6.1—
A Criticism of the Semiotic Analysis

While the analysis of symbols and symbolic representation presented in chapter 4 is in certain ways novel and no doubt will be regarded as controversial in some respects, one general thrust of the analysis—the idea that the nature of utterances and inscriptions depends upon the conventions and intentions of speakers and writers—may plausibly be regarded as a "mainstream" view. It is a view widely held by writers both within cognitive science and outside it,^[1] and is indeed endorsed in some form by CTM's most important advocates (see Fodor 1981). There are some particular twists to my articulation of this view—notably, the distinction between the technical sortal terms 'marker', 'signifier', and 'counter', the claim that there are four separate "modalities" of conventional being, and the claim that not only semantics but also syntax and symbolhood are conventional in nature. But most objections to these features of my account as an account of utterances and inscriptions would probably take the form of an intramural debate between writers who embrace a semiotics based on convention and intention.

When this account is offered as a general account of symbols and sym-

bolic meaning, however, it sometimes meets with greater resistance. For it is often claimed that what this analysis really gives us is an account of the nature of specifically communicative or discursive symbols —or perhaps of symbols-as-used-communicatively —and not an account of symbols, syntax, and symbolic meaning generally, much less a general account of representation.

Now to this latter claim—that the account in chapter 4 is not a general account of representation —I gladly defer. It was not my intent there to supply a general account of representation or an analysis of the uses of the word 'representation', nor does doing so fall within the rhetorical scope of this book. What we are discussing here, after all, is not the general claim that thought involves representation, but the more specific claim that it involves symbolic representation.^[2] It is necessary, however, to address the claim that the Semiotic Analysis presented here is somehow specifically an analysis of discursive symbols—of symbols-used-communicatively, and not symbols per se .^[3] For this claim will be of direct relevance to the analysis of CTM, as the symbols postulated by CTM's advocates are not used communicatively. For purposes of brevity, I shall put this objection in the critic's voice:

CRITIC : Look here, Horst. The analysis you give may be very well and good as an analysis of discursive symbols such as utterances and inscriptions, but you have been far too hasty in drawing the conclusion that all symbols are conventional in nature on the basis of these examples. The decision to confine yourself to conventional examples seems to be a matter more of fiat than of principle; and as a consequence, the analysis is question begging if it is presented as a general account of symbols and symbolic meaning. What you really have here is a hybrid analysis: what it describes is not precisely what it is for symbols to have semantic properties, but also how they come by them in a fashion that is conducive to communicative use of the symbols. Other symbols (e.g., mental representations and some representations in computers) also have semantic properties, but are not used communicatively. Arguably, the only reason that discursive symbols are conventional in nature is that this is necessary for their communicative role in natural languages. And so there is no reason to suppose that the semantic properties of mental representations would share this feature.

Moreover, as to your contention that there is no such thing as a symbol simply "being" of a particular type or "meaning something" apart from how it is interpretable under conventions, intended, interpreted, or

interpretable-in-principle, you have really shown less than you think. You are right that there is no question of a discursive symbol "meaning something" apart from how it is interpretable, intended, and so forth—at least if you mean by this (a ) that you can't have discursive symbols that are meaningful without getting their meanings in these ways, and (b ) that telling the story about how symbols are conventionally interpretable and how they were intended, and so on, already says all there is to say about what they mean. That is, your conditions are both necessary and sufficient for the attribution of symbolic meaning in the case of discursive symbols. But this is quite compatible with the possibility that symbolic meaning is a distinct property from conventional interpretability, authoring intentions, and the like. Consider the following analogy: suppose that someone wanted an analysis of redness, and you were to give an analysis in terms of the reflectance properties that a solid object would have to have in order for it to be red. It would be true that solid objects could not be red without having these reflectances and, arguably, that once you had said that an object had these reflectances, there was nothing more to its being red to be told. But it does not follow that being red is in general simply a matter of reflectances or that nothing can be red without having these reflectance gradients. There is, for example, red light . The property of being red is accounted for in one way in solids and in another way in light. It is thus a mistake to identify the property of being red with the properties solids must have to be red solids, because things other than solids can be red. Similarly, you can have physical triangles and abstract triangles, and the latter do not have all of the properties one would expect of the former. Give an account of triangularity that builds physical properties into the picture and you leave out abstract triangles. Similarly, temperature is mean kinetic energy of molecules for gases, but not for plasma. Give an account of temperature simpliciter as mean kinetic energy of molecules and you've arbitrarily ruled out the possibility of plasma having a temperature.

Now look at your examples: you've restricted your domain to communicative signs. You may be right that, for this domain, an account of semantic properties (and symbolhood and syntax) has to advert to conventions and intentions. But all that means is that things in this domain cannot realize such properties except by way of conventions and intentions. In some sense, temperature is mean kinetic energy for gases, but not for plasma. Redness is a matter of reflectance curves for solids, but not for light. And similarly, meaning is a matter of conventional and actual interpretation for communicative signs (and likewise syntax and

symbolhood), but (as you point out) not for mental states, and arguably not for symbols that represent but are not used communicatively . You have confused the analysis of the property of meaningfulness simpliciter with an account of how it gets realized in particular kinds of objects—namely, objects whose function is to communicate meaning. If you want to analyze meaning, the analysis had better work for noncommunicative symbols like mental representations as well. And if you do that, arguably you will end up with an analysis that is applicable to mental states, too, thus circumventing the conclusion that the semantic vocabulary is paronymous.

I cease to speak in the critic's voice.