The Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Peircean Semiotics (Bloomsbury Companions) 9781350076112, 9781350076129, 9781350076136, 1350076112

Citation preview

The Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Peircean Semiotics

i

Bloomsbury Companions The Bloomsbury Companion to Cognitive Linguistics, edited by Jeannette Littlemore and John R. Taylor The Bloomsbury Companion to Language Industry Studies, edited by Erik Angelone, Maureen Ehrensberger-Dow and Gary Massey The Bloomsbury Companion to Lexicography, edited by Howard Jackson The Bloomsbury Companion to M.A.K. Halliday, edited by Jonathan J. Webster The Bloomsbury Companion to Phonetics, edited by Mark J. Jones and Rachael-Anne Knight The Bloomsbury Companion to Stylistics, edited by Violeta Sotirova The Bloomsbury Companion to Syntax, edited by Silvia Luraghi and Claudia Parodi The Continuum Companion to Discourse Analysis, edited by Ken Hyland and Brian Platridge Available in Paperback as The Bloomsbury Companion to Discourse Studies The Continuum Companion to Historical Linguistics, edited by Silvia Luraghi and Vit Bubenik Available in Paperback as The Bloomsbury Companion to Historical Linguistics The Continuum Companion to Phonology, edited by Nancy C. Kula, Bert Botma and Kuniya Nasukawa Available in Paperback as The Bloomsbury Companion to Phonology The Continuum Companion to the Philosophy of Language, edited by Manuel García-Carpintero and Max Köbel Available in Paperback as The Bloomsbury Companion to the Philosophy of Language Continuum Companion to Second Language Acquisition, edited by Ernesto Macaro Available in Paperback as The Bloomsbury Companion to Second Language Acquisition

ii

The Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Peircean Semiotics Edited by Tony Jappy

iii

BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 50 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3DP, UK 1385 Broadway, New York, NY 10018, USA BLOOMSBURY, BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published in Great Britain 2020 Copyright © Tony Jappy and Contributors, 2020 Tony Jappy has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Editor of this work. For legal purposes the Acknowledgements on p. xvii constitute an extension of this copyright page. Cover image: © Shutterstock / Perekotypole All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. Bloomsbury Publishing Plc does not have any control over, or responsibility for, any third-party websites referred to or in this book. All internet addresses given in this book were correct at the time of going to press. The author and publisher regret any inconvenience caused if addresses have changed or sites have ceased to exist, but can accept no responsibility for any such changes. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. ISBN:

HB: 978-1-3500-7611-2 ePDF: 978-1-3500-7612-9 eBook: 978-1-3500-7613-6

Series: Bloomsbury Companions Typeset by RefineCatch Limited, Bungay, Suffolk To find out more about our authors and books visit www.bloomsbury.com and sign up for our newsletters.

iv

Contents List of Figures List of Tables List of Contributors Acknowledgements Primary Sources and Abbreviations

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14

Introduction Tony Jappy Peirce in Contemporary Semiotics Paul Cobley Peircean Semiotics in China Today Xingzhi Zhao Peirce’s Conception of Semiosis Tony Jappy A Complex System of Sign Classes for Complex Sign Systems Priscila Borges Peirce’s Aesthetic Confession and Its Analytical Consequences Robert E. Innis Abduction: The Logic of Creativity Sara Barrena and Jaime Nubiola Abduction as an Explanatory Strategy in Narrative James Jakób Liszka and Genie Babb Logic and Dialogic in Peirce’s Conception of Argumentation Augusto Ponzio A Peircean Semiotics of Technological Artefacts Bent Sørensen, Torkild Thellefsen and Martin Thellefsen The Semiotic Nonagon: Peirce’s Categories as Design Thinking Claudio F. Guerri Pragmatism and Semiotics in Teaching Drawing Today Seymour Simmons From Gestures to Habits: a Link between Semiotics and Pragmatism Rossella Fabbrichesi Peirce and Welby: For an Ethics of the Man–Sign Relation Susan Petrilli Peircean Semiotic for Language and Linguistics Jamin Pelkey

vii x xi xvii xviii 1 31 73 101 133 155 185 205 235 253 277 303 339 359 391

v

vi

Contents

15 Co-localization as the Syntax of Multimodal Propositions: An Amazing Peircean Idea and Some Implications for the Semiotics of Truth Frederik Stjernfelt Notes Glossary Index

419 459 487 499

Figures 0.1.

A simplified graphic of part of Peirce’s 1903 classification of the sciences 0.2. Peirce’s table of compatibilities between subdivisions 1.1. Ten-sign illustration from R339 1.2. The ten signs from CP 2.264 3.1. Ancient Greek origins of the term ‘semiosis’ 3.2. John Deely’s levels of semiosis (after Deely 1990: 32) 3.3. Flagging on the Seven Sisters. Courtesy of the photographer, Didier Pomarès 3.4. Hexadic semiosis in 1908 3.5. The determination sequence of ‘Ground arms!’ 3.6. A potential misconception of the sign-object-interpretant triad as semiosis 9.1. A self-driving car making sense of its surroundings. Reproduced with permission from Catherina Vaeversted Lauritzen. 9.2. Designers working with a wall-sized screen making deductions concerning the interior of a self-driving car. Reproduced with permission from Catherina Vaeversted Lauritzen. 9.3. Technological artefacts are also meaningful messages and can have rhetorical effects. Reproduced with permission from Catherina Vaeversted Lauritzen. 10.1. Diagram of the definition of sign by Peirce (CP 2.228, 1897). 10.2. A radial section of the Morphic Paradigm 10.3. The semi cone of the Morphic Paradigm 10.4 a, b and c. A cylinder with a hollow centre that has invariant Tactrix 10.5. A radial section of invariant Attitude of the four quadrants (I, II, III and IV) of a Simple Configuration of two different-sized squares 10.6. Abbey of Saint Blaise by Pierre Michel d’Ixnard, Germany, 1783 10.7. Villa Rotonda, by Palladio, Vicenza, Italy, 1566 10.8. Dominican Motherhouse by Louis Kahn, Pennsylvania, USA, 1965–69

15 24 34 34 103 104 106 120 122 128 260

264

271 279 289 290 291

291 292 292 293 vii

viii

10.9. 10.10. 10.11. 10.12. 10.13. 11.1.

List of Figures

Curutchet House by Le Corbusier, La Plata, Argentina, 1948 Tracings on the plan of the Abbey of Saint Blaise Tracings on the plan of the Villa Rotunda Tracings on the plan of the Dominican Motherhouse Tracings on the plan of the Curutchet House Duck-Rabbit illusion: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/ Category:Rabbit–duck_illusion (Accessed 3 May 2019) 11.2. ‘Schröder Stairs’. http://www.newopticalillusions.com/wp-content/ uploads/2017/06/Optical-Illusion-With-Staircases-1.png (Accessed 3 May 2019) 11.3. ‘Contour versus gesture’. From The Natural Way To Draw by Kimon Nicolaides. © 1941, and renewed 1969 by Anne Nicolaides. Reprinted by permission of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. 11.4. ‘Figurative gesture’. From The Natural Way To Draw by Kimon Nicolaides. © 1941, and renewed 1969 by Anne Nicolaides. Reprinted by permission of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. 11.5a. and 11.5b. S. ‘Line exercises’. Paul Klee, Pedagogical Sketchbook (1972). 11.6. ‘Letter, October 14, 1870, p. 5, with map of St. Peters in Rome’. Houghton Library, Harvard University. Am 1631, MS L341. 11.7a. ‘Epistêmy’ and 11.7b. ‘Caricatures of Noses’. Houghton Library, Harvard University. Am 1631, MS 1538. 11.8. ‘Labyrinth with Minotaur’. Houghton Library, Harvard University. Am 1632, MS 1537. 11.9. ‘Kandinskys’. Houghton Library, Harvard University. Am 1632 MS 725. 11.10. ‘Serpentine Line/Stone Wall’. Houghton Library, Harvard University. Am 1632, MS 315, fol.5 recto. 12.1. Sraffa’s Neapolitan gesture quoted by Wittgenstein c. 1940. Courtesy Filippo Di Lorenzo 12.2. Drawing from Carlo Sini’s Archive. Statue of the Great Goddess of Nature and Life in Cnossos, 2018. Courtesy Carlo Sini (www.archiviocarlosini.it) 12.3. The birth of smile between mother and child, 1993. Courtesy Family Leo

293 294 294 295 295 308

309

315

315 320 322 324 326 328 330 347

348 349

List of Figures

The nominalist dialectics of synchrony and diachrony in Saussure and Bloomfield 14.2. Diagrammatic reasoning from the analytic sign to processual semiosis in Peirce 14.3. Diagrammatic reasoning toward Peircean semiotic for language and linguistics 15.1. A photographic print of Andreas Achenbach 15.2. Dauthage’s portrait of Achenbach, Wikimedia Commons 15.3. Two Beta Graphs 15.4. No Admittance sign 15.5. King Den ivory tablet, Abydos 15.6. Decipherment of the King Den tablet 15.7. Introductory Donald Duck image sequence (© Disney) 15.8. Diagram of a geometrical triangle 15.9. A Cartesian plane 15.10. Segment of a topographical map of southern Germany. Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported licence. Attribution: Thomas Römer 15.11. The cover of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone 15.12. The Peirces’ tombstone, Milford PA (author’s collection)

ix

14.1.

400 403 405 424 425 427 429 432 433 436 438 438

439 444 445

Tables 0.1. 0.2. 0.3. 1.1. 3.1. 10.1. 10.2. 10.3. 10.4.

x

Peirce’s 1867 trichotomy of representamens (CP 1.558) The three-division typology of 1903 integrating the hypoicons The hexad of 12 October 1904 The three trichotomies of 1903 The hexad of 23 December 1908 set out across the page Diagram of the Semiotic Nonagon with its nine aspects of the sign Synthetic semiotic nonagon of the sign Architecture analysed in its three and nine aspects Synthetic semiotic nonagon of the sign Graphic Languages analysed in its three and nine aspects Synthetic semiotic nonagon of the sign Treatment of Colour analysed in its three and nine aspects

13 24 27 37 121 280 286 288 297

List of Contributors Genie Babb ([email protected]) is currently chair and associate professor of English at the State University of New York, Plattsburgh, and her teaching and research specialties include the Victorian period, as well as drama and performance studies. She has published articles on late-Victorian writers like H.G. Wells and Robert Louis Stevenson, as well as Alaskan themes like sitespecific performance art – a piece that grew out of a collaboration with UAA’s Department of Theater and Dance. She is also the vice president of the Victorian Interdisciplinary Association of the Western United States. Sara Barrena ([email protected]) has a PhD in philosophy, and is coordinator of the Grupo de Estudios Peirceanos at the University of Navarra. Her research on Peirce is focused mainly on creativity, education and aesthetics. She has translated numerous Peirce texts into Spanish and is the author of several books about Peirce and pragmatism: La razón creativa. Crecimiento y finalidad el ser humano según C. S. Peirce (2007), co-authored with J. Nubiola Charles S. Peirce (1939– 1914): un pensador para el siglo XXI (2013), Pragmatismo y educación. Charles S. Peirce y John Dewey en las aulas (2015) and La belleza en Charles S. Peirce: origen y alcance de sus ideas estéticas (2015). For many years, she has combined her research and philosophical activity with her work as a fiction writer. Priscila Borges ([email protected]) has a PhD and an MA in Communication Studies and Semiotics at the Catholic University of São Paulo (PUC-SP). She is full professor in the Department of Audiovisual and Advertising, Faculty of Communication at University of Brasilia (UnB), Brazil. She is also researcher and executive director of the International Center for Peirce Studies at PUC-SP, vice-secretary general of the International Association for Semiotic Studies (IASS/AIS), and board member of the Semiotic Society of America (SSA). Her research interests include Peirce’s semiotics, especially the system of sixty-six sign classes, and his philosophy, and its applications to visual language and models, diagrams and semiotics of the media. Paul Cobley ([email protected]) is Professor in Language and Media at Middlesex University. He is the author of a number of books, most recently xi

xii

List of Contributors

Cultural Implications of Biosemiotics (2016) and Narrative 2nd edn (2014). He is co-series editor (with Kalevi Kull) of Semiotics, Communication and Cognition (de Gruyter Mouton), co-editor (with Peter J. Schulz) of the multi-volume Handbooks of Communication Sciences (de Gruyter) and co-edits the journal Social Semiotics. Among his edited volumes are The Routledge Companion to Semiotics (2009), Theories and Models of Communication (2013, with Peter Schulz), Semiotics and Its Masters Vol. 1 (2017, with Kristian Bankov), Realism for the 21st Century: A John Deely Reader (2009) and The Communication Theory Reader (1996). He is the ninth Thomas A. Sebeok Fellow of the Semiotic Society of America, President of the International Association for Semiotic Studies (elected 2014) and is secretary (since 2012) of the International Society for Biosemiotic Studies. Rossella Fabbrichesi ([email protected]) is Full Professor of Hermeneutics at the State University of Milan, Italy. She has been studying Peirce since her PhD in Philosophy, Il concetto di relazione in Peirce, 1992. She has authored Introduzione a Peirce (1993); Peirce and Wittgenstein on Common Sense (2004); Peirce e Wittgenstein: un confronto (2014); Eco, Peirce, and Iconism, ‘The Library of Living Philosophers’ (2017). She recently edited the ‘Rivista di Storia della Filosofia’ (3/2017), an international issue entirely dedicated to Pragmatism. She has served in 2018 as President of the Charles Sanders Peirce Society, is founder and former President of Associazione Pragma, and of Centro Studi Peirce, based in Milan. She is also part of the European Pragmatism Association and of the Scientific Board of the European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy. In recent years she has mainly worked on the connections between pragmatist and continental thought: The Pragmatism of the Late Foucault (2015); Cosa si fa quando si fa filosofia? (2017). Claudio Guerri ([email protected]) is an architect, Consultant Professor and Doctor at the Facultad de Arquitectura, Diseño y Urbanismo of the University of Buenos Aires, UBA, where he teaches Semiotics at Doctorate level. He also directs the Research Programme, the Semiotics of Space-Design Theory. He also teaches at the Universidad Nacional del Litoral, UNL, and the Universidad Nacional de Tres de Febrero, UNTREF. He has lectured and taught graduate seminars in many countries in North and South America and Europe. His area of interest is Morphology, Graphic Languages and the development of methodologies and models of applied semiotics for qualitative research. He is or has been a member of the executive committee of several international scientific societies as IASS-AIS; FELS; ISIS-Symmetry, national societies as SEMA, AAS,

List of Contributors

xiii

and the editorial staff of deSignis, ARTINF and Cuadernos de la Forma. He has written articles on art, architecture, design and semiotics in Spanish, English, Italian and German, and has published Lenguaje Gráfico TDE. Más allá de la Perspectiva (Buenos Aires: EUDEBA, 2012) and Nonágono Semiótico. Un modelo operativo para la investigación cualitativa (Buenos Aires: EUDEBA, 2014 and 2016). Robert E. Innis ([email protected]) is Professor of Philosophy Emeritus at the University of Massachusetts Lowell. He has been Fulbright Professor at the University of Copenhagen and Obel Foundation Professor in the Center for Cultural Psychology at the University of Aalborg. Among his publications are Semiotics: An Introductory Anthology, Consciousness and the Play of Signs, Pragmatism and the Forms of Sense, and Susanne Langer in Focus: The Symbolic Mind, along with many articles and chapters on philosophy, semiotics, aesthetics, and cultural psychology. Tony Jappy ([email protected]) is professeur honoraire at the University of Perpignan Via Domitia, France. He has participated in numerous semiotics and visual semiotics colloquia and congresses. He has published articles on problems relating to linguistics and semiotics and visual semiotics, and has authored and co-authored several books, including an Introduction to Peircean Visual Semiotics (Bloomsbury Academic) in 2013. His current research is devoted primarily to C.S. Peirce’s post-1904 six-correlate system of semiotics, and is the subject of a book published in 2016 in Bloomsbury Academic’s Advances in Semiotics series: Peirce’s Twenty-Eight Classes of Signs and the Philosophy of Representation. James Liszka ([email protected]) is Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs, and Professor of Philosophy at the State University of New York, Plattsburgh. He is also Emeritus Professor at the University of Alaska Anchorage. He is the author of The Semiotic of Myth (1990), Moral Competence (1999), and A General Introduction to the Semiotic of Charles S. Peirce (1996), which has been translated into Chinese and Korean. He has published articles on semiotics, pragmatism, ethics, and the work of Charles Peirce. Jaime Nubiola ([email protected]) is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Navarra, Spain. His research is focused on the philosophy of C.S. Peirce, pragmatism and the history of analytic philosophy. He has been Visiting Scholar at the Universities of Harvard, Glasgow and Stanford. He co-authored with Fernando Zalamea Peirce y el mundo hispánico (2006) and with Sara Barrena Charles S. Peirce (1839–1914): Un pensador para el siglo XXI (2013). In 1994, he

xiv

List of Contributors

launched a Grupo de Estudios Peirceanos in Navarra to promote the study of C.S. Peirce and pragmatism, especially in Spain and the Spanish-speaking countries (www.unav.es/gep/). He has been President of the Charles S. Peirce Society (2008) and was the chairperson of the Charles S. Peirce International Centennial Congress (2014). Jamin Pelkey ([email protected]) is Associate Professor in the Department of Languages, Literatures and Cultures, Ryerson University, Toronto. He serves as managing editor of The American Journal of Semiotics, Vice President of the International Association for Cognitive Semiotics and is the 2017 recipient of the Mouton d’Or Award for best article in the journal Semiotica. He has edited or co-edited eight collections in linguistics and semiotics and is the author of three monographs, including Dialectology as Dialectic (De Gruyter, 2011) and The Semiotics of X (Bloomsbury, 2017). Susan Petrilli ([email protected]) is Professor of Philosophy and Theory of Languages, University of Bari Aldo Moro, Italy, and Visiting Research Fellow, University of Adelaide, Australia. She is seventh Sebeok Fellow of the Semiotic Society of America. Her research fields include Philosophy of Language, Semiotics, Translation Theory, and Communication Studies. With Augusto Ponzio she has introduced the seminal concept of ‘semioethics’. They have codirected several book series including ‘Reflections on Signs and Language’ with Peter Lang. Her most recent books include Sign Studies and Semioethics (2014), Victoria Welby and the Sign Sciences (2015), The Global World and Its Manifold Face (2016), Challenges to Living Together (2017), Signs, Language and Listening (2018). She publishes regularly in English and Italian. Augusto Ponzio ([email protected]) is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy and Theory of Languages, University of Bari Aldo Moro, founded the Department of Philosophy of Language in 1970 and the Doctoral Program in Language Theory and Sign Sciences, in 1988 (which he directed until 2012). He directs several book series and journals including Athanor, founded in 1990. He has been International Visiting Professor at universities in Australia, China, Brazil, the United States, Canada, South Africa and across Europe. He has published widely in Italy and abroad with well over a hundred monographs to his name, some translated into English, French, Serbian, Spanish, Portuguese and Chinese. Recent books include: Linguistica generale, scrittura letteraria e traduzione, Guerra (2007); Tra semiotica e letteratura. Introduzione a Michail Bachtin, Bompiani (2015); Lineamenti di semiotica e di filosofia del linguaggio in

List of Contributors

xv

collaboration with Susan Petrilli, Guerra (2016); La coda dell’occhio. Letture del linguaggio letterario senza confini nazionali, Aracne (2016). Seymour Simmons, III ([email protected]) is Professor of Fine Arts Emeritus from Winthrop University, Rock Hill, SC, where he taught art education and studio art, primarily drawing. Prior to moving to South Carolina, he taught at Massachusetts College of Art and did research on the arts in education at Harvard Project Zero. He holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in printmaking from Colorado State University, as well as MEd and EdD degrees from Harvard, where his concentration was Philosophy of Education. His dissertation traced the theory and practice of drawing instruction from ancient times to the present. He is currently writing a book based on his dissertation addressing the teaching of drawing in the digital age. The book is informed by more recent research on the relation of drawing instruction to semiotics, Multiple Intelligence theory, cognitive science, developmental psychology, creativity theory, and holistic education. As an artist, his work concentrates on the figure, portraiture, and landscape primarily in drawing and water-based media. Bent Sørensen ([email protected]) is an independent scholar. He is co-editor (with Torkild Thellefsen) of Umberto Eco in His Own Words (2017, De Gruyter Mouton) and co-editor (with Torkild Thellefsen) of Charles Sanders Peirce in His Own Words (2014, De Gruyter Mouton). He has published, as author and co-author, numerous articles on philosophy (Peirce, Eco), communication research and theory (print advertising, branding), library- and information science (the concept of information), and semiotics (iconicity, metaphor). Furthermore, he is the co-editor (with Torkild Thellefsen) of journal special issues within these areas. Finally, he is a consultant in a municipality department which offers services to the elderly and disabled. He works with innovation and project management, for example, on the development, testing and evaluation of assistive technologies. Frederik Stjernfelt ([email protected]) is professor of semiotics, intellectual history and the philosophy of science, Aalborg University, Copenhagen. He is a critic for Weekendavisen. Books in English include Diagrammatology (2007), Democratic Contradictions of Multiculturalism (2012, with J.M. Eriksen), Natural Propositions (2014). Papers in Semiotica, Synthese, Sign Systems Studies, Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society, etc. He is also PI (with David Budtz) of the Humanomics Center, conducting meta-studies in the state of the

xvi

List of Contributors

humanities, the philosophy of science, etc. A selection of papers can be found at: http://frederikstjernfelt.dk Martin Thellefsen ([email protected]) is an associate professor at the Department of Information Studies, University of Copenhagen. He holds a PhD in knowledge organization, received from the Royal School of Library and Information Science (2010). His research interests include semiotics of knowledge organization, information science and digital culture. He has contributed to research in library and information science (LIS), in particular investigating into the theoretical foundation of information, the concept of information needs and semantic relations in knowledge organization. His research is published in high-level journals such as Journal of Documentation, Knowledge Organization, Library Trends, Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, as well as Semiotica. Torkild Thellefsen ([email protected]) has a PhD from Aalborg University (2003) and the degree of dr. merc from Copenhagen Business School (2009). His research interests include philosophy (Peirce and Eco), library and information science (the concept of information and knowledge organization), communication research and theory (branding), semiotics (iconicity, indexicality and symbolic signs) and theory of science. He is the editor and co-editor of eleven books (in Danish and English), including Charles Sanders Peirce in His Own Words, Umberto Eco in His Own Words (both with Bent Sørensen) and Semiotiske Undersøgelser (Semiotic Investigations). His publications appear in journals such as: Semiotica, Transactions of the C. S. Peirce Society, Journal of the American Society for Information Science, Knowledge Organization, Journal of Documentation, Library Trends and Cybernetics and Human Knowing. Xingzhi Zhao ([email protected]) is an associate professor in the English Department at Sichuan University, China, and also the executive editor-in-chief of Signs & Media, the bilingual semiotics journal in China. He obtained his PhD in semiotics and communication at Institute of Semiotics and Communication Studies (ISMS), Sichuan University. His major research field is Peircean Semiotics, particularly with respect to the relations between theories of communication and the sign. Other academic interests include semiosis in the digital age, the social semiotics of gift-giving as well as cultural studies.

Acknowledgements The contributors to this Companion come from ten different countries. Generally written in mixed Jamesian mode – telling, but mostly showing – their chapters are testimony to the ubiquity of Peirce’s continuing and, indeed, ever-growing relevance. On behalf of Bloomsbury Academic and their future readers I should like to thank them for having accepted the invitation, for having persevered through the year in spite of the difficulties that the academics of today have to face, and for having delivered their chapters in time to meet the deadline. In many cases permissions have been given to reproduce images and material from prior sources, and for this, many thanks to the benefactors from the beneficiaries. I should like to thank, too, the team at Bloomsbury – Andrew Wardell, our commissioning editor for having initially mooted the project and encouraged it all the way through, and Becky Holland for having helped me avoid many editorial mistakes. Finally, heartfelt thanks to F once more, for the food, the patience and the moral support. Perpignan, 14 November 2018

xvii

Primary Sources and Abbreviations Works by Peirce in translation or in collections in other languages (Chinese and Italian, for example) have been left as references in the original chapters. General references to standard primary Peirce sources are indicated in the text by letters in brackets as follows: Peirce, C.S. 1903. A Syllabus of Certain Topics of Logic. Boston: Alfred Mudge & Son. Peirce, C.S. 1923. Chance, Love and Logic, M.R. Cohen (ed.). New York: Harcourt. Peirce, C.S. 1931–1935, 1958. The Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce, 8 Volumes, C. Hartshorne, P. Weiss and A.W. Burks (eds). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. (CP followed by volume and paragraph number) Peirce, C.S. 1940. The Philosophy of Peirce: Selected Writings. J. Buchler (ed.). London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Peirce, C.S. 1955. Philosophical Writings of Peirce, edited by J. Buchler. New York: Dover. Peirce, C.S. [1966] 1996. Charles S. Peirce: Selected Writings (Values in a Universe of Chance), P Wiener (ed.). New York: Dover Publications. Peirce, C.S. 1967. Annotated Catalogue of the Papers of Charles S. Peirce, R.S. Robin (ed.). Amherst, MA: The University of Massachusetts Press. Peirce, C.S. 1975–79. Contributions to The Nation, 3 Vols, K.L. Ketner and J.E. Cook (eds). Lubbock: Texas Tech Press. Peirce, C.S. 1976. The New Elements of Mathematics, Vols 1–4. C. Eisele (ed.). The Hauge: Mouton (NEM followed by volume and page number). Peirce, C.S. and V. Welby-Gregory. 1977. Semiotic and Significs: The Correspondence between C. S. Peirce and Victoria Lady Welby, C.S. Hardwick (ed.). Bloomington: Indiana University Press (SS followed by page number). Peirce, C.S. 1982–. The Writings of Charles S. Peirce, 8 Vols, M. Fisch, E. Moore and C.J. Kloesel, and the Peirce Edition Project (eds). Bloomington: Indiana University Press (W followed by volume and page number). Peirce, C.S. 1991. Peirce on Signs: Writings on Semiotics by Charles Sanders Peirce, J. Hoopes (ed.). Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press. Peirce C.S. 1992. The Essential Peirce: Selected Philosophical Writings, Volume 1: 1867–1893, N. Houser and C.J. Kloesel (eds). Bloomington: Indiana University Press (EP1 followed by page number). Peirce, C.S. 1998. The Essential Peirce, Volume 2: 1893–1913. Peirce Edition Project (eds). Bloomington: Indiana University Press (EP2 followed by page number). Peirce, C.S. (various). Unpublished manuscripts, numbered and paginated by Richard Robin in Peirce (1967). These are referenced by the letter R immediately followed

xviii

Primary Sources and Abbreviations

xix

by the manuscript number, e.g. R478, which is the manuscript containing the first parts of Peirce’s projected syllabus. The interested reader can consult the very valuable Peirce Archive manuscript resource provided by the Humboldt University of Berlin: https://rs.cms.hu-berlin.de/peircearchive/pages/home.php? (accessed November 2018).

xx

Introduction Tony Jappy

It is now almost forty years since the Peirce scholar, Max Fisch, published his two-part assessment of the ‘range of Charles Peirce’s relevance’ (1980, 1982). Fisch was primarily interested in how certain contemporary sciences and research projects were being influenced by Peirce’s thought, and his exhaustive two-part analysis reviewed an impressive number of instances. Houser (2010), although a much shorter study, took up the relation between theory and practice, and, following some of the paths to Peirce’s continuing relevance opened up by Fisch, also showed how Peirce’s contributions to philosophy were applicable to research being conducted in this century. Now, Peirce was already much appreciated in philosophical circles as the founder and principal spokesman for American pragmatism, but, as can be seen from the studies by Fisch and Houser, was now becoming increasingly influential in semiotics. It is to give the reader some idea of the influence on, and relevance to, contemporary semiotic theory and practice of his ground-breaking ideas advanced over a hundred years ago that this Companion has been conceived and composed, not only for the specialist semiotician or philosopher, but for researchers in the humanities interested in signifying processes and also for the interested general reader. It is now well known that Peirce had a pioneering influence in physics, logic and mathematics, for example, but the scope of the present book concerns the humanities, and his growing influence on research into narrative, contemporary philosophy, aesthetics, architecture, and semioethics, to name but these. Unlike the scope of other collections devoted to Peirce, the chapters to follow are not intended to be exegetic and will not discuss in depth selected concepts associated with his semiotics, but will, instead, illustrate this continuing relevance by exemplifying the manner in which many of his most important concepts – abduction, the dicisign, the icon-index-symbol triad, for example – contribute to the authors’ research projects and preoccupations. 1

2

Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Peircean Semiotics

This Introduction is organized in three sections. First comes a brief biography of Peirce the man, then a summary review of his philosophical originality, finishing with a number of Peirce’s self-assessments. The second section outlines the thematic structure of the Companion and introduces the chapters to follow. Finally, there is a presentation of the great semiotic system of 1903, the one in which he developed his ten classes of signs. This is intended not so much for the confirmed Peirce scholar, for whom it offers nothing new and so can be skipped, as for researchers from other fields and general readers who may have little or no acquaintance with the details of Peircean semiotics but are aware, for example, of the universally known icon-index-symbol division, possibly from its absorption into competing theories of the sign. It is included, therefore, as the majority of the concepts developed in the following fifteen chapters originated in this system and, above all, as it constitutes one of the most influential components of Peirce’s enormous semiotics legacy.

Peirce the philosopher1 The most exhaustive – and uncompromising – biographical account of Charles Sanders Peirce, philosopher, polymath and semiotic genius, is to be found in Brent (1998), so what follows is simply a summary of his life and a brief description of him as a philosopher. Peirce was born in 1839 in Cambridge, Massachusetts, into a family of academics, his father, Benjamin Peirce, being a noted astronomer and the foremost mathematician of his age. Although already much interested in logic2 he graduated summa cum laude (MSc) in Chemistry in 1863. Two years earlier he had already joined the United States Coast Survey, a federal agency which funded research into such diverse fields as astronomy, geodesy, cartography and weights and measures. Peirce eventually held several posts with the Survey over a period of thirty years, which allowed him to represent the agency at various scientific gatherings in Europe on five occasions during his time in office and also to nourish his enthusiasm for experimentation – his work on relative gravity involved the use of pendulums and he designed several of these himself. From 1879 to 1884 he held an untenured lectureship in logic at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, during which time he finally divorced his estranged first wife and married a Frenchwoman with whom he had been living for some time. Owing to an allegedly difficult personality, to the scandal attending his remarriage and to the intriguing of a jealous colleague, his lectureship was terminated in

Introduction

3

1884. With a small inheritance from an aunt in 1888 Peirce bought a large but unprofitable property in Milford, Pennsylvania, where he lived until the end of his life, with the exception of a bleak period in New York City in the mid-nineties (see Brent 1998, Chapter 4). After having reviewed her monograph What is Meaning? in 1903 Peirce began to correspond sporadically until 1911 on logic and semiotics with Lady Victoria Welby, a lady-in-waiting to Queen Victoria and a keen linguist, this correspondence and a number of draft letters being one of the most important sources of information concerning the evolution of his thinking on signs. At home he would barely have survived financially without donations from friends such as William James and his brother James Mills Peirce and payments for articles, public lectures and dictionary contributions: he had apparently prepared approximately 15,000 definitions for the Century Dictionary between 1883 and 1891.3 In December 1904 he wrote to Lady Welby that he was hoping to settle his finances by selling his home, Arisbe, and taking up ‘a small consulate’ in Ceylon, but the project fell through, unfortunately for Peirce, no doubt, but fortunately for the future of semiotics (SS: 43–44, 46, 1904). Towards the end of his life he was obliged to take morphine to allay the pain from abdominal cancer, to which he eventually succumbed, in desperate financial straits, on 19 April 1914. Peirce’s career as a philosopher spanned more than forty years during which Peirce specialists posit several developmental periods, for a theory conceived painstakingly over such a period of time necessarily underwent modifications, and his was an evolving theory which he had to adapt to a variety of correspondents, a variety of readers (e.g. not only The Monist but also The Popular Science Monthly), and a variety of audiences in his public lectures, with their widely differing degrees of philosophical and logical sophistication. He was, for a long time, best known as the major protagonist of pragmatism, a philosophical movement which began in Cambridge, MA, in the second half of the nineteenth century. This is often described as a philosophy of knowledge acquisition akin to empiricism but for Peirce, in 1907 at least, it was a logical concept, ‘merely a method of ascertaining the meanings of hard words and of abstract concepts’ (CP 5.464, 1907) and was initially enshrined in the following maxim: ‘Consider what effects, which might conceivably have practical bearings, we conceive the object of our conception to have. Then, our conception of these effects is the whole of our conception of the object’ (CP 5.402, 1878). His career specifically as a logician began towards the end of the 1860s when he published an article in which he reviewed and simplified Kant’s categories (CP 1.545–59, 1867), reducing the original twelve first to five and then to three.

4

Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Peircean Semiotics

He would continue to work on philosophical problems all his life, with pragmatism and logic to the fore, but, unfortunately for posterity and in spite of the encouragement of his friends, he was never able to self-finance or to convince a publisher to commission what might have been a clear, logically organized survey of his complex philosophical innovations. In any case, his development as a philosopher was such that no one book could have done justice to the increasingly complex conception of logic that he developed in a period of over forty years. Many of his manuscripts and some of the articles published in his lifetime were made available in the eight volumes of the Collected Papers over the period 1931 to 1958 but, unfortunately, the various stages of his thought and the chronology of the manuscripts were not always respected. There is now, however, a chronological edition of his writings in the course of publication, which, when complete, will enable scholars to obtain a much clearer appreciation of the development of Peirce’s philosophical enterprise. Unlike Saussure and his system of semiology, Peirce based his semiotics on logical as opposed to linguistic principles, and just why this should be so becomes a little clearer when we examine his epistemological choices, which were founded on three basic philosophical positions: his adherence to a singular form of idealism, his realism and, finally, his empiricism. The reader new to Peirce will be surprised, perhaps, by the way many of his concepts are posited in groups of three. Peirce belonged to a philosophical tradition reaching back to, among others, Pythagoras via Newton, Descartes and Leibnitz; that is, to a tradition which holds that number is the key to our explanation of the world around us. This was why in his outline classification of the sciences the position of the foremost theoretical science of discovery was occupied by mathematics (cf. Figure  0.1). Peirce expressed the principle thus: ‘the most fundamental characteristic of the most universal of the mathematical hypotheses, I mean that of number’ (CP 1.421, c. 1896) – in his case, the number three. He was aware of the potentially embarrassing nature of this particular number – its inevitable association with the Trinity and thence with theology and religion – but declared himself innocent of ‘triadomany’, that is, of attaching ‘a superstitious or fanciful importance to the number three’ (CP 1.568, 1910). Furthermore, under the influence of his father and as a consequence of his training in the laboratory and his researches on gravity, Peirce maintained throughout his life an experimentalist’s conception of science, and as a consequence he considered that the laws of physics, for example, are ‘real’ in the sense that behind the innumerable physical, chemical and biological events that

Introduction

5

we experience there are laws which determine them, and that to affirm the contrary was to limit oneself to the slavish observation of raw data and to trust in a sort of blind positivism. He was thus a thorough-going realist: ‘I am myself a scholastic realist of a somewhat extreme stripe’, he claimed (CP 5.470, 1907). That is, he held that there was a reality that was independent of minds, signs and, contrary to one of the basic axioms of Saussure’s Cours de linguistique générale, language4: reality is such as it is, independently of what anyone thinks it to be and irrespective of any language. From a semiotic point of view, this means that there is something ‘outside’ the sign which the sign does not determine, something which, on the contrary, determines the sign to be what it is, the way it is and how it comes to signify. Finally, Peirce was an empiricist, and while he disagreed with Locke – from whom he adopted the term ‘semeiotics’ (Σεμιοτική) – on the way the mind obtains and processes the information it receives, like Locke he based the distinctions he made concerning what is thinkable upon experience, which he defined as the ‘cognitive resultant of our past lives’ (CP 2.84, 1902). In other words, as we go through life each event that we experience leaves its mark on our cognitive make-up, and contributes to our ability to adapt to each new situation: given his particular conception of the sign, our developing experience of the world is nothing less than a semiotic enrichment of our minds, and our ability to interpret and adapt to the world around us is the determination of our knowledge stored up from experience and of our capacity to infer and form hypotheses – by means of signs. This capacity to infer applied to the need to find food, to find a mate, to ensure a social contract and generally to survive accounts for our successfully learning our native language. Within ten years of his death, his highly original contribution to logic and semiotics was beginning to be recognized: By far the most elaborate and determined attempt to give an account of signs and their meaning is that of the American logician C. S. Peirce, from whom William James took the idea and the term Pragmatism, and whose Algebra of Dyadic Relations was developed by Schroeder. Unfortunately his terminology was so formidable that few have been willing to devote time to its mastery, and the work was never completed. ‘I am now working desperately to get written before I die a book on Logic that shall attract some minds through whom I may do some real good,’ he wrote to Lady Welby in December, 1908, and by the kindness of Sir Charles Welby such portions of the correspondence as serve to throw light on his published articles on Signs are here reproduced. 1923: 279

6

Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Peircean Semiotics

It was with these words, that C.K. Ogden and I.A. Richards introduced Charles Sanders Peirce as the last of their selection of ‘some moderns’, i.e. contemporary contributors to the theory of signs and their meanings. In Appendix D of The Meaning of Meaning Peirce followed Husserl, Frege, Bertrand Russell, Gomperz and Peirce’s editor, James Baldwin. While the summary of Russell’s contribution to the topic ran to less than a page, the editors devoted over ten to Peirce’s late statements on logic and semiotics (1923: 279–90). *** Peirce was an undisputed intellectual genius but was also a very complex human being and, for example, professed to Lady Welby what for many readers must seem very controversial opinions concerning among other things slavery, universal suffrage and labour unions (SS: 78–79, 1908) while also denouncing as a ‘gospel of greed’ (CP 6.294, 1893) the tenets of what he saw as the crass, Darwininspired, self-seeking individualism of the age. Such contrasting extreme views may have been a consequence of the physical and mental health problems he suffered from, for he was also allegedly subject to mood swings, nervous breakdowns and bouts of intense pain throughout his life: . . . the [manic-depressive] disease which seems to have begun in his early 20s, worsened with age . . . Peirce manifested many of the associated symptoms. On the manic side he exhibited driven, paranoid, and impulsive actions; hypersexuality; extraordinary energy; and irrational financial dealings, including compulsive extravagance and disastrous investments. On the depressive side, he exhibited severely melancholic or depressive states characterised by suicidal feelings of flatness of mood, which were accompanied by inertness of mind, inability to feel emotion, and an unbearable sense of futility. Brent 1998: 41

The following brief assessments of the man and his work by Peirce himself should give the reader an idea of just how complex a personality he was and of his almost constitutional preoccupation with logic to which he associated his difficulties in bonding with others,5 and behind the assured tones of which we detect hints of a strangely clinical self-perception. The undertaking which this volume [a projected work to be entitled A Guess at the Riddle] inaugurates is to make a philosophy like that of Aristotle, that is to say, to outline a theory so comprehensive that, for a long time to come, the entire work of human reason, in philosophy of every school and kind,

Introduction

7

in mathematics, in psychology, in physical science, in history, in sociology, and in whatever other department there may be, shall appear as the filling up of its details. EP1: 247, 1887–1888 Every man begins life with a natural confidence in his own powers, or rather with an absence of any suspicion of their proving insufficient. But each step we take towards perfect self-consciousness consists in learning our own weakness or error. Manuscript R339: 291v, 1906, . . . my habits of thinking are so different from the generality of ordinary people. Besides I am left-handed (in the literal sense) which implies a cerebral development and connexions of parts of the brain so different from those of right-handed people that the sinister is almost sure to be misunderstood and live a stranger to his kind, if not a misanthrope. This has, I doubt not, had a good deal to do with my devotion to the science of logic. SS: 96, 1908

Finally, herewith the self-introductory pages Peirce planned late in life for yet another projected but never-to-be-published book on logic, which in retrospect read more like an epitaph than a preface to a treatise on logic: Taking up a new book by a new author, and deliberating whether to read it or no, he to whom both are new naturally desires some trustworthy information about the author . . . I am already seventy-one years old and shall be a couple of years older yet before the book is writ . . . So I may as well make a clean breast of it. To begin with, then, my brain can certainly not be larger than the average. I should say it was a trifle under. But I have a great curiosity to know what it looks like, being naturally interested in it and being convinced it must be peculiar. My guess is that it is unusually convoluted. For I suppose that convolutions have the effect of rendering what is going on in one part of the brain more or less free from interference by another. Now this must favor highly abstract thinking. In another respect, however, its effects will be unfortunate. For unquestionably the effective evolution under natural selection is to adapt every normal type to its normal environment; and consequently the man who is in any respect decidedly unlike his fellows must necessarily be ill-adapted for the normal, every-day affairs of life. Now this describes me: I am strong in whatever is abstract and theoretical, but a perfect baby in everyday gumption. R657: 1–6, 1910

8

Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Peircean Semiotics

Peirce today would no doubt be ticked off as bi-polar or as having another somesuch personality disorder, but a comparison with Baudelaire’s albatross would surely be more appropriate . . .

Organization of the chapters Although entitled a Companion to contemporary Peircean semiotics, the book cannot cover all aspects of the great man’s contribution to the field. There is no chapter that deals exclusively with his Existential Graphs, for example, these being a direct application of his genius for diagrammatic reasoning, nor is his pragmatism dealt with in depth, although it would presumably have figured largely in the methodeutic branch of his grand logic if he had managed to develop it. The topics that the chapters do deal with have been organized thematically as much as is possible in a compendium of such diverse research preoccupations: the first series serves to contextualize Peirce today; the second discusses applications of the theory to specific research objectives; the third is more exploratory and seeks correspondences between Peirce and other researchers and other research fields. This does not mean, of course, that the more practical applications have no theoretical scope or that the more theoretical papers have no practical consequence or are out of context, situations which would run counter to the spirit of Peirce’s pragmatism: the three divisions simply constitute convenient groupings that both correspond to their thematic content and seek to avoid the almost theological cleavage between semiotics and philosophy that surfaced irresponsibly just over a decade ago in Peirce studies. Many aspects of Peirce’s semiotics have been borrowed, developed, used and abused not only by protagonists of competing schools of semiotics but also by Peirce scholars. Paul Cobley, as President of the International Association of Semiotic Studies (IASS) is ideally placed to examine and evaluate the reception of Peirce’s semiotics by leading specialists of the discipline and to draw attention to interesting developments of the theory but also to possible misinterpretation or misunderstanding of the great man’s ideas, and this is the substance of his chapter. From a country in which semiotics has experienced spectacular growth Xingzhi Zhao, a leading Chinese Peirce specialist and the translator into Mandarin of James Liszka’s 1996 A General Introduction to the Semeiotic of Charles Sanders Peirce, charts the evolution of the fascinating but problematic philosophical encounter between Peircean concepts and traditional Chinese thought. Although the OED’s first instance of the term ‘semiosis’ is from Peirce’s

Introduction

9

1907 manuscript on Pragmatism (R318), the concept has been developed significantly outside a strictly Peircean context (e.g. biosemiotics, narratology). Chapter 3 retrieves Peirce’s original definition, eclipsed in the specialist literature by discussions of his complex sign systems, and seeks to explicate its originality. The chapter by Priscilla Borges reviews the complete set of Peirce’s typologies from 1867 to 1908 and illustrates her topic with discussions of important contemporary fields of research – the media, political parties, gender characterization. Finally, Robert Innis’s chapter provides a convenient link to the chapters to follow by comparing Peirce’s little-developed conception of aesthetics (Peirce held that his semiotics was heavily dependent upon aesthetics and ethics) with others better known and more recent, and above all skilfully bridges the controversial gap between semiotics and philosophy. A second group of chapters begins with a study by Sara Barrena and Jaime Nubiola which introduces, through a discussion of Peirce’s very influential concept of abduction, the sorts of problems involving creative thinking in a variety of disciplines exploited in the chapters to follow. Indeed, Genie Babb and James Liszka’s contribution takes up the concept and relates it to creativity in narrative, story construction, reader response and film. Augusto Ponzio, too, reviews the concept of abduction together with Peirce’s icon-index-symbol trichotomy, and employs them to investigate theoretical correspondences between Bakhtin’s dialogism and Peirce’s theory of inference. Brent Sørensen, Martin and Torkild Thellefsen introduce a Peircean semiotics of technological artefacts involving grammar, logic and rhetoric, and offer the self-driving car as their example. Claudio Guerri’s chapter discusses selected problems of design and architecture, and suggests ways of resolving them by means of a reasoning system which he calls the semiotic nonagon, based upon Peirce’s categories and the 1903 sign system. Finally, Seymour Simmons’s chapter examines the case for teaching ‘drawing as thinking’ in art and design as well as general education today in the light of Peirce’s semiotics and pragmatism. The chapters in the final section all take up aspects of Peirce’s semiotics or philosophy or both and investigate the insights they offer into the methodologies and ideologies at work in contemporary social and academic problems. Continuing studies on abduction, Rossella Fabbrichesi’s philosophically oriented chapter is more reflective and, drawing on Peirce’s theory of inference and his pragmaticism, seeks to tease out correlations between habit and the important semiotics of gesture. The chapter by Susan Petrilli, the foremost exponent of semioethics, explores ethical principles deriving from research preoccupations informing Peirce’s semiotics and the theory of significs expounded by his British

10

Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Peircean Semiotics

correspondent, Lady Welby, bringing this usually background figure fully into the limelight with Peirce. Jamin Pelkey’s chapter, drawing on the architectonic principle inherited by Peirce from Kant, seeks to synthesize within a Peircean perspective seemingly divergent and potentially antagonistic theories of language and linguistics. Finally, Frederik Stjernfelt’s exhaustive study engages with an extraordinarily broad variety of research topics – photography, Ancient Egyptian cartouches, cartoons, biosemiotics and linguistics, for example – and shows their common features by formulating them in terms of multimodality and a generalization of Peirce’s concept of the dicisign.

The semiotics of 1903 Preliminary remarks Peirce’s thinking on signs evolved considerably between 1865 and 1909, that is, over a period of almost forty-five years, although there is no real consensus among authorities on the stages in the evolution of his various systems of signs. One simple approach to the problem consists in associating the different periods with the number of divisions, or trichotomies, he established in his search for classes of signs: a single division in the long period from the mid-1860s to 1903, three late in 1903 itself, six in 1904 and ten from 1905 onward. Such a characterization shows how Peirce’s sign typologies grew in content and accelerated in their complexification in the first few years after the beginning of the last century. However, since there seems to have been a major shift in the theoretical background to the way Peirce conceived signs and sign-action beginning in 1905, there is justification for distinguishing two periods, again of vastly differing lengths and corresponding in this case to two distinct manners of classifying signs. The first runs from the mid-1860s to 1904, while the second, much shorter period runs roughly from 1905 to 1909. Such a theoretical imbalance can be explained by the fact that during the first, longer period, Peirce’s phenomenological categories, once he had established their final form in 1902, were indispensable in the classification of signs, whereas in the second period the criteria he employed were three ‘universes of existence’, this, significantly, also being the period in which he first introduced the concept of semiosis and broadened his conception of the sorts of things that might constitute the object of a sign. Paradoxically, the material from this later period was made available to

Introduction

11

the reading public at large before the earlier: the source of Peirce’s mature thinking on signs is to be found principally in the exchange of letters between Peirce and his British correspondent, Lady Victoria Welby, and much of this correspondence, in addition to extracts from published papers, was made available in Appendix D of Ogden and Richards’ The Meaning of Meaning quoted above, almost ten years before the publication of the first volumes of the Collected Papers in 1931–1932. This presentation of the semiotics of 1903, then, reviews the final stage of the theory developed over the first, almost forty-year period in which Peirce came to use the three categories forming the basis of his phenomenology. In this earlier period, he first developed these categories from his logic and, then, after an exhaustive revision of his phenomenology in 1902, inversed the roles, so to speak, and employed the categories as criteria within the logic to establish the subdivisions, which, when combined in specific ways, eventually yielded the ten classes of signs to be discussed below. Since the second, much shorter period is the one in which he employed different subdividing criteria and in the course of which he came to define the concept of semiosis, discussion of it will be deferred until Chapter 3. *** In November 1903, Peirce began a series of eight lectures at the Lowell Institute in Boston, entitled ‘Some topics of logic bearing on questions now vexed’, and it is on two draft manuscripts, namely R478 and R540, prepared by Peirce as a supplement for these lectures, that the following exposition of the semiotics of 1903 is based. The Syllabus, as he called the supplement, was indeed published, but, ironically, owing apparently to insufficient funds (SS: 12), this version omitted precisely that information which the audience needed most in a discussion of the vexed questions of the title of the lectures, namely the theoretical background to Peirce’s very original and rapidly evolving conception of logic as semiotics. In view of this, then, there are three good reasons why the presentation of his semiotics should concentrate on the material to be found in this syllabus. First, the text of this, the best-known of Peirce’s divisions of signs and the typology they define, is also available in four of the five chapters in Essential Peirce: Volume Two (Peirce 1998: 258–299, conventionally referred to as EP2) that reproduce material prepared for the lectures. In this way, readers can follow the exposition for themselves by referring to the chapters in EP2 should they so wish, recover information that may inadvertently or deliberately have been omitted from the exposition and judge for themselves the importance of such

12

Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Peircean Semiotics

and such an aspect of the theory. Second, general presentations of Peirce’s semiotics have on occasion been hybrid, in the sense that in seeking to be exhaustive authors have combined aspects of different stages in the development of the theory, sometimes to the detriment of clarity and precision: restricting the exposition to material written for the Syllabus is intended to avoid such a pitfall. The third and most important reason is that much of the material in the following chapters draws heavily on the semiotics of the projected syllabus and therefore a summary of the semiotics of the period will be useful for researchers who are not semioticians or are unacquainted with Peirce’s theories and for the general reader, too. However, before turning to the definitions of the sign and the typology that Peirce derived from them, there follow two general remarks to enable readers to place the 1903 semiotics in its broader context. ***

Logic as semiotics First, Peirce used the term ‘logic’ in two distinct ways, according it a narrow sense and a broad one. In the first case, logic was, he claimed, the standard or traditional study of the conditions of sound reasoning, this involving in his case three forms of inference: hypothesis-formation, deduction and induction. On the other hand, in his broader sense of the term, logic was also ‘general semeiotic, treating not merely of truth, but also of the general conditions of signs being signs’ (CP 1.444, c. 1896). In this broad sense, then, for Peirce logic was the general science of signs, composed of three different branches, whereas in the narrow, standard or traditional sense, it was simply one of those three branches. Thus, the terms ‘semeiotic’, ‘semiotic’, or ‘semiotics’ were all terms which Peirce used as synonyms for ‘logic’ in the broad sense, for in his view, knowledge was representation (EP2: 271, 1903), and representation can only be realized by signs. In this Introduction the term ‘semiotic(s)’ is the chosen usage, though many American scholars prefer the spelling ‘semeiotic’.6

The sign before 1903 Second, there are two stages in the development of his semiotics that deserved to be singled out, namely the presentation of an initial typology in 1867 and a general extension of the scope of logic from 1885 onwards.

