Social media (SM) influence young adults’ communication practices. Artificial Intelligence (AI) is increasingly used for making recommendations on SM. Yet, its effects on different generations of SM users are unknown. SM can use AI recommendations to sort texts and prioritize them, shaping users’ online and offline experiences. Current literature primarily addresses technological or human-user perspectives, overlooking cognitive perspectives. This research aims to propose methods for mapping users’ interactions with AI recommendations (AiRS) and analyzes how embodied interactions mediated by a digital (...) agent can lead to changes in social and cultural practices. For this, this work proposes a comparative analysis of central practices evoked by AI recommendations-mediated communication on SM among users in Italy, Estonia, and the Netherlands in the age category 18–26 years old. The data used in the comparative analysis was collected via semi-structured interviews and elaborated based on cognitive psychology and semiotics. This research highlights the contextual significance of AI recommendations as a mediator in creating new communication practices. Findings confirm that young adults often choose practices that would enhance their digital representations according to AiRS’ dominant patterns and categories. AiRS impacts individual interpretations and practices and can further affect social and cultural levels. (shrink)

Дослідження риторики часто обмежуються історією питання та аналізом риторичних прийомів з класичного риторичного канону. Проте у сучасному світі цього недостатньо. Ця стаття присвячена опрацюванню питань про візуальну та цифрову риторики: двом взаємопов'язаним областям, які відіграють ключову роль у сучасному інформаційному світі, оскільки за допомогою риторики апробуються, опановуються і конструюються різноманітні моделі реальності. Тому що риторика за своєю природою виступає механізмом конструювання та інтерпретації моделей реальності, виконуючи ключову роль у формуванні громадської свідомості. В рамках даного абстракту ми розглянемо основні аспекти дослідження (...) цих дисциплін, а також їх вплив на формування і сприйняття повідомлень у сучасному суспільстві. У зв'язку зі стрімким розвитком технологій і постійними змінами в медійному середовищі, філософський аналіз візуальної та цифрової риторики стає необхідним інструментом розуміння сутності нових викликів. Візуальна риторика може створювати специфічні кадри сприйняття, керуючи увагою глядачів і впливаючи на їх інтерпретацію подій і явищ. Цифрова риторика вивчає вплив цифрових технологій на способи комунікації, використання мови та ефективність переконання в цифровому середовищі. Філософський аналіз цих областей стає особливо важливим у світлі швидкого розвитку технологій і динамічних змін у медіа-середовищі, а через це і в людській свідомості. Підхід з використанням філософії дозволяє більш глибоко зрозуміти характер і відмінності візуальної та цифрової риторик, їх коріння та етичні аспекти. Філософський підхід дозволяє задавати ґрунтовні плідні питання про те, як візуальні та цифрові засоби впливають на наші переконання, цінності та культурні норми. Філософія маніфестує потенційні ризики, пов'язані з використанням візуальних і цифрових засобів комунікації, бо цифрова риторика стикається з низкою викликів, як от надмірна кількість інформації, ефемерність повідомлень, усвідомлення брехливості-справжності, технічні обмеження тощо. В статті обґрунтовується важливість філософського аналізу в контексті сучасного інформаційного ландшафту, що допомагає нам більш свідомо та ефективно взаємодіяти з цими потужними засобами спілкування та вираження поглядів. Стаття надає фреймворк для критичного мислення, що дозволяє суспільству адаптуватися до постійних змін і розвиватися в умовах інформаційного насичення. (shrink)

Western language philosophy studies meaning from diverse aspects, with a core concern for how meaning is formulated and interpreted. The artificial-language and natural-language schools are two camps in this philosophical undertaking, the former insisting on scientific logic and positivism in meaning verification while the latter emphasizing subjective intention and context in meaning interpretation. Semiotics provides another semantic perspective that tips toward the theory of the natural-language school. This article compares the semantic thought of analytical language philosophers with that of a (...) Chinese semiotician – Yiheng Zhao, who defines meaning as the interpretative potential between any two signs, and, being the product of signifying activities, meaning should be stipulated as dynamic process instead of a static essence. Thus, the interpretation of meaning is totally free of the shackles of logical positivism and radical interpretation required by the artificial-language school. On the other hand, differing from the natural-language school, meaning in Zhao’s semiotic theory can be either expressive or communicative, which means meaning that has originated from an expresser does not necessarily need an interpreter like the utterer-audience binary in Grice’s theory. Compared with Anglo-American analytical language philosophers, Zhao shows more affinities in semantic thought with the continental philosophers – Husserl, Heidegger, Gadamer, Habermas, and Ricoeur. (shrink)

