The central focus of this paper is the disjunction between the findings of climate science in revealing the threat of global warming and the failure to act appropriately to these warnings. The development of climate science can be illuminated through the perspective provided by Peircian semiotics, but efforts to account for its success as a science and its failure to convince people to act accordingly indicate the need to supplement Peirce’s ideas. The more significant gaps, it is argued, (...) call for the integration of major new ideas. It will be argued that Peirce should be viewed as a Schellingian philosopher, and it will then be shown how this facilitates integration into his philosophy of concepts developed by other philosophers and theorists within this tradition. In particular, Bourdieu’s concepts of the ‘habitus’ and ‘field’ will be integrated with Peirce’s semiotics and used to analyse the achievements and failures of climate science. It will be suggested that the resulting synthesis can augment Peirce’s evolutionary cosmology and so provide a better basis for comprehending and responding to the situation within which we find ourselves. (shrink)

Originally written in 1990, this reviews largely late 20th century debates on the study of law as Logic, Discourse, or Experience; the Unity of the Legal System and the Problem of Reference; Semiotic Presuppositions of Traditional Jurisprudence (Austin, Hart, Kelsen, Dworkin, Legal Realisms); then turns to legal philosophies explicitly Employing Forms of Semiotics (Kalinowski, the Italian Analytical School, Rhetorical and Pragmatic Approaches, Sociological and Socio-Linguistic Approaches, Peircian Legal Semiotics, Greimasian Legal Semiotics and Aesthetic/Symbolic Approaches). A major (...) section then offers (from a largely Greimasian point of view) some hypotheses for legal semiotics on the Problem of Reference, Semantic and Pragmatic Levels, Semiotic Groups and “The Legal Culture”, Normativity and Justification, and finally considers the implications for particular legal phenomena: the “Legal System”, Legal Institutions, Legal Codes, Legal Rules, Rights, Courtroom Behaviour: Witness and Counsel, The Judge: Justification of Decisions on Law, and the Criminal Justice Process. A conclusion addresses the status of legal semiotics. (shrink)

Playing fields are “spaces where the communitas suspends its everyday life and structures” and “The internal logic of sporting games is connected to values from the social context”, Playing fields: Power, practice, and passion in sport, 127–144. Reno: University of Nevada Press). But what about the space in between? What kind of semiotics organisation can be detected in the membrane between player and liminal space where spectators are not allowed yet specific characters needed to carry out an event? We (...) can therefore identify a liminality that can be connected either to the controlled or the wild playing field and depending on which of the two is the case can be analysed according to the degree of regulated system of signs which they produce. This implies different pathways and rituals: as matches are played, a variety of bodily activities may be taking place concurrently. Furthermore, it is inevitable that these activities attract the attention of the audience or alternately lead a player to interact with a non-player. In this article, I will first try to identify certain semiotics features, especially connected to Eco’s Peircian concept of Encyclopedia, that characterize the status of liminal space around the playing field. Then I will focus on liminality in soccer, investigating what kinds of interaction exist outside the playing area. (shrink)

This paper outlines a method to assess the effectiveness of diagrams, from semiotic foundations. In doing so, we explore the Peircian notion of signification, as applied to diagrammatic representations. We review a history of diagrams, with particular emphasis on schematics used for representing systems, and uncover the neglect of semiotic analysis of diagrammatic representations. Through application of category theory to the Peircian triadic model, we propose a set of quantitative quality measures for diagrams, and a framework for their (...) assessment, based on the properties of their encoding, pragmatic and perceptual morphisms. These measures include diagram complexity, utility, aesthetics and expert assessment of semiotic content, together with qualitative feedback. We consider the diagrams as an aid to cognitive processes, rather than a purely communication media. This utility-focused perspective on diagram quality dimensions allows for fresh insights into the creation of effective diagrams. (shrink)

The present article discusses various suggestions for a philosophical framework for a transdisciplinary information science or a semiotic doctrine. These are: the mechanical materialistic, the pan-informational, the Luhmanian second order cybernetic approach, Peircian biosemiotics and finally the pan-semiotic approach. The limitations of each are analyzed. The conclusion is that we will not have to choose between either a cybernetic-informational or a semiotic approach. A combination of a Peircian-based biosemiotics with autopoiesis theory, second order cybernetics and information science is (...) suggested in a five-leveled cybersemiotic framework. The five levels are 1) a level of Firstness, 2) a level of mechanical matter, energy and force as Secondness, 3) a cybernetic and thermodynamic level of information and signal, 4) a level of sign games in living systems, and 5) a level of conscious language games in self-conscious social humans. (shrink)

The philosophical underpinnings of this article are the Peircian notion of the triadic nature of the sign as iconic, linguistic and indexical, and the use of the sign as a ‘Zeug’ or thing as a means of pointing to or deixis in the context of creative activity in the classroom. This involves Lyotard's conception of desire as the generation of a space where the pupil can be affected by what the world donates. Both deixis and desire take on added (...) value in relation to the psychoanalytic theories of Winnicott in terms of the role of transitional object use in the generation of ‘potential space’, and Nussbaum's notion of tyche or being on the lookout for what the world has to offer. In terms of education, the central section of the article looks at the way these notions can be applied to teaching and learning in the secondary art classroom. This involves the use of what I have termed transitional notation, combining all three Peircian sign modes on a surface of inscription that is ‘ready-to-hand and that operates as what the anthropologist Alfred Gell termed an ‘index of agency’. (shrink)

