Deconstruction is a project to which any and very text is thus (indeed!) a-priori liable. But, what needs to be noticed-and what seems constantly to escape the notice of deconstructionist epigones-is that the ultimate source of the passions in the environmental interaction (both cultural and physical) of human animals with material surroundings ( Read more... )

Paul Cobley, The Routledge Companion to Semiotics (ed. Cobley, 2010), pp. 203-4:

While Peirce is acknowledged as the greatest American philosopher, John Deely (b. 1942), in his wake, is arguably the most important living American philosopher and is the leading philosopher in semiotics. An authority on the work of Peirce and a major figure in both ( Read more... )

Below is the first video of a five-part YouTube version of John Deely’s “A Sign is a What?” The other four parts are currently available here on the University of Tartu’s website. Here is the .pdf version, reprinted from The American Journal of Semiotics 20.1-4 (2004), 1-66.

Click to view

If we ask what it is that semiotic studies investigate, the answer is, in a word, action. The action of signs.
-John Deely, Basics of Semiotics (1990), chapter 3: “Semiosis: The Subject Matter of Semiotic Inquiry ( Read more... )