Bibliography

An Elementary Account of the Logic of Relatives

Signs, or representations, are of three kinds: Icons, Indices, and Tokens. [—]

The icon represents its object by virtue of resembling it. It thus depends on a simple feeling. Mental association has nothing to do with it. The icon has no generality, because it does not analyze the character it exhibits. There is thus no more generality in the icon than there is in the object. Nor has the icon anything to do with the sense of contact with the world, nor with the actual existence of its object. It is a mere dream. Icons comprehend all pictures, imitations, diagrams, and examples. Every algebraical formula, in so far as it shows the letters connected by signs analogous to the relations between the quantities those letters denote, is an icon: q^q. No quality or character of any kind can be conveyed or made known, except by the means of an icon. With reference to qualities of feeling, this is evident. But it is equally true with regard to relations.

Signs, or representations, are of three kinds: Icons, Indices, and Tokens. [—]

Indices are signs which stand for their objects in consequence of a real relation to them. An index is a sign which stands for its object in consequence of having a real relation to it. A pointing finger is its type. Of this sort are all natural signs and physical symptoms. The index has no generality in itself. It does not depend on a mental association, but upon a real reaction between the mind and the external world at the moment when the index acts. The index asserts nothing; it only says “There!” It takes hold of our eyes, as it were, and forcibly directs them to a particular object, and there it stops.

Signs, or representations, are of three kinds: Icons, Indices, and Tokens. The token represents its object in consequence of a mental association, and depends upon a habit. Such signs are abstract and general, because habits are general rules to which the organism has become subjected. They are, for the most part, conventional and arbitrary. All common nouns are tokens. Indeed, all words, insofar as they are conventional, partake of this character.