Chinese environmentalists have called for an ecological civilization. To promote this, ecology is defended as the core science embodying process metaphysics, and it is argued that as such ecology can serve as the foundation of such a civilization. Integrating hierarchy theory and Peircian semiotics into this science, it is shown how “community” and “communities of communities,” in which communities are defined by their organization to promote the common good of their components, have to be recognized as central concepts (...) not only of ecology, but of life itself. This perspective is used to defend Lovelock’s “Gaia” hypothesis and the call of Prugh, Costanza, and Daly for strong democracy. An ethics and political philosophy is sketched based on “eco-poiesis” or “home-making,” which is equated with augmenting the life of communities, both human and non-human. (shrink)

Following C. S. Peirce’s claim that aesthetics precedes ethics and logic, I argue for reconceiving aesthetics as a normative science. The deteriorated relations between these links in the ‘modern mythology’ is associated with art’s decline and apparent indistinguishability from the ‘general aesthetic’ (aided by ‘aesthetics as theory’). ‘Naturalizing’ art, according to F. W. Schelling’s system, is proposed to ameliorate this. Bringing together Peircian semiotics with Schelling’s ‘process metaphysics’ suggests how to restore the historicized split between Art ‘as principle’ (...) and the Person (two ‘perfect signs’) by attending to the ‘ethical phenomenology’ of artworks. An argument is then made for how modern ethics and ‘morals’ may be reconnected. (shrink)

The fundamental problem for theoretical aesthetics is its inability to account for art’s meaning-value (Trimarchi, 2022). As previously argued, Art’s higher meaning is only found emerging from the artwork’s tacit dimensions, where empirical-historical intentionality is almost completely inconsequential (Trimarchi, 2024b). The latter’s interpretable ‘phenomenology of sequence’ produces a false theorising tendency, disconnecting art from the history of ideas and severing aesthetics from ethics and logic. Art appears ‘infinitely interpretable’, hence entirely subjective. Adapting Arnold’s (2011) actantial processual approach, I show how (...) Peircian semiotics, via ‘real Secondness’, uncovers art’s higher meaning. Peirce’s ‘diagrammatic thinking’ exposes art’s unique role of ‘objectifying’ the Person (in any subject, via appropriate propositions), without de-valuing this bearer of moral values. His ‘semiotic realism’ helps unveil Scheler’s anthropological (also termed ‘ethical’) phenomenology emerging from Merleau-Ponty’s ‘obscure zone’, to discern poetic from other speculation. Art’s ‘subject-objectivation’ (or, ethical intentionality) is thus able to be mapped phenomenologically to reveal any artwork’s meaning-value orientation. This paper combines Peirce’s ‘phenomenology of reason’ with Scheler’s hierarchy of values and Schelling’s ‘mythological categories’ (Trimarchi 2024b) to suggest a methodology for moving beyond neo-Kantian theoretical aesthetics (and analytical philosophy’s grip on the anti-art of ‘modernity’). That is, moving from the realm of perception to knowing, reviving art’s ontological connection to normative aesthetics. In conclusion, Peirce’s ‘science of ideals’ is thus revealed as Complexity Science, which – via his ‘suspended second’ (or, Ricoeur’s ‘second ontology’) - vindicates Schelling’s claim for how ‘aesthetics becomes objective’ (Trimarchi, 2024a). (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:What's so Important about Music Education?Leonard TanJ. Scott Goble, What's so Important about Music Education? (New York, NY: Routledge, 2010)In What's so Important about Music Education, J. Scott Goble proposes a new philosophical foundation for music education in the United States based on the theory of semiotics by American pragmatist Charles Sanders Peirce. Following a brief summary, I will note several merits in Goble's book before sketching (...) four recommendations for future editions.In Chapter One, Goble notes how the inclusion of non-Western musics in the public schools as espoused in the 1967 Tanglewood Declaration has raised two crucial questions: "Whose music should be included in the curriculum?" and "What is the role or social importance of public school music education in the United States as a postmodern society?" Noting that music education was established in the United States during the modern era, and that the Tanglewood Declaration did not account for vast differences in beliefs about music, Goble argues that there is a need to establish a new philosophical foundation that can accommodate the varied beliefs and practices of diverse cultural groups in postmodern United States.In Chapter Two, Goble sketches and critiques five cultural anthropologists. Of the five, he singles out Clifford Geertz's conception of culture as "semiotic [End Page 201] webs" (p. 20) as the conceptual foundation that is appropriate for this study. He then links Geertz's notion of culture to the semiotic theory of C. S. Peirce which is to become the theoretical underpinning of the book. Subsequently, he unpacks many key Peircian themes: human conceptions are maintained not individually but collectively in cultural groups, provisional truth (as opposed to absolute Truth) is relative and dependent on conceptions of communities, and the scientific method is the sole mode of inquiry by which people in communities may use to satisfy their doubts to formulate beliefs. Most importantly, Goble expounds the "pragmatic maxim" that since humans live in communities united by common beliefs, "the 'clear' meaning of an idea held by a member of the community will almost inevitably stem from the beliefs—or ways of understanding—held by members of that community" (p. 30). Goble concludes the chapter by presenting the Peircian semiotic system of cognition which posits that a "sign" is conceptualized in a triadic relationship: the Sign or "Firstness," the Object or "Secondness," and the Interpretant or "Thirdness" (p. 33).In Chapter Three, Goble considers how music is a sign based on the theoretical framework laid in Chapter Two. Drawing on the work of ethnomusicologists, anthropologists, psychiatrists, and a neuroscientist, he formulates a Peircian pragmatic approach to musical practices which posits that "the musical practices of different cultural communities represent a diverse cluster of community-specific ritualized behaviors involving sound" (p. 252). Furthermore, each of the musical practices "serves those persons who meaningfully participate in it as a means of psychophysiological, psychosocial, and/or sociopolitical equilibration relative to the worldview—or ordered conception of Reality—they tacitly share" (p. 252). For Goble, this pragmatist conception of musical practices is neither ethnocentric, universalist, nor relativist, and can serve as a conceptual framework for all diverse musical practices in postmodern United States.With the Peircian pragmatic conception in mind, Goble examines historical factors that contributed to current conceptions of music in the United States in Chapter Four. He laments that as a result of European Enlightenment and three socio-political phenomena in the United States (the separation of church and state, promotion of no other worldview than democracy, and adoption of democratic capitalism), music is no longer pragmatically oriented but trivialized and pursued by self-serving musicians.In Chapter Five, Goble traces the philosophical justifications for music education throughout the history of the United States. While the sign "musical practice" was conceptualized as "worship" in colonial America, the sign "music" was conceived as "art" during the age of Enlightenment, and as "product" during the age of science and technology. Noting that Bennett Reimer's music education as aesthetic education is limited in its Western focus on music as works [End Page 202] of artistic objects, Goble aligns his Peircian conception along praxial lines—in particular, with... (shrink)

