This essay begins with a consideration of one way in which animals and persons may be valued as “irreplaceable.” Drawing on both Plato and Pascal, I consider reasons for skepticism regarding the legitimacy of this sort of attachment. While I do not offer a complete defense against such skepticism, I do show that worries here may be overblown due to the conflation of distinct metaphysical and normative concerns. I then go on to clarify what sort of value is at (...) issue in cases of irreplaceable attachment. I characterize “unique value” as the kind of value attributed to a thing when we take that thing to be (theoretically, not just practically) irreplaceable. I then consider the relationship between this sort of value and intrinsic value. After considering the positions of Gowans, Moore, Korsgaard, Frankfurt, and others, I conclude that unique value is best understood not as a variety of intrinsic value but rather as one kind of final value that is grounded in the extrinsic properties of the object. (shrink)

Lovers do not relate to their beloveds as seats of valuable qualities that would be replaceable for anyone with relevantly similar or more valuable qualities. Instead, lovers take their beloveds to be irreplaceable. This has been noted frequently in the current debate on love and different theories of love have offered different explanations for the phenomenon. In this paper, I develop a more complex picture of what is involved in lovers taking their beloveds to be irreplaceable. I argue (...) that in order to account for the beloved’s irreplaceability, a theory of love must meet two conditions: it must explain the subjective aspect as well as the moral aspect of the beloved’s irreplaceability. I show that current theories of love fail to meet these conditions, either one or both of them, and I offer an alternative account that does - an account according to which love is understood as a special kind of desire for the beloved as a person. The aim of this paper is twofold: first, to give a more nuanced picture of the beloved’s irreplaceability, acknowledging in particular that there is a moral aspect to the phenomenon that has not been attended to thus far; second, to introduce and motivate a new desire-based account of love. (shrink)

In 1987, the Brundtland Commission urged nations to improve present conditions without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs. Against the background of this appeal for sustainable development, there is a call for intergenerational justice, under a sufficientarian framework. Despite their strong relation, we claim that, to some degree, intergenerational sufficientarianism disregards relevant sustainability notions. This neglect undermines intergenerational sufficientarianism in the context of sustainability, here operationalized as sustainable development. In response, we propose the concept of (...) class='Hi'>irreplaceable goods as a necessary bridge between the two frameworks. Simultaneously, we stress the need for scholars to consider sufficientarianism as a valid alternative to egalitarianism for achieving resource justice. To harmonize intergenerational sufficientarianism and sustainability, we firstly delineate sustainability theoretical notions that influence fair distributive futures. Secondly, we incorporate those sustainability constraints into the conceptual background of intergenerational sufficientarianism. We also establish the concept of irreplaceable goods as a pivot and anchor for further theoretical development on the sufficient well-being of future generations. Finally, we discuss the implications of this concept in terms of expenditure and investment by contemporary people. With the proposed adjustments, we advocate that intergenerational sufficientarianism is a robust framework to deliver just futures. (shrink)

The protection of species ranks highly among environmentalist priorities, and many environmentalists expect the public to respect and support efforts to protect and rehabilitate endangered species. There are a range of instrumental and anthropocentric justifications for these attitudes, yet some environmentalists want more. It is unclear that more is to be had. In particular, it is challenging to justify some environmentalist attitudes without appealing to some version of the claim that species are intrinsically valuable. However, this has been a notoriously (...) difficult thesis to defend, and it is clearly not available to those who doubt the existence of species. In this paper, I show how a number of environmentalist commitments that appear to be about the value of species can be interpreted and defended in a way that is compatible with antirealism about species. According to my proposal, the proper target of environmentalists’ evaluative concern is the irreplaceable design that is embodied by the individuals that make up a (putative) species. This approach can capture and justify many environmentalist attitudes about the value of biological variety without attributing intrinsic value to species, or even requiring a place for species in our ontology. This enables environmentalists to effectively sidestep a number of puzzling issues surrounding the nature and value of species. (shrink)

This review covers experimental approaches to sound-symbolism—from infants to adults, and from Sapir’s foundational studies to twenty-first century product naming. It synthesizes recent behavioral, developmental, and neuroimaging work into a systematic overview of the cross-modal correspondences that underpin iconic links between form and meaning. It also identifies open questions and opportunities, showing how the future course of experimental iconicity research can benefit from an integrated interdisciplinary perspective. Combining insights from psychology and neuroscience with evidence from natural languages provides us with (...) opportunities for the experimental investigation of the role of sound-symbolism in language learning, language processing, and communication. The review finishes by describing how hypothesis-testing and model-building will help contribute to a cumulative science of sound-symbolism in human language. (shrink)

Iconicity, the resemblance between the form of a word and its meaning, has effects on behavior in both communicative symbol development and language learning experiments. These results have invited speculation about iconicity being a key feature of the origins of language, yet the presence of iconicity in natural languages seems limited. In a diachronic study of language change, we investigated the extent to which iconicity is a stable property of vocabulary, alongside previously investigated psycholinguistic predictors of change. Analyzing 784 English (...) words with data on their historical forms, we found that stable words are higher in iconicity, longer in length, and earlier acquired during development, but that the role of frequency and grammatical category may be less important than previously suggested. Iconicity is revealed as a feature of ultra-conserved words and potentially also as a property of vocabulary early in the history of language origins. (shrink)