Introduction

13

The single division system from 1867 The paper entitled ‘On a New List of Categories’ and published in 1867 (EP1: 1–10) is considered by many Peirce scholars as a major breakthrough in western philosophy, placing Peirce on a par with Aristotle and Kant.7 Within the chronology of Peirce’s thinking on signs it is important to note that he should have developed his three categories by defining them in terms taken from logic: representamen, ground, correlate (his term then for what would later become the object) and interpretant, which figure in the definitions of the five categories he initially advanced (later reduced to three), are all logical concepts, that of interpretant being Peirce’s own contribution to logic, and an inestimable theoretical advance. Table  0.1 displays the single division of representamens from the period 1866–1867, ‘representamen’ being at the time the term designating the unit of representation. The term ‘sign’, which was later to replace ‘representamen’, was at the time effectively an alternative term for ‘index’. What was later to become the icon was identified as a ‘likeness’ in 1867: as a technical term for one of the three subdivisions of the relation holding between the sign and the object the term ‘icon’ would only appear nearly twenty years later. In 1867, too, the symbol, which Peirce considered then the sole object of study of the logician, subdivided into the traditional tripartite distinction between term, proposition and argument as indicated on Table 0.1.8

1885 The year 1885 witnessed another important advance in Peirce’s conception of signs. In a paper contributing to the philosophy of notation9 he now established that all three types of signs – symbols (referred to in this text as ‘tokens’), indices and icons – were necessarily involved in any perfect system of logical notation.

Table 0.1 Peirce’s 1867 trichotomy of representamens (CP 1.558) Sign-Correlate Symbol argument proposition term Index/sign Likeness

14

Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Peircean Semiotics

He moreover showed, among other things, and drawing explicitly on the work of one of his pupils, O.H. Mitchell, how indices were necessary to quantification in logic, and, finally, offered early examples of the use of indices in reasoning. This broader scope of signification can be measured in the following early definition of the sign, in which the expression ‘in some respect or capacity’ shows that icons and indices have acquired equal status with the symbol as the sign’s modes of representation of its object: A sign, or representamen, is something which stands to somebody for something in some respect or capacity. It . . . creates in the mind of that person an equivalent sign, or perhaps a more developed sign. That sign which it creates I call the interpretant of the first sign. The sign stands for something, its object. CP 2.228, c. 1897

The Syllabus R478 Although Peirce had planned this comprehensive syllabus to accompany the course of lectures, the published version ran only to twenty-three pages, and was composed of his classification of the sciences, an ethics of terminology and a two-part commentary on aspects of his Existential Graphs. Understandably, perhaps, in view of their length and complexity and Peirce’s financial difficulties, the ‘leading conceptions of logic’ planned for the supplement were left unpublished. In this way, the most important material for the future theory of semiotics, which was to be as influential in its content as the Cours de linguistique générale (Saussure [1916] 1972) was to be to semiology and structuralism, was omitted from the published Syllabus, and only systematically brought to light thirty years later with the publication of the first volumes of the Collected Papers. This presentation of the theory from the intended syllabus begins with the logic in the second part of the first of the two principal manuscripts, R478, entitled ‘Sundry Logical Conceptions’, and begins, like the Syllabus, with a brief description of the classification of the sciences and of his ethics of terminology. This will provide a background to the presentation of the logic.

Classification of the sciences of discovery Briefly, the classification that Peirce proposed in 1903 distinguished between theoretical and practical sciences. The ‘cenoscopic’ theoretical sciences subdivide

Introduction

15

into the sciences of review and the sciences of discovery, by which Peirce means the discovery of knowledge.10 Within the sciences of discovery, philosophy follows mathematics, precedes a field of applied inquiry Peirce calls ‘Idioscopy’, and itself subdivides into phenomenology, normative science and metaphysics (Figure 0.1). The normative sciences, which rest ‘largely on phenomenology and on mathematics’ (EP2: 259), form three very distinct divisions: esthetics, ethics and logic, where ‘each division’, Peirce notes, ‘depends on that which precedes it’ (EP2: 260). Esthetics and ethics receive rather cursory treatments. However,

Figure 0.1 A simplified graphic of part of Peirce’s 1903 classification of the sciences.

16

Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Peircean Semiotics

logic, the subject of the lectures, begins with speculative grammar ‘the general theory of the nature and meanings of signs, whether they be icons, indices, or symbols’ (EP2: 260). This is followed by ‘critic’ (by which he meant the narrow, traditional conception of logic mentioned earlier). This discipline classifies inferential processes and determines the validity of each of the major kinds of reasoning: abduction, which is a variety of inference governing the formation of hypotheses, together with the traditional types, deduction and induction. For Peirce, in combination they played an important role in the discovery and validation of knowledge. Finally comes methodeutic, which he understood as that part of logic which studies the methods that ought to be pursued in any scientific investigation. Figure  0.1 shows this architectonic structure and the internal dependencies Peirce established between the different scientific disciplines.

The ethics of terminology The classification of the sciences was followed by an ‘ethics of terminology’ in which Peirce was preparing his readers for the deliberately unusual, specialized vocabulary that would feature in his discussion of the topics in the lectures. For Peirce the symbol, the most complex type of sign, was the essential vehicle of scientific thought, but presented an insurmountable problem: symbols, as he mentions on other occasions, grow, and in growing are enriched but as a consequence lose precision. Valid scientific thinking required that the meaning of symbols remain constant and not evolve as they do in the vernacular. He furthermore held that new scientific ideas required a new concept-specific terminology and that it behoves the inventor of the new conception, as he was doing in logic, to avoid the vernacular and provide the new, concept-specific terms, an obligation he imposed upon himself (EP2: 266). The reader may be wondering at this point why we should be bothering with a classification of the sciences and an ethics of terminology in a Companion to Contemporary Peircean Semiotics. One reason is that they preceded the material on logic in the projected syllabus, which shows that Peirce obviously thought that it was in the interests of his audience to provide the logic proper with a general context. But there is an even more important reason. As a philosopher and scientist Peirce sought to avoid the fallibility of human psychology – what might today be termed the ‘avoidance of mentalism’ – in the discussion of the abstract character of logic. It was not that he didn’t approve of psychology; quite the contrary, he included it in the special, idioscopic, sciences together with linguistics and literary studies, sciences which produced new facts, often requiring, unlike

Introduction

17

philosophy and mathematics, special equipment, travel, laboratories, etc. Contextualization of his logical concepts in this way avoided the danger of the ad hoc in semiotic enquiry – the inventing of concepts to suit the occasion, in other words. Peirce was no bricoleur: he was anxious that his audience should know just where the theoretical concepts he was discussing in the lectures were coming from, and sought to relate them to the broader scientific context. Moreover, he was preparing the audience for the extended use of new, possibly puzzling terminology in the pursuance of his discussion of the complex theoretical issues. The ethics of terminology stated in uncompromising terms the terminological precision he was imposing on himself and on his audience. In short, he would not offend his audience by ‘dumbing down’ the lectures they were paying for (a position often misunderstood by contemporary commentators who censure his use of allegedly ‘difficult’ vocabulary). Where better to place such information than in a syllabus for the audience to peruse at will, and made available before the lectures?

Phenomenology and the sign Having given the theoretical context for the logic proper in his classification of the sciences and the ethics of terminology, Peirce approaches the problem of what qualifies as a sign and the divisions and subdivisions it is involved in in two ways – initially by drawing on his theory of the three universal categories and, in the later manuscript, R540, by deriving the sign and its correlates more explicitly from a theory of triadic relations. In both cases the reasoning he applies is justified by principles provided by his particular conception of phenomenology and his three categories derived from general experience.11 Drawing at the same time on material from both manuscripts, this presentation now sets out the ways in which the sign and its correlates were derived, and how they combine to produce ten classes of signs. Peirce first introduces the theoretical background sustaining his semiotics, namely his conception of phenomenology and its three categories, in the following manner: Phenomenology is that branch of science . . . in which the author seeks to make out what are the elements, or, if you please, the kinds of elements, that are invariably present in whatever is, in any sense, in mind. According to the present writer, these universal categories are three . . . They may be termed Firstness, Secondness, and Thirdness . . . EP2: 270

18

Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Peircean Semiotics

To simplify, the category of Firstness, which he assimilated to freedom and independence, was realized as qualities, properties, feelings; Secondness, which he assimilated to effort and resistance, was to be found in individuality, fact, existence and brute action; Thirdness, which he assimilated to generality, mediation and continuity, covered the complex phenomena of thought, habit and signs. In the manuscript he offers examples of the three categories: for Firstness, the quality of redness (as found in a rose or royal livery, for example); for Secondness, the sense of resistance and effort (as required when a door is hard to open and has to be pushed forcibly, for example); finally, typical cases of Thirdness are associated with thought, law and symbols, etc. (EP2: 268–269). These categories would be used when he defined the various subdivisions of signs introduced later in the text. A further important principle validated by the categories then led to the analytical process of abstraction or precission. He showed that by this form of mental separation the three were organized in such a way that it ‘is possible to prescind Firstness from Secondness . . . But it is impossible to prescind Secondness from Firstness . . . So likewise it is possible to prescind Secondness from Thirdness. But Thirdness without Secondness would be absurd’ (EP2: 270). To simplify, Peirce held that it was possible to think of Firstness independently of Secondness – e.g. redness as in the Chinese flag independently of the flag itself – and Secondness independently of Thirdness – e.g. the Chinese flag independently of its being the representation of a nation – but Thirdness necessarily involved the existential support of Secondness – i.e. it is impossible to see the Chinese flag outside an embassy, for example, independently of its material state and the Firstness of its red colour. Thus, something partaking of Secondness also necessarily involved – couldn’t be thought independently of – the qualities of Firstness. We as existent individuals are good examples of such a principle as, partaking of Secondness, we have the intangible qualities, features, etc., that partake of Firstness and render each of us different but also recognizable. The whole system of prescindable values functioned as a sort of Russian doll principle in which the more complex categories ‘contain’ or logically imply the less. Precission, as we see below, founds the ‘involvements’ that Peirce later invokes when he describes the implication relations holding between the subdivisions of his trichotomies.

Speculative grammar Having established the major principles obtained from his phenomenology Peirce begins the process of exploiting the first branch of his grand logic,

Introduction

19

speculative grammar, and defines the sign and the two associated correlates in terms of first, second and third, introducing as he does so, the principle of triadic relations that he builds upon in the later manuscript (R540): A Sign, or Representamen, is a First which stands in such a genuine triadic relation to a Second, called its Object, as to be capable of determining a Third, called its Interpretant, to assume the same triadic relation to its Object in which it stands itself to the same Object. The triadic relation is genuine, that is its three members are bound together by it in a way that does not consist in any complexus of dyadic relations . . . A Sign is a Representamen with a mental Interpretant. Possibly there may be Representamens that are not Signs. EP2: 272–273

This passage raises two points. First, from the definition, in which the or is conjunctive (either term is valid for this definition), it follows that for all triadic relations the first correlate of the triadic relation is the representamen. However, in the special case where the interpretant of a representamen is mental in nature, is a ‘cognition of a mind’ – in other words when the sign produces an effect upon an animate, thinking being – then that representamen is a sign. This is indeed what he had actually prepared to tell the audience in Lecture Three: ‘In particular, all signs convey notions to human minds; but I know no reason why every representamen should do so’ (CP 1.540, 1903). A sign, then, is defined to be a species of representamen – the class of signs is included in the class of representamens, in other words – although as we now see, in this period Peirce employs both terms almost interchangeably for simplicity of exposition: either can be considered to be the unit of representation. The basic distinction is important nevertheless: representamens without mental interpretants are not signs but theoretically extend the capacity for representation and interpretation to organisms such as plant life, etc., which don’t possess mentality. Second, although the object and the interpretant are indispensable participants in every act of representation, they are not in themselves the concern of speculative grammar as they only occur or appear adventitiously in the very act of representation and therefore cannot be classified in advance. This is especially understandable in the case of the interpretant, the effect that the sign has on an interpreter, as the reaction in an interpreter that a sign produces obviously, even if deliberately ‘targeted’, cannot be determined with certainty before it has been produced. Thus, the purview of speculative grammar is restricted to the conditions which determine whether some entity qualifies as a sign or not, together with its modes of representation and with its informational value, and

20

Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Peircean Semiotics

is therefore purely formal in nature. As for the sign’s meaning, the grammar can only specify, as we see in what follows, how a sign means, not what it means.

Two divisions The sign now defined, Peirce develops the grammar by identifying the trichotomies that divide signs. At this point in his version of the syllabus he introduces two trichotomies. The first concerns the sign’s various modes of representation of its object, namely the types of relation, partaking of the three categories in ascending order of complexity, holding between the sign and the object: ‘Representamens are divided by two trichotomies. The most fundamental is into Icons, Indices, and Symbols’ (EP2: 273). In the case of the icon, the least complex sign and partaking of Firstness, the relation with the object is purely qualitative – sign and object share at least one quality – and the icon therefore resembles its object as in the case of figurative paintings, which purport to resemble what they represent. The relation between the index and its object partakes of Secondness and is existential, existence being a step higher than quality in the phenomenological hierarchy: there is a physical contact between two individual entities as when the wind influences a windsock on an airfield, or in the case of a photographic portrait which is indexical by virtue of its being existentially determined through actual spatio-temporal contact with what Peirce saw as an example of the sign’s object at that time, namely the model: no model, no photograph. Finally, the most complex sign, the symbol, partakes of Thirdness and has to be learnt since its relation to its object is of the nature of a general convention, as in the case of any verbal sign, or the Highway Code, for example. The second trichotomy concerns the relation holding between the sign and its interpretant, which is the reaction or effect on the interpreter produced by the sign. This classifies signs according to their informational value and identifies in order of increasing phenomenological complexity sumisigns, dicisigns (the class of propositions extended since 1885 to include complex, often multimodal, iconic and indexical signs such as the portrait of a woman with her name beneath or a photograph (EP2: 282)) and arguments or suadisigns, a labelling system which exhibited his desire to avoid vernacular terms in scientific discourse, particularly in view of the fact that the neologism ‘interpretant’ was another term of his own invention. Later, in manuscript R540, he reverts to a more traditional terminology, identifying the three subdivisions respectively as rheme, dicent sign and argument. The rheme is a simple substitute for its object, like the English common noun cat or the predicative expression – sat on the mat, and affords no information. The dicent sign, or dicisign, on the other hand, composed of a

Introduction

21

subject and a predicate, is an informational sign, as in The cat sat on the mat. Peirce’s discussion of the dicent sign in the manuscript is important in many ways, but one of its most interesting features is the fact that it takes the analysis of such signs beyond the traditional verbal proposition and includes pictorial signs of various types (EP2: 282). Finally, as the name suggests and according to a long tradition in logic, the argument is a sign of reasoning, of which Peirce distinguishes the three types mentioned above: abduction, or the formation of hypotheses, deduction and induction. While neither division can tell us what the meaning of a given sign is, Peirce has replaced a monolithic, holistic conception of meaning by isolating two relations that contribute to it, namely how the sign signifies its object and what its informational value might be.

R540 In this later manuscript Peirce introduces a division of the sign itself, which again avoids vernacular terms and which he identifies in order of increasing complexity as the qualisign, which is any quality which functions as a sign, such as red for danger; the sinsign or singular, existent perceivable sign, such as the sudden change of direction of the windsock on the airfield. Finally, the legisign, which is a sign by law or an element of some general system such as a human language. In this latter case, in order to be perceivable, and therefore interpretable by an animate being, legisigns occur in actual cases of representation as replicas. One of Peirce’s favourite examples is the English definite article. This, the most frequently found word in the language, occurs many times on a single page, and yet there is only one form in the English language system that governs its usage: that unique form is the legisign and its many realizations are its replicas. Peirce was probably led to introduce a sign division for two reasons. First, it is difficult to validate the phenomenological status of the two relational trichotomies holding between the sign and its correlates without first having established that of the sign. For example, the symbol is defined as representing a general object, such as ‘cat’, a class of domestic felines. Peirce no doubt realized that logically this requires a sign which is equally general, one now identified in the first trichotomy as a legisign, e.g. the common noun cat. Second, and more importantly, perhaps, it was in this later manuscript that he introduced the ten classes, and it would have been illogical to propose an exhaustive classification of signs without involving a division for the sign itself. We see the logical import of this in Peirce’s conception of the index: demonstrative pronouns and weathercocks were identified as indexical in 1903 (EP2: 274): the first are verbal in nature and differ from weathercocks by being not sinsigns, but legisigns. Thus, if there were no

22

Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Peircean Semiotics

sign division it would be impossible to differentiate logically between a demonstrative pronoun and the veering of a weathercock.

Hypoiconicity and the implication principle In the course of his description of the icon in the earlier manuscript Peirce had made a very fecund distinction, confirming a statement made in a Harvard lecture on pragmatism presented earlier in the year: ‘Now the Icon may undoubtedly be divided according to the categories’ (EP2: 163). If anyone had asked him in how many ways one entity can resemble another, Peirce would have suggested that there were three, and he derived them in the projected syllabus by applying the analytical principle which had earlier yielded icon, index and symbol to the Firstness of the icon itself, thereby obtaining three hypoicons or ‘sub-icons’. The trichotomy resulting from this recursive process is enshrined in the following terse definition describing image, diagram and metaphor in order of increasing complexity: Hypoicons may roughly be divided according to the mode of Firstness which they partake. Those which partake of simple qualities, or First Firstnesses, are images; those which represent the relations, mainly dyadic, or so regarded, of the parts of one thing by analogous relations in their own parts, are diagrams; those which represent the representative character of a representamen by representing a parallelism in something else, are metaphors. EP2: 273

Any painting without a label or legend is an example of Peirce’s image: Leonardo’s Mona Lisa is a painting hanging in the Louvre in Paris and, without its caption, is an image in the Peircean technical sense. It is an existent piece of coloured canvas, a sinsign therefore, exhibiting qualities – lines, forms and colours – arranged in the distinctive manner we are all familiar with. More complex, since, unlike the image, it is not ‘freehand’ and corresponds precisely to its object point by point, the diagram is an icon of relations (CP 4.418, 1903), structuring all manner of instruments of measurement, the instructions for building kits or the illustrations in geometry manuals, for example, as well as the syntax of verbal signs. Now, Peirce further recognized that there are signs more complex than the common diagrammatic type, signs able to represent objects more complex than themselves, for example verbal signs which ‘synthesize’ in the guise of a single judgemental statement elements from two or more distinct relations. The speaker who sees an analogy or a parallel between the warrior Achilles on the battlefield and lions in the chase and collapses the analogy in the single proposition Achilles

Introduction

23

is a lion as opposed to the compound proposition realized as the diagrammatic simile Achilles is as ferocious in battle as the lion is in the chase is ‘informing’ the single proposition with metaphoric hypoiconicity as defined by Peirce. Moreover, what is valid for verbal signs is valid also for indices such as photographs and icons such as paintings: these, too, may be metaphorical. Thus, with the hypoicons and the implication principle Peirce expanded the traditional dyadic literalfigurative distinction into a triad of values, introducing at the same time a means of analyzing the structures of multimodality.12 What made this statement so fruitful for future researchers, linguists in particular, was the fact that it offered a reasoned account of how language structure is motivated, and not, as Saussure had initially claimed, arbitrary. In manuscript R478 Peirce had applied the categories successively to the signobject relation and then recursively to the icon. The principle of precission defined in that section of phenomenology made it possible for him to state in the later manuscript, R540, that in order for their respective objects to be successfully identified the index involves a ‘sort of icon’ and the symbol involves a ‘sort of index’ (EP2: 291–2). In other words, it was logically valid to prescind – i.e. isolate mentally, remember – a sort of icon from the index and to prescind a sort of index from the symbol. For example, the windsock which suddenly changes direction on an airfield is indexical – by the existential contact between wind and windsock – but we understand that the direction it displays corresponds to, or ‘imitates’, ‘resembles’ the direction of the wind, and is thus the index’s iconic component. We prescind the formal Firstness of the directionality from the existential Secondness of the moving windsock: we are able mentally to separate the iconic directionality from the indexical encounter between the wind and the windsock. Since the recursive application of the categories to the icon had yielded image, diagram and metaphor it follows that by transitivity both dicent symbols such as the utterance Achilles is a lion and indices like a photograph in some way involve an icon and, consequently, any of the three hypoicons. It thus became possible to detect hypoiconic patterns in language signs formed necessarily of symbols and indices which, at a certain level of analysis, could be shown to resemble what they represented.13

Ten classes of signs The foregoing information can conveniently be summarized on Table  0.2, on which the three divisions are realized as the sign plus the two relational trichotomies mentioned earlier, respectively the sign’s mode of representation, including the three hypoiconic subdivisions of the icon, and its informative capacity.

24

Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Peircean Semiotics

Table 0.2 The three-division typology of 1903 integrating the hypoicons Category Respect Sign Sign-Object

Sign-Interpretant

Firstness

Secondness

Thirdness

qualisign icon image diagram metaphor rheme

sinsign index

legisign symbol

dicisign

argument

Figure 0.2 Peirce’s table of compatibilities between subdivisions.14

The scheme on Figure 0.2 indicates the categorial affinities holding between the subdivisions of the three trichotomies. The rules drawn by Peirce on Figure  0.2 are simple. First, two vertical lines associating three subdivisions of the same phenomenological complexity form a class. For example, the first class, the qualisign, is obtained by tracing the leftmost pair of vertical lines linking subdivisions partaking of Firstness from qualisign to rheme through icon. Since a qualisign cannot ‘move up’ the phenomenological scale to combine with a Secondness there is no need to mention the icon and the rheme in the class label: the terms are redundant, hence, simply, ‘qualisign’. Similarly, another vertical trace associating the subdivisions partaking of Thirdness leads from legisign to argument through symbol, yielding the tenth class, the argument: since a Thirdness can only be preceded by another Thirdness, there is no need to specify the association with legisign and symbol. A second rule allows a downward diagonal trace from right to left, going from the phenomenologically more complex subdivisions to the less. For example, it is possible to trace a

Introduction

25

class from sinsign to icon, which necessarily leads to rheme. This yields the iconic sinsign, another case where mention of the rhematic status of such a sign is superfluous. By combining subdivisions in this way Peirce obtained ten classes of signs, which he numbered in order of increasing phenomenological complexity, given below with a simple example of each (see EP2: 294–296): 1. 2. 3. 4.

Qualisign Iconic sinsign Rhematic indexical sinsign Dicent sinsign

the black colour of mourning in the West any figurative painting or sketch the cry Ouch! the sudden change of direction of a windsock 5. Iconic legisign the iconicity of the ‘thumbs-up’ sign 6. Rhematic indexical legisign the demonstrative adverb Yonder! 7. Dicent indexical legisign the Chemist sign or a green Greek cross or a caduceus above a high-street shop 8. Rhematic symbol common nouns such as liberty, equality, fraternity, cat 9. Dicent symbol the utterance Yonder lies Dover! 10. Argument typically, any syllogism

Summary of the semiotics of the projected Syllabus The sign is the first correlate of a triadic relation. It is determined by the second correlate, its object, to produce an effect upon an interpreter, this effect or reaction being the third correlate, the sign’s interpretant. This signifying process necessarily involves all three correlates: if, for example, no interpretant is produced then the agency in question is not a sign. What sense, in this case, are we to give to the concept of determination? Peirce originally defined it thus: ‘To determine means to make a circumstance different from what it might have been otherwise’ (W1: 245, 1865). In a draft letter to William James in January 1909 he explained that the sign was ‘specialized’ by something other than itself, i.e. its object, invoking the German word bestimmt meaning ‘determined’, ‘specific’, ‘particular’ (EP2: 492), but the concept had already assumed a more active status by 1908, as the sign was defined at this later stage in Peirce’s thinking on semiotics as participating in a logically and chronologically ordered dynamic six-correlate signifying process

26

Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Peircean Semiotics

in which the nature of each successive correlate was dependent upon the one preceding it. In 1902 Peirce had, on two occasions, suggested that the sign’s interpretant in turn functioned as a further sign of the same object, determining yet another interpretant to function as a sign of that object in a continuous infinite process: ‘Anything which determines something else (its interpretant) to refer to an object to which itself refers (its object) in the same way, the interpretant becoming in turn a sign, and so on ad infinitum’ (CP 2.303) and similarly in CP 2.92. This same principle is to be found in the continuation of the definition of the sign given in the section on speculative grammar above (for the full version see EP2: 272–273, 1903). However, the introduction of the three interpretants in 1904 and the hexadic system of 1908 (see Chapter  3) severely constrained such a continuous process. The definition of the sign provided Peirce with three divisions or trichotomies: one for the sign itself; one obtained from the association of the sign with its object, these being the sign’s three modes of representation of its object – the symbol, index, diagram and metaphor, etc., are relations; and, finally, one obtained from the association of the sign with its interpretant, this trichotomy evaluating the sign’s informational potential. The phenomenological concept of precission underwrote the possibility of establishing an implication principle by means of which Peirce was able to show that the more complex subdivisions implied or involved those from lower down the order. The various compatibilities between the subdivisions of the three ordered trichotomies enabled Peirce to postulate ten classes of signs. The ten classes are only indirectly related to the definition of the sign and the signifying process, and there is, therefore, only a tenuous relation holding between the definition of the sign and the determination sequence in which it occurs on the one hand, and the three divisions and ten classes on the other. Consequently, unlike the twenty-eight classes of 1908, the ten of 1903 are not the product of semiosis. Signs are a sub-class of the class of representamens and are defined specifically as representamens with mental interpretants. In 1903, therefore, it was theoretically possible to have representamens without mental interpretants. Whereas all ten classes of signs of 1903 have mental interpretants by definition, this is not the case with all of the twenty-eight and sixty-six classes that Peirce was to establish in 1908.

Introduction

27

The six-correlate system of 1904 On 12 October 1904, Peirce addressed a letter to Lady Welby in which, after outlining once more his phenomenological framework, he described a new hexadic system, theoretically capable of yielding twenty-eight classes of signs. Table 0.3 sets out in tabular form Peirce’s description of this new, more complex typology. It is important to note that the correlates associated with the sign have been expanded from two to five instead of the earlier three: signification now involves six correlates, namely the sign, two objects – the immediate object and the dynamic object – and its three interpretants, standardized for convenience as immediate, dynamic and final (respectively Oi, Od, S, Ii, Id and If on Table 0.3). This more comprehensive typology has as its respects the sign plus a set of five divisions, which are all relational as in 1903, but Peirce never developed it in the way he had exploited and illustrated the earlier ten-class system. It is important to note, too, that the criteria enabling the analyst to establish these relational divisions in the typology are the three phenomenological categories, as in 1903, and that at this time Peirce provided no definition of the signifying process involving these six correlates. Subsequent developments rendered the relations posited between the sign and the immediate object and between the sign and the immediate interpretant redundant, while the four remaining were to feature in the ten-division typologies of 1908. Presumably as a result of a change of theoretical framework from categories to universes, the twenty-eight classes of signs hypothetically obtainable from this typology were never identified.

Table 0.3 The hexad of 12 October 1904 Category Respect S S-Od S-Oi S-If S-Id S-Ii

Firstness

Secondness

Thirdness

qualisign icon S of quality rheme contemplated S S interpreted by feeling

sinsign index S of experience dicent urged S S interpreted by experience

legisign symbol S of law argument submitted S S interpreted by thought

28

Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Peircean Semiotics

Further reading The following are recommended as further reading. Atkin (2015) is a good allround introduction to Peirce the philosopher and covers aspects of his thought not dealt with in this Introduction; Bellucci (2017) is a comprehensive recent study of the semiotics of the period described above, though the author adopts positions which differ from those advanced in this Introduction; Jappy (2013) attempts to demonstrate the potential of Peirce’s semiotics for the analysis of pictorial signs and discusses hypoiconicity; Liszka (1996), although twenty years old, is still the best attempt to synthesize Peirce’s thinking on signs; Deledalle (2000) is a wide-ranging review of Peirce’s semiotics, which discusses relations between Peircean theory and selected luminaries and issues in the field; finally, Wiener’s selection of texts (Peirce [1966] 1996) includes several very important letters to Lady Welby in addition to some of his contributions to pragmatism, and is well worth consulting. There is also a useful biography and assessment of Peirce on the New World Encyclopedia website, although the semiotics is restricted to the period of 1903 described above: www.newworldencyclopedia. org/entry/Charles_Peirce (Retrieved October 2018).

References Atkin, A. 2015. Peirce. London: Routledge. Bellucci, F. 2017. Peirce’s Speculative Grammar: Logic as Semiotics. London: Routledge. Brent, J. 1998. Charles Sanders Peirce: A Life. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Deely, J. 2006. ‘ “To Find Our Way in These Dark Woods” Versus Coming up Short’. Recherche Sémiotique / Semiotic Inquiry, 26, 165–234. Deledalle, G. 2000. Charles S. Peirce’s Philosophy of Signs: Essays in Comparative Semiotics. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Fisch, M. 1980. ‘The Range of Peirce’s Relevance’. The Monist, 63(3), 269–276. Fisch, M. 1982. ‘The Range of Peirce’s Relevance (Continued)’. The Monist, 65(2), 123–141. Gallie, W.B. 1952. Peirce and Pragmatism. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Haiman, J. 1985. Natural Syntax: Iconicity and Erosion, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Houser, N. 2010. ‘Reconsidering Peirce’s Relevance’, In M. Bergman, S. Paavola, A.-V. Pietarinen and H. Rydenfelt (eds). Ideas in Action: Proceedings of the Applying Peirce Conference, Helsinki: Nordic Pragmatism Network, 1–15. Jakobson, R. 1965. ‘Quest for the Essence of Language’. (Reprinted in Jakobson, 1971, 345–359).

Introduction

29

Jakobson, R. 1971. Selected Writings Vol. 2: Word and Language. The Hague: Mouton. Jappy, T. 2013. Introduction to Peircean Visual Semiotics. London: Bloomsbury Academic. Liszka, J.J. 1996. A General Introduction to the Semeiotic of Charles Sanders Peirce. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Locke, J. [1690] 1964. An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, abridged and edited with an introduction by A.D. Woozley. London: Collins. Ogden, C.K. and I.A. Richards. [1923] 1972, The Meaning of Meaning: A Study of the Influence of Language Upon Thought and the Science of Symbolism. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Pharies, D. 1985. Charles S. Peirce and the Linguistic Sign. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company. de Saussure, F. [1916] 1972. Cours de linguistique générale. Paris: Payot. Shapiro, M. 1998, ‘Sound and Meaning in Shakespeare’s Sonnets’, Language, 74, 81–103.

30

1

Peirce in Contemporary Semiotics Paul Cobley

Introduction Given the voluminous nature of his writings, it is hardly surprising that there are many Peirces. There is the Peirce of the Collected Papers, there is the Peirce of the chronological edition of the Writings, there is the Peirce of the magazine articles for such outlets as The Nation, as well as the Peirce of the encyclopedia and journal entries he wrote, plus the Peirce of regular contributions to journals such as The Monist. These overlap with the biographical Peirce: the son of Benjamin, a leader at the US Coast and Geodetic Society, the figure who haunts ‘The Metaphysical Club’, the scandalous Peirce, the father of pragmatism, the Peirce rendered by Brent’s (1993) pioneering biography, and many more. Similarly overdetermined is the Peirce of semiotics. It is well known that Peirce spent at least the last twenty years of his writings explicitly concerned with semiotics. Likewise, during the same period, he forged pragmaticism, especially from 1905 onwards. For many, both pragmaticism and semiotics are contained within a major over-arching project which Peirce pursued – not without revisions – in his philosophy, particularly after presenting his 1867 paper, ‘On a New List of Categories’. Yet the fortunes of Peirce’s semiotics cannot only be sought in his own writing and endeavour. As Peirce well recognized in his avowal that he was ‘a backwoodsman, in the work of clearing and opening up what I call semiotic, that is, the doctrine of the essential nature and fundamental varieties of possible semiosis; and I find the field too vast, the labor too great, for a first-comer’ (c. 1906: CP 5.488), the massive interdisciplinary task of semiotics must be a collective one, left to the community of inquirers. To search for the Peirce of Peircean semiotics, then, it is necessary to consider the vexed history of Peirce’s own writings on signs, but also those of his posthumous interpreters and interlocutors. It is possible that those tangled skeins can never 31

32

Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Peircean Semiotics

be unravelled. Certainly, much of what has been considered to be semiotics, Peircean or otherwise, cannot be undone. However, the current volume offers a chance to state the current situation and this chapter will attempt to offer a sketch of the different Peirces that have contributed to the chimera of contemporary semiotics. Those Peirces are to be found in his own works as they have come to light. Yet that ‘coming to light’ has often been a ‘rediscovery’ of work that has been in the public sphere but has not been considered. Scholars in semiotics over the last fifty years have done much to rediscover or make apparent the major contributions to knowledge of Peirce’s writings. Sometimes this has involved making explicit what might have been only implicit over many pages of Peirce’s work. I have previously written about this process very briefly, in respect of the concept of subjectivity and ‘the self ’ (Cobley 2014). In this chapter, I will refer specifically to the theory of signs that has been derived from Peirce, focusing largely chronologically on the endeavour of key semioticians: Jakobson, Eco, Fisch, Ransdell, Sebeok, Merrell, Nöth, Petrilli, Deely and Stjernfelt, building on the evolving scholarship that has made Peirce’s writings available. These works are very different in orientation, often focusing on some beaten path or some by-way of Peirce’s semiotics. There are also some necessary omissions in the account: in particular, the works of Morris, Deledalle, Santaella-Braga and Houser. Apologies for this must be offered and a hope that the narrative thread is maintained.

Sign theory and Peirce’s writings The first anthology of Peirce’s writings published after his death in 1914 was Morris Cohen’s volume, Chance, Love and Logic: Philosophical Essays (1923). It contained two books: Illustrations of the Logic of Science (c. 1878), comprising such essays as ‘The Fixation of Belief ’ and ‘How to Make our Ideas Clear’, plus another, untitled, volume consisting of some of Peirce’s contributions to The Monist (1891–1893), along with an essay on ‘The pragmatism of Peirce’ by John Dewey. The volume does not contain a great deal of explicit discussion of the theory of signs. Yet, in the same year, C.K. Ogden and I.A. Richards published in Britain The Meaning of Meaning (1923), ‘the first book in any language’, according to Max Fisch (1986 [1978]: 345), ‘from which it was possible to get a grasp of Peirce’s semeiotic at first hand, in his own terms’. Nonetheless, The Meaning of Meaning was, for Fisch, not the most auspicious start to Peirce studies. Famously, Peirce had written to Lady Welby on 23 December 1908:

Peirce in Contemporary Semiotics

33

Know that from the day when at the age of 12 or 13 I took up, in my elder brother’s room a copy of Whately’s Logic and asked him what Logic was, and getting some simple answer, flung myself on the floor and buried myself in it, it has never been in my power to study anything, — mathematics, ethics, metaphysics, gravitation, thermodynamics, optics, chemistry, comparative anatomy, astronomy, psychology, phonetics, economic[sic], the history of science, whist, men and women, wine, metrology, except as a study of semiotic . . . SS: 85–86

Fisch ([1978] 1986: 345) claims that the 1923 edition of The Meaning of Meaning misquotes this passage and that Ogden and Richards call Peirce a ‘nominalist’. However, these crimes are certainly absent from subsequent editions of The Meaning of Meaning after the publication of the first six volumes of the Collected Papers. The sources for Peirce’s semiotics properly began to emerge in the 1950s. Although the Collected Papers had begun its first phase under the editorship of Charles Hartshorne and Paul Weiss from 1931–1935, this was only the start of a long story. As Fisch ([1978] 1986: 346) notes, Charles Morris got his hands on Volumes I–VI of the Collected Papers before he published Foundations of the Theory of Signs in 1938. Arguably, the key volumes for sign theory were VII–VIII (edited by Arthur W. Burks), although Volume II had contained another crucial text on sign theory, the ‘speculative grammar’ (CP 2.219ff, 1903). The last two volumes of the Collected Papers contained (in Volume VIII), the letters to Lady Welby, where, in an accessible but nevertheless still very complicated manner (see Borges 2016), Peirce laid out his theory of semiotics. The influence of these letters as a founding text in (Peircean) semiotics is not to be underestimated, although, as will be seen, that text has sometimes been diluted and even distorted. Where other texts in the Collected Papers may have referred to signs and their components, the letters to Welby lay out an aspirant comprehensive theory of signs. As Borges (2016: 172) notes, there are two letters of special importance in this respect: one for the first period of the Peirce-Welby correspondence, dated 12 October 1904 and one from 23 December 1908, as quoted above. Moreover, ‘The division of signs presented is the most developed one with two objects and three interpretants’ (Borges 2016: 172). The comments in this text are closely related to those in the speculative grammar texts: both present trichotomies of signs and both consider ten classes of signs, ultimately. In his ‘Logic Notebook’, through the years 1869–1905, Peirce drew a diagram of one iteration of his trichotomies (Figure 1.1). The extension of these into ten classes of signs then appeared in the speculative grammar notes, diagrammatized as in Figure 1.2.

34

Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Peircean Semiotics

Figure 1.1 Ten-sign illustration from MS R339.

Figure 1.2 The ten signs from CP 2.264.

These complex perspectives on signs would scarcely have been known in the first part of the twentieth century. Yet, they were to be unleashed on the world in somewhat of a flurry in the 1950s. At a time when European intellectual life was being permeated by structuralism and, particularly, the influence of Saussure and Barthes in sign theory (see Cobley 2006a, 2006b), Peirce’s sign theory must have been quite bewildering. Nevertheless, this did not prevent it from seeing the light of day in a number of book publications, some of them rather neglected or overlooked today. Heralding the second part of the century, and most prominent because it was so early, was Feibleman’s An Introduction to the Philosophy of Charles S. Peirce (1946). Closely following were Thomas A. Goudge’s The Thought of C. S. Peirce (1950) and Walter B. Gallie’s paperback, Peirce and Pragmatism (1952). All three consider Peirce’s theory of signs in relation to formal logic. Probably Gallie, in his Chapter 5, is the closest of the three to providing an account of Peirce’s general semiotic – as opposed to a restricted discussion of signs in formal logic – that can be recognized as consonant with the endeavour of contemporary semiotics.

Peirce in Contemporary Semiotics

35

Yet, more important for semiotics than these books in the 1950s were the works of Peirce himself that became available. Under the editorship of Irwin C. Lieb, Peirce’s side of the correspondence with Lady Welby became available in 1953. Two of these letters were reprinted in the eighth volume of the Collected Papers in 1958. Both sides of the correspondence were not to become available in the public sphere until 1977, in Charles Hardwick’s volume, Semiotics and Significs. Significantly, two philosophers assembled very useful anthologies of Peirce’s writings. Justus Buchler’s The Philosophy of Peirce: Selected Writings was originally published by Routledge and Kegan Paul in 1940, but re-published as a paperback entitled Philosophical Writings of Peirce in 1955. It contained a chapter entitled ‘Logic as semiotic: the theory of signs’, culled from CP 2.227–9, 2.274–302, 2.243– 65, 2.304 and 2.305–6, the last two of which comprised Peirce’s entries on ‘Sign’ and ‘Index’ for Baldwin’s Dictionary of Philosophy and Psychology. Philip Wiener’s collection, Values in a Universe of Chance, was published in 1958, the same year as Burks’ Volumes VII–VIII of the Collected Papers. It contained an excellent range of Peirce’s writings, concluding with an edited selection of the letters to Lady Welby which included those of 12 October 1904 and 23 December 1908. So, at this time, the key statements on sign theory by Peirce were available and, for those with a will to study them, were probably quite startling. For those linguists familiar with Saussure before the first translation of his Cours into English in 1959, one can only imagine their response when reading at the end of Wiener’s volume (1958: 407) that Peirce had envisaged 59,049 classes of signs (CP 8.343).

Trichotomizing and reducing the typology of signs One of the leading figures in the history of semiotics who knew Saussure’s Cours well, soon after it was ‘exported’ to Russia in the early 1920s, and who had already cultivated an enduring fascination with Peirce, was Roman Jakobson. It is clear by the time of his residence in the United States that Jakobson was immersed in Peirce’s writings and saw Peircean semiotics as a long project inaugurated by the essay ‘On a New List of Categories’ (1867; CP 1.545–59). Jakobson writes ([1975] 1987: 441), It is notable that, throughout the thinker’s whole life, the conception which underlies his continual efforts to establish a science of signs gained in depth and in breadth, and simultaneously remained firm and unified. As for the ‘semiotic’, ‘semeiotic’ or ‘semeotic’ it only surfaces in Peirce’s manuscripts at the turn of the

36

Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Peircean Semiotics century; it is at this time that the theory ‘of the essential nature and fundamental varieties of possible semiosis’ captures the attention of this great researcher. 1.444; v. 488

Moreover, Jakobson makes clear that Peirce’s work should be seen as being concerned with the ‘whole multiplicity of significative phenomena’ (1987 [1975]: 442] rather than Jakobson’s main area of expertise, language. So, Jakobson was not blinkered by his concerns in linguistics and by no means a novice in Peirce studies. As an influence on the development of semiotics, it is difficult to overestimate Jakobson’s work. His profile was sufficiently prominent that numerous accounts of semiotics which were to be produced in anglophone academia in the 1970s essentially refracted sign study through a – some might say ‘crude’ – Jakobsonian lens (for example, Hawkes 1977, Coward and Ellis 1978). Certainly, Jakobson seems to be the source for some simplification of the extent of Peirce’s classes of signs. Throughout the 1950s and early 1960s he referred to Peirce and Peircean takes on the sign. For example, in his seminal contribution to the Style in Language conference and subsequent book, Jakobson (1960) makes the indexical sign pivotal. In some ways, he provided a bridge between the Saussurean and the Peircean traditions of sign theory. This was not necessarily helpful, since there were ways in which the two traditions were incompatible. However, in one of his most influential essays, ‘Quest for the Essence of Language’ (1965), Jakobson introduced a useful retrospective Latinization of the components of a dyadic conception of the sign. By no means taken up universally, his coining of ‘signum comprising both signans and signatum’ (1965: 22), denoting a train of thought articulated after the Stoics, promised to cut through some of the terminological chaos that has been attendant on so many formulations in different areas of semiotics regarding sign-vehicles, objects and referents. Many of the arguments that preoccupied theorists in the wake of Saussure arose from the problematic of taking the signans/signatum distinction as the basis of signhood and focusing on the linguistic sign as the paradigm case of semiosis. Predicated on a triadic theory of the sign, Peirce’s approach, especially as revealed in the 1950s, represented an epochal departure in sign study – even if there is a precursor of triadism in John Poinsot during the period of late Latin philosophy. The letters to Lady Welby, on top of the discussions on speculative grammar, presented a trichotomy consisting of a Sign (or ‘Representamen’); an Object (that which it refers to – either in the mind or in the world); and, the most difficult of the three, an Interpretant. The naming of the latter clearly indicates a

Peirce in Contemporary Semiotics

37

desire for distinction from an ‘interpreter’ which, in other sign theories, would be an entity or agency outside the sign as a whole. This is the basic difference Peirce’s semiotics bears in relation to the Saussurean sign (see Jakobson [1975] 1987: 443). Plus, the complexity is multiplied by another layer in which each component of the sign can map onto one of the three categories of phenomena: so, the Sign/ Representamen is Firstness, the Object is Secondness and the Interpretant is Thirdness (CP 2.228; on Peirce’s categories, see, especially, the Introduction and Chapter 10, this volume). The Interpretant, then, is arguably the touchstone of Peircean semiotics in its distinction from other sign theories. One might have thought that Jakobson would have amplified this issue. Yet, he writes in ‘Quest for the Essence of Language’ (1965: 23) that the interpretant fits into a scheme of signum: ‘Peirce likewise makes a clear-cut distinction between the “material qualities”, the signans of any sign, and its “immediate interpretant”, that is the signatum’. Even so, in Peircean semiotics, the Interpretant is that which the sign produces, its ‘significate effect’ (CP 5.475): it is usually another sign and is usually – but not always – located in the mind. An Interpretant’s most important role is in the contribution to a further triad in which it becomes the Sign or Representamen, with a subsequent Object and another Interpretant which, in turn, fulfils the same role (potentially ad infinitum). This is the process of semiosis, the continual production of meaning through one sign triad leading to another by means of the invocation of new interpretants. The process was beginning to be recognized as an important semiotic phenomenon in the 1950s. Gallie (1952: 120) gives a preliminary example of it by stating that an individual, A, might point at the floor whereupon companion, B, would interpret by looking in that direction, to be followed by C who asks ‘What are you looking at?’ One original sign from A therefore gives rise to two further signs from B and C which have taken a component (the Interpretant) from the signs that precede them.

Table 1.1 The three trichotomies of 1903 Category Respect Sign Sign-Object Sign-Interpretant

Firstness

Secondness

Thirdness

qualisign icon rheme

sinsign index dicisign

legisign symbol argument

38

Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Peircean Semiotics

Moreover, with the mapping of signs in their forms (how they are composed as Firstnesses, Secondnesses and Thirdnesses) and the categories to which they relate in the Universe (again, Firstnesses, Secondnesses and Thirdnesses), Peirce came up with the designations – in trichotomies – for classes of signs as in MS339 (Figure 1.1). There can be no mistaking that there are three sets of three signs here. Yet, Jakobson (1965: 23–24) states only that: Signs (or representamena in Peirce’s nomenclature) offer three basic varieties of semiosis, three distinct, ‘representative qualities’ based on different relationships between the signans and the signatum. This difference enables him to discern three cardinal types of signs. 1) Icon acts chiefly by factual similarity between its signans and signatum, e.g., between the picture of an animal and the animal pictured; the former stands for the latter ‘merely because it resembles it.’ 2) Index acts chiefly by factual, existential contiguity between its signans and signatum, and ‘psychologically, the action of indices depends upon association by contiguity;’ e.g., smoke is an index of a fire, and the proverbial knowledge that ‘where there is smoke, there is fire’ permits any interpreter of smoke to infer the existence of fire irrespective of whether or not the fire was lighted intentionally in order to attract someone’s attention; Robinson Crusoe found an index: its signans was a footprint in the sand, and the inferred signatum, the presence of some human creature on his island; the acceleration of pulse as a probable symptom of fever is, in Peirce’s view, an index, and in such cases his semiotic actually merges with the medical inquiry into the symptoms of diseases which is labeled semeiotics, semeiology or symptomatology. 3) Symbol acts chiefly by imputed, learned contiguity between signans and signatum. This connection ‘consists in its being a rule’ and does not depend on the presence or absence of any similarity or physical contiguity. The knowledge of this conventional rule is obligatory for the interpreter of any given symbol, and solely and simply because of this rule the sign will be actually interpreted. Originally the word symbol was used in a similar sense also by Saussure and his disciples, yet later he objected to this term because it traditionally involves some natural bond between the signans and signatum (e.g., the symbol of justice, a pair of scales), and in his notes the conventional signs pertaining to a conventional system were tentatively labelled seme, while Peirce had selected the term seme for a special, quite different purpose. It suffices to confront Peirce’s use of the term symbol with the various meanings of symbolism to perceive the danger of annoying ambiguities; but the lack of a better substitute compels us for the time being to preserve the term introduced by Peirce.

Peirce in Contemporary Semiotics

39

Following this long quote, it is important to stress that Jakobson did not leave these three sign types hanging as distinct, mechanical entities. A few pages later (1965: 26) he insists on ‘Peirce’s concern with different ranks of coassistance of the three functions in all three types of signs’ whereby the iconic, indexical and symbolic aspects of signs are blended in one another. Yet, his main concern is with the symbol (1965: 36–37) and, in the focus of the essay ‘Quest for the Essence of Language’, there is no mention of 10, 66 or 59,049 sign types. In light of this omission and in light of Jakobson’s influence, it should not be too surprising to find that the icon-index-symbol trichotomy became standard fare in speaking of semiotics in the kind of second-string fashion (i.e. with semiotics as a fashionable ‘approach’ to supplement the main concern of established disciplines) common in the 1970s and 1980s. This was compounded by the fact that the dominant tradition in semiotics seemed to be Saussurean semiology, concerned exclusively with language, cultural artefacts and resolutely glottocentric in bearing. As such, Peircean semiotics was merely an adjunct to semiology insofar as it was able to contribute to or complement any semiological principles that had already been learned. The situation was exacerbated, of course, by the fact that Peirce’s writings were so dispersed, so numerous, so difficult and, even in the Collected Papers, arranged in a way that was not conducive to understanding the development of his semiotics or to fathoming in general. It is for this reason that the shadow of Jakobson, a supreme communicator, lurks behind many a subsequent account of Peircean semiotics until well after his death in 1982. One of the earliest English examples of such a bias appears in Peter Wollen’s Signs and Meaning in the Cinema (1969), a volume whose influence is evident in its appearance, most recently, in a fifth edition. The presentation of Peirce is markedly Jakobsonian; indeed, for Winston and Tsang (2009: 459), ‘the Peirce he [Wollen] brought into play was a rather limited and formalist thinker’. Wollen is sufficiently circumspect to mention the blending proclivity of icon/ index/symbol; yet there is no mention of other kinds of signs. Furthermore, the discussion of semiotics is in the context of Saussure and semiology (the word used by Wollen throughout, particularly in Chapter 3). So, an icon is a sign where ‘the relationship between signifier and signified is not arbitrary but is one of resemblances or likeness’ (1969: 102); an index features an ‘existential bond’ between itself and an object; and ‘The third category of sign, the symbol, corresponds to Saussure’s arbitrary sign’ (1969: 103). All of which indicate for Wollen that ‘Peirce’s categories [not Firstness, Secondness, Thirdness, but this trichotomy of signs] are the foundation for any advance in semiology [sic]’ (1969: 103).

40

Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Peircean Semiotics

A one-off inflection of the Jakobsonian perspective on Peirce’s second trichotomy is no doubt tolerable. However, one example leads to another. In the same UK tradition that spawned Wollen’s book, Hawkes takes up the Jakobsonian baton. He begins by noting Jakobson’s signans/signatum coining and states that it ‘does not essentially differ from the distinction between signifier and signified recorded by Saussure’ (1977: 102) and then proceeds to insist that Peirce ‘proposed a complex classification of signs precisely in terms of the different relationship each manifested between signans and signatum’ (1977: 102). Hawkes does, at least, mention that Peirce identified nine signs that can be combined to make ten types, as in CP 2.264; but this is just an hors d’oeuvre prior to announcing that, ‘According to Peirce, the framework for the existence of knowledge derives from the assertion of propositions through the second “triad” of signs: icon, index and symbol’ whose importance requires a closer look (1977: 104–105). Five years later, in Fiske’s Introduction to Communication Studies (1982), which is still in print, in a third edition featuring extra editorial paraphernalia, Peirce’s second trichotomy appeared in further isolation: ‘Peirce produced three categories of sign, each of which showed a different relationship between the sign and its object, or that to which it refers’ (Fiske 1982: 46). He adds: ‘What Saussure terms iconic and arbitrary relations between signifier and signified correspond precisely to Peirce’s icons and symbols’ (1982: 46). Fiske (1982: 48), like Hawkes (1977: 106), then goes on to show how iconicity, indexicality and symbolicity can blend in the example of a traffic sign. In a book published at the same time and used on the same undergraduate courses as the volume by Fiske, ‘Indexical, iconic and symbolic signs’ get their own section in a chapter on ‘Semiotics and Ideology’ (Dyer 1982). There is absolutely no mention of Peirce; iconic, indexical and symbolic signs are simply discussed in terms of how they enact relations between ‘signifier and signified’ (Dyer 1982: 99). Typically, in the writing of this time and this type on semiotics, there is a complete acceptance of ‘signifier’ and ‘signified’ as the accepted wisdom and no sense given that they are problematic both as concepts and translations (see Cobley 2006a). More examples could be added to the roll-call of the quasi-Jakobsonian version of Peircean semiotics. The point, though, is not to chide this current for its deficiencies of scholarly virtue. Semiotics, for these writers, was just a matter of ‘theory’ or ‘approach’ – a means to write about the main concern: literature, media, culture, ideology and so forth. There is no sense in such discussions of semiotics that studying Peirce could lead to fundamental insights into modes of cognition, forms of reasoning and the human’s place in the cosmos. Instead, there is more of a concern with how communication might involve recurrent

Peirce in Contemporary Semiotics

41

codes or tropes that are, to a greater or lesser extent, obfuscatory, preventing humans from escaping ideology and the polis and, certainly, preventing them from gaining access to ‘reality’. The thought, in respect to Peirce, of one of the foremost semioticians is merely illustrative in this context.