Social semiotics is now widely regarded as one of the leading research areas. This study is the first attempt to present a holistic overview of social semiotics based on the data in the Web of Science core collection database from 2001 to 2020. The study investigates, among other issues, social semiotics’ publishing tendency, the most productive authors, countries, institutions, and hotspots. The results exhibit a steady rise in its publications and citations. The current analysis verifies the growing quantitative and qualitative (...) research contributions and influences of this field. Furthermore, what the journals focus on are the innovative and contemporary themes, manifested predominantly in sign, multimodality, gender, experimental semiotics, advertising, culture, and social media, which involve a wide range of methodologies to make the research more acceptable and constructive. These results are expected to offer refreshing insights that inspire scholars in formulating scientific agendas and advising their research strategies, thereby facilitating substantial contributions to the domain. (shrink)

In this essay, I survey the different uses of the concept of the symbol at play in the philosophy of religion. Considering that historically theories of the symbol have frequently had significant religious presuppositions and implications, I suggest that one might expect that the symbol would play a significant role in current research. This is not the case, however, since the very specific metaphysical, linguistic and theological premises that have traditionally informed much theorisation of the symbol tend to be unpopular (...) today. The main exception is Peircean symbolics which has recently been re-appropriated by a variety of philosophical fields, including philosophy of religion. To open up further contexts for contemporary deployments of the symbol, I look to contemporary public and legal debates concerning the right to wear religious symbols as an area of research unjustly neglected by philosophers of religion: much of the inchoate conceptual work being done in the legal cases themselves would naturally feed into academic philosophical discussion of the symbol. (shrink)

We critically address current theories of figurative language, focusing on the role of literal or compositional meaning in the interpretation of non-literal expressions, including idioms and metaphors. Specifically, we formulate and discuss the processing hypothesis that compositional meaning may either facilitate or impede the recovery or construction of the intended figurative meaning depending on multiple factors, and in particular, on the expression’s decomposability and on the “strength” of semantic relations between the compositional and figurative meanings. As a case study, we (...) consider research on processing and acquisition of figurative expressions in highly verbal individuals with autism spectrum disorder in comparison to neuro-typical individuals, and examine the factors that may account for the observed comprehension deficits in the ASD group. Based on this evidence, we discuss some of the strategies employed by language users in processing non-compositional or non-literal expressions, and we highlight implications for research on natural language comprehension and processing systems in the domain of figurative meaning. (shrink)

This study reviews research about the recognition of one’s own face and discusses scientific techniques to investigate differences in brain activation when looking at familiar faces compared to unfamiliar ones. Our analysis highlights how people do not possess a perception of their own face that corresponds precisely to reality, and how the awareness of one’s face can also be modulated by means of the enfacement illusion. This illusion allows one to maintain a sense of self at the expense of a (...) precise discrimination of self-face. The internal dynamics of different brain processes, associated with the construction of bodily identity and the sense of self and capable of integrating signals from different sensory channels, particularly visual and tactile, create a mirror-mask effect. According to this effect, the self-face reflected by a mirror becomes a mask for the self, which has the features of the subject’s face, but nonetheless does not correspond perfectly to its characteristics. This poses interesting questions about the nature and construction of one’s self, as self-face reflections allow the mind to mediate between analogue and virtual reality, between past and future events, between memories and plans of action and, most importantly, between beliefs about our identities. (shrink)

Most contemporary approaches to meaning presume the limitation of semiotics (Didi-Huberman, Gumbrecht, Belting). The question of what kind of “semiotics” is required has not been asked. However, without some general science of meaning it is impossible to reform theory without committing past errors or ignoring progress. In the interest of reconnecting contemporary interests in “presence” to long-evolving needs, I review the ossification and decline of one theory of semiotics that serves as the tacit model rejected today. I return to problems (...) of the nature of the sign – whether it is “digital” or “analog” and conceived as “communication” or merely “meaning.” I then reconstitute a workable visual cognitive semiotics based on phenomenological premises. (shrink)

