The discussion continues with an agreement: words are signs.
Adeodatus and Augustine unpack the meaning of the sentence: "if nothing from so great a city it pleases the gods be left...". The conversation becomes stuck on the word "nothing." How can a word signify "no" thing if, by the very definition, it has to signify something?
What strikes me here is that they are practicing a very slow, very intense close reading, but predicating that each word must signify an object. This is going to be important for Augustine later in the debate so that he prove that words are misleading (and by extension words are necessary for faith). Augustine runs into problems with the word "nothing." To get out of this sticky wicket they include "states of mind" as also being signified in words.
As they unpack the sentence, they also come up with these rules of signification and what we don't necessarily need to signify:
a) things we are not doing when we are asked about them and can do them on the spot (without signs--and this aspect is going to come back in future discussions).
b) the very signs we happen to be doing (for example, walking).
This then turns to a discussion about the division of signs themselves which I will deal with in the next blog.
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