Moderator introduction: Who is this guy? Why does he care about semiotics?

[essius]

As the creator and maintainer of this community, I feel it behooves me to introduce myself and explain my entrance into the semiotic perspective

Comments

[tcpip]

Thanks for this introduction. My own experience is far more tangential.

My initial exposure with in my first year at (Murdoch) University where readings for the foundation course, "Structure, Thought and Reality" included significant selections from de Saussure's "Course in General Linguistics", and Barthes' "Mythologies".

I found the area of inquiry fascinating, but my own interests at the time were more towards economics, political history and sociology. In my honours year for undergratuate studies and whilst doing postgraduate research I became interested in semiotics again in a wider manner, but mostly in pragmatics, via Habermas' theory of communicative action.

[essius]

What is your impression of Saussure? What appeals to you about Habermas' theory?

[tcpip]

WRT to Saussure, I remember being impressed at the time by the careful and clear distinction between sign, signifier and signification and the distinction between langue and parole.

WRT to Habermas, I have a long experience and interest in the Frankfurt School. I appreciate Habermas' steadfast commitment to including other points of view which he has debated with (functionalism, hermeneutics, falsification, systems theory) and incorporating this with linguistic pragmaticism. I am not so impressed with his recent trends towards Christian theology against the technological transformation of humanity.

[essius]

Do you buy Saussure's general account? To me, it seems much too narrow, as it focuses mainly on one aspect (the arbitrariness) of only one realm of signs (the conventional). Also, in semiology the signifier (signifiant) is always material or sensible vehicle of signification, and the signified (signifié) is always a concept. Shouldn't a more general account of signs open up the possibility for mental signifiers as well as physical, mind-independent signifieds?

What would you say are the main points of Habermas' debate with hermeneutics? How do you understand "linguistic pragmaticism"? I notice that you didn't use "pragmatism," a term which Peirce first proposed but later rejected after Dewey and James distorted its meaning, but instead his later coinage he thought ugly enough "to be safe from kidnappers."

Also, if you ever want to check out a semiotician who has a bone to pick with various monotheisms, you might look into Robert Corrington's work. He's an active member of the Unitarian Universalist association.

[essius]

Of course. Generally speaking, semiotics is what happens when semiosis becomes self-aware-a kind of "metasemiosis," to use Petrilli and Ponzio's phrase. What has your entrance into the semiotic perspective been like?

[amalia_slava]

I see you are a 'friendly neighborhood moderator' as well.
Pleased to make your acquaintance.

I look forward to seeing where you go with this. I don't know much about semiotics except what I learned from Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.
Which isn't much.

Best of luck!

[essius]

Pleased to make yours, as well.

Strange. I've read Pirsig's ZatAoMM, but I don't recall him mentioning semiotics. Do you know on what page he discusses it?

[royinpink]

So...what's so great about Poinsot? Can you convince me?

[essius]

John Poinsot (1589-1644), a part-Burgundian, part-Portuguese Iberian philosopher, is the first thinker we encounter who not only proposes a general theory of signs, but unequivocally affirms such a theory. Before Locke's brief proposal of semiotics in 1690, we get a full-blown systematic treatise on signs from Poinsot in 1632. Poinsot's semiotic anticipates Peirce's in several ways. First, Poinsot's account, like Peirce's, is triadic: Poinsot's "fundament of the sign" corresponds to Peirce's representamen; his "object" or "significate" corresponds to Peirce's "object"; and his understanding of the position of a "cognitive power" in the triadic sign-relation partially coincides with Peirce's "interpretant." And Poinsot is very clear that without the triadic relationship, there is no sign. The fundament of a sign signifies only "virtually." The sign, properly speaking, is not the fundament but the relation itself.

Second, Poinsot's threefold division of signs prefigures Peirce's. See, e.g., Tractatus de Signis, Book One, Question 2,

[royinpink]

Sometimes it is one of similitude or of an image [cf. icons] or whatever other proportion.

Would some other proportion fall into a different iconic category, like Peirce's diagrams? That makes sense to me...

Anyway, I still think Peirce wins. For one, I'm not that interested in animal communication, and Peirce's semiotic seems still to be the more developed, though still unfinished. Every bit of it is built on 1st/2nd/3rd-ness, as well as, I gather, philosophy-i-don't-understand. Peirce was an able mathematician and scientist as well as logician/semiotician and pragmatist. Plus he is full of snark. And he named his house Arisbe! And he loved "The Sphinx," which is an awesome poem. Lol, but seriously, his semiotic owns all.

[digitig]

Well, hello folks.

I'm an engineer by profession, working in aviation safety -- a field that has it's own smiotic systems, from jargon through graphical notations to undocumented dress codes -- but as a hobby I'm doing a degree in humanities with English Language, and as a free choice module I'm doing "Philosophy and the Everyday Situation". I have a particular interest in the philosophy of mind (and its relationship to the philosophy of science), and part of that for me is the question of what it actually is to assign meaning; "what is the meaning of 'meaning'", if you like. That seems to me to be a semiotic question!