The main theme of the article, which by genre falls into the area of semiotically influenced philosophy, is a reflection on the relationship between the human and the non-human, using two partial but parallel discourses. The first discourse is the perspective of general semiotics, which is defined in the article on the basis of two distinct forms of rationality that, in different guises, still intervene in debates about the nature of the humanities and social sciences today. The first form of (...) this rationality is semiological, which can be classified under the encyclopaedic rubric of structuralism, and which has its main source of inspiration in general linguistics and its continuation in philosophical anti-humanism. The second perspective has its origins in Peirce’s logicist theory of the sign and his pragmatist metaphysics, and opens up thinking about the sign, the human, and the non-human to a non-language-centric view of the world. Despite their demonstrable theoretical and methodological incompatibility, the present text treats them as incompatible but largely complementary perspectives. It is in their mutual exposition that one can see the moments in which the view of modern human as a semiological and semiotic animal takes shape. The text brings this fundamental and founding theoretical schism into focus by examining two images from post/modern art: Ted Chiang’s “The Great Silence” and Jorge Luis Borges’ “Averroës’s Search.”. (shrink)

The main theme of the article, which by genre falls into the area of semiotically influenced philosophy, is a reflection on the relationship between the human and the non-human, using two partial but parallel discourses. The first discourse is the perspective of general semiotics, which is defined in the article on the basis of two distinct forms of rationality that, in different guises, still intervene in debates about the nature of the humanities and social sciences today. The first form of (...) this rationality is semiological, which can be classified under the encyclopaedic rubric of structuralism, and which has its main source of inspiration in general linguistics and its continuation in philosophical anti-humanism. The second perspective has its origins in Peirce’s logicist theory of the sign and his pragmatist metaphysics, and opens up thinking about the sign, the human, and the non-human to a non-language-centric view of the world. Despite their demonstrable theoretical and methodological incompatibility, the present text treats them as incompatible but largely complementary perspectives. It is in their mutual exposition that one can see the moments in which the view of modern human as a semiological and semiotic animal takes shape. The text brings this fundamental and founding theoretical schism into focus by examining two images from post/modern art: Ted Chiang’s “The Great Silence” and Jorge Luis Borges’ “Averroës’s Search.”. (shrink)

In The Name of the Rose, Umberto Eco essentially presents an educative vision of some basic semiotic principles that infuse the textual form of a popular fictional genre—the detective story. In effect, it characterizes the postmodernization of the traditional “whodunnit” moving the genre from the realm of “the real” or the plausible into the realm of “the metaphysical” or the unthinkable. The Name of the Rose is a practical application in semiotics. Or, how the aesthetics of textual production as generated (...) through the lexical signs and codes manifest the discursive text of a novel work. The semiotic twists and turns of the detective story facilitate this educational function and the purposeful transformation of the reader into an individual capable of appreciating and grasping the conflicting ideological viewpoints expressed through its dialogical structure. The detective genre enables the Umberto Eco to produce an educational narrative via the intricacies of plot in the detective story while teaching main aspects of semiotic theory. (shrink)

This contribution to design methodology reflects upon the barriers to effectiveness imposed by our tendency to gravitate towards the over-formal in human affairs. We see a correspondingly cleaned-up description of the process of design, a failure to consider its jagged elements and to take proper account of the non-formal in knowledge (e.g. tacit knowledge) and communication. Discipline in methodology is accordingly wrongly equated with formality. The failure of design to be effective is more likely for innovative design rather than routine (...) design.It is suggested by way of explanation that design methodology especially in the field of information technology is infused with the ghost of positivism, manifest in an unconditional belief in the value of rationality and an implied naive realist conviction about the fixed, singular and transparent nature of the environment for which design is undertaken.We need to be able to work with uncertainty rather than try for its entire elimination. A breadth of approach in carrying out the activity of design is threatened by lack of attention to the variety of forms which knowledge and corresponding forms of discourse can take.We undertake the disciplined reduction from the messy real work to metaphors tidy enough to work with, or models as they are usually misnamed.The notion of “language of struggle” is invoked as a suitable metaphor for the non-formal discourse particularly relevant to innovative design. A complementary exploration is offered of socio-linguistic space which is the common context for design.In view of the concern with social space necessary to effective design, it may be enlightening to consider the designer as applied anthropologist. (shrink)

Journal Name: Semiotica Issue: Ahead of print.

