Words are not merely psychological
Words are not merely psychological counters or tokens as it were. They are philosophical in nature because word and language occupy a crucial point in reality.
The fundamental action of words is to massively limit the immense reality of the vagueness from which the word springs, somewhat as ovulation involves the selection of an egg or a few eggs from an unfathomable pool.
The existence of language and word is theologically relevant because it gets at the matter of reality itself and its fundamental nature. If as I infer reality is all, and it moves, then it contains within its action and rules the elements that account for all aspects of existence.
Reality then can be seen to contain or be infused by the I Am that Moses encountered. Its name is what is.
However, we know that we function by language and I believe we also can see the theological relevance of there being an Abba (the word) to whom Jesus prayed who is both part of the I Am and part of what can communicate with us.
This may have to do with Tillich’s interesting notion of a God beyond God.
My point here is that any seeing of language or words as psychological cannot be what Peirce, as a realist and pragmaticist, would have accepted. Words are tied in with ontology.
That they impact us means that they become psychological as well but not exclusively so.