It is often assumed that there is a necessary relationship between historical value and irreplaceability, and that this is an essential feature of historical value’s distinctive character. Contrary to this assumption, I argue that it is a merely contingent fact that some historically valuable things are irreplaceable, and that irreplaceability is not a distinctive feature of historical value at all. Rather, historically significant objects, from heirlooms to artifacts, offer us an otherwise impossible connection with the past, a value that (...) persists even in the face of suitable replacements. (shrink)

According to one important proposal, the difference between perception and cognition consists in the representational formats used in the two systems (Carey, 2009; Burge, 2010; Block, 2014). In particular, it is claimed that perceptual representations are iconic, or image-like, while cognitive representations are discursive, or language-like. Taking object perception as a test case, this paper argues on empirical grounds that it requires discursive label-like representations. These representations segment the perceptual field, continuously pick out objects despite changes in their features, and (...) abstractly represent high-level features, none of which appears possible for purely iconic representations. (shrink)

Sign languages are known to display the same general grammatical properties as spoken languages, but also to make greater use of iconic mechanisms. In Schlenker et al.’s ‘Iconic Variables’ :91–149, 2013), it was argued that loci can have an iconic semantics, in the sense that certain geometric relations among loci are preserved by the interpretation function. Here we ask whether plural and height specifications of loci display the formal behavior of phi-features in remaining uninterpreted in focus- and ellipsis-constructions. Data from (...) ASL and LSF show that plural and height specifications may indeed remain uninterpreted in these constructions; furthermore, there are cases in which a single high locus is construed iconically and left uninterpreted in the course of ellipsis resolution. We argue that our data are compatible with two theories. According to the Strong View, plural and height specifications of loci display exactly the behavior of spoken language features. According to the Weak View, our data just show that plural and height specifications share the behavior of features and other non-assertive elements in being separable from the referential terms they specify. Our LSF data are compatible with the Weak View; our ASL data might provide support for the Strong View. While our aim is merely to open the debate about the featural status of iconic specifications, the question is of some importance: if features are innate and primitive elements of grammar, and if some of them have an intrinsically geometric semantics, the signed modality might play a greater role than is usually thought at the very core of Universal Grammar. (shrink)

Recent experiments have shown that people iconically modulate their prosody corresponding with the meaning of their utterance. This article reports findings from a story reading task that expands the investigation of iconic prosody to abstract meanings in addition to concrete ones. Participants read stories that contrasted along concrete and abstract semantic dimensions of speed and size. Participants read fast stories at a faster rate than slow stories, and big stories with a lower pitch than small stories. The effect of speed (...) was distributed across the stories, including portions that were identical across stories, whereas the size effect was localized to size-related words. Overall, these findings enrich the documentation of iconicity in spoken language and bear on our understanding of the relationship between gesture and speech. (shrink)

This book consolidates and extends the authors’ work on the connection between iconicity and abductive inference. It emphasizes a pragmatic, experimental and fallibilist view of knowledge without sacrificing formal rigor. Within this context, the book focuses particularly on scientific knowledge and its prevalent use of mathematics. To find an answer to the question “What kind of experimental activity is the scientific employment of mathematics?” the book addresses the problems involved in formalizing abductive cognition. For this, it implements the concept and (...) method of iconicity, modeling this theoretical framework mathematically through category theory and topoi. Peirce's concept of iconic signs is treated in depth, and it is shown how Peirce's diagrammatic logical notation of Existential Graphs makes use of iconicity and how important features of this iconicity are representable within category theory. Alain Badiou’s set-theoretical model of truth procedures and his relational sheaf-based theory of phenomenology are then integrated within the Peircean logical context. Finally, the book opens the path towards a more naturalist interpretation of the abductive models developed in Peirce and Badiou through an analysis of several recent attempts to reformulate quantum mechanics with categorical methods. Overall, the book offers a comprehensive and rigorous overview of past approaches to iconic semiotics and abduction, and it encompasses new extensions of these methods towards an innovative naturalist interpretation of abductive reasoning. (shrink)

Mathematical notation includes a vast array of signs. Most mathematical signs appear to be symbolic, in the sense that their meaning is arbitrarily related to their visual appearance. We explored the hypothesis that mathematical signs with iconic aspects—those which visually resemble in some way the concepts they represent—offer a cognitive advantage over those which are purely symbolic. An early formulation of this hypothesis was made by Christine Ladd in 1883 who suggested that symmetrical signs should be used to convey commutative (...) relations, because they visually resemble the mathematical concept they represent. Two controlled experiments provide the first empirical test of, and evidence for, Ladd's hypothesis. In Experiment 1 we find that participants are more likely to attribute commutativity to operations denoted by symmetric signs. In Experiment 2 we further show that using symmetric signs as notation for commutative operations can increase mathematical performance. (shrink)