In this article, we propose that gestures play an important role in the connection between sensorimotor experience and language. Gestures may be the link between bodily experience and verbal expression that advocates of embodied cognition have postulated. In a developmental sequence of communicative action, gestures, which are initially similar to action sequences, substantially shorten and represent actions in metonymic form. In another process, action sequences are based on kinesthetic schemata that themselves find their metaphoric expression in language. Again, gestures enact (...) kinesthetic schemata that are correlated with verbal expressions. Examples from a large database are used to illustrate the various processes by means of which language arises when students conduct school science investigations. (shrink)

Playing fields are “spaces where the communitas suspends its everyday life and structures” and “The internal logic of sporting games is connected to values from the social context”, Playing fields: Power, practice, and passion in sport, 127–144. Reno: University of Nevada Press). But what about the space in between? What kind of semiotics organisation can be detected in the membrane between player and liminal space where spectators are not allowed yet specific characters needed to carry out an event? We can (...) therefore identify a liminality that can be connected either to the controlled or the wild playing field and depending on which of the two is the case can be analysed according to the degree of regulated system of signs which they produce. This implies different pathways and rituals: as matches are played, a variety of bodily activities may be taking place concurrently. Furthermore, it is inevitable that these activities attract the attention of the audience or alternately lead a player to interact with a non-player. In this article, I will first try to identify certain semiotics features, especially connected to Eco’s Peircian concept of Encyclopedia, that characterize the status of liminal space around the playing field. Then I will focus on liminality in soccer, investigating what kinds of interaction exist outside the playing area. (shrink)

Umberto Eco argues that a mirror image is not a sign. At best it is a double, a thing that ceases to be once the reflected object is removed. Harry Mulisch narratively suggests that mirror images function metaphorically as gateways between human suffering and the divine. And interestingly, science employs mirrors and mirror images both to turn our gaze upwards and to show us reflections of our place in the cosmos. Tying together Eco's notion of the double, Mulisch's insistence that (...) mirror images reflect humanity's construction of the divine, and the Giant Magellan Telescope Project's cosmic images, it is my contention that modern, telescopic mirror images are much more than snapshots of the cosmos. They are constructions of human and divine meaning that—signifying—pose the question, what is reflected: the cosmos or humanity? (shrink)

My aim in this paper is to show the relevance of an ‘effective semiotics’; that is, a field study based upon Peirce's semiotics. The general context of this investigation is educational semiotics rather than semiotics of teaching: I am concerned with a general approach of educational processes, not with skills and curricula. My paper is grounded in a field study that I carried out in a school, L'Ecole de la Neuville, implementing Institutional Pedagogy in France. I first investigate the relevance (...) of Peirce's semiotics in such a context. I then propose several definitions for the word ‘institution’, referring to the core concepts of this particular pedagogy, before describing the concept of ‘institution-sign’, which is considered a useful tool for making effective connections between several aspects of semiotics. I finally assert that an institution constitutes a tool that allows teachers to favour semiosis in educational contexts. (shrink)

Societies have always used their heritage to remain resilient and to express their cultural identities. Today, all the still-available experiences accrued by human societies over time and across space are, in principle, essential in coping with the twenty-first century grand challenges of humanity. Artificial intelligence and machine learning algorithms can assist the next generation of historians, heritage stakeholders, and decision-makers in decoding unstructured knowledge and wisdom embedded in selected cultural artefacts and social rituals, encoding data in machine-readable systems, aggregating information (...) according to the user’s needs in real time, and simulating the consequences of either erasing, neglecting, putting in latency, or preserving and sharing specific human experiences. What our global society needs is a multilingual and transcultural approach to decode-encode the treasure of human experience and transmit it to the next generation of world citizens. This approach can be the pathway to work on a new science of heritage, its ethics, and empathy. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to interpret systematically M. M. Bakhtin’s views on genre. Although Aristotle was the first philosopher—and one of the first thinkers in general who focused on the issues of artistic and rhetorical genres, philosophy as such did not treat these issues for a considerably long time. One of the first philosophers who approached the genre issue within the larger context of the philosophy of language was Mikhail M. Bakhtin, a Russian philosopher and a literary scholar. (...) As early as the 1920s he founded philosophical thinking on the so-called small speech genres, which later served as the basis for a remarkable theory of primary and secondary genres. Bakhtin is a world renowned theoretician on the novel, but his genre theory is nevertheless very topical, too, since it relates to issues focused on by philosophers much later. (shrink)