Grappling with the invariant In the Introduction to one of the landmark treatises in semiotics, Umberto Eco (1976: 16) announces that the fourth chapter of the book ‘will be devoted to a discussion of the very notion of the “typology of signs”: starting from Peirce’s trichotomy (symbols, indices and icons), I shall show to what degree these categories cover both a more segmentable field of signfunctions and an articulated range of ‘ “sign producing” operations, giving rise to a more comprehensive n-chotomy of various modes of sign production’.

In some ways, Eco was the scholar that Peirce’s works had been waiting for. He was a medievalist, steeped in the scholastic tradition to which Peirce was one of the main heirs. Eco was also a scholar committed to sign theory: semiotics was at the core of all his work on popular culture, in journalism, in his fiction and in his cultural activities. A Theory of Semiotics was self-consciously a treatise on the current state of knowledge regarding how signification works. As such, it was a successor, or even superseded, The Meaning of Meaning (Ogden and Richards 1923) and Foundations of the Theory of Signs (Morris 1938). Eco invokes the latter immediately (1976: 16), then in passing later; the former is discussed in relation to triangles of signification on pp.  59–60. More central is Peirce, particularly the role of the interpretant, the second trichotomy, abduction and, running through the book’s argumentation, the type/token distinction. A Theory of Semiotics evinces a profound engagement with the Collected Papers, including an appreciation of the ‘masterful little treatise on Existential Graphs’ (1976: 197). Notably, Eco furthers the Jakobsonian focus on icon/index/symbol, although he does not carry out this action in the kind of unknowing way that has been referenced above. His discussion of icon/index/symbol proceeds under the acknowledgment that it is ‘perhaps, the most popular of Peirce’s trichotomy’ (1976: 178). This is contextualized by the immediate discussion of qualisigns, sinsigns and legisigns (1976: 179). In the chapter devoted to ‘Theory of sign production’, Eco notes (1976: 217) the ‘fallacy’ of sign typology and refers to sign ‘functions’, instead. He adds (1976: 303 n.19) the following note:

42

Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Peircean Semiotics To the extent that Peirce established part of his program of a typology of signs (only 10 types on the programmed 66) every sign appears as a bundle of different categories of signs. There is not an iconic sign as such, but at most an Iconic Sinsign which at the same time is a Rheme and a Qualisign, or an Iconic Rhematic Legisign (2.254). Nevertheless the classification was still possible for, according to Peirce, the different trichotomies characterized the signs from different points of view and signs were not only precise grammatical units but also phrases, entire texts, books. Thus the partial success of the Peircian endeavor (along with his almost complete failure) tells us that if one wants to draw a typology of signs one must, first of all, renounce the straightforward identification of a sign with a ‘grammatical’ unit, therefore extending the definition of sign to every kind of sign-function.

This is a very telling passage. It represents a considerable leap in sophistication over the conceptualization of the trichotomy’s blending propensity, which other commentators, often simplifying Peirce’s semiotics, were trying to grasp. It also makes clear the distinction of the conceptualization of sign types and sign functions. It inculcates icon/index/symbol into the typology of ten signs; and, while so doing, it notes that Peirce used the singular ‘sign’ only as a heuristic device in theoretical writing – frequently it is clear that Peirce was concerned with the singular sign, strictly, as a way to conceive a collection of signs. The last point is an important one for Eco, but it takes A Theory of Semiotics in a very specific direction as far as the development of Peircean semiotics is concerned. Some of the key points of what a Peircean semiotics would be fortytwo years later are definitely apparent in Eco’s treatise. He is clear from the outset that ‘the “subjects” of Peirce’s “semiosis” are not human subjects but rather three abstract semiotic entities, the dialectic between which is not affected by concrete communicative behaviour’ (1976: 17). In this way, Eco shows how Peirce’s theory avoids a psychologistic perspective on sign use. More generally, Eco interprets Peirce’s semiotics as ‘non-anthropomorphic’, acknowledging that this designation ‘could also fit Saussure’s proposal; but Peirce’s definition offers us something more. It does not demand, as part of a sign’s definition, the qualities of being intentionally emitted and artificially produced’ (1976: 15). Indeed, the third element of Peirce’s sign guarantees the latitude in understanding signs beyond their mooring in communicational processes that Eco lauds. He writes (1976: 68; emphasis in the original), ‘The interpretant is not the interpreter (even if a confusion of this type occasionally arises in Peirce). The interpretant is that which guarantees the validity of the sign, even in the absence of the interpreter’. What Eco is pointing out is that the idea of signs merely as instruments in

Peirce in Contemporary Semiotics

43

full communication is woefully inadequate to any pursuit of semiotics after Peirce. Yet, A Theory of Semiotics is very much a work that tries to fuse knowledge in semiotics with knowledge in communication theory (see Cobley 2013). In part, the fusion is negotiated through a courtship of Peirce’s semiotics and the more invariant features of the sign in semiology after Saussure. As a whole, the book is devoted to the discussion of invariant signification and even has a long chapter on ‘Theory of Codes’. Peirce’s sign is, at one stage, even discussed in terms of ‘overcoding’ (1976: 133) and ‘undercoding’ (1976: 135–136). As has been mentioned, Eco sometimes couches the notion of code in Peirce’s terms of ‘type’ and ‘token’, a common approach to defining code (Ogden and Richards 1923: 280–281; Harris 1996: 10) which sadly overlooks Peirce’s third term in that distinction, the ‘tone’ (CP 5.437; Cobley 2017). Mainly, though, Eco (1976: 36–37) gives a strong definition of coding as composed of rules that can incorporate looser definitions of codes as general practices, guidelines or fairly weak constraints on meaning. Peirce’s conviction that the work of the interpretant gives rise to further signs seems somewhat at odds with Eco’s emphasis on coding which, by definition, involves invariant meaning rather than interpretation. Of course, such a view of fully invariant coding is only really applicable to machines and less so to most human practice. So, in a synthesis of Saussurean and Peircean perspectives Eco stresses the way in which signs refer to other signs or ‘cultural units’: ‘Every attempt to establish what the referent of a sign is forces us to define the referent in terms of an abstract entity which moreover is only a cultural convention’ (1976: 66; emphasis in the original). Slightly side-stepping full invariance, while retaining the Peircean idea of ‘sign’ as applicable strings of signs, the ‘meaning’ of a term for Eco can only ever be a ‘cultural unit’ (1976: 67) or, at most, a psychological one. Eco thus casts semiotics as a ‘substitute for cultural anthropology’ (1976: 27), effectively underplaying all the opportunities that Peirce’s semiotics offered, and which Eco had noted, for a more comprehensive, encompassing science of signs throughout all realms in the universe. The inflection of Peirce in A Theory of Semiotics, as part of a general semiotic enterprise which featured Barthes, Saussure and Hjelmslev, as well as the notions of ‘expression’, ‘content’, ‘denotation’, ‘connotation’ and ‘referent’, perhaps reflected an ambitious, but premature, attempt at holism. In the spirit of cooperation fostered by the formation of the IASS in 1969, in which Eco was involved, as well as the subsequent Congress of the IASS in Milan (1974), Eco (1979: v) had stated the aim ‘to discuss the state of the discipline but also 1) the right of the discipline to exist, 2) its history, and 3) the possibility of providing the discipline with a

44

Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Peircean Semiotics

unified methodology and a unified objective’. Yet, there were two further large theoretical and historical reasons for the Peirce of Eco to appear in the way he did in the 1970s. The first of these stems from Eco’s ongoing concern with the practice of interpretation.Witnessing the excesses of deconstruction and poststructuralism, particularly their sometimes relativist, Humpty Dumpty approach to text interpretation, Eco was alert to the need for credible interpretations of semiosis. He sought to rein in the unruliness that ‘unlimited semiosis’ engendered by the interpretant might seem to warrant. In his 1990 essay on ‘Unlimited Semiosis and Drift: Pragmaticism vs. “Pragmatism”’ he stated his position with supreme force and clarity, showing that the growth of signs that Peirce had analysed so extensively, differed almost immeasurably from the ‘anything goes’ overinterpretation of some contemporary textual exegeses. The second large historical and theoretical reason for Eco’s ‘invariant’ Peirce arises from an ‘incontinence’ in general semiotics of the period. Towards the end of his life, Eco stated quite bluntly in an interview that he and his fellow semioticians in the 1960s and 1970s had ‘pissed code’ (Kull and Velmezova 2016). That is, they were unable to restrain their euphoric dream of codifying all phenomena, making the subject to invariant readings. Nonetheless, Eco’s Peircean semiotics should not be consigned to a historical conjuncture. The issue of interpretation in a Peircean frame was not to be curtailed. Furthermore, the reach of Peirce’s sign beyond human communication and the a-personalism of the interpretant, both of which exercised Eco in 1975– 1976, were to be enduring matters in Peircean semiotics.

‘Semeiotic’ and the ‘sop to Cerberus’ meet pragmaticism Two contemporary indications that these were enduring matters are offered in quite different overviews of Peirce’s work that are very much germane to the development of semiotics. The first is associated with Max Fisch; the second with Joseph Ransdell – both of whom were among the foremost Peirce scholars of their time. Fisch’s article, from 1978, consisted of a survey of the fortunes of Peirce’s semiotics in a fashion that has partly provided the model for this chapter. It mentions first what Fisch considers to be the key terms of Peirce’s semiotics, the Latin derivatives, ‘representation, sign, object, and interpretant’, ‘semiosis’ and, less familiar,‘semiosy’ ([1978] 1986: 321). Indeed, Fisch articulated and promoted, in this essay and elsewhere, the argument that Peirce’s preferred name for his sign theory was ‘semeiotic’, an argument that John Deely (2006: 74–75) later put to the test and found wanting.

Peirce in Contemporary Semiotics

45

For Fisch, although Peirce was a logician, it was important to note that his semiotics was first sketched on 14 May 1867 in ‘On a New List of Categories’. There, three kinds of representations – likenesses (later: icons), indices, and symbols – mapped onto a trivium of conceivable sciences – formal grammar, logic, and formal rhetoric in respect to a general division of symbols, common to all three sciences – terms, propositions and arguments and three kinds of argument associated with the representations: hypothesis (likenesses), induction (index), deduction (symbol) ([1978] 1986: 324). This framework, reports Fisch ([1978] 1986: 326), arose from lectures which Peirce was invited to give at Harvard in 1865 and later, in 1866, at the Lowell Institute, expressly on the ‘logic of science’. So, while Fisch sees Peirce’s study of logic and mathematics as paramount, he nevertheless insists that it takes place within the general theory of signs ([1978] 1986: 337). Indeed, Fisch goes all the way back to ‘Some Consequences of Four Incapacities’, published in the Journal of Speculative Philosophy in 1868, to exemplify Peirce’s contention from an early stage (5.253) that ‘all thought is in signs’ ([1978] 1986: 325). In discussing Peirce’s later definition of signs, Fisch refers to the 23 December 1908 letter to Lady Welby. Famously, Peirce writes: I define a Sign as anything which is so determined by something else, called its Object, and so determines an effect upon a person, which effect I call its Interpretant, that the latter is thereby mediately determined by the former. My insertion of ‘upon a person’ is a sop to Cerberus, because I despair of making my own broader conception understood. SS: 80–81

Fisch asks ([1978] 1986: 343) ‘What, then, was the sop to Cerberus?’ The answer that he gives implies that Peirce uses ‘upon a person’ as a figure of speech; but, in doing so, really did not wish to lapse into psychological discourse or psychologism. This is no doubt true in some measure: Peirce’s semiotics repeatedly veers away from explanations based on the psychology of people and its whole raison d’être is ‘logic as semiotic’, rather than ‘psychology as semiotic’. What Fisch misses here, more so than Eco, is the opportunity to identify the mention of the sop as an indication that Peirce, rather, did not wish to lapse into a general anthropocentrism. The consequences of this point for Peirce’s semiotics will be revisited, below. Meanwhile, Ransdell’s overview of Peirce was published just one year before that of Fisch. It differs from the later of the two essays in that Ransdell is much less reticent about foregrounding semiotics in Peirce’s career. He sees Peirce’s

46

Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Peircean Semiotics

project as an attempt to bring ‘communication, meaning and inference into a genuine theoretical unity’ ([1977] 1997: 157) – an aspiration not dissimilar from that of Eco (1976). Making his position clear from the outset, Ransdell says of Peirce ‘a good ninety percent (if not more) of his prodigious philosophical output is directly concerned with semiotic’ ([1977] 1997: 158). What goes with this, for Ransdell – and it is certainly where he concurs with Fisch – is the requirement of approaching Peirce’s semiotics by understanding ‘something of the philosophical ideas at its basis’ ([1977] 1997: 159). At a moment when students in subjects amenable to semiotics were being taught that Peirce provided a supplement to Saussure in his icon/index/symbol trichotomy, Ransdell’s intervention was timely, even if its consequences were demanding. Most importantly, Ransdell anticipated in the 1970s where Peirce would lead in semiotics nearly fifty years later. In particular, Ransdell ([1977] 1997: 160) emphasized Peirce’s philosophy of mind: Prima facie it may sound absurd to suppose that a conception of mind derived from an analysis of human truth-seeking will have fruitful application to such sub-human entities as, let us say, amoebas or slime molds, or to such global processes as evolution. That it should have at least some application to human behavior and to the products of human art is reasonable enough in view of the fact that it was originally derived from a conception of a human activity. And of course it is not difficult to see how such a conception might have application to artificial intelligences, since they are usually constructed on an anthropomorphic basis to begin with. But the far wider application indicated may initially seem dubious indeed. In fact, it is not so implausible as it may at first seem, in view of the way Peirce construes truth.

Ransdell notes that, thus far, Peirce’s work has been insufficiently developed and predicts greater areas of application for his semiotics as ‘mind’ is replaced by ‘semiosis’ and ‘thought’ by ‘sign’, ‘interpretant’, ‘symbol’ and so on, all of which avoid what Ransdell calls ‘mentalism’ ([1977] 1997: 161). Ransdell’s observations on the symbol bear revisiting in light of what contemporaries were assuming in regard to its correspondence with the Saussurean linguistic sign. He points out that it is often forgotten that linguistic signs will partake of indexical and iconic functions (the typical ‘blending’ in the trichotomy); he also argues that the ‘conventionality’ which is their putatively dominant characteristic is by no means straightforward. Indeed, the term ‘conventionality’ is quite obscure because there is little agreement about how it is constituted. The issue is certainly not pursued by Peirce. Symbols, for him, are not limited to conventional signs; rather, they depend on a habit or natural disposition (Ransdell [1977] 1997:

Peirce in Contemporary Semiotics

47

174). Furthermore, this is not a matter of an opposition between ‘nature’ and ‘convention’, as some semioticians would have it. Such an opposition constitutes the crux of early Barthesian semiology, for example, where societal ‘mythologies’ consist of conventional signs masquerading as ‘natural’ ones (Cobley 2015). Yet, as Ransdell points out, there are natural symbols as well as conventional ones. The symbol, more precisely, should be defined as deriving ‘no value as a sign from anything but the fact that it will be interpreted in a certain regular way’ and ‘every given symbolic interpretation is, qua symbolic sign, hostage in its meaning to interpretation subsequent to it – a potentially infinite process which can only be conceptualized by means of a general rule’ ([1977] 1997: 174–175). In this way, the symbol is a prime example of the future determining the past: that is, the interpretation accruing to a symbol depends to some extent on how that interpretation might change in the future. The point that Ransdell makes in 1977 lays out the agenda for current ‘interpretative’ (as opposed to ‘code’) semiotics. He writes ([1977] 1997: 174–175), Insofar as our thoughts are symbolic in character (as linguistic thoughts largely are), they are what they are because of what will be made of them. It is thus in the creative reception of thought that its meaning lies. It is true that we cannot interpret a symbolic thought to mean just anything we want it to mean, but the reason for this does not lie where it is commonly thought to lie: in the signs themselves – as if words have intrinsic semantic limits quite apart from all understanding of them – or in a private Cartesian ego which invests them with meaning through an act of will. When we de-limit a thought – give it a definite semantic contour – by our interpretation of it, the limit upon us in doing this can only lie somehow in the fact that our interpretation is in its turn a thought which will get its semantic identity through some subsequent delimitation, and so on ad infinitum. The limits of symbolic meaning thus really lie in the generosity of future interpretation, and if we wish to maximize meaning we are obliged to be as generous in our interpretations as is feasible in view of the generosity which we can expect from our subsequent interpreters. It is really only the latter which limits us.

The ‘moral’ that Ransdell takes from Peirce’s theory of symbolic communication is that it is in human inclinations to critically cultivate the growth of meaning, dependant on the nurturing acts of fellow interpreters in the future, that humans themselves will grow. One could add two points to this observation. First, the growing of signs that Ransdell envisages is consonant with what the Peirce of biosemiotics takes as axiomatic in the functioning of the human Umwelt (see ‘A matter of fact – natural signs and symbols’, below). Second, the cultivation of

48

Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Peircean Semiotics

symbols as a critical projection of future meaning cannot be an induction – a brute, indexical relation in the present. Nor can it immediately become an induction – a relation that must obtain in the future. Rather, interpretation must first be hypothetical: an ‘abduction’ in Peirce’s semiotic terminology.

Abduction and interpretation Thomas A. Sebeok constantly kept Peirce on the agenda of semiotics. Even as a linguist steeped in the technicalities of language teaching and heavily influenced by Jakobson, as he was early in his career, Sebeok was also the student of Morris and therefore acquainted with Peirce from a tender age. Sebeok’s championing of Peirce at all stages amounted to a seizing of the opportunity, missed by Eco, Fisch and so many others, to fulfil Peirce’s vision of an encompassing science of signs throughout all realms in the universe. So, Peirce is represented fairly comprehensively in Sebeok’s work from the late 1960s onwards, with Fisch ([1978] 1986: 346) pronouncing him ‘the most productive and influential semeiotician of the present day’. Looking back from the vantage point of the present, it is clear that Peirce’s role in Sebeok’s oeuvre is certainly momentous, but only as part of a broad, ambitious and thoroughly eclectic semiotic project that matched, if not exceeded, Peirce’s own. However, Sebeok was responsible for a bout of pivotal Peircean scholarship focusing on abduction. In two volumes – one on Peirce and Sherlock Holmes co-written with Umiker-Sebeok, You Know My Method (1980) and a volume co-edited with Eco, The Sign of Three (1983) – Sebeok completely re-draws the common understanding of what is involved in knowledge through observation. Both books are concerned with ‘classical’ detection in fiction and, in one case in particular, detection in real life. For the discussion of fiction, Sebeok shows that the logic of the archetypical detectives, Pierre-Auguste Dupin (created by Edgar Allan Poe) and Sherlock Holmes (created by Arthur Conan Doyle), consists not in ‘deduction’ as a working through of signs. Instead, it proceeds from ‘abduction’ or, put another way, ‘retroduction’, ‘hypothesis’ and ‘conjecture’ upon signs. The inferences of the classic detective are revealed to be informed ‘guesses’. A fictional detective is usually presented with an event – a case – without knowing what precipitated it; the detective’s task, then, is to not only divine the precipitating factor(s) that have brought about the current configuration of signs but also to solve the case by using the signs to apprehend the criminal. The approach of Dupin and Holmes to such cases appears to be deductive: it presents

Peirce in Contemporary Semiotics

49

the solution that, following logical consideration of the signs, must be correct. After all, as Holmes says to Watson as early in his career as Chapter 6 of The Sign of Four ‘How often have I said to you that when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth?’ The Peircean approach to such matters is more nuanced and instructively so. In the essay, ‘Deduction, Induction and Hypothesis’ which appeared in Popular Science Monthly in 1878 (also reprinted in Cohen’s 1923 Peirce collection), Peirce (CP 2.623) summarizes Aristotelian logic, using syllogisms to demonstrate different types of reasoning: Suppose I enter a room and there find a number of bags, containing different kinds of beans. On the table there is a handful of white beans; and, after some searching, I find one of the bags contains white beans only. I at once infer as a probability, or as a fair guess, that this handful was taken out of that bag. This sort of inference is called making an hypothesis. It is the inference of a case from a rule and result.

To this, Peirce (CP 2.625) adds that, hypothesis or abduction is a weak kind of argument which ‘often inclines our judgment so slightly toward its conclusion that we cannot say that we believe the latter to be true; we only surmise that it may be so. But there is no difference except one of degree between such an inference and that by which we are led to believe that we remember the occurrences of yesterday from our feeling as if we did so.’ So, abduction is altogether more tentative and risky than either induction or deduction. To demonstrate this point, Sebeok and Umiker-Sebeok discuss a hitherto little-known autobiographical essay of Peirce on abduction. In ‘Guessing’ (1929 [c. 1907]), Peirce relates an incident, and its subsequent investigation, in which his watch, chain and coat were stolen during a trip from Boston to New York on the Fall River Line steamship Bristol. When he discovered the crime, Peirce arranged for all the waiters on the ship to be lined in a row for his inspection. During the inspection he was visited with a sudden conviction that one of the men in particular was the culprit and, despite the subsequent assignment of a Pinkerton detective to the case and the pursuit of other suspects, Peirce was proved right in his suspicions. As Sebeok and Umiker-Sebeok show, Peirce’s abduction was a pure guess, a response to a hunch. It seemed to come from nowhere and was probably derived unconsciously rather than the consciously. Yet, quoting Peirce, they note that the chief elements of such abduction are not only ‘its groundlessness [and] its ubiquity’ but also its ‘trustworthiness’ (1980: 23). Eco (1976: 132), too, notes that ‘abduction seems to be a free movement of the

50

Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Peircean Semiotics

imagination, more endowed with emotion (more similar to a vague intuition) than a normal decoding act’. The puzzle of the combination of ‘wild’ interpretation and ‘trustworthy’ interpretation leads Sebeok and Umiker-Sebeok to resurrect the scholastic definition later utilized by Peirce. The latter had argued that there are broadly two modes of knowledge in use in detection: logica utens and logica docens. The first logic is broadly associated with the abductive impulse in that it is a logic-in-use on a quotidian basis; it has an awareness of the need for a logical system but is not an informed logic deriving from years of scientific thinking, experience and observation. Such an informed logic, on the other hand – common to physicians and other expert witnesses, including fictional detectives – is the second mode: logica docens (CP 2.204; MS 692). Sebeok and Umiker-Sebeok note that Watson in the Holmes canon enacts logica docens in respect of his medical practice but is inept in transferring this method to the detection of crime; Holmes, on the other hand, practices the methods of medicine in general, thus ensuring that ‘an element of art and magic is blended into the logic of scientific discovery’ (Sebeok and Umiker-Sebeok 1980: 66). As Ransdell ([1977] 1997: 165) notes, logica docens entails a logic which is teachable and that Peirce believed should be humans’ ‘universal logic-in-use’ as opposed to the more ‘instinctive’ logic-in-use of logica utens. The latter, Ransdell continues, works in primitive and simple life; but it needs theoretical development in the more complicated lives of contemporary humans. ‘But’, he adds ([1977] 1997: 165), this theoretically developed logic – the result of the logician’s and scientist’s work – is or should be rooted firmly in the instinctive logic-in-use. In other words, the logician does not – or rather should not – be attempting to invent a general method for the pursuit of truth but should instead be discovering and developing that method which he and everyone else already uses, and which human beings always have used and indeed always will use, even if theoretical logic and science should cease to exist.

Throughout his work, Sebeok makes reference to the signs that medics have been able to detect through symptoms on the patient’s body as well as nonverbal and verbal references to such symptoms from the patient to the doctor. Sebeok and Danesi (2000: 7) note that the appearance of the inside of an atom was initially ‘abducted’ by Ernest Rutherford a long time before it could be verified. These are examples of what might be called ‘extrapolating’ from signs – with some success. However, as has been noted, Eco (1976: 133–137) considers abduction as a component of interpretation to be prone to ‘overcoding’, ‘undercoding’ and

Peirce in Contemporary Semiotics

51

requiring ‘discoursive [sic] competence’. What this demonstrates is that, while abduction will always be a way of thinking about signs and is unexpectedly integral to logic, it nevertheless requires circumspection. Peirce put the matter considerably more bluntly: ‘no blight can so surely arrest all intellectual growth as the blight of cocksureness; and ninety-nine out of every hundred good heads are reduced to impotence by that malady – of whose inroads they are most strangely unaware!’ (CP1.13, c. 1897) This circumspection is what is known as the doctrine of fallibilism and it bears directly on the action and interpretation of signs. Before examining fallibilism in Peircean semiotics, though, it is necessary to gain some clarity about what signs are taken to be doing.

What do signs do? Customarily, it is assumed that signs do something. This is inherent even in those cases when signs fail to do something. In Peirce’s semiotics, what a sign does is to ‘stand for’ something (CP 1.339, 1.538, 2.228, 2.274, 2.305, 2.436, 2.683 etc. throughout the Collected Papers). Similarly, although it is not a term commonly used by semioticians, Winfried Nöth (2011: 446), notes that ‘representation’ is what a sign could be seen to carry out; it is a key concept that occurs 780 times in the Collected Papers. ‘Sign’, he notes as a contrast, does not appear in the sense of semiotics, during the period of 1857 to 1866. Then, in 1867, Peirce continued to use the term ‘representation’ as the genus within which signs are one species. Thus, as Nöth points out (2011: 447), semiotics in the 1860s is, for Peirce, the general science of representation(s). Of course, representation – as a term and as an act – has a great many definitions and a great many applications in the study of human signification, particularly in studies of culture. Yet, Nöth identifies some very convincing reasons why it is important in Peircean semiotics. As has been seen, commentators on Peirce – within semiotics and sometimes as transient fellow travellers of semiotics – have fixated on the icon/index/symbol trichotomy. Undoubtedly, this is the clearest example of a familiar sign-to-object representation (crudely: resemblance/causality/conventionality). That is, a dyad. As Nöth (2011: 451) demonstrates, Peirce, however, from his earliest writings onwards, used the expression representative exclusively in a triadic sense. Even in its syntactic construction, his use of the adjective is trivalent. He says, for example: ‘By a name is usually meant something representative of an object to a mind’ (CP 3.319, 1882). In

52

Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Peircean Semiotics 1868, he states that ‘the representative function of a sign [. . .] is something which the sign is, not in itself or in a real relation to its object, but which it is to a thought’ (W 2: 225; CP 5.287). In the same manuscript, he distinguishes this triadic function from the denotative application of the sign. Only in this latter sense is the sign prescinded from its interpretant, since in its ‘the pure denotative application’ the sign is restricted to its ‘real connection’ with its object. W 2:227; CP 5.290

What is missing, of course, in denotative and connotative dyads, is the interpretant. For Nöth (2011: 452), this point also rather gives the lie to the idea, common in some quarters, that Peirce’s concept of representation pertains to the dimension of reference, whereas his concept of signification pertains to the dimension of meaning. Yet, it is not just the interpretant that has been the crux of the argument in Peirce’s semiotics. The Representamen, as a term, has also been the focus of considerable debate which Nöth cites. It is well known that Peirce ‘abandoned’ the term in July 1905, according to an unsent letter, included by Hardwick as an appendix in his volume of the Peirce-Welby correspondence, in which Peirce reverts to ‘sign’ not ‘representamen’, having ‘no need of this horrid long word’ (SS: 193). Nöth, however, finds the definition of representamen in 1902 to be crucial. He argues (2011: 463) that Peirce’s distinction of representamen and sign that developed in 1902 restricted the concept of ‘sign’ to representamens with mental interpretants while extending the concept of representamen to representations not interpreted by thoughts. By 1905, with his unsent letter to Lady Welby, the distinction was less necessary. Nöth (2011: 464) writes: With his extension of the concept of representamen in 1902 to processes in the absence of human minds, Peirce could now affirm what he had merely hypothesized in 1873, namely that the faculty for biological self-reproduction makes a sunflower a representamen.

Nöth then quotes CP 2.274, where Peirce suggests that the turning of the sunflower towards the sun, with its possibility of reproducing a sunflower, entails that ‘the sunflower would become a Representamen of the sun’. The conclusion of Nöth’s article, even without sops to Cerberus, should be clear: in the very fabric of Peirce’s sign theory is a conception which not only allows, but invites an understanding of the sign which applies to terrestrial flora as well as fauna. This, then, is what signs do in Peircean semiotics: they pertain to all life forms. Yet, there are also suggestions that signs are not just applicable to life as it blithely

Peirce in Contemporary Semiotics

53

proceeds in a Newtonian universe. One of the most ambitious Peircean semioticians, Floyd Merrell, has been concerned to extend the triadicity of Peirce’s logic to account for nothingness at one end (if semiosis was linear – which it is not) and infinity at the other. Merrell’s work consists of impressive interdisciplinarity coupled with a compulsion to communicate. It results in writing on Peirce that is both folksy and very approachable in tone, but also forbidding in its range. Perhaps disappointingly, Merrell (2001: 31) repeats the second trichotomy fallacy, qualified by noting that icon/index/symbol make up the ‘most basic classes of signs in Peirce’s menagerie’. Happily, he does add elsewhere that [I]f we really want to get a fairly good grip on Peirce’s semiotics, in addition to icons, indices and symbols, we must at the very least take in what he calls qualisigns, sinsigns and legisigns, and terms (or words), propositions (or sentences) and arguments (or texts or narratives). 2000: 37

Merrell is not afraid to add terminology, as he does here. For him, the growth of signs, through the action of the interpretant and the process of unlimited semiosis (this phrase from Eco 1976: 68, rather than Peirce) is a preoccupation of Merrell’s semiotics. So he takes Peirce’s ten signs, renumbers them and renames some of them in the following list (2000: 39–50; with Peircean originals – where deviation has occurred – in square brackets): 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10.

Qualisign Iconic sinsign Indexical sinsign Dicent sinsign Iconic legisign Rhematic indexical legisign Dicent indexical legisign Term or word [rheme] Proposition [dicisign, dicent] Argument or text or narrative [argument]

As part of the process of listing these signs, Merrell also gives one of the few accounts of them which can be used by students who are searching for applications of Peircean sign types. The account cannot be re-played here, but those looking to explain to an audience outside the Charles S. Peirce Society why the ‘decalogue’ should be studied are certainly advised to consult it directly.

54

Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Peircean Semiotics

Yet, while Merrell is adept at communicating Peirce’s sign theory, his larger concern is to extend semiotics to domains of greater complexity than general representation. In introducing the ten signs, he notes how there is a movement (as implicit in Table 2.1, above), from the top left-hand corner with qualisign, down to the bottom right-hand corner with argument. This, he points out (2000: 38), ‘does not imply a one way path from simple signs to complex signs. Rather, the path is two-way’. It is the reason he seeks to extend the triad of Peirce, such that 1,2,3 can be shown to arise from 0 (nothingness) and lead to ∞ (infinity). It takes little imagination to discern that the Peircean sign is thus being elevated to a cosmological principle. Merrell (1997: 66) opines that Peirce, a child of the nineteenth century, endowed the mind with free-wheeling evolutionary principles contingent upon his triadic dialogic spiral, beginning with ‘chance’ and ending in ‘necessity.’ But unlike Kant, he took a step toward liberating classical mechanics from its conceptual straitjacket, though he did not take the final step into the light of day subsequently made possible by relativity, quantum theory, the ‘limitative theorems’ of Godel and others, and avant-garde movements in the arts.

For all the cosmic significance he finds in the Peircean sign, Merrell is still able to ground it in something familiar. He writes (2000: 54) of 0, 1, 2, 3 . . . ∞, Just five fleshless signs and a few commas and periods. Yet it’s everything. It’s nothing and it’s everything, depending on what you bring to the equation. That venerable Newtonian equation,‘F = M × A’,‘Force equals Mass times Acceleration’, is nothing but a few signs as well. However, if in a baseball game the ball ricochets off a bat and comes flying in the direction of your forehead, you know you’d better do something about it. So you raise your gloved left hand and neatly catch the fly. You didn’t think in proper Newtonian terms. ‘The object of x grammes is travelling with y velocity which yields z momentum and will collide with a human skull with q force unless it is met with an equal and opposite force in the form of object p’. You had not time to think it. You just acted. Your body acted on the sign while your sluggish mind was dragging along behind. Your body took all the information in, and did what it had to do. In other words, the ball came out of nowhere, ‘0’, your body instinctively grasped the sign, ‘1, 2, 3, . . .’ and it performed the necessary act before you were knocked into oblivion, ‘∞’. Well, not really ‘0’ and not ‘∞’, but you know what I mean. You know what I mean in the same way that you can get up and walk to the wall in spite of Xeno’s argument that in order to do so you must transgress an infinitity of spatial increments through an infinity of temporal increments. You just know what to do and how to do it and you do it.

Peirce in Contemporary Semiotics

55

Of course, there are moments when ‘You just know what to do and how to do it and you do it’. That is typical of abductive processes and the common practices of logica utens. Yet, as mentioned earlier, this is no licence, granted by Peircean semiotics, to be cocksure.

Fallibilism: the vagueness and approximate nature of signs One of Peirce’s most well-known essays outside semiotics is ‘How to Make Our Ideas Clear’, published in Popular Science Monthly in January 1878, and available in the Collected Papers at 5.388 to 5.410. Here, Peirce criticizes the contention from logic that ideas are either clear and unmistakable or otherwise obscure. As a whole, though, Peirce finds, ideas can be very clear without necessarily being true. This is a matter which drives his concern, especially after 1878, with what he calls in the first chapter title of the Speculative Grammar, the ‘ethics of terminology’ (CP 2.219–26). The same concern is evident, of course, in Peirce’s changing of his original designations for sign types and functions as well as his use of Greek or Latin derivatives and neologisms. He writes (CP 2.223, 1903): It is good economy for philosophy to provide itself with a vocabulary so outlandish that loose thinkers shall not be tempted to borrow its words. Kant’s adjectives ‘objective’ and ‘subjective’ proved not to be barbarous enough, by half, long to retain their usefulness in philosophy, even if there had been no other objection to them. The first rule of good taste in writing is to use words whose meanings will not be misunderstood; and if a reader does not know the meaning of the words, it is infinitely better that he should know he does not know it.

He was certainly right about Kant. The distortive common sense of the objective/ subjective couplet has been so enduring that Heidegger (1978 [1946, 1947]) called for it to be completely deconstructed and it remains to be seen whether Deely’s accomplishment of that (1994, 2009a; Cobley and Stjernfelt 2016) will catch on more widely. For Peirce, however, the challenge of terminology is the challenge of signs as a whole – what interpretants do they produce and how is it possible to be confident that those interpretants lead in the direction of reality? Susan Petrilli, a major Peircean semiotician and formidable scholar of Welby inter alia (see, for example, Petrilli 2009), emphasizes the necessary vagueness of signs in Peirce’s semiotics. There is, in the interpretant, a fundamental lack of certainty. Whereas a sign conceived as a ‘code’ in the strong sense will act mechanically and with certainty, interpretation involves variability at its core

56

Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Peircean Semiotics

because a sign is for some entity (or, as in the ‘sop to Cerberus’ mentioned earlier, it has ‘an effect upon a person’). So, Petrilli notes (2015: 74) the division of the interpretant in which there is the ‘immediate interpretant’, concerning meaning as it is ordinarily and customarily used by the interpreter, and the ‘dynamical interpretant’, concerned with meaning in a given context (the ‘effect upon a person’). Peirce’s ‘final interpretant’ indicates ‘interpretive potential at the highest degrees of significance and understanding’ (2015: 74). It is worth noting de Tienne’s point (quoted in Deely 2006: 116 n. 75) that Peirce does not mean the traditional sense of ‘final’ when he uses the word ‘final’ in ‘final interpretant’ or ‘final causation’; rather, he means ‘ideal’: ‘Final’ says de Tienne, ‘is not confined to the purposive, but to the tendential’. Petrilli shows that Peirce and Welby’s preoccupation with signs – and their discussion of them in the first decade of the twentieth century – is often focused on the scientific adequacy of terminology. Evoking the spirit of logic utens, she states (2015: 94) that they both believed that such terminology should proceed from ‘a critical reading of common experience, common sense, and common speech’ but nonetheless involve ‘a scientifically valid nomenclature, which breaks with individual habits and preferences and satisfies the requisite of unanimity among specialists’. This includes an outlandish vocabulary. Yet, a critical common sense differs from perhaps one of the defining features of common sense: that is, the latter acts as a source of certainty in an uncertain world. Criticality throws into question this certainty, even while it does not obliterate common sense. Petrilli (2015: 98) considers Chapter 3 of Peirce’s unpublished A Survey of Pragmaticism (1907, CP 5.505 to 5.525) on critical common sensism and notes that Peirce maintains that all beliefs are vague. He even goes so far as to claim that the more they are indubitable, the vaguer they are. He goes on to discuss the misunderstood importance of vagueness, even in mathematical thought. Vagueness is no less than constitutive of belief, inherent to it and to the propositions that express it. It is the ‘antithetical analogue of generality’.

She then quotes the following passage from CP 5.505: A sign is objectively general, in so far as, leaving its effective interpretation indeterminate, it surrenders to the interpreter the right of completing the determination for himself. ‘Man is mortal.’ ‘What man?’ ‘Any man you like.’ A sign is objectively vague, in so far as, leaving its interpretation more or less indeterminate, it reserves for some other possible sign or experience the function of completing the determination. ‘This month,’ says the almanac-oracle, ‘a great event is to happen.’ ‘What event?’ ‘Oh, we shall see. The almanac doesn’t tell that.’

Peirce in Contemporary Semiotics

57

The general might be defined as that to which the principle of excluded middle does not apply. A triangle in general is not isosceles nor equilateral; nor is a triangle in general scalene. The vague might be defined as that to which the principle of contradiction does not apply. For it is false neither that an animal (in a vague sense) is male, nor that an animal is female.

For Peirce, generality and vagueness are two different, even opposed, phenomena despite seeming to be synonymous in common-sense terms. This opposition is particularly true of signs. A general sign will always have the same interpretant; a vague sign, in its very principle, will not have a fixed interpretant. Indeed, ‘no sign can ever be absolutely and completely indeterminate’ (CP 5.506). This is a fact that semiotics has known for a long time, independently of Peirce. However, while its consequences for communication have been dwelt upon at length, the ramifications for cognition, knowing and science have received less attention. For Petrilli, a proponent of critical dialogism, vagueness in the sign offers an opportunity for humans. She writes (2015: 100), ‘The risk is that the more we attempt to be precise, the less we understand each other’. In the face of this, there is a need for recognition that explication of indeterminate semiosis is interpretative and ‘translative’; it leads to new interpretants and requires further approximation by those compelled by critical dialogue. The referent – a concept that has, in some ways, haunted general semiotics but which Peirce negotiated adeptly in his ‘object’ and in his ‘realism’ (see, especially, c. 1896, CP1.15 to 1.172; Deely 2001a: 161–486, 611–668) – seems to promise certainty. Only an approximation of certainty can be the target, though, of interpretants and interlocutors trading and translating them. As Peirce states, ‘there is a world of difference between fallible knowledge and no knowledge’ (CP 1.37); the former harbours the possibility of leading to a ‘final’ destination while certainty gives the impression that such a destination has already been reached. Certainty seems to be the preserve of the individual, while community – a recurring word in the Collected Papers – is associated with the work required by uncertainty.

The crowd of interlocutors Although he does not seem to have used the phrase, Peirce has become inexorably associated with the concept of a ‘community of inquirers’, that body of people in dialogue whose effort in the growth of signs will culminate in the arrival at a ‘final’ scientific terminus. He outlines the idea in his 1869 paper,‘Grounds of validity of the

58

Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Peircean Semiotics

laws of logic: further consequences of four incapacities’ in the Journal of Speculative Philosophy (Volume 2, pages 193–208; W2: 242–272). Taking the statement, ‘There is smoke; there is never smoke without fire: hence, there has been fire’ he shows (W2: 252–253) how deduction can move from ‘relatively future’ to ‘relatively past’: Nevertheless, if we can thus reason against the stream of time, it is because there really are such facts as that ‘If there is smoke, there has been fire,’ in which the following event is the antecedent. Indeed, if we consider the manner in which such a proposition became known to us, we shall find that what it really means is that ‘If we find smoke, we shall find evidence on the whole that there has been fire’; and this, if reality consists in the agreement that the whole community would eventually come to, is the very same thing as to say that there really has been fire. In short, the whole present difficulty is resolved instantly by this theory of reality, because it makes all reality something which is constituted by an event indefinitely future.

In addition to indicating the future-orientation of the community’s work, this quote also stresses the vis a prospecto bearing of semiosis as a whole (see also Deely 2014, 2015). In light of the importance of the community in Peirce’s semiotics and in light of the earlier question, ‘What do signs do?’, perhaps it is time to ask what motivates semioticians of a Peircean bent. In 2007, the dedicated Peirce scholar, T.L. Short, published a book called Peirce’s Theory of Signs. On the very first page (2007: ix), after the front matter, the book’s preface begins: Peirce’s theory of signs, or semeiotic, misunderstood by so many, has gotten in amongst the wrong crowd. It has been taken up by an interdisciplinary army of ‘semioticians’ whose views and aims are antithetical to Peirce’s own, and meanwhile it has been shunned by those philosophers who are working in Peirce’s own spirit on the very problems to which his semeiotic was addressed.

The book then goes on to consider Peirce’s ‘mature theory’ or ‘mature semeiotic’. In reviewing the differences between semiology and what he calls ‘semeiotic’, the book (2007: 16–21) gives a reasonable account, noting some of the problems that have been mentioned in the present chapter, such as those inherent in attempts to reconcile Saussurean and Peircean semiotics as well as the dominance of ‘convention’ in the functioning of signs. Yet, with that particular opening lunge, the book was to bound to be put to the sword itself, as it was by two Peircean semioticians: Joseph Ransdell and, especially, John Deely. Spats of the kind that Short’s book provoked take place fairly regularly in some academic circles. Yet, there is something to learn from this one with regard to what semioticians seek to do with semiotics – specifically, here, with Peircean

Peirce in Contemporary Semiotics

59

semiotics. Deely – a semiotician with a formidable record in Peirce studies, the editor and prime mover of the electronic edition of the Collected Papers, an exegete of Peirce to match Short and, certainly, like Peirce himself, an original thinker who is also one of the heirs of the scholastic tradition (see, especially, Deely 2001a) – sets out to demolish the book on three main issues and some sub-issues. First, the ‘mature semeiotic’ of Peirce is not Peirce’s own. The book, according to Deely (2006: 59; see ‘References’, below, for date discrepancy), presents ‘what Short thinks Peirce would have made his final theory if, in foresight, Peirce had known everything that Short knows in hindsight’. ‘Peirce’s mature theory’ is code for ‘Short’s theory of what Peirce should have thought’. Second, the ‘mature semeiotic’ that Peirce did not, in fact, develop is posited as separate from earlier stages of Peirce’s development as a thinker. ‘Peirce’s 1868–9 doctrine of thought-signs’ (Short 2007: 27) is said to have been deeply flawed and said to have been recognized by Peirce who corrected himself by 1907. Ransdell (2007: 658), as might have been expected, was flabbergasted by this aspect of Short’s book, calling it ‘pure fiction’. Third, the conclusion about Peirce’s ‘mature semeiotic’ that the book reaches is a deliberate attempt to wrest Peirce from semiotics, the disciplinary field he founded, and claim him for Analytic Philosophy. There is certainly some pathos in vilifying a marginalized group (the semioticians) from the position of a powerful group (Analytic Philosophy) because the former possess something that the latter cannot bear them to have. As Deely (2006: 110 n. 48) puts it, ‘the emergence of Peirce as an important figure has been in spite of the Analytic mainstream development; and the scramble now to assimilate him to that tradition borders on pathetic’. Most of the criticisms of the book are provoked by this attempt to assimilate Peirce. The choice of one piece of terminology, for example, is decisive. Short’s book uses ‘semeiotic’ to distinguish Peirce’s sign theory from the semiotics that Short associates with Europe, even though semiotics is a global enterprise with strong centres in Latin America and East Asia. So, Deely immediately sets to work on that ethic of terminology, concluding from his investigations (2006: 62–65) that ‘an actual examination of Peirce’s own usage . . . rather clearly reveals a prevalence of “semiotic” over “semeiotic”, with strong suggestions that even “semeiotics” is preferable to “semeiotic” ’ (2006: 64). Fisch was responsible for creating the myth that Peirce preferred ‘semeiotic’; but, where that claim for the preference was innocuous, Deely writes (2006: 64), Short extends it in order to ‘cut Peirce off from those very “future explorers” who take up the doctrine of signs centered on semeiosis as Peirce understood it to be’. Of course, ‘the “community of inquirers” of which Peirce made so much and on which he rested

60

Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Peircean Semiotics

all his optimism for the future of thought becomes simply “the wrong crowd” ’ (2006: 61–62). Another issue arises with the action of signs – semiosis. As is evident even from a cursory reading of Peirce’s semiotics, semiosis lives by the rule of three. Peirce roots out all thinking that is not triadic or reduces to just dyads. Deely’s definition of semiosis (2006: 74) occurs in precisely the same spirit: there can be brute physical action between two subjects; but if that action takes on significance, the character of signs, it involves ‘a coöperation of three subjects, such as a sign, its object, and its interpretant, this tri-relative influence not being in any way resolvable into actions between pairs’ (cf. Peirce 1907; R318). Short’s book, by contrast, is shown to harbour not a triadic sign but a quadratic one, because semiosis is taken to be ‘a feature of the purposive behavior of animals when they make use of signs’ (2006: 75). That is to say, there is the triadic sign plus the animal user, which is also the sign’s ‘context’ (2006: 77). One might add that such a quadratic definition of signs, featuring purposively behaving animals, sails perilously close to the wind of psychologism. So, one reason for the book’s attack on semioticians is that it considers ‘semiosis as irreducibly concerned with something more than and considerably different from the action of signs as such, whereas for Peirce (in contrast to Short) this action of signs itself is the object of semiotic inquiry’ (2006: 78). Where semiosis goes and what it does poses a problem for those who would enforce disciplinary boundaries. This is because semiosis is not a phenomenon perpetually under the control of purposive animal behaviour. Deely writes (2006: 82), However much the politics of academia may seek to make the frontiers of its disciplines hard and fast, however ‘territorial’ semiotic animals may become in ‘protecting their turf ’, they are powerless to change the fact that semiosis crosses all frontiers, even as it is involved in establishing those frontiers in the first place.

Complementing this point, Deely (2006: 86–88) discusses the two senses in which signs exist: as individual, common-sense signs that are circulated, and as the triadic relation ‘above’ all such common signs, the relation that enables them to be signs. In a sense, Analytic Philosophy might be able to mobilize certain signs within boundaries; however, it can do nothing about the triadic relation that allows signs to occur in so many places. It is this relation that the semiotic animals – humans – can conceive and the other species cannot (Deely 2006: 88). Yet, the triadicity in semiosis as recognized by Peirce still ranges over all realms rather than just that of purposive animals. Peirce’s point in distinguishing interpretant from interpreter

Peirce in Contemporary Semiotics

61

was ‘to move beyond the narrow (not to mention quadratic) view of semiosis that Short is trying to impose on the theory of signs. For what Short has said tells us that purpose is imported into semiosis from the outside’ (Deely 2006: 95). The distinction exists to allow precisely the entire non-human edifice of semiosis into the definitions of signs. One might add that Peirce’s ‘sop to Cerberus’ is not just a momentary and voluntary lapse into psychologism; rather, it is a terminologically heuristic figuring of his more general conception of where semiosis works and reaches. Deely (2006: 90) refers to this as ‘Peirce’s Grand Vision’ – ‘the very vision which Short would have us believe Peirce “in his mature thought” abandoned’. If Short’s volume had kept abreast of contemporary semiotics, particularly how Peirce’s insights have been used in biosemiotics (see ‘A matter of fact – natural signs and symbols’, below, and Chapter 3), it would have perhaps avoided resting on the notion that animals constitute the ‘lowest level of semiosis’. Furthermore, it would have had to consider, without falling into pan-semiotics, the myriad of places where semiosis occurs. Part of the project of claiming Peirce for Analytic Philosophy, then, is to cut out Peirce’s Grand Vision of signs perfusing the universe. Peirce, in Short’s formulation, would certainly not be an heir to the scholastic tradition, forging semiotics in a bid to discover the hinterland of illusion and reality. Nor would he be a latter-day explorer of what Sebeok (2001: 8) called an enduring pre-Socratic practice, traversing all disciplinary boundaries, as well as the earth and the heavens. Rather, Peirce’s sign theory would confine itself to formal logic or endless analyses of figures of speech. It would be as narrow and specialized as possible, bound by a conception of language. His idea of semiosis would be restricted to ‘the sphere of “interpreters” in just that sense of conscious beings that Peirce distinguished “interpretant” from in order to make possible consideration of the fullest extent of the action of signs as triadic in the universe which signs perfuse’ (Deely 2006: 98). That would be the Peirce of psychologism.

A matter of fact – natural signs and symbols One of the first points that Frederik Stjernfelt makes, skilfully and persuasively is that Peircean semiotics is a resolute anti-pychologism. Natural Propositions (Stjernfelt 2014) is an extraordinary volume, marked by eminently quoteable wisdom on nearly every page, much of it related to a profound engagement with Peirce (and other thinkers). Ostensibly, the book’s concern is with Peirce’s formulations on Dicisigns or propositions and contains much welcome tough

62

Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Peircean Semiotics

talk (which should be heard by anyone intoxicated with an ‘anything goes’ inclination towards interpretation) regarding the status of signs as facts. The foundation of the book’s argument is that Peirce shares an anti-psychologism with Frege and Russell but that it is an anti-psychologism (certainly pace Short) that is ‘without the linguistic turn’ (2014: 4) and is earlier and more ambitious than the anti-psychologism of the other two thinkers. Anti-psychologism, writes Stjernfelt (2014: 13), is basic for semiotics. Semiotics refuses to take signs as reducible to psychological phenomena. In the example of Peirce’s semiotics, this has been seen throughout this chapter. The problem with psychologism is that it tends towards relativism. Stjernfelt (2014: 13) offers a simple, but compelling, fictional example: If mathematical entities were really of a purely psychological nature, then truths about them should be attained by means of psychological investigations. The upshot of psychologism might thus be that a proper way of deciding the truth of the claim that 2+2 = 4 would be to make an empirical investigation of a large number of individual, psychological assessments of that claim. So, if we amass data of, say, 100.000 individual records of calculating 2+2, we might find that a small but significant amount of persons take the result to be 3 – which would give us an average measure of around 3.999 as the result. This might now be celebrated as the most exact and scientific investigation yet of the troubling issue of 2+2 – far more precise than the traditional, metaphysical claims of the result being 4, which must now be left behind as merely the coarse and approximate result of centuries of dogmatic mathematicians indulging in armchair philosophy and folk theories, not caring to investigate psychological reality empirically.

Similarly, semiotics seeks not to reduce signs to individual mental representations: both the sign vehicle, its content and act of signification are considered by semiotics in their bearing as types whose tokens can be discerned in processes of cognition and communication. Stjernfelt (2014: 45) refers to current experimental research in semiotics, involving tests, eye tracking, brain imaging and so forth, research which produces results and adds to understanding of how groups of human beings deal with meaning and reference. He concludes, however, that ‘such results can never hope to reduce the generality of signs to any mere sum of such individual processings’. In sum (Stjernfelt 2014: 47), Semiotics is impossible without anti-psychologism. If signs were only particular, fleeting and ever-shifting epiphenomena of brains and minds, this would not

Peirce in Contemporary Semiotics

63

only give up signs as such as stable objects of scientific study – but it would, in turn, destroy even psychology itself along with all other sciences, because sciences, as already Aristotle realized, always intend general structures, even when they describe particular objects.