The aim of this thesis is to confront the crisis in art and argument over whether it has lost its way. According to Friedrich Schelling, the ‘modern mythology’, bolstered by the onset of Christianity, is responsible for generating ‘aesthetic privation’ producing a joint crisis of meaning for humanity and art. Their artificial historicising, at the root of this, began with overturning the ‘ancient mythology’ in which art was a unified principle integrally linked to both Nature and History via the Person. (...) Extending this argument, drawing on other Radical Enlightenment thinkers, I show why this corrupted the essential link between aesthetics, ethics, and logic (exacerbated by Kant’s re-definition of aesthetics). And subsequently how the human habitus and telos globally transformed under an evolving modern ‘positivistic materialism’, characterised by an ideological, reflective standpoint, ‘worlding’ humanity toward posthumanism and possible extinction. Addressing the underlying problem of modern ‘mythologising’ and ‘aesthetic privation’ is proposed as essential to mending the associated historicised disjunctures between Art and Society, Nature, and the Person connecting both meaning crises. Early chapters examine why reassociating art ontologically with the normative discipline of aesthetics rather than theoretical ‘aesthetics’ is necessary for this. Reconceiving art as complexity science (Wissenschaft), as Schelling’s ‘process metaphysics’; ‘naturalising’ it to restore habitual primary attendance to bearers of higher meaning (‘internal’ goods) is proposed. This requires understanding ‘ethical value’ in the phenomenology of this ‘science of admiring’. A method for which, and for returning virtue ethics (firstly to the arts ecology), is suggested as a meaningful, practical way to reunite ethics with morals in modern society. Naturalising Art is thus argued as necessary for developing a new mythology and genuine political community needed to reorient humanity. The procedure followed is to firstly examine the posited underlying problem’s significance and causes. Deterioration of the Principle of Art (and essential link between Art and the Person, via corruption of the normative disciplines) emerges as a key reason for why art and humanity’s meaning crises developed together, peaking in contemporary ‘modernity’. This central claim and corresponding remedial propositions (reconnecting Art with normative aesthetics) centre on four main arguments for addressing five suggested historical ‘modifications’ (identified by Raymond Williams, and others) producing the above disjunctures. Re-establishing an ontological conception of Art, restoring dialectical normativity to our modes of admiring (‘idealising’), is thus proposed as essential for confronting deep assumptions inherent in modern mythologising. A methodology for assessing ‘ethical’ meaning-value directionality in any artwork, by combining Peircian semiotics with Max Scheler’s hierarchy of values to revive Schelling’s principle of Art, is then developed to suggest a practical approach for restoring virtue ethics to the human telos. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:LITERAL AND METAPHORICAL USES OF DISCOURSE IN THE REPRESENTATION OF GOD IN HIS SEMINAL work on the theory of signs, Charles Morris affirms that human beings are " the dominant sign-using animals" and that" the human mind is inseparable from the functioning of signs-if indeed mentality is not to be identified with such functioning." 1 By means of acculturation we learn to use and interpret signs, both linguistic and (...) non-linguistic; and by virtue of these capacities we can appropriately designate the human animal as homo symbolicus, homo loquens, and homo sapiens. Indeed, all forms of human culture presuppose the ability to use and interpret signs, including that form of human culture which leads us to speak of ourselves as homo religious. Over the years I have come to understand and speak of religion as a community with its cultus. There is the community, be it triba1, national, or universal with its polity or structure and ongoing history; and there is the cultus with its organic system of linguistic and nonlinguistic signs, encompassing ·such elements as stories, creeds, scriptures, doctrines, theologies, confessions, prayers, chants, songs, rites, rituals, sacraments, artifacts, etc. Like any other cultural system, scheme or network of signs one can characterize a religious cultus as an inter -subjective set of signs whose usage is determined by the implicit or explicit rules that govern the relations of signs to each other; the relations of the signs to the objects which the signs designate or denote, or stand for in some way; and the relations of signs to the users or interpreters of these signs and to those who are affected by these signs in some way. 1 Charles W. Morris, FoundatioJi of the Theory of Signs, in International Encyclopedia of Unified Science, Vol. I, No. 2 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1939), p. L 6~7 628 WILLIAM L. POWER: Given this understanding of community and cultus, one can describe a religion as an organized group of socially interdependent human beings which uses or employs ·a system of linguistic and nonlinguistic signs to represent reality in its various modalities and mixtures of good and evil and to affect human ways of life on the basis of that representation. Altering the terminology somewhat, one could say that a religious community uses its cultus to proclaim, enact, and display a comprehensive worldview.and to form and tr:msform the ethospathos of human beings in their solidarity and solitude. Expressed semiotically, there is the system of signs of a particular community, the intended signification of these signs, and the significance of these signs for those who use and are affected by them. What distinguishes a religion from other forms of human culture is that a rel·igious cultuml sy•stem or a religious community with its cultus is primarily concerned with ultimate or supreme reality or with that which is divine, holy, or sacred and that reality's bearing on and relevance for human life and well-being. In short, a religion is a cultural system which functions to map the whole of re.ality and to acculturate in desirable ways or to civilize. If a religion is a cultural system, then one can identify three distinct yet inseparably related dimensions of every religion. There is 1) the cultural dimension consisting of the interrelruted signs, symbols and expressions of a cultus; 2) the reality and value dimension consisting of the ontological and axiological purport of the cultus; and 3) the experiential dimension consisting of the existential import of the cultus. It is this thioo dimension which has led many in the past and in the present to speak of religion as piety, consciousness of things divine, ultimate concern, religiousness, etc. In the tradition of Peircian semiotics, one can speak of these three dimensions as the syntactic, semantic, and praigmatic dimensions of a religion; and they can be analyzed and studied with the aid of syntactics or syntax, semantics, and pr:agmatics, which as a unity LITERAL AND METAPHORICAL USES OF DISCOURSE 629 constitute the discipline of semiotics. As Peirce recognized, modem semiotics is continuous with the Medieval trivium of grammar, logic, and rhetoric-the semiotics of almost a millennium a;go... (shrink)