Fuller's program of social epistemology engages a rhetoric of inquiry that can be usefully compared and contrasted with other discursive theories of knowledge, such as that of Richard Rorty. Resisting the model of “conversation,” Fuller strikes an activist posture and lays the groundwork for normative “knowledge policy,” in which persuasion and credibility play key roles. The image of investigation is one that overtly rejects the “storehouse” conception of knowledge and invokes the metaphors of distributive economics. Productive questions arise as to (...) how notions of creation and distribution might guide this rhetoric. (shrink)

Two approaches to the study of diagnostic thinking are compared, one mainly propositional, namely that of Patel and Groen (1986), the other mainly semantic, that of Lemieux and Bordage (1986). Patel and Groen analyzed the linear dimension of cardiologists' discourses while solving a case of acute bacterial endocarditis, that is, the before and after propositional rules. A secondary analysis of two of their pothophysiological protocols is done using structural semantic techniques from Lemieux and Bordage where the vertical dimension of the (...) discourses is analyzed, that is, the levels of meaning or semantic axes. Contrary to Patel and Groen's position, making an accurate diagnosis is not explained in terms of pure forward reasoning through networks of causal rules, but by means of networks of semantic qualities abstracted from the symptoms and signs. The semantic qualities operate in the clinician's mind in terms of binary oppositions (e.g., sudden-gradual, unilateral-bilateral) whereby each pair of properties constitutes a semantic axis (e.g., sudden-gradual). The successful diagnosticians are those who use the most diversified and pertinent set of semantic axes and, therefore, have a deeper representation of the problem. (shrink)

Peirce’s sign model is introduced as incompatible with structural semiology in the majority of semiotics textbooks. In this paper, I would like to argue against this general polarization of the semiotic discipline. I focus on compatibilities between Lucien Tesnière’s syntactic theory (verbal valency) and Peirce’s logic of relatives. My main argument is that structural linguistics is not necessarily dyadic, and that Peirce’s sign doctrine is perfectly structural. To define the structural approach in Peirce, I analyze the notions of form (structure) (...) and substance in Hjelmslev and Peirce. The aim of my argument is to contribute to attempts to introduce Peirce’s theory to the field of linguistics in the hope that such an integration will be beneficiary for general linguistics. To extend and support my argument, I provide some examples from biology where Peirce’s theory has been applied. I demonstrate an analogy between the biological structures of proteins and the structure of a sentence with Peirce’s own writings. I consequently introduce Peirce as the first structural semiologist and as the first biolinguist. (shrink)

New discoveries in the life sciences have affirmed that the virtual script as well as its context-dependent reading and interpretation determine the final living creature. An extended understanding of Darwinian Theory is crucial for understanding life as semiosis in terms of Peirce and Eco’s semiotic models. The semiosis of living systems is potentially unlimited. Genes are not static and unchangeable scripts, but can always be reinterpreted by new interpretants that illuminate them from different points of view, depending on which properties (...) are relevant in a particular context. The encyclopedia is a term, in Umberto Eco’s semiotics, which represents the multidimensional space of semiosis that is governed by a self-sustaining production of interpretants. The paper will present the idea of understanding the Extended Synthesis in terms of a biosemiotic enyclopedia. (shrink)

Some forms of argumentation are best performed through words. However, there are also some forms of argumentation that may be best presented visually. Thus, this paper examines the virtues of visual argumentation. What makes visual argumentation distinct from verbal argumentation? What aspects of visual argumentation may be considered especially beneficial?

