Treatise on Semiotics

Quaestio 1. - Concepts and the Division of Signs

Art. 1: Let us consider an idea or concept, namely, that of a chair. It is evident that the word (by
which we refer to whatever it is that a chair is) is not precisely what the chair is. Perhaps we
could say that the word "chair" is, in-another (that is, in reference to other), what a chair is, or
merely indicates what a chair is, but certainly we couldn't say that about the chair in-itself, that
is, deconsidering any secondary determinations, determinations of anything that isn't the actual
chair.
Anyhow, medieval logicians would call that which we used, be it verbally or gramatically, to
refer to the chair as a sign. A sign is something that indicates something else, and this is exactly
what words do. In this terminology, all words are signs. Let us here postulate a distinction
between simple signs and composite signs: "a" is no more neither less a sign than "and", and yet,
one is composed of the other. This happens because in grammar a sign can be used, in
conjunction with others, to create a new one, composed of them. Thus both what we call
"words" and what we call "letters" are signs in the medieval logicians' terminology.

Art. 2: If we so desire, it is possible to decompose all signs even further. For the grammatical
signs are equivalent to audible signs; for example, the symbolic (here meaning "inside our
alphabet") representation "chair" has, in turn, an equivalent representation in sound, that is, the
sound of the word chair.
Petrus Hispanus, a prominent medieval logician (who also happened to be Pope John XXI),
distinguished even further than we already have; sounds either have an inherent meaning or
not. But we shall discuss the determinacy of the meaning of a sign soon. For now let us say
merely that sounds with meanings are called voices, from where come the concepts of univocity
and equivocity. Now, one can say that the concept of animal in that of a man and that of a dog are
univocal, in the sense that both are have share animal having the same meaning. The same can't
be said by the relation the concepts of right as in the opposite of left and right as in correct. These
are equivocal. There is also a third possibility in this distinction: analogy. An ocurrency of
analogous meanings, to cite an example, would be the case of the relation between the foot of the
mountain and the foot of a man.

Art. 3: Now, in relation to that which determines the meaning of a sign, we must say that,
whatever it is, it doesn't exist in the physical world. First, what I mean by meaning here is justly
that identification between the sign and what it represents. This is called intentio by
aristotelians. Let us call it intentionality: the intention, the directedness something has towards
something else, in this case, a sign towards what is represented. Anyhow, it seems wrong to
suggest that the meaning of a sign may be found in its physical constitution. On the purely
physical order, we may analyse wether a paper that has the word chair written on it is in motion
or not, and if the affirmative answer is the case, what type of motion; on the purely chemical
order, we may analyse what elements of the periodic table constitute the paper, the atomic
number of said elements, the number of protons, neutrons and electrons on each of the atoms of
a molecule of each element in a given moment, say. Yet, intuitively, the meaning won't be
found. This is call is called indeterminacy of meaning in analytic philosophy. In order to account
for this phenomenon, we must appeal to a principle that doesn't happen to be material; a formal
principle. Inside the aristotelian terminology, formal is precisely that which determines, while
material is that which is determined. Therefore, let us conclude that the meanings are
determined by their form, which is what directs their directedness, or intentionality.