[humanmarkup-comment] **PC-24-Section 4.2.24

that have been done in the current versions on the website because the explanatory text versions contained a mistaken copying operation and repeated a variation of the definition of signal even in the usual repetition of the title. So here you will see a new form of notation:

From: >To: >To:

This progression moves from the erroneous text to correct text as it now appears in the current version to proposed text

From:
"Human Signal
A perceptible change in an environmental factor that can be used to transfer meaning. The basic function of such signals is to provide the change of a single environmental factor to attract attention and to transfer meaning. The vocalization of language is a clear example."

To:
"Human Symbol
Any device with which an abstraction can be made. May inlcude written and spoken language as well as visual objects. May include a process of symbolization. May be culturally specific and often used as a means to communicate cultural values. May and often do appear in clusters and depend upon one another for meaning and value."

To:
"Human Symbol

The following is a pretty clear description by cognitive-science folks of traditional semiotics terminology for symbol . Symbol in semiotics is a TYPE of sign. The key distinction is that symbol is taken to be based in social convention. In contrast, mapping of physical nature of a referent characterizes icon type; stemming from a cause, "index" type. (-- Hardly anyone uses "index" in this technical sense, however; instead lay senses of "sign" or even "signal of" appear instead as in Len's examples in our discussions).

An icon is a sign that stands for an object by resembling it, not merely visually, but by any means. Included in this category of sign are obvious examples like pictures, maps and diagrams and some not so obvious ones like algebraic expressions and metaphors. The essential aspect of the relation of an icon to its object is one of similarity, broadly defined.

Indexes refer to their objects, not by virtue of any similarity relation, but rather via an actual causal link between the sign and its object: smoke is an index of fire, a weather vane is an index of wind direction, a mark on a fever thermometer is an index of body temperature, and so forth. The relation between the sign and its object is actual in that the sign and object have something in common; that is, the object "really" affects the sign.

Finally, symbols refer to their objects by virtue of a law, rule or convention. Words, propositions and texts are obvious examples in that no similarity or causal link is suggested in the relation between, for example, the word "horse" and the object to which it refers. In this category especially the potential arbitrary character of signs comes to the foreground. If symbols need bear no similarity or causal link to their object, then the signs can be considered by the sign user in unlimited ways, independent of any physical relationship to the sign user. This point is of crucial importance and, in fact lays the foundation for the semiotic view of cognition in humans.

If signs stand for other things, such that these other things are brought to mind when the sign is used, then we have a case where a system of signs acts as some code for some system of objects. Why are codes necessary, when all they do is fill in for their objects? Here we stress again that a sign stands for its object not completely, but in only some aspect or ground. If the sign and the object were equivalent, the sign would be the object.

Given that signs are incomplete equivalencies, it is possible to determine signs by means of some set of rules for those equivalencies. In this way, a series of signs can be linked together in a true code, where the rules not only express the state of affairs of certain objects, but where the code rules can be manipulated so as to generate new versions of expressions and arrive at new forms of content. Signs, because they are only incompletely equivalent to their objects, are thereby free to have characteristics of their own. Crucially, these characteristics can include coherence with other signs to form a system of signs that are related to their object, on the one hand, and to the other signs in the system on the other hand."

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