User:KYPark/1986/Arbib

The Construction of Reality 

Michael A. Arbib and Mary B. Hesse (1986)

http://books.google.com/books?id=a3yMTANfHBQC

8.3 The language of symbols
It is a commonplace that the language of religion is the language of metaphor and symbol. Religion, like science, is largely concerned with describing the unobservable and, therefore, must call on all possible mechanisms for extending the everyday meaning of language. The remark is, however, often intended to imply two things not so obviously true. First, it seeks to distinguish modes of expression in religion sharply from those of science, which are assumed literal and descriptive. Second, it does so to the detriment

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translation or paraphrase, just as metaphor was taken to be meaningless until explicitly paraphrased into its "literal meaning." Many suggestions have been made about how to classify different kinds of signs, and there is little agreement about either terminology or substance. We look at two different types of classification of signs within the semiological theory in order to contrast them with our holistic approach. First, we take classifications, based on Charles Peirce's semiology, that classify signs into "indices" and "symbols" (Peirce 1931, p. 372). By an index, Peirce intends various kinds of natural signs related to their referents by physical contiguity. For example, an index may be a cause or effect of its referent (smoke for fire), or a conventional indicator, like a pointing finger (the "index" finger). For some of Peirce's successors, indexes have also come to include signs associated with the referent by part-whole relations (white coat for scientific research), by functional association (the key for captivity or exclusion), or by some historical association well known in the social group (e.g., Churchill's cigar or the paving stones of the Latin Quarter). Conventional signaling systems and codes are also included among indexes. Symbols, on the other hand, are taken to be signs that relate to their meanings by some sort of resemblance or analogy. For example, the flame is taken as the sign for the heat of passion, or water for purification; or there may be analogy of form, as when Nathan's story of the rich man who coveted his neighbor's lamb is a symbol for David, who coveted his neighbor's wife.

This distinction between "index" and "symbol" repeats almost word-for-word the distinction we noted between "metonymy" and "metaphor" in classical grammar. As explained in Section 8.1, "metaphor" is used in the specific sense of a linguistic trope based on explicit similarities and analogies; it is contrasted with "metonymy," in which causes are taken for effects, and vice versa, or parts for wholes, or accidentally associated things stand for each other. Here, again, the theory of signs and symbols mirrors classical semantics. In terms of our network theory that "all language is metaphorical," however, we want to look more closely at this distinction between indexes and symbols.

Consider first the status of the signs of language itself. Are they indexes or symbols? On the one hand, it may be said that words are conventional signs and therefore indexes. but if we consider larger units of descriptive language -- phrases, sentences, semantic networks -- it then appears that the structure of these units must bear some analogy or morphism to the world that is their referent (or that, in our terms, they "construct"). In the network theory of language, this is not the one-to-one relation of correspondence truth, but a relation between general linguistic terms and perceived family resemblance classes of objects, which constitute the essentially metaphorical component of all language that is equally fundamental. Word tokens are conventionally associated with their "meanings, and the syntax of a language has conven-

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Cultural signs |           |-|          Symbols     Conventional codes |      |-|   Metonymy   Metaphor

Figure 8.2 Classification of signs derived from Evans-Pritchard (1956) and Beattie (1964)


 * 1) [...] p. 69), whether this is similarity, cause-effect, or historical association, though the appropriateness may not always be obvious, or even, as in the case of dreams, capable of being made fully conscious.
 * 2)  What symbols stand for are not concrete evens, but abstract actions, such as "kingship," "courage," "defilement," "atonement."
 * 3) Symbols represent abstract ideas because these ideas are difficult to represent literally and the primitive capacity for abstract thought and expression is limited.
 * 4) Symbols express something that is an object of value. This is indicated by the fact that peoples' feelings about symbols are often highly charged and exhibit resistance to change: for example, flags, totems, songs, the Sikh turban, spells, baptisms, sacrifices, initiation rites.

If Beattie's list were the whole truth, however, it would be easy for a positivist to solve the problem of symbolism. Since we have a developed language of abstract ideas, it might be said that we can simply decode symbols into that language, using their appropriate characters to give us the clue to the correct abstract translation. As far as its meaning is concerned, symbolism would be seen as a primitive device; when decoded, ts translation would either come out false ("sticking pins in a wax image causes harm to the original"), or as a piece of platitudinous functional psychology ("eating a common mean means experiencing group solidarity"), or doubtfully meaningful and in need of further interpretation ("getting on one's knees means abasing oneself before God"). What would be left of symbolic expression and symbolic acts would be their emotive or morally strengthening quality and social effectiveness. As we see in Chapter 9, these symbolisms are what Durkheim regards as the residue of religion when its claims are superseded by science.

