Susanne K. Langer. Philosophy In A New Key; A Study in the Symbolism of Reason, Rite, and Art. (1942, Harvard University Press; reprint, 1958, The New American Library, Mentor Books).
"The use of signs is the very first manifestation of mind. It arises as early in biological history as the famous 'conditioned reflex,' by which a concomitant of a stimulus takes over the stimulus-function. The concomitant becomes a sign of the condition to which the reaction is really appropriate." (Pp. 35-36.)
Traditional illustration: As a natural behavior, a dog salivates when it smells/sees food. This behavior is natural and innate. The food is an unconditioned stimulus and the salivation is an unconditioned response. If a bell is rung at the moment the dog smells food and begins to salivate, and this arrangement is repeated a few times, the dog will begin to salivate without the presence of food, or when the smell of food is (experimentally) suppressed. The bell is a conditioned stimulus.
In Langer's view, the bell is a sign pointing to the food.
For the animal, conditioning is learning by association.
Langer casts her discussion of conditioning into mentalistic language by saying that, when the dog responds to the bell with salivating, the dog is responding to a sensation (the bell). Thus she has "interiorized" associational learning, putting learning inside mind, where mind is in a Cartesian dualism.
"... the use of signs is certainly a mental function. It is the beginning of intelligence. As soon as sensations function as signs of conditions in the surrounding world, the animal receiving them is moved to exploit or avoid these conditions." (P. 36.)
Further, the animal can build up a repertoire of signs which are conditioned stimuli (a sign-language [but not language in the sense that humans have language]). Learning signs as conditioned stimuli can proceed by trial and error. (P. 36.) The animal has the opportunity to adapt to a complex environment and/or a changing environment through such associational learning.
Not all signs are external objects (or sounds or odors or events, etc.). Langer says, expressions, e.g., facial expressions (p. 47), and gestures (p. 53) can also be signs. (See how she uses the term, expressions, when discussing Carnap and Russell; p. 79.) A person might have the facial expression of an upward pulled mouth with teeth partially exposed. Or make a gesture with the hand. Expressions and gestures are, for Langer, free signs, in the sense that they do not come with pre-determined referents. By Langer's argument, I would, with the same logic, argue that "feelings" (emotions) can be signs. (P. 47.) The organism can associate those free feeling-signs with whatever referent it wishes. In this freedom of assignment lies the essence of play with signs that allows signs to become symbols.
Emotions have evaluative function in the lower brain. When humans see a face or body type and posture, the lower brain evaluates what it sees as hostile or hateful or friendly, etc. This evaluation is prior to analysis using logic and prior to language treatment of the image. Emotions are therefore signs, in Langer's theory, pointing to behaviorial responses. Today, studies have shown that emotion reaction is to generalized (rather than specific) facial and bodily contortions and arrangements. Our brain can identify a friendly smile in a round, white face with lots of hair on the head, as well as an oblong, black face with little hair on top, etc. In Langer's view, this generalized ability to read faces is reading abstractions. Further, the emotions are pointing to future behavior on the part of the persons whose face and body are being viewed and to future response to the emotion on the part of the viewer. These characteristics would make emotions symbolic in function rather than signs for pointing (see below).
Signs have special characteristics that distinguish them from symbols. In nonhuman animals:
- Signs are specific, not general. The sign itself is not abstract. It is a concrete bell.
- A sign refers to a specific, concrete referent. The bell is a sign pointing to concrete food of the sort with which the dog is familiar (or to which it innately responses when it smells it).
- Signs point to objects or conditions that are present (not elsewhere, or future or past [this is ambiguous in Langer]).
- Signs do not point to abstractions, that is, signs do not point to ideas.
- Signs provoke behavior. (P. 36.)
- Animals "do not distinguish between natural signs and artificial or fortuitous signs" (p. 59)
- Words cannot be signs for animals; presumably Langer means that words, as arrangements of sound, can be signs (just as the wind could be) for animals; but words, as bearing language meaning, cannot.
Among humans, signs take on different capabilities.
- Signs are used to "represent" things (p. 37), not simply to point to ("indicate") them.
- Signs can refer to things past, present, and future (p.58).
- Signs can refer to things, events, and conditions (p. 58).
- Humans distinguish between natural and artificial signs (p. 58-59).
- Signs are guides to practical activities (p. 59).
- Words, as bearers of language meaning, can be signs.
When Langer discusses signs as so used by humans, she says they are "signs" (putting the word in quotation marks), or " 'substitute signs' " (putting the term in single quotation marks--quoting someone else?), that is, not really signs at all, but symbols.
Signs (along with symbols) have meaning. Regarding signs, the meaning of a sign is its meaning to some other organism and is the referent of the sign. (Pp. 36-37, 55, 56-57.) Meaning is a function of signs, not a property or quality of them (pp. 56-57).
Objects, events, conditions, etc., have significance as they are signs (or symbols).(Pp. 58-59.)
Experience is the product of prior-existing signs (and/or symbols). (Langer made this point as a remark and I can't find the page reference! P. 60?) In this sense, experience is what we have learned, as signs and symbols are the basis for all learning.
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