Let us suppose that I have a piece of paper, written on it is the phrase 'The experience of the colour red', and I have asked you if this piece of paper is having the experience of the colour red
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There are, of course, varying perspectives among semioticians concerning the relation of a sign-vehicle to its object, and of the object to the reality objectified therein. From the perspective of a realist semiotic, the written account represents or signifies the reality (in this case the experience of red) itself, and upon reading the account one is brought into relation with that reality. To speak more generally, the sign enables a coincidence of an object (signified) and some reality or other (whether mind-independent or mind-dependent, insofar as sign-relations, generically understood, are indifferent to the ontological status of what they signify). In the present case, we have an account of the experience of red, which experience is dependent on the mind of the experiencer but not on the minds of external observers. The account itself is never identified with the experience, but there is no reason, in principle, to exclude the possibility of the signification of a thing coinciding with the thing itself in its proper being.
But in looking to the actual case, the picture is complicated by the inadequacy of written accounts to lead to a complete objective grasp of the reality of the experience. This inadequacy is not simply a function of the incompleteness of language, but the incompleteness of the nonverbal signs in which language is necessarily rooted. We never attain the thing in its fullness. As Aquinas famously notes, “our cognition is so weak that no philosopher has ever been able to investigate completely the nature of a single fly.” But this inadequacy does not entail the inadequacy of semiosis to bring about the partial coincidence of object and thing, the incomplete but genuine objectification of the thing, in an act of signification.
Hence, I don’t see the necessity of either of the two positions you have described. The quasi-idealist conflation of idea and thing is one error, but so too is the genuinely idealist conflation of idea and object signified. In contrast to both positions (unless I have misunderstood you), the idea is the sign on the basis of which a thing becomes also an object. According to tradition, if the idea is a mental representation or concept, it is a formal sign; and if the idea is a written account, it is a collection of instrumental signs expressing that formal sign. In either case, the thing itself is what is ultimately intended.
Moreover, as you observe in your response to the second position, “the relevant significations are semantically grounded just by virtue of their thus ultimately referring to being rather than to signification ad infinitum,” meaning that an object signified need not become another sign signifying yet another object (though in fact there is nothing stopping such from occurring, which process semioticians call “unlimited semiosis”). And if the thing signified becomes significant in some other way, it will be caught up in a numerically distinct sign-relation.
Finally, I would not wish to say that “a thing…signifying…is in essence a sign.” The sign in its proper being is a relation of sign-vehicle to object to meaning. Without this triadic relationship, there is no semiosis, no act or process of signification. What we commonly call a sign is merely the vehicle or body of the sign, but the sign in its essence is the relation of that sign-vehicle to an object signified and to a “proper significate outcome” (Peirce’s description of the interpretant). This is so even if the sign and the object have no mind-independent status (as for example in the case of Santa Claus signifying Christmas, both of which are socially constructed realities having no existence independent of human minds). The task of sign theory or semiotics to explain what the sign is. That has relevance in itself, since the sign is a kind of being and as such amenable to theoretical investigation. But what I think you are getting at is that semiotics does not displace metaphysics. If so, I agree. However, semiotics is in at least one important sense prior to both metaphysics (which studies mind-independent being) and logic (which has to do with a certain kind of mind-dependent being), for semiotics studies what transcends both orders of being-namely, the sign.
In what sense is metaphysics limited to the genus of mind-independent being? You don't agree with the Aristotelian identification of metaphysics with ontology, c.f. Metaphysics vi.1?
If we distinguish between mind-independent and mind-dependent being not prior to but from within metaphysics that, then semiotics would be the study of the nature and action of that being capable of transcending those two orders, namely the sign. For sign-relations are, qua relations, not limited to mind-independent categorial instantiation. Would you argue that semiotics is, then, a peculiar subfield of metaphysics?
Incidentally, what are your thoughts on the validity of the trivium and quadrivium?
I'm not sure that it's important to be thinking about semiotics in the first place. The study of things whose treatises can be held in my left hand transcends genii of being too, but I'm not sure this is a particularly noteworthy fact.
Hmmm... I'm not sure I have any interesting thoughts about them.
Importance is teloi-relative. It may not be important for you to be thinking about semiotics, but it behooves those who are interested in the subject to understand it. However, I can think of a few general reasons to take an interest in semiotics. Firstly, signs are a necessary condition for life, knowledge and communication. If one is interested in the metaphysical conditions for any of these or related phenomena, one might therefore take an interest in the field.