In “How Molecules Became Signs”, Prof. Deacon outlines a plausible mechanism whereby biochemical systems could be understood to fulfill the conditions of being “alive” in the context of the two broad families of requirements, namely the energetics of metabolism and the informatics of coding. In so doing, he addresses head-on how to account for the origin and the action of coding in physical systems, and thereby the necessary and sufficient conditions for life. I review some of the relevant issues around (...) the interlocking potential necessary and sufficient conditions whereby these two phenomena are included within systems of interpretation in organisms. (shrink)

This account of civil liability for animals in a range of ancient, mediaeval and modern legal systems (based on a series of studies conducted early in my career: (s.1)) uses semiotic analysis to supplement the insights of conventional legal history, thus balancing diachronic and synchronic approaches. It reinforces the conventional historical sensitivity to anachronism in two respects: (1) (logical) inference of underlying values from concrete rules (rather than attending to literary features of the text) manifests cognitive anachronism, an issue manifest (...) in biblical scholarship’s discussion of the stoning of the homicidal ox in Exod. 21:28 (s.2); (2) the application of modern notions of literal (rather than narrative) meaning not only manifests a semiotic anachronism but here also obscures the institutional origins of many of the rules in a system heavily reliant on self-help and informal settlement. (shrink)

This article draws on analysis of a variety of problems emerging from practical applications of Group Decision Support Systems (GDSS) to propose a fundamental evolution of decision support models from the traditional single decision-spine model to the decision-hedgehog. It positions decision making through the construction of narratives making the rhizome that constitutes the body of the hedgehog with the fundamental aim of enriching understanding of the contexts of decision making. Localized processes constructing and exploring prescriptions for action within a plethora (...) of decision spines are rooted in this rhizome. It identifies a synthesis of theories that influence decision making within organizations and proposes a comprehensive system of Group Decision Authoring and Communication Support (GDACS). In doing so it proposes that the iterative development of collective narrative within an organizing system engaged with complex decision making leads to active engagement with implementation - a process we call Collaborative Authoring of Outcomes. Throughout, the article outlines the implications for the organization of GDACS and proposes a comprehensive architecture that enables this approach. (shrink)

In recent years, the advancements made in the field of neuroscience have been echoed in criminal law, reigniting the discussion on culpability from the viewpoint of if it actually exists, considering the echoes of determinism on the re-found non-existence of free will. This discussion has triggered, once again, the issue of the boundaries and inter-relations between law and science, namely on whether normative or legal concepts and categories should acknowledge scientific breakthroughs. Bringing forth the theme of the limits of the (...) law, this discussion is able to provide insight, with reference to a specific problem, as to whether there are plausible legal answers in the context of the ascription of liability if the subject of law ceases to be a responsible—and thus free—person. Taking into consideration evolution both of science and criminal law dogmatic, we aim to argue that in the particular case of culpability, the desired autonomy of law has its limitations, and that without such limitations the ascription of liability would not have a correct answer. For this argument we will firstly approach the meaning of culpability as a milestone of subjective responsibility in criminal law, so that we can then analyse some arguments made regarding the impact of neuroscience on the maintenance of a concept of culpability with the meaning given above, so that lastly we can proceed to the rebuttal of the overarching impact of science on the law and advocate the autonomy of culpability within the necessary limits imposed by the needs of a plausible legal answer. (shrink)

Advances in the neurosciences have many implications for a collective understanding of what it means to be human, in particular, notions of the self, the concept of volition or agency, questions of individual responsibility, and the phenomenology of consciousness. As the ability to peer directly into the brain is scientifically honed, and conscious states can be correlated with patterns of neural processing, an easy—but premature—leap is to postulate a one-way, brain-based determinism. That leap is problematic, however, and emerging findings in (...) neuroscience can even be seen as compatible with some of the basic tenets of existentialism. Given the compelling authority of modern “science,” it is especially important to question how the findings of neuroscience are framed, and how the articulation of research results challenge or change individuals’ perceptions of themselves. Context plays an essential role in the emergence of human identity and in the sculpting of the human brain; for example, even a lack of stimuli (“nothing”) can lead to substantial consequences for brain, behavior, and experience. Conversely, advances in understanding the brain might contribute to more precise definitions of what it means to be human, including definitions of appropriate social and moral behavior. Put another way, the issue is not simply the ethics involved in framing neurotechnology, but also the incorporation of neuroscientific findings into a richer understanding of human ethical (and existential) functioning. (shrink)

