LANGUAGE Peirce classified signs into three classes There are natural signs: clouds, for instance, are a natural sign of rain, and stripped bark on a tree may be a sign of the presence of deer Next, there are iconic signs, which signify by resembling their objects Naturalistic paintings and sculptures are the most obvious examples, but there are others such as maps Two features are essential to an iconic sign: (1) it should share with its object some feature that each could have if the other did not exist; (2) the method of interpreting this feature should be fixed by convention Finally, there are symbols, of which words are the most important example, but which include such things as uniforms and traffic signals These, like iconic signs, are determined by convention, but unlike iconic signs they not operate by exploiting any resemblance to their objects Since Peirce, theorists have divided semiotics into three disciplines: syntactics, the study of grammar and whatever may underlie grammatical structure; semantics, the study of the relationship between language and reality; and pragmatics, the study of the social context and the purposes and consequences of communication Peirce’s own work operated at the interface of all three disciplines; but in the work of his followers, despite their school title of ‘pragmatists’, discussion focused upon two key concepts of semantics, namely meaning and truth Peirce and James explained meaning in similar ways: in order to discover what an utterance meant you had to explore what would be the practical consequences of its being true, and if there was no difference between the consequences of two different beliefs then they were in effect the same belief But James maintained that the truth of a belief, and not just its meaning, depended on its consequences, or rather on the consequences of believing it If my believing that p is something that pays in the long run, something whose overall consequence is profitable for my life, then p is true for me The pragmatist’s claim, he tells us, is this: Truth, concretely considered, is an attribute of our beliefs, and these are attitudes that follow satisfactions The ideas around which the satisfactions cluster are primarily only hypotheses that challenge or summon a belief to come and take its stand upon them The pragmatist’s idea of truth is just such a challenge He finds it ultra-satisfactory to accept it, and takes his own stand accordingly (T 199) 127