This is a fitting first station for a book which, although bearing some traces of fragmentation attendant on being made up of previously published articles, adheres throughout to the discussion of the ‘reality’ of signs, or signs’ factual bearing. Just to be clear, this last does not, of course, entail that all signs – or even some – are straightforwardly referential. There would be no need for semiotics if that was true. Yet, signs’ capacity or potential to ‘carry a truth value’ (Stjernfelt 2014: 1) as propositions demands at the very least the extensive study which Stjernfelt devotes to them in this book. Possibly where this point about the ‘reality’ of signs is most evident is in biosemiotics, the topic of Chapter  7 of Stjernfelt’s volume. Already, it should have been clear from what has been shown so far in the current chapter that Peirce’s semiotics, even as evidenced in relatively early commentaries on it, provides important grounds for present-day biosemiotics. For example, Ransdell in 1977 stresses the growth of signs – that is, semiosis in general. One sphere of semiosis, the pursuit of truth in human beings, he observes ( [1977] 1997: 168) to be ‘generically the same as something to be found in life generally, namely, the tendency to learn’. Yet he notes that humans cannot learn fully what is real. What access do we have to the real object, he asks ([1977] 1997: 168) besides our access to the immediate object, that is, our understanding of it at a given time? Can we somehow get outside of our own minds, our own semiosis, to compare the real object to our idea of it to see to what extent the latter is a faithful and adequate representation of the former? Of course not. Consequently, either the real object is forever unknowable – a Kantian Ding an sich – or else it is that which is present to us in the immediate object when the latter is satisfactory.

The argument Ransdell makes here about the real being what is present in the immediate object (a technical aspect of Peirce’s semiotics, after all) is, effectively, the same one that is at the core of Jakob von Uexküll’s concept of Umwelt and bears on the importance Stjernfelt attributes to Dicisigns. An Umwelt is the means by which organisms capture ‘external reality’ in response to semioses. Signs grow – from the organism itself and from elsewhere, other organisms, or in feedback from itself (as in echolocation). The Umwelt of a species, then, is composed by the circulation and receiving, insofar as it is

64

Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Peircean Semiotics

physically allowed by an organism’s sensorium, of signs (von Uexküll 1992, 2001a, b, 2010; Deely 2009b; the essays in Kull 2001; Brentari 2015). In species that thrive, an Umwelt may feature various degrees of semiotic freedom – that is, moments of respite from actions conducive to pure survival – which allow it the opportunity to anticipate rather than simply react to signs around it (Hoffmeyer 1996: 58). This possibility is not that far removed from the educated guesses that make up Peirce’s ‘abduction’. Moreover, as with Peirce’s semiotics, in the concept of Umwelt there is the realization that beyond species’ capacities of semiosis there is a world – the ‘real world’, in one sense – which cannot be reached. In any Umwelt, misinterpretation of signs, overlooking of signs and signs not being 100 per cent adequate representations of reality, maintain any species, to some extent, in a state of illusion. That being the case, workable propositions or signs of fact assume paramount importance for any organism. It is for this reason that biosemiotics and Dicisigns, in Stjernfelt’s analysis, really need each other. As Sebeok repeatedly pointed out (see, for example, 1986: 14), usually referring back to a concise formulation by Francois Jacob, the testimony that an Umwelt is a fairly good guide to reality – a workably accurate model – is offered by the survival of the species within a given Umwelt. If an Umwelt offered an irredeemably faulty grasp of reality, then that species would not survive. Stjernfelt (2014: 141) puts it even more succinctly and with respect to a specific class of signs: ‘Selection forces the survival of truth-bearing signs – Dicisigns’. He goes on (2014: 141–142), Evolution then subdivides, sophisticates and articulates quasi-propositions, gradually achieving growing autonomy of its parts. So, instead of an ongoing construction from building-blocks, semiotic evolution is rather the ongoing subdivision, articulation and autonomization of a reasoning process having its very first proto-form in primitive metabolism.

One observation that Stjernfelt (2014: 141) makes in this respect inverts the common-sense way in which Western education usually teaches about complex entities. He suggests that, in considering evolution, it is tempting to imagine the earliest signs to be simple and the later ones to be more complicated. However, it is the highest Peircean sign types (propositions/Dicisigns and Arguments) which, because of their relation to fact, are the most critical for survival. Stjernfelt (2014: 141) argues that such signs must have been present at the very beginning of evolution ‘albeit in a rudimentary indistinct proto-form, corresponding to Peirce’s idea that propositions are genuine signs, and the whole periodic table of simpler signs are but degenerate signs which naturally occur within propositions’.

Peirce in Contemporary Semiotics

65

Connected with this revealing inversion of common sense, Stjernfelt also casts doubt on attempts to map evolution in phases which correspond with a putative hierarchy of signs over periods of time. In such mappings it is not just a matter of phylogenesis recapitulating ontogenesis but sign phases putatively integral to ontogenesis occurring in the same order phylogenetically. Merlin Donald’s influential volume, The Origin of the Modern Mind: Three Stages in the Evolution of Cognition and Culture (1991), is an example of this perspective. In biosemiotics, Terrence Deacon’s landmark volume, The Symbolic Species (1997), is another example; plus it implements Peircean semiotics at some length, in a persuasive and thoroughly interdisciplinary synthesis. As Stjernfelt remarks (2014: 142), Deacon’s idea is that ‘icons, indices, and symbols characterize large phases of biological evolution so that early biology was iconic, later to become indexical while only human beings process symbols’. Deacon shows that each of these sign functions is nested: that is, an index contains the functions of icons, while a symbol contains functions of both indices and icons. This take on the trichotomy, as has been seen, is by no means uncommon; but what Deacon does with it in order to explain the evolution of language, with its scarcely conceivable gradualism and its hitherto unfathomable leaps of development, certainly is uncommon. However, for Stjernfelt the pure icon, signifying on the basis of resemblance, could never result in an index, where the signification is based on an existential relationship with the object. Pure indices are similar in this respect. They cannot signify on their own. So, too, is a pure symbol: ‘bereft of any iconical or indexical qualities is equally marginal – something like the isolated x of algebra’ (2014: 143). The necessity of such collaboration of icons and indices within symbols (Stjernfelt 2013: 143): forms the basic reason why the tempting idea of mapping the icon-index-symbol triad onto the process of evolution is doomed to fail: pure icons, indices, symbols are marginal phenomena. So, there could never have been an evolutionary period where purely iconic signs prevailed – they are much too vague to communicate any information of value for biological processes, because their content is merely possible and does not, in itself, relate to the actual world. And there could never have been a purely indexical period – indices being attentiondirecting and based on the here-and-now, they are unable to perform the central task of orienting and guiding biological activity into the future which requires the generality of the symbol. Rather, biological processes are characterized, from the very beginning, by the argumentative arc leading from one Dicisign to the next, typically, from primitive perception to primitive action – and the decisive criterion is that of being susceptible to deception.

66

Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Peircean Semiotics

These, of course, are good Peircean points which complement the inversion of common sense in respect of complex signs coming first. Later (2014: 148), Stjernfelt makes a similarly convincing inversion in respect of cognition and communication, stating that the former is a much more simple process in that it requires, at low levels such as bacteria, an organism and an environment, whereas communication requires at least two organisms (and probably an environment, too). The earlier point about evolutionary efficiency obtains, as well: that is, isolated icons and isolated symbols are too vague to carry out the more precise, fact-orientated work that is performed by the combinatorial form of a Dicisign. Yet, strong though these points are, particularly in technical Peircean semiotic terms, they do not constitute the end of the story. Three challenges can be made. First, is the nesting in Deacon’s utilization of the second trichotomy of Peircean signs really in the service of positing pure sign functions (e.g. iconic only), let alone pure significatory epochs? Readers will need to closely consult Deacon (1997), in an interpretative mode, to answer this question. Second, evolution of humans has surely been more rapid with the advent of the symbol – it has prevented the rudimentary trajectory ‘from primitive perception to primitive action’ (Stjernfelt 2014: 143) continuing endlessly, without development. Surely, there must be some qualitative difference in the semiotic regime that features a sign that allows projection into the future and contemplation on the past. The ability of humans to refer to their signs, an ability which requires a command of symbols, has been foregrounded by thinkers as different, but related, as Cassirer ([1944] 1972) and Deely (2010). Both recognize Ransdell’s observation that the symbol has ‘no value as a sign from anything but the fact that it will be interpreted in a certain regular way’, thus being hostage to future interpretations. Third, there is the possibility that propositions, signs of fact or Dicisigns were distributed, in their own way, across the domains of the ‘lower’ signs in evolution. That is, ‘fact’ functioned in a fashion that was quite removed from the more elevated vision implied by a proposition. Kull (2007: 2) offers a programme of knowing that distinguishes life and semiosis: it consists of faculties of recognition, memory, categorization, mimicry, learning and communication. Assigning each of these to the sign functions, or a blended combination of the sign functions, of the second trichotomy would not be difficult. Those functions do not need to be pure, nor do they need to be divorced from propositional value. Fact, in the sense of relatively efficient capturing of external reality, could surely have occurred by chance in domains of largely iconic or indexical signs. Vagueness, after all, is inherent in all signs, as Peirce shows; it must offer an opportunity not just for

Peirce in Contemporary Semiotics

67

humans but for all other areas where signs have ‘an effect upon a person’ (a phrase that should now be interpretable in anti-psychologistic terms). Regardless, what is clear is that Peirce’s semiotics, in the sphere of biosemiotics alone, facilitates numerous investigations which would not have ensued without his work as backwoodsman. Peirce’s general definition of semiosis is one that drives biosemiotics (see Chapter  3, this volume, below). His synechism (not discussed here, but see Cobley 2016) is implicit in biosemiotics’ lowering of the threshold of semiosis from, say, literature, to the level of the cell. Peirce’s cosmology, too, has clearly prompted the development by Deely (1990: 83–104) of “physiosemiosis”, which challenges biosemiotics’ insistence that life and semiosis are co-extensive and, as has been seen, the idea that the triadic sign has a fourth element in the behaviour of animals. Indeed, as Nöth (2001: 16) identifies, ‘Charles Sanders Peirce is the crown witness of both the advocates and the opponents’ of physiosemiosis. Along with the recapturing of Peircean semiotics’ anti-psychologism, the starting point of this section of this chapter, Deely’s work in his final years (e.g. 2014, 2015), on the ‘suprasubjective’ indicates the triadic relation above common signs that moves semiotics into all manner of realms.

Conclusion Fittingly, given the centrality of the concept of the growth of signs in his work, Peirce’s semiotics is very fecund. It has been seen that Peirce’s sign theory in general semiotics has been the subject of debate, as it should be, and has been the subject of some measure of malformation, as is inevitable with all endeavours of this magnitude. It is only fortunate that Peirce’s semiotics did not suffer the fate of being buried forever. Its malformation has probably been most pronounced in the fixation of later semioticians on the second trichotomy. This is not unrelated to the attempt to assimilate Peirce’s work to existing semiotic perspectives, in particular those which tried to enforce invariance (or codes) in ways that are at odds with the interpretative bent of Peirce’s semiotics. Despite his ‘sop to Cerberus’, Peirce’s semiotics is not just a matter of signs as they are used by humans, as it largely is in the communication theory that grew up alongside semiotics in the latter part of athe twentieth century (Cobley and Schulz 2013). Peirce’s semiotics is concerned with all semiosis: in life, in the cosmos. It also recapitulates, in a sophisticated sense which does not exclude the entities that a sign is for, the mission of semiotics to be concerned with signs over and above individual uses of them.

68

Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Peircean Semiotics

It should be observed, of course, that the representation of Peirce’s semiotics taken here has also been partial, not least because of the largely chronological approach and what has had to be left out. Chronologically, with the deviations noted, the sequence has been Peirce’s writings (1923 to the 1950s and beyond) Jakobson (1965) Eco (1976) Fisch (1978) Ransdell (1977) Sebeok (1980) Merrell (1997–2001) Nöth (2011) Petrilli (2015) Deely (2006; really 2009) Stjernfelt (2014) Discussion of some major scholarship in Peircean semiotics has had to be omitted – Morris most regrettably, but, in addition to those mentioned in the introduction to this chapter, the omitted work of the following established Peircean semioticians would demand following up by the reader: Vincent Colapietro (see Cobley 2014), Dinda Gorlée, Claudio Guerri, Tony Jappy, James J. Liszka, Donna West, Torkild Thellefsen and Bent Sørensen, et al. There are also emerging Peircean semioticians, present and future interpretants of sign study, that were overlooked here; among those are Francesco Bellucci, Priscila Borges, Yunhee Lee, Alin Olteanu, Jamin Pelkey. Indeed, in the discussion of Peircean semioticians that did occur in this chapter, the cursory glance at their work does not do justice to their prodigious contributions in the field. Short of falsity, it is meet that imperfections act as a call for further dialogue and work. ‘Out of a contrite fallibilism’, writes Peirce, ‘combined with a high faith in the reality of knowledge, and an intense desire to find things out, all my philosophy has always seemed to me to grow . . .’ (CP 1.14)

References Borges, P. 2016. ‘Tracing Signs of a Developing Science: On The Correspondence Between Victoria Lady Welby and Charles S. Peirce’. Semiotica. 196: 163–184. Brent, J. 1993. Charles Sanders Peirce: A Life. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Peirce in Contemporary Semiotics

69

Brentari, C. 2015. Jakob von Uexküll: The Discovery of the Umwelt between Biosemiotics and Theoretical Biology. Dordrecht: Springer. Cassirer, E. 1944 [1972]. An Essay on Man. New Haven: Yale University Press. Cobley, P. 2006a. ‘Saussure: Ferdinand Mongin de: Theory of the Sign’. In K. Brown (ed.). Encyclopaedia of Language and Linguistics. 2nd edn. Oxford: Elsevier. Cobley, P. 2006b. ‘Barthes, Roland: Theory of the Sign’, in K. Brown (ed.) Encyclopaedia of Language and Linguistics. 2nd edn. Oxford: Elsevier. Cobley, P. 2013. ‘Semiotic Models of Communication’. In P. Cobley and P.J. Schulz (eds). Theories and Models of Communication. Berlin: de Gruyter. Cobley, P. 2014. ‘The Metaphysics of Wickedness’. In T. Thellefsen and B. Sørensen (eds). Charles Sanders Peirce in His Own Words. Berlin: de Gruyter. Cobley, P. 2015. ‘The Deaths of Semiology and Mythoclasm: Barthes and Media Studies’, Signs and Media (10) 1–25. Cobley, P. 2017. ‘Discussion: Integrationism, Anti-humanism and the Suprasubjective’. In A. Pablé (ed.). Critical Humanist Perspectives: The Integrational Turn in Philosophy of Language and Communication. London: Routledge. Cobley, P. and F. Stjernfelt. 2016.‘Sign, Object, Thing: An Eternal Golden Braid’. Chinese Semiotic Studies 12(3), 329–334. Coward, R. and J. Ellis. 1978. Language and Materialism: Developments in Semiology and the Theory of the Subject. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Deacon, T.W. 1997. The Symbolic Species: The Co-evolution of Language and the Human Brain. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Deely, J. 1990. Basics of Semiotics. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. Deely, J. 1994. The Human Use of Signs or: Elements of Anthroposemiosis. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield. Deely, J. 2001a. Four Ages of Understanding: The First Postmodern Survey of Philosophy from Ancient Times to the Turn of the Twentieth Century. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Deely, 2001b. ‘Physiosemiosis in the Semiotic Spiral: A Play of Musement’. Sign Systems Studies, 29(1): 26–48. Deely, J. 2006. ‘ “To find our way in these dark woods” versus coming up short’, Recherches sémiotiques/Semiotic Inquiry. 26(2/3): 57–126. The Deely essay was commissioned 11 April 2007, submitted in final form October 2007, actual publication was in January 2009. The discrepancy between publication date and actual journal date is a result of the fact that RSSI had fallen behind in its issues and is in a ‘catch-up’ mode with the issue in question. Deely, J. 2009a. Purely Objective Reality. Berlin: de Gruyter Mouton. Deely, J. 2009b. ‘Semiosis and Jakob von Uexküll’s concept of umwelt’. In Paul Cobley (ed.). Realism for the 21st Century: A John Deely Reader. Scranton, PA: Scranton University Press, 239–258. Deely, J. 2010. Semiotic Animal: A Postmodern Definition of ‘Human Being’. Transcending Patriarchy and Feminism. South Bend, IN: St. Augustine Press.

70

Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Peircean Semiotics

Deely, J. 2014. ‘Subjectivity, Suprasubjectivity, and Semiosis’, Chinese Semiotic Studies 10(4), 593–604. Deely, J. 2015. ‘Semiosis and “Meaning as Use”: The Indispensability and Insufficiency of Subjectivity in the Action of Signs’. Sign Systems Studies 43(1), 7–28. Donald, M. 1991. The Origin of the Modern Mind: Three Stages in the Evolution of Cognition and Culture. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Dyer, G. 1982. Advertising as Communication. London: Methuen. Eco, U. 1976. A Theory of Semiotics. Bloomington and London: Indiana University Press. Eco, U. 1979. ‘Introduction’. In S. Chatman, U. Eco and J.M. Klinkenberg (eds). A Semiotic Landscape: Proceedings of the First Congress of the International Association for Semiotic Studies, Milan, June 1974. The Hague: Mouton. Eco, U. 1990. ‘Unlimited Semiosis and Drift: Pragmaticism vs. “Pragmatism” ’. In The Limits of Interpretation. Bloomington and London: Indiana University Press. Eco, U. and T.A. Sebeok. 1983. The Sign of Three: Dupin, Holmes, Peirce. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Feibleman, J.K. 1946. An Introduction to the Philosophy of Charles S. Peirce, New York: Harper Bros. Fisch, M. [1978] 1986. ‘Peirce’s General Theory of Signs’. In Peirce, Semeiotic and Pragmatism: Essays by Max H. Fisch. K.L. Ketner and C.J.W. Kloesel (eds). Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Fiske, J. 1982. An Introduction to Communication Studies. London: Methuen. Gallie, W.B. 1952. Peirce and Pragmatism. Harmondsworth: Pelican. Goudge, T.A. 1950. The Thought of C. S. Peirce. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Harris, R. 1996. The Language Connection. Bristol: Thoemmes. Hawkes, T. 1977. Structuralism and Semiotics. London: Methuen. Heidegger, M. [1946, 1947] 1978. ‘Letter on Humanism’. In D.F. Krell (ed.). Martin Heidegger: Basic Writings. London: Routledge, pp. 217–266. Hoffmeyer, J. 1996. Signs of Meaning in the Universe. B.J. Haveland (trans.). Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Jakobson, R. 1960. ‘Closing Statement: Linguistics and Poetics’. In Thomas A. Sebeok (ed.). Style in Language. New York and London: Technology Press of MIT and John Wiley, 350–377. Jakobson, R. 1965. ‘Quest for the Essence of Language’. Address to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, February 10. Published in Diogenes 51 (1966) 21–37. Jakobson, R. [1975] 1987. ‘A Glance at the Development of Semiotics’. In Language in Literature. K. Pomorska and S. Rudy (eds). Cambridge, MA. and London: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. Kull, K. (ed.) 2001. Jakob von Uexküll: A Paradigm for Biology and Semiotics special issue. Semiotica. 134 1/4. Kull K. 2007. ‘A Brief History of Biosemiotics’. In M. Barbieri (ed.). Biosemiotics: Information, Codes and Signs in Living Systems. New York: Nova.

Peirce in Contemporary Semiotics

71

Kull, K. and E. Velmezova. 2016. ‘Umberto Eco on Biosemiotics’, paper presented at the 16th Gatherings in Biosemiotics, Charles University, Prague, 7 July. Lieb, I.C. 1953. Charles S. Peirce’s Letters to Lady Welby. New Haven: Whitlock’s, Inc. Merrell, F. 1997. Peirce, Signs, and Meaning. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Merrell, F. 2000. Signs for Everybody or Chaos, Quandaries, and Communication. New York and Ottawa: Legas. Merrell, F. 2001. ‘Charles Sanders Peirce’s Concept of the Sign’. In P. Cobley (ed.). The Routledge Companion to Semiotics and Linguistics. London: Routledge. Morris, C. 1938. Foundations of the Theory of Signs. International Encyclopedia of Unified Sciences 1(2). Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Nöth, W. 2001. ‘Protosemiosis and Physicosemiosis’, Sign Systems Studies, 29(1), 13–26. Nöth, W. 2011. ‘From Representation to Thirdness and representamen to Medium: Evolution of Peircean Key Terms and Topics’. Transactions of the Charles Sanders Peirce Society. 47 (4), 445–481. Peirce, C.S. 1929. ‘Guessing’. Hound and Horn 2(3), 267–282 published in fragmentary form in CP 7.36–42. Petrilli, S. 2009. Signifying and Understanding: Reading the Works of Victoria Welby and the Signific Movement. Berlin: de Gruyter Mouton. Petrilli, S. 2015. ‘Sign, Meaning, and Understanding in Victoria Welby and Charles S. Peirce’. Signs and Society 3(1), 71–102. Ransdell, J. 1997 [1977]. ‘Some Leading Ideas of Peirce’s Semiotic’. www.iupui. edu/~arisbe/menu/library/aboutcsp/ransdell/LEADING.HTM last accessed 8 November 2018. This is a lightly revised version of the paper originally published in Semiotica 19 (1977), 157–178. Ransdell, J. 2007. ‘T. L. Short on Peirce’s Semeiotic’. Transactions of the Charles Sanders Peirce Society. 43(4), 654–662. Sebeok, T.A. 1986. I Think I Am a Verb: More Contributions to the Doctrine of Signs. New York: Plenum Press. Sebeok, T.A. 2001. Global Semiotics. Bloomington and London: Indiana University Press. Sebeok, T.A. and M. Danesi. 2000. The Forms of Meaning: Modeling Systems Theory and Semiotic Analysis. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Sebeok, T.A. and J. Umiker-Sebeok. 1980. ‘You Know My Method’: A Juxtaposition of Charles S. Peirce and Sherlock Holmes. Bloomington: Gaslight Publications. Stjernfelt, F. 2014. Natural Propositions: The Actuality of Peirce’s Doctrine of Dicisigns. Boston, MA: Docent Press. Uexküll, J. von. 1992. ‘A Stroll Through the Worlds of Animals and Men: A Picture Book of Invisible Worlds’. Semiotica. 89(4), 319–391. Uexküll, J. von. 2001a. ‘An Introduction to Umwelt’. Semiotica. 134(1/4), 107–110. Uexküll, J. von. 2001b. ‘The New Concept of Umwelt: A Link Between Science and the Humanities’. Semiotica. 134(1/4), 111–123.

72

Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Peircean Semiotics

Uexküll, J. von. 2010. A Foray into the Worlds of Animals and Humans. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Wiener, P.P. 1958. Values in a Universe of Chance. New York: Doubleday. Winston, B. and H. Tsang. 2009. ‘The Subject and the Indexicality of the Photograph’. Semiotica. 173(1–4), 453–469. Wollen, P. 1969. Signs and Meaning in the Cinema. London: BFI.

2

Peircean Semiotics in China Today Xingzhi Zhao

The beginning of Peircean semiotic studies Chinese scholars were interested in semiotics as early as the 1920s. Yuanren Zhao independently coined the Chinese term ‘Fuhao Xue’ ㅖਧᆖ˄signstudies˅in 1926; later, Guangtao Fang studied Saussurean semiology in 1929, and I.A. Richards gave a lecture series on the theory of meaning at Tsinghua University. Hence, semiotics has a history of over ninety years in China, although it has not always been plain sailing. Peircean semiotics in China is correlated with the evolution of semiotics in Chinese academic history. Although some Chinese scholars began to introduce Peirce’s theory in the early 1960s, compared with Saussurean semiology his theory was still neglected throughout the twentieth century. The blossoming of Chinese semiotics at the beginning of the twenty-first century has reversed this situation: Peircean semiotics is now one of the most important pillars of Chinese semiotics and has been further developed by semiotic movements in China today. The first Chinese scholar who directly discussed Peircean semiotics in his works was Professor Zhongshu Qian, one of the top litterateurs and literary theorists in contemporary China. His writings on the topic appeared in the fourvolume Guan Zhui Pian ㇑䭕ㇷ (Limited Views: Essays on Views and Letters), the collected short essays on topics in both Western and ancient Chinese literary criticism and philosophy, written in classical Chinese during the 1960s and 1970s. In this book, Qian discusses an important argument in Wen Fu ᮷䍻 (The Poetic Exposition on Literature) by Lu Ji (261–303 AD), a well-known litterateur and calligrapher in the Jin Dynasty. Lu focused on the relation between literary writing and the expression of meaning, which he summarized as follows: ᚂᛓн〠⢙ˈ ᮷н䙞᜿DŽ 73

74

Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Peircean Semiotics I constantly fear failure in my conceptions or thoughts [‘Yi’, ᜿] not being equal to the things of the world [‘Wu’,⢙], and in my writing [‘Wen’,᮷] not being equal to my conceptions.

Qian argued that the relationship between ‘Yi’, ‘Wen’ and ‘Wu’ in Wen Fu was quite similar to Peirce’s thoughts concerning the correlation among three elements – sign, object and interpretant – in semiosis. According to Peirce: But by ‘semiosis’ I mean, on the contrary, an action, or influence, which is, or involves, a cooperation of three subjects, such as a sign, its object, and its interpretant, this tri-relative influence not being in any way resolvable into actions between pairs. CP 5.484, 1908

Basing his remarks on Peirce’s analysis of semiosis, Qian interprets Yi, Wen and Wu as the following: If, following the logic that Yi is from the inside while Wu is from the outside, Wen is initiated from our inner thought but refers to the outside world. Wen can express one’s thoughts by representing the things of the world. That is to say, Wen can refer to Wu and represent Yi simultaneously, thereby Yi could be conveyed if Wen connects the inside and outside harmoniously. Qian, 2007: 1863

Then he lists further similar triangular relationships in ancient Chinese literary criticism and philosophy, and concludes that all those triangles can be correlated with their Western counterpart, that is, with Peirce’s triadic model. Examples include ‘Ju-Ming-Shi’ Ѯ਽ᇎ (reflection-names-reality) in Mo Zi ໘ᆀ, ‘Qing-Shi-Chi’ ᛵһ䗎(feeling-events-phrases) in Wen Xin Diao Long ᮷ᗳ䴅嗉 (by Liu Xie, 465–522 AD) and Lu Zhi’s ‘Yan-Xin-Shi’ 䀰ᗳһ (language-mind-events): Western Scholars think that semiosis is trirelative,1 hence it can be illustrated as the basic triangle: interpretant, thought, or reference – sign, symbol – object, referent. They are corelated and cannot be replaced by any other (CP 5.484, 1908;2 Ogden and Richards 1923 11). [In ancient Chinese thought,] ‘Ju’ Ѯ or ‘Yi’ ᜿ is equivalent to interpretant or thought; ‘Ming’ ਽ or ‘Wen’ ᮷ is equivalent to sign; while ‘Shi’ ᇎ or ‘Wu’ ⢙ is equivalent to the object that the sign refers to. Qian, 2007: 1864

Qian’s brilliant insight was the first time that ancient Chinese philosophy met Peircean semiotics. It was not until the 1980s that the first generation of Chinese Peircean scholars began to introduce Peirce’s theories in the wake of Qian’s pioneering exploration.

Peircean Semiotics in China Today

75

Interestingly, they were mainly logicians or philosophical scholars, during a period when Saussurean semiology began to make inroads in Chinese linguistic academia. This difference in background obviously has something to do with the logic-rhetorical style of Peirce’s semiotic system. For instance, the first article about Peirce published in a Chinese journal was Feng Zhang’s ‘A Tentative Study of Peirce’s View of Truth’ (1985). In this paper, Zhang introduced Peirce’s definition of truth, that is ‘truth is the conformity of a representamen to its object’ (CP 5.554) and explained how his semiotics and pragmaticism contributed to his doctrine of truth. In the meantime, several logicians referred to Peirce and Peirce studies in Western academia in their general introductions to semiotics in journals. For example, Danqing Mao introduced Peirce’s definition of ‘representamen’ and the relationship between his semiotics and logics in two articles – ‘The Chinese Translation of Semiotics/ Semiologie’ (1985) and ‘The Origin of Semiotics’ (1987). It should be noted that Li Xiankun, the founder of Chinese logical semiotics, published his two preliminary semiotic articles in 1988, namely ‘Logic and Semiotics’ and ‘What are Signs and Semiotics’, arguing that semiotics should belong to the field of logic by quoting Peircean semiotic doctrine from The Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce. Shortly after, Li published a fundamental paper named ‘On Semiosis and the Classification of Signs’ (1990), where Peirce’s ten classes of signs were first systematically introduced to Chinese readers. It can be seen that most Chinese Peircean studies during the 1980s focused on introducing Peirce’s definition and classification of signs. However, the major fields of Chinese semiotics at that time were linguistics and literary criticism, and Saussurean semiology had considerable influence on studies in these fields. Thus, Peircean semiotics was still an alternative branch with a small audience, waiting for an awakening in Chinese academia.

The awakening of Peircean semiotic studies In the highly politicized atmosphere of China during the twentieth century, linguistics always enjoyed the advantage of being at a distance from political storms, thanks to none other than Joseph Stalin, who, to put an end to the debate in the Soviet Union, wrote a pamphlet in 1950 that declared ‘the formula on “the class nature of language” is wrong and non-Marxist’. That pronouncement gave linguistics an unexpected freedom that virtually no other discipline in the human sciences in China enjoyed.

76

Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Peircean Semiotics

However, serious study of Saussurean and Chomskyan schools of linguistics did not start until the thaw beginning at the end of the 1970s. This delay could explain why Peircean semiotics was neglected in China throughout the twentieth century. Western semioticians began to notice the Pars Pro Toto Fallacy and revisit Peirce at the end of the 1960s. In China, the systematic introduction of Saussurean linguistics began only in the 1980s. The Chinese edition of Saussure’s Cours de linguistique générale was published in 1983 and a new translation in 1996; after the Troisième cours surfaced in the West, its Chinese translation appeared in 2001, which aroused renewed interest in him. Even today, linguistic semiotics is still the mainstay of semiotics in China. The recognized leaders in this field are Professors Hu Zhuanglin of Peking University (Hu, 2004), Wang Mingyu of Tianjing Foreign Studies University (Wang, 2004), and Ding Ersu of Lingnan University in Hong Kong (Ding, 2000). Professor Cai Shushan of Tsinghua University, in contrast, has devoted his academic career to logic and cognitive linguistics, an enterprise that has been marked by impressive achievements (Cai, 2007). Nevertheless, articles detailing Peirce’s semiotic system had been appearing since the 1990s in the fields of language and literature studies, signs that Peircean semiotics was beginning to take root in China. Li Youzheng’s voluminous General Introduction to Semiotics (Li, 1993), which is more than 700 pages long, was also published in this period. It included one section that briefly introduced Peirce’s three classifications of signs based on the relation between sign, object and interpretant. Many scholars, who are the leading figures in Chinese semiotics today, began to call for the rediscovery of Peircean semiotics, because they felt it was an inevitable step in the further development of Chinese semiotic studies. For instance, Zhao was the first Chinese scholar to point out the Pars Pro Toto Fallacy of semiotics. In his monograph Semiotics of Literature (1990), he argued that Saussurean semiology led to the development of structuralism, so we can safely identify it with structuralist semiotics. However, once structuralism transformed itself into post-structuralism, it would be inappropriate to equate the whole of semiotics with Saussurean semiology (1990: 1–4). Therefore, he adopted Peircean semiotics as his dominant theoretical framework to analyse literary texts and reconstruct literary theories in that book. In a paper titled ‘On Peirce’s trichotomy of signs’ (1994), Ersu Ding indicated that the advantage of Peirce’s classification was that it could solve the problem of a wide range of visual signs present in contemporary life, while Saussurean semiology was unable to differentiate these kinds of signs. Hence, he declared

Peircean Semiotics in China Today

77

that Peirce’s doctrine was more suitable for solving the problem of signs in contemporary society. Later, more scholars (Wang, 1998; Zhang, 1999, 2004; Lu, 2002) revisited Peirce’s semiotics and explained why and how his theory breaks through the limitations of structuralism, and hence needed more attention from Chinese scholars. It is no exaggeration to say that the pioneering work discussed in this section explored a new way forward for Chinese semiotic studies, and was a harbinger of the boom of Peircean semiotics in China.

The boom of Peircean semiotics The booming Chinese semiotic movement in the twenty-first century has accelerated the development of Peircean semiotics, which has become one of the dominant semiotic paradigms in the last ten years. Nowadays many Chinese semioticians, from multiple perspectives, adopt diversified theoretical approaches to conduct their semiotic studies. While Peircean semiotics forms the basis of such studies, ‘Peirce +’ – combining Peircean semiotics with other doctrines – has become the new trend of semiotics in China today. These claims can be demonstrated using quantitative data. On Baidu Search (the leading search engine in China), one can find 91,790 items for ‘Peircean semiotics’. In addition, 1,027 academic papers or dissertations with ‘Peirce’ or ‘Peircean semiotics’ as keywords can be found on the CNKI database (the dominant academic database in China), with most published in the last ten years. These publications on Peirce cover nearly all disciplines in the human sciences, including semiotics, philosophy, logic, literature, arts, communication and journalism, anthropology, cultural studies, etc. Nevertheless, these data only give a general idea of the wider situation, because many scholars use Peircean doctrine in their research without indicating this approach in the titles or keywords. For instance, Yirong Hu’s monograph Semiotics of the Image: Perspective on Media Spectacle (Hu, 2014) in essence adopts Peirce’s theory of iconicity as a framework to discuss ‘universal iconicity’ in the media and mass communication, and its influence on contemporary culture. One major feature of this period is the publication of Chinese translations of Peirce’s selected works and monographs on Peirce, a very important step in popularizing his semiotic system. The first is Cornelis de Waal’s On Peirce (2003, 2014) translated by Professor Changchi Hao, a brief guide to Peirce’s thought. Later, Professor Jiliang Tu of the Chinese Academy of Social Science selected and

78

Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Peircean Semiotics

translated Selected Writings of Charles Sanders Peirce (Peirce, 2006). Since it belongs to the ‘Series of American Pragmatism’, this collection mainly focuses on pragmaticism, epistemology, metaphysics, logic and science. However, Chapter 7, ‘Logics as semiotics: The theory of signs’ from Bucher, ed., Philosophical Writing of Peirce (Peirce, 1955: 98–191), ‘On the nature of Signs’ (W3: 66–68) and a section titled ‘Signs’ from Peirce on Signs (Peirce, 1991) are included in this book. Although the volume is only a beginning, it is notable as the first Chinese translation of Peirce’s semiotic writings. It was followed by the Chinese version of J. Brent’s Charles Sanders Peirce: A Life (translated by Jinqiang Shao, 2008), which introduced more of Peirce’s original thought to Chinese readers. However, there was still no translation presenting Peirce’s full semiotic system until I translated C.S. Peirce: On Signs (Peirce and Liszka, 2014). This book, as far as I know, is different from any published selected works, because it contains two major parts. The first is Peirce’s own account of his semiotic theories. Professor Liszka of New York State University, Professor Yiheng Zhao of Sichuan University and I co-edited this part, by selecting essential materials from the Collected Papers and reorganizing them to present Peirce’s ideas about the complex system of signs. The second part is Professor Liszka’s monograph A General Introduction to the Semiotics of Charles Sanders Peirce, which is the first monograph on Peircean semiotics published in China. We hope this book will serve as a guide for those interested in Peirce’s theory of signs. Indeed, this book has been welcomed by Chinese semioticians: more than 500 papers or books have now cited this book. Later, Hoopes (ed.), Peirce on Signs (2017) was translated into Chinese, presenting more of Peirce’s semiotic writings to Chinese readers. It is also worth mentioning that Professor Zhao Yiheng left the University of London and resettled at the Sichuan University in 2006, which marked the beginning of a fast-developing period for semiotics, particularly Peircean semiotics. He established the Institute of Semiotics and Media Studies (ISMS) in 2008, and then founded China’s first postgraduate programme in semiotics, enrolling both MA and PhD students.3 Unlike other semiotic institutes in China, which are mainly rooted in schools of foreign languages and linguistics, ISMS belongs to the School of Literature and Journalism, where three majors (literature, journalism and media studies and arts) have a long history of collaborative and interdisciplinary studies. Developing a Peirce-like, open and interpretive pattern of semiotics, which can deal with various signifying activities in social culture, became their major target. Hence, the research scope of ISMS is wider than usual, including video games, brands, fashion, tourism, gifts, popular culture, etc.

Peircean Semiotics in China Today

79

ISMS is now celebrating its tenth anniversary (2008–2018). In the last decade, about 100 young semioticians have obtained their MA or PhD in semiotics from this institute, and most of them are continuing their semiotic research. With the enthusiastic response shown by students around the country, ISMS has been winning greater recognition. Members of ISMS have published more than eighty semiotics books to date, including volumes in the ‘Series of Young Chinese Semioticians’, the ‘Series of Chinese Semiotics’, and ‘Translation of Semiotics Today’. Most of them, following the ‘Major Tradition’ of semiotics, in Sebeok’s words, take Peircean semiotics or ‘Peirce +’ as their basis. Thus, ISMS has played an important role in promoting the ‘Peircean turn’ of Chinese semiotic studies. The increase in academic activities in semiotics in China today has brought together scholars interested in Peircean semiotics. There are five major semiotic research centres in China, located in Chengdu, Nanjing, Tianjin, Suzhou and Lanzhou. They jointly established the ‘Alliance of Chinese Semiotics’ in 2017, aiming to promote the development of Chinese semiotics by various activities. For instance, three major professional journals in China, Signs and Media (English–Chinese, Chengdu), Chinese Semiotic Studies (English, Nanjing) and Language and Semiotics Studies (English, Suzhou), have now become important platforms for scholars to communicate their latest semiotic research. Papers on Peircean semiotics or its applications are the mainstream of these journals. In particular, the establishment of two semiotic associations, the Association of Cultural and Communication Semiotics (ACCS, 2015) and Association of Semiotics and Communication Studies (ASCS, 2018), indicates the prevalence of Peircean semiotics in nearly all areas of the humanities and social sciences in China. The former is mainly for scholars in literature, art and culture, while the latter is for journalism and media studies and other semiotic approaches to the social sciences. Both of them established their secretariat offices at ISMS, Sichuan University, and share a similar goal, which is to construct a general theory of semiotics that embraces various signifying activities in society and culture. Hence, Peircean semiotics, given its openness and dynamic nature, has become the theoretical ‘commens’ of these associations: the two associations have nearly 500 registered members altogether, who are leading the Peircean trend in China today. At the same time, domestic and overseas scholars have been connecting more and more closely since the Nanjing Conference (2012). Accordingly, more overseas Peircean scholars and their works are being introduced to China, and vice versa.

80

Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Peircean Semiotics

The year 2014 was a milestone for international communications in Chinese Peircean semiotic studies. Three Chinese journals, Philosophical Analysis, Russian Literature and Arts and Signs and Media, published special sections that year to commemorate the hundredth anniversary of Peirce’s death. It was rare in China for journals from three different fields to publish special sections almost at the same time. Contributors to these sections, including overseas scholars such as James Liszka and Ahti-Veikko Pietarinen (2014a; 2014b) mainly discuss Peirce’s logic and semiotics, and their influences today. In autumn 2014, Professor Anthony Jappy accepted my invitation and gave a lecture about Peircean visual semiotics at Sichuan University. He came back to Chengdu the following summer and gave the opening lecture in a two-week course on Peircean semiotics and pictorial studies, thus popularizing Peircean thought at different levels among university students in China. In addition, more international conferences and other academic events on Peircean semiotics took place in China in the new century. The earliest can be dated back to 2005, when ‘Sign and Value: Sino-US Conference on Peircean Philosophy’ was held at Beijing Normal University. Professor Cornelis de Waal, Professor James Liszka, Professor C. Pearson, Professor Ken Ketner and their Chinese counterparts participated in this conference. It was followed by a roundtable discussion on ‘Peirce, Saussure and the Semiotics of Communication’ in Chengdu in July 2015 as a special session at the First International Symposium on Cultural and Communication Semiotics. The book launch of the Chinese translation of Liszka’s A General Introduction to the Semiotics of Charles Sanders Peirce was included in the schedule, which was the first press conference for a Peircean monograph in China. Professor Jappy and Professor Lee Yunhee from South Korea were also invited to this conference. In October 2016, the First International Conference on Peirce’s Philosophy and Logic was held in Guiyang. Professor Pietarinen, Professor Jeremy Siligman, Professor Mihir Charkraborty and other domestic scholars (including myself) participated in this conference.

Traditional Chinese semiotic thought and Peircean semiotics The development of Peircean semiotics also provided Chinese scholars with a comparative perspective for studying traditional Chinese philosophy and literary criticism. In recent years, this semiotic branch has become more salient in China, because they have found the ubiquity of Peircean triads in traditional thought.

Peircean Semiotics in China Today

81

China has a long history of semiotic thinking. It can be dated back as early as the so-called Pre-Qin Period (eighth–third centuries BC), when Mingxue ਽ᆖ (the study of naming), flourished. Reflection on language in ancient China centred on ‘names’ (ming, words) and their relation to ‘stuff ’ (shi, objects, events, situations), second-century BC. Different ways to deal with the relation between the names and their referents resulted in different schools of Mingxue at that time. Among the most representative were Confucius’s ‘Zheng Ming Lun’ ↓਽䇪 (naming doctrine), ‘Mingshi Lun’ ਽ᇎ䇪 (the study of names and reality) in Mo Zi ໘ᆀ and ‘Zhi Wu Lun’ ᤷ⢙䇪 (the study of referents) in Gong Sun Long Zi ‫ޜ‬ᆉ嗉ᆀ. From the semiotic perspective, these schools of thought all endeavour to study the relation between the sign and its objects and how the name can represent the meaning. In addition, Yi Jing ᱃㓿 (The Book of Changes), the study of the exchanges between Yin 䱤 and Yang 䱣, is regarded as the first complete semiotic system in the world. Professor Zhongshu Qian, as mentioned above, could be regarded as the first scholar to study these philosophies from a Peircean perspective during the 1960s and 1970s. Further related research took place in the late 1980s, when scholars began to absorb Peirce’s theories, attempting to adopt them to the traditional Chinese semiotic system. In general, these studies can be categorized into three groups. First are comparative studies of Peircean semiotics and Chinese semiotic thought in the Pre-Qin period, the majority of which concentrate on the triadic analysis of the naming doctrines. In other words, these studies concerned whether the concepts developed by ancient Chinese philosophers – Ming ਽ (name), Shi ᇎ (reality, object), Wu ⢙ (stuff, thing), Ju Ѯ (reflection; concept), etc. – can be clarified by Peirce’s triadic model. Indeed, many triads can be found in those philosophical documents. For instance, Mo Zi, an important work in the school of naming, indicated that a triad could exist in a name and its referents: ᡰԕ䉃ˈ਽ҏDŽᡰ䉃ˈᇎҏDŽ਽ᇎ㙖ˈਸҏDŽᘇ㹼ˈѪҏDŽlj໘ᆀg㓿 䈤кNJ What something is called by is its ‘name’ (Ming). What is so called is the ‘object’ (Shi). The mating of ‘name’ and ‘object’ is ‘relating’ (He). To intend and to perform are to ‘act’ (Xing). Exposition of Canon I, Mo Zi ѮˈᤏᇎҏDŽ Ju (to refer to/pick out by name from others) is to present the analogue for the object (Shi). Canon I, Mo Zi

82

Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Peircean Semiotics

‘Ming’,‘shi’ and‘ju’in Mo Zi could be regarded as a semiotic triad from a Peircean perspective (Zhu, 2012: 175–176). Ming is similar to Peirce’s ‘representamen’ or ‘sign’, because it is the something used to refer to the other thing. Wu, in turn, is what ming refers to, therefore it is the ‘object’; while ju is the way we choose a name to indicate the object, which could be regarded as Peirce’s ‘interpretant’, because the choice of name depends on our understanding of both name and object. However, different schools have their own ideas about essence and the functions of ming, especially its different ways of connecting to the shi. For instance, instead of the idea that the name should indicate the object directly, some other schools, like Daoism, hold that ‘ming depends on the shi’, or even ‘there is no name in the word’, which makes the problem more complex. Hence, the pioneers in this field, such as Zongtang Liu (1989), Xiankun Li (1990; 1996), Zhixiao Gou (1995) and Xiangyun Zeng (1996; 1999), attempted to adopt Peircean semiotics to clarify these terms or relationships, beyond the traditional logical or semantic perspectives. Professor Xiankun Li (1990) explained that, from the Peircean perspective, the name could be interpreted as having different meanings, hence different symbolic functions. Thus, the name is, in essence, not a ‘concept’ or ‘social norm’ as was the traditional view, but the name (or sign) in itself. The concept is like the interpretant, which is the mediation between name and object. Because a name has different ways to connect with this object, it can produce different interpretants. Accordingly, the name has different meanings, the aim of ‘Zhen Ming Shuo’ ↓਽䈤 (to rectify names with names) or naming theory is therefore not semantic or logical deduction but pragmatic – to find a way to protect the univocality of the name. Peircean explanations of naming theory in the 1990s laid the foundation for in-depth research into traditional semiotic thinking in ancient China. A number of related monographs can be found in the new century. For instance, Daode Chen and Xiangyun Zeng’s Study of Pre-Qin Doctrines of Names and Disputations from the Viewpoint of Semiotics (2017), is a systematic study of naming theory mainly based in logic semiotics. Zhu Dong’s Semiotic Thinking in the Pre-Qin Period (2014) is much more comprehensive: following Peircean tradition, he regards ‘ming’ as a comprehensive semiotic system in ancient China, which experienced an exchange from linguistic norms to behaviour norms, indicating the ‘growth of symbols’ of ming in ancient society. The second important field is the Peircean semiotic analysis of the symbolic system in Yi Jing ᱃㓿 (The Book of Changes), the earliest of the Chinese classics,

Peircean Semiotics in China Today

83

which remains the most difficult riddle in the world. Scholars around the world have continued to show an enduring interest in interpreting the related thoughts in this book, and its semiotic analysis began to appear in the 1980s. Pierre Guiraud was one of the semiotic pioneers in the West to study this book, pointing out that The Book of Changes was probably the most logical and abstract symbolic system in the world. In China, earlier scholars such as Xiaoshen Zhao (1998), Liangyun Chen (1988), Mengxuan Yu (1990), Jiannan He (1995) and Haiping Ye (1997) published groundbreaking studies, mainly focusing on the nature of the signs and their mechanism from the perspective of semiotics. Although their studies at that time cannot be regarded as strictly Peircean, they indeed indicated a potential dialogue between The Book of Changes and Peircean semiotics. Xiaoshen Zhao (1998), invoking the Peircean relationship between sign and object, proposed that Bagua is the system of signs that the ancient Chinese summarized according to natural phenomena; this paper was the first to adopt Peircean semiotics to study Yi Jing. Other papers (Chen, 1998) at that time also found that different types of semiosis in Yi Jing always existed in an infinite and dynamic process, indicating that even the same sign in different contexts or structures will produce different meanings. This explanation is much closer to Peirce’s notion of ‘infinite semiosis’, as Eco summarized it. Peirce noted that ‘the interpretant is nothing but another representation to which the torch of truth is handed along; and as representation, it has its interpretant again. Lo, another infinite series’ (CP 1.339, c. 1893–1895). In this way, the signs in Yi Jing acquired meaning before the formation of their forms; accordingly, their meaning was dependent on the relation between the interpreter’s interpretation and their object (Yu, 1990). These pioneering studies inspired more scholars in China to adopt Peircean models to unravel the various puzzles in this mysterious work. More mature and systematic Peircean analysis of Yi Jing can be found in the new century (Zhu Dong, 2014; Fang Ren, 2015; Su Zhi, 2016; Wang Junhua, 2016). The latest monograph by Professor Su Zhi from Zhejiang Conservatory of Music, The Semiotic Thoughts in Zhou Yi (2018), is the most representative in this field; the majority of this publication adopts Peircean semiotics to explore the signifying mechanism in Yi Jing. Traditional ideas hold that Yi Jing develops a kind of dualism, because it mainly studies the dynamics of Yin and Yang. However, a number of works (Zhu, 2014; Su, 2016, 2018; Wang 2016) using a Peircean approach have found that its symbolic system generally consists of three parts instead of two: that is, guahua খ⭫ (hexagram images), guaci খ䗎 (hexagram statements) and yizhuan ᱃Ր

84

Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Peircean Semiotics

(the commentaries). Guahua points to guaci’s description of the object, and yizhuan makes relevant interpretation of the meaning of the sign. These three elements, followed by the same idea about the relation among Yan 䀰 (words), Xiang 䊑 (images) and Yi ᜿ (meaning) in traditional Chinese philosophy, constitute a complete signifying process which is quite similar to the components of Pierce’s trichotomy. Thus, these studies agree that Peircean semiotics represents a breakthrough in current Yi studies. Owing to the masking of Yi Jing’s phenomenological connotations, conscious and otherwise, it has long been interpreted as a dichotomic philosophy. Fortunately, inspired by Peirce’s phaneroscopy and his semiotics, citing ancient documents and archaeological discoveries in China, these scholars now have an opportunity to unlock the secret of Yi Jing: it is the representation of the trinity in ancient Chinese philosophy, irreducible and indecomposable. Hence, to restore phenomenological truth to Yi Jing will contribute not only to the revaluation of Chinese philosophy, aesthetics, literature, art and history as a whole, but also to the reconstruction of the paradigm of world philosophy, aesthetics and natural sciences (Wang, 2016). Another fruitful application in this field is the use of Peircean semiotics to analyse Chinese classic literature and literary criticism. For instance, Professor Wen Yiming’s monograph (2011) combines ‘semiotic self ’ doctrines of Peirce and Mead to analyse the narrations of the semiotic self in Hong Lou Meng 㓒ᾬỖ (The Dream of the Red Chamber), one of the four Chinese literary classics. Professor Sun Jinyan’s A Cultural Semiotic Study of Martial Art (2015) explores this unique genre in the history of Chinese literature and its cultural background, based on a Peircean model. In the preface of Wang Junhua’s monograph C.S. Peirce and Chinese Classical Aesthetics (2018), one of the most representative works in this field, she stated that Peirce’s semiotics and phenomenology have the following features that are especially suitable for studies of Chinese classic literature and criticism. First, from intuition to signs: there is no intuition, according to Peirce, hence our knowledge of the inner mind comes from the observation and abduction of facts in the world. Second, from dualistic isolation to triadic continuity: Peirce’s triadic semiotic paradigm transcends the limitation of Saussure’s dualistic pattern and ‘the cage of language’, hence gives infinite space back to semiotics and aesthetics. Third, from comments to formal criticism: Many of doctrines in Chinese classical aesthetics were usually individual random comments, and most of them cornered about the ethicality; hence it is difficult to study from the perspective of forms. However, the Peircean triadic model can systematically re-construct it,

Peircean Semiotics in China Today

85

because a ‘triadic model’ is also the essence of Chinese classical aesthetics. Fourth, from vague language to logical categories: although there is a rich body of classical criticism, its language is usually highly literary. Hence, Peirce’s logicbased semiotic system is useful for clarifying ancient theories. Last but not least, from ‘guess at the riddle’ to science: guided by Peircean semiotics, Chinese classical aesthetics studies can be developed as a ‘normative science’, beyond the disputations of different schools (Wang, 2018: 1–3).