It is being increasingly recognized that the Saussurean dictum of “the arbitrariness of the linguistic sign” is in conflict with the pervasiveness of the phenomenon commonly known as “sound symbolism”. After first presenting a historical overview of the debate, however, we conclude that both positions have been exaggerated, and that an adequate explanation of sound symbolism is still lacking. How can there, for example, be (perceived) similarity between expressionsand contents across different sensory modalities? We offer an answer, based on the (...) Peircian notion of iconic ground, and G. Sonesson’s distinction betweenprimary and secondary iconicity. Furthermore, we describe an experimental study, in a paradigm first pioneered by W. Kohler, and recently popularized by V.Ramachandran, in which we varied vowels and consonants in fictive word-forms, and conclude that both types of sounds play a role in perceiving an iconic ground between the word-forms and visual figures. The combination of historical conceptual analysis, semiotic explication and psychological experimentationpresented in this article is characteristic of the emerging paradigm of cognitive semiotics. (shrink)

In this volumed, Randall Beer and Joanna Rączaszek-Leonardi have opened an important discussion of what is further needed to enhance the reach of dynamical approaches to cognition. Focusing on issues concerning the nature of language and developments in language technology, we have attempted, in this brief contribution, to place their proposals in a larger philosophical framework that suggests lines of inquiry that we believe will yield fruitful outcomes. In particular, we suggest that the adoption of a process metaphysics suggests that (...) dynamic approaches appropriately conceived within the context of current scientific advances are at basis adequate as a framework; however, the more profound implications of its adoption have not yet been sufficiently explored. (shrink)

The concept of intrasemiotics designates the semiosis of the interpenetration between the biological and psychological autopoietic systems as Luhmann defines them in his theory. Combining a Peircian concept of semiosis with Luhmann’s theory in the framework of biosemiotics makes it possible for us to view the interplay of mind and body as a sign play. The recently suggested term ‘sign play’ pertains to ecosemiotics processes between animals of the same species stretching Wittgenstein’s language concept into the animal world of (...) signs. With intrasemiotics there is an inner interplay. Lorenz in ethology has used the concept of motivation, and Uexküll the concept of tone, mostly describing the outgoing effect on perception and the reactions on perception. One could view intrasemiotics as the interplay between Lorenz’ biologically defined motivations and Freud’s Id, understood as the psychological aspect of many of the natural drives. In the last years of development of his theory Lorenz studied how emotional feedback can introduce just a little learning through pleasurable feelings also into the instinctivesystems because, as he reasoned, there must be some kind of reward going through instinctive movements, thus making the appetitive searching behaviourfor sign stimuli possible. But he never found an acceptable way of modelling motivation in biological science. A cybersemiotic model may combine these approaches, defining various concepts of thoughtsemiotics, phenosemiotic and intrasemiotics, combining them with the already known concepts of exosemiotics, ecosemiotics, endosemiotics to an approach which studies the self-organising semiotic processes in living systems. (shrink)

Eshel Ben-Jacob’s manuscript entitled ‘Bacterial wisdom, Gödel’s theorem and creative genomic webs’ summarizes decades of work demonstrating adaptive mutagenesis in bacterial genomes. Bacterial genomes, each an essential part of a Kantian whole that is a single bacterium, are thus not independent of the environment as sensed; and a single bacterium is therefore a semiotic entity. Ben-Jacob suggests this but errs in 1) assigning autonomy to the genome, and 2) analogizing through computation without making clear whether he is doing so for (...) illustrative purposes or making committed ontological propositions. We reinterpret adaptive mutagenesis and related phenomena in ways both metaphysically rigorous and revealing. We conclude that bacteria are much farther removed from the ‘self-organizing’ world of inanimate process than from the Peircian world of signs; and a critical reappraisal of existing knowledge can enhance our understanding of selfhood, semiosis, and the roots of subjective experience. (shrink)

