A symbolic sign is using something to represent something that it is not

Semiotics for Beginners :

https://www.cs.princeton.edu/~chazelle/courses/BIB/semio2.htm

https://web.pdx.edu/~singlem/coursesite/begsem.html

http://take10charles.blogspot.com/2017/01/symboling-is-identifying-something-with.html

Symboling is identifying something with something that it is not . The technical term for this is the arbitrary relation between sign and thing signified

CB: Symboling is ,as I like to explain it , using something to represent something it is not. Imaginary beings are using something ( words or drawing or sculpture ) to represent something that doesn't exist or nothing. Math is all that. Numbers don't exist except in the imagination . Lines in geometry are infinitely long, but there are no infinitely long lines in reality , only in imagination.

Ancestor veneration , original culture and language, are using things and words to represent people who no longer exist.

I hypothesize that ,the immortality of gods is symbolic of many generations from the past, mortal beings who attain symbolic immortality by the living generation having so many recorded memories in living individual brains of the experiences of the dead while the dead were still alive . The living individual brains get this by learning language and culture, custom and tradition , religion .

Culture as material, not mystical, it is "soul" transcending generationally the mortality of all individual Selves; cultural immortality, eternity is symbolized as gods.


Iconographic signs (like the drawing of a pipe above )are still not what they represent, even as they are not arbitrary. Iconographic signs are similar to what they represent , so they are not arbitrarily related to what thry represent , like words.


< Drawings and paintings are iconographic signs . A portrait of Lincoln is not Lincoln. So , after Lincoln is dead , the portrait of Lincoln can share the appearance of Lincoln with future generations . This is the critical characteristic of a sign that allows communication between generations, AND ONLY HUMANS HAVE IT SO ONLY HUMANS CAN ACCUMULATE KNOWLEDGE.

Lincoln's _name_ is arbitrarily related to Lincoln .