Short‐term memory in vision is typically thought to divide into at least two memory stores: a short, fragile, high‐capacity store known as iconic memory, and a longer, durable, capacity‐limited store known as visual working memory (VWM). This paper argues that iconic memory stores icons, i.e., image‐like perceptual representations. The iconicity of iconic memory has significant consequences for understanding consciousness, nonconceptual content, and the perception–cognition border. Steven Gross and Jonathan Flombaum have recently challenged the division between iconic memory and VWM by (...) arguing against the idea of capacity limits in favor of a flexible resource‐based model of short‐term memory. I argue that, while VWM capacity is probably governed by flexible resources rather than a sharp limit, the two memory stores should still be distinguished by their representational formats. Iconic memory stores icons, while VWM stores discursive (i.e., language‐like) representations. I conclude by arguing that this format‐based distinction between memory stores entails that prominent views about consciousness and the perception–cognition border will likely have to be revised. (shrink)

In language, recombination of a discrete set of meaningless building blocks forms an unlimited set of possible utterances. How such combinatorial structure emerged in the evolution of human language is increasingly being studied. It has been shown that it can emerge when languages culturally evolve and adapt to human cognitive biases. How the emergence of combinatorial structure interacts with the existence of holistic iconic form-meaning mappings in a language is still unknown. The experiment presented in this paper studies the role (...) of iconicity and human cognitive learning biases in the emergence of combinatorial structure in artificial whistled languages. Participants learned and reproduced whistled words for novel objects with the use of a slide whistle. Their reproductions were used as input for the next participant, to create transmission chains and simulate cultural transmission. Two conditions were studied: one in which the persistence of iconic form-meaning mappings was possible and one in which this was experimentally made impossible. In both conditions, cultural transmission caused the whistled languages to become more learnable and more structured, but this process was slightly delayed in the first condition. Our findings help to gain insight into when and how words may lose their iconic origins when they become part of an organized linguistic system. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Irreplaceable Cannot Be ReplacedEllen HarveyThe Irreplaceable Cannot Be Replaced, Ellen Harvey, 2008. Photographs: Jan Baracz.People in New Orleans were invited to submit images or descriptions of irreplaceable places, people, or things lost to Hurricane Katrina. Eleven submissions were chosen at random and the artist painted 16” x 20” oil paintings based on those submissions. All thirty texts that were submitted were framed and exhibited along (...) with the paintings at the Contemporary Arts Center/New Orleans as part of the exhibition Something from Nothing, curated by Dan Cameron. Texts without a painting were accompanied by a framed black panel. At the end of the exhibition, all of the paintings and the framed texts were given away to the participants.Ellen Harvey was born in the United Kingdom and lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. She has exhibited extensively in the US and internationally and was most recently included in the 2008 Whitney Biennial. Recent solo exhibitions include Private Collections at Locks Gallery, Philadelphia, The Museum of Failure at Luxe Gallery, New York, Beautiful/Ugly at Magnus Müller in Berlin, Bad Mirror at Galerie Gebruder Lehmann in Dresden, Mirror at the Pennsylvania Academy, and A Whitney for the Whitney at Philip Morris at the Whitney Museum at Altria. She took part in the Whitney Independent Study Program and the PS1 Studio Program. Recent awards include a Pennies from Heaven Grant, a Philadelphia Exhibitions Initiative Grant, a Rema Hort Mann Foundation Grant, a Palm Beach County Cultural Council Grant, and a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship. She has completed projects for both the New York and Chicago Transit Authorities, most recently including a mosaic for the new Metro-North Yankee Stadium Station. The New York Beautification Project was published by Gregory Miller in 2005, and Ellen Harvey: Mirror was published by the Pennsylvania Academy in 2006. Click for larger view View full resolutionI am 87 years old living in a trailer on our property in New Orleans.We had 5 ft of water, which remained in the house 6 weeks creating mold to the ceiling.We lost everything. When I read Chris Rose’s column (he’s my favorite columnist in the whole world) it brought to mind my mother’s two dining room chairs that had been around as long as I can remember. I had them restored in about 1976 by Senior Citizens in classes of the “Peoples Program” sponsored by the nuns on Mirabean Ave. The wood was polished and varnished with a light brown stain and the seats were re-caned. I was born in 1920 so the chairs could be 75 years old. Anyway I can imagine you will have many interesting subjects to choose from but I’m submitting mine hoping I’ll be one of the very fortunate ones selected.I am terrible at drawing but will give you as complete a description as I can.I loved those chairs and enjoyed them for extra seating on holidays and at parties and they were conversation pieces.Alice Delaney[End Page 2] Click for larger view View full resolutionThere are so many “washed away” treasures, that the memorialization of even just one will be everlastingly meaningful to the community.I am submitting photographs of porcelain dolls, which I had crafted prior to the disaster. The dolls shown were created from commercial molds and were ready to go to a “new home.” Needless to say these dolls were submerged under water for at least two weeks. I call them my “children of the flood” but have not had the courage to disassemble them. I was able to rescue some doll parts and am in the process of cleaning, sorting and sanitizing them for future assembly.If I am ever able to get back to my very rewarding hobby, which was helpful in supplementing my retirement income, I will have to replace my electronic kiln and most of my doll making supplies. Many of the molds that were destroyed are no longer available. However, I will keep the memories dear, I have been fortunate enough to replace my sewing machines and some of the fabric used for clothing and doll... (shrink)

