Dear Jon, lists, I think Jon has an important point here. Too many people confuse the idea that diagrams are iconic, on the one hand, with the idea that iconic signs should be immediately interpretable, on the other. It is the latter which is false. Most if not all diagrams require symbolic conventions in order to make clear which aspects of the diagram token should pertain to the object depicted, and which should not - as well as conventions governing which manipulations are allowed (I covered some of that in Diagrammatology, 2007 - by "conventions" here, I do not mean abritrarily chosen rules). So even if diagrams are fundamentally iconic, this does not imply they are 1) immediately understandable, nor 2) they may work without symbols. Sometimes we may get the idea they work without symbols, but that is rather because we have internalized those symbols so well as to proceed with tacit knowledge of them.
Best F Den 21/09/2014 kl. 05.42 skrev Jon Awbrey <jawb...@att.net<mailto:jawb...@att.net>> : JA:http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.science.philosophy.peirce/14182<http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.science.philosophy.peirce/14182> JA:http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.science.philosophy.peirce/14184<http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.science.philosophy.peirce/14184> SJ:http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.science.philosophy.peirce/14187<http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.science.philosophy.peirce/14187> JA:http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.science.philosophy.peirce/14194<http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.science.philosophy.peirce/14194> Sung, List, Consider Figure 1 ☞ http://intersci.ss.uci.edu/wiki/images/0/01/Aristotle%27s_Sign_Relation.gif from Awbrey & Awbrey (1995) ☞ https://www.academia.edu/1266493/Interpretation_as_Action_The_Risk_of_Inquiry What is a diagram like that intended to represent? Being one of the very authors who intended it to represent something I can tell you with some authority what I had in mind. There's a part of it that looks like this: S / O--<R| \ I That part of the picture is supposed to represent a sign relation that we find in Aristotle's "On Interpretation", where O is the object, S is the sign, I is the impression that the object makes on the interpreter, and R is the triadic sign relation that relates the preceding three entities. I guess I used to assume that diagrams like that are largely self-explanatory, but years of being called on to supplement their ostensible self-explanations with volume after volume of my own explanations has taught me otherwise. So let's eye these diagrams a little more closely to see where they lead astray. Jon Jon Awbrey wrote: Sung, List, Let's see if we can turn our discussion of these paltry stick figures to some good purpose in the task at hand, namely, to investigate the uses (and abuses) of diagrams and to examine the forms of understanding (and misunderstanding) to which they give rise. People have used these sorts of figures to illustrate the structures of triadic sign relations for as long as I can remember, but their use depends on grasping the stylistic conventions that determine their intended interpretation. We can call them "icons" without being totally wrong, but the meaning of an icon always depends on knowing what features or structures of its object it bears in common. Because these figures depend on knowing or guessing the stylistic conventions involved in their use, they are also symbols, and very much so. To be continued ... Jon
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