Secondly, semiotics provides the only inherently inter- and transdisciplinary field of study (at least of which I'm aware). If one is interested in the prospect of healing the fragmentation of the disciplines brought on by academic specializations, or even simply finding a theoretically legitimate dialogical intersection point with other disciplines, semiotics' inter- and transdisciplinarity may motivate one toward the semiotic perspective.
Thirdly, the semiotic narrative provides historians of philosophy with a much completer view of the whole than many if not most current histories of philosophy, and enables philosophers to sublate, as it were, the premodern and modern paradigms for a more doctrinally complete perspective.
And so on.
You will find that signs play less relative cosmologico-metaphysical role than "things whose treatises can be held in [your] left hand," insofar as the latter depends on what you are holding in your left hand whereas the former do not. To be sure, the fact that signs transcend genii of being is of less interest than the way signs transcend genii of being-i.e., not via arbitrary description but due to their nature as ontological relations.
Yes, but teloi are chief-good-relative, and it behooves those who are interested in being good to order their activities toward it as their ideal.
As for signs being a necessary condition for our study of life, knowledge, and communication, so are letters, but we would be mistaken to make the study of letters the basis of our biology, epistemology, and dialectics. The question is not whether we can find signs in such fields, but rather what place signification has in the orders of determination and discovery in such fields.
Secondly, philosophy itself is inherently inter- and transdisciplinary or is failing to pursue it's proper telos when it is not. You may argue that this is true but that philosophy should itself be semiotics, which would be a good argument but not one I see given here nor that I'd admit at face.
Thirdly, ditto: it is the responsibility of philosophy per se to provide historians of philosophy with, etc. There is no proper distinction between philosophy and history of philosophy here.
As for signs being a necessary condition for our study of life, knowledge, and communication, so are letters, but we would be mistaken to make the study of letters the basis of our biology, epistemology, and dialectics. The question is not whether we can find signs in such fields, but rather what place signification has in the orders of determination and discovery in such fields.
I said signs are a necessary condition for life, knowledge and communication, not for the study of these phenomena (though obviously they are necessary for that as well). Your second point stands, however, but that's part of what semiotics does in fact aim to answer. For instance, the biosemiotician does not merely ask what kinds of signs are found amongst biological organisms, but also what role they play and how this is significant (see, e.g., Jesper Hoffmeyer's landmark volume, Biosemiotics: An Examination into the Signs of Life and the Life of Signs).
Secondly, philosophy itself is inherently inter- and transdisciplinary or is failing to pursue it's proper telos when it is not. You may argue that this is true but that philosophy should itself be semiotics, which would be a good argument but not one I see given here nor that I'd admit at face.
Would you say philosophy achieves its inherent inter- and transdisciplinarity in virtue of its formal object, being? If so, fair enough. But semiotics specifies that kind of being whose action is essential for there to be any formal object whatsoever.
Thirdly, ditto: it is the responsibility of philosophy per se to provide historians of philosophy with, etc. There is no proper distinction between philosophy and history of philosophy here.
Then whether we conceive of semiotics as a subfield of philosophy or a philosophical perspective, it seems to be doing precisely what philosophy should be doing, and is eo ipso worthy of merit.
It's not clear that signs are necessary conditions for life, etc., and if they are such a position can only be established by metaphysics, which makes semiotics, even if it maximally fulfills its most audacious pretensions for universality, remains a science posterior to metaphysics. In the same way, the naturalist errs in regarding metaphysics as something naturalism overcomes, since naturalist theses are metaphysical theses to be established by doing metaphysics, and so even in the most robust scientific naturalism, natural science remains posterior to metaphysics.
I think philosophy achieves its inherent inter- and transdisciplinarity in virtue of its formal object, Being, yes. Though I may be inclined to add some combination of God, Mind, and Spirit to the determination of that formal object.
Again, it seems that the sign must be a contraction of being rather than vice-versa, and consequenrly semiotics a science posterior to metaphysics rather than vice-versa.
I agree with your last formulation, except that to be worthy of merit it remains to be shown how such a subfield or perspective is preferable to alternatives.
It's not clear that signs are necessary conditions for life, etc., and if they are such a position can only be established by metaphysics, which makes semiotics, even if it maximally fulfills its most audacious pretensions for universality, remains a science posterior to metaphysics. In the same way, the naturalist errs in regarding metaphysics as something naturalism overcomes, since naturalist theses are metaphysical theses to be established by doing metaphysics, and so even in the most robust scientific naturalism, natural science remains posterior to metaphysics.
The necessity of signs for life can be made clear to those for whom it isn't already. All perceptual and intellectual concepts are formal signs, and even in sensation (analytically but not actually separable from perception) there are sign-relations: proper sensibles making known common sensibles. Moreover, that semiotics may be posterior to and part of metaphysics doesn't seem to invalidate it as having a legitimate and important formal object.
