🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <164@thirdi.UUCP> sarge@thirdi.UUCP (Sarge Gerbode) writes:
>So, there are the following categories of messages:
>
>1.  Those that make statements.
>2.  Those that try to evoke specific experiences.
>3.  Those that stimulate and act as "inkblots" for the imagination of the
>    audience.
>
>Of these three forms of messages, only the first has truth value or
>(therefore) mendaciousness.

OK, although I would quibble about category 2.  Suppose someone writes a
book in which he attempts to get the reader to feel what it is like to drive
a truck.  Suppose that the author does not actually know what it is like to
drive a truck, and therefore the experience evoked is all wrong.  Or suppose
he *does* what it is like to drive a truck, but deliberately evokes a
different (perhaps more exciting) experience.  I think there are grounds for
calling either of these cases mendacious.

Still, I think the original claim referred to the *symbols*, not the
*messages*.  Can you imagine symbols which can be used for messages of types
2 and 3, but not of type 1?

I can't.  So I'm at least willing to accept that the ability to be used
mendaciously is one of the characteristic properties of symbols.  I'm not
yet prepared to accept it as part of the definition.  (It certainly can't be
the whole definition -- a message as a whole can be used mendaciously, yet
the message is composed of symbols rather than being a symbol itself.
Likewise, individual phonemes are parts of symbols, not symbols themselves.)

Perhaps the originator of this discussion (whose name I have lost) can take
a stab at filling out the definition.
-- 

Frank Adams                           ihnp4!philabs!pwa-b!mmintl!franka
Ashton-Tate          52 Oakland Ave North         E. Hartford, CT 06108