The Mahāyāna Buddhist term dhāraṇī has been understood to be problematic since the mid-nineteenth century, when it was often translated as “magical phrase” or “magical formula” and was considered to be emblematic of tantric Buddhism. The situation improved in contributions by Bernhard, Lamotte and Braarvig, and the latter two suggested the translation be “memory,” but this remained difficult in many environments. This paper argues that dhāraṇī is a function term denoting “codes/coding,” so that the category dhāraṇī is polysemic and context-sensitive. (...) After reviewing Western scholarship, the article discusses dhāraṇī semantic values and issues of synonymy, the early applications of mantras, the sonic/graphic background of coding in India extended into Buddhist applications, and the soteriological ideology of dhāraṇīs along with some of its many varieties. (shrink)

Signs in the early stages of research (e.g. pathways, thoughts/ideas, and structured feedback) form a web that we call the semiotic web of the research proposal. This web is based on the unlimited semiosis of signs, the semiotic square of education, and the semiotic web of law. We start weaving this web by formulating a raw thought and a number of research ideas. Βy travelling various pathways, we develop patterns of thinking which in turn lead to several potential research proposals, (...) one of which will become the chosen research proposal. We use the concept “semiotics of education” as our theoretical base for a heuristic tool, the semiotic web of the research proposal, to explore an aspect of educational research methodologies. Recognizing that overcoming habitual dualisms is a distinguishing feature of the semiotics of education, we open up the discussion about the extent to which the research proposal should be an integral part of the main supervision process and explore some of the possibilities surrounding this goal. The study highlights the evidence arising from a lifelong distance-learning programme in research proposal development and provides illustrative examples of the way in which educational principles have been translated into practice in a Greek university. This article is based on our presentation “The semiotic web of the research proposal” delivered at the conference Semiosis in Communication – Knowing and Learning, Bucharest, June 16–18, 2016. (shrink)

Our approach to the epistemology of post-truth is based on the idea that to fully comprehend any post-truth, going back to its origins (i.e., to the moment in which some faulty interpretations start to spread) can be not only relevant but illuminating.One of the most renowned cases of post-truth concerns vaccines and their alleged relationship with autism. It all started in 1998, when The Lancet published a study suggesting a link between the measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine and some symptoms (...) of autism. The case is relevant both because it is at the origins of contemporary anti-vaccinism and because it took twelve years to fully disprove what in 1998 was presented as a scientific truth: this means that the boundary between truth and falsehood has been blurred for a long period of time.For this purpose, we have applied the semiotic methodology to 20 articles from The Independent, 20 from The Telegraph, 20 from The Guardian, and 20 from The Daily Mail, published between 1998 and 2010. Unexpectedly, many elements that can be seen as ‘post-truth seeds’, such as conspiracy theories and the joint presentation of multiple truths, have been found even in the most scientifically accurate newspapers. (shrink)

This paper suggests that it is largely a want of notional distinctions which fosters the “explanatory gap” that has beset the study of consciousness since T. Nagel’s revival of the topic. Modifying Ned Block’s controversial claim that we should countenance a “phenomenal-consciousness” which exists in its own right, we argue that there is a way to recuperate the intuitions he appeals to without engaging in an onerous reification of the facet in question. By renewing with the full type/token/tone trichotomy developed (...) by C. S. Peirce, we think the distinctness Block calls attention to can be seen as stemming not from any separate module lurking within the mind, but rather from our ability to prescind qualities from occurrences. (shrink)

This article builds on C. S. Peirce’s suggestive blueprint for an inclusive outlook that grants reality to his three categories. Moving away from the usual focus on (contentious) cosmological forces, I use a modal principle to partition various ontological layers: regular sign-action (like coded language) subsumes actual sign-action (like here-and-now events) which in turn subsumes possible sign-action (like qualities related to whatever would be similar to them). Once we realize that the triadic sign’s components are each answerable to this asymmetric (...) subsumption, we obtain the means to track at which level of complexity semiosis finds itself, in a given case. Since the bulk of such a “trinitarian” metaphysics would be devoted to countenancing uninterpreted phenomena, I argue that current misgivings about sign-based ontologies are largely misplaced. (shrink)

