"Mean" as a Triadic Relation

Seth Sharpless -- in Yahoo Analytic Philosophy Group (I recently tried to re-subscribe, I don´t know what happened, but I never of course meant to leave the group without a warning!) and elsewhere -- notably now in T. W., Pragmatics and Nonverbal communication --, has reminded us that Grice possibly overlooked, when turning to Anglo-Saxonisms his Peirce that Peirce HAD emphasised the "interpretant" but failed. See my notes elsewhere on "Beanz Meanz Heinz", etc. --.

For Sharpless´s Grice, indeed, if I recollect his thoughts alright, we have:



my mother

spots

measles


She says, "Those spots mean measles".

I reply, "Nonsense. Spots cannot mean. Stones cannot mean. The Rolling Stones can mean but that´s neither here nor there, and even I doubt they can mean AT UNISON. Mick Jagger can mean".

"What are you talking about?", my Mom goes on. "Those spots are a causal sign that your brother has measles".

"So"

"Well, call 911. Or something"

"But will they mean measles for them?"

"Them who?"

"People at 911. They tend to be on the ignorant side".

--- MORAL: Even in the most basic account of

"smoke means smoked salmon"
or "where there is smoke, there is smoked salmon"


we HAVE to add the "interpretant".

The Grecians knew all about these. The earliest uses of "semeion" have to do with

That thunderbolt means, to us, that Zeus just farted.

Later, Hippocrates would go subtler:

Her green vomit means she is choleric.

It would be a few centuries till Grice will find Peirce´s subtle considerations and get the back to the frail again with his (Grice´s) uses of two senses of "mean": mean-N and mean-NN.

And it would be a couple of years, later, his "Meaning Revisited" where he´ll grant that he was pretty confused when Lady Ann Martin-Strawson retyped his "Meaning" NOT for him. For these are "NOT" uses of "mean". Or if they are, they are not "senses" of "mean". "mean" has only ONE core sense:


x means y

x is a (causal, or other) effect of y.
x is a (causal or other) "CONSEQUENCE" of y.

-- is this just temporal? No. Can be conceptual.


And where does, to end this blog post with what we started, the third argument in the relation fit in?

Call it "z"

x means y, for z

In symbols

M(x, y, z)

The same for the classier

S(x, y, z) with "S" for semeion ("Classy" is my irreverence to refer to "Loeb is all you need", the Loeb CLASSICAL library).

or

S(x, y, z) with "S" for signum, for those like Eco and his student ("Theories of sign in classical antiquity") claim when they extend the HIGH-Classy Grecian period, 4th century B. C. -- to include the Hellenistic Romans.

Cheers,

JL