The sociocultural turn in Peircean semiotic studies The recent development of semiotics has widened its spectrum to cope with the drastic changes in Chinese culture in the last twenty years. The sudden, unexpected economic boom has posed a great challenge to academia in China where, not long ago, even the name of cultural studies was hardly heard of. When literary critics and the social sciences turned their attention to culture in general, semiotics provided a natural channel, and scholars in cultural studies and communication studies resorted to semiotics en masse. Cultural studies have thus become a huge discipline in China today. Against this background, more and more scholars in China today agree that Peircean semiotics plays a key role in turning semiotics into a general framework for social and cultural studies, for the following three reasons. First, Peirce held a far-reaching view on the nature of form, which turns semiotics into ‘the mathematics of human sciences’ (Zhao, 2011: 6). The distinction between form and content is a dominant problem in the humanities and cultural studies: what the essence of the thing is determines the nature of different theories. There is also the major difficulty that no general theoretical framework can embrace all sociocultural phenomena. However, Peirce’s discussion of form has successfully clarified this problem, laying a solid foundation for his semiotics as a general theory of cultural studies: General terms denote several things. Each of these things has in itself no qualities, but only a certain concrete form which belongs to itself alone. This was one of the points brought out in the controversy in reference to the nature of universals . . . Hence, a general term has no substantial depth. On the other hand, particular terms, while they have substantial depth, inasmuch as each of the things, one or other of which is predicated of them, has a concrete form, yet have no substantial breadth, inasmuch as there is no aggregate of things to which alone they are applicable. CP 2.415, 1867

86

Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Peircean Semiotics

The above explanation solves the problem opposing content and form in terms of logic. According to Peirce, form is the universal quality of the general term, because it has substantial breadth but its depth is temporarily suspended in related studies. Hence, if we want to comprehend one thing by its general quality, we have to find or summarize its form. In turn, one thing may be regarded as ‘content’, but can turn out to be ‘form’ if it is generalized. Peircean semiotics can be regarded as a ‘formalized’ theory (Zhao, 2014), because it aims to construct a ‘ceroscopy’ (CP 1.191, 1903) covering all semiosis in the world. Hence, because of its general applicability and operability, Peircean semiotics can be adopted as the most formalized general theory guiding cultural and social studies. Second, the triadic system that Peirce designed is open to unlimited semiosis. Peirce’s series of triads – for instance, monad-dyad-triad in logic, firstnesssecondness-thirdness in phaneroscopy, quality-fact-fact in metaphysics, signobject-interpretant in semiosis, etc. – not only means that his semiotics covers all the formal principles of semiosis, but also, more importantly, helps him to construct an open and dynamic semiotic system. In particular, the principle of ultimate semiosis developed from his triadic system shows how an open and continuous interpretive process is the nature of every signifying movement, successfully liberating contemporary semiotics from the constraints of structuralism. Third, his confidence in the human mind’s affinity for ‘truth’ through a ‘community of inquiry’ makes signification an inter-subjective cement for society. In his semiotics, Peirce was not simply satisfied with summarizing different forms of semiosis and their formal features, but continued to develop his doctrine into a social theory of interpersonal relationships. The dominant problem on which he concentrated was the process of interpreting and communicating signs, which was not confined to individuals but to the public (Zhao, 2014; Zhao, 2017: 135). He maintained that once man began to trace the meaning of signs, it necessarily became a process of interpersonal communication, because semiosis in itself is a kind of inter-subjective interaction: That, since any thought, there must have been a thought, has its analogue in the fact that, since any past time, there must have been an infinite series of times. To say, therefore, that thought cannot happen in an instant, but requires a time, is but another way of saying that every thought must be interpreted in another, or that all thought is in signs. CP 5.253, c. 1903

These kinds of inter-subjective dialogues ultimately became the ‘community of inquiry’ where the ultimate interpretant or ‘truth’ existed. Therefore, Peirce’s

Peircean Semiotics in China Today

87

ideas about the relation between symbolic communication and community open the door to social studies, especially communication and media studies in a new media age. The root causes of communication in new media society, and their impact on culture, are the formation of a new inter-subjectivity and the community relations brought about by new media technology (Zhao 2017c; Zhao, 2018). Consequently, Peircean semiotics can be considered an impetus for the sociocultural turn in Chinese semiotic studies today. Just as Zhao Yiheng advocated in his paper ‘Returning to Peirce’: ‘returning to Peirce will definitely help the Chinese semiotic movement push forward to new heights’ (Zhao, 2014). Thus, we see that current Peircean semiotic studies in China not only apply his doctrine to analyse specific sociocultural phenomena, but also concentrate on the theoretical reconstruction of semiotics as a general theory of cultural and social studies on the basis of Peircean semiotics. Zhao Yiheng’s ‘trilogy of meaning’, Semiotics: Principles and Problems (2011), A General Narratology (2013) and Philosophical Semiotics (2017), is the most prominent body of work in this field, playing an important role in promoting the ‘Peircean turn’ of Chinese semiotic studies. Hence, this trilogy, more than 1.2 million Chinese characters in total, enjoys a high reputation among Chinese academics. The trilogy’s fundamental theory is a general semiotics or ‘cultural formalism’ that aims to reconstruct contemporary semiotics so that it can effectively analyse all types of sociocultural problems. Therefore, Zhao initiates his reconstructive work in the first book Semiotics: Principles and Problems following a Peircean approach, but his original ideas about signs develop Peirce’s doctrine into a more dynamic and applicable methodology for cultural and social studies. For instance, Peirce once suggested that ‘nothing is a sign unless it is interpreted as a sign’ (CP 2.308, 1902), thereby shifting semiotics from a textorientated to an interpretation-orientated paradigm. Zhao follows this approach and redefines sign as ‘a perception that is regarded as carrying meaning’ (2011: 1), further activating the dynamic mechanism of semiosis and rebuilding semiotics as a more flexible approach for dealing with various forms of semiosis in social culture. Anything that makes an interpreter perceive something to carry meaning and needing interpretation can be regarded as a sign. Thus, it is the interpreter’s interpretation, not the sign itself, that makes a sign a sign. Consequently, interpretation ‘is the potential that one sign can be interpreted by another sign, that is to say, interpretation is the realization of meaning’ (2011: 2). Hence, it is the sign-users’ act of dynamic interpretation that bridges ‘sign’ and ‘meaning’, an essential pair in Zhao’s definition.

88

Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Peircean Semiotics

Peirce’s definition of semiotics, which is ‘the doctrine of the essential nature and fundamental varieties of possible semiosis’ (CP 5.488, 1907), is based on all of the possible signs in the world. Zhao considered this broad scope as an advantage of Peircean semiotics, because semiotics should be ‘abstract enough so as to embrace all types of semiosis’ (Zhao, 2014). Sharing the same logic, Zhao refines semiotics as ‘the study of meaning’ (2011: 2). Because ‘social culture is the total set of activities that convey meaning’, semiotics becomes the fundamental theory of cultural studies. A clearer elaboration of the relations between meaning, semiotics and cultural studies can be found at the beginning of his book: The problem of meaning, including its production, sending, communication, receiving, understanding and variation etc., is the core issue of both the humanities and social sciences. The fundamental goal of semiotics is to provide the basic methods for studying meaning; therefore, it can be operated as a mutual framework shared by different disciplines devoted to studying cultural problems. In other words, different theories acquire their commensurability because of semiotics, no longer confined to its specialty. 2011: 22

These efforts at revisiting and refining Peirce’s work can be found everywhere in Zhao’s book, showing how a Peirce-like semiotics – an open and dynamic system – can be the fundamental basis for social and cultural theory. Another example is his redefinition of ‘art’ based on Peirce’s triadic model, endeavouring to prove that semiotics can accommodate concrete cultural phenomena that other disciplines or theories may not clearly explain. Zhao proposed that the fundamental character of art semiosis is ‘skipping the object’. This definition means that in the sign-object-interpretant triad, an art sign always skips the object and directly refers to its interpretant, which is a function of its distance from any practical purpose. According to this definition, it is not difficult to classify Marcel Duchamp’s Fountain as art. Exhibiting the urinal in a gallery separates it from its original function and makes it a piece of art. Only this premise allows beholders to understand how to interpret art – to jump over its functionality (object) and to focus on its artistic value (interpretant). Zhao’s theoretical development of Peircean semiotics is not just confined to the concrete analysis of sociocultural problems. Peirce defined phenomenology to be ‘occupied with the formal elements of the phaneron’ (CP 1.284); thus, it is a kind of formal theory of meaning (Zhao, 2017: 2). In this way, Zhao advanced the idea that ‘phenomenology, as Peirce designed, should be the ground theory of semiotics’ (2017: 2), and developed Peirce’s phaneroscopy to construct an

Peircean Semiotics in China Today

89

ontology of signs, systematically examining the coming into being of meaning. This ambition has been fulfilled in his latest work Philosophical Semiotics (2017). In its preface, he states, ‘the theory of meaning in this book follows from and develops Peircean semiotics’ (2017: 1). Inspired by this, Professor Jia Peng and her colleagues published a series of papers, focusing on Peirce’s essential concepts of his phenomenology, namely, ‘Secondness’ (Peng and Liu, 2017), ‘ground’ (Peng and Li, 2016), ‘continuity’ (Peng and Li, 2014) etc., for the systematic development of this branch. Zhao’s original renovation and reconstruction of contemporary semiotic systems develops a Peircean approach with a much broader scope, where cultural and social problems can be solved under the umbrella of semiotics. His trilogy – especially Semiotics: Principles and Problems – has been influential in Chinese academia, and called ‘one of the most important books on semiotics in the last thirty years’ (Rao, 2012). It has inspired more semioticians in China to participate in the cultural and social turn of Peircean semiotics. As for sociocultural aspects, many studies have attempted to identify the signifying mechanism in specific social activities, providing a brand-new perspective to related studies. For instance, Xingzhi Zhao’s series of studies on gift-giving (Zhao, 2013; 2014a) focused on Peirce’s classification of signs and his universal rhetoric, to construct a general semiotics of gift-giving to clarify the categories, boundaries and functions of gifts throughout human history. With a similar logic, Dr. Chen Xue (Xue, 2018) has investigated the impact of digital communication on our everyday life, based on Peirce’s thoughts about the relation between signs and mind. The convergence of Marxism and Peircean semiotics for solving social problems is also a major trend in China today. The most representative example is Semiotics of Commodity (Rao and Zhu 2017). The co-authors of this book maintain that the traditional dichotomy of commodity – to divide it into two major types: material and cultural commodity – is not enough to analyse its nature, because there is no material commodity without symbolic value, nor symbolic without materiality. Hence, Peirce’s triadic model regarding the relation between value, value in use and value in exchange, as the semiosis of sign, object and interpretant, respectively, can solve the problem of the commodity and its symbolic value in a dynamic way. Following this logic, the authors discuss music, tourism, gifts and clothes as commodities and their unique signifying mechanisms. Other studies discuss issues about ethnic minorities (Zong and Liang, 2018), celebrity (Yan, 2018), Marxist semiotics (Hu and Chen, 2016), make-up and body decoration (Jia, 2018), etc.

90

Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Peircean Semiotics

As for art, scholars emphasize Peirce’s term ‘interpretant’ and its principles of communication in various cultural issues. Especially in art studies, traditional dualistic semiology cannot explain artworks in the post-modern age, because the majority of them are held not to have a ‘signified’. However, Peircean theory of the interpretant brings a new perspective to contemporary art studies: according to the triadic model, the nature of art today is to direct to its interpretant instead of its object. Therefore, scholars in China, inspired by Peirce, conduct unique forms of research. For instance, Lian Duan (2016) adopts the Peircean triadic model to clarify the visual order in the coding system of traditional Chinese landscape painting, initiating a new approach to ancient Chinese painting theory. Weiqing Hai (2018) focused on the semiotic anthropology of dance, aiming to analyse one of the oldest dancing forms in China – the ‘Circle Dance’. On the basis of Peircean categories, he divided his topic into three major types of cultural heritage: dancing signs, dancing ideas and dancing material culture. It is the first systematic study of traditional dance guided by Peircean semiotics in China. Moreover, many scholars, such as Jia Peng (2017), Qing Yan (2010), Zhiliang Wang (2011) and Zhenglan Lu (2014), have explored semiotic problems in the visual arts, aesthetics, music and film by adopting a Peircean approach.

Communication and media studies and Peircean semiotics The twenty-first century has witnessed the rapid development of new media technology, which has played an ever more important role in communication. From the representation to the construction of reality, both the connotation and extension of mediated communication have changed: communicators and the virtual community they belong to turn out to be the dominant factors in communication. Most of all, the redundancy of signs and their signifying activities in cyberspace now determines the way communicators represent their meaning in related communities (Zhao, 2017c). However, current communication theories that focus on the effect of media are not sufficient to analyse those new phenomena, which is where the convergence of media and semiotics studies begins. Given this situation, the semiotics of communication has become a salient trend in China today. Related scholars believe that semiotics and communication studies share the same target, as they aim to study the communication of meaning via signs, and also share an overlapping academic history (Zhao and

Peircean Semiotics in China Today

91

Xue, 2017). Hence, when the communication of meaning and the formation of meaning community on the internet become the theme of both semiotics and communication studies, it is very natural for both disciplines to merge. The interdisciplinary development of semiotics and communication studies does not merely broaden the application domain of Peircean semiotics, but also promotes the systematic exploration of his thinking about communication. As summarized in my latest monograph, C.S. Peirce and the Semiotics of Communication (Zhao, 2017a), Peircean semiotics has an innate connection to communication studies, not just because it laid the foundation of early American communication theories, but also still continues to guide today’s communication studies in a new media society. The concept of ‘communication’ inherent in his semiotics helped him to shape an open and dynamic system that can consciously guide today’s semiotics beyond structuralism (Zhao, 2016; 2017b). For instance, he placed the important element ‘interpretant’ in his triadic model, indicating that the meaning of a sign is dependent on communication between interpreters. Most importantly, his classification of interpretants in the communicational process established the bidirectional pattern of communication in advance: There is the Intentional Interpretant, which is a determination of the mind of the utterer; the Effectual Interpretant, which is a determination of the mind of the interpreter; and the Communicational Interpretant, or say the Cominterpretant, which is a determination of that mind into which the minds of utterer and interpreter have to be fused in order that any communication should take place. This mind may be called the commens. It consists of all that is, and must be, well understood between utterer and interpreter at the outset, in order that the sign in question should fulfil its function. SS: 196–7, 1906

This pattern, emphasizing inter-subjective interactions between sign-users, can be regarded as the prototype of ‘symbolic interactionism’ (Hu, 2007; Zhao, 2015; Zhao, 2017), because the pioneers of this school, such as William James, John Dewey and George H. Mead, responded to Peirce’s idea directly or indirectly. Hence, Peirce can be counted among the first generation of American communication studies (Hardt 2008: 31–47). More thoughts about communication can be found in his manuscripts. In particular, his ideas about the self and communicational patterns, and his speculations about the relation between ultimate interpretant and the formation of community, can be regarded as the framework for his communication theory

92

Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Peircean Semiotics

(Zhao, 2017). According to Peirce, the analysis of communication is based on the following hypothesis: sign users communicate, share their meanings and then construct a community of meaning by virtue of signs. Those ideas have indeed inspired scholars to reconsider the relationship between symbolic communication, individual and community in new media society. Therefore, many communication studies based on a Peircean approach have been published in recent years. They can be categorized into three groups. First, journalism is the traditional field of communication studies. With the publication of Semiotics of Journalism (Li, 2014) – the first semiotic monograph on journalism in China – more scholars became interested in revisiting important issues in this field, hoping to update the current theory from a semiotic point of view. ‘Truth’ in journalism is a salient issue, because traditional ideas about truth, that it involves a correspondence between news coverage and the facts, has now been challenged with the rise of online news, public journalism, new journalism and citizen journalism. Moreover, ‘post-truth’ has in recent years become a dominant problem in journalism. Many scholars (Jiang and Li, 2013; Feng, 2017; Zhang, 2017; Rao and Li, 2018) have adopted Peirce’s ideas about ‘truth’, trying to redefine this term to deal with the changing environment of news production. They agree with Peirce that truth is a problem of community, which is the commens among interpreters in a specific community. Hence, ideas of truth in journalism itself have experienced many changes, from factual truth to community truth, via sign-textual truth. Second, research has focused on changes in communication in a new media age. With the rapid development of digital media technology, as represented by the Internet and convergent media, human society has entered a ‘meta-media age’ since the end of the twentieth century. Regarded as a ‘media of media’, metamedia (that is, terminal screens connected by the Internet) integrate all existing media forms and their communication patterns, by translating, remodelling or even reforming their sign-texts. Accordingly, ‘remediation’ turns out to be the dominant way to construct the meanings of signs in meta-media. It should be noted that the remediation of meta-media changes not only the forms of existing media, but also the way we communicate with signs; that is, meta-communication re-emerges in new-media communication. Hence, scholars (Zhao 2014b, Zhao, 2018; Zhao and Peng, 2018; Feng, 2013; Hu, 2017) have made use of Peirce’s interpretant theories to explore the features of new media and their influences on the communicative relationship and the genre of communication. Last but not least, several studies have investigated applicable fields in communication. As a Peircean approach has become prevalent, many scholars

Peircean Semiotics in China Today

93

have been keen to develop a so-called constructive semiotics, to provide professional suggestions for the development of specific industries. Therefore, a Peircean approach to semiotic studies has been applied to brands (Jiang, 2014, 2016; Li, 2015; Tu and Xin, 2012), advertising (Rao, 2014), games (Zong, 2014), tourism (Rao and Zhu, 2017; Zhen, 2013), noise and communication (He, 2016), etc. The majority of these studies apply Peirce’s triadic model to renew the definition of their study objects and provide more original strategies for these industries.

A summary The powerful movement of Peircean semiotics in China today can be summarized as follows: First, Chinese semiotic studies have experienced a paradigm shift, from pure theoretical study (e.g. philosophy, logic or linguistics) to a more general or practical field, cultural and social studies. Consequently, the theoretical paradigm must be updated to embrace all cultural or social phenomena. Peircean semiotics is ‘the doctrine of the essential nature and fundamental varieties of possible semiosis’ (CP 5.488, 1907), which features an interpretive/communicative approach; therefore, it is in accordance with the trend of Chinese semiotics today. Accordingly, many more Peircean studies nowadays can be found in sociocultural fields. Second, the application of Peircean semiotics to these fields will encounter new problems, while the process of solving them will, in return, renovate or even re-construct his semiotic system. Therefore, many Chinese scholars nowadays not only focus on the applications of Peirce, but also try to develop his theories. For instance, Jia Peng is now constructing her own system of ecosemiotics, combining Peirce’s triadic model and Jacob von Uexkull’s ‘umwelt’ to research the semiosis of art and ethnology (Peng, 2014; 2017). Dong Zhu of Lanzhou University now works on his semioethics in Pre-Qin philosophy, based on his Peircean analysis of the relation between ‘Names’ (Ming), ‘Reality’ (Shi) and ‘Refection’ (Ju) in different Pre-Qin philosophical schools. Last but not least, the interdisciplinary approach to Peircean semiotics has become the mainstream. Peirce’s semiotic system is highly interdisciplinary, covering logic, phenomenology, rhetoric, communication, etc. Thus, one will find scholars engaging in Peircean studies within at least four different fields – linguistics, logic and philosophy, cultural studies and the social sciences such as

94

Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Peircean Semiotics

journalism and media studies. Especially in the cultural and sociological fields, the major domain of Peircean semiotic studies in China, scholars have been more vigorously developing a ‘Peirce +’ paradigm. They explore many more possibilities that combine Peircean semiotics with other doctrines of signs, for the better analysis of their subject from multiple perspectives. Doing so, in turn, ensures that Peircean studies remain dynamic.

References Brent, J. 2008. Charles Sanders Peirce: A Life, translated by Shao Jinqiang. Shanghai: Shanghai People’s Publishing House. Cai, S. 2007. Yuyan, Luoji yu Renzhi (Language, Logic and Cognition). Beijing: Tsinghua University Press. Chen, D. and X. Zeng. 2017. Fuhaoxue Shiye xia de Xianqin Minbianxue Yanjiu (Study of Pre-Qin Doctrines of Names and Disputations from the Viewpoint of Semiotics). Beijing: People’s Publishing House. Chen, L. 1988. ‘Lun Zhouyi de Fuhao Xiangzhen’ (The Symbolism in Zhouyi). Philosophical Researches, 3, 58–65. Ding, E. 1994. ‘Lun Peirce de Fuhao Sanfenfa’ (On Peirce’s trichotomy of signs). Foreign Language and Literature, 3, 10–14. Ding, E. 2000. Yuyan de Fuhaoxing (The Sign Character of Language). Beijing: Foreign Languages Teaching and Research Press. Duan, L. 2016. ‘Peirce Fuhaoxue de Yizhi Zhixu yu Zhongguo Shanshuihua Bianma Xitong de Shijue Zhixu’ (Peircean Semiotics and the Visual Order of the Coding System in Chinese Landscape Painting). Literature and Art Studies, 3, 122–132. Feng, Y. 2013. ‘Peirce dui Dangdai Chuanboxue Yanjiu de Lilun Gongxian’ (The Peircean Contribution to the Contemporary Communication Studies). Journal of Chongqing University of Posts and Telecommunications, 25(2), 59–65. Feng, Y. 2017. ‘Xinwen Keneng Zhenshi: Yige Fuhaoxue Fenxi’ (The Possible Truth of Journalism: A Semiotic Analysis). Editor’s Friend, 11, 48–51. Fang, R. and H. Lin. 2015. ‘Cong Peirce de Guandian Kan Zhouyi de Fuhaoxue Xingzhi’ (The semiotic features of Zhou Yi from the Perspective of Peircean Semiotics). Studies of Zhouyi, 4, 36–46. Gou, Z. 1995. ‘Lun Xianqin Zhexue de Fuhaoxue Quxiang’ (Towards the Semiotic thinking in Pre-Qin Philosophy). Academic Forum, 2, 18–22. Hai, W. 2018. Wudao Fuhaoxue Shiyexia de Zhonghua Quanwu Wenhua Yicun Yanjiu (A Cultural Semiotic Study on the Heritage of Chinese Circle Dance). Chengdu: Sichuan University Press. Hardt, H. 2008. Critical Communication Studies: Communication, History and Theory in America, translated by He Daokuan. Beijing: Peking University Press.

Peircean Semiotics in China Today

95

He, J. 1995. ‘Leibniz, Hegel yu Yijing Fuhao Xitong’ (Leibniz, Hegel and The Semiotic System of Yijing). Jiangxi Social Sciences, 12, 62–67. He, Y. 2016. ‘Zaoyin Fazhe: Peirce Xianxiangxue Shiyu xiade Fuhao Zaoyin Yanjiu’ (The Rule of Noise: A Peircean Phenomenological Approach to Noise). Signs and Media, 2, 172–182. Hu, Y.R. 2014. Tuxiang Fuhaoxue: Chuanmei Jinguan Shijie de Tushi Bawo (Semiotics of the Image: Perspectives on Media Spectacle). Chengdu: Sichuan University Press. Hu, Y.R. and W. Chen (eds). 2016. Dangdai Makesi Zhuyi Fuhaoxue Sichao Wenxuan (Marxist Semiotics Today: A Selection). Chengdu: Sichuan University Press. Hu, Y.Q. 2007. Zaidu Fayan: Lun Zhijiage Xuepai Chuanbo Sixiang (Respeaking: On Communication Thought of Chicago Sociology School). Beijing: Encyclopedia of China Publishing House. Hu, Z. 2004. Renzhi Yinyuxue (Cognitive Metaphorology). Beijing: Peking University Press. Jia, J. 2018. Daban: Fuhaoxue Yanjiu (Semiotics of Making-up and Body Decoration). Chengdu: Sichuan University Press. Jiang, S. 2014. ‘Fuhao Xiuci Shiyu xiade Pinpai Fuhao Biaoyi Jizhi Yanjiu’ (The Signifying Mechanism of Branding from the Perspective of Semiotic Rhetoric). Journal of Fujian Normal University, 3, 61–66. Jiang, S. 2016. ‘Pinpai Shijue Shibie de Fuhao Yaosu yu Zhicheng Guanxi’ (On the Symbolic Elements of Brand Logos and their References in Brand Visual Identification). Signs and Media, 2, 183–195. Jiang, X. and Li, W. 2013. ‘Cong Keitizhizhen dao Fuhaozhizhen: Lun Xinwen Qiuzhen de Fuhaoxue Zhuanxiang’ (From Objective Truth to Semiotic Truth: Semiotic Orientation of Truth-seeking in Journalism). Chinese Journal of Journalism and Communication, 11, 48–51. Li, Q. 2014. ‘Jiyu Peirce Fuhaoxue Lilun de Chuantong Pinpai Jiazhi Renzhi Chayi Yanjiu’ (The Cognitive Differences of Traditional Brands Based on Peircean Semiotics). Southeast Communication, 1, 113–116. Li, X. 1988. ‘Shenme shi Fuhao yu Fuhaoxue’ (What are signs and semiotics), Thinking and Wisdom, 6, 4–7. Li, X. 1988. ‘Zhihaoxue yu Luojixue’ (Logic and semiotics). Philosophical Researches, 9, 61–68. Li, X. 1990. ‘Fuhao Guocheng yu Fuhao de Fenlei’ (On Semiosis and the Classification of Signs). Thinking and Wisdom, 4, 2–4. Li, X. 1990. ‘Zhongguo: Yige Juyou Fengfu de Guojia’ (China – A Country with Abundant Semiotic Traditions), Jianghan Forum, 1, 32–38. Li, Y. 1993. Lilun Fuhaoxue Daolun (Introduction to Theoretical Semiotics). Beijing: Social Science Academic Press. Liszka, J.J. 2014. ‘Some Reflections on Peirce’s Semiotics: On the Occasion of the 100th Anniversary of His Death’. Signs and Media, 2, 13–31. Liu, Z. 1989. ‘Zhiwu Lun yu Zhihaoxue’ (Zhiwu Lun and Semiotics). Philosophical Researches, 12, 48–56.

96

Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Peircean Semiotics

Lu, D. 2002. ‘Lun Fuhao de Fenlei Wenti: Peirce Yanjiu Zhaji’ (On the Classification of Signs: The Research Notes on Peircean Studies). Journal of PLA University of Foreign Languages, 4: 25–28. Lu, Z. 2016. ‘Kuameijie Yinyue de Fuhao Xiuci’ (The Semiotic Rhetoric of Cross-music). Journal of South China Normal University, 2, 37–40. Mao, D. 1986. ‘Tantan Fuhaoxe de Hanyi Wenti’ (The Chinese Translation of Semiotics/ Semiologie). World Philosophy, 4, 44 + 83. Mao, D. 1987. ‘Fuhaoxue de Qiyuan’ (The Origin of Semiotics). Philosophical Theories, 3, 27–28. Ogden, C.K. and Richards, I.A. 1923. The Meaning of Meaning. New York: Harcourt Brace and World. Peirce, C.S. 2006. Selected Writings of Charles Sanders Peirce, edited by Tu Jiliang, translated by Tu Jiliang and Zhou Zhaoping. Beijing: Social Science Academic Press. Peirce, C.S. 2017. Peirce on Signs: Writings on Semiotic by Charles Sanders Peirce, edited by J. Hoopes, translated by Xu Peng. Shanghai: Shanghai Translation Publishing House. Peirce, C.S and Liszka J. J. 2014. C.S. Peirce: On Signs/A General Introduction of the Semeiotic of Charles Sanders Peirce, translated by Zhao Xingzhi. Chengdu: Sichuan University Press. Peng, J. and Li, Y. 2014. ‘Lun Guiyuefu jiqi Lianxuxing’ (The Symbol and Its Continuity). Foreign Languages in China, 13(02), 34–40. Peng, J. and Li, Y. 2016. ‘Zuowei Diyixing de Jichu: Peirce Zaoqi Fuhaoxue Sixiang zhongde Zhongyao Gainian’ (Ground as Firstness: An Important Concept in Early Peircean Semiotics). Journal of Southwest Minzu University, 37(08): 54–58. Peng, J. and Liu, L. 2017. ‘Lun Xianyan Yishi de Zhishixing Kuangjia ji Zuowei Dierxing de Zhishixing’ (Indexicality as Secondness and Scaffolding of Priori Intention: A Discussion with Zhao Yiheng). Journal of Shanghai University, 34(06): 114–124. Peng, J. 2017. ‘Yishu Fuhao de Sanxing Lun’ (The Triadic Features of Art Signs). Contemporary Literary Criticism, 5, 52–66. Pietarinen A. 2014a. ‘Cunzai Tu: Luoji Yu Renzhi’ (Existential Graphs: Logic and Cognition). translated by Liu Xinwen, Philosophical Analysis, 5(01): 15-36+197. Pietarinen A., Dai, W. and Zhao, X. 2014b. ‘Extensions of Charles S. Peirce: An Interview with Ahti-Veikko Pietarinen’, Signs and Media, 2, 48–67. Qian, Z. 2007. Guan Zhui Pian (Limited Views: Essays on View and Letters). Shanghai: SDX Joint Publishing Company. Rao, G. 2012. ‘Fuhaoxue Heyong?’ (What’s the Usage of Semiotics?). China Book Review, 10, 113–117. Rao, G. 2014. Guanggao Fuhaoxue (Semiotics of Advertising). Chengdu: Sichuan University Press. Rao, G and Zhu, H. 2017. ‘Zuowei Shangpin de Lüyou: Yige Fuhaoxue Guandian’ (Tourism as Commodity: A Semiotic Perspective). Signs and Media, 1, 19–28.

Peircean Semiotics in China Today

97

Rao, G., Zhu. H and Liu, N. (eds). 2017. Shangpin Fuhaoxue (Semiotics of Commodity). Chengdu: Sichuan University Press. Rao, G. and Li, J. 2018. ‘Fan yu Shifan: Xinwen Zhenshi de Yixnag Zuiqiu’ (Norm and Anomie: The Alternative Term of Truth in Journalism). Journalism, 6, 18–24. Su, Z. 2016. ‘Zhouyi Fuhao Xitong zhongde Biaoyi Sanfen Guanxi’ (On the Triadic Relations of Signifying Modes in the Sign System of Book of Changes). Signs and Media, 1: 71–79. Su, Z. 2018. Zhouyi Fuhao Sixiang Yanjiu (The Semiotic Thoughts in Zhouyi). Chengdu: Sichuan University Press. Sun, J. 2015. Wuxia Wenhua Fuhaoxe (A Cultural Semiotic Study of Martial Art). Chengdu: Sichuan University Press. Tu, L. and Xin, Y. 2012. ‘Cong Peirce Fuhaoxue Jiaodu Jiexi Yiyun Kuangquanshui Gaoguao Tuxing’ (A Peircean Semiotic Analysis on the Brand Logo of Evian). Qilu Realm of Arts, 4, 72–74. Waal, C. 2003. On Peirce, translated by Hao Changchi. Beijing: Zhonghua Book Company. Wang, J. 2016. ‘Yi San wei Ti, Yi Yinyang wei Yong: Yijing yu Peirce Xianxiangxue’ (The Application of Three to Two: A Reflection on Book of Changes). Signs and Media, 1, 80–101. Wang, J. 2018. Peirce yu Zhongguo Gudian Meixue (C.S. Peirce and Chinese Classical Aesthetics). Chengdu: Sichuan University Press. Wang, M. 1998. ‘Dui Peirce Fuhao Sixiang De Yuyanxue Chanshi’ (A Linguistic Interpretation of Peirce’s Semiotics). Journal of PLA University of Foreign Languages, 6, 3–9. Wang, M. 2004. Yuyan Fuhaoxue (Linguistic Semiotics). Beijing: Higher Education Press. Wang, Z. 2011. ‘Peirce Fuhaoxue yu Shijue Yishu’ (Peircean Semiotics and Visual Arts). Journal of Nanjing Arts Institute, 3, 108–114. Wen, Y. 2011. Honglou Meng Xushu zongde Fuhao Ziwo (The Semiotic Self in the Narration of The Dream of the Red Chamber). Suzhou: Soochow University Press. Xue, C. 2018. ‘Lun Moyin: Richang Shenghuo Wenhua Chuanbo Jizhi Zaisikao’ (On Memes, An Exploration of the Communication Mechanism of Everyday Life Culture). Signs and Media, 1, 143–155. Yan, Q. 2010. ‘Peirce Fuhao Guocheng zhong Buming Tuili de Meixue Weidu yu Yishu Biaoda Yanjiu’ (The Aesthetic Dimension and Artistic Expression of Abduction in Peircean Semiotics). Journal of Southwest University, 36(2), 154–158. Yan, W. 2018. Mingren˖Chuanbo Fuhaoxue Yanjiu (Celebrity: A Semiotic Communication Study). Chengdu: Sichuan University Press. Ye, H. 1997. ‘Lun Zhouyi de Liangtao Fuhao Xitong jiqi Yiyi’ (The Two Systems of Zhouyi and their Significations). Academic Exploration, 6, 59–63. Yu, M. 1990. ‘Yiyi, Fuhao yu Zhouyi’ (Meaning, Signs and Zhouyi). Quarterly of Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences, 4, 109–116.

98

Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Peircean Semiotics

Zeng, X. 1996. ‘Zhiwu Lun: Zhongguo Gudai de Fuhaoxue Zhuanlun’ (Zhiwu Lun: The First Monograph on Semiotics in China). Collected Papers of Logic Studies. Zeng, X. and Liu, Z. 1999. ‘Mingxue yu Fuhaoxue’ (The Theory of Naming and Semiotics). Journal of Changsha University of Science and Technology, 1, 22–27. Zhang, C. 2017. ‘Cong Xinwenxue dao Meijiexue: Yi Fuhaoxue wei Jichu de Xueke Shenghua’ (From Journalism to Media Studies: The Disciplinary Turn on the Basis of Semiotics). Journal of Xiangtan University, 41(04), 128–131. Zhang, F. 1985. ‘Peirce Zhengli Guan Chutan’ (A Tentative Study of Peirce’s View of Truth). Journal of Zhengzhou University. 3, 19–24. Zhang, L. 1999. ‘Peirce De Fuhaoxue Guan Pingshu’ (A Review of Peirce’s Semiotics). Journal of Yangzhou University, 1, 56–58. Zhao, X.S. 1998. ‘Zhouyi, Fuhao, Yinyue’ (Zhouyi, Signs and Music). People’s Music, 11, 16–19. Zhao, X.S. 2013. ‘Liwu Zuowei Shehui Jiaoliu Fuhao de Zhuzhong Leixing’ (The Categories of Gifts as the Social Communicative Signs). Jiangsu Social Sciences, 6, 162–167. Zhao, X.Z. 2014a. ‘Lun Liwu de Pubian Fenlei: Yige Fuhaoxue Fenxi’ (A General Classification of Gifts: A Semiotic Analysis). Signs and Media, 1, 93–107. Zhao, X.Z. 2014b. ‘Lun Shejiao Meiti de Fuhao Goucheng jiqi Gongneng’ (The Construction of Signs in Social Media and Their Functions). Editors’ Friend, 12, 56–60. Zhao, X.Z. 2015. ‘Peirce de Sanyuan Moshi zai Chuanboxue zhongde Yiyi’ (The Peircean Triad Mode and Its Influences on Communication Studies). Cultural Studies and Literature Theory, 3, 180–189. Zhao, X.Z. 2016. ‘Peirce Chuanboxue Sixiang Chutan’ (A Tentative Study on the Thoughts of Communication in Peircean Semiotics). Social Scientists, 3, 156–160. Zhao, X.Z. 2017a. Peirce yu Chuanbo Fuhaoxue (C.S. Peirce and Semiotics of Communication). Chengdu: Sichuan University Press. Zhao, X.Z. 2017b. ‘Lun Peirce Fuhaoxue zhongde Chuanboxue Sixiang’ (On Communication Theories in Peircean Semiotics). Chinese Journal of Journalism and Communication 39(6), 87–104. Zhao, X.Z. 2017c. ‘Lun Chuanbo yu Shequn: Yige Peirce Chuanbo Fuhaoxue Lujing’ (Communication and Community: A Perspective from Peircean Semiotics of Communication). Cultural Studies and Literature Theory, 1, 91–100. Zhao, X.Z. 2018. ‘Yuanmeijie yu Yuanchuanbo: Xinyujing xia Chuanbo Fuhaoxue de Xueli Jiangou’ (Meta-media and Meta-communication: A Theoretical Construction of Semiotics of Communication in the New Media Context). Modern Communication, 40(02): 102–107. Zhao, X.Z. and Xue, C. 2017. ‘Peirce Fuhaoxue zai Chuanboxue zhongde Fazhan Guiji: Yige Xueshushi Kaocha’ (The Development of Peircean Semiotics in Communication Studies: An Academic History). Journal of Huaiyin Teachers College, 39(2), 172–178. Zhao, X.Z. and Peng, J. 2018. ‘Lun Fengge, Qinggan yu Xiuci: Yige Peirce Jieshixiang Sanfen Lujing’ (On Style, Emotion and Rhetoric: From the Peircean Trichology of Interpretants). Academics, 1, 105–112, 286.

Peircean Semiotics in China Today

99

Zhao, Y.H. 1990. Wenxue Fuhaoxue (A Semiotics of Literature). Beijing: Wenlian Press. Zhao, Y.H. 2011. Fuhaoxue: Yuanli Yu Tuiyan (Semiotics: Principles and Problems). Nanjing University Press. Zhao, Y.H. 2011. The Fate of Semiotics in China. Semiotica, 184, 271–278. Zhao, Y.H. 2013. Guangyi Xushuxue (A General Narratology). Chengdu: Sichuan University Press. Zhao, Y.H. 2014. ‘Huidao Peirce’ (Return to Peirce). Signs and Media, 2, 1–12. Zhao, Y.H. 2017. Zhexue Fuhaoxe: Yiyi Shijie de Xingcheng (Philosophical Semiotics: The Coming into Being of the Word of Meaning). Chengdu: Sichuan University Press. Zhen, Z. 2013. ‘Wenhua Lvyou de Fuhao Jiangou’ (The Symbolic Construction of Cultural Tourism). Journal of Sichuan University, 5, 90–95. Zhu, D. 2012. Xianqing Fuhao Sixiang Yanjiu (Semiotic Thinking in Pre-Qin Philosophy). Chengdu: Sichuan University Press. Zong, Z. 2014. Youxixue: Fuhao Xushuxue Yanjiu (Ludology: A Semio-narratological Study). Chengdu: Sichuan University Press. Zong, Z. (ed.). 2018. Minzu Fuhaoxue Wenji (Semiotics of Ethnic Minorities). Beijing: Social Sciences Academic Press.

100

3

Peirce’s Conception of Semiosis Tony Jappy

Introduction This chapter seeks to set out a purely Peircean conception of what has become an operational concept – namely, semiosis – in a number of diverse semiotics-related research domains. This was a concept that Peirce introduced and defined summarily in 1907, but was never able or concerned to develop its logical scope and explanatory potential. There are two principal reasons for doing so. First, to show how his thinking on signs and signification developed very considerably from the theory presented and discussed in the Introduction, a development which has not received from Peirce specialists the interest that it deserves. Second, as can be seen from the examples to be found in the Oxford English Dictionary, the term was eventually adopted in an ever-growing number of fields of scientific enquiry, having been borrowed from the strict confines of what was originally a theory of representation to become an indispensable explanatory instrument in a range of studies concerning literature, music, culture, and, most spectacularly, semiotic research in the life sciences, testimony indeed to the continuing relevance of one of Peirce’s groundbreaking concepts in logic advanced over a hundred years ago. In the Introduction to this book it was suggested that Peirce’s thinking on signs could conveniently be divided into two periods: the first, leading from the mid1860s to 1904 and documented and discussed in the Introduction, was characterized by the use of the three phenomenological categories to discriminate the subdivisions of the various divisions yielding, one, ten and a potential set of twenty-eight relationally based classes of signs. The second, later period, to be developed in the present chapter, involves a very different set of classification criteria, and is, significantly, the period in which Peirce also introduced the concept of semiosis. These two developments are here seen as concomitant, and with this in mind, therefore, the chapter seeks to set out principles which might establish the 101

102

Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Peircean Semiotics

nature of a specifically Peircean conception of semiosis. In itself, this is a potentially hazardous enterprise as our knowledge of Peirce’s changing conception of the sign and of semiosis, which he also referred to as the ‘action of the sign’ (R318: 55, 1907; EP2: 493, 1909), is fragmentary, characterized from a terminological point of view, moreover, by subtle but sometimes perplexing changes of viewpoint and approaches to the problem. Therefore, the discussion is perforce to be tempered with caution (hence the hedges ‘suggests that’ and ‘seems to’, that appear at times in the text) and delivered in the least hectoring tone possible. After having reviewed and illustrated the problem raised by conflation of Peirce’s differing conceptions of how signs signified in 1903 and 1908, the chapter accordingly proposes a succinct chronology of the general principles of the later semiotics and attempts to identify and then illustrate certain defining characteristics of Peircean semiosis. Such a chapter is surely justified, as the term has been much employed in recent years but has rarely been defined within a strictly Peircean framework. To this end, the project of the chapter will involve examining and exploiting the simpler of the two typologies he described in a letter to Lady Welby in 1908. This typology theoretically yields twenty-eight classes of signs, whereas the more ambitious one, which necessarily integrates the simpler, distinguishes sixty-six such classes.

The problem The concept of semiosis can be traced back at least to the Ancient Greeks. Bailly’s authoritative Dictionnaire Grec Français (1950) contains, among other references to the sign, the following (see Figure 3.1). The entry for semiosis on Figure 3.1 offers two principal meanings of the term, of which the first is the more relevant to contemporary research: ‘σημείωσις, εως (ὴ), I the act of marking with a sign, whence: 1, the act of taking note of something, jotting something down, Marcellinus, Thucydides; 2, designating, indicating, Plutarch, Morals; Nichomacus of Gerasa, arith.; 3, medical check, Medicorum Graecorum opera. II a seal, visible sign, banner’. As might be expected the Oxford English Dictionary credits Peirce with the first modern use of the term in 1907, defining it as: semiosis (siːmɪˈəʊsɪs) Also semeiosis. [a. Gr. σημείωσις sign, inference from a sign.] The process whereby something functions as a sign.

Peirce’s Conception of Semiosis

103

Figure 3.1 Ancient Greek origins of the term ‘semiosis.’

Since 1907 reference to the term has become widespread in literary, culture and music studies (it is also the name of an avant-garde string quartet). Above all, in biosemiotics, a thriving, innovative and stimulating offshoot from traditional semiotics that has absorbed, amongst others, the Peircean model, semiosis has become one of the field’s fundamental operational concepts. What we have to remember is that within a purely Peircean context, semiotics is, as was seen in the Introduction, a general, cenoscopic science, yielding concepts to metaphysics and the idioscopic sciences. Literary, music and culture studies would all be classified by Peirce as idioscopic, as they all produce new information and may require laboratory techniques and instrumentation in order to obtain it. However, contemporary research is not bound by any rule to accept Peirce’s division of the sciences, and this is clearly the case in biosemiotics, as can be seen from Figure 3.2 which summarizes the late John Deely’s schematic representation of the development of semiotic modalities across, for example, the human, animal and plant realms in which semiosis is deemed to operate, and which it is interesting to compare with Figure 0.1 in the Introduction. Obviously, Peirce’s logic as semiotics would be classified as anthroposemiosis, but he did not restrict the process to human minds. In ‘Prolegomena to an Apology for Pragmaticism’, for example, he extends semiotic capability to the plant and animal realms: ‘Thought is not necessarily connected with a brain. It appears in the work of bees, of crystals, and throughout the purely physical world . . . Not only is thought in the organic world, but it develops there’ (CP 4.551, 1906). See, too, CP 5.492, 1907: ‘If we now revert to the psychological assumption originally made, we shall see that it is already largely eliminated by the consideration that habit is by no means exclusively a mental fact. Empirically, we find that some plants take habits. The stream of water that wears a bed for itself is forming a habit’, and EP2: 435, 1908: ‘The third Universe comprises everything whose being consists in active power to establish connections between different objects, especially between objects in different Universes . . . Such. . . is a living consciousness, and such the life, the power of growth, of a plant’.

104

Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Peircean Semiotics

Figure 3.2 John Deely’s levels of semiosis (after Deely 1990: 32).

Now, although in Peirce’s vision of science a cenoscopic concept such as semiosis would naturally be available to metaphysics and the idioscopic sciences, the adoption of a logical concept for modelling purposes in ‘non-logical’ fields of enquiry can be shown, in certain cases, to be problematic and potentially invalidating, which makes any attempt to clarify the nature of the concept as it was initially defined by Peirce a useful contribution to such research. But even within a properly semiotic field such as biosemiotics the very nature and pertinence of the original concept is disputed. Consider, for example, the theoretical problems raised by the biosemiotician Marcello Barbieri, in two texts in which he refers to the concept of semiosis as defined by a ‘Peirce-Sebeok’ tradition (2008: ix), one of ‘four models of biological semiosis and at least four different schools of biosemiotics’ (2008: x). The potentially problematic nature of the Peircean conception of semiosis is identified in a later text: The existence of different types of semiosis has been recognized, so far, in two ways. It has been pointed out that different semiotic features exist in different taxa and this has led to the distinction between zoosemiosis, phytosemiosis, mycosemiosis, bacterial semiosis and the like. 2009: 19

Peirce’s Conception of Semiosis

105

So far, so good: a concept developed within a particular theory of logic has now been adopted and applied successfully within a far more extensive domain of application, resulting in, as Barbieri notes, a far greater number of taxa. However, the implications for a Peircean conception of semiosis are less acceptable when he continues: Another type of diversity is due to the existence of different types of signs and has led to the distinction between iconic, indexical and symbolic semiosis. In all these cases, however, semiosis has been defined by the Peirce model, i.e., by the idea that the basic structure is a triad of ‘sign, object and interpretant’, and that interpretation is an essential component of semiosis. This model is undoubtedly applicable to animals, since it was precisely the discovery that animals are capable of interpretation that allowed Thomas Sebeok to conclude that they are also capable of semiosis. Unfortunately, however, it is not clear how far the Peirce model can be extended beyond the animal kingdom, and we already know that we cannot apply it to the cell. The rules of the genetic code have been virtually the same in all living systems and in all environments ever since the origin of life, which clearly shows that they do not depend on interpretation. 2009: 19

First, the association of the process of semiosis with icons, indices and symbols takes a very un-Peircean turn, as the chapter will show, and is presumably a conceptual development advanced within a less constrained theoretical framework than the one that Peirce imposed upon himself. Second, while the basic structure of semiosis was, indeed, the sign-object-interpretant triad that Peirce defined in 1907, within a year he had expanded this triad to a hexad involving not one object, but two, and not one interpretant, but three. Third, it can be shown that this later conception of semiosis is better characterized as intention- or cause-determined rather than simply as a process, as Barbieri appears to suggest, of interpretation. The effect or reaction produced by the sign according to Peirce’s late, post-1907 semiotics reveals the vast majority of signs to be purposive, telic, displacing the focus of signification from the interpretant to the sign’s dynamic object. In view of these and other theoretical issues the concept of semiosis set within a Peircean framework surely merits a review of the basic principles. For one of the problems attending the so-called ‘Peirce-Sebeok’ model that Barbieri is dismissing in his reference to ‘iconic, indexical and symbolic semiosis’ is precisely the possible confusion of the two very different 1903 and post-1907 versions of the semiotics: icons, indices and symbols are the product of static classification criteria; semiosis, on the other hand, is a dynamic process.

106

Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Peircean Semiotics

To see why such a confusion might be problematic we need simply consider indexical signs. When Peirce tells us that ‘Examples of Indices are the hand of a clock, and the veering of a weathercock’ (EP2: 274, 1903), he is talking about these as signs, referring to how they represent their objects but, note, not to the objects themselves, the time of day, for example, or the direction the wind is coming from: these are the conclusion, the mental interpretants that such signs determine, the conclusion that an interpreter draws from observing such indices. That the sign-classes of 1903 should not identify their objects is, of course, normal, as they were all defined with Peirce’s speculative grammar. Speculative grammar, within the phenomenological framework Peirce employed at the time, simply specified the formal, ‘syntactic’ conditions of signhood, and made no provision for a logical semantics that would identify the sign’s object. Figure 3.3 is a photograph of two small trees on the top of the Seven Sisters cliffs near Brighton, England. For the human observer on site the flagging is, within the ten-class system of 1903 described in the Introduction to this book, doubly indexical: not only can this observer infer the position of the sun at a particular time of day, as evidenced by the shape and position of the shadows behind the trees, but also, from the inclined profile of the trees, the direction and strength of the wind at this location. Assuming the observer to have access to a

Figure 3.3 Flagging on the Seven Sisters. Courtesy of the photographer, Didier Pomarès.

Peirce’s Conception of Semiosis

107

compass or to have a solid knowledge of his or her bearings, such flagging can be classified as a dicent indexical sinsign. This is just one of the ten classes of signs identified in 1903, the sign, the reader will remember, being defined in the manuscripts intended for the Syllabus as a representamen having a (single) mental interpretant. But people out on a walk on the cliffs don’t generally seek to classify flagging as a sign: adjudging a particular sign to be indexical is a purely academic exercise that recognizes that there is an existential relation holding between the sign and its object, whatever this may be. The flagging enables the walkers to judge, rightly or wrongly, the direction and force of the winds responsible for the constrained development of the trees. Alternatively, if they have a map the trees can function, again indexically, as a landmark and aid their orientation. Now, as mentioned earlier, the division of the typology of 1903 that classifies signs as iconic, indexical or symbolic makes no provision for the observer or interpreter to identify the object of any sign, it simply categorizes the nature of the relation holding between the sign and its object. In the case of the trees it is the repeated existential contact of the wind with the trees that makes them indexical, while the direction and degree of their flagging are iconic. It is not the index itself which identifies for the observers on the cliff the source of the flagging; for this they must already have what Peirce in 1907 began to refer to as ‘collateral knowledge’ of that object. This suggests that there must be some other semiotic operation at work in association with, but distinct from, the interpretation of the flagging as an index. References to ‘indexical semiosis’ as mentioned by Barbieri miss an important semiotic feature of the flagging, for at another level of analysis (cf. Figure 3.2), one to which the biosemioticians have consistently drawn attention, the flagging is part of a semiotic process which, in this case, does not determine a mental interpretant and therefore cannot be indexical. From the point of view of the trees the flagging to which they have been subjected is not a sign, but, rather, an effect – an interpretant, in other words – of the prevailing wind, this latter being a sign determined by some complex necessitant weather process. On this different level of analysis, the flagging can be seen as one of a series of stages in a complex semiotic process, namely a consequence of the general direction and consistent force of the winds generated by recurring law-governed climatic conditions that determine the final effect of the process, this being the almost identical habits of the two trees. Thus, to invoke some variant of the ‘indexical semiosis’ mentioned in Barbieri’s critique is simply to confuse the issue, for such a hybrid concept is of dubious scientific value.

