Talk:Semeiotic

A different approach from a different stand

From a linguistic point of view the definition of signs as interpreted by humans and other living organisms involved in communication should be seen within the framework of d. Crystal’s DEED paradigm. According to him any verbal statement made between two actors of a communicative act is either a description or an explanation. Clearly, before you spell out any idea to share you sort out your thoughts through a number of mental operations collectively referred to as explanation (including not only your reasoning facilities, but your volition and emotions as well). Then you decide to ahead with your motor action and produce your description whether in writing or spoken. At the other end of the dialogue you first meet such a description and then you proceed with your explanation of what has been shared with you.

Clearly, you have comparison at work here both before you speak up and after you have heard some verbal utterance. Such clusters of verbal signs according to W.H. Mittins, are of two kinds, a label, headings or titles, and b) messages. Obviously, your mental operation involved here is relating or establishing relations between a cluster of words (signs), or the form, and yourself, the speaker or the author, and the context, and whatever you find appropriate in terms of content involved in the communicative act, such as reason, will and emotion.

No doubt any element of a language makes uses of the operation of substitution, some existing object and the verbal sign created in reference to the former. From that on signs are relatively freely substituted in order to create a second level of reality where the laws of physics do not apply. But do they really not apply? In fact, they do in the sense that the whole set of symbols are created in conformance with basic physical laws of attraction and repulsion that are identified at different levels and not just contradictions of logic, but incompatibility of emotional quantities. Therefore the best way to make distinction between signs in general is to identify the process of how they are generated through mental operations. For instance, before a symbol is interpreted as a symbol, it must first be assigned to and agreed on in a fairly large audience including the possible contexts as well. Or, before an icon is created and/or dedicated to represent something else, that something and the icon must be compared and found similar to or indicative of one another. Finally, and index is a sign to connect the occurrence of some verbal sign both in a sorted list and in an unsorted body of signs/references so that your search may be facilitated and any direct pointing would be eliminated.

Consequently, the linguistic form of any proposition is a message, and a message is a cluster of words that has a predicate (a verbal part) to it, otherwise it is only a label, a heading or a title. And whether you accept it or not, it is the predicate, the verbal part that is indicative of the relation between the subject and the object (SVO), the simplest variety of statements, propositions or messages. On the other hand if the verbal part is not fully specified, then the whole clause makes no sense. Notice the triadic nature of this patter that at the same time corresponds to the law of identity and the algebraic operations, i. e. the way both logic and math operate with signs.

Therefore the whole issue of explanation in the current ontology summit on the general problem of Explanations to me seems to lack the understanding the underlying mental processes that seem to lead to identical patterns in describing or formulating ideas/experiences in terms of the building blocks making up longer sequences of human utterances, beyond ontologies or nomenclatures as linguistically speaking they are nothing but labels, headings and titles, whereas any proposition on the world must have a predicate (a verbal component) that is not reduced to the verb “to contain” (mereology), but is concerned with the issue of explanation on the receiving side that is obviously dependent on previous knowledge or educational/cultural background, expertise.

And the common denominator for such a varied audience must be a proper breakdown of mental operations where each operation calls for another in case the receiver or listener lacks something on understanding. Typically, calls for specification if generalities are heard, or the other way round, when the message is not specific enough. In other words, when one-on-one relation cannot be established or confirmed. This brings up the issue of having different wording (languages and disciplines) for the same chunk of reality, or recognizing a larger prospect than reasoning and logic, where emotion and volition will also play a role, maybe in a totally different ball game than designing ontologies. Genezistan (discuss • contribs) 19:26, 25 November 2018 (UTC)