Georgina Woodward
I think terminology by itself is pretty pointless, unless people are very clear about symbols: the written and spoken and binary digit symbols, invented by human beings, used as a type of tool by human beings, and which only have meaning to human beings.
Unfortunately there are an awful lot of people, including philosophers, who make the mistake of thinking that symbols have objective meaning, when in fact symbols only have subjective meaning to particular human beings (although no doubt some non-human animals can be trained to associate some personal-to-themselves meaning in connection with visual or sound symbols).
I think it is a somewhat difficult issue, because when one looks at words (e.g. on a screen or paper), it is difficult to separate out the physical symbols (on the screen or paper) from the experience of knowing the meaning of the symbol, which has come from the eyes and brain processing light waves, and from learning the meaning of the symbols at school.