This paper argues that pragmatists must be more cognizant of the concept of "power" and its consequences. To demonstrate this, I show how Foucault's analytics of power can be brought into Peirce's theory of signs. Central to both philosophers is the role of action. Using the concept of action, I explain that Foucault's conception of power, action on actions, can be understood as structuring Peircian habits, which are rules for action. From here I build out to Peirce's semiotics, (...) illustrating how power channels the meanings of signs in certain directions. The rest of the paper is dedicated to reconstructing in light of Foucault Peirce's claim that the subject is nothing more than the signs it uses. I argue that any understanding of the subject must account for the subject being distributed through a field of power. The paper concludes by proposing a new "philosophy of the subject" which seeks to reconcile Foucault's concerns with those of pragmatism. (shrink)

In this paper I examine parallels between C.S. Peirce's most mature account of signs and contemporary philosophy of language. I do this by first introducing a summary of Peirce's final account of Signs. I then use that account of signs to reconstruct Peircian answers to two puzzles of reference: The Problem of Cognitive Significance, or Frege's Puzzle; and The Same-Saying Phenomenon for Indexicals. Finally, a comparison of these Peircian answers with both Fregean and Direct Referentialist approaches to the (...) puzzles highlights interesting parallels and important differences between Peirce's final account of signs, and the concepts used in analytic philosophy of language. (shrink)

The Iconic, Indexical and Intellective are conceptions derived from Charles Sanders Peirce's use of his sign theory. In characterizing different kinds of interpretative activity, they can be used to address certain problems in science, technology and the arts.

I argue that a fruitful approach to exploring the significance of the abstract expressionist Barnett Newman’s body of work, understood as as an attempt to “paint the sublime,” is by appeal to Peircian phenomenology and the conception of “originativity” that it entails. By attending, in particular, to Peirce’s conception of “the firstness of thirdness,” I show how this “reasonable feeling” both signifies our “affinity” with the world with which we transact and, with specific respect to what happens when looking (...) at Newman’s paintings, explains why we are spurred to reflect upon the meaning of these experiences. In this way, “the firstness of thirdness” accounts for our recognition of a form of reasonableness that exceeds that exhibited in ordinary conceptualization. (shrink)

It is argued, that theory sf signs, especially in the tradition of the great philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce (1839–1914) can inspire the study of central problems in the philosophy of biology. Three such problems are considered: (1) The nature of biology as a science, where a semiotically informed pluralistic approach to the theory of science is introduced. (2) The peculiarity of the general object of biology, where a realistic interpretation of sign- and information-concepts is required to see sign-processes as immanent (...) in nature. (3) The possibility of an artificial construction of life, hereby discussed as a conceptual problem in the present form of the artificial life project and its implied definition of life. (shrink)

Later reprinted by Deborah Charles Publications (and not available from Amazon), this book expounds and comments on the application of Greimasian semiotics to a legal text, as found in the article by Greimas and Landowski in Greimas, Sémiotique et Sciences Sociales (1976), compares this with the semiotic presuppositions of Hart, Dworkin, MacCormick and Kelsen, and offers my own analysis of the implications of such semiotic analysis for legal theory, including some more recent radical non-positivist accounts.

Semiotics has the merit of demonstrating that whatever is human involves signs. Indeed, it implies more than this: viewed from a global semiotic perspective we now know that whatever is simply alive involves signs. And this is as far as cognitive semiotics and global semiotics reach. But semioethics pushes this awareness even further by relating semiosis to values and by focusing on the question of responsibility, of radical, inescapable responsibility inscribed in our bodies insofar as we are (...) ‘semiotic animals,’ on the human capacity for responsibility for life over the entire planet. Semioethics develops our awareness of the extension of the semiosic network in the direction of ethics; from a semioethic perspective the question of responsibility cannot be escaped at the most radical level (that of defining commitments and values). (shrink)

"Eco wittily and enchantingly develops themes often touched on in his previous works, but he delves deeper into their complex nature... this collection can be read with pleasure by those unversed in semiotic theory." —Times Literary Supplement.

The paper studies semiotic values in advertisements appearing in German Catholic periodicals in Silesia in the second half of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The study is grounded in the Tartu School of Semiotics and shows shifts and hierarchies in the semiotic valuations of particular commodities. Collected advertisements were classified into four main groups: (1) books, (2) church art, (3) church and devotional accessories, (4) everyday life commodities. We motivate the claim that the group (2) of the advertisements (...) in the Catholic press we analyzed was the driver for the introduction of the remaining two categories of ads, hence the study of this group is pivotal for our analysis. The parameters of center, periphery, and “border,” as between the sacred and the profane are also taken into account, within the structural interrelation of Sr (religious system) (cf. Zaliźniak et al. 1975 [1962]) and Sc (commercial code). Assuming the usefulness of explanatory mechanisms, in conclusion a heuristic interpretation is provided in terms of the relations of semiotic primes. (shrink)

This paper conducts a semiotic analysis of the Moses and Pharaoh narrative in the Qur’an by examining descriptive, narrative and argumentative propositions, enunciation, and discourse.1 The methodology tests the narrative against an analytical model based on theories of structural and cognitive semiotics and developed by Grambye and Sonne (2003a). A bit-by-bit application of the model to the narrative yields crucial results in the propositional analysis in which descriptive, narrative, and argumentative propositions are tested against the 3-D, transport, and thematic (...) models; the enunciational analysis in which point of view and style are examined with specific focus on frequency; and the discursive analysis in which intertextual and ethical implementations underlie the core values borne by the narrative. The merit of this methodological approach is not limited to the analysis of these two narrative texts, but can reverberate to other Qur’anic narrative texts. (shrink)

In this article, I attempt to describe how certain theoretical constructions of semiotics could be applied in educational theoretical work. First I introduce meaning as a basic concept of semiotics, thus also touching on concepts such as action, competence and causality. I am then able to define learning as a change of competences, and also refer to the pedagogical concept of learning i.e. Bildung, which can be roughly defined as valuable human learning. I then take up the problem (...) of education as pedagogical direction and communication. Finally, I conclude with some considerations on the famous Greimassian semiotic square. (shrink)

