Peirce – semiotics –an introduction


joão queiroz



Semiotics

> Peirce is often considered the founder of modern semiotics

> ‘formal theory of sign’ (NEM 4:20) > ‘cenoscopic semiotics’ (MS 499) > ‘general’ (CP 1.444) > ‘normative’ (CP 2.111) > ‘speculative’ (MS 693) > ‘pure theory of signs’ (MSL 107)

Semiotics

> ‘the doctrine of the essential and fundamental nature of all varieties of possible semioses’

> that is, of any conceived form of semiosis, and of its possible variations

> semiotics describes and analyses the structure of semiotic processes without concern over any basis of material support that serves to bring about such processes, or under what conditions they can be observed

Semiotics

> inside cells (citosemiosis) > among plants (fitosemiosis) > in the physical world (physiosemiosis) > in animal communication (zoosemiosis) > in activities considered as typically human

> production of notations > meta-representations

Semiotics

> In other words, Peirce’s concept of semiotics involves a theory of the sign in the most general sense.

> It is from this kind of investigation that the ‘quasi-necessary’ nature of this science results, which is, such as mathematics, conceived by Peirce as a formal science (CP 2.227).

Semiotics

> > in contrast to mathematics, which ‘constructs in the imagination’ the objects of its experiments (CP 1.240, 4.233ff) in order to extract from them ‘relations of necessity’ (CP 4.229), semiotics does not investigate the forms of its own construction (CP 1.241).

> It finds the objects of its investigation in the signs’ concrete, natural environment – and in the ‘normal human experience’, or the ‘ordinary experience’ (Potter 1967: 8; CP 1.241).

Semiotics

> speculative grammar

> ... examining the ‘sign physiology of all kinds’ (CP 2.83) that is, the concrete nature of signs as they emerge and develop, and the conditions that determine the sign’s further development, its nature, and its interpretation.

> critical logic

> speculative rhetoric

Semiotics

> speculative grammar

It is the branch that investigates:

> the conditions to which any and every kind of sign must be submitted > the sign itself ... its true nature

Semiotics

> speculative grammar

For Houser (1997: 9), ‘the logician who concentrates on speculative grammar investigates representation relations (signs), seeks to work out the necessary and sufficient conditions for representing, and classifies the different possible kinds of representation’.

Semiotics

> Peirce developed, between 1867 and 1908-11, a model of sign as process, action, relation, and designed elaborated divisions of signs in order to describe these processes

> 3, 10, 66 classes of signs

> Peirce’s pragmatic model of meaning as the ‘action of signs’ (semiosis)

> philosophy > psychology > theoretical biology > computational semiotics > cognitive sciences

> list of categories

First and foremost, Peirce’s semiotics is grounded on a list of categories – Firstness, Secondness, Thirdness – which corresponds to an exhaustive system of hierarchically organized classes of relations

This system makes up the formal foundation of Peirce’s philosophy and of his model of semiotic action.

In brief, the categories can be defined as:

(1) Firstness: what is such as it is, without reference to anything else. (2) Secondness: what is such as it is, in relation with something else, but without relation with any third entity. (3) Thirdness: what is such as it is, insofar as it is capable of bringing a second entity into relation with a first one in the same way that it brings itself into relation with the first and the second entities.

> categories

Firstness is the category of vagueness and novelty — it is ‘the mode of being which consists in its subject’s being positively such as it is regardless of anything else. That can only be a possibility’ (CP 1.25).

Secondness is the category of reaction, opposition, and differentiation — ‘generally speaking genuine secondness consists in one thing acting upon another, — brute action’ […] ‘I consider the idea of any dyadic relation not involving any third as an idea of secondness’ (CP 8.330).

Thirdness is the category of mediation, habit, generality, and conceptualization (CP 1.340).

> Any description of semiosis (action of sign) involves a relation constituted by three irreducibly connected terms:

> My definition of a sign is: A Sign is a Cognizable that, on the one hand, is so determined (i.e., specialized, bestimmt) by something other than itself, called its Object, while, on the other hand, it so determines some actual or potential Mind, the determination whereof I term the Interpretant created by the Sign, that that Interpreting Mind is therein determined immediately by the Object (CP 8.177).

> three irreducibly connected terms:

> The triadic relation between sign, object, and interpretant is irreducible: it cannot be decomposed into any simpler relation.

> This is why the sign-object relationship cannot be enough to understand sign-mediated process.

> semiosis (action of sign):

> Peirce spoke of the sign as a ‘conveyer’, as a ‘medium’ (MS 793), as ‘embodying meaning’.

> Meaning, in the full sense, involves the sign’s interpretant, that is, its interpretation by way of its collaboration with some agent engaged in the process of interpretation.

> semiosis (action of sign):

> A sign is also pragmatically defined as a medium for the communication to the interpretant of a form embodied in the object, so as to constrain, in general, the interpreter’s behavior –

> […] a Sign may be defined as a Medium for the communication of a Form. [...]. As a medium, the Sign is essentially in a triadic relation, to its Object which determines it, and to its Interpretant which it determines. [...]. That which is communicated from the Object through the Sign to the Interpretant is a Form; that is to say, it is nothing like an existent, but is a power, is the fact that something would happen under certain conditions (Peirce MS 793:1-3).

> semiosis (action of sign): medium for the communication

> The object of sign transmission a habit (a regularity, or a ‘pattern of constraints’) embodied as a constraining factor of interpretative behavior –

> a logically ‘would be’ fact of response.

The form is something that is embodied in the object as a ‘regularity’, a ‘habit’, a ‘rule of action’, or a ‘disposition’.

Form is defined as having the ‘being of predicate’ (EP 2.544) and it is also pragmatically formulated as a ‘conditional proposition’ stating that certain things would happen under specific circumstances (EP 2.388).

> semiosis (action of sign): medium for the communication

> Form

For Peirce, it is nothing like a ‘thing’, but something that is embodied in the object as a habit, > ‘rule of action’ > ‘disposition’ > ‘real potential’ > ‘permanence of some relation’

> semiosis = meaning

A Peircean meaning of the sign is not a thing or an entity. It is an emergent process resulting from the relation between S–O–I within local contexts.

semiosis exhibits a rich variety of morphological

patterns

‘Sign in general [is] a class which includes pictures, symptoms, words, sentences, books, libraries, signals, orders of command, microscopes,

legislative representatives, musical concertos, performances of these’. 


C.S.Peirce

‘As in any branch of research, the possible

establishment of an inventory of rational subtypes will constitute a major progress’.

Frederik Stjernfelt

O I

S

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O I

S

fundamental classes of signs > 1867

firstness: icon secundness: index thirdness: symbol

sign

interpretantobjectquality

energy ‘signs proper significate effect’

reaction

S

O I

co-incidence

reaction

S

O I

exemplos >>> notações >>>

exemplos >>> notações >>>

references: http://www.commens.org

http://www.commens.org

references: http://www.commens.org

http://www.commens.org

joão queiroz [www.semiotics.pro.br/iconicity] Institute of Arts & Design (UFJF)