Lexicon of Arguments

 

I 112 ff
Sign/Laws of Nature/Armstrong: There is no sign for the law of gravity! Phenomena are only clues!.
Sign: E.g. Black Clouds: there must be a true inductive generalization, a probability.
Sign/Armstrong: it is not necessary for a sign to act as a sign. There are signs that no one can read, and signs that are read by no one.
The thing designated: is, like the sign, always a particulate fact. There is no sign for the general! (I.e. neither for the validity of laws of nature!)
Vs: there are counter-E.g. against this simple definition of sign, however:
Signs/Indications: E.g., a certain disease is almost always fatal. You would not say, however, that the disease is a sign of death.
Sign: sings never act as a cause! - But: E.g., black clouds: here it is not quite correct. But still, the fact that the clouds are black has nothing to do with the induction of rain! Those features of the sign due to which the thing in question is designated by the sign are not causally responsible.
Also with irregularity (error, deception - irony disregarded here) a statement is still a sign. A sign can say different things in different contexts anyway. E.g. in a very specific meteorological situation, black clouds could also be signs for something other than rain.