Journal Name: Semiotica Issue: Ahead of print.

One of the least explored areas of C.S. Peirce's wide range of work is his contributions to psychology and the philosophy of mind. This dissertation examines the corpus of this work, especially as it relates to the subjects of mind, habit, instinct, sentiment, emotion, perception, consciousness, cognition, and community. The argument is that Peirce's contributions to these areas of investigation were both highly original and heavily influenced by the main intellectual currents of his time. An effort has been made to (...) present Peirce's philosophy without apology, within the conceptual framework and idiom of its time, and without appeal to a comprehensive view that Peirce never articulated. Nevertheless, as several noted interpreters have argued, much of this work can be viewed through the lens of Peirce's innovative theory of signs and the notion of the semiotic triad as its central unifying feature, despite the fact that the general theory was itself under continuous refinement and remained incomplete at the time of his death. Another hermeneutical device employed is William James' better known and more accessible work which, when juxtaposed with Peirce's ideas, serves to bring them into sharper relief. While general and historical in the presentation of material, this study seeks, at the same time, to engage the criticism of contemporary Peirce scholars in an attempt to account for several of the conundrums inherent in Peirce's work. Among the problems with implications for his philosophy of mind and theory of inquiry are the limitations of his theory of continuity, his negative view of the self, his somewhat ambiguous position on the relation of psychology to logic, and the metaethical puzzle arising from application of his theory of probable inference to truly fateful decisions. These problems provide an interesting perspective and lend balance to the truly insightful contributions Peirce made to the discovery of the mind. (shrink)

Peirce is far too strange for the uses to which he is put in art history. This is a plea to art historians for a moratorium on Peirce citations.

The distinction between a type and its tokens is a useful metaphysical distinction. In §1 it is explained what it is, and what it is not. Its importance and wide applicability in linguistics, philosophy, science and everyday life are briefly surveyed in §2. Whether types are universals is discussed in §3. §4 discusses some other suggestions for what types are, both generally and specifically. Is a type the sets of its tokens? What exactly is a word, a symphony, a species? (...) §5 asks what a token is. §6 considers the relation between types and their tokens. Do the type and all its tokens share the same properties? Must all the tokens be alike in some or all respects? §7 explains some problems for the view that types exist, and some problems for the view that they don't. §8 elucidates a distinction often confused with the type-token distinction, that between a type (or token) and an occurrence of it. It also discusses some problems that occurrences might be thought to give rise to, and one way to resolve them. (shrink)

Attempts to explain Peirce’s various classifications of signs have been a preoccupation of many Peirce scholars. Opinions are mixed about the sense, coherence, and fruitfulness of Peirce’s various versions, particularly the latter ones. I argue here that it is not a fruitful enterprise, even if sense could be made of them. Although Peirce makes his motivations for the classification of the sciences fairly explicit, it’s hard to find Peirce’s reasons for sign classification. More importantly, I try to make the case (...) that such classifications are premised on a reductionist framework of semiosis that is contrary to the irreducible triadic character of signs that Peirce otherwise espouses. The reductionism is the result of Peirce’s use of certain models for his sign classifications, in particular, Mendeleev’s periodic table. I suggest that the remedy for the reductionism is to re-emphasize the processual and functional view of semiosis, rather than to focus on particular classes of signs. Corresponding to the three triadic conditions of semiosis, I argue that signs function to inform, represent or refer, and interpret, and that understanding these three function and how they interrelate may prove to be a more fruitful approach to sign analysis than sign classification. (shrink)

The genuine Peircean concept of the sign is more adequately imaged by a tripod than the customary triangle. The tripod allows for three-way interaction between the three sign components, and it gives rise to Peirce’s nine sign classes and the ten signs that are engendered from them.

