Two Aspects of Thought: Sign and its Function in Human Imagination

Abstract

Two Aspects of Thought: Sign and its Function in Human Imagination. – The author searches proofs of functioning of a metaphor and a metonomy, which he considers analogical to terms an icon and an index from CH. S. Peirce’s semiotic. These proofs are found in the animated nature, outwards human consciousness. The presence of these two correlation aspects in a phylogenesis is unable to explain an human usage of an arbitrary sign (symbol in Peirce’s terminology), which disagrees with naturalist and materialistic theories of life phylogenesis, because the human consciousness itself has a character of a sign (which is stressed e. g. by L. S. Vygotsky). So the possibility of the usage of a symbol is sought with a help of a platonic myth of the cave.