This paper concerns the role of the structural properties of representations in determining the nature of their content. I take as a starting point Fodor's (2007) and Heck's (2007) recent arguments making the iconic structure of perceptual representations essential in establishing their content as content of a different (nonconceptual) kind. I argue that the prima facie state–content error this strategy seems to display is nothing but a case of “state–content error error,” i.e., the mistake of considering that the properties that (...) characterize the type of content certain representations have are indeed independent of their structural properties. I also consider another objection to the general strategy, namely that it falls short of showing that the nonconceptual content of perceptual experiences thus established is the kind of content that figures in true explanations of intentional behavior. I concede this point in respect of Fodor's version of the strategy, while denying that it has any bearing on Heck's approach. The success of this objection in Heck's case ultimately depends, I argue, upon an unjustified commitment to a certain empirically suspect model of perception. (shrink)

Grammatical asymmetries in possessive constructions are overtly coded in about 18% of the world’s languages according to the World Atlas of Language Structures What primarily motivates these grammatical asymmetries is controversial and has been at the crux of the “iconicity vs. frequency” debate This paper contributes to this debate by focusing on the grammatical asymmetries of Paamese possessive constructions, and looking for the primary motivating factor in their multidimensional experiential context. After a careful account of four experiential dimensions of distance, (...) the degrees of experiential distance are shown to systematically correspond to the degrees of formal distance of the possessive constructions used to refer to these experiences. Relevant anthropological and linguistic data concerning Paamese is used to explore whether this correspondence between language and experience is primarily motivated by iconicity or economy. I argue that diagrammatic iconicity is the primary motivating factor for the grammatical asymmetries in Paamese possessive constructions, and that economy can account for some, but not all cases. I also show that economy and iconicity can collaborate in motivating some cases, and thus do not necessarily need to be opposed. (shrink)

This article suggests an iconic turn in cultural sociology. Icons can be seen, it is argued, as symbolic condensations that root social meanings in material form, allowing the abstractions of cognition and morality to be subsumed, to be made invisible, by aesthetic shape. Meaning is made iconically visible, in other words, by the beautiful, sublime, ugly, or simply by the mundane materiality of everyday life. But it is via the senses that iconic power is made. This new approach to meaning (...) is compared with others — with materialism, semiotics, aestheticism, moralism, realism, and spiritualism. (shrink)

There is a puzzle about how we might sensibly love someone as the particular person she is despite changes in that person’s characteristics that are sometimes radical. In light of this puzzle, I argue that our most intimate relationships are centered around historical relational properties that serve two important functions. On the one hand, they render individuals irreplaceable to us. On the other, they constitute individuals as the particular persons they are. If this account is plausible, then to love (...) another because she is the person she is is not to love her because of her characteristics. Rather, it is to love her in light of a unique history that cannot be shared with anyone else and has made her who she is. (shrink)

If the Mona Lisa, the Sistine Chapel, the sarcophagus of Tutankhamun, or the Sword of Goujian were destroyed, nothing could replace them. New works of art that are even more impressive may be created, which may replenish the value in the world in quantity, but they would not fully replace the loss. Works of art and historical artifacts have irreplaceable value. But just what is irreplaceable value? This paper presents perhaps the first analysis. Irreplaceable value is a (...) matter of intrinsic value in virtue of unreinstantiable good-making properties, which give rise to reasons to preserve and protect. (shrink)

We argue that some sign language loci (i.e. positions in signing space that realize discourse referents) are both formal variables and simplified representations of what they denote; in other words, they are simultaneously logical symbols and pictorial representations. We develop a 'formal semantics with iconicity' that accounts for their dual life; the key idea ('formal iconicity') is that some geometric properties of signs must be preserved by the interpretation function. We analyze in these terms three kinds of iconic effects in (...) American and French Sign Language (ASL and LSF): (i) structural iconicity, where relations of inclusion and complementation among loci are directly reflected in their denotations; (ii) locus-external iconicity, where the high or low position of a locus in signing space has a direct semantic reflex, akin to the semantic contribution of gender features of pronouns; and (iii) locus-internal iconicity, where different parts of a structured locus are targeted by different directional verbs, as was argued by Liddell and Kegl. The resulting semantics combines insights of two traditions that have been sharply divided by recent debates. In line with the 'formalist camp' (e.g. Lillo-Martin and Klima, Neidle, and Sandler and Lillo-Martin), our theory treats loci as variables, and develops an explicit formal analysis of their behavior. But we also incorporate insights of the 'iconic camp', which emphasized the role of iconic constraints in sign language in general and in pronominals in particular (e.g. Cuxac, Taub, Liddell). However, this synthesis is only possible if formal semantics makes provisions for iconic requirements at the very core of its interpretive procedure. (An Appendix discusses relevant data from Italian Sign Language [LIS].). (shrink)

Iconicity, or the resemblance between form and meaning, is often ascribed to a special status and contrasted with default assumptions of arbitrariness in spoken language. But does iconicity in spoken language have a special status when it comes to learnability? A simple way to gauge learnability is to see how well something is retrieved from memory. We can further contrast this with guessability, to see (1) whether the ease of guessing the meanings of ideophones outperforms the rate at which they (...) are remembered; and (2) how willing participants’ are to reassess what they were taught in a prior task—a novel contribution of this study. We replicate prior guessing and memory tasks using ideophones and adjectives from Japanese, Korean, and Igbo. Our results show that although native Cantonese speakers guessed ideophone meanings above chance level, they memorized both ideophones and adjectives with comparable accuracy. However, response time data show that participants took significantly longer to respond correctly to adjective–meaning pairs—indicating a discrepancy in a cognitive effort that favored the recognition of ideophones. In a follow‐up reassessment task, participants who were taught foil translations were more likely to choose the true translations for ideophones rather than adjectives. By comparing the findings from our guessing and memory tasks, we conclude that iconicity is more accessible if a task requires participants to actively seek out sound‐meaning associations. (shrink)

