On the Nature of Symbolism

On Talking about Symbolism

By Dennis J. Darland

December 1, 2007

Revised December 18, 2007

It might seem to be cheating in http://dennisdarland.com/philosophy/Landini1.html to say

Symbol1_1r(Tom,now,’loves’,loves)

But this was not intended to define the word ‘loves’. It is asserting a symbolic relation for Tom between the word ‘loves’ and loves (at time now), it is assumed that the person considering this statement knows what ‘loves’ means. You don’t need to be able to verbally define words in order to state the symbolic relations. Making the symbolic relations explicit is necessary to solve certain philosophical problems (such as opacity). Also syntax can allow some reasoning - by manipulating symbols – but cannot allow you to forget the meaning of symbols altogether. (Whitehead, Symbolism, p.2.) When Tom uses the word ‘loves’ in asserting a belief, the symbolic relation must hold, but that is not what her is asserting. He doesn’t have to be aware of all the facts involved in such a symbolic relationship (which would involve psychology, physics, biology, etc.). No!; the relation just has to hold!

I would say the symbolic relationship is explained by the use of the symbol (like Wittgenstein) for ordinary language or otherwise. That a formal language has a relationship to the world would be an empirical fact. There is some room for convention, e.g. that in algebra subtraction is taken as left associative; while in the programming language APL it is right associative. But once the conventions are made other results necessarily follow. E.g. 2-2-2 = -2 or 2-2-2 = 2.