* copy editor: Adam Christian von Wald Representative Signs * A chapter on symbols Karl Bühler 1. We are familiar with representative personages like those of delegates or lawyers representing their parties; congressmen in Washington are representatives and so are ambassadors abroad. We know also that pictures and statues represent something. And finally, we have and use representative signs and call them symbols. What sort of representation can one expect from people, pictures and signs respectively? A lawyer ‘personates’ his party and ‘plays his party’s part’. Congress personates the people in legislature and an ambassador personates the President. The official activities of those people are legally circumscribed and based upon the confidence of those whom they represent. Now, whatever such official activities may be, it is clear without saying that nothing of its kind is to be expected from representative signs. For, signs are impersonal things and not people who act; representative signs, therefore, can’t personate and play the part of what they represent. And yet, one feels that they have something in common with personal representatives. To say what they have in common will be easier at the end of this chapter; but this much is safe to say right at the beginning: Instead of exhibiting a thing itself, one sometimes exhibits a picture or a sign of it and sometimes, if a human being exhibits only a sign or picture, he wishes the thing itself could appear, i.e. ‘I wish I could show it to you’, he says. But, of course, the thing itself isn’t there. Many symbols cannot be exhibited because the represented thing is invisible and is never registered by the senses. Mathematical symbols like 1, 2, 3 and etc. may represent just so many apples or dollars and those apples or dollars could appear before the eyes, but what V-1 represents cannot. V, standing for victory, is a symbol that can be exhibited by people in Europe; the thing it represents cannot, or rather not yet, sometime it will appear, they hope, and fill their hearts and minds with joy in reality. Pictures (photographs, paintings and drawings) come nearest to symbols and often mix with them. Students speak of symbolism in the arts; or, the other way around, students speak of pictorial symbols, as the case may be. Things like the crescent moon of the Mohammedans or hammer and sickle of the Soviet Russians consist of pictorial elements while the whole in both cases is considered to be a symbol. And the other way around: symbolic elements may enter the picture of a painter. There need to be some studies in the field of arts to find the rules to which the experts usually judge and classify such things. And there need to be studies K O D I K A S / C O D E Ars Semeiotica Volume 28 (2005) No. 1-2 Gunter Narr Verlag Tübingen Karl Bühler 36 of another kind, that seek to find the basic principles of semantics from which they should receive a final clarification. There are pictures and pictures; paintings are not photographs, but both of them are pictures; and blue-prints are pictures too in their kind, and so are geographical maps. And within all those compositions one finds some roots and springs of some of the forms of symbolic representation. 2. Modern statistics is a very effective way of using representative samples of things. Just before the presidential election of 1940 the Gallup poll predicted 52 percent of the votes for Roosevelt; another poll (by Elmo Roper) published in Fortune predicted 55.2. Roosevelt received 54.6 percent. Each prediction was based upon the result of a trial poll with a relatively small but representative group of voters. Knowing precisely the decisive factors, statisticians can select a group of several thousands and predict the final result of millions; the sample being statistically conformed to the whole is representative. The variance of each prediction from the real result shows in figures how near they came to the goal of making the sample representative. When speaking of samples that represent a class or mass of things one can enlarge the horizon. Mother earth preceded modern industry in mass production. And human beings in hoarding and managing the wealth of things have learned better and better to make use of samples; the idea that a natural history museum has a world of things in samples while trade and commerce make practical use of samples. Each sample, we repeat, is due in its own way to represent a mass or class of things, be it for a scientific or for a practical purpose. Samples and symbols, in comparison, offer another opportunity to show what kind of representation we can expect from representative signs. Human things in museums and samples in commerce are marked and labeled, that means there are symbols on and around them. This bridges the disconnection between sample and the represented mass or class of things. There will be an opportunity later to show how samples from early human social life, without such symbols, can be put to work and how they demonstrate a very efficient means of communication - like the system amongst bees collecting nectar and pollen from flowers of a given plant species for the common store-room in the beehive. Here we shall be able to read facts and judge what the difference between samples used and symbols used (as a means of communication) means. 