It is often claimed that pre-attentive vision has an ‘iconic’ format. This is seen to explain pre-attentive vision's characteristically high processing capacity and to make sense of an overlap in the mechanisms of early vision and mental imagery. But what does the iconicity of pre-attentive vision amount to? This paper considers two prominent ways of characterising pre-attentive visual icons and argues that neither is adequate: one approach renders the claim ‘pre-attentive vision is iconic’ empirically false while the other obscures its (...) ability to do the explanatory work, which motivates positing pre-attentive visual icons in the first place. With this noted, I introduce the notion of an ‘Analogue Map’ and argue that it provides a superior characterisation of pre-attentive vision's iconicity. I then argue that this forces a reassessment of debates which have traditionally presupposed the iconicity of pre-attentive vision, emphasising ramifications for the viability of a format-based perception-thought border. (shrink)

It is common to distinguish two great families of representation. Symbolic representations include logical and mathematical symbols, words, and complex linguistic expressions. Iconic representations include dials, diagrams, maps, pictures, 3-dimensional models, and depictive gestures. This essay describes and motivates a new way of distinguishing iconic from symbolic representation. It locates the difference not in the signs themselves, nor in the contents they express, but in the semantic rules by which signs are associated with contents. The two kinds of rule have (...) divergent forms, occupying opposite poles on a spectrum of naturalness. Symbolic rules are composed entirely of primitive juxtapositions of sign types with contents, while iconic rules determine contents entirely by uniform natural relations with sign types. This distinction is marked explicitly in the formal semantics of familiar sign systems, both for atomic first-order representations, like words, pixel colors, and dials, and for complex second-order representations, like sentences, diagrams, and pictures. (shrink)

While it has become commonplace to use the term “icon” in philosophy of religion, it is an “icon” modeled after the resources of language. We find this for example in the recent Blackfriars article by Adam Glover, which despite its intention to treat the icon as an image, reduces it once again to a general form of reference which immediately feeds back into the linguistic. But might the icon have resources unique to its character as an (...) image that can help us understand what is meant by the paradoxical task of making visible the invisible God? This article takes up this task in conversation with the work of Jean-Luc Marion. (shrink)

This paper refines a controversial proposal: that core systems belong to a perceptual kind, marked out by the format of its representational outputs. Following Susan Carey, this proposal has been understood in terms of core representations having an iconic format, like certain paradigmatically perceptual outputs. I argue that they don’t, but suggest that the proposal may be better formulated in terms of a broader analogue format type. Formulated in this way, the proposal accommodates the existence of genuine icons in perception, (...) and avoids otherwise troubling objections. (shrink)

This paper is divided into three sections. In the first section we offer a retooling of some traditional concepts, namely icons and symbols, which allows us to describe an evolutionary continuum of communication systems. The second section consists of an argument from theoretical biology. In it we explore the advantages and disadvantages of phenotypic plasticity. We argue that a range of the conditions that selectively favor phenotypic plasticity also favor a nongenetic transmission system that would allow for the inheritance of (...) acquired characters. The first two sections are independent, the third depends on both of them. In it we offer an argument that human natural languages have just the features required of an ideal transmission mechanism under the conditions described in section 2. (shrink)

This study aims to find out whether speakers of different language backgrounds (English, French, Spanish, and Macedonian) are sensitive to semantic associations (‘fluid’ and ‘forcible contact’) attached respectively to two purported phonaesthemes (/fl-/ and /tr-/). Participants completed the task in oral and written conditions. They had to match phonaestheme-related definitions with either of two non-words (one phonaestheme-bearing and the other containing a distractor). The results obtained indicate that participants significantly chose non-words beginning with /tr-/ when the definition activated a meaning (...) related to forcible contact, and non-words starting with /fl-/ when the definitions made reference to fluids in the four languages. The results point to the existence of non-arbitrary sound-meaning relations. A corpus-driven study of frequencies of lemmas and word tokens starting with the purported phonaesthemes also sheds light on the possible origin of the phonaesthemic associations, suggesting that both iconicity and systematicity motivate such associations. The results obtained are interpreted in the context of a functional, usage-based model of language, which can accommodate the existence of iconic tendencies, the role of learning and linguistic experience in language, and arbitrariness. (shrink)