108

Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Peircean Semiotics

Consider, now, a different, more complex type of sign, displayed on a banner waved by a football fan sporting a red and white scarf and chanting the name of an embattled football manager: (1) In Arsène we trust

The legisigns composing this particular utterance – deliberately based on the motto on the back of the American dollar – are: a symbol (the verb trust), indices (a proper noun, a personal pronoun, the Ø first-person plural present tense marker and the preposition in) and an interesting iconicity (the word order).1 The complex sign (1) would therefore be classified within the 1903 ten-class system as the replica of a dicent symbol. The problem is that any number of very different replicas of dicent symbols, such as I hate football, That sentence reminds me of something or The guy must be out of his mind! are all logically identical to utterance (1) – they are all replicas of dicent symbols. Yet we know that they all mean different things and would be pronounced in different contexts; and we know, too, that they would not have the same rhetorical intent, which suggests again that there is another semiotic creative process involved, one for which the system of 1903 offers no explanation. What the 1903 system described in the Introduction cannot identify, then, is the reason for, or purpose of the sign or where its peculiar rhetoric originates. And yet this is what any observer or fellow football supporter would do almost unthinkingly, and in doing so would enter into a very different signifying process, the same process as the one in which the flagging of the trees in Figure 3.3 is understood, at a particular level of analysis, to be not a sign but an effect. The process in each of these very different cases is what Peirce ultimately came to identify as semiosis. The purpose of this chapter should now be clearer: to establish how Peirce’s concept of semiosis might explain both the process through which humans naturally produce and interpret such signs and how such a process has a level of operation that can involve trees such as those on Figure  3.3. One legitimate answer is to be found in the same multivariant text from 1907 in which he first introduced and defined the concept. Here Peirce explained that one of his goals in semiotics was to identify all possible varieties of semiosis (R318: 119; CP 5.488), a task which chronic ill-health, poverty and a constitutional inability to adapt to the exigencies of the real world made it impossible for him to complete. While biosemioticians have been working with versions of the concept for over half a century, most Peirce scholars interested in semiotics have either been concerned with the relation between semiosis and phenomenology (e.g. Short 1981, Müller 1994) or else with the correct ordering of the six and ten divisions

Peirce’s Conception of Semiosis

109

yielding respectively the twenty-eight and sixty-six classes of signs mentioned above (e.g. Weiss and Burks 1945, Sanders 1970, Savan 1988). And yet, since every distinct post-1907 class of signs must somehow relate to a distinct variety of semiosis, it follows that by 1908 Peirce had come to postulate sixty-six possible varieties of semiosis and more or less to identify twenty-eight, a research potential which might account for the two types of semiosis examined above, and for this reason alone surely merits further investigation.

Stages in the development of post-phenomenological signification The following sections set out a necessarily succinct chronology of the principal stages in the development of Peirce’s conception of semiotics and show him expanding his conception of representation to include a more detailed processual model of the action involving the sign than the system advanced in his planned version of the Syllabus of 1903.

1905–1906 The sign as medium2 The years 1905–1906 were a period of rapid change in Peirce’s development of his semiotics, as he was beginning to examine the nature of the determination of the sign by the object. This involved, among other things, the association of an utterer and an interpreter, the positing of quasi-minds as a logical, as opposed to a psychological, context for the process of signification, and his defining the sign as a medium. Of these theoretical innovations the latter is probably the most important. In a draft letter to Lady Welby he had already dismissed the concept of ‘representamen’, suggesting that it was an ugly word, and theoretically suspect in that it might be thought to have an inadmissible reflexive influence on the object that produced it, as a parallel to the role of a representative in Congress who, once elected, influences the very people who voted for him or her (SS 193, 1905): the object influences the sign, not vice versa. One further reason for rejecting the term, too, was the fact that it had initially been defined as the first correlate of a triadic relation, whereas the relation Peirce was now working with was hexadic. As mentioned in the Introduction, in the course of the Lowell Lectures of 1903 Peirce had defined the sign in the following manner, in which the continuing influence of his conception of phenomenology is visible:

110

Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Peircean Semiotics

A Sign, or Representamen, is a First which stands in such a genuine triadic relation to a Second, called its Object, as to be capable of determining a Third, called its Interpretant, to assume the same triadic relation to its Object in which it stands itself to the same Object. CP 2.274, 1903

However, in the period 1905–1906, no doubt partly as a consequence of the expanded set of correlates, he modified the role of the sign, and, in the course of integrating two objects and three interpretants in his conception of signification, explicitly attributed to the sign itself a more precisely defined mediating role, as we see in the following extract from manuscript RL463, a draft letter to Lady Welby dated 9 March 1906: I use the word ‘Sign’ in the widest sense for any medium for the communication or extension of a Form (or feature). Being medium, it is determined by something, called its Object, and determines something, called its Interpretant [. . .] In order that a Form may be extended or communicated, it is necessary that it should have been really embodied in a Subject independently of the communication; and it is necessary that there should be another subject in which the same form is embodied only as a consequence of the communication. EP2: 477, 1906

As can be seen from the quotation, the 1906 draft insists upon the fact that the sign is a medium for the communication of a ‘form’. Just what sort of entity is this form that the object communicates to the sign via the immediate object? Peirce suggests an explanation for this in a variant page 3 of another contemporary manuscript, R793: [That] which is communicated from the Object through the Sign to the Interpretant is a Form. It is not a singular thing; for if a Singular thing were first in the Object and afterward in the Interpretant outside the Object, it must thereby cease to be in the Object. R793: 5, 1906

Clearly, if what was communicated from the object to the sign were an existent, singular entity it would cease to be located in the object once it had been ‘communicated’ to the sign and would cease to be in the sign as soon as it inhered in the interpretant. The form communicated by the dynamic object to the sign via the immediate object is therefore necessarily qualitative, quality being described as the ‘monadic element of the world’ (CP 1.426, c. 1896) and consequently the only category of being that can simultaneously be ‘the same

Peirce’s Conception of Semiosis

111

form’ embodied in sign, objects and interpretants. Signs – media – defined by the 1906 statement above simply need to be perceivable and to accommodate such forms emanating, of course, from the dynamic object. Potential media, then, according to this view, are the artist’s canvas, cinema-, computer- or TV-screens, neon hoardings outside department stores, metal panels on roadsides, oldfashioned school blackboards, etc. Returning to utterance (1), the medium in this case is the air that is ‘formed’ or shaped by successive peaks and troughs if the speaker chants the slogan on his banner, or, alternatively, the paper page above on which the utterance has been recorded. The period 1905–1906 also saw Peirce establishing a number of ten-division typologies in which the objects were generally referred to as the immediate and dynamic (or real) object. On the other hand, the interpretants, the final in particular, received a number of different denominations: the immediate can also be the intended, the dynamic can be dynamical, whereas the final was variously designated as the signified, significant, representative, logical, normal or eventual interpretant. However, in that same March 1906 draft to Lady Welby Peirce offered a highly suggestive series: There is the Intentional Interpretant, which is a determination of the mind of the utterer; the Effectual Interpretant, which is a determination of the mind of the interpreter; and the Communicational Interpretant, or say the Cominterpretant, which is a determination of that mind into which the minds of utterer and interpreter have to be fused in order that any communication should take place. This mind may be called the commens. It consists of all that is, and must be, well understood between utterer and interpreter, at the outset, in order that the sign in question should fulfill its function. EP2: 478, 19063

The interest of this important passage is to be found in the distinctions Peirce draws between the three interpretants, for they offer a completely new perspective from which to examine the signifying process. For example, the logical disjunction between the intentional (i.e. immediate) interpretant as a determination of the mind of the utterer4 and the effectual (i.e. dynamic) interpretant as a determination of the mind of the interpreter is important as, in combination with the concept of the commens, it introduces a semiotic ‘differential’. Not only does the 1906 draft confine communicative concerns within the object-driven nature of the process of signification, but it also explains how signs can produce an effect or reaction which diverges from the one intended: if the utterer and interpreter involved in the communication have

112

Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Peircean Semiotics

widely differing experiences of the world, then this non-deterministic interpretant sequence clarifies those cases where the effectual (dynamic) interpretant is not congruent with the intentional. In the verbal example concerning the football manager given above, (1), any addressee might signal his or her agreement by a nod of the head or by agreeing verbally with the utterer but might equally reply with an irate No we don’t! These are all valid effectual interpretants as conceived in the draft letter, but only the first two would be congruent with the spirit of the utterance. Peirce had clearly found the need to account for the fact that interpreters interpret signs differentially, each according to their experience of the world, which explains why the effectual interpretant as conceived in 1906 should be a determination of the experience of the interpreter. Moreover, the fact that an interpreter can dispute the fact represented by the utterance is justification of the validity of the concept of the ‘commens’: the sign (1) has been interpreted, albeit negatively in the third response offered above, proving that the communicative process associating utterer and interpreter has functioned correctly in spite of disagreement. Thus, there are important implications for our understanding of the future definition of semiosis to be found in the drafts of this period. First, any form communicated to the sign must come from the dynamic object alone and is communicated in various stages, to begin with by the immediate object to the sign, and thence to the series of interpretants. In other words, there is no form or feature in the sign that is not ‘inherited’, so to speak, from the object. This means that the utterer and interpreter – the two abstract quasi-minds – simply constitute a logical context for the abstract process determining the sign. The reader might find this rather extreme, but for Peirce this was logic, not linguistics or psychology (both of which being idiosciopic sciences, specialized fields of enquiry contributing nothing to general cenoscopic theory). Second, the definition of the sign as medium given above suggests that in spite of the fact that the two objects were introduced later in the manuscript, the interpretant order of intentional, effectual, and, finally, communicational, given in the quotation anticipates the determination sequence presented in the 1908 letter to Lady Welby and displayed on Figure 3.4. In fact, all six correlates were being re-examined and given more specific functions in the sequence, the interpretants included: they received different names, but were presented in the order immediate, dynamic and final, with, as seen earlier, the immediate described as a determination of the utterer and the dynamic a determination of the interpreter. What Peirce seems to have been working towards, clearly, was that the immediate interpretant could communicate a form of intentionality originating in the dynamic object to the

Peirce’s Conception of Semiosis

113

two that followed it. In short, the correlates were beginning to acquire specific functions in the signifying process.

1907 Semiosis defined A new stage comes with the document entitled ‘Pragmatism’ (Prag) of 1907. This is manuscript R318, a 698-page document parts of which are reproduced in CP 5.465– 496 and parts in EP2: 398–433, a delicate situation as it tends to highlight, as in the case of the CP selection, concepts which are thought to be important but never appear again after 1907 – it really requires to be read in full. The several variants in the manuscript show that Peirce now saw the nature of the association of what he must still have considered to be the three foundational constituents of semiosis or ‘semeiosy’, as he also called it (CP 5.473, 1907), as being the dynamic action involving the ‘cooperation’ of three subjects, namely a sign, its object and its interpretant: It is important to understand what I mean by semiosis. All dynamical action, or action of brute force, physical or psychical, either takes place between two subjects [whether they react equally upon each other, or one is agent and the other patient, entirely or partially] or at any rate is a resultant of such actions between pairs. But by ‘semiosis’ I mean, on the contrary, an action, or influence, which is, or involves, a coöperation of three subjects, such as a sign, its object, and its interpretant, this tri-relative influence not being in any way resolvable into actions between pairs. CP 5.484, 1907

In the same manuscript, Peirce, no doubt aware of the immensity of the task before him, defines ‘semiotic’ in a novel manner, and announces the need for future research into the identification in logic of what he saw as all possible varieties not so much of classes of signs, but of varieties of possible semiosis, thereby establishing a necessary theoretical relation between class of sign and class of semiosis: I am, as far as I know, a pioneer, or rather a backwoodsman, in the work of clearing and opening up what I call semiotic, that is, the doctrine of the essential nature and fundamental varieties of possible semiosis; and I find the field too vast, the labor too great, for a first-comer. R318: 119, 1907

Such a move would have been impossible in 1903, since the classes of signs were not directly linked to the action in which the sign was engaged: the only correlate so linked was, necessarily, the sign itself, since at this time it was both the determination of the object and the determinant of the interpretant, while

114

Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Peircean Semiotics

classes of signs involved neither of the other two correlates but, rather, relations between the sign and the two correlates. The statement is important, then, in two ways: first, it establishes that there is not one form of semiosis, but many different types. Second, it implies that to each distinct type of semiosis there corresponds a distinct class of signs; conversely, each distinct class of signs is necessarily the determination of a distinct type of semiosis. Consider, furthermore, the following example of a sign that Peirce offers in the same manuscript: Suppose, for example, an officer of a squad or company of infantry gives the word of command, ‘Ground arms!’ This order is, of course, a sign. That thing which causes a sign as such is called the object (according to the usage of speech, the ‘real,’ but more accurately, the existent object) represented by the sign: the sign is determined to some species of correspondence with that object. In the present case, the object the command represents is the will of the officer that the butts of the muskets be brought down to the ground [. . .] For the proper outcome of a sign, I propose the name, the interpretant of the sign. The example of the imperative command shows that it need not be of a mental mode of being. R318: 51–53, 1907

The interesting features of this example are, first, that the object can now be the will of the officer, a case of intentionality in semiosis which confirms the potential for such a semiotic determinant to be found in the earlier description of the immediate (intentional) interpretant as a determination of the utterer, and second, that the interpretant – here the existential interpretant and elsewhere referred to in the manuscript as the ‘energetic’ interpretant – can not only be a thought or habit but also an action. In the draft of 9 March, 1906, Peirce seemed still to consider the sign’s object as what the sign was about. He offered an interesting definition of the dicisign, referring simply to the ‘part appropriated to representing the object, and another to representing how [the] sign itself represents that object’ (EP2: 478). In the example he gave, John is in love with Helen, one part represents the sign’s object, namely the pair John and Helen, while the other signifies the form of the relations holding between these partial objects – is in love with – (SS: 196). In the pragmatism manuscript of 1907, however, the object of the military command is the source of the imperative utterance, namely the officer’s will, not the implicit subject You and the muskets. It has to be borne in mind, regarding this particular example, that Peirce was also experimenting with the sorts of sign-mediated correspondences holding between object and interpretant, identifying the three interpretants as the emotional, energetic and logical (also ‘intellectual’) interpretants for what

Peirce’s Conception of Semiosis

115

ultimately became the immediate, dynamic and final, respectively. At one point in the manuscript he suggests a system which relates three different types of sign differentially with their respective objects and interpretants. In order of decreasing complexity, the examples Peirce gives are a concept or thought, the ‘Ground arms!’ command and, least complex, a piece of concerted music. The concept, the most complex sign, determined all three interpretants, the logical/ intellectual, the energetic and the emotional, but, surprisingly, such general signs had no ‘real’, i.e. dynamic object. To the sign of ‘middling’ complexity, the military command, a sign which ‘brings about an actual event’, writes Peirce, there corresponded a real object, namely the will of the officer that the musket butts be brought to the ground, but such a sign determined only the emotional and energetic/existential interpretants. Finally, to the piece of concerted music, or, in another example, to the air played on a guitar, there corresponded only an immediate object and an emotional interpretant. As the three signs diminish in complexity, the number of interpretants that they determine decreases accordingly: while, since there can be no ‘final’ object, the direct object of a sign such as the military command could determine mediately first an emotional then a dynamic interpretant, and the feeling-infused guitar air could only be determined by an immediate object and in turn determine an immediate interpretant, some feeling or emotion (R318: 375–377, 1907). This rather baroque system was to disappear within a year. However, its curious series of interpretants – the logical/intellectual, the energetic/existential and the emotional – became the source of much debate in later commentaries, being thought by some to be subdivisions of the dynamic interpretant, or for others a supplementary series that somehow runs parallel to the later standard immediate, dynamic and final series established during the following years. The fact is that they disappeared together with the strange typology described above. In any case, it is unlikely that there would be three subdivisions of the dynamic or final interpretant as has been suggested, since Peirce only subdivided the sign, always according to its phenomenological value or, as we shall see shortly, with respect to the universe to which the object or interpretant involved in the classification belonged. A sign can be classified as a token if it is itself a member of the universe of existents, or as a general type leading to self-control or habit if its final interpretant is a member of the universe of necessitants, for example. In 1907 Peirce seemed still to consider the correlates as different kinds rather than as stages in a determination sequence, as we see from the fact that the interpretants, for example, were defined by his phenomenological categories: ‘It is easy to see that there are three kinds of interpretants of signs. Our categories

116

Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Peircean Semiotics

suggest this’ (R318: 281). As we see in the next section, objects and interpretants, together with the sign, were later made to be subjects of a hierarchy of universes (either possibles, existents or necessitants): the interpretants were never subdivided and named in the way a sign is in a classification.5

1908 Objects and universes Much has justly been made by Peirce scholars of the pioneering nature of the three interpretants, the identification and naming of which have given rise to considerable debate and discussion. The present section, however, will describe some no less pioneering late developments that Peirce introduced with respect to the role of the object in relation to the sign, and consequently in relation to the process of semiosis, for 1907 had also seen the introduction of the requirement of collateral acquaintance, observation, or experience of the object in the process of interpretation. The term ‘collateral observation’ seems to have been first introduced in the ‘Pragmatism’ manuscript R318 of 1907 discussed above (e.g. R318: 601, 611, 613, 623), while ‘collateral experience’ (EP2: 480, 1908; 493, 495 and 498, 1909) and ‘collateral acquaintance’ (EP2: 496, 1909) figure in definitions of the sign thereafter. This suggests that Peirce was beginning to broaden his interest in the function of the object, too, in signification, and, it is important to note, it also corresponded to a profound change of in the theoretical framework within which Peirce was now to define signs and sign-classes. In a manner which clearly parallels the way he began his description of speculative grammar in the intended Syllabus of 1903 (EP2: 267–272) and in the letter to Lady Welby of 1904 with its six divisions of signs (CP 8.327–8.333) by means of an introduction to phenomenology and the three categories, Peirce prefaced the definition of the innovative hexadic process of signification given in 1908 by a thorough description of what appears to be an initial attempt to associate universe with semiosis – there are three at this stage, by means of which he now established the subdivisions within each of six new trichotomies: It is clearly indispensable to start with an accurate and broad analysis of the nature of a Sign. I define a Sign as anything which is so determined by something else, called its Object, and so determines an effect upon a person, which effect I call its Interpretant, that the latter is thereby mediately determined by the former . . . I recognize three Universes, which are distinguished by three Modalities of Being. One of these Universes embraces whatever has its Being in itself alone . . . I denominate the objects of this Universe Ideas, or Possibles, although the latter designation does not imply capability of actualization . . . Another Universe is

Peirce’s Conception of Semiosis

117

that of, 1st, Objects whose Being consists in their Brute reactions, and of, 2nd, the Facts . . . I call the Objects, Things, or more unambiguously, Existents, and the facts about them I call Facts . . . The third Universe consists of the co-being of whatever is in its Nature necessitant, that is, is a Habit, a law, or something expressible in a universal proposition. EP2: 478–479, 1908

The purpose of the phenomenology in 1903 had been to establish clearly the formal elements making it possible to describe the sign as a phenomenon. This was Peirce’s goal in employing the categories of Firstness, Secondness and Thirdness to define the sign with respect to its correlates (and to establish the various subdivisions within the ten-class typology): the representamen was defined as the first correlate of a triadic relation (e.g. CP 1.541, 1903), there being no dynamism inherent in the classes defined by the association of the three divisions. However, by 1908, with the sign now defined as a medium and with his conception of semiosis as a dynamic process clearly established, the three universes supplied the system with ‘receptacles’ of possible, existent and necessitant entities that could function as signs and interpretants, but above all, as the objects ‘triggering’, so to speak, semiosis. More importantly, perhaps, these universes now provided Peirce with a range of possible dynamic objects that was virtually inexhaustible. In this way, his late illustration of various types of dynamic objects extends considerably our understanding of the sorts of entities of which a given sign might be a determination. In an earlier work from 1908, ‘A Neglected Argument for the Reality of God’ (EP2: 434-450), Peirce had already offered the following brief but fascinating inventory of the sorts of entities that qualified as members of the universe of necessitants: The third Universe comprises everything whose Being consists in active power to establish connections between different objects, especially between objects in different Universes. Such is everything which is essentially a Sign, — not the mere body of the sign, which is not essentially such, but, so to speak, the Sign’s Soul, which has its Being in its power of serving as intermediary between its Object and a Mind. Such, too, is a living consciousness, and such the life, the power of growth, of a plant. Such is a living institution, — a daily newspaper, a great fortune, a social ‘movement’. CP 6.455, 1908

This leads to another important consideration for Peirce’s development of the dynamic object, its implication for the problems of causation and intention in signification and how to account for it within the semiotics. Since the dynamic

118

Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Peircean Semiotics

object is logically the source or origin of semiosis, and since such necessitant entities as ‘a living consciousness . . . the life, the power of growth, of a plant . . . a living institution, — a daily newspaper, a great fortune, a social “movement”’ are all potential objects of signs – Table 3.1 shows that both immediate and dynamic objects can be classified as necessitant – it follows that such entities, which involve growth, dynamism, can be sources of intentionality. As in the case of the will of the platoon commander, exhorting a football manager to remain with the club, for example, or an appeal for information regarding a missing teenager posted by the side of the road, a political pamphlet, a halt sign at a road junction, etc., are all the creatures of an intention. Not only can the dynamic object, in an uncanny anticipation of phytosemiosis, be necessitant and intentional as in the ‘the life, the power of growth of a plant’, it can also be the source of consciously deliberate creation, the specific nature or aspect of which, namely its form, is communicated to the sign by the structure inherited from the dynamic object by the immediate object; in other words, the latter is the form, shape, appearance which intentionality originating in the dynamic object presents in any existent sign.6

Hexadic semiosis Sign class and semiosis Having described the three-universe framework by means of which he would now establish the subdivisions in his two new typologies, in the same letter to Lady Welby, Peirce came to expand or refract the triadic ‘cooperation’ of the three subjects of the definition of 1907 into one involving six such subjects. He proposed the following description of the ‘determination’ sequence in semiosis, by which term he means ‘constrains or limits the nature of the correlate coming next to such and such a state’, or ‘is responsible for the correlate coming next being such as it is’: It is evident that a possible can determine nothing but a Possible, it is equally so that Necessitant can be determined by nothing but a Necessitant. Hence it follows from the Definition of a Sign that since the Dynamoid Object determines the Immediate Object, Which determines the Sign itself, which determines the Destinate Interpretant, which determines the Effective Interpretant, which determines the Explicit Interpretant,

Peirce’s Conception of Semiosis

119

the six trichotomies, instead of determining 729 classes of signs, as they would if they were independent, only yield twenty-eight classes; and if, as I strongly opine (not to say almost prove) there are four other trichotomies of signs of the same order of importance, instead of making 59049 classes, these will only come to sixty-six. SS: 84

The order of the additional interpretant divisions was S—Od, S—Id, S—Od—If, and S—If, all relational as in the typologies of 1903 and 1904. As mentioned above, we have Peirce discarding the phenomenological framework mentioned in his intended syllabus for the Lowell Lectures five years earlier and in the letter to Lady Welby of 12 October 1904, adopting instead what can broadly be considered as an ontological one, i.e. one in which Peirce has specified domains of possible, existent and necessitant entities and relations among them. There are a number of possible explanations for such a move, but it should first be noted that the choice of three universes as opposed to the earlier phenomenological categories as the means of establishing the subdivisions of the various trichotomies is dismissed as irrelevant by certain Peirce specialists, who either ignore the distinction or assimilate category to universe,7 and this requires clarification. To begin with, for there to be a process of any kind which involves the dynamism necessary for the determination of a sign that is ‘percussive’, for example (the case where the dynamic interpretant Id is an existent on Table 3.1), and produces an action, the categories are clearly inapplicable: a category is a type of predicate or descriptive term concerning phenomena and is incapable of materially setting in motion a sequence of correlates resulting, for example, in musket-butts being brought to the ground. We know, too, that Peirce derived the single sign, the two objects and the three interpretants at the time when he was working solely with his categories, and that he claimed in 1907 that it was the categories that defined the three interpretants (R318: 281). Since there is no way in which he could have derived such a one-two-three correlate system using the universes of the sort described in 1908, it follows that universes must be logically and functionally distinct from categories. Moreover, in view of Peirce’s strictures on the ethics of terminology and given the fact that he was still presenting work elsewhere on his phenomenology, now termed ‘phaneroscopy’, if he mentions universes as classification criteria in the 1908 letter and drafts and in subsequent letters to William James (EP2: 492, 497, 1909), it can reasonably be assumed that he meant universes and not categories. The determination process itself can be represented more simply by the scheme on Figure  3.4, in which the interpretants have been standardized

120

Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Peircean Semiotics

respectively from destinate, effective and explicit to immediate, dynamic and final. At this point, it should be noted that some authors, e.g. Savan (1988: 52) invert this order, identifying the explicit as the immediate, and the destinate as the final. In view of the order established in the determination sequence in the quotation from the letter to Lady Welby given above, this would produce the illogical situation where the final interpretant determines its own immediate interpretability. For one thing, it would mean that in the ‘Ground arms!’ example given above, the dynamic interpretant (the banging of the musket-butts on the ground) would be accomplished before the soldiers had understood the immediate interpretant, i.e. the meaning of the command. Such an ideologically loaded determination order would also result in a very un-Peircean determinism: if the final interpretant determined its own interpretability what chance would there be of fallibilism in interpretation? And what place would there be for the infinite variety of individual experience in interpretation? Figure 3.4 displays in simple form the hexadic structure of semiosis as I believe Peirce conceived it in 1908, in which the arrow ‘→’ indicates the process of determination of the successive correlates in the process, and in which the abbreviations Od, Oi, S, Ii, Id and If represent, respectively, the dynamic and immediate objects, the sign, followed by the immediate, dynamic and final interpretants:

Figure 3.4 Hexadic semiosis in 1908.

The 28-class, six-division typology of 1908 Table  3.1 sets out the six divisions occupying the initial positions in the ten described by Peirce in the 1908 letter to Lady Welby, which also appears to be the only occasion on which Peirce mentioned his 28-class, six-division typology. This classification system employs the six correlates mentioned earlier by Peirce in the letter to Lady Welby of 12 October 1904 (SS: 32–34), but by 1908 his conception of the classification of signs can be seen in Table 3.1 to have matured considerably in two important ways. First, it is the correlates themselves as they occur in semiosis which constitute the respects, or classification features of the typology, as opposed to the earlier systems of 1903 and 1904 incorporating, respectively, the sign and its two and five relational divisions. Second, the criteria employed to establish the subdivisions are no longer the three categories, for these have been replaced by the three modal universes mentioned above. And it

Peirce’s Conception of Semiosis

121

Table 3.1 The hexad of 23 December 1908 set out across the page8 Subject Od Universe Necessitant collective Existent Possible

Oi

S

Ii

Id

copulant

type

relative

usual

If

to produce self-control concretive designative token categorical percussive to produce action abstractive descriptive mark hypothetical sympathetic gratific

is this second aspect which makes Table 3.1 particularly important: the twentyeight distinct classes of signs are the result of twenty-eight distinct cases of semiosis: one involving entities from the universe of ‘possibles’, six determined by objects from the universe of existents, and a further twenty-one distinct types of semiosis determined by necessitant objects, these being semioses concerning the biosphere. In short, there is no logical difference between class of sign and class of semiosis in this hexadic system. Although this chapter is not concerned with the classification of signs, there are two remarks to be made concerning Table  3.1. First, what has often been referred to as ‘continuous semiosis’ (not by Peirce, note) following Peirce’s conception of the interpretant as a sign determining another possible interpretant (EP2: 290,1903), is restricted to one class of signs: there is now only one possible sign of continuity in semiosis, namely the self-control producing collective sign, that is, necessitant-level semiosis leading to habits. All other classes lead either to actions, as in the ‘Ground arms!’ example, or to feelings. Second, it is employing the correlates themselves as the classification features of the typology in this hexadic system that made it possible for Peirce to assimilate the sign-classes obtained to classes of semiosis. For example, the infantry officer’s command would be classified as an action-producing, collective, copulant token (adjusting it now to have a final interpretant). The command is determined by a necessitant object, the officer’s will, a variety of intention; as a copulant sign it has a complex necessitant syntax and it determines a type of which the command is an instance; as a sign it must be perceivable and for this reason is an existent, an instance of a type, and has a specific recognizable quality as a disturbance of the air between the officer and the platoon. With respect to this quality we note that Peirce hesitated over the designation of the subdivision corresponding to the former qualisign. The letter, as shown on Table 3.1, has ‘mark’, presumably for written or

122

Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Peircean Semiotics

pictorial signs, while the alternative term ‘tone’ was judged in 1906 to be more appropriate for aural signs (see CP 4.537), and no doubt the officer would not employ the barking tone of the command when addressing a senior officer. The interpretant sequence, in which the redundant information relating to categorical and percussive signs has been omitted from the description of the sign, is existent, too, and produces, finally, an action, the bringing down of the butts to the ground. As a realization of the idealized semiosis on Figure 3.4, the actual sequence would yield Figure  3.5, where the subscript ‘nec’ and ‘ex’ represent respectively correlates belonging to necessitant and existent universes. It should be noted, however, that this is not the sort of exercise that Peirce found of interest, judging by a remark in a draft letter to William James in 1909: ‘My classification of signs, however, is intended to be a classification of possible signs and therefore observation of existing signs is only of use in suggesting and reminding one of varieties that one might otherwise overlook’ (EP2: 500, 1909). Moreover, he never exploited this particular typology and only adopted the determination sequence for illustrative purposes (see note  10), and yet actionproducing, collective, copulant tokens, whether declarative, interrogative or injunctive as with the ‘Ground arms!’ command, are being uttered millions of times a minute throughout the world and are a typical realization of anthroposemiosis. Consider, finally, this tentative illustration of how the system described above might function in the analysis of the following brief dialogue (2) drawn from a scene in a detective novel. Two police officers, one male, the other female, are searching a murder victim’s flat. (2)

‘Reckon there’s any chance of grabbing ourselves a coffee while we’re here?’ ‘You mean in the flat?’ Clarke watched him nod. ‘You’d drink a dead man’s coffee?’ ‘I’ve drunk a damn sight worse.’ ‘You know, I actually believe that.’ Rankin 2007: 24

All the utterances in the extract would, in the typology of 1903, be classified as replicas of dicent symbols, irrespective of differences of syntax, textual function (dialogue, narrative), and medium (airwaves, nodding head). In that case, from a

Figure 3.5 The determination sequence of ‘Ground arms!’

Peirce’s Conception of Semiosis

123

strictly logical point of view within that system, they are indistinguishable (the nod of the head would be also be a replica of a dicent symbol – within the culture of the protagonists a nod is a regular, conventional sign of assent). And yet, as we read the text, we are aware not only of the semantic content of the utterances, but also of the very different attitudes the utterances represent of the speakers towards each other and towards the ideas they are both expressing through what they say; in other words, we are aware of more general semiotic processes than the static classification of the utterances as dicent symbols. Such is the structure of a dialogue like this that it can be analysed in terms of all six correlates of sign-action that Peirce worked with after 1904, an analytical approach unavailable within the system of 1903, and has the advantage of exhibiting the interpretants produced by successive signs. For example, the male detective’s nod of the head in line 2 is a reaction to Clarke’s question, showing understanding of, and disregard for, her expressed surprise. The nod of the head is interesting in another way: the sequence is initiated by Clarke’s incredulity, the object which activates the question You mean in the flat?, a complex sign the interrogative syntax of which is a determination of her disbelief or amazement. In other words, the interrogative structure can be seen as the ‘form’ in the Peircean sense communicated to the sign as the immediate object. The sign or medium itself consists in the troughs and peaks in the airwaves as Clarke speaks, while her companion’s nod is proof that the utterance has been understood at the immediate interpretant stage, Moreover, the nod, as a reaction, constitutes both the dynamic – a nod is physical and therefore ‘percussive’ – and final interpretants of Clarke’s utterance, the nod obviously being an action. In this way, Clarke’s question can be classified as an action-producing collective token. It is engendered, so to speak, mediately by the curiosity or incredulity determining that question. The adjunctive actually in Clarke’s final rejoinder, too, is yet another example of the complex reaction to her colleague’s intentionally outrageous reply: it represents a laconic reaction to the truth value of her own utterance. The other utterances in the extract can be analysed similarly, suggesting that the exchange can be considered as a series of complex semiotic processes; in other words, as a series of semioses structured as displayed on Figure 3.4.

Discussion Just how final we can take the system outlined in the letter of 23 December to be is difficult to judge for at least two reasons: Peirce’s doubts concerning the number of divisions to include in his typologies of signs, and a later review of the

124

Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Peircean Semiotics

relation between object and universe. First, in the drafts following the letter, he combines the six universe-defined divisions with the three subdivided in 1903– 1904 by the categories in the ten-division typologies he describes in the draft of 25 December, plus one new one. These typologies place the sign, and not the dynamic object, in initial position in the classification, thereby neutralizing the determination process associated with semiosis. Moreover, he mentions ‘310 or 59049 difficult questions to consider’ (CP 8.343, 1908), as though dissatisfied with the limitations imposed by the universe hierarchy, or unable to apply it to a mixed set of divisions. Note, too, a remark in a letter to William James in which he seems unsure of limiting the number of divisions to the ten of 1908 (EP2: 501, 1909), and this from his Logic Notebook: The amount of labor still required on the ten trichotomies of signs (and more than these ten I don’t enquire into, not because I don’t think they are in truth there, but simply because it will be all I possibly can do to define and to prove these ten) is enough of itself to occupy the 10± years of efficient thinking that may remain to me if no accident cuts them short. R339: 360r, 1909

Second, in the following extract from a draft letter to William James composed barely two months after the one to Lady Welby in which the twenty-eight and sixty-six classes of signs were first mentioned Peirce details a number of cases where the sign’s dynamic object corresponds to or identifies what he calls a ‘universe of existence’. In other words, the dynamic object is, or determines, an ontology. In a draft to James dated 26 January 1909, he offers the following definition of the sign and an innovative development in his conception of the dynamic object: 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 (or, in some cases, as if the Sign be the sentence ‘Cain killed Abel’ in which Cain and Abel are equally Partial Objects, it may be more convenient to say that that which determines the Sign is the Complexus, or Totality, of Partial Objects. And in every case the Object is accurately the Universe of which the Special Object is member, or part), 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 mediately by the Object. EP2: 492, 1909

The apparent proliferation of objects (partial, special) is a way of specifying hierarchical relations among the objects represented, but one that seems to have

Peirce’s Conception of Semiosis

125

no particular bearing on semiosis.9 On the other hand, by identifying the dynamic object as the universe itself, rather than the earlier typological conception in which the dynamic object is referred to one of three universes in the classification of signs, Peirce has simplified the theoretical framework considerably, but shows a certain hesitation in his verbocentric examples as to what the object of a sign really is. In the draft of 1906 the object is what the sign is about, its theme, so to speak, but, as in the case of the infantry officer in 1907, it becomes the origin of the signifying process, namely a possible state of mind of the utterer, among other things. In the extract above, the two partial objects Cain and Abel seem to determine a class of context-less, gnomic utterances rather like The sun rises in the east, whereas the officer’s command is the contextbound expression of a subjectivity or an intention. This hesitation is confirmed by the following extract from the same draft: In the sentence instanced [‘Napoleon is lethargic’] Napoleon is not the only Object. Another Partial Object is Lethargy; and the sentence cannot convey its meaning unless collateral experience has taught its Interpreter what Lethargy is, or what that is that ‘lethargy’ means in this sentence. The Object of a Sign may be something to be created by the Sign. For the object of ‘Napoleon’ is the Universe of Existence so far as it is determined by the fact of Napoleon being a Member of it. The Object of the sentence ‘Hamlet was insane’ is the universe of Shakespeare’s Creation so far as it is determined by Hamlet being a part of it. The Object of the Command ‘Ground arms!’ is the immediately subsequent action of the soldiers so far as it is affected by the molition expressed in the command. It cannot be understood unless collateral observation shows the speaker’s relation to the rank of soldiers. You may say, if you like, that the Object is in the Universe of things desired by the Commanding Captain at that moment. Or since the obedience is fully expected, it is in the Universe of his expectation. At any rate, it determines the Sign although it is to be created by the Sign by the circumstance that its Universe is relative to the momentary state of mind of the officer. EP2: 493, 1909

This fascinating passage introduces a series of examples of how a universe is determined by the (partial or special) objects that are members of it. While it leaves the status of the object unresolved, it nevertheless neutralizes neatly and economically the conventional distinction between reality and fiction: the universe determined by Napoleon’s being a member of it and the universe determined by Hamlet’s being a member of it are logically the same sorts of universe. In this, Peirce’s object-determined universes uncannily anticipate Umberto Eco’s ontologies of possible worlds and fictional characters (2009).

126

Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Peircean Semiotics

Moreover, eschewing psychologism in favour of logic, Peirce has confirmed the role of the utterer in semiosis: whatever motivation he or she has, the object of the motivation is in a universe defined by that very object – intention, expectation, volition. This is an important statement which confirms the principle advanced in 1906 that there is nothing in the sign that does not originate in the object or in the universe defined by that object. Napoleon, Hamlet and the will of the officer, as the objects of signs, now define universes of existence or logical ontologies, and it is these that inform signs, not the historian, Shakespeare or the officer giving the order. Just how these innovations would have developed his search for possible classes of semiosis is difficult to imagine, but in a letter to James dated 14 March 1909, he does in fact analyse in simple terms two verbal signs in a manner which confirms the hexadic structure of semiosis.10 *

*

*

From this chronology of the development of the later semiotics, we see that by defining these universes of existence and the sorts of entities they can contain, including signs, objects and interpretants, Peirce had changed significantly the theoretical framework within which he approached the process of signification. When he began his work in logic in the 1860s, he saw the discipline as a theory of representation: the representamen at the time was the unit of representation, and his first trichotomy, a by-product of his research into a new theory of categories, established the ways in which representamens stood for their objects, hence the importance of the sign-object relation in subsequent typologies: logic, he came to claim, was a veritable ‘philosophy of representation’ (CP 1.539, 1903), with the ten classes to which a sign could belong central to any thinking on signs. In 1908, on the other hand, the process of signification itself became a theoretical priority: what had begun as a theory of types of representation finished, as he left it, as a theory of how representations originate and the sorts of effects that they produce. Within this later conception the object is now defined to be the origin or initiator of semiosis, and therefore it is clearly the object which has to be the triggering agency of all signification, and the sole source of a sign’s form. Thus, while the system of 1903, in which the identity of the object itself is irrelevant to typological considerations, is unable to account explicitly for causation and intention, that of 1908 can show them both to be sources of semiosis. In short, by 1909 Peirce had taken logic from a theory or philosophy of representation to a theory of representing, from ten static classes of signs appealing to mental interpretants to an intricate but incompletely defined model of the very process of signifying.

Peirce’s Conception of Semiosis

127

Concluding remarks There can be no definite conclusion in the conventional sense to a study of Peirce’s semiosis. It seemingly only occurs as a technical term in a single complex, unpublished manuscript of 1907, and he only hinted at how it might function in the 23 December 1908 letter to Lady Welby, never stating unequivocally how the term might apply – a rather sobering situation in view of the concept’s now widespread application. This final section, therefore, simply seeks to offer the reader a summary of the features of semiosis as Peirce left the concept. This does not mean, of course, that Peirce has some sort of posthumous copyright on the concept and that it cannot be adopted and adapted by others. The section simply seeks to review what, in the light of the preceding remarks, might be considered a truly Peircean conception of semiosis, summarised to begin with, in five points: ● ●

● ●

●

Semiosis is a logical concept. It is a dynamic process composed of six, not three, correlates, and functions as a linear sequence. It is triggered by the sign’s dynamic object. It is structured within three universes of existence, for which phaneroscopy is irrelevant. It accounts for causation and intention by virtue of an extended conception of the dynamic object.

As originally conceived, the concept is logical, a hypothesis on the nature not of life, as in the case of biosemiotics, but of signification and the entities it engages with. We note, however, that while in 1903 Peirce was explicitly concerned with logic as a philosophy of representation and in classifying the signs of logic, in the period from 1907 to 1909 he seems to have been constructing a theory of the production of signs, and, furthermore, that the concept’s adoption by workers in fields other than logic – musicology, narratology, art history and biosemiotics, for example – realizes Peirce’s contention that the idioscopic sciences inherit principles from the cenoscopic. Semiosis is a dynamic process, composed of six, not three, correlates, each determining in some way the one that follows, and in this way, it neutralizes the 1903 distinction between representamens with or without mental interpretants. It is difficult, outside laboratory conditions or the analysis of completely recorded semioses such as the military command, for example, or the short dialogue discussed above, to determine the nature of the interpretants, which, perhaps, is why researchers prefer to work with the original triad. Such a simplification,

128

Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Peircean Semiotics

Figure 3.6 Potential misconception of the sign-object-interpretant triad as semiosis.

however, is unscientific and can vitiate their results: schemas such as Figure 3.6 and other three-pronged variants belong to a conception of signification – or even of the sign itself, for certain scholars – as the simultaneous fusion of the three correlates, no doubt with part of the definition of a sign from 1903 in mind: ‘The triadic relation is genuine, that is its three members are bound together by it in a way that does not consist in any complexus of dyadic relations’ (EP2: 273). But by 1908 the action in which the sign participated had become a logically and chronologically ordered process of determination involving six correlates – semiosis. Any reference to a purely Peircean conception of semiosis should theoretically therefore be able to account for the contribution in a given process of all six correlates in the problem under analysis. A researcher like Barbieri, who, as a result of his dissatisfaction with the application of Peircean semiosis to the cell, adopts a ‘codemaker’ model (2008: 21), is, of course, free to modify the basic model as he wishes. Such a decision is perfectly legitimate scientifically: if the model doesn’t fit the empirical data, change the model. In this case, though, the model can no longer be referred to as Peircean. Semiosis also being an irreversible linear process, the interpretant sequence can have no influence on the origin of the sign or on the sign itself: the process is initiated by the sign’s dynamic object, and is a process, moreover, in which the dynamic and immediate objects can, as shown on Table 3.1, be semiotically more complex than the sign itself. For this reason, while the ten-division typologies established in the Logic Notebook between October 1905 and August 1906 and the two ten-division typologies in the drafts to Lady Welby from 24 to 28 December 1908 might possibly constitute valid typologies for sixty-six classes of signs, they cannot qualify as classifications of semiosis: they all begin with the sign division, followed by those dealing with the object, while the interpretant divisions complete

Peirce’s Conception of Semiosis

129

the typology. In other words, they reflect the order not of determination in semiosis but, rather, the earlier phenomenological order – first, second, third – established by Peirce in his definition of the correlates of triadic relations (EP2: 289-291, 1903). In the letter to Lady Welby of 23 December 1908, the actual determination sequence involving the sign necessarily begins with the object. Thus, the only possible typology which is both a typology of sign classes and a typology of semioses is the 28-class system mentioned briefly in the letter. It might seem problematic that the cases of distinct semioses should be limited to twenty-eight – one of qualities, six of existential causation and twenty-one of intention and other necessitant determinants – but there is theoretically no limit to the variety within a given class of semiosis, just as the dicisign of 1903 is not limited to verbal signs but also includes photographs, pictorial signs and multiple other varieties, too. A further point concerns the combinatory within semiosis: the six correlates cannot ‘belong to’ a category: they can only belong to one of three universes. While the categories might be the bases of division order in the 66-class typologies, semiosis as a signifying process and a dynamic instrument of growth is a post-1907 concept with respect to which phenomenology is irrelevant: researchers can easily be misled by the fact that the three universes seem to fit easily with Firstness, Secondness and Thirdness. However, only the broad, late conception of the dynamic object can account for intentionality, causation and ‘qualitative signification’ (for want of a better term, meaning the single semiosis from a possible dynamic object to a possible final interpretant yielding a feelinginducing abstractive mark on Table 3.1). To refer to Peircean semiosis in terms of Firstness, Secondness and Thirdness, then, is to take research along a path strewn with theoretical pitfalls. Now, such reservations might give the impression that the systems of 1903 and 1908 are irreconcilably different, which would introduce an embarrassing hiatus in Peirce’s general theory of logic as semiotics. This is not the case, for while the iconic-indexical-symbolic semioses dismissed by Barbieri are indeed illogical, the sign-classes of 1903 and the process of 1908 are not nevertheless mutually exclusive: they can coincide. This coincidence can be adventitious, as in the case of the flagging of the trees, which is indexical when noticed by the human observer but a consequence of an entirely unconnected natural semiotic process, a case of phytosemiosis (cf. Figure  3.2), plant life adapting to its environment. It can be intentional, on the other hand, as in the cases of the Arsenal supporter’s banner, the infantry officer’s command and the banter between the two detectives: they all deliberately ‘utter’ replicas of dicent symbols in order to influence their audience.11

130

Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Peircean Semiotics

Finally, the linear deployment of the six stages of semiosis as Peirce presented them in 1908 can effectively model creative activity of all kinds at the many levels of dynamic organization in the biosphere, including the persuasive techniques of the engineering of consent (Bernays 1947) and, effectively rendering consent itself irrelevant, the intrusive strategies of the present-day deliberate insidious capture and exploitation of internaut data in business, government and social relations. However, to do justice to this aspect of the concept would require a whole new chapter.

References Anderson, D. 1995. Strands of System: The Philosophy of Charles Peirce. West Lafayette: Purdue University Press. Bailly, A. 1950. Dictionnaire Grec Français, Paris: Hachette. Barbieri, M. (ed.). 2008. Introduction to Biosemiotics: The New Biological Synthesis. Dordrecht: Springer. Barbieri, M. 2009. ‘Three Types of Semiosis’. Biosemiotics, 2, 19–30. Bellucci, F. 2018. Peirce’s Speculative Grammar: Logic as Semiotics. London: Taylor and Francis. Bernays, E. 1947. ‘The Engineering of Consent’. Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, (250), 113–120. Deely, J. 1990. Basics of Semiotics. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Eco, U. 2009. ‘On the Ontology of Fictional Characters: A Semiotic Approach’. Sign Systems Studies, 37(1/2), 82–97. Freadman, A. 2004. The Machinery of Talk: Charles Peirce and the Sign Hypothesis. Stanford: Stanford University Press Jappy, T. 2016. Peirce’s Twenty-eight Classes of Signs and the Philosophy of Representation: Rhetoric, Interpretation and Hexadic Semiosis. London: Bloomsbury. Jappy, T. 2018a. ‘Intentional Signs from a Peircean Perspective’. Language and Semiotic Studies. Vol. 4(1), 80–99. Jappy, T. 2018b. ‘Example, Metaphor and Parallelism in the Object: How Peirce’s Late Semiotics Justifies the Hypoicons’. Chinese Semiotic Studies, Vol. 14(3), 289–307. Jappy, T. 2018c. ‘Speculative Rhetoric, Methodeutic, and Peirce’s Hexadic Sign-systems’. Semiotica, 220, 249–268. Jappy, T. 2019. ‘Dos aproximaciones peirceanas a la imagen: hipoiconicidad y semiosis’. La Tadeo Dearte, 4(4), 34–53. Müller, R. 1994. ‘On the Principles of Construction and the Order of Peirce’s Trichotomies of Signs’. Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society. XXX(1), 135–153.

Peirce’s Conception of Semiosis

131

Rankin, I. 2007. Exit Music. London: Orion Books Sanders, G. 1970. ‘Peirce’s Sixty-Six Signs?’. Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society. VI(1), 3–16. Savan, D. 1988. An Introduction to C. S. Peirce’s Full System of Semeiotic. Toronto Semiotic Circle. Short, T.L. 1981. ‘Semeiosis and intentionality’. Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society. 17(3), 197–223. Weiss, P. and A. Burks. 1945. ‘Peirce’s Sixty-Six Signs’. The Journal of Philosophy, 42(14), 383–388.

132

4

A Complex System of Sign Classes for Complex Sign Systems Priscila Borges

Introduction Peirce conceived his semiotics as a logical discipline, an abstract and general theory for mapping, classifying, and analysing sign processes. According to him, semiotics is ‘the doctrine of the essential nature and fundamental varieties of possible semiosis’ (EP2: 413, 1907). The study of signs begins with the observation of well-known sign features and continues, in processes of abstraction and inferences, until it reaches a more comprehensive general system of all possible sign types. Peirce’s classification of signs concerns the first branch of semiotics, called speculative grammar, which determines the general conditions for signs to reach their purpose. In this context, the classes of signs show a certain path necessary for signs to represent. If we understand Peirce’s classifications of signs as ordered systems of signs that show the necessary relations for mediation, we may use these systems as methodological tools, or instruments of inquiry, to perceive sign tendencies, derive relations among them, and predict properties of new signs. Peirce’s best-known system of signs describes ten classes, which were very well explained and exemplified in his texts, and is frequently adopted in applications and discussed by Peirce’s commentators. In contrast, Peirce only suggested the system of sixty-six classes in his letters and drafts to Lady Welby in the late years of his life, around 1908. In these documents, he showed logically how to reach the sixty-six classes, but he could not elaborate on the definitions and details of all classes, leaving the subject for further researches (EP2: 482, 1908). Left open, this issue is insufficiently explored and gives rise to a good number of disputes among the researchers that venture upon it.1 The increase in the number of sign classes is a consequence of the increase in the number of aspects observed in the semiotic process. In the system of three 133

134

Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Peircean Semiotics

classes we observe only one aspect of the sign process, which is the relation between the sign and its object. The impact of observing fewer aspects in a semiotic analysis is that the phenomenon observed is described in less detail. If we observe a phenomenon in respect to a fewer number of aspects, we may relate it to other phenomena that have similar features, and conclude that the phenomenon is of a certain type. However, if we observe a greater number of aspects of the same phenomena, we may perceive that the phenomena that seemed to be similar in a certain level are actually very different in other aspects. Semiotic analysis can help us understand phenomena because it allows, first, the identification of particular features of the sign, and, second, the recognition of a sign process through the relation between sign classes, which shows the possible formation of general categories and concepts. The process of understanding depends on the generalization process that comes after the observation of a particular phenomenon. The complexification of the methods of analysis, therefore, allows the understanding of greater levels of complexity and organization of signs. Such analyses may be not only useful, but also necessary to the observation of complex signs whose features overflow the categories usually adopted for their comprehension. We may observe this, for example, in gender definitions, which are currently undergoing a transformation with the creation of new denominations, expanding the types of gender, and increasing the complexity of gender definition with the acquisition of new criteria. Another field whose boundaries are changing and which, consequently, demands more complex methods of analysis is language. Digital language modified the boundaries between languages, and the processes of creation and reception of its messages have been modified as well. Some artistic works explore these limits, evincing the weaknesses of some classification models. The same occurs with the classification of sciences. The fields of knowledge were established from a certain way of understanding the world, considering both social and technological areas, which have been modified over the years, blurring the boundaries between fields and challenging our traditional ways of defining research areas.

