SYMBOL I: THE IDEA OF YOU
After your unconscious has learned to directly map any physical perception of the word “Galileo” to your imagined perception of Galileo, it doesn’t stop there. Now, every time you have any audio, visual, or gestural perception of “Galileo,” your unconscious automatically has a “Galileo”-as-imagined-perception-of-Galileo moment. Subsequently, its next trick involves processing the relationships from both word and referent (associations, perceptions, and all) into one integrated representation of “Galileo.” That’s symbolic reference.
Emergent Cognition - Framework 