God revealed to man during the history of his salvation in two ways: through word and through image. In other words, the divine message was addressed to the hearing and seeing of man. In the second case, revelation was achieved in a complete form. Man was part of a theophanic act, he was enveloped by the divine light and with the help of his spiritual eyes he was able to see, as much as it was permitted, God who is light. (...) This light was not completely strange to man, even though he could not see it with his physical eyes. The uncreated light that God made even from the first day of creation did not disappear when the great light were put in the sky. It had the purpose to arrange creation and to be the environment within which man could meet God and talk to Him face to face. Even though the fall took man out of sight, God established that from time to time this bright environment should be revealed to man in order to call him back to the life within light. These presentations of the Lord in the light of His glory continued after His incarnation. The mystical experiences of the Fathers of the Church constitute a testimony to this respect. But seeing this divine light is not reserved exclusively to the mystics, but may be experienced, partly, by the faithful nowadays. The present study endeavours to provide contemporary man with the necessary premises to experience the sight of the deifying light by means of religious imagery. Whether we have in view icons painted on wood or walls or stained glass imagery, they all contain, hidden within, the kind of light which, once experienced, illuminates man and fills him with light. (shrink)

This paper explores the role of iconicity in spoken language and other human communication systems. First, we concentrate on graphical and gestural communication and show how semantically motivated iconic signs play an important role in creating such communication systems from scratch. We then consider how iconic signs tend to become simplified and symbolic as the communication system matures and argue that this process is driven by repeated interactive use of the signs. We then consider evidence for iconicity at the level (...) of the system in graphical communication and finally draw comparisons between iconicity in graphical and gestural communication systems and in spoken language. (shrink)

This paper explores the role of iconicity in spoken language and other human communication systems. First, we concentrate on graphical and gestural communication and show how semantically motivated iconic signs play an important role in creating such communication systems from scratch. We then consider how iconic signs tend to become simplified and symbolic as the communication system matures and argue that this process is driven by repeated interactive use of the signs. We then consider evidence for iconicity at the level (...) of the system in graphical communication and finally draw comparisons between iconicity in graphical and gestural communication systems and in spoken language. (shrink)

Maps and realist pictures comprise prominent sub-classes of iconic representations. The most basic, most important sub-class is perception. Other types are drawings, photographs, musical notations, diagrams, bar graphs, abacuses, hieroglyphs, and color chits.

Investigations of iconicity in language, whereby interactants coordinate meaningful bodily actions to create resemblances, are prevalent across the human communication sciences. However, when it comes to analysing and comparing iconicity across different interactions and modes of communication, it is not always clear we are looking at the same thing. For example, tokens of spoken ideophones and manual depicting actions may both be analysed as iconic forms. Yet spoken ideophones may signal depictive and descriptive qualities via speech, while manual actions may (...) signal depictive, descriptive, and indexical qualities via the shape, movement, and placement of the hands in space. Furthermore, each may co-occur with other semiotics articulated with the face, hands, and body within composite utterances. The paradigm of iconicity as a single property is too broad and coarse for comparative semiotics, as important details necessary for understanding the range of human communicative potentialities may be masked. Here, we draw on semiotic approaches to language and communication, including the model of language as signalled via describing, indicating and/or depicting and the notion of non-referential indexicality, to illustrate the multidimensionality of iconicity in co-present interactions. This builds on our earlier proposal for analysing how different methods of semiotic signalling are combined in multimodal language use. We discuss some implications for the language and communication sciences and explain how this approach may inform a theory of biosemiotics. (shrink)

Sometimes form-meaning mappings in language are not arbitrary, but iconic: they depict what they represent. Incorporating iconic elements of language into a compositional semantics faces a number of challenges in formal frameworks as evidenced by the lengthy literature in linguistics and philosophy on quotation/direct speech, which iconically portrays the words of another in the form that they were used. This paper compares the well-studied type of iconicity found with verbs of quotation with another form of iconicity common in sign languages: (...) classifier predicates. I argue that these two types of verbal iconicity can, and should, incorporate their iconic elements in the same way using event modification via the notion of a context dependent demonstration. This unified formal account of quotation and classifier predicates predicts that a language might use the same strategy for conveying both, and I argue that this is the case with role shift in American Sign Language. Role shift is used to report others’ language and thoughts as well as their actions, and recently has been argued to provide evidence in favor of Kaplanian “monstrous” indexical expressions. By reimagining role shift as involving either quotation for language demonstrations or “body classifier” predicates for action demonstrations, the proposed account eliminates one major argument for these monsters coming from sign languages. Throughout this paper, sign languages provide a fruitful perspective for studying quotation and other forms of iconicity in natural language due to their lack of a commonly used writing system which is otherwise often mistaken as primary data instead of speech, the rich existing literature on iconicity within sign language linguistics, and the ability of role shift to overtly mark the scope of a language report. In this view, written language is merely a special case of a more general phenomenon of sign and speech demonstration, which accounts more accurately for natural language data by permitting more strict or loose verbatim interpretations of demonstrations through the context dependent pragmatics. (shrink)

Conceptual engineers are always on the lookout for concepts that can be improved upon or replaced. Kevin Scharp has argued that the concept truth is inconsistent, and that this inconsistency thwarts its ability to serve in philosophical and scientific explanatory projects, such as developing linguistic theories of meaning. In this paper I present Scharp’s view about what makes a concept inconsistent, and why he believes that truth in particular is inconsistent. Then I examine the concepts that he suggests should replace (...) truth for various explanatory and expressive duties. I argue that those concepts are not up to the tasks for which they are posited, and so Scharp’s replacement methodology itself needs to be reengineered. (shrink)

This chapter contains section titles: Introduction Senders and Receivers Content States of the Mind and Brain.