How to construct a sign system Each system of signs is a set of related sign classes that shows how a sign may function. Peirce employs two methods for deducing sign classes. The first has to do with the sign structure, which brings up aspects that should be observed

A Complex System of Sign Classes

135

about the sign. The other shows the modes of being of each aspect, according to phenomenological categories. The aspects mobilized in each sign system vary according to the concept of sign adopted. The first sign concept proposed by Peirce presents the sign as a triadic relation between three elements: A sign, or representamen, is something which stands to somebody for something in some respect or capacity. It addresses somebody, that is, creates in the mind of that person an equivalent sign, or perhaps a more developed sign. That sign which it creates I call the interpretant of the first sign. The sign stands for something, its object. It stands for that object, not in all respects, but in reference to a sort of idea, which I have sometimes called the ground of the representamen. CP 2.228, c. 1897

Peirce often refers to the sign itself as the ground of the sign, the representamen, or simply as sign. It is important to clarify that there is a difference between the sign as a triadic relation and the sign itself, which is the first and fundamental element that constitutes the triadic relation. To avoid confusion, I will always use sign to refer to the sign as a triadic relation, and sign itself to refer to the sign within the triadic relation. Later, Peirce described a more elaborate concept of sign, dividing the object into two – dynamical and immediate – and the interpretant into three – immediate, dynamical, and final. Namely, we have to distinguish the Immediate Object, which is the Object as the Sign itself represents it, and whose Being is thus dependent upon the Representation of it in the Sign, from the Dynamical Object, which is the Reality which by some means contrives to determine the Sign to its Representation. In regard to the Interpretant we have equally to distinguish, in the first place, the Immediate Interpretant, which is the interpretant as it is revealed in the right understanding of the Sign itself, and is ordinarily called the meaning of the sign; while in the second place, we have to take note of the Dynamical Interpretant which is the actual effect which the Sign, as a Sign, really determines. Finally there is what I provisionally term the Final Interpretant, which refers to the manner in which the Sign tends to represent itself to be related to its Object. CP 4.536, 1906

Each aspect of the sign structure considered in a system presents three modes of being. The modes of being or the nature of each aspect were based on Peirce’s three phenomenological categories, and that explains why the aspects of the sign have always three modes of being. In 1867, still in the earlier years of his work,

136

Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Peircean Semiotics

Peirce presents his first text about the categories in the American Academy of Arts and Science: ‘On a New List of Categories’ (W2: 49–59, 1868; EP1: 1–10). Quality, relation and representation were the first names of Peirce’s categories that later were called firstness, secondness, and thirdness. A quality is a fundamental element, which is independent of any other and does not refer to any other correlate. A relation refers to an occurrence of certain qualities in a correlate. A representation is the element that makes possible the comparison between multiple occurrences of qualities (EP1: 5–6; W2: 54–55). The category of firstness relates to quality, originality, novelty, chance and indetermination. It is something that may exist by itself, without reference to anything else. Firstness is the mere possibility of realization of a certain quality; its actualization in a singular moment already involves an element of secondness. Secondness is linked to effort, experience, the relation with a second term without any reference to a third. Secondness characterizes actuality, singularity, opposition, conflict, resistance, or raw action. It is experience in an instant, therefore, particular and singular. Thirdness is the category of mind, habit, law, generality, purpose, continuity, temporality, representation, and mediation, which means that two elements are related by a third element. One of the most important things to notice in Peirce’s categories is that they are interrelated and presented in a certain order. The latter always encompasses the former. This order is replicated in all his studies and they are fundamental for the systems of sign classes. Peirce’s systems of signs vary from three to sixty-six sign classes. To distinguish the systems of sign classes, I will start from the simplest system and will present, one by one, the next systems, as they acquire more sign classes, showing the differences and potentialities of each one of them. I am not going to present all the classes in each system, since this would demand much more than a single chapter, but I will point to particular features of each system that are fundamental to understand their analytic power.

The system of three classes of signs The first system I identify has three classes of signs and is based on Peirce’s simplest concept of sign, which is a triadic relation involving the sign itself, the object and the interpretant. In 1868, in ‘On a New List of Categories’ (EP1: 1–10; W2: 49–59, 1868), Peirce described three types of representation considering only one aspect of the sign: the modes of being of the relation between the sign

A Complex System of Sign Classes

137

itself and its object [S-O]. They were denominated: likenesses (which later were called icons), indices and symbols (EP1: 7; W2: 56, 1868). Icon, index and symbol compose the first trichotomy of signs. In 1885, Peirce (EP1: 225–228) affirmed that the triadic relation could be degenerated in three pairs: sign-object, sign-mind, and object-mind (EP1: 226). What Peirce calls mind in this text is later called interpretant. The relation between the sign itself and its object concerns the referentiality of the sign, that is, the way the sign refers to something. The second relation holds between the sign itself and the interpretant, which concerns the way the sign may create an idea about its object, that is, the possible interpretations of the sign. The third relation holds between the idea created and the object represented by the sign, and it may show in which way the idea created conforms to the object or not. In this text, Peirce (EP1: 225–228) observed that without the relation between the sign itself and its object the sign would not function as a sign at all. This explains why he first turned his attention to the possible modes of this relation between the sign itself and the object. The way the sign refers to the object, therefore, is the first aspect observed and is that upon which the system of three sign classes is built. The modes of sign reference are important for the sign to function, but this relation does not reveal, for instance, the possible effects of the sign. And it does not question the possible types of objects, nor the possible types of signs. Is the object of a sign something from the universe of experience? Is the object something that cannot be experienced, but still from the universe of reality? Can we experience reality or are these two universes completely taken apart? Could the object of a sign be something imagined? Are signs only particulars or could they be generals? All these problems are not included in the system of three sign classes, even though they are incorporated in Peirce’s later systems. The classes of signs are obtained from the observation that the relations between the sign and the object are of three types, which corresponds to three modes of reference. The iconic, the indexical and the symbolic signs are the three sign classes that compose what I identify as being the system of three sign classes. These three terms have been used in many works, sometimes with an extended meaning not restricted to the relation between the sign itself and its object. It is important, however, to bear in mind that they refer only to one aspect of the sign. If we need to refer to other modes of relation of the sign, we must use the other terms Peirce suggested in his later work. If the sign has qualities that are similar to the qualities of its objects and if that is the most important relation that allows the sign to represent the object, then,

138

Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Peircean Semiotics

we have an iconic sign. If, instead, no quality of the object is involved in the sign, but there is a correspondence in fact, a direct physical connection that forces the attention to the particular object, we have an indexical sign. Finally, if the sign represents by virtue of a convention, then, we have a symbolic sign. From these sign classes, it is common to see some examples, such as the notions that images are iconic signs because they represent forms, colours and textures of their object; or that a pointing finger, an arrow, or smoke, as indicating fire, are indexical signs; or that words representing objects due to a language convention are symbolic signs. Such examples may help us to understand types of relations. Yet they do not account for the complexity of sign relations, nor does this categorical view of classes help us understand the complexity of signs. This is evident when we discuss a photographic image, for example. We may say that there is an iconic relation, since the photographic image has qualities similar to the qualities of the object photographed. But there is also an indexical relation, since the photograph is the record of the light reflected by the object. And there is also a symbolic relation since a series of arbitrary rules are involved in the construction of the photographic image that constitute what we call the photographic language. These sign classes may help us perceive the various ways in which a single sign represents its object. If we use the sign classes to classify the mode of relation between the sign and the object that is presented immediately, we may end up using the classes to reinforce features that are evident in the sign instead of discovering its complexity. The example given above about photographic images shows exactly that. There is a broad discussion about the status of the photographic image and about the possible change of its status when photography moved from analogic to digital. It is obvious that one mode of relation may become more evident than another depending on the photographic image that is being observed. The other possibilities of relations, however, do not disappear, and should not be ignored if we are willing to understand the language of the photographic image. If we look at the classes as indicative of a process, we can see that signs may represent their objects in various ways and that a system of classes of signs may be understood as expressing a logical process, which may show the growth of signs. The links between classes of signs are analogous to the links between the phenomenological categories on which they are based. This means that a sign that represents an object indexically has also certain qualities, and such qualities may resemble the qualities of some entity, which puts it in an iconic relation to

A Complex System of Sign Classes

139

some objects that may coincide or not to the object that is represented indexically. A symbolic sign, besides representing by convention, also presents qualities that may resemble the qualities of other objects, configuring it as an iconic sign, in the same way as it can be in an existential relation to some object that configures it as an indexical sign. This one aspect of the sign considered in the system of three sign classes can help us discover the objects that the sign may represent, even if they are not evident. Knowing the three ways in which the sign may refer to the object, we could look at a sign trying to identify the possible objects that may establish such relations with the sign. This is important since it gives us a broader view of the representative possibilities of the sign. The desire to discover the relation between the sign itself and the object is related to the will to know what the sign represents. Most of the time, we understand what the sign represents before understanding how the sign could create that idea of its object or perceiving that the sign could produce different and even contradictory meanings. Paying attention to the mode of relation between the sign and its object is important, but it does not help much when we are dealing with signs that challenge certain established modes of reference. In seeking to perceive the ways in which existing signs may represent, we will note that signs have a greater representative potential than is usually perceived in a communicative situation. This is very important for content producers on different media that would like to avoid misinterpretations of their messages. The object of a sign may not be a definite particular, nor is it restricted to a particular idea, which represents it (as the interpretant in a semiotic relation). When the researcher identifies the object of the sign, he is within the semiotic chain and, like other interpreters, creates in his mind an idea of the object that is the interpretant generated by the sign. It is up to him, as a researcher, to be aware that such an object is only an idea that represents the object and that the object of the sign is broader than the idea that the researcher has of the object. The object of the sign, which for Peirce is what determines the sign, is ultimately the real object, that is, the object regardless of its representation. Since we only know something about the objects from our experience with signs, we cannot completely define the object itself, but we must be attentive to the sign in order to perceive the object in a broader way without restricting it to what we think it is. The complexity of the object and its relation to reality are evinced in the systems of twenty-eight and sixty-six sign classes, which consider the modes of being of the dynamical and the immediate objects.

140

Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Peircean Semiotics

The system of ten classes of signs In 1903, Peirce (EP2: 289) proposed the system of ten sign classes. The increase from three to ten sign classes is obtained by the observation of more aspects of the sign. The system of ten sign classes considers three aspects of the sign: the nature of the sign itself [S], the modes of the relation between the sign itself and its object [S-O], and the modes of the relation between the sign itself and the interpretant [S-I]. The modes of the relation between the sign itself and its object are not independent of the modes of being of the sign itself and of the modes of being of the object. In the system of ten sign classes, we consider the modes of being of the sign itself, but not the modes of being of the object, which is going to appear in the systems of twenty-eight and of sixty-six sign classes. Despite the absence of the modes of being of the object, Peirce observed that the mode of being of the sign itself was an important aspect to be observed, and that it was necessary to observe it before observing the mode of the relation between the sign itself and the object, because the latter depends on the former. Therefore, the sign aspects observed should follow an order of determination. That is, we should observe first the aspects that are independent of others and that may modify the following aspects. Consequently, the first aspect observed in the system of ten sign classes is the mode of being of the sign itself, since it affects and may restrict the modes of being of all the relations that involve the sign itself. The next aspect to consider is the relation between the sign itself and its object, since this relation may modify the way the sign can be interpreted, which relates to the modes of being of the relation between the sign itself and the interpretant. The third, then, and the last aspect observed is the relation between the sign itself and the interpretant, since it depends on the mode of being of the sign and on the mode of the relation between the sign itself and its object. Each aspect of the sign may have three modes of being, following the phenomenological categories. The sign itself, then, can be a qualisign, a sinsign, and a legisign. The relation between the sign and the object is the same as from the last system, iconic, indexical and symbolic. The relation between the sign and the interpretant may be rhematic, dicent or argumental. The order of the terms of each trichotomy is related to the phenomenological categories. That is, qualisigns, icons and rhemas are modes of being related to firstness. Sinsigns, indexes and dicents are modes of being related to secondness. Legisigns, symbols and arguments are related to thirdness. The first constituent of each trichotomy has the mode of being of firstness, the second of secondness, and the third of thirdness.

A Complex System of Sign Classes

141

To derive ten sign classes from these trichotomies, we must observe the order of determination of the aspects considered in the sign system and the logic of the phenomenological categories. Thus, we may start from the first aspect considered in the sign. If the sign itself is a qualisign, which is of the nature of firstness, the phenomenologically simplest mode of being, it can only determine further modes of being of this very category. That is, a qualisign may have an iconic and a rhematic relation. This is the first class of sign of this system. If the sign itself is a sinsign, which is of the nature of secondness, then it can determine further relations of firstness or secondness. That is, a sinsign may only have iconic or indexical relations. Finally, the sign itself that has the mode of being of thirdness, that is, a legisign, may have an iconic, indexical or symbolic relation. If we apply this rule to all the aspects of the sign, from the consideration of three aspects we would lead to ten possible sign classes (EP2: 289–299, 1903). The addition of two new aspects for observation in the system of ten classes increases the complexity of the system of ten sign classes, since it establishes the necessity of ordering and of applying the logic of the phenomenological categories to the classes. The inclusion of the trichotomy related to the nature of the sign draws attention to the sign itself, instead of going directly to the object of the sign. As researchers of semiotics, we have to pay attention to the sign, and suspend the semiotic process, which brings to us almost immediately a certain idea about what the sign represents. Proposing to observe the mode of being of the sign itself, Peirce conceives that signs may be potential, existent and general. That is, not all signs are signs with which we may have experience. Signs that are existent, or sinsigns, are signs from the universe of experience. We must admit, however, that there are potential signs, which may become existent, even though we have not experienced them yet. The existence of sinsigns is provided by the potentiality of a sign to become an existent sign, which is given by qualisigns. The qualisign is a possible sign. Yet, in a semiotic analysis, we are always facing an existent and particular sign. If we are already facing an existent sign, or sinsign, should we give any attention to the possible signs, or qualisigns? Should we go back and think of possible signs, if we are analysing a sign that already exists? If we go back and think of qualisigns, we will realize that the existence of a sign draws on a multiple set of possible qualities and we may even perceive the qualities that make this a particular sign and differentiate it from others. Qualisigns may reveal in a semiotic analysis the possible qualities of certain types of signs, of which the existent sign is also a type. The universe of possible qualities may be infinite, but for a semiotic analysis, it is important to identify

142

Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Peircean Semiotics

some common qualities of a certain type of sign, because they may modify the way the sign signifies. While a qualisign shows the possible qualities of a sign, a sinsign is a sign that is the object of experience (EP2: 294, 1903). A sinsign may be a particular sign, disconnected from other signs, or an instance of a legisign. That is, an existent sign may be a sign that follows a convention. In this case, the sinsign is an occurrence of a law, which is the only mode of experience of general signs such as legisigns. Then, the third type of sign is a conventional sign that governs its replicas (EP2: 291, 1903). The observation of the mode of being of the sign itself expands the idea of the sign, since signs are not only particular signs with which we may have experience. The systems of signs include possible signs, existent signs and general signs. The discussion of the modes of representation of the photograph could be enlarged by the discussion of the mode of being of the sign itself. We may understand photography as a field of possible qualities in the universe of visual representations created through the capture of light emitted by such objects. Each existent photograph is the realization of this field of possibilities, each one with its own features. Namely, each photograph has its own qualities as images, such qualities may be the result of different processes of capturing light, and each photograph represents the different objects photographed. Being sinsigns, these photographs refer to the objects that emitted the light captured, but they also refer to the process of capturing the light and producing the photographic image. When we perceive a photographic image as legisigns, that is, as being part of a codified system of images, we may also perceive that the representation of the objects photographed is not by chance. They appear in a certain way because they belong to a set of cultural practices related to photographic images, such as a professional photograph taken for and published in a newspaper, or a personal photograph taken with a smartphone and shared in social media. We can see that a sign, or a photograph, can be a particular image that functions as a sort of record of something, or it can be a general sign, a legisign, that implies types of photographic images. If we observe a photographic image in a newspaper, it presents at the same time these two modes of being. It is an image that represents a fact, and it also represents a certain way of taking photos and presenting it that is typical of photojournalism. Both the sinsign and the legisign are determined by the objects of the sign. Therefore, the objects of the sign might have different modes of being. In the systems of twenty-eight and sixty-six sign classes, we can distinguish the modes of being of the dynamical object, and that may be fundamental to understand that a sign

A Complex System of Sign Classes

143

may have more than one object, which, together, determine the way the sign may represent. The other aspect introduced in the system of ten sign classes concerns the mode of being of the relation between the sign itself and the interpretant. This aspect emphasizes the importance of the meaning produced by the sign in the semiotic process. Therefore, the representation process includes the problem of producing meanings and this is evident in the system of ten sign classes. The three types of relation that concern the meaning produced show that the general intended interpretant varies from a vague to an explicit idea. The rhema is the vaguest interpretant, being imprecise, but essential as it contributes with a term to what we may call the meaning reached by the semiotic process. The dicent is less vague than the rhema. It is more informative than a term, since it connects the term with something that brings up a proposition that contributes to the construction of the argument, but is still imprecise. The argument, on the other hand, is explicit on its meaning as it considers the terms and the propositions created during the semiotic process in order to reach a proper argument (EP2: 220–222, 1903; SS: 33, 1904). Therefore, the system of ten sign classes includes some important issues of the semiotic process. It introduces the idea that the sign may have more than one mode of being, and that its meaning may be more or less accurate. I will continue presenting next the system of twenty-eight sign classes and the new aspects Peirce added to it.

The system of twenty-eight classes of signs In 1908, Peirce suggested a system of twenty-eight sign classes taking into account a more developed concept of sign, composed of six terms (EP2: 480–481, 1908). In this new sign concept, the triadic relation is maintained, but we can zoom in to the object and the interpretant, distinguishing between two objects – the dynamical and the immediate – and three interpretants – the immediate, the dynamical, and the final. The immediate object is the object as the sign represents it, while the dynamical object is the object actually efficient but not immediately present. According to Peirce, the immediate object is the object represented by the sign, whereas the dynamical object is independent of what we think about it (505–506, 1906). The immediate interpretant is the interpretant represented or signified in the sign, the dynamical interpretant is the effect actually produced in the mind by the sign,

144

Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Peircean Semiotics

and the final interpretant is the effect that would be produced on the mind by the sign after a sufficient development of thought (CP 8.343, EP2: 482, 1908). The sign represents the dynamical object, which, in this way, determines the sign. The immediate object is that part of the dynamical object that is represented in the sign. The sign does not represent its dynamical object completely, but only partially. Therefore, the aspect of the dynamical object represented in the sign is the immediate object. Peirce defines the immediate object as a hint given by the sign that indicates its dynamical object (EP2: 480, 1908). Besides the relation with the object, the sign, in order to represent, must be able to determine an interpretant that also represents the object. The sign, however, can only determine an interpretant because the sign has the immediate interpretant within it. We can understand the immediate interpretant as the sign capacity to determine an interpretant. Once generated, the immediate interpretant becomes a dynamical interpretant, which is the mental or emotional effect produced by the sign in the course of its interpretation. The sign can produce more than one dynamical interpretant, and all of them are potentially included in the immediate interpretant. The dynamical interpretant, therefore, is the effect produced by the sign in some mind at a given instant. Finally, Peirce’s final interpretant is understood as the hypothetical interpretative result at which any interpreter should arrive in the course of the interpretation of a sign, in which all circumstances of the sign’s meanings and practical consequences are taken into consideration (Short 1996: 493–494). The system of twenty-eight sign classes includes the divisions of objects and interpretants increasing the number of aspects considered in the sign process to six. All the aspects concerned, however, are related only to the nature of the terms; no relation between terms is included. The aspects concerned in the system of twenty-eight sign classes are the natures of the dynamical object [DO], of the immediate object [IO], of the sign itself [S], of the immediate interpretant [II], of the dynamical interpretant [DI], and of the final interpretant [FI]. Again, a combination of the modes of being and their order of determination, generates twenty-eight sign classes (Borges 2016; Jappy 2017). The distinction of the dynamical object emphasizes the idea that the object of the sign is related to the real, which is ‘that whose characters are independent of what anybody may think them to be’ (W3: 271, 1878). The dynamical object is that which resists the interpretations given of it (Hausman 1991: 480). Interpretations may misunderstand it, and, although the dynamical object could be modified by the course of signs, it is not one interpretation at a particular time that can change it. The features of the dynamical object would only be reached in

A Complex System of Sign Classes

145

the end of an inquiry. This end is possible, but it is not actually achievable for at least two reasons. First, we are never sure that we have discovered everything from the object, since we only know it through signs. Second, while we investigate, the chain of signs continues to increase and it slowly changes the objects of the sign, making the investigation a continuous process, whose end is given by the lack of necessity to continue the process, but not by having exhausted it. Peirce affirms that we achieve perfect knowledge about something when our opinion about that something is set up in such a way that, no matter how far we go with the inquiry, it will not bring in any novelty (CP 4.62, 1893). The appropriate knowledge, however, does not correspond to the full discovery of the dynamical object. If we consider Peirce’s fallibilism, we should conceive that someone could reach a conclusion that seems perfect for him, and which conflicts with the conclusion I myself reached independently, and that seemed perfect to me. Even when the interpretant produced seems to correspond to the object of the sign, we should not be certain of it. We may conceive, then, that the dynamical object relates to Peirce’s idea of reality (Franco and Borges 2015). In this system of sign classes, Peirce describes three modes of the dynamical object showing that the dynamical object is not restricted to a particular object. That explains why a sign may produce different interpretants that seem to correspond to the object of the sign. When the dynamical object is a particular object, it is easier to look at the ideas created by the signs and to assert whether they are appropriate or not. But what if the dynamical object is not only a particular object? According to Peirce, in respect to the nature of the dynamical objects, a sign may be: abstractive, concretive, and collective. Peirce states that the object of the sign is not an isolated existent, but the universe to which it belongs (EP2: 492, 1909). A sign is abstractive when it refers to a general dynamical object. The whole universe of the visual language, for instance, could be thought to be the most general object of the photographic image. A sign is concretive when its dynamical object is an actual occurrence, that is, the scene that was registered and fixed in the image with some materialized qualities. A sign is collective when its dynamical object concerns the conventions and laws that regulate the universe of visual language and that enable the appearance of existent objects such as the photographic image, that is, the chemical and physical aspects from the photographic camera, film and paper without which no image could be registered. But the dynamical object from collective signs also includes the conventions from other visual languages that influence the photographic image, such as the types of frames, lighting and colouring, as well as the social

146

Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Peircean Semiotics

conventions involved in the production of photographic images, that is, the situations that are photographed, the purpose of the image, and their modes of distribution. The possibility of a collection as a dynamical object, which leads us to conceive that reality is composed by generals, can only be understood if we consider Peirce’s view of the real, which is ‘the ideal end-result of information and reasoning, and it can only be approached in a communal setting, such as the community of inquirers’ (Bergman 2002: 3). The collection shows that some dynamical objects are determined by interpretation (Borges 2014: 7). That is, the dynamical object of the sign may be modified by a series of interpretants that lead to some conclusions. These conclusions, however, need to be shared between the members of the community in which the sign occurred. The types of dynamical object may be even more important in the case, for instance, of new terms created to refer to gender diversity, which evince that the binary definition of gender is not enough to describe gender identity in our society. It is not the mode of the relation between sign and object that enables the change of an idea or of a concept. There may be a change in the mode of the relation, but the most significant one is the change in the object itself. The changing of a concept means changing the object of a sign. The creation of new terms seeks to modify the object of the sign. These terms become signs that represent the object (types of gender) from another perspective, allowing the increase of the object. This may occur through new words, but also through the experience with people, and people’s images or actions that show that a certain concept of gender does not work any more and needs to be re-thought. Let us see what these types of dynamical object tell us in the case of a new term created to reconfigure the notion of gender. This new term will be an abstractive sign when its dynamical object concerns the gender thematic in its most general way, including all different notions of gender from different times and different cultures, as well as the possible notions of gender that may arise in the future. It will be a concretive sign when its dynamical object concerns the specific notion designated by the term, as in trans-feminine, for instance, which refers to someone who identifies as feminine, without identifying either as a man or a woman, and who was assigned as male at birth. It will be a collective sign when its dynamical object concerns the criteria used to describe gender types, such as the gender assigned at birth, the identification with the categories of feminine or masculine, the identification with the idea of woman or the idea of man, and everything else that is being taken into account to define gender in this new context.

A Complex System of Sign Classes

147

As the object represented is new or unknown, the relation between the sign itself and the object may seem to be broken and the meaning of the sign may not be understood. The system of twenty-eight sign classes, however, does not consider this important aspect, which appears in the system of sixty-six sign classes as the relation between the sign itself and the dynamical object. The interpreter of a sign needs some collateral experience with the object of the sign in order to reach an interpretant that corresponds to its object. It is necessary, then, to consider the mode of being of the dynamical object and the mode of being of the sign itself. The consideration of these two aspects may help distinguish between new signs of a known object and signs of a new or unknown object. The increase in the number of criteria used to designate gender increases the number of gender types, showing the complexity of the gender concept. Consequently, the variety of signs that may represent this variety of gender types has also increased and complexified. The immediate object is the object as the sign represents it. It is the part of the dynamical object that is represented in the sign. In respect to the nature of the immediate object, a sign may be descriptive, designative or distributive. A sign is descriptive when its immediate object communicates some feature of the dynamical object to the sign. It may communicate a possible feature or a feature of a particular object. A sign is designative when its immediate object designates a real and singular occurrence in a determined time and space, which may be a replica of a collective sign, whose dynamical object is of the third mode of being. And the sign is distributive when its immediate object is a notion the sign gives about the dynamical object of the third mode of being, which, in the case of the example above, are the criteria adopted to describe gender. Independently of how the sign refers to its dynamical object, if the dynamical object has changed, becoming more complex, all the signs that make reference to gender may refer to this more complex dynamical object. This dynamical object, however, does not exclude the old notions of gender that preceded it. Even the dynamical object that is an actual occurrence is defined as an object of experience from past or future. The notion of gender accumulates various meanings, and, because of that, it is necessary to observe each sign in its own time. When analysing a sign, it is necessary to discover the context of the sign in time and space. This means both the context of creation of the sign and the context of its interpretation, since they may affect the interpretants generated by the sign. The new criteria added to the notion of gender do not immediately exclude other criteria that have applied in the past. Being a social concept, the effective

148

Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Peircean Semiotics

transformation of the concept of gender does not occur by, say, the changing of written laws. Effective change only occurs if the new criteria are incorporated into people’s habits. That requires time and experience with the new signs. Experiences with new signs could generate, at first, imprecise interpretants that do not correspond with the notion of gender proposed. Even if the sign has been created with the intention of designating a complex notion of gender, there is no assurance that this idea is going to be produced by the interpretants, because there is no consensus on the notion of gender. A person who has no collateral experience with the object of the sign may not understand it. In this case, a person may have an experience with gender that does not correspond to the one that the term refers to. The person, however, will identify gender as being the object of the sign and the interpretant produced by the sign will refer to the part of the dynamical object that is known. The production of an interpretant that is not adequate to the sign is fundamental to the development of a collection as dynamical object, since the various frustrated experiences with the sign may show, in the long run of semiosis, that there is something different in the collection determining the signs. Experiences with signs determined by a more complex dynamical object are fundamental to generate interpretants that may produce a new idea of gender in a community, which, after a few years or decades, may develop a more uniform notion about the criteria that define gender. By presenting three types of interpretants and their modes of being, the system of twenty-eight sign classes shows that signs may produce a large variety of interpretants. The capacity of the sign to produce interpretants is related to the immediate interpretant. Its mode of being, which is hypothetical, categorical, and relative, shows that signs may produce interpretants that are more or less definite. The dynamical interpretant shows the effect that the sign can actually produce in the mind (EP2: 482, 1908). These effects vary from a sense of affinity, a kind of shock that strikes the mind, and a habitual effect (Borges 2016: 254). The final interpretant, which corresponds to the purpose of the sign (EP2: 498, 1909), varies from having the purpose of giving pleasure, of resulting in an action, or of producing a meaning. If we consider that these sets of interpretants are all connected and that they may show the process through which the production of different interpretants would lead at the end to the conceiving of a meaning, then, we could understand how a new meaning of the concept of gender can emerge from the diversity of interpretants produced. The modes of checking the correspondence between the interpretants produced and the sign itself and its dynamical object, however, are

A Complex System of Sign Classes

149

not considered in the system of twenty-eight sign classes. They are going to be evident in the system of sixty-six sign classes.

The system of sixty-six classes of signs In his letters to Lady Welby, Peirce (EP2: 477–491, 1908) increased to ten the number of aspects observed in the sign, making it possible to derive sixty-six sign classes. These aspects emerge from Peirce’s more elaborate concept of sign. This time the aspects include both the nature of the terms and their relations: the dynamical object [DO]; the immediate object [IO]; the sign itself [S]; the relation between the sign itself and the dynamical object [S-DO]; the immediate interpretant [II]; the dynamical interpretant [DI]; the relation between the sign itself and the dynamical interpretant [S-DI]; the final interpretant [FI]; the relation between the sign itself and the final interpretant [S-FI]; and the triadic relation between the dynamical object, the sign itself, and the dynamical interpretant [DO-S-FI]. The ten aspects considered in this system comprise all the aspects from the systems proposed earlier. Thus, this is the most complete system Peirce ever proposed. To reach sixty-six sign classes it is necessary to establish an order for the aspects. Peirce presented these aspects in more than one order, and since he never offered a list containing all the classes of this system, as he did with the system of ten sign classes, there is no consensus about the proper order of the aspects.2 It is necessary, however, to adopt an order to derive the sign classes. The adoption of different aspect orders generates different classes of signs, since the mode of being of one aspect of the sign constrains the possible modes of being of the next aspect (Bergman 2002: 7). In addition, the aspects of the object restrict the aspects of the sign, whereas the aspects of sign restrict the aspects of the interpretant. The relations between the aspects of the sign lead to the idea that the system of sign classes expresses a logical process. The order I have adopted in my researches, presented here in this chapter, follows the logic of the sign process because following this order we obtain a system that functions as an inquiry tool that exposes the growth of signs. Besides comprising all the aspects proposed earlier, this system considers both the modes of being of the terms and the relations between the terms. In the proposed order, the terms of each relation are considered prior to the relation itself, since we must consider that the mode of being of the terms may change

150

Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Peircean Semiotics

the mode of being of their relation. These features make the system of sixty-six sign classes more promising in representing the sign process than the system of twenty-eight sign classes, which presents only terms (Borges 2016). Since I have already mentioned most of the aspects that appear in the system of sixty-six sign classes in the previous ones, here I will focus on the aspects that are specific to this system. They are: the relation between the sign itself and the dynamical interpretant [S-DI]; the relation between the sign itself and the final interpretant [S-FI]; and the triadic relation between the dynamical object, the sign itself, and the final interpretant [DO-S-FI]. I have argued elsewhere (Borges, 2019) that interpretants that follow from symbolic signs have a fundamental role in semiotics, providing confidence in the reasoning process, and contributing to the evolution of thought. Only symbolic signs, which are signs of the third mode of being, have the capacity to produce interpretants that also reach the third mode of being. A symbolic sign is a general sign, that is, a legisign that has a purpose and that ‘seeks to make itself definite, or seeks to produce an interpretant more definite than itself ’ (EP2: 323, 1904). We may predict the interpretants of a particular sign considering its features and its context, and we may understand how a sign produces different interpretants, especially in the case of gender we have been examining, in which the sign denotes a collection as a dynamical object. Two different and perhaps conflicting ideas about the criteria for defining a new gender type produced in the mind of two different persons may seem, to each one of them, true and adequate for the sign. They could never doubt their ideas, unless they take notice of each other’s idea. The conflict could result in the expansion of knowledge if they further investigate the semiotic process until discovering that their notions of the dynamical object are different. Instead of simply stating that the idea produced in one mind is wrong, the contrast between the ideas produced shows the necessity of arriving at a common notion of the collection which is taken as a dynamical object, especially when dealing with social concepts. This example shows how a sign may produce an interpretant more definite than itself. Symbolic signs may produce interpretants that check the interpretant actually produced in order to have a more confident interpretation. The three aspects that consider the relations between the sign and the interpretants that are exclusive of the system of sixty-six sign classes relate to this process of obtaining confidence in the semiotic process.3 Peirce says that the relation between the sign itself and the dynamical interpretant refers to the manner of appeal of the dynamical interpretant, which may be suggestive, imperative, or indicative (EP2: 490, 1908). In a letter to

A Complex System of Sign Classes

151

William James, Peirce (EP2: 496–497, 1909) relates the dynamical interpretant to logical analysis. From this, we may understand the manner of appeal of the dynamical interpretant as a means to determine whether the dynamical interpretant produced follows from the features of sign, as in a deductive process in which a conclusion follows necessarily from the premises. After producing an effect in the mind, we may investigate it to verify if the idea produced corresponds to the sign’s capacity to produce interpretants. The indicative mode of being expresses that the idea produced in the mind is connected to the immediate and to the dynamical interpretants in such a way that the idea conforms to the limited ranges of cases in which it may be applied, and to the habitual occurrences expressed by the usual dynamical interpretant. The idea actually produced may follow the tendency pointed by the immediate interpretant and the tendency shown by the interpretants actually produced. This tendency usually reflects a shared meaning between members of the same community, that is, a habit, or a rule of action. The relation between the sign itself and the final interpretant refers to the nature of the influence of the sign. Peirce (EP2: 496–497, 1909) relates pragmatic analysis to the final interpretant. It is not by chance that the final interpretant corresponds to the purpose of the sign, whose third mode of being is called pragmatic, whose function, in turn, is to produce self-control (EP2: 490, 1908). The nature of the influence may vary from being rhematic, dicent, and argumental. First, the rhematic tends to reaffirm a concept already established, but it may also propose a new term to a new concept, if we discover that the interpretants produced are not adequate to the purpose of the sign. Second, the dicent shows the relations that precede the interpretant to justify the adoption of a new or old concept. Finally, the argument, which is necessarily self-controlled, may debate the reasons to maintain or change a concept. The triadic relation between the dynamical object, the sign itself and the final interpretant, which is the last aspect considered, refers to the nature of the assurance of the utterance (EP2: 490, 1908). The modes of being of the triadic relation are assurance of instinct, of experience, or of form. Since we are dealing with a reasoning process, it seems reasonable to think that these assurances may be related to the types of reasoning as Houser (EP1: xxxvii, 1992) proposes. He relates instinct assurance to the abductive process, experience assurance to induction, and assurance of form to deduction. The three modes of reasoning are present in the sign system as they are possible in the semiotic process. To reach the deductive process it is necessary to follow a pragmatic final interpretant, which involves self-control. Not all semiotic processes, however, follow this path.

152

Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Peircean Semiotics

Most of them, on the contrary, end in an instinctive or experience mode of assurance. That explains why, most of the time, we deal with signs being confident of their results by instinct. We only trust them. To reach a deductive process, however, a conscious effort is necessary. By taking into consideration the interpretants in relation to their sign, the system of sixty-six sign classes shows that the production of an interpretant is also the result of a reasoning process that allows critical thinking about it. For critical thinking, it is necessary to observe the suitability of the interpretant to the sign and to the context in which it appears, to observe whether the interpretant follows the tendency indicated by the sign, and, later, to evaluate whether the idea reached agrees with the purpose of the sign. This process of investigation about the interpretant, which verifies the effect generated by the sign, demanding a self-controlled cognitive process, shows that it is possible to intervene in the sign process through a combination of sign experiences and proper reasoning. Including all the aspects considered in the systems that preceded it, the system of sixty-six sign classes deals with the problem of reference, shows the potential, existent and general types of signs, distinguishes the dynamical and the immediate interpretants, which leads to a certain notion of reality and the possible relations holding with it, and describes a possible reasoning process to verify the interpretants produced with respect to their relation to the sign itself and to the dynamical object. It is a complex system that shows the necessary path for signs to represent and the necessary path for modifying complex signs systems, such as cultural concepts.

References Bergman, M. 2002. ‘C. S. Peirce on Interpretation and Collateral Experience’, Forskarseminarium i filosofi. Available at . Accessed in June, 2013. Borges, P. 2009. ‘The Sign Tree: From Sign Structure to Peirce’s Philosophy through Reading a Visual Model of the 66 Classes of Signs’, in E. Tarasti (ed.) Communication: Understanding / Misunderstanding – Proceedings of the 9th World Congress of the International Association for Semiotic Studies (IASS-AIS). Vol. 2, 203–212. Helsinki: Acta Semiotica Fennica XXXIV. Borges, P. 2010. ‘A Visual Model of Peirce’s 66 Classes of Signs Unravels His Late Proposal of Enlarging Semiotic Theory’, in L. Magnani, W. Carnielli and C. Pizzi (eds.). Model-Based Reasoning in Science and Technology (Studies in Computational Intelligence 314), 221–237. Berlin: Springer-Verlag.

A Complex System of Sign Classes

153

Borges, P. 2014. ‘Experience and Cognition in Peirce’s Semiotics’, The American Journal of Semiotics. 30(1–2). 1–26. doi: 10.5840/ajs2014301/21. Borges, P. 2016. ‘A System of 21 Classes of Signs as an Instrument of Inquiry’, The American Journal of Semiotics. 31(3–4). 245–276. doi: 10.5840/ajs2016153. Borges, P. (2019). ‘Confidence Through the Semiotic Process’. Semiotica. aop. doi: 10.1515/sem-2018-0083. Farias, P. and J. Queiroz. 2003. ‘On Diagrams for Peirce’s 10, 28, and 66 Classes of Signs’, Semiotica 147, 165–184. Farias, P. and J. Queiroz. 2006. ‘Images, Diagrams, and Metaphors: Hypoicons in the Context of Peirce’s Sixty-six-fold Classification of Signs’, Semiotica 162, 287–307. Franco, J. and P. Borges. 2015. ‘O real na filosofia de C. S. Peirce’, Teccogs: Revista Digital de Tecnologias Cognitivas, TIDD | PUC-SP, São Paulo, n. 12, pp. 66–91, jul-dez. Hausman, C. 1991. ‘Peirce’s evolutionary realism’, Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society, Vol. 27(4), 475–500. Houser, N. 1992. ‘Introduction’, in Peirce, C.S. (1992). Jappy, T. 2017. Peirce’s Twenty-eight Classes of Signs and the Philosophy of Representation. London, New York: Bloomsbury. Liszka, J.J. 1996. A General Introduction to the Semiotic of Charles Sanders Peirce. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Merkle, L.E. 2001. Disciplinary and Semiotic Relations across Human-Computer Interaction. London, Ontario, Canada: University of Western Ontario (unpublished doctoral dissertation). Müller, R. 1994. ‘On the Principles of Construction and the Order of Peirce’s Trichotomies of Signs’, Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society, Vol. 30(1), 135–153. Peirce, C.S. 1906. ‘Prolegomena to an Apology or Pragmaticism’, The Monist 16, 492–546. Queiroz, J. 2002. Modelos das relações sígnicas na semiose segundo C.S. Peirce: evidências empírico-teóricas. São Paulo. 199 f. (Doutorado em Comunicação e Semiótica). Programa de Comunicação e Semiótica, Pontifícia Universidade Católica de São Paulo. Romanini, A.V. 2006. Semiótica Minuta: Especulações sobre a gramática dos signos e da comunicação a partir da obra de C.S. Peirce. São Paulo. (Doutorado em Ciências da Comunicação) Escola de Comunicação e Artes (ECA). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). Sanders, G. 1970. ‘Peirce’s Sixty-six Signs?’, Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society. Vol. 6(1), 3–16. Short, T.L. 1996. ‘Interpreting Peirce’s Interpretant: A Response to Lalor, Liszka, and Meyers’, Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society Vol. 32(4), 488–541. Weiss, Paul; Burks, Arthur. 1945. ‘Peirce’s Sixty-six Signs’, Journal of Philosophy 42. 383–388.

154

5

Peirce’s Aesthetic Confession and Its Analytical Consequences Robert E. Innis

In Peirce’s ‘The Seven Systems of Metaphysics’ we find the following ‘confessional’ text: It is esthetic enjoyment which concerns us; and ignorant as I am of Art, I have a fair share of capacity for esthetic enjoyment, and it seems to me that while in esthetic enjoyment we attend to the totality of Feeling, – and especially to the total resultant Quality of Feeling presented in the work of art we are contemplating, – yet it is a sort of intellectual sympathy, a sense that here is a feeling that one can comprehend, a reasonable feeling. I do not succeed in saying exactly what it is, but it is a consciousness belonging to the category of Representation through representing something in the Category of Quality of Feeling. EP2: 190, 1903

And in a passage from ‘The Three Normative Sciences’ we read: In light of the doctrine of categories I should say an object, to be esthetically good, must have multiple parts so related to one another as to impart a positive simple immediate quality to their totality; and whatever does this is, in so far, esthetically good, no matter what the particular quality of the total may be. EP2: 201, 1903

These two passages, in which a mélange of different categories are intermingled, frame this discussion of Peirce’s aesthetic relevance. Its goal is neither to determine in taxonomic fashion the place of aesthetics (esthetics) within Peirce’s architectonic schema of the normative sciences nor to catalogue the variety of places and contexts in Peirce’s vast works where he mentioned en passant art or the aesthetic in some way. And it is definitely not a survey of the variety of rich ways Peirce’s semiotics has been used (or abused) in aesthetic analyses.1 155

156

Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Peircean Semiotics

The focal point of the discussion – without denying there could be other choices – is to examine in light of the two passages above Peirce’s remark, in ‘The Maxim of Pragmatism’, that aesthetics is concerned with ‘objects simply in their presentation’ (EP2: 143, 1903). It is important to realize, as others have done (Guardiano 2017, Corrington 2015), that on Peircean principles nature itself can be taken as not just an aesthetic phenomenon, a vast field of appearances, but in fact as an aesthetic product, emerging in the autopoetic self-assembling processes of nature itself. We must not, therefore, be seduced by Peirce’s ‘simply’. Beyond those objects that are constructed specifically to be contemplated and engaged as having a specific kind of significance and a distinctive kind of structure that demand ‘interpretation’, there are as well all those objects that are simply given to perception as emergent forms arising out of processes of nature naturing (natura naturans). Peircean cosmology sees the significance of the universe as residing in its being the ‘poem of God,’ indeed a kind of ‘argument’. Guardiano (2017), in his remarkable development of ‘aesthetic transcendentalism’, cites a text from Emerson that captures what we are faced with if we see nature itself and its processes as a vast field of presentations worthy of our deepest affective and aesthetic attention, clearly an imperative of Peirce’s cosmological vision. Emerson (2000: 365–366) writes: It seems as if the day was not wholly profane in which we have given heed to some natural object. The fall of snowflakes in a still air, preserving to each crystal its perfect form; the blowing of sleet over a wide sheet of water, and over plains; the waving rye-field; the mimic waving of acres of houstonia, whose innumerable florets whiten and ripple before the eye; the reflections of trees and flowers in glassy lakes; the musical, steaming, odorous south wind, which converts all trees to wind-harps; the crackling and spurting of hemlock in the flames, or of pine logs which yield glory to the walls and faces in the sitting-room— these are the music and pictures of the most ancient religion. My house stands in low land, with limited outlook, and on the skirt of the village. But I go with my friend to the shore of our little river, and with one stroke of the paddle I leave the village politics and personalities, yes, and the world of villages and personalities, behind, and pass into a delicate realm of sunset and moonlight, too bright almost for spotted man to enter without novitiate and probation. We penetrate bodily this incredible beauty; we dip our hands in this painted element; our eyes are bathed in these lights and forms.

Emerson’s text in its descriptive precision and metaphorical powers must be read against the background of what Ibri called the ‘poetic ground’ of Peirce’s metaphysics and aesthetics, rooted in Schelling’s philosophical vision, a vision

Peirce’s Aesthetic Confession and Its Consequences

157

that also includes a Platonic presupposition of a continuum of forms whose ingression into determinacy defines nature’s creative advance into novelty (Ibri 2009). Nature natured (natura naturata), the fields of objects within which we are embedded and to which we and our own products also belong, are the ‘ejects’ from the various orders of nature naturing (natura naturans), a term with a long metaphysical and ontological lineage. Emerson’s text is an exemplification of engaging objects in their presentation and itself something to be engaged. It informs us as much as the world was shown informing him. Nature itself in all its diversity is the dynamic matrix of our common life and resonant with many forms of aesthetic value eliciting interpretation as ‘contemplative action’. In another context, in his review in The Nation of James’s Principles of Psychology, Peirce wrote: ‘the fact is that it is not necessary to go beyond ordinary observations of common life to find a variety of different ways in which perception is interpretative’ (CP 5.184, 1891). Nature itself in all its diversity is the dynamic matrix of our common life and resonant with many forms of aesthetic value, a central thesis of process philosophy with many important links to Peirce. Peircean aesthetics encompasses both the uncommon and the common in the life of consciousness, indeed effecting as a habit of attending an ongoing transfiguration of the common into the marvellous. Such a transfiguration elicits from us what Goethe called das Erstaunen: the highest state that we can attain (Das Höchste, wozu der Mensch gelangen kann, Conversation with Eckermann, 18 February 1829), a marvelling or being astonished at the universe, both large and small, both near and far, both stable and unstable, both formed and in process of transformation, as he wrote in his prefatory poem Parabase.2 Das Erstaunen is an absorptive wondering that catches us up on all levels of our existence. [cf also das Schaudern ist der Menschheit bestes Teil] A Peircean aesthetics sees such processes of absorptive engagement both with art and with nature as bringing into play all the categories of consciousness sketched in his earliest philosophical writings. It does so by connecting us with and foregrounding what Peirce posited as the fundamental modes of being permeating the universe: a continuum of possibilities (Firstness,) systems of actual singularities or real existences (Secondness), and a realm of laws or regularities unifying and incorporating the two prior modes (Thirdness). In ‘The Architecture of Theories’ (EP1: 285–297, 1891) Peirce argued, and never repudiated, that the elementary phenomena of mind – which clearly include aesthetic perception and interpretation – follow from these fundamental modes and are realized as: qualities of feeling, sensations of reaction and effort or disturbances of feeling, and general conceptions arising from processes of

158

Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Peircean Semiotics

mediation or comprehension. Writing to Lady Welby (CP 8.328, 1904), Peirce had admitted that the doctrine of categories ‘long ago conquered me completely’. In itself, though, as others have shown (see Houser 1983), such a taxonomic schematization of the actual categories of consciousness – feeling, action, thought – is not novel or self-evidently complete as a phenomenological framework, but it nevertheless has great value. Peirce, for his part, claims that the categories were the results of a ‘scientific and fundamental analysis of the constituents of consciousness’ (CP 7.542, c. 1900). They are, he writes, ‘constant ingredients of our knowledge’ and are due to ‘congenital tendencies of the mind’ (CP 1.374, 1887–1888). In an echo of his debt to Scholastic philosophy, he holds that they can be considered as ‘three parts or faculties of the soul or modes of consciousness’ (CP 1.374). While Peirce considered these three modes of consciousness, which we can identify and differentiate further in our own practices of self-reflection, to be exemplifications of Firstness, Secondness, and Thirdness, in ‘The Architecture of Theories’ he wrote, in quite an understatement, they are ‘conceptions so very broad and consequently indefinite that they are hard to seize and may be easily overlooked’ (EP1: 296, 1891). Here is a further compact specification of their use in delineating the three categories of consciousness that have a permanent place in Peirce’s thought: first, feeling, the consciousness that can be included with an instant of time, passive consciousness of quality, without recognition or analysis; second, consciousness of an interruption into the field of consciousness, sense of resistance, of an external fact, of another something; third, synthetic consciousness, binding time together, sense of learning, thought. CP 1.377, 1885

Consciousness for Peirce is triadically structured as a relational matrix of feeling, action/reaction, and thought. A fortiori, then, any apprehension of an artwork or any aesthetic attending to a natural object would bring these three modes of consciousness into play. How does this work out on Peircean principles? Before looking at how a Peircean aesthetics would attempt to answer, or exemplify an answer to, such a question, we have to hold fast to Peirce’s claim, fully consonant with his theory of signs, that ‘every kind of consciousness enters into cognition’ (CP 1.381, 1887–1888), including the ‘cognition’ brought about by engagement with artworks and aesthetic experience quite generally (see Ingarden, Stjernfelt). Although feelings, in Peirce’s words, ‘form the warp and woof of cognition’, and while the ‘will, in the form of attention [to the other],

Peirce’s Aesthetic Confession and Its Consequences

159

constantly enters’, cognition is neither feeling nor the polar sense. It is, as Peirce says, ‘consciousness of process, and this in the form of the sense of learning, of acquiring, of mental growth’. It cannot be immediate for it cannot be ‘contracted into an instant’. It is ‘the consciousness that binds our life together. It is the consciousness of synthesis’ (CP 1.381, 1898). So, as Peirce says, we have ‘three radically different elements of consciousness, these and no more’ (CP 1.382). All of these elements are operative or are put into play in engaging artworks as well as natural objects and places, as Emerson’s text exemplifies if read with Peircean eyes. What is distinctive about the synthesis that takes place in an aesthetic encounter, whether with an artwork or with a natural object? Is it a matter of the relative weighting of these irreducible elements in a special form of attending, the aesthetic as opposed to the theoretical, or is it some feature or features of the object attended to that binds us to the object?

Between quality and signs Peirce’s aesthetic confession focused on the notion of ‘quality’ as the key to ‘esthetic enjoyment’. What is presented in a work of art, which belongs to the ‘category of Representation’, that is, the semiotic order, is a ‘total resultant Quality of Feeling’, a ‘reasonable feeling’ that engenders, as its significate effect, an ‘intellectual sympathy’. John Dewey, in his ‘Peirce’s Theory of Quality’, considered Peirce’s theory of quality his most important philosophical achievement by reason of its focusing first and foremost on ‘the matter of experience as experienced’. Dewey writes: ‘I am quite sure that he [Peirce], above all modern philosophers, has opened the road which permits a truly experiential philosophy to be developed, which does not, like traditional empirical philosophies, cut experience off from nature’ (1935: 375). As is well known, Dewey’s aim and achievement was to develop a naturalistic experiential aesthetics. This he did in masterful fashion in his Art as Experience with no explicit use of Peircean semiotic categories, although his aesthetics and his account of thought quite generally operatively developed and exemplified Peircean consequences of thinking in qualities and not just about qualities. Dewey characterized Peirce’s phenomenological analysis of experience as rooted in: . . . a logical analysis of experience: an analysis based on what he calls Firstness, of sheer totality and pervading unity of quality in everything experienced,

160

Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Peircean Semiotics

whether it be odor, the drama of King Lear, or philosophic or scientific systems; Secondness, existentiality, or singular occurrence; and Thirdness, mediation, or continuity. 1935: 371

Dewey famously laconically remarked in his ‘Peirce’s Theory of Linguistic Signs, Thought, and Meaning’ (Dewey 1946: 91) that the categories of Firstness, Secondness, and Thirdness were ‘perhaps not very happy names’. Still, he considered the notion of a ‘permeating total quality of anything experienced’ (1935: 371) as indispensable for the development of an ‘experiential philosophy’ – and by extension an experiential aesthetics. In spite of his aversion to the categories he cites the following passage from Peirce: . . . a firstness is exemplified in every quality of a total feeling. It is perfectly simple and without parts; and everything has its quality. Thus the tragedy of King Lear has its Firstness, its flavor sui generis. That wherein all such qualities agree is universal Firstness, the very being of Firstness. CP 1.531

At the same time he also accused Peirce in the 1935 paper of having ‘panpsychic predilections’ (375), a charge that may or may not have a grain of truth in it but does not prevent Dewey himself from developing a deep appreciation of the aesthetic worth of nature within his own form of evolutionary naturalism (see my ‘Between Nature and Art’ forthcoming 2020). Dewey, nevertheless, saw the general phenomenological import of Peirce’s triadic division, which he resolutely pursued. There is a strong echo of the Peircean triad in Dewey’s remark that ‘existence itself is qualitative, not merely quantitative, is marked by stress and strain, and by continuities’ (375). The ‘existence’ Dewey is referring to, however, is not exactly the ‘secondness’ of the categorial triad but of our lives in time in which, live creatures that we are, ‘action, feeling, and meaning are one’ (1934: 22), an echo, quite clearly, of the Peircean categorial triad. Artworks, as made things that we encounter in experience, are the results of syntheses performed by artists in which a medium or material of some sort – including language – is shaped into or ‘realized’ in a form or structure. Artworks are ‘wrought’. Such material creation is the aesthetic exemplification of Peircean abduction, the discovery or invention of a solution to a ‘problem’ set by (or even to) and peculiar to the artist in multiple ways (see Hausman 1985). In the case of the performing arts such as music or dance, the ‘realization’ of the work also involves a form of synthesis, whether solo or group. The contentious central

Peirce’s Aesthetic Confession and Its Consequences

161

thesis of Peircean semiotics, formulated at the very beginning of Peirce’s career, that ‘all thought . . . must necessarily be in signs’ (CP 5.251, 1868) and that ‘whenever we think, we have present to consciousness some feeling, image, conception, or other representation, which serves as a sign’ (EP1: 38, 1868), entails that an artwork is the embodiment or carrier of a ‘thought’. It arises by means of the transformation of a medium into a material sign configuration (Atkins speaks of a sign vehicle) with a distinctive form and a distinctive material quality or feel, which everything has. The semiotic materiality of an artwork entails that it must be perceived in some way, depending on the type of medium, and that the ‘idea’ – the object or thing-meant or, as Dewey puts it, subject-matter – to be expressed by or embodied in an artwork functions as a kind of heuristic ‘lure’ eliciting the appropriate sign-configuration to embody it. The idea embodied in an artwork is not just invented but found. The idea does not have to be fully existent prior to the processes by which it is embodied or made determinate in a multi-factored sign configuration that is meant to effect a distinctive kind of engagement resulting in the total Quality of Feeling that Peirce foregrounds as central to ‘esthetic enjoyment’. I have used the terms ‘multi-factored’ and ‘configuration’ for the following reason. If we accept Peirce’s claim that every kind of consciousness enters into cognition, with its irreducible triadic structure of feeling, reaction, and thought, then there must be a corresponding triadic semiotic structure to the artwork – or natural object – that is engaged with and that determines the contours of the aesthetic encounter. The artwork precisely as such, on Peircean principles, is perhaps best considered not so much a certain distinctive type of ‘sign’– although we could try to pigeon hole it, with dubious or uneven payoff, in some way by reference to Peirce’s varied taxonomic classifications of signs. Yet, the artwork is clearly an integrated structure of different sign modes or different sign types that determine the relations between and the functions of the ‘multiple parts’ that ‘impart a positive simple immediate quality to their totality.’ Every type of sign or sign-modality enters functionally into and plays a role in the composition of an artwork and every element in it has a semiotic valence. Still, the well-known differentiation of signs into icons, indices, and symbols has clear and indispensable relevance to and analytical value for the development of a perceptually adequate pragmatist or pragmaticist aesthetics in the semiotic mode that recognizes the primacy of quality in the aesthetic encounter. As Jappy (2017) has helpfully shown in grounded detail, in the course of his career Peirce proposed varied differentiations of sign types and classes, all with interlocked and correlative triadic structures. Discussion of their ultimacy or relative

162

Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Peircean Semiotics

ultimacy seems at times a hall of mirrors and even, in some respects, pointless. Semiotics is not a game of ‘name that sign’. Some classifications have more aesthetic relevance and consequences for aesthetic theory than others. But for the most part they are experimental variations on a theme and often mere renamings. By reason of the scattered and progressive nature of Peirce’s philosophical output there is controversy about the relative ultimacy even for Peirce of his classification of signs and their analytical consequences (see Jappy 2017, Short 2007, Ibri 2009, Innis 2013). This does not prevent using fruitfully the most wellknown typology of icon, indices, and symbols for aesthetic purposes, without trying to link it at every turn with later triadic schematizations. In this way we can directly sketch very real strengths and the heuristic importance of Peirce’s semiotics for aesthetics and its relations to some alternative ways of enriching and sketching the semiotic contours of an adequate aesthetics that respects its perceptual roots and permanent matrices.