Semiotic construction has an enormous influence on the latest studies in promoting intercultural communication. Understanding all symbols of traditional rites and fostering mutual respect, compassion, sympathy and empathy for other cultures is understood as a new angle. Moreover, semiotic construction is a contact tool for cultural qualities. This research aims to explore and reveal the multicultural values that are contained in the tiba meka rite. The analysis examines 50 custom spokespersons over the period of February to December 2019 and uses (...) interviews, stationery collection, field notes and audio-visual recordings. Three research results concerning the tiba meka rite were found. First, semiotic meanings used in tiba meka rites are semiotic expressions that invite national or international outsiders, government guests, religious leaders and community leaders. Second, the philosophy relates to the theory, personality and morality of economics behind semiotic spoken words. This philosophy is influenced by the following main philosophies: pragmatism and indoctrism. Third, the tiba meka rite's multicultural values include respect, gender, politics, solidarity, faith, tolerance, political, social, economic, authority and familiarity, and these values promote intercultural communication. The six steps used by the Manggarai people to welcome outsiders include these concepts. (shrink)

_Edusemiotics_ addresses an emerging field of inquiry, educational semiotics, as a philosophy of and for education. Using "sign" as a unit of analysis, educational semiotics amalgamates philosophy, educational theory and semiotics. Edusemiotics draws on the intellectual legacy of such philosophers as John Dewey, Charles Sanders Peirce, Gilles Deleuze and others across Anglo-American and continental traditions. This volume investigates the specifics of semiotic knowledge structures and processes, exploring current dilemmas and debates regarding self-identity, learning, transformative and lifelong education, (...) leadership and policy-making, and interrogating an important premise that still haunts contemporary educational philosophy: Cartesian dualism. In defiance of substance dualism and the fragmentation of knowledge that still inform education, the book offers a unifying paradigm for education as edusemiotics and emphasises ethical education in compliance with the semiotic unity between knowledge and action. Chapters contain accessible discussions in the context of educational philosophy and theory, crossing the borders between logic, art, and science together with a provocative theoretical critique. Recently awarded a PESA book award for its contribution to the philosophy of education, _Edusemiotics_ will appeal to an academic readership in education, philosophy and cultural studies, while also being an inspiring resource for students. (shrink)

Peirce described himself as a disciple of Berkeley, and described the truth of Berkeleyanism as consisting, in part, of “hinging” all philosophy (or "all coenoscopy") on the concept of sign. This article collects Berkeley’s chief semiotic contributions, and discusses how it may have influenced Peirce’s semiotic.

Semiotic objections to markets urge us not to place a good on the market because of the message that doing so would send. Brennan and Jaworski reject them on the grounds that either the contingent semiotics of a market can be changed or the weakness of semiotic reasons allows them to be ignored. The scope of their argument neglects the impure semiotic objections that claim that the message a market sends causes, constitutes, or involves a nonsemiotic wrong. These are (...) the most compelling class of semiotic objections and are the kind actually advanced in the literature. Rather than focusing on the necessity or contingency of a market's semiotics, we should instead attend to a semiotic objection's most important feature: its purity or impurity. (shrink)

Semiotics is the study of signs addressing their action, usage, communication and signification. Edusemiotics—educational semiotics—is a recently developed direction in educational theory that takes semiotics as its foundational philosophy and explores the philosophical specifics of semiotics in educational contexts. As a novel theoretical field of inquiry, it is complemented by research known under the banner ‘semiotics in education’, which is largely an applied enterprise. In this respect edusemiotics is a new conceptual framework for both theoretical (...) and empirical studies. Edusemiotics has also been given the status of being a new branch of theoretical semiotics and it was launched as such at the 12th World Congress of the International Association for Semiotic Studies in September 2014 at the New Bulgarian University in Sofia. The article presents ‘semiosis’ as the action of signs across culture AND nature and posits ‘learning’ in terms of developing semiotic consciousness and semiotic competence. Semiosis is a process and as such it defies the Cartesian philosophy of substance-dualism that still informs the culture of education. The paper focuses specifically on university education permeated by disciplinary boundaries and the fragmentation of knowledge grounded in objective science inherited from modernity. Where is semiotics as the science of signs in the context of academic culture? The authors conclude by affirming the transdisciplinary character of semiotics and edusemiotics and specify the distinctive focal points of transdisciplinary knowledge afforded by edusemiotics. (shrink)