I think philosophy achieves its inherent inter- and transdisciplinarity in virtue of its formal object, Being, yes. Though I may be inclined to add some combination of God, Mind, and Spirit to the determination of that formal object.
I see semiotics as adding a special determination to being as well. It doesn't just view all arts, sciences and humanities as inexorably involved in being, but as caught up in a semiosis that governs their intelligibility and their cross-disciplinary possibilities. After all, semiotics may function not only as a subset of metaphysics but may prove also to be-given the appropriate qualifications-coextensive with logic.
I agree with your last formulation, except that to be worthy of merit it remains to be shown how such a subfield or perspective is preferable to alternatives.
No, but the posteriority of semiotics to metaphysics reduces it to a special science and refuses it the place of general science which you are disposed to grant it. Whether there can be a special science of the sign seems to be an entirely uncontentious question. Whether semiotics is more than a special science, e.g. that it is ontology (i.e. that science which transcends genera of being), first philosophy (i.e. that science which is trans- and interdisciplinary), or the history of Spirit (i.e. that science which sublates historical moments of philosophical consciousness)--this is contentious.
As for alternative accounts of the history of Spirit, we have of course Hegelian accounts, Marxist accounts, Nietzschean-Heideggerian accounts, etc.
That semiotics is formally more specific than metaphysics doesn't prevent it from being similarly inter- and transdisciplinary and in such a way that the doctrine of signs is the perfection of the metaphysics of communication and dialogue (and thus indispensable to if not coextensive with the metaphysics of life and knowledge). Nor does its formal specificity keep it from transcending genera of being, inasmuch as a sign's vehicle and its object can be either mind-independent or mind-dependent (or both in different respects).
I don't see why these accounts must all be seen as alternatives with respect to a semiotic account. A semiotic history would stress that history is a species of semiosis both in its unfolding and its organization by historians. As logic, semiotics could investigate the sign-relations used in the other accounts and judge their semiotic adequacy.
But in looking to the actual case, the picture is complicated by the inadequacy of written accounts to lead to a complete objective grasp of the reality of the experience. This inadequacy is not simply a function of the incompleteness of language, but the incompleteness of the nonverbal signs in which language is necessarily rooted. We never attain the thing in its fullness. As Aquinas famously notes, “our cognition is so weak that no philosopher has ever been able to investigate completely the nature of a single fly.” But this inadequacy does not entail the inadequacy of semiosis to bring about the partial coincidence of object and thing, the incomplete but genuine objectification of the thing, in an act of signification.
Hence, I don’t see the necessity of either of the two positions you have described. The quasi-idealist conflation of idea and thing is one error, but so too is the genuinely idealist conflation of idea and object signified. In contrast to both positions (unless I have misunderstood you), the idea is the sign on the basis of which a thing becomes also an object. According to tradition, if the idea is a mental representation or concept, it is a formal sign; and if the idea is a written account, it is a collection of instrumental signs expressing that formal sign. In either case, the thing itself is what is ultimately intended.
Moreover, as you observe in your response to the second position, “the relevant significations are semantically grounded just by virtue of their thus ultimately referring to being rather than to signification ad infinitum,” meaning that an object signified need not become another sign signifying yet another object (though in fact there is nothing stopping such from occurring, which process semioticians call “unlimited semiosis”). And if the thing signified becomes significant in some other way, it will be caught up in a numerically distinct sign-relation.
Finally, I would not wish to say that “a thing…signifying…is in essence a sign.” The sign in its proper being is a relation of sign-vehicle to object to meaning. Without this triadic relationship, there is no semiosis, no act or process of signification. What we commonly call a sign is merely the vehicle or body of the sign, but the sign in its essence is the relation of that sign-vehicle to an object signified and to a “proper significate outcome” (Peirce’s description of the interpretant). This is so even if the sign and the object have no mind-independent status (as for example in the case of Santa Claus signifying Christmas, both of which are socially constructed realities having no existence independent of human minds). The task of sign theory or semiotics to explain what the sign is. That has relevance in itself, since the sign is a kind of being and as such amenable to theoretical investigation. But what I think you are getting at is that semiotics does not displace metaphysics. If so, I agree. However, semiotics is in at least one important sense prior to both metaphysics (which studies mind-independent being) and logic (which has to do with a certain kind of mind-dependent being), for semiotics studies what transcends both orders of being-namely, the sign.
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Incidentally, what are your thoughts on the validity of the trivium and quadrivium?
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Hmmm... I'm not sure I have any interesting thoughts about them.