Basic sign typologies and their aesthetic relevance I propose that we can be satisfied for present aesthetic purposes with the following definition of a sign from 1902, which mirrors many others Peirce constructed. A sign, Peirce writes, is ‘something, A, which brings something, B, its interpretant sign determined or created by it, into the same sort of correspondence with something, C, its object, as that in which itself stands to C’ (Peirce 1902, NEM 4, 20–21). These are the three fundamental factors of the process of semiosis, the permanent core of Peirce’s semiotic investigations which underwent development, if not substantive improvement in all ways, with its various permutations of terminology, focus, and ranking. Although Peirce proposes that the process of semiosis or sign-action is an open-ended spiral, for present purposes we can see it as a structured relation between these three correlates – sign, object, interpretant –, with, as I will point out, further differentiations of the correlates into classes of signs, objects, interpretants constituting more correlates. Later hexadic models argue for six correlates and multiple classifications, which I will note in passing when necessary but not use in my analysis, which does not have an exegetical goal (see Jappy 2013, 2017 for applications of the later semiotic schemas). The ‘object’ in the case of an artwork is clearly not necessarily or even predominantly a ‘thing’, but in more general terms the ‘thing-meant’. It determines the artwork in its

Peirce’s Aesthetic Confession and Its Consequences

163

functioning as a ‘sign’. The task of the artwork is to capture the identifying or essential features of the object, not the whole object, but the determining aspect or form under which the object is to be taken as what is is. Form is transmitted to and from the sign. How the object is ‘taken’ or presented, the object in its ‘how’, is the interpretant, the ‘significate effect’ determined mediately by the sign and ultimately by the object. The 1903 schema of the triadic relational structure of semiosis is schematized linearly as: [O>S>I]. This indissoluble triad, in spite of later differentiations, is ground zero of semiosis and of semiotics. Peirce was surely right to focus on the way each sign type is related or linked to the sign’s ‘object’ or ‘thing-meant’. It remains of permanent analytical value. Peirce calls the sign-object, or object-sign, relation a ‘logical’ relation since, in order to be a true representation, which an artwork is on Peircean principles, the sign must ‘correspond’ to the ‘object’ it represents, which clearly does not have to be a ‘thing’. There follows, from the triadic division of the ultimate modes of consciousness, a triadic division of objects into (a) qualities made known by feelings, (b) existent systems and configurations of singular particulars, such as the differential perceptual properties that, a permanent concern of pragmatism in all its forms, steer, orient, and constrain pragmatic perception and action by their very ‘thisness’, and (c) laws, regularities, or the organizing constitutive ‘idea’ that binds qualities and properties into intelligible unities or ‘totalities’, as Peirce says. There follows the classic corresponding division into (a) iconic signs, and their hypoiconic subdivision into images, diagrams, and metaphors, linked by qualities shared with their objects, (b) indexical signs of all sorts linked by real connections with their objects, and (c) symbolic signs linked by some binding general principle with their objects. If, in the case of artworks, we think of this division as also a division into modes of signifying and not just into compound types of sign classes resulting from a kind of speculative combinatorial logic, we can readily see that artworks are differently weighted configurations of these modes. But any law they make known or be dependent upon is unique to each one. The ‘law’ is not conventional but constitutively immanent. They clearly have an iconic dimension, schematized in the differentiation of hypoicons, an indexical dimension by reason of the material relations between its ‘parts’, as Peirce noted, and a symbolic dimension, although this entails, as I will argue later, a rather different conception of what ‘symbol’ should mean when applied to an artwork. Artworks clearly belong to the symbolic dimension in some important sense of that word. While there is a conventional aspect to an artwork, artworks are by no means determined by ‘conventions’ in Peirce’s sense, except for example in cases of iconography or

164

Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Peircean Semiotics

belonging to different genres and so forth (see Jappy 2013). They can clearly be constructed out of such conventional signs – as iconological studies have shown in the case of painting or visual art in general – but the ‘total resultant Quality of Feeling’ of the artwork, giving rise to a sort of intellectual sympathy, is something quite different, determined by the material quality of a singular Peircean ‘tone’ that holds the artwork, no matter how complex, together. Aesthetic perception clearly shows that an artwork functioning as a sign is not linked directly in a dyadic relation to its object. It is linked for us by means of, and determines, its interpretant, what Peirce called a sign’s ‘proper significate effect’. As to the interpretant sign created or determined by the sign, in line with Peirce’s fundamental triadic division of the categories of consciousness into feelings, reactions or sensations of differences in the experiential field, and thoughts, there follows what is the most well-known, and in my opinion for aesthetic purposes the most phenomenologically helpful, triad of interpretants: affective (or, as Peirce put it, ‘emotional’), energetic, and ‘logical’.3 The interpretant determined by the selective nature of the sign’s relation to its object embodies or realizes, as I pointed out, the ‘aspect’ under which the object is accessed by means of the sign: through an appropriate feeling or quality that the iconic sign embodies, through a sense of interruption, of, as Gadamer put it, ‘being touched so’, with the singularity of the artwork constraining or guiding perception and will, and through the grasp of an ‘idea’, though not in the case of an artwork a discursive concept, that immanent law or sense that binds together all the parts of the artwork as a totality. In what follows, for reasons that will become apparent, I will use this triad as a phenomenologically grounded analytical basis, alluding to later triads in Peirce’s schematizations only when pertinent. As to the first, the affective interpretant, Peirce writes: ‘The quality of feeling is the true psychical representative of the first category of the immediate as it is, of the present in its direct, positive presentness’ (CP 5.44). It is the presentness of the object in its appearing in its unique singular quality that confronts us in the artwork as well as what we attend to when we attend to other objects under their aesthetic aspect or directly contemplated in a spirit of total openness, as we saw in the Emerson text. As Dewey writes, in a Peircean vein: ‘it is through feeling (including sensation as such) that qualities present themselves in experience’ (1935: 375). Looked at experientially, it is the feeling of the totality of a quality, a kind of ‘intellectual sympathy’, that arises in the field of consciousness of the perceiver or interpreter of an artwork, as Peirce so clearly states in one of his ‘confessional’ passages. Artworks as images embody qualities of feeling.

Peirce’s Aesthetic Confession and Its Consequences

165

As to the second, the energetic interpretant, each ‘object’ or ‘totality’ we attend to has its defining parts that are bound to the object and are known in perceptualpragmatic action as indices ‘materially’ bound to it. They steer and constrain, as Peirce later put it, ‘percussively’ the systems of actions and reactions of all sorts and forms of attending to an artwork. The Mona Lisa and Les Demoiselles d’Avignon steer and constrain perceptual acts, as well as affective reactions, by all the material features proper to them. Such reactions, looked at affectively, can be toward or away from the artwork. A smiling as opposed to a sad face has in addition to its expressive quality its internal configuration of mutually implicating parts that define it as this face as well as a face. These are the perceptual diacritical features, functioning as indices, they enable recognition and guide and steer perception and action. In their fittingness that have a diagrammatical dimension. These features that define the artwork as object have their own material qualities that also enter into the resultant totality of feeling of the artwork or the aesthetically apprehended object. As to the third part of the division of interpretants, the logical, the ‘object’ or ‘thing-meant’ of the artwork as a sign-configuration is accessed by and through a binding unity or core that is the integrating or determining ‘idea’ embodied in and inseparable from the artwork. An artwork as a perceived semiotic artefact has its ‘internal object’, its ‘thing-meant’, that it refers to. In as much as artworks belong to the semiotic order this is the ‘signification’ of the artwork which results from the integration of the qualitative and indexical components. The ‘final’ interpretant of an artwork, cognate to but not identical with what Peirce meant by this in his later theory of signs, is ultimately not ‘logical’ in any discursive sense but ‘intuitive’ in a sense to be specified later. How can we put these central and rich distinctions to work more concretely in our reflections on the aesthetic relevance or bearing of Peirce’s semiotic approach to aesthetics? Without engaging in a dialectical dance of categories and terminological alternatives I will follow up by indicating two lines that can contribute to a better placing of a Peircean aesthetics with respect to outlining concretely and with phenomenological nuance the structures put into play in our engagements with objects in their presentation, ways that show the necessity of a combination of phenomenological concreteness with the need for flexibility in determining the analytical tools needed for framing the dimensions of ‘esthetic enjoyment’. The first line traces Peircean themes in Dewey’s aesthetics. The second line traces Susanne Langer’s intersections with Peirce and her different but equivalent division of the semiotic continuum and her valuable way of showing the heuristic power of the artwork as an image of the forms of ‘feeling’.

166

Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Peircean Semiotics

Peircean themes in Dewey’s aesthetics John Dewey’s perceptual extension and application of Peirce’s work focuses, as I have already indicated, on the centrality of Peirce’s theory of quality. It is, however, not without semiotic relevance, although Peirce appears nowhere in Art as Experience. It is quality, not the sign, that is the core concept in Dewey’s development of an explicitly experiential aesthetics. Dewey’s goal is to uncover and outline concretely with phenomenological nuance the structures put into play in our engagements with objects in their presentation. Dewey’s project of a pragmatist aesthetics does not function ‘top down’ by looking for exemplifications of an antecedently derived schema, although Art as Experience is also informed by James’s theme-field-margin schema. Quality is the informing feature of our experience as a whole. In his essay ‘Qualitative Thought’ Dewey writes: ‘the world in which we immediately live, that in which we strive, succeed, and are defeated is preeminently a qualitative world. What we act for, suffer, and enjoy are things in their qualitative determinations’ (1930: 195), a theme that runs, implicitly or explicitly, throughout Dewey’s work. Thinking about the world in all its modes and forms, Dewey continued, is ‘definitely regulated by qualitative considerations’ (1930: 195). Recognition of quality, as well as the participatory nature of knowing as such, is the key factor in the avoidance of ‘that species of continued intellectual lockjaw’ called epistemology (1930: 196), including the intellectualization of aesthetics. There is, he writes in Art as Experience, an ‘undefined pervasive quality of an experience . . . that . . . binds together all the defined elements, the objects of which we are focally aware, making them a whole’ (1934: 198). Things and objects appear against a qualitative background ‘which is defined and made definitely conscious in particular objects and specified properties and qualities’ (1934: 197). Echoing James, Dewey remarks that the margins of this qualitative background ‘shade into that indefinite expanse beyond which imagination calls the universe. This sense of the including whole implicit in ordinary experiences is rendered intense within the frame of a painting or poem’ (1934: 198). Artworks, on Dewey’s account, are essential instruments of making this undefined quality explicit, indeed, of creating novel forms or frames of experiencing that do not merely mirror what is given but add to it by creating specific forms of significance that introduce novelty into the world. This is the ‘quickening’ that occurs in the engagement with an artwork provided it displays an ‘organization of energies’ that gives it a sense of ‘livingness’. But clearly, natural objects, indeed, the magnificent spectacle of universal process, are grasped within a ‘bounding

Peirce’s Aesthetic Confession and Its Consequences

167

horizon’ that moves along with us and, as Dewey says, ‘we are never wholly free from the sense of something that lies beyond’ (1934: 197), a sense that frames our grasp of the qualitative singularity of every object, as Emerson’s text so clearly shows. Dewey thickens and extends with phenomenological detail the bodily basis of aesthetic perception, something not foregrounded, although implicitly present, in Peirce’s account. Peirce’s ‘total resultant Quality of Feeling’ is exemplified in the following passages. Although they may seem to deal with perception quite generally, they have direct import for specifying the consequences of Peirce’s theory of quality, since all experience is ‘toned’. Dewey writes: It is not just the visual apparatus [he writes] but the whole organism that interacts with the environment in all but routine action. The eye, ear, or whatever, is only the channel through which the total response takes place. A color as seen is always qualified by implicit reactions of many organs, those of the sympathetic system as well as of touch. It is a funnel for the total energy put forth, not its wellspring. Colors are rich and sumptuous just because a total organic resonance is deeply implicated in them. 1934: 127

A ‘total organic resonance’ and a ‘total resultant Quality of Feeling’are two ways of specifying the same thing. Of course, looked at this way, what Dewey is describing and concretizing in perceptual terms encompasses, in the case of so-called natural perception as in the Emerson and Hudson texts, what Peirce’s theory of signs understands semiotically: the domain of the affective and energetic interpretants in Peirce. Systems of perceptual, and perceptually accessible, signs have, on the account, their own intersensory ‘feels’. Indeed: When we perceive, by means of the eyes as causal aid, the liquidity of water, the coldness of ice, the solidity of rocks, the bareness of trees in winter, it is certain that other qualities than those of the eye are conspicuous and controlling in perception. And it is certain as anything can be that optical qualities do not stand out by themselves with tactual and emotive qualities clinging to their skirts. 1934: 129

There is a deep existential and normative aspect to this intersensory structure that has aesthetic import and bears upon the very broad theme of the role of habit taking in life. As Dewey put it in ‘Affective Thought’:

168

Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Peircean Semiotics

. . . changes in the surroundings involves correlated changes in the organism, and so the eye and ear gradually become acclimatized. The organism is really made over, is reorganized in effecting an adequate perception of a work of art . . . integration in the object permits and secures a corresponding integration in organic activities. 1931: 122

The perception of artworks as totalities with formal qualities embodied in an integrated and integrating medium can become a normative measure of how well the world in which we live and suffer becomes the ‘traits which naturally characterize objects when the environment is made over in consonance with basic organic requirements’ (131: 121). Aesthetic perception on Dewey’s account, then, exemplifies in perspicuous form the centrality and universality of quality in all perception. Indeed, it is there, in aesthetic perception, that the somatically conditioned preanalytic apprehension, implicitly recognized by Peirce, lying at the base of our primary encounter with experience is undeniably displayed. This is the threshold of experience. About this threshold and its crossing Dewey writes: The total overwhelming impression comes first, perhaps in seizure by a sudden glory of the landscape, or by the effect upon us of entrance into a cathedral when dim light, incense, stained glass and majestic proportions fuse in one indistinguishable whole. We say with truth that a painting strikes us. There is an impact that precedes all definite recognition of what it is about. As the painter Delacroix said about this first and preanalytic phase ‘before knowing what the picture represents you are seized by its magical accord’. This effect is particularly conspicuous for most persons in music. The impression directly made by an harmonious ensemble in any art is often described as the musical quality of that art. 1934: 150

This ‘being struck’ is clearly the beginning of a process of the aesthetic appropriation of an artwork, which results in the total resultat Quality of Feeling. This is the work of a time-bound interpretation that passes through, and repasses through, the triadic structure of any object as defined by a determining quality resident in an existential singularity whose parts, as indices, are intrinsically related to one another and bound by it into some ‘unifying form’. But in the case of an artwork – or the attending to any object aesthetically – the form is a ‘form of feeling’, whose ‘morphology’, to anticipate a line of analysis from Susanne Langer’s own semiotic art theory, is displayed, embodied in, and constitutes the artwork as an image.

Peirce’s Aesthetic Confession and Its Consequences

169

Although Peirce repudiates the notion of intuition as an immediate form of cognition, what Dewey says about intuition does not entail immediacy in any naive sense. Dewey writes: ‘Intuition . . . signifies the realization of a pervasive quality such that it regulates the determination of relevant distinctions or of whatever, whether in the way of terms or relations, becomes the accepted object of thought’ (1930: 199). Intuition is to be thought of as ‘realization’, then, as an outcome, an eventuation, as Randall (1958) emphasized. Immediate experience is always mediated. The determination of relevant distinctions is interpretative action on the part of the interpreter, but relevance is a form of ‘belonging to’ the material artwork, not something arbitrarily ‘imputed’ to the artwork by the interests of the interpreters. The ‘relevant’ distinctions are vectors toward ‘the accepted object of thought’. Dewey encapsulates this process in the following passage, which explicates the processes behind the statements in Peirce’s aesthetic confession. Even at the outset, the total and massive quality has its uniqueness; even when vague and undefined, it is just that which it is and not something else. If the perception continues, discrimination inevitably sets in. Attention must move, and, as it moves, parts, members, emerge from the background. And if attention moves in a unified direction instead of wandering, it is controlled by the pervading qualitative unity; attention is controlled by it because it operates within it. 1934: 1996

The core idea running throughout Dewey’s aesthetics is that ‘an aesthetic experience, the work of art in its actuality, is perception’ (1934: 167). On Peircean principles, perception itself exemplifies the universal role of the categories, although Dewey does not avail himself of them. Indeed, the artwork is a form, a concept that Dewey devotes two chapters to in Art as Experience. Form, Dewey writes, with an artwork primarily in mind, ‘is a character of every experience that is an experience . . . Form may then be defined as the operation of forces that carry the experience of an agent, object, scene, and situation to its own integral fulfillment’ (1934: 142). This integral fulfillment is an emergence that introduces a new dimension or level of unity incorporating the qualitative and indexical dimensions of the artwork. The artwork on Dewey’s account, however, is not something ‘static’ or ‘motionless’. Nor is its ‘object’ or ‘subject matter’. It has the character of livingness, a kind of internal motion, that functions as a lure for us and that is intrinsic to the artwork’s effect. The livingness of the artwork, which Langer will also

170

Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Peircean Semiotics

foreground, instigates and controls the organization of our energies and, Dewey says, it is the factor of livingness that engenders in our engagement with the art product ‘the feeling of dealing with a career, a history, perceived at a particular point of its development’ (1934: 181), a process that is not closed, but open and self-augmenting. At the same time the livingness can also be manifested in a form of ‘still presence’, not a flat absence of life but a moment pregnant with significance in which at the culminating moment of perception we are lifted into or caught up in an epiphanic event that Dewey calls a consummatory experience, which enfolds time past and time future. ‘Every movement of experience in completing itself recurs to its beginning, since it is a satisfaction of a prompting initial need. But the recurrence is with a difference; it is charged with all the differences the journey out and away from the beginning has made’ (1934: 173) – and will continue to make. This is itself a characterization of the process of interpretation. Dewey’s account of aesthetic experience, rooted in a nuanced phenomenology of perception, shows that Peirce’s ‘total resultant Quality of Feeling’ is marked by rhythm, indeed complex rhythms that do not contravene its unity. Rhythm, as Dewey puts it, is ‘ordered variation of manifestation of energy’, with variation being just as important as order (1934: 169). As for aesthetic order, variation is its ‘indispensable coefficient’ and agency for the institution of ‘rationality among qualities’ (1934: 174) that marks an artwork as source of Peircean ‘esthetic enjoyment’. The recurring relationships, what Peirce called ‘the multiple parts so related to one another,’ impart an individuality of their own to the artwork (1934: 171), the singularity of secondness. Dewey, writing in an existential mode, remarks that ‘the need of life itself pushes us out into the unknown’ (1934: 175). Our own life rhythms are marked by a dialectic of closure and awakening, and, as Dewey says, ‘every awakening settles something. This state of affairs defines organization of energy’ (1934: 176). It is, as Dewey says, the ‘variety and scope of factors which, in being rhythmic each to each’ build up and inform our perceptual frames (1934: 178). Our prior frames have to be ‘broken through’ or interrupted (again an instance of Peircean secondness) in order for the requisite degree of energy to be evoked, but the energy also has to come from our own willingness to be put into play, to be caught up in and informed by the pregnant image or singularity of the perceptual occasions presented in Emerson’s text. This willingness itself can clearly surprise us, manifesting an openness or need we did not know we had prior to the encounter with an artwork or with the natural world, as the interruptive power of the Emerson passage illustrates.

Peirce’s Aesthetic Confession and Its Consequences

171

Dewey describes the organization of energies as ‘cumulating and conserving’, analogous to the onward motion of the ‘waves of the sea’ (1934: 177). Peircean ‘esthetic enjoyment’, looked at within a Deweyan frame, is a process. Indeed, in one sense, the wave structure of the flow of consciousness is an alternation of compressions and releases and forms of resistance that prevent immediate discharge of its energy. Following James’s image of the flights and perchings of a bird as exemplifying the flow of consciousness, Dewey conceives of aesthetic experience as ‘progressively enacted’, reaching, through a series of ‘flights’, balance and equilibrium in the ‘perchings’ or resting places, a process James schematized conceptually in terms of the ‘transitive’ and ‘substantive’ parts of the field of consciousness. But on Dewey’s reckoning the ‘final measure of balance or symmetry is the capacity of the whole to hold together within itself the greatest variety and scope of opposed elements’ (1934: 184) mirrored in our bodily existence as a field of integrated tensions determined by the perceived object. Dewey recognizes that speaking of energy may seem to some to be out of place in dealing with art, but that one must acknowledge its centrality if we want to understand art’s ‘power to move and stir, to calm and tranquillize’ and to keep these aspects in some rhythmic balance. Aesthetic effect, as Dewey understands it, ‘is due to art’s unique transcript of the energy of the things of the world.’ It is not a transcript of things alone, but of their energies, indeed in Peircean terms an embodiment of their energies through their shared qualities. These transcripts, sign-configurations of all sorts, unique symbolic images, connect aesthetic effect with ‘qualities of all experience as far as experience is unified’. Art, as Dewey says, ‘operates by selecting those potencies in things by which an experience – any experience – has significance and value’ (1934: 189). Of course, the notion of the potencies in things brings to mind the Schellingian background to Peirce’s thought. Dewey has shown us a way to extend and exemplify Peirce’s category of quality in his perception-based aesthetics. Dewey was by no means unaware of Peirce’s classification of signs but he did not develop his aesthetics by explicit reference to it, although I have indicated how we can see the core triad of sign types with the linked triad of sign-object-interpretant play an implicit yet constitutive role in his insightful descriptions and analyses. Dewey offers us one way of seeing the aesthetic relevance and consequences of Peirce’s semiotics. Dewey’s aesthetics is itself the consequence, but clearly not in the way one would perhaps have expected. Another way of looking at the relevance of Peirce’s semiotic pragmaticism can be found in its compatibility with, and enrichment by, the work of Susanne

172

Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Peircean Semiotics

Langer, who despite having dismissed Peirce’s differentiation of a plethora of sign classes as an ‘obstreperous flock’ yet managed, without appealing to ontological categories or other Peircean concepts, to construct a rich aesthetic theory consonant with Peirce’s division of the semiotic continuum and with his focus on feeling. Langer’s work independently confirms and substantiates Peirce’s claim about the centrality of feeling and the focal role of qualitative meaning in aesthetics. She also links feeling to form in creative and important ways and also supplements Dewey’s own phenomenological supplementation of Peirce by her analysis of the aesthetic importance of rhythm and gradients in art and aesthetic perception. We should look upon Langer’s approach to aesthetics as not so much an alternative to the Peircean model as a complement to it in a common undertaking. Is not this way of proceeding fully consonant with Peirce’s admonition to not block the road of inquiry? How then can Langer contribute to the evaluation of the aesthetic relevance of Peirce’s semiotics?

Between feeling and form: on the roots of aesthetic import It is its putative comprehensiveness, systematicity, and avoidance of logocentrism that informs the development of a Peircean approach to aesthetics. The same is the case for Langer. In both her early and late works, Langer makes two essential divisions in the semiotic continuum that at first sight may seem to be quite different from Peirce’s. The first division Langer makes is between ‘indication’ and ‘symbolization’. Indication, as Langer conceived it, is meant to encompass the whole realm of semiosis that is prior, both temporally and structurally, to distinctively human semiosis, which is, on Peircean terms, ‘symbolic’ (cf. Deacon 1997). Symbolization, for both Peirce and Langer, encompasses what is distinctively, if not perhaps exclusively or totally, human. While Peirce based the claim on his theory of categories, Langer’s distinction between indication and symbolization is derived for the most part from Karl Bühler’s two-field theory of language with its distinction between the deictic and symbolic fields. Indication for Langer encompasses both (a) the primitive grasp of a felt significance, of physiognomic/expressive configurations and (b) the steering of behaviour and perception in stable, ultimately finite, cycles. These are the domains of Peirce’s feeling and action/reaction, of qualities and indices. In Langer’s early formulation, this was the realm of ‘signals’, a term she used to foreground, in accord with pragmatism’s and Peirce’s deepest insight, the actional,

Peirce’s Aesthetic Confession and Its Consequences

173

not merely contemplative, matrix of the organism-world interface. The domain of indication, as Langer uses the term, is the domain of finite context-dependency of feeling and action rooted in sentience itself and the sign systems that permeate and inform it, one of the main themes of the discipline of biosemiotics that Peirce inspired. Langer divides symbolization or rather the symbolic continuum into two essentially different sign systems: a discursive system and a presentational system. Both systems belong to the ‘symbolic order’, but in a rather different, though related, sense than Peirce’s. Her schematization is simpler than Peirce’s and, in my opinion, more transparent and analytically relevant for aesthetics. The discursive system or order for Langer, as for Peirce, is exemplified or embodied in language, mathematics, graphs and diagrams whose contents are able to be articulated in alternative formulations or are dependent upon the conventions of notational systems. They are themselves analytical tools that can be applied to themselves recursively (see Stjernfelt). Artworks belong to the presentational system or order, an unintended felicitous connection with Peirce’s theme of ‘objects in their presentation’. This order, a ‘presentational symbolic’ order, also includes the image-based and image-constituted sign-configurations of ritual, sacrament, and myth. Although their ‘logic’ belongs to a distinctive symbolic order not reducible to the discursive, they are for Langer still ideational and are in that sense, as they are for Peirce, representational (Jappy 2013, 2017). What Langer calls ‘presentational forms’ are true symbols, carriers of an ‘idea’, but not a discursive concept, since their power of mediation is intrinsically bound to what Langer called ‘different integuments of sensation’ (1942: 72). The indissoluble integuments of presentational symbols are the source of their Peircean material qualities or affective tones and the material features of the supporting and incorporated images. They are essential to their power to signify and relate us to their object. For Langer, every presentational symbol is based on the symbolic pregnancy of the very forms of experience itself and their ability to become ‘life symbols’. Symbolic pregnancy is intrinsically connected to iconism’s basis in resemblance. Langer writes: [T]he artist’s eye sees in nature, and even in human nature betraying itself in action, an inexhaustible wealth of tensions, rhythms, continuities and contrasts that can be rendered in line and color; and those are the ‘internal forms’ which the ‘external forms’ – paintings, musical or poetic compositions or any other works of art – express for us. The connection with the natural world is close, and easy to understand; for the essential function of art has the dual character of

174

Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Peircean Semiotics

almost all life functions, which are usually dialectical. Art is the objectification of feeling; and in developing our intuition, teaching eye and ear to perceive expressive form, it makes form expressive for us wherever we confront it, in actuality as well as in art. Natural forms become articulate and seem like projections of the ‘inner forms’ of feeling, as people influenced (whether consciously or not) by all the art that surrounds them develop something of the artist’s vision. Art is the objectification of feeling, and the subjectification of nature. 1967: 87

Art symbols, Langer asserts, have one unifying feature: in creating a ‘semblance’ – that is, a living image or Peircean icon – they articulate a ‘vital form within its scaffold’ (1953: 68). Every symbolic image that is a work of art is a ‘total form’ (1953: 369), a ‘single, indivisible symbol, although a highly articulate one’ (1953: 369), composed of multiple parts so related to one another. What it articulates is not just the ‘objective’ world, but ourselves and the dynamic contours of the access structures to the felt meanings of the forms of the world. The artistic image becomes an objective presentation of ‘feeling of activities interplaying with the moments of envisagement’ (1967: 81) that define not just the creative activity of the artist but the interpretive responses of the perceiver which are not just found ‘in the head’ but in the ‘tonus of the whole organism’ (1967: 125), as we saw with Dewey. Morever, in line with Peircean semiotics pushing the threshold of significance down, Langer claims that at least on the human level ‘all conscious experience is symbolically conceived experience; otherwise it passes “unrealized” ’, that is, unfelt or sinking down into Peirce’s bottomless lake of consciousness. There is need for some image-schema for this realization: An image does not exemplify the same principles of construction as the object it symbolizes but abstracts its phenomenal character, its immediate effect on our sensibility or the way it presents itself as something of importance, magnitude, strength or fragility, permanence or transience, etc. It organizes and enhances the impression directly received. And as most of our awareness of the world is a continual play of impressions, our primitive intellectual equipment is largely a fund of images, not necessarily visual, but often gestic, kinesthetic, verbal or what I can only call ‘situational’ . . . [W]e apprehend everything which comes to us as impact from the world by imposing some image on it that stresses its salient features and shapes it for recognition and memory. 1967: 59

Langer shows us that there is great heuristic value to the art image as an ‘image of feeling’ such that ‘in contemplating how the image is constructed, we should

Peirce’s Aesthetic Confession and Its Consequences

175

gain at least a first insight into the life of feeling it projects’. Indeed, when Langer writes that ‘feeling is projected in art as quality’ (1967: 106), is this not a core Peircean thesis, a grounding insight arrived at without the use of the categories? The inner process of art, says Langer, is ‘from felt activity to perceptible quality; so it is a “quality of life” that is meant by “livingness” in art’ (1967: 152). Feeling for Langer is, as it is for Peirce and for Dewey, the ‘whole vital substructure’ of our lives and this is what, among other things, comes to presentation in art and by extension in nature as informed by art-filled eyes, as Langer observed and as we can see in the Emerson text. This is also a philosophical lesson of Emerson’s Nature. Livingness is presented by a pattern of tensions. This pattern, Langer says, ‘reflects feeling predominantly as subjective, originating within us, like the felt activity of muscles and the stirring of emotions’ (1967: 164). The livingness of the image is rooted in what Langer calls a kind ‘permanent tonicity’ (1967: 175) that results from the dialectical fusion of structure and dynamism in the image, and also in the live organisms that we are, balanced between stability and instability, what Dewey called the ‘moving unbalanced balance of things’. The felt livingness of the artistic image is also an image of the felt livingness of life. It is an essential ingredient in the symbolic pregnancy of the artwork and of the experiential matrices out of which it emerges and which it embodies. Langer writes of an artwork holding ‘all the phases of the evolving vision’ of the artist (1967: 179). The realized form of the artwork retains, she thinks, all the experiential aspects ‘which an ordinary perceptual datum gives up as it reaches its full objective status; because the ordinary percept becomes a thing for perception, but the artist’s creation becomes a symbol’ (1967: 179) with a career. This notion can be helpfully illustrated in the case of painting, although the theoretical and phenomenological point could be extended. James Elkins (2000: 5) instructs us to focus on . . . the act of painting, and the kinds of thoughts that are taken to be embedded in paint itself. Paint records the most delicate gesture and the most tense . . . Painting is an unspoken and largely uncognized dialogue where paint speaks silently in masses and colors and the artist responds in moods.

Indeed, the meanings embedded in paintings preserve the motions that generate them, clearly belonging to the indexical domain. ‘Painters can sense those motions in the paint even before they notice what the paintings are about’ (2000: 5) and so can in different ways the perceivers of the paintings and readers of texts the language of which is funded by all the resonances embodied in it.

176

Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Peircean Semiotics

Likewise, Wentworth (2004: 43) gives a nuanced and convincing defence and illustration of the thesis that ‘each material has its own qualitative nature’, just as the evolution of music and its instrumental bases have. The palpability of signs foregrounded by Roman Jakobson is exemplified here in a way appropriate to the materials, but clearly, to indicate a direction of reflection, is also displayed in the verbal arts and musical arts on the one hand and architecture on the other where, as Juhani Pallasma noted, the ‘eyes of the skin’ are put into play both passively and actively in the processes of perception, imagination, and design (see Pallasma 2009, 2012). What Langer called a ‘genuine semantic beyond limits of discursive language’ (1942: 86) functions at both the lower and higher thresholds of our encounter with artworks – and by extension with the natural world as the poem or argument of God. All have import. There is something there to be understood, generating an intellectual sympathy. Presentational symbols and systems of such symbols, the world as presented to our contemplation, according to Langer, are, looked at aesthetically, specific and unique unto themselves. Each is only itself. And even if it belongs to a class of symbols, it does not represent the class but exemplifies it in its own way. But while presentational symbols are distinctive instruments of true thought, as Dewey powerfully argued, they have a total, not general, reference, as discursive forms do. They determine or give rise to, in the Peircean sense, a distinctive configuration of logical or intellectual, energetic, affective interpretants in such a way as to define the untranslatable, but not uninterpretable mode in which their ‘object’ or thing-meant is to be accessed or taken. The presentational symbol or symbol system, as in the case of myths, defines a content, embodies an imaginally supported mode of feeling, and constrains or induces patterns of acting and feeling. As Dewey put it: ‘Language fails not because thought fails, but because no verbal symbols can do justice to the fullness and richness of thought. If we are to continue talking about “data” in any other sense than as reflective distinctions, the original datum is always such a qualitative whole’ (1930: 199). Langer’s notion of a unique ‘vital import’, the ‘original datum’ embodied in the artwork, puts into play all three types of interpretants. Such presentational symbols are pregnant with a sense which can only be gestured toward in discourse, which is always derivative with respect to them. What Langer says about artistic import, with a distinction between interpretation and perception, exemplifies a general point and extends Dewey’s own extension of Peircean ideas especially in not just the logical but in a kind of temporal and structural sequence of interpretants, schematized in the later triad of immediate, dynamic, and final

Peirce’s Aesthetic Confession and Its Consequences

177

interpretants, a triad that seems more suited to discursive symbolic structures, perhaps, than to artworks. Artistic import requires no interpretation; it requires a full and clear perception of the presented form, and the form sometimes needs to be construed before one can appreciate it. To this end, interpretations of verbal material or representational compositions may be useful, even necessary. But the vital import of a work of art need not and cannot be derived by any exegesis. Such a process, indeed, destroys one’s perception of import. 1967: 84

Langer argues that the ‘meaning’, defined in terms of vital import, of an art symbol in particular and, to follow Emerson, of nature as a field of objects taken as presentational symbols in general, is inextricably presented with and in the distinctive ‘morphology’ of the symbol in a symbolic formation. Its palpability or material reality, as a system of systems of non-coded differences, can never be circumvented. Such a symbol – or object seen symbolically – never becomes transparent as in the ideal of scientific prose or a scientific model or diagram. The presentational symbol is not a model of something but an image of it, although as both Dewey and Stjernfelt have shown, in line with Peirce’s differentiation of hypoicons, it has a diagrammatic function and dimension (see Innis 2014 with respect to diagrammatic analysis in Dewey’s aesthetics and Stjernfelt’s (2007) discussion of a diagrammatic analysis of an Eckersberg painting). It is a symbolically pregnant image with a distinctive qualitative feel. The basis of Langer’s analysis, I have pointed out, is the insight, or thesis, that an affect-laden object of experience is able to be both itself and what it symbolizes or exemplifies in the mode of resemblance. This is an exemplification of what Goethe is referring to in his notion of an Urphänomen or originary phenomenon, which for Langer becomes the basis of ‘life symbols’. Langer thinks along with Dewey and Peirce that the lower threshold of semiosis, the affectiveperceptual-actional field, not only grounds the higher, but is the locus of the ‘realization’ of experience by imposing a perceptually thick schema on the experiential flux that ‘fixes’ its defining features or form. Hence Langer’s aphoristic assertion that ‘meaning accrues essentially to forms’ (1942: 90). But the Peircean and Dewey’s position is that quality likewise accrues essentially to forms and in some ways guides their direction. Quality is found at the very margins of the process of formation of images as its unavoidable and dynamically effective background.

178

Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Peircean Semiotics

The comprehension of form itself, through its exemplification in formed perceptions or ‘intuitions’, is spontaneous and natural abstraction; but the recognition of a metaphorical value of some intuitions, which springs from the perception of their forms, is spontaneous and natural interpretation. Both abstraction and interpretation are intuitive, and may deal with non-discursive forms. They lie at the base of all human mentality, and are the roots from which both language and art take rise. (1953: 378)

Dewey grounds this spontaneity in the grasp of – and being grasped by – an all-pervading quality. The artwork as a formed quality – specifically made for being presented to contemplation – arises out of and transforms experience by a distinctive kind of abstraction. It abstracts and embodies in presentational symbols, by reason of their unique structure, a defining or dominant quality and mediates insight into what Langer calls the ‘morphology of feeling’. But in a deep sense, in light of the role of an all-pervasive quality, such an abstraction is not something that we ‘do’. It is a happening or ‘event’, an ‘outcome’ of a non-willed pull that as Hausman (1985, see also Anderson 1987) suggests, with reference to a suggestion by Langer, one is lured toward by a ‘commanding form’ in process of being apprehended or realized. Presentational abstraction generates the art image (and other presentational forms proper to ritual, sacrament, and mythic symbols) out of the flux of imaginal experience and the image-schemas that support and inform it. It turns experience itself – its objects and patterns of relation – into meaning systems by presenting or constructing material artefacts that are not, and cannot be, described or built up in terms of the type of coded salient features of discursive symbols. This is the reason that Langer thinks that a work of art, or aesthetic artefact, is not language-like at all. Language, to be sure, is a complex pattern of internally related forms and out of them we can also construct presentational forms, the whole domain of poetry and in works whose meaning is not discursive. But complex patterns of forms are not languages and artworks have sysems of salience proper to them. Nor, Langer proposes, should we try to force them into such a mould, even for analytical purposes. What does join them is the notion of systems of differences and the cognate notion of diacrisis, the general grasp of pertinences or ‘differences that make a difference’, as Gregory Bateson said. This is not a property of language alone. Langer and Peircean semiotics refuse to take the linguistic model as a universal model for aesthetics (see also Sheriff 1994, 1999). Discursive forms and presentational forms are different exemplifications of general semiotic principles, but they have constitutive principles of their own.

Peirce’s Aesthetic Confession and Its Consequences

179

For Langer the artwork, even the simplest, has a very complex internal structure, but the elements out of which it is made are not really individual language-like signifying units nor are they to be identified with or differentiated by reference to material sensory orders, as Langer argues against David Prall. Artworks, both in their creation and their interpretation: . . . cannot be built up like the meaning of a discourse, but must be seen in toto first; that is, the ‘understanding’ of a work of art begins with the intuition of the whole presented feeling. Contemplation then gradually reveals the complexities of the piece, and of its import. In discourse, meaning is synthetically construed by a succession of intuitions; but in art the complex whole is seen or anticipated first. 1953: 379

Such is Langer’s version of Peirce’s ‘emotion of the tout ensemble’ (CP 1.311). While Langer is in some way thinking of visual art here – paradigmatically represented in painting – even poetry or literary narratives, their sequential guiding of anticipations are only understood in relation to the whole after the whole has been presented and after one has revised or reconfigured the interlocked them. Only then, in retrospect, can the complex whole be appropriated aesthetically and re-imagined or re-perceived as a whole. Langer is foregrounding the primacy of a permeating qualitative firstness, something that is never left behind and can never be separated from its symbolic carrier, but which is only completed at the end. This is also, quite generally, the ground level of our encounter with the world. We live forwards but we understand backwards, as Kierkegaard said, and the same can be said for reading and perceiving. Peircean semiotics, then, has to take seriously and recognize its own agreement with Langer’s claim, arrived at quite differently, that artworks bear ‘a close logical similarity to the forms of human feeling’ (1953: 27). Art images embody these forms of feeling in all their pluriform variety. They express, or exhibit, forms of subjectivity objectively. Artworks, as Langer puts it, are objectifications of feeling and, looked at metaphysically, forms of the subjectification of nature. Art images make objective the forms in which experienced realities appear and are constructed, without being reducible to what they are ‘about’. Their import is not their theme or motif, which they nevertheless have. Rather, the symbolic image, projected and constructed, makes it possible not just to perceive the world in its mere objectivity but what it feels like to feel the world in a specific way and how the world is thereby ‘qualified’. This is Dewey’s ‘undefined pervasive quality of an experience . . . that which binds together all the defined elements, the objects of which we are focally aware, making them a whole’ (1934: 198).

180

Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Peircean Semiotics

Peircean aesthetics can learn from Langer that artworks as symbolic images present not merely objects or an array of sensory properties but ‘the forms of things’ (1953: 51). A rich passage from Cassirer, to whom Langer is indebted, contains a deep truth for aesthetics. The sphere of art is a sphere of pure forms. It is not a world of mere colors, sounds, tactile qualities – but of shapes and designs, of melodies and rhythms. In a certain sense all art may be said to be language, but it is language in a very specific sense. It is not a language of verbal symbols, but of intuitive symbols. He who does not understand these intuitive symbols, who can not feel the life of colors, of shapes, of spatial forms and patterns, harmony and melody, is secluded from the work of art – and by this he is not only deprived of aesthetic pleasure, but he loses the approach to one of the deepest aspects of reality. Cassirer 1979: 186

These forms are forms of feelings that embody the ‘ideas of feeling’ (1953: 59). They need not be models or diagrams or lifelike copies in any literal sense. Langer values the art image rather for its power to exhibit a form of feeling, indeed, not to express an actual feeling (1953: 59), but the experiential logic of one. Art symbols, Langer asserts, have one unifying feature: in creating a ‘semblance’ – or iconic structure – they articulate a ‘vital form within its scaffold’ (1953: 68). Every symbolic image that is an artwork, no matter its scale, is a ‘total form’ (1953: 369), a ‘single, indivisible symbol, although a highly articulate one’ (1953: 369). What it articulates is not just the ‘objective’ world, but ourselves and the dynamic contours of the access structures to the felt meanings of the forms of the world. This is the double role the art image plays in Langer’s work and joins together her semiotics, her aesthetics, and her philosophy of mind and in this way links it in essential ways with and enriches and confirms the core idea of Peircean aesthetics. Langer ascribes to presentational forms and the logic of images the heuristic power exhibiting the various ways that ‘recognizing vital patterns in pure art . . . may be keys to essential relations in the life of feeling’ (1967: 69). Langer points out that the artistic image is marked by gradients. This notion is of capital importance for a phenomenologically astute semiotic reflection on the heuristic role of art. Langer writes: ‘Gradients of all sorts – of relative clarity, complexity, tempo, intensity of feeling, interest, not to mention geometric gradations (the concept of “gradient” is a generalization from relations of height) – permeate all artistic structure’ (1967: 211). Indeed, they ‘run through every artistic structure and [make] its rhythmic quality’ (1967: 212) and are principal factors in

Peirce’s Aesthetic Confession and Its Consequences

181

determining its ‘livingness’ or sense of a dynamic order of internal relations. This is Dewey’s ‘rationality among qualities’. Indeed, Langer’s notion of ‘phase beauty’ points toward the phenomenon that a work of art is not only a completed significant form, but emergent result of successive phases, just as occurs in the dialectical dance of nature naturing and nature natured. As Langer points out, the significant form appears to have developed and to have retained the phases of its own development, thus being in a kind of ‘motion’ from within. The sense, Langer claims, is one of ‘virtual’ growth. These characteristics of the artwork, or art image, are revelatory of the phasal structures of the subjective life of feeling and of the semiosic processes out of which they emerge and which they exemplify, whose formal structures rooted in the categories were Peirce’s central concern. In the artwork, Langer says, comes to expression ‘the all-inclusive “greatest rhythm” of life’, a kind of universal cadential rise and fall, growth and decay, and so forth. In the artwork, she writes, life speaks to life. Langer, paralleling the work of Peirce, James, and Dewey, asserts a ‘tacit recognition of . . . qualitative continua, which is inherent in human perception itself ’ and thinks of this as being ‘the intuitive basis of our concepts of degree’ (1967: 214). Articulation, whether visual, audial, or some other mode, deploys sensory materials by degree and ‘sensations, like emotions, like living bodies, like articulated forms, have gradients of growth and development’ (1967: 214), a position that intersects with Peirce’s reflections on synechism. Langer continues: The rhythm of acts which characterizes organic forms pervades even the world of color and light, sheer sound, warmth, odor and taste. The implicit existence of gradients in all sensation reinforces our appreciation of living form by giving it an echo or reiteration, in sense, which is always charged with feeling and consequently tends to subjectify the form, to make its import felt yet hold that import to the projective medium. This is probably the greatest single means artists have of ‘animating’ their work. 1967: 214

Holding the import to the projective medium is an essential aspect of the material quality of the sign. But it is not just the work that is animated. It is us. And our forms of animation arise as a vast array of feelings that qualify the frames of our existence in time. Artworks, unique transcripts of the energies of things, can present for contemplation every domain of life in which we can be affected. Their focus is universal as they explore and call to mind in symbolically pregnant images and life symbols every dimension of what Peirce called ‘quale consciousness’. As Peirce wrote:

182

Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Peircean Semiotics

The quale-consciousness is not confined to simple sensations. There is a peculiar quale to purple, though it be only a mixture of red and blue. There is a distinctive quale to every combination of sensations so far as it is really synthesized – a distinctive quale to this moment as it is to me – a distinctive quale to every day and every week – a peculiar quale to my whole consciousness. CP 6.223

It is the deepest existential task of art to traverse and enrich this vast domain which is in constant development with no predetermined end. It is the joint reflective and analytical role of philosophy and semiotics to try to understand just how it does so. Peirce’s semiotics is an indispensable guide to this domain. Its heuristic fertility is beyond doubt. I have not, however, argued that we can or must look for a full and singularly unique framework for aesthetics, or at least the outline of one, from Peirce alone. I have tried to specify without undue scholarly technicalities just what Peirce’s most valuable contributions consist in and in this respect exactly how they can be most profitably compared to and complemented by other frames that have the same scope and concerns even if developed with different analytical tools and thematic cores, whether explicitly or implicitly semiotic. Quale-consciousness, in its human form, and reflection upon it are enabled by the rise of complex semiotic orders, including paradigmatically those orders where objects are created to be contemplated ‘simply in their presentation’. All of nature is worthy of such contemplation as both Emerson and Goethe witness. These presentational orders exemplify the great dance of energies and patterns of the processes in which we live and have come to be and which join the aesthetic dimension of life with the deepest forces of nature naturing.4

References Anderson, D. 1987. Creativity and the Philosophy of C. S. Peirce. Dordrecht, Netherlands: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers. Anderson, D. 1995. Strands of System: The Philosophy of Charles Peirce. Lafayette, Indiana: Purdue University Press. Bunn, J. 2014. The Natural Law of Cycles. New York: Routledge. Cassirer, E. 1979. Symbol, Myth, and Culture: Essays and Lectures of Ernst Cassirer 1935–1945, D. Verene (ed.). New Haven: Yale University Press. Corrington, R. 2015. Nature’s Sublime: An Essay in Aesthetic Naturalism. Lanham: Lexington Books. Corrington, R. 2016. Deep Pantheism: Toward a New Transcendentalism. Lanham: Lexington Books.

Peirce’s Aesthetic Confession and Its Consequences

183

Deacon, T. 1997. The Symbolic Species: The Co-evolution of Language and the Brain. New York: W.W. Norton & Company. Dewey, J. 1930. ‘Qualitative Thought’. in Hickman and Alexander 1998b. Dewey. J. [1931a] 1968. ‘Philosophy and Civilization’. Gloucester, MA : Peter Smith. Dewey, J. 1931b. ‘Affective Thought’, in Dewey 1931a. Dewey, J. [1934] 1989. Art as Experience. With an Introduction by Abraham Kaplan. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press. Dewey, J. 1935. ‘Peirce’s Theory of Quality’. in Hickman and Alexander 1998a. Dewey, J. 1946. ‘Peirce’s Theory of Linguistic Signs, Thought, and Meaning’. The Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 43(4), 85–95. Dilworth, D. 2009. ‘Elective Affinities: Emerson’s “Poetry and Imagination” as Anticipation of Peirce’s Buddhisto-Christian Metaphysics’. Cognitio. São Paulo, Vol. 10, No. 1, 43–59, Jan./Jun. 2009. Dilworth, D. 2010. ‘Elective Metaphysical Affinities: Emerson’s “Natural History of Intellect” and Peirce’s Synechism’. Cognitio, São Paulo, Vol. 11, No. 1, 22–47, Jan./Jun. 2010. Elkins, J. 2000. What Painting Is. New York: Routledge. Emerson, R.W. 2000. The Essential Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Brooks Atkinson (ed.); with an introduction by M. Oliver. New York: The Modern Library. Gadamer, H-G. 1986. The Relevance of the Beautiful, trans. Robert Berlusconi. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Guardiano, N. 2017. Aesthetic Transcendentalism in Emerson, Peirce, and NineteenthCentury American Landscape Painting. Lanham, MD : Lexington Books. Hausman, C. 1985. A Discourse on Novelty and Creation. Albany : State University of New York Press. Houser, N. 1983. ‘Peirce’s General Taxonomy of Consciousness’. Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society Vol. 19, No. 4 (Fall, 1983), 331–359. Hickman, L. and T. Alexander (eds). 1998a. The Essential Dewey, Vol. 1. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Hickman, L. and T. Alexander (eds) 1998b. The Essential Dewey, Vol. 2. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Ibri, I. 2009. ‘Reflections on a Poetic Ground in Peirce