The article’s aim is to present plastic semiotics, one of the most recent branches of the Greimassian School. In his Structural Semantics: An Attempt at a Method (1966) Algirdas Julius Greimas stated that sensorial perception was the dimension in which the grasping of meaning takes place, but explicit principles of the analysis of this nonlinguistic dimension were published only years later, in his article “Figurative semiotics and plastic semiotics” (1984). Since then, plastic semiotics has been leading (...) independent existence, focused on the eff ects of sense generated by the form and the substance of expression. Plastic analysis has turned out to be a fruitful approach not only in the field of visual studies, but also in the research into other sensorial expressions.Статья знакомит с одной из наиболее молодых ветвей греймасовской семиотики – пластической. В книге Греймаса ≪Структурная семантика: поиск метода≫ (1966) чувственное восприятие было определено как измерение, в котором осуществляется схватывание смысла/значения. Основы анализа этого неязыкового измерения были изложены им позднее в статье ≪Фигуративная семиотика и пластическая семиотика≫ (1984). С тех пор пластическая семиотика превратилась в самостоятельную дисциплину, которая фокусируется на сенсорных эффектах смысла, произведенных формой и сущностью выражения. Пластический анализ оказался плодотворным подходом не только в области визуальных исследований, но и в исследованиях других сенсорных выражений.Artikli eesmargiks on tutvustada plastilist semiootikat, uht Greimase koolkonna uuemat haru. Greimase teoses “Strukturaalne semantika: meetodi otsingul” (1966) nimetati meeletaju selleks mootmeks, milles leiab aset tahenduse tabamine. Selle mittekeelelise mootme analuusi sonaselged pohimotted ilmusid aga aastaid hiljem Greimase artiklis “Figuratiivne semiootika ja plastiline semiootika”. Sestsaadik on plastiline semiootika muutunud iseseisvaks distsipliiniks, keskendudes meelelistele tagajargedele, mida tekitavad valjenduse vorm ja sisu. Plastiline analuus on osutunud viljakandvaks lahenemiseks mitte uksnes visuaaluuringute vallas, vaid ka teiste meeleliste valjenduste uurimisel. (shrink)

The continuing growth of semiotics signifies increased awareness of global communicative processes. Expansion of the communicative universe through semiotic research furthers the transformation of our contemporary experience. Semiotics thus provides a means to articulate transmodernity. We validate this assertion through semiotic analysis of an everyday object, by which we discover an infinite horizon. With that horizon, we transcend the global culture of addiction and reach the spiritual science that is necessary to develop a lasting paradigm for humankind.

This essay explores the terminology of semiotics with an eye to the historical layers of human experience and understanding that have gone into making the doctrine of signs possible as a contemporary intellectual movement. Using an essentially Heideggerian view of language as a heuristic hypothesis, the name semiotics is examined in light of the realization that only with Augustine's Latin signum was the possibility of a general doctrine of signs introduced, and that first among the later Latins was (...) the idea of sign as a general mode of being specifically verifiable both in nature and in culture in establishing the texture of human experience vindicated according to an explanation of how such a general mode of being is possible. The contemporary resumption through Charles Peirceof the Latin line of vindication completed especially by Poinsot is explored along these same lines in terms of considerations of why the term semiotics has emerged as, so to speak, the logically proper name of the global interest in signs. (shrink)

Semiotics, the body of knowledge developed by study of the action of signs, like every living discipline, depends upon a community of inquirers united through the recognition and adoption of basic principles which establish the ground-concepts and guide-concepts for their ongoing research. These principles, in turn, come to be recognized in the first place through the work of pioneers in the field, workers commonly unrecognized or not fully recognized in their own day, but whose work later becomes foundational as (...) the community of inquirers matures and ‘lays claim to its own’. As semiotics has matured, the work of Jakob von Uexküll in establishing the concept of Umwelt has proven to be just such a pioneering accomplishment for the doctrine of signs, and in this paper I trace out some of the lines of development according to which Uexküll’s concept came to occupy its central place in semiotics today. (shrink)

The subject of this book is the thought of the American pragmatist and founder of semiotics, Charles Sanders Peirce. The book collects the papers presented to the International Conference Semiotics and Philosophy in C.S. Peirce (Milan, April 2005), together with some additional new contributions by well-known Peirce scholars, bearing witness to the vigour of Peircean scholarship in Italy and also hosting some of the most significant international voices on this topic. The book is introduced by the two editors (...) and is divided into three sections, corresponding to the three main areas of the most interesting contemporary reflection on Peirce. Namely, Semiotics and the Logic of Inquiry (part I); Abduction and Philosophy of Mathematics (part II); Peirce and the Western Tradition. (part III). The analysis is carried out from a semiotic perspective, in which semiotics should not be understood as a specific doctrine but rather as the philosophical core of Peirce’s system. As we read in the introduction: “it is semiotics and philosophy or, rather, semiotics as philosophy and philosophy as semiotics, which emerge from a reading of these papers”. (shrink)

We provide an overview of a proposal for a new metaphysical framework within which theology and science might both find a home. Our proposal draws on the triadic semiotics and threefold system of metaphysical categories of C. S. Peirce. We summarize the key features of a semiotic model of the Trinity, based on observed parallels between Peirce's categories of Firstness, Secondness, and Thirdness and Christian thinking about, respectively, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. We test and extend the semiotic (...) model by exploring how Peirce's taxonomy of signs offers a new approach to theological reflection on the Incarnation. This leads to a novel way of framing scientific questions about human evolution in semiotic terms and to a new approach to theological anthropology. Finally, we use the semiotic model of the Trinity as the basis of a trinitarian approach to the theology of creation according to which the semiotic processes that are fundamental to life and to human behavior and cognition may be understood as “vestiges of the Trinity in creation.”. (shrink)

Basic, key concepts of semiotic are surveyed en route to establishing signs, units of signification, as always dealing in relations. These relations are triangular and mediate. Signs span and mediate between the internality and externality of things, thing being defined as a composite of subjectivity and objectivity. Because signs are relational and mediate, identicality is postulated as the limit of the sign. Identicality is aligned with things-in-themselves, which are assigned to meta-reality, to associate semiotic and metaphysic. Mind, thought, world, and (...) reality are conceptualized in such a way as to link signs with experience. Experience is explained as being founded in relations and practices between things. These relations and practices are formulated in significations. From these signification relations experience is founded, and through experience identities are situated and selves emerge. Holding experience as being formative of and fundamental to reality, it is concluded that reality is best described as being constituted in signs and ultimately bound by significations and relations between things. (shrink)