ASL can express plurals by repeating a noun, in an unpunctuated fashion, in different parts of signing space. We argue that this construction may come with a rich iconic component: the geometric arrangement of the repetitions provides information about the arrangement of the denoted plurality; in addition, the number and speed of the repetitions provide information about the size of the denoted plurality. Interestingly, the shape of the repetitions may introduce a new singular discourse referent when a vertex can be (...) inferred to denote a singular object. Thus one may point towards the first or last iteration of a horizontal repetition of BOOK to denote the left- or right-edge of the corresponding row. This yields a remarkable interaction between iconic semantics and standard logical semantics. We show that our analysis extends to ‘punctuated’ repetitions, which involve clearly individuated iterations of a singular noun. While these may initially look like coordinated indefinites, they are better handled by the same iconic framework as plural, unpunctuated repetitions. Some repetition-based mass terms also give rise to iconic effects, and to different readings depending on whether the repetition is continuous, unpunctuated, or punctuated. Our analysis highlights the need for a formal semantics with iconicity to study the integration of such iconic and logical conditions. It also raises a question: can similar facts be found in spoken language when gestures are taken into account? We suggest that several effects can be replicated, especially when one considers examples involving ‘pro-speech gestures’. (shrink)

The essay proposes a notion of “icon” understood, according to the paradigm born of the Second Council of Nicaea, as a visible image of the invisible qua invisible. In this light, the distinctive feature of the icon-image is its ability to manifest the paradoxical identity-difference relationship that links visible and invisible, and, consequently, representable and unrepresentable, immanence and transcendence, eternity and time. By offering itself as the privileged place for the presentation of an absence and of a “withdrawal”, (...) the icon is distinguished in the first place by its apophatic and kenotic character. In this sense, the salient trait of the icon is its constitutive disquiet: it is founded on the “relational economy” of the image, which implies the need of an incessant articulation of the relation between visible and invisible. We can thus see in the icon the paradigm itself of “great art”: indeed, like the icon, great art is always primarily characterised by its disquiet, that is its ability to make transcendence appear in immanence, the Other of the visible appear in the visible. (shrink)

For a sign to be a sign it must bond an object, a signifier, and the idea to which it gives rise. The paper focuses on the iconicity of silence as a hypoiconic signifier, exploring the semiotics of silence in light of the notions and studies of iconicity. Fascinating parallelisms hold between iconicity and silence. These raise many challenges to the study of each separately, let alone dealing with them jointly. Some icons and some silences are qualities in the real (...) world, others are semiotic forms standing for or denoting objects. Simple, intuitive qualities of iconicity and of silence are naturally grasped and shared from antiquity to the present by cultures and peoples. The paper employs Peirce’s initial basic trichotomy of iconic classes as well as his later hierarchies for studying the iconic stance of silence as a hypoiconic signifier. Analyzing and illustrating the possible complexities between forms, contents, their relations and their interpretations, group hypoiconic silences into silence as an image, silence as a diagram, and silence as a metaphor. (shrink)

In 2017, Medicaid faced a near-death experience, the third of its 53-year history. Its survival and resilience is a testament not just to its size but to the multiple, vital roles Medicaid plays in the health care system, and its ability to adapt to emerging population health needs. It can take an existential threat to make these indispensable qualities clear.

An analysis is proposed for the common argument that something should be preserved because it is irreplaceable. The argument is shown to depend on modal elements in irreplaceable, existence assumptions of preserve, and the logic of obligation. In terms of this theory it is argued that utilitarianism can account for most, but not all instances of persuasive appeals to irreplaceability. Beingessentially backwards looking, utilitarianism cannot in principle justify preservation of objects irreplaceable because of their history or genesis.

Many sign languages display crosslinguistic consistencies in the use of two iconic aspects of handshape, handshape type and finger group complexity. Handshape type is used systematically in form-meaning pairings (morphology): Handling handshapes (Handling-HSs), representing how objects are handled, tend to be used to express events with an agent (“hand-as-hand” iconicity), and Object handshapes (Object-HSs), representing an object's size/shape, are used more often to express events without an agent (“hand-as-object” iconicity). Second, in the distribution of meaningless properties of form (morphophonology), Object-HSs (...) display higher finger group complexity than Handling-HSs. Some adult homesigners, who have not acquired a signed or spoken language and instead use a self-generated gesture system, exhibit these two properties as well. This study illuminates the development over time of both phenomena for one child homesigner, “Julio,” age 7;4 (years; months) to 12;8. We elicited descriptions of events with and without agents to determine whether morphophonology and morphosyntax can develop without linguistic input during childhood, and whether these structures develop together or independently. Within the time period studied: (1) Julio used handshape type differently in his responses to vignettes with and without an agent; however, he did not exhibit the same pattern that was found previously in signers, adult homesigners, or gesturers: while he was highly likely to use a Handling-HS for events with an agent (82%), he was less likely to use an Object-HS for non-agentive events (49%); i.e., his productions were heavily biased toward Handling-HSs; (2) Julio exhibited higher finger group complexity in Object- than in Handling-HSs, as in the sign language and adult homesigner groups previously studied; and (3) these two dimensions of language developed independently, with phonological structure showing a sign language-like pattern at an earlier age than morphosyntactic structure. We conclude that iconicity alone is not sufficient to explain the development of linguistic structure in homesign systems. Linguistic input is not required for some aspects of phonological structure to emerge in childhood, and while linguistic input is not required for morphology either, it takes time to emerge in homesign. (shrink)

