Posted by Ben C on 02/20/07 08:24

On 2007-02-20, dorayme <doraymeRidThis@optusnet.com.au> wrote:
> In article <vc7kt2peh97a1savd8jnh37c7ejbbc6s89@4ax.com>,
> Andy Dingley <dingbat@codesmiths.com> wrote:
>
>> The core of Saussure's analysis could be said to be that signs
>> ("elements" in our world) have two aspects: signifier and signified. The
>> signifier is the sound or symbol with which we express them and the
>> signified is the concept we actually mean behind them. Only the
>> signifier is immediately obvious, but only the signified conveys real
>> meaning.
>
> Be careful of this continental stuff, Andy, they like reinventing
> wheels and adding epicycles and in their factories, some anti
> Ockham principle seems the main guide, and, for good measure, a
> device to add great fat dollops of pure obscurantism (in
> Australia, we call it bullshit).
>
> There are words and sentences and these have meanings. We do not
> need some third ghostly intermediary called a concept. What do
> you really think the concept of "is" is? It has a meaning but you
> will not find it conveniently in some object. My cat has a name
> and this name refers to the actual cat. There is a cat and there
> is a word. And there is how the word is used.

The best definition of concept I've heard (which is possibly
Wittgenstein's idea) is "knowing how to use a word". You possess the
concept of a cat if you know how to use the word "cat". This works for
all words (including ones like "ouch").

Which amounts to pretty much what you said. I agree that the "signified
thing", unless we just mean the cat itself, is skating on very thin ice.

But credit to AD for explaining it so clearly. I never had the faintest
idea what those people like Saussure were on about and anyone I asked to
explain always disappeared like turtles into their black turtlenecks at
the first sign of logic.

But the distinction actually works a lot better, even to the point of
working at all, applied to HTML than it ever did applied to natural
language. The "what I signify is what I get" editor has a future.

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