3. Representative things can be static or dynamic. A common photograph and a statue are static (they don’t move), while motion pictures and a play on stage are dynamic (something is going on and in moving represents something else). The actions of living things can be symbolic actions. What does that mean? We shall take pains to scrutinize and destroy one definite modern half-truth about symbolic actions. We don’t need an actor on stage or on the big screen to produce symbolic actions, we produce innumerable sorts of symbolic actions ourselves in ‘real’ life. There is a division, of course, between the fictitious world of theater and our so-called real life. There’s no doubt about the fact that stage, screen, statues and pictures are nothing but a world of shine; a fictitious world, that much is surely true. Fighting fists on stage don’t hurt and gunshots don’t kill. But there is a difference between ‘to be fictitious’ and ‘to be symbolic’, which we intend to make perfectly clear. Otherwise we would fail to understand a series of important facts. Pictures remain pictures and symbols are still signs if in a fictitious or in a real world. It is important to note that both stage and screen have produced and cultivated some new techniques in symbolization. Representative Signs 37 4. The members of a jury, that is the judges of evidence in a murder case, are not expected to be expert students of crimes. They are common citizens endowed with an average education. They have life experience, an average I.Q. and goodwill to do their duty as judges. They shall be unbiased and follow the common rules of trial procedure; they are expected not to be influenced by outside information (rumors, gossip and newspaper reports) but to follow the procedure, to take in the evidence and to judge. ‘The theory of judicial investigation requires that the juror keep his mind wholly free from impression, until all the facts are before him in evidence; and that he should then frame his conclusion from all these fact, taken together’. 1 The emphasis here is a warning against prejudice (hasty conclusion), in the literal sense of the word, and the positive advice to make the context of evidence the basis of the verdict. It must be common life experience that the institution of juries relies on; for otherwise one would make students of crime the final judges of evidence. I believe semantics is able to present some arguments in favor of juries in a general form. Two groups of people regularly feel stirred by doubts after trials like Landru’s; prescientific people on the one hand and over-scientific ones on the other hand. Those who are not thoroughly familiar with the role of probabilities in all quarters of science usually underestimate judicial ‘evidence’ by comparing it to principles of science like physics and chemistry. But exactly by making such a comparison they fail to recognize the specific character of a judicial proof. On the other hand those who are accustomed to measuring probabilities in science feel disquieted because juries say yes or no and nothing more. The additional announcement that the verdict of guilty was reached with eleven against one voice is different of course, from what they feel is missing in verdicts. If during the trial a marksman or a physician judges in matters of the validity or significance of circumstantial evidence, they usually try to estimate probabilities. But juries don’t even know the word probability or rather they are not expected to use it. They are only given the simple advice that evidence should be beyond a reasonable doubt; otherwise the decision has to be in favor of the defendant (in dubiis pro reo). We neglect here cases of civil law where the obligation of proof is specifically regulated in a different way. What semantics could do and hasn’t done yet is to develop general, purified, and systematic knowledge on how we do what juries do in everyday life - and do so without error. Such mistakes in our everyday life would be dangerous - a daily trial of whether to be or not to be. In matters of circumstantial evidence sometimes a member of the jury has to judge the validity of a single indicative sign, always the significance of each single sign and lastly the total context of evidence. Take the Landru case as an example: ‘Absolute proof is lacking’ says E.R. Punshon, ‘yet when with a monotonous and dreadful regularity it is shown that he was the last person with whom the missing individual was seen and after that was seen no more, then it may be claimed that complete certainty is achieved which is above all proof’ (p 120, the italics by me). What does that mean ‘above all proof’? Punshon says on the same page that ‘life, even in France, is more than either logic or law’, ‘in logic it is impossible to add eleven probabilities together and make one certainty’ as it seems to be here. This thing has puzzled many theoreticians; but it did not prevent the jury in Paris from bringing in a verdict of guilty. Punshon oversimplifies on purpose of course, in his lines quoted above; for that ‘dreadful regularity’ was not the only indicative sign. And if we add three more items of circumstantial evidence, what then? We add that L. had disposed of the valuable property of ‘the missing individuals, that his note book showed a similar ‘dreadful regularity’ in matters of the ticket expenses, and that he kept curious collections of little things in his garage. Karl Bühler 38 I think this context makes an