Beattie goes further, however, and begins to move away from a strictly semiological view. He suggests that in religion and other forms of symbolism "reality is misrepresented if the symbol, and not the often indefinable thing that it symbolizes, it taken to be the ultimate truth" (Beattie 1984, p. 239). The possibility of explicit translation is now dropped; the referent is "indefinable." Beattie suggests instead an aesthetic model. As in the Western understanding of art, there is no point in trying to "disprove" symbolic systems, and they are not intended to contribute directly to some practical end: "we need to distinguish between the 'truths' of practical experience ..., and those, also 'true' but in a different way, of religion, myth and poetry, even though both may be accepted on the same ground of 'custom' by the less reflective members of all cultures" (Beattie 1970, p. 258).

Unfortunately, this comparison with works of art does not help our cognitive problem because the philosophical understanding of truth in aesthetic contexts is at least as obscure as in the case of symbolism. but Beattie is here moving to a more holistic view. We now look at another theory that explicitly abandons the semiological theory and replaces it by an account of symbolism more consistent with our cognitive theory of metaphor.

In his Rethinking Symbolism, Daniel Sperber (1975) objects to the notion of symbols as "codes" needing translation by means of simple (symbol, meaning) dyads. He point out that those who have presupposed this theory have deceived themselves into thinking that the empirical evidence about symbolism fits such atomistic dyads. But closer attention to the evidence shows that this is not the case. First, it is generally agreed that we cannot produce immediate interpretations of symbols with standard linguistic meanings, since although symbols usually have such meanings, they do not explain the symbolism but rather form part of the problem of symbolism itself. Material water used in ritual, or the word "water," do not just mean or refer to water but symbolically mean something else -- purification, initiation, evil, the river of death. Thus arises the "double-meaning" theory of symbolism. The second meaning cannot just be elicited from literal language since it is itself usually metaphoric or symbolic.

Second, these arguments suggest what Sperber calls the "cryptological" view. Symbolic meanings are hidden and have to be discovered by close questioning either of ordinary speakers or of special people who are initiates of an esoteric meaning not available to ordinary speakers. Either group may be reluctant informants. Alternatively, the hidden meanings may have to be elicited by psychoanalysis, as in Freudian theory. The interpretations thus elicited from actors are often either banal ("water meaning cleansing"; but then why the disproportionate ritual fuss?); or contradictory (water means life, but also death); or themselves symbolic and in need of further clarification ("water means cleansing from sin"). In the most interesting cases, such as the last of these examples, the preferred exegesis itself needs exegesis. Moreover, if such interpretations are known only to an elite group or to the visiting anthropologist or psychoanalyst, how can symbolism function as a communicative system within society in general?

Sperber goes on to argue that the "grounds," such as similarity, for using symbolism in particular ways are not themselves grounds of meaning. He concludes that the question "What do symbols mean?" is a cultural artifact of Western and other cultures that foster rationalistic exegesis and is inappropriate to the elucidation of symbolism. Unfortunately, however, he does not succeed in freeing himself from another cultural artifact -- namely, the literalist theory of language and the associated empiricist theory of reference. He presupposes that language is propositional, in the sense of requiring univocity, verbal substitutability, and the rule of noncontradiction, and he accepts the analytic-synthetic distinction. Thus, in his analysis of symbolism is not a language and that metaphors such as "meaning" are inappropriate for it. Symbols for him are not "words" with "syntax" and "semantics." Rather, they are concerned with the organization and classification of language and hence of the world and with ensuring shared orientations in the social group. Symbols are more like an "encyclopedia" for organizing concepts and have no meaning or truth value in themselves. They may be called "cognitive," but like regulative principles or conceptual frameworks they are neither empirically nor analytically true.

Sperber too easily accepts the analytic-synthetic-conventional distinctions and thus fails to see that a new theory of meaning and new senses of the "cognitive" may be required. He does, however, provide arguments for a holistic theory of symbol systems. Instead of regarding his theory as a rejection of the whole idea of symbolism as a language, we can regard it as a cogent argument against a particular theory of what a language is -- namely, the literalist theory of meaning and the empiricist theory of reference. In fact, it is noticeable how many of Sperber's arguments about symbolism echo similar arguments against the cognitive character of metaphor within the same literalist tradition. conversely, the restoration of cognitive significance to metaphor can be made to carry symbolism along with it. Sperber rejects the question "What do symbols mean?" and replaces it by the question "How do symbols work?" The network theory has made the same replacement, in the sense that it no longer regards "meaning" as a second term in a relation between words or sentences and some other domain whether this is a "world" or a metalanguage. Rather, it takes meaning to be the set of meaning relations within and among words, sentences, and larger holistic units of language. Meaning relations are typically neither empirical reference nor dictionary translation, but synonymy, resemblance, analogy, homology, opposition, inversion.

In our network model of language, we have the resources for a more adequate understanding of symbolism as a generalization of metaphor. We summarize this modified linguistic theory of symbolism in the following sis points:


 * 1) There are more or less complex entities that may be words, sentences, propositions, utterances, prayers, liturgies, sacred objects and locations, myths, dramatic performances, ritual acts, social roles and hierarchies, all of which may act as "symbols."
 * 2) These complex entities become symbols in contexts of meaning, where they are related in symbolic discourses and symbolic acts. They are highly con

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