Re: Pragma, Pragmata, Pragmatitude❢

Peircers,

By way of review, let us return to the ''locus classicus'' for the use of pragma/pragmata in 
something approaching a fully sign-relational sense:

> Words spoken are symbols or signs (symbola) of affections or impressions (pathemata) of the soul
> (psyche);  written words are the signs of words spoken.  As writing, so also is speech not the
> same for all races of men.  But the mental affections themselves, of which these words are
> primarily signs (semeia), are the same for the whole of mankind, as are also the objects
> (pragmata) of which those affections are representations or likenesses, images, copies
> (homoiomata).
> 
> (Aristotle, De Interpretatione i.16a4)

In our paper, "Interpretation as Action : The Risk of Inquiry", Susan Awbrey and I venture the
following initial comment:

> This early text recognizes the three roles within the sign relation:  signs, ideas, and objects.
> It also characterizes the relationships between these three roles.  For Aristotle, the relation
> between signs (words) and ideas (affections and impressions) is that of a symbol to what it
> symbolizes.  In origin, a symbol was a split coin used as a token of recognition.  In concrete
> terms, the symbol is a particular kind of sign.  As a fragment, it refers both to its other half
> and to the whole that they originally formed.  The relation between ideas and objects is that of
> an impression to what it is a likeness of.  Although Aristotle leaves it implicit, we can see
> that there is a relationship between signs and objects that is a compound of the first two
> relations.  It is the indirect relation, a fragment of a likeness.  There is irony here, that the
> sign relation is rooted in a type of iconoclasm.
> 
> https://www.academia.edu/1266493/Interpretation_as_Action_The_Risk_of_Inquiry

Elsewhere we called this "Aristotle's Approximation" to the triadic sign relation, the only thing
holding it back being its articulation of the sign relation as compound or disjointed rather than
describing it as a fully irreducible triadic relation.

Regards,

Jon

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