Construct · 3 fields · 4 citations
One name. Different field. Different construct. One map.
● jingle · one word, three constructs Nearest construct by meaningiconcompare the meaningsEvery construct on the map is compared with every other by the meaning of its definitions, and the closest one is surfaced here. The nearest construct to symbol is icon.
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In psychoanalysis a symbol is an image in a dream or symptom that stands in for a hidden wish or idea the mind has kept out of awareness. Freud's 1900 Die Traumdeutung (The Interpretation of Dreams) treated such symbols as disguised substitutes formed by the dreaming mind, so that a surface image points to a buried meaning that analysis tries to recover. Jung's 1964 Man and His Symbols later broadened the idea toward recurring images he held to be shared across cultures. The referent here is a substitute image tied to unconscious content by an interpreter, not a mark fixed to its object by social agreement, and not a token shuffled by rules inside a machine.[1][2]
In semiotics a symbol is a sign that stands for its object only because of a rule, habit, or convention, and not because it resembles the object or is physically connected to it. Charles Peirce set out this meaning in his 1903 division of signs into icon, index, and symbol: the word "dog" is a symbol because a community agrees to let it stand for the animal, an icon works by resemblance, and an index works by a real physical link. The referent is an agreed relation between a mark and a meaning, which differs from a dream image read for a hidden wish, and from an uninterpreted token that a computer manipulates.[3]
In computing a symbol is a physical pattern or token that a system can create, copy, compare, and combine according to rules, without the pattern needing any meaning of its own. Allen Newell and Herbert Simon's 1976 Computer science as empirical inquiry: Symbols and search proposed the physical symbol system hypothesis, that such symbol structures and the processes acting on them are enough for general intelligent action. The referent is a formal, manipulable mark defined by what a machine can do with it, not a conventional sign agreed by a community, and not an image in a dream that stands for a hidden wish.[4]
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