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Secondly, semiotics provides the only inherently inter- and transdisciplinary field of study (at least of which I'm aware). If one is interested in the prospect of healing the fragmentation of the disciplines brought on by academic specializations, or even simply finding a theoretically legitimate dialogical intersection point with other disciplines, semiotics' inter- and transdisciplinarity may motivate one toward the semiotic perspective.
Thirdly, the semiotic narrative provides historians of philosophy with a much completer view of the whole than many if not most current histories of philosophy, and enables philosophers to sublate, as it were, the premodern and modern paradigms for a more doctrinally complete perspective.
And so on.
You will find that signs play less relative cosmologico-metaphysical role than "things whose treatises can be held in [your] left hand," insofar as the latter depends on what you are holding in your left hand whereas the former do not. To be sure, the fact that signs transcend genii of being is of less interest than the way signs transcend genii of being-i.e., not via arbitrary description but due to their nature as ontological relations.
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As for signs being a necessary condition for our study of life, knowledge, and communication, so are letters, but we would be mistaken to make the study of letters the basis of our biology, epistemology, and dialectics. The question is not whether we can find signs in such fields, but rather what place signification has in the orders of determination and discovery in such fields.
Secondly, philosophy itself is inherently inter- and transdisciplinary or is failing to pursue it's proper telos when it is not. You may argue that this is true but that philosophy should itself be semiotics, which would be a good argument but not one I see given here nor that I'd admit at face.
Thirdly, ditto: it is the responsibility of philosophy per se to provide historians of philosophy with, etc. There is no proper distinction between philosophy and history of philosophy here.
Reply
I said signs are a necessary condition for life, knowledge and communication, not for the study of these phenomena (though obviously they are necessary for that as well). Your second point stands, however, but that's part of what semiotics does in fact aim to answer. For instance, the biosemiotician does not merely ask what kinds of signs are found amongst biological organisms, but also what role they play and how this is significant (see, e.g., Jesper Hoffmeyer's landmark volume, Biosemiotics: An Examination into the Signs of Life and the Life of Signs).
Secondly, philosophy itself is inherently inter- and transdisciplinary or is failing to pursue it's proper telos when it is not. You may argue that this is true but that philosophy should itself be semiotics, which would be a good argument but not one I see given here nor that I'd admit at face.
Would you say philosophy achieves its inherent inter- and transdisciplinarity in virtue of its formal object, being? If so, fair enough. But semiotics specifies that kind of being whose action is essential for there to be any formal object whatsoever.
Thirdly, ditto: it is the responsibility of philosophy per se to provide historians of philosophy with, etc. There is no proper distinction between philosophy and history of philosophy here.
Then whether we conceive of semiotics as a subfield of philosophy or a philosophical perspective, it seems to be doing precisely what philosophy should be doing, and is eo ipso worthy of merit.
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I think philosophy achieves its inherent inter- and transdisciplinarity in virtue of its formal object, Being, yes. Though I may be inclined to add some combination of God, Mind, and Spirit to the determination of that formal object.
Again, it seems that the sign must be a contraction of being rather than vice-versa, and consequenrly semiotics a science posterior to metaphysics rather than vice-versa.
I agree with your last formulation, except that to be worthy of merit it remains to be shown how such a subfield or perspective is preferable to alternatives.
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The necessity of signs for life can be made clear to those for whom it isn't already. All perceptual and intellectual concepts are formal signs, and even in sensation (analytically but not actually separable from perception) there are sign-relations: proper sensibles making known common sensibles. Moreover, that semiotics may be posterior to and part of metaphysics doesn't seem to invalidate it as having a legitimate and important formal object.
I think philosophy achieves its inherent inter- and transdisciplinarity in virtue of its formal object, Being, yes. Though I may be inclined to add some combination of God, Mind, and Spirit to the determination of that formal object.
I see semiotics as adding a special determination to being as well. It doesn't just view all arts, sciences and humanities as inexorably involved in being, but as caught up in a semiosis that governs their intelligibility and their cross-disciplinary possibilities. After all, semiotics may function not only as a subset of metaphysics but may prove also to be-given the appropriate qualifications-coextensive with logic.
I agree with your last formulation, except that to be worthy of merit it remains to be shown how such a subfield or perspective is preferable to alternatives.
What alternatives do you have in mind?
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As for alternative accounts of the history of Spirit, we have of course Hegelian accounts, Marxist accounts, Nietzschean-Heideggerian accounts, etc.
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I don't see why these accounts must all be seen as alternatives with respect to a semiotic account. A semiotic history would stress that history is a species of semiosis both in its unfolding and its organization by historians. As logic, semiotics could investigate the sign-relations used in the other accounts and judge their semiotic adequacy.
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