Signs

Augustine distinguishes natural and given signs. The first signify with no intention of signifying, while the latter signify because a person has an intention to signify. The distinction, at least in part, is a distinction of will.

Peirce’s typology of icon, sign, and symbol depends on a different criterion. Peirce is looking at the relation of the signifier to the thing signified, rather than to the intention of the communicator.

Augustine and Peirce are (perhaps) not disagreeing with each other in their analysis of signs so much as attending to different features of signs.

Next
YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE

Deliver Us from Evil

Kari Jenson Gold

In a recent New York Times article entitled “Freedom With a Side of Guilt: How Food Delivery…

Natural Law Needs Revelation

Peter J. Leithart

Natural law theory teaches that God embedded a teleological moral order in the world, such that things…

Letters

Glenn C. Loury makes several points with which I can’t possibly disagree (“Tucker and the Right,” January…