Biosemiosis is a process of choice-making between simultaneously alternative options. It is well-known that, when sufficiently young children encounter a new word, they tend to interpret it as pointing to a meaning that does not have a word yet in their lexicon rather than to a meaning that already has a word attached. In previous research, the strategy was shown to be optimal from an information theoretic standpoint. In that framework, interpretation is hypothesized to be driven by the minimization of (...) a cost function: the option of least communication cost is chosen. However, the information theoretic model employed in that research neither explains the weakening of that vocabulary learning bias in older children or polylinguals nor reproduces Zipf’s meaning-frequency law, namely the non-linear relationship between the number of meanings of a word and its frequency. Here we consider a generalization of the model that is channeled to reproduce that law. The analysis of the new model reveals regions of the phase space where the bias disappears consistently with the weakening or loss of the bias in older children or polylinguals. The model is abstract enough to support future research on other levels of life that are relevant to biosemiotics. In the deep learning era, the model is a transparent low-dimensional tool for future experimental research and illustrates the predictive power of a theoretical framework originally designed to shed light on the origins of Zipf’s rank-frequency law. (shrink)

Many edusemiotic writers have begun to closely align edusemitoics to biosemiotics; the basic logic being that, if the life process can be defined through the criterion of semiotic engagement, so can the learning process :373–387, 2006). Thus, the ecological concept of umwelt has come to be a central area of investigation for edusemiotics; allowing theorists to address learning and living concurrently, from the perspective of meaning and significance. To address the conceptual and experiential foundations of the edusemiotic perspective, this paper (...) will focus its attention on the basic semiosic processes that sustain the learner’s primary modelling system or umwelt—the world of meaning and sensory engagement that the organism is immersed in. This focus enables us to identify and explore four basic principles that an ecologically concerned edusemiotic perspective can be said to rest upon; the Iconicity Hypothesis, the Principle of Suprasubjective Relation, the Natural Learning Flow Principle, and the Continuity Principle. The identification and elaboration of these basic philosophical orientations will help establish the importance and relevance of the edusemiotic perspective for educational philosophy and theory in general. This task requires the methodological framework of Sebeok and Danesi’s Modelling Systems Theory, which; provides a biosemiotically grounded approach to understanding the diversity of modelling phenomena across all species, and; contextualizes the specific focus of this study within the broader forms of learning and knowing encompassed by a semiotic theory of learning. Hopefully such attention to the foundational doctrina of this new perspective will encourage more educational research to take what Semetsky has called the edusemiotic turn. (shrink)

El trabajo de Wittgenstein es el documento de una lucha filosófica de toda la vida por comprensiones en el límite de lo pensable y su expresión adecuada, basada en la idea de limitar el alcance de lo racionalmente expresable desde adentro para ganar intuiciones más allá. Como consecuencia de su forma de pensar de doble cara, a menudo se puede sentir una tensión entre pensamientos o formas de argumentación aparentemente opuestas que a veces conducen a malas interpretaciones. En este artículo (...) se mostrará que la idea de «correr contra los límites del lenguaje» (y tratar de echar un vistazo al otro lado) fue absolutamente central para la filosofía temprana y posterior de Wittgenstein, sin embargo, todavía dejando la puerta entreabierta para explicaciones metafísicas. A partir de la concepción de un Wittgenstein de doble cara, al mismo tiempo positivista y metafísico, se puede explicar mas convincentemente la función de su introducción del concepto de «juegos de lenguaje». Se vuelve posible también arrojar nueva luz sobre su concepción de la semántica y el así llamado «argumento del lenguaje privado». (shrink)

This essay adopts a semiotic perspective focused on practices of communication, movement, and translation to examine the global impact of A. J. Greimas and his oeuvre. The linguist and semiotician’s lecture trips abroad, the number and provenance of international students in his Paris seminar, and the chronology and linguistic geography of translations of his work help describe, gauge, and explain the dissemination and development of his ideas throughout the world. His project has engendered distinctive appropriations and at times productive institutional (...) structures in a number of cultural and linguistic contexts, notably Romance, Anglo-American, Germanic, Russian, Lithuanian, and Chinese. The broader historical relations between France and other lands, and the extent of each society’s use of the French language have conditioned, fostered, or impeded responses to his proposals. The conclusion’s discussion of the relative importance of personal contacts, socio-historical context, and the sociolinguistic and pedagogical status of French for his international reception aims to contribute to general methodological debates in the history of science and ideas and in transnational history. (shrink)