A model called the “semiotic ladder,” which consists of “consecutive semiotic squares,” is proposed in this paper, through which the meanings of the deep structure of a narrative can be depicted as fluid and dynamic. It shows the stages of producing meanings in the narrative, from beginning to end. To see this, several narratives in the epic and mythological genres are analyzed in order to discover their abstract and deep structural meanings, and to prove the dynamic nature of meaning in (...) the semiotic ladder. According to the analysis, the process of the semiotic ladder depicts the displacement and fluidity of narrative meanings using consecutive semiotic squares, and this pattern can be applied to and implemented in all narratives. Also, the semiotic ladder allows us to clearly observe the pattern of movement of the narrative subject schema in the path of accomplishing the object. (shrink)

The skin can be described as a niche structured by semiotic artefacts (tattoos) that work as symbolic–indexical devices (dicisigns). New biocompatible technologies responsive to organic and environmental variations change the role of the skin as a semiotic niche. New devices are transforming the skin into a niche of interactive interfaces. In this article we introduce a variety of techno-scientific artefacts, which are readily available, and their main characteristics. We are interested in the recent proliferation of devices based on biotechnologies that (...) can be coupled to the body, especially epithelial (superficial or invasive), and how they change what we know as ‘embodied communication’. (shrink)

Signifying practices by which living creatures communicate, are, according to Sebeok, the survival-machines. Accordingly, as represented by the semiotic text analysis or Bakhtin's textology, one can speak about a human survival-machine. This has been studied by different semiotic schools (including the Moscow-Tartu school) referring to language, culture, genre and, importantly, text ideology. In this article, the aspects of textology in Peirce's generalized theory of signs become analysed. After a discussion of the concept of text in Peirce's (published and unpublished) writings, (...) its relationship with semiosis and other Peircean categories isshown. The project of elaborating Peirce-based text-semiotics expects that it must be dramatically different from other sign-theoretical text-theories. This may be a path towards more inter-subjective and creative textology. (shrink)

The emergence of organic, metabolic, cognitive and cultural codes points us to the need for a new kind of explanatory causality, and a different kind of bio-logic— one dependent on, but different from, the deterministic logic derived from mechanical causality, and one which can account for the increase in semiotic freedom which is evident in the biological hierarchy. Building upon previous work (Bruni 2003), in this article I provide a stipulative definition of semiotic freedom and its relation to causality in (...) biological and cognitive systems. To do so, I will first discuss the close relation that triadic causality and semiotic freedom have to the notions of teleology and emergence, and how the latter two are interrelated in living systems. I pinpoint some of the reservations that these notions have encountered in the history of science (including evolutionary biology and cognitive science), but stress also their necessity in the study of any given biological and cognitive system. I draw a distinction between horizontal and vertical emergence in order to arrive at a notion of ‘second order emergence’ that affords us a more viable definition of semiotic freedom. I will then attempt to show that all of these concepts are of paramount importance when we come to study processes of sensing, perception andcognition at any level of a living system. Accordingly, these ideas are part of a framework-in-development to research the scale of thresholds of semiotic freedom, by assuming a top-down approach i.e., by starting from the highest levels of semiotic freedom and cognitive processes, and exploring how those processes disaggregate into lesser degrees of freedom. I thus hope to bridge the gap between those levels from above. (shrink)

Intercultural Approaches between Europe and China via Art? -/- Two landscapes from different cultures, Europe and China, that are both considered masterpieces are the focus of a study by Martina Sauer. To what extent are they each perceived as beautiful? Can the differences in aesthetic understanding tell us something about the respective cultures? Do the results have the potential to contribute to intercultural rapprochement between Europe and China? The possibility that these ideas can be fruitful for intercultural connections and understanding, (...) and for a re-evaluation of the interaction between humans and nature, is considered and analysed using the tools and theory of vitality semiotics (VS). -/- The task is examined by taking up premises from the philosophy of emotions by Sabine A. Döring, from the art history by Heinrich Wölfflin, from the infant research by Daniel N. Stern and from the empirical research in neuroscience on vitality forms by the research group around Giacomo Rizzolatti. -/- Cf. Martina Sauer, Vitality Semiotics: The Ever Beautiful and Its Potential for an Intercultural Approach: In Atmospheric Design and Everyday Aesthetics, edited by David Brubaker & Zhuofei Wang [Contemporary Aesthetics, Special Volume 12, 2024]: 1-11. (shrink)

Many caricaturists get the idea for their caricature from current issues of society. The philosophy of the caricature lies in the opinion it presents, which discusses society’s goals, culture, and crises, and it is represented in an ironic way to deliver its visual message. The fight for women’s rights, inequality, and discrimination are examples of issues concerning Saudi women that have been represented by several caricaturists. Hence, the aim of this paper is to investigate female and male caricaturists’ linguistic and (...) semiotic representation of Saudi women’s challenging issues. Following (Kress and Van Leeuwen. 2006. Reading images: The grammar of visual design, 2nd edn. London: Routledge), a social semiotic multimodal approach to the analysis is adopted in this study, which is drawn from Halliday’s social semiotic theory. Twenty caricatures were carefully selected based on the content and the issues that are being discussed in the caricatures with a consideration of their relation to the aim of the study. The present study contributes to enriching Saudi women’s rights in relation to Saudi Vision 2030. The research is significant in that, in examining women/male caricaturists’ representations of the challenges and opportunities of Saudi women empowerment prior/after Saudi Vision 2030 in the workplace, social life, it contributes to understanding the supportive caricature discourse, basic social values for Saudi women, the pressures they undergo, and the success they have achieved so far in attaining their rights. The study findings show that both the semiotic and verbal elements of the caricatures were significant in delivering the messages for women’s rights in the new Saudi. (shrink)