Why is beauty consoling? Ancient and Medieval Western philosophy was primarily concerned with beauty in relation to truth and goodness. The theistic religions assume a link between beauty, goodness and truth, all of which are viewed as Divine attributes. This is one reason for the iconoclasm that all three Abrahamic religions share to a greater or lesser degree. Yet, creative fictions of great artistic beauty aspire to a certain truthfulness. A work of the imagination may deepen or purify our emotions (...) such that we gain a clearer understanding of reality. Beauty is consoling because it resolves the contradictions of experience; art can be a conduit to a supreme transcendent unity. The Iconic Imagination is both a reflection on the redemptive potential of art, and an investigation of the traditions of occidental Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism and Islam in their confrontations with the particular power of art to represent the transcendent. Throughout, Hedley argues that the malaise of much contemporary reflection upon beauty is a consequence of the marginalisation of beauty's religious dimension. (shrink)

Modern microscopes create a capacity to see and act at the scale where unassisted human senses are powerless. Images of nanoscale phenomena represent a world that effectively intervenes in human life while remaining distant and ineffable. This combination of an unbridgeable distance between man and technology with a real power of the latter over the human condition is characteristic, not only of nanotechnology, but also of the theology of sacred icons that mediate in the knowledge of divine reality. We draw (...) an anthropological analogy between nanotechnological images and sacred icons, and we employ it to analyze the functioning of such images in society. The questions that we study include: a) the art of mediation in representing the ineffable and its necessity; b) the effects provoked by such images; c) primitive comprehension of nanoscale images. This work has repercussions for a wide variety of disciplinary accounts and practices, from the anthropologist and the philosopher to the laboratory scientist, the art critic, and the engineer who conceives and designs nanoscale instruments. (shrink)

The key focus of this essay is the experience of encountering divine wonder in things. The examination of the divine encounter is staged against the phenomenological backdrop. Specifically, the concept of the divine wonder is taken in its original, Husserlian, definition as Verwunderung and is traced via Levinas and his concept of face (le visage) to the early 20th century Russian philosopher, Pavel Florensky (1882–1943), whose 1922 essay “Iconostasis” approaches divine representation (лuк) in icon painting explicitly and consistently as (...) a phenomenon of wonder. More broadly, by connecting Florensky and his work to the phenomenological project at large, this essay aspires to show that the early 20th century Russian contributions to phenomenological thought go beyond adaptations and simulations of the traditional phenomenological prolegomena toward highly original philosophical encounters. (shrink)

I develop an account of scientific representations building on Charles S. Peirce's rich, and still underexplored, notion of iconicity. Iconic representations occupy a central place in Peirce's philosophy, in his innovative approach to logic and in his practice as a scientist. Starting from a discussion of Peirce's approach to diagrams, I claim that Peirce's own representations are in line with his formulation of iconicity, and that they are more broadly connected to the pragmatist philosophy he developed in parallel with his (...) scientific work. I then defend the contemporary relevance of Peirce's approach to iconic representations, and specifically argue that Peirce offers a useful ‘third way’ between what Mauricio Suárez has recently described as the ‘analytical’ and ‘practical’ inquiries into the concept of representation. As a philosophically minded scientist and an experimentally inclined philosopher, Peirce never divorced the practice of representing from questions about what counts as a representation... (shrink)

The article explores cross-modal iconic relations in nine diverse Western-music songs ranging from 1600 to 2015, all of them thematizing dysphoric weeping. Initial input comes from five recurrent features observed in ancient Greek texts associated with performative events, including the prominence of sound, interjections and strong self-referentiality, repetitions and refrains, the motif of endlessness, and tears associated with streams of water, dew, and libation liquids. The analysis adopts Peirce’s conceptual distinction between image, diagram, and metaphor iconicity, although the continuum reading (...) proposed by several scholars is ultimately favored. The sample turns out to offer plenty of evidence of iconic relations. Interjections, falsetto, verbal repetitions, musical repetitions, musical rendering of sighs and endlessness, ostinato patterns, downward notes, and water images (rain and rivers), all of this is shown to substantiate cross-modal iconicity encompassing weeping, lyrics, music (including musical notation), and images, in different combinations. Quantitative investigations confirming/disconfirming and adding iconicity patterns, and comparative analyses linking Western and non-Western lament traditions constitute desiderata for future work. (shrink)

In this article, the role of abductive reasoning within Peirce's diagrammatic reasoning is discussed. Both abduction and diagrammatic reasoning bring in elements of discovery but it is not clear if abduction should be a part of a fully developed diagrammatic system or not for Peirce. This relates to Peirce's way of interpreting abduction in his later writings. Iconicity and perceptual elements as a basis for discoveries are analyzed, both in deductive and abductive reasoning. At the end, the role of modern (...) ideas of distributed cognition applied to the Peircean scheme is shortly delineated. (shrink)

European Journal of Philosophy, EarlyView.