У статті розглядаються семіотичні категорії Ч. С. Пірса: Firstness, Secondness, Thirdness. Їх розробка привела Пірса до критики модерної теорії дуального знаку і побудови логіки зв’язків у структурі знаку, заснованої на тріаді знака, об’єкта та інтерпретанти. Модерний дуалізм знаку, в якому пов’язувалися два компоненти, означник і означене, замінюється у Пірса тріадною моделлю, завдяки введенню ним у структуру знаку інтерпретанти. Пірс спирався на методологічні наслідки чотирьох нездатностей, а саме – жодної інтроспекції, ніякої інтуїції у значенні неінференційного пізнання, жодної думки без знаків, і (...) жодної концепції абсолютно непізнаваного – для критики картезіанства. Це дало можливість Пірсу переосмислити класичну атомістичну концепцію мови і довести, що знак не існує ізольовано у вигляді окремої ідеї чи символу, але завжди вплетений у сітку інших знаків. Таким чином, підхід Пірса демонструє голістський підхід до мови та дійсності як системи знаків. Для Пірса концепція семіозису була центральним поняттям його семіотичної теорії. На думку Пірса, жоден предмет не функціонує як знак, доки не буде сприйнятий як такий. Кожен знак здатний генерувати інтерпретанту, і цей процес практично нескінченний. Ідея семіозису виражає саму суть відносин між знаком і зовнішнім світом: об'єкт репрезентації існує, але він недоступний, немов «захований» у низці семіотичного опосередкування. Однак пізнання цього об’єкта можливе лише шляхом вивчення породжених ним знаків. Щоб знати, що означає даний знак, розуму необхідний певний досвід об'єкта цього знака, досвід за межами цього знака або знакової системи, але пов'язаний з ним. (shrink)

The present essay aims at integrating different concepts of meaning developed in semiotics, biology, and cognitive science, in a way that permits the formulation of issues involving evolution and development. The concept of sign in semiotics, just like the notion of representation in cognitive science, have either been used too broadly, or outright rejected. My earlier work on the notions of iconicity and pictoriality has forced me to spell out the taken-forgranted meaning of the sign concept, both in the Saussurean (...) and the Peircean tradition. My work with the evolution and development of semiotic resources such as language, gesture, and pictures has proved the need of having recourse to a more specified concept of sign. To define the sign, I take as point of departure the notion of semiotic function (by Piaget), and the notion of appresentation (by Husserl). In the first part of this essay, I compare cognitive science and semiotics, in particular as far as the parallel concepts of representation and sign are concerned. The second part is concerned with what is probably the most important attempt to integrate cognitive science and semiotics that has been presented so far, The Symbolic Species, by Terrence Deacon. I criticize Deacon’s use of notions such as iconicity, indexicality, and symbolicity. I choose to separate the sign concept from the notions of iconicity, indexicality, and symbolicity, which only in combination with the sign give rise to icons, indices, and symbols, but which, beyond that, have other, more elemental, uses in the world of perception. In the third part, I discuss some ideas about meaning in biosemiotics, which I show not to involve signs in the sense characterised earlier in the essay. Instead, they use meaning in the general sense of selection and organisation, which is a more elementary sense of meaning. Although I admit that there is a possible interpretation of Peirce, which could be taken to correspond to Uexküll’s idea of functional circle, and to meaning as function described by Emmeche and Hoffmeyer, I claim thatthis is a different sense of meaning than the one embodied in the sign concept. Finally, I suggest that more thresholds of meaning than proposed, for instanceby Kull, are necessary to accommodate the differences between meaning (in the broad sense) and sign (as specified in the Piaget–Husserl tradition). (shrink)

In this paper I explore Peirce's account of association and his view that it is the only force which exists within the intellect. I look to the British Associationists, especially Hume, for the background. From there, Peirce's theory of attention becomes important for explaining the formation of associations. Finally, I argue that resemblance and contiguity are reduced to association by utility motivated by the individual's interests. Placing association in a general theory of the individual's interests is important for understanding the (...) habits and critical self-control that are essential for the ultimate aim of the growth of concrete reasonableness. (shrink)

This article examines the contention that the central concepts of C. S. Peirce’s semeiotic are inherently communicational. It is argued that the Peircean approach avoids the pitfalls of objectivism and constructivism, rendering the sign-user neither a passive recipient nor an omnipotent creator of meaning. Consequently, semeiotic may serve as a useful general framework for studies of learning processes.