impression upon the unsophisticated, average person and gives them a kind of certainty that is similar to some other certainties in our daily life. There is a variety of identification and fitting proofs from which we draw a similar kind of certainty. One modern form is the fingerprint identification. Another form of convincing fitting tests is what the sergeant of the police laboratory did in the Bayly case (cp. above p …). The ancient Greeks used the same fitting test in practical life: Break a specimen of earthenware in pieces; those irregularly broken pieces will fit exactly back together. Supposing now that a statesman or merchant in Athens wants to send a slave with an oral message to his allies in Sparta - it’s an oral message for good reasons, when the messenger could fall in the hands of enemies or competitors - in Sparta he, the slave, must prove where he comes from. Well, the Greeks were prepared for that; for those partners of a future correspondence had broken a tiny earthen plate into two pieces especially produced for that purpose and divided it amongst themselves. The messenger now brings the piece left in Athens with him and can thereby legitimize himself. Such a piece was called a symbolon (symbol); for the Greek verb symballein (or symballestai), meaning ‘to put together’. The context of circumstantial evidence in the Landru case fits exactly to one and not at all to the other of the two explanations. It fits exactly into the accuser’s and not at all into the defender’s explanation. The jury had to judge between the two alternatives. Their common knowledge of life in Paris refused the defender’s story and accepted the accuser’s as the truth. That’s all. 5. The judicial proof in the Landru case was obviously incomplete. There was no evidence on how this man had killed his victims; was it by means of poison, shooting, or strangling? Nor was there any indication of how he had disposed of the corpses. And yet he was convicted. Why are we convinced that he was guilty? If one likens the judicial proof in this extraordinary case to a fitting test, some doubts disappear. Imagine any other criminal case where the police find a fingerprint on a decisive place; but ‘this print is not well developed in all details, it has unprinted fringes and faded little spots within it. Yet otherwise the pattern is clear and unique enough for an expert’s diagnosis’. Or suppose there is a piece of broken earthenware that fits to the rest excepting some little edges of the piece which are missing; maybe they have crumbled away. In a fitting test even such a fragment can be convincing enough and ‘gaps’ might not spoil the test-proof. In the same way the whole context of evidence in a judicial proof can be convincing despite the ‘gaps’ in it. Furthermore, suppose that broken piece of earthenware is very irregular and shows an all around broken edge. Such a piece is ideal for a fitting test. And if there should be a score of pieces - the more the better. All that, particularly the generalization ‘the more the better’, applies to both a simple physical fitting test and the context of circumstantial evidence. The judicial proof in the Bayly case provides an illustration to the rule the ‘more the better’. For the majority of those 274 exhibits small particles of bigger pieces of the missing man’s body, clothes, watch, cigarette lighter etc. were collected. Of course, they were not exhibited in the courtroom for the purpose of a physical fitting test; for, nobody could have reconstructed the whole to which they as parts belonged. They were exhibited in order to corroborate one another as indicative signs. All together they indicated one and the same fact that the victim’s body had been destroyed on Bayly’s premisses. Sometimes in criminal cases detectives strike a whole layer (mine) of indications, and then there is no limit to the findings except the cost of procedure and the interest of having enough of them. If a Representative Signs 39 detective’s ‘clue’ has hit the truth, sometimes the rest of his business is a sort of exploitation, just like in a real mine. Another point: As things may be, sometimes the entire body of circumstantial evidence improves if the single facts are physically or mentally far apart from one another. So were four indications in Landru’s case, four very disparate facts: first the proof of opportunity that he had lived with the missing person and was seen with her just before she disappeared; secondly the notes of expenses in his notebook; thirdly the rarities collection in his garage; and lastly his disposal of her property. As a table stands on four legs at the corners, so this juridical proof stands on four indications. Maybe it wouldn’t have been enough in this case had there not been a fifth fact, namely the dreadful repetition in Landru’s case, repetition of practically the same network of events, ten times with women and once with a boy, who disappeared. Sometimes in criminal cases the proof is difficult and doubtful for the very reason that a small number of indications are not widespread enough and not physically or mentally independent enough from one another. An illustrative example of this kind is ‘The murder of Julia Wallace’, a masterful analysis of which is given by Dorothy L. Sayers. 2 Notes 1 Alexander M. Burrill, A Treatise on Circumstantial Evidence. 1868. p. 598 (the italics there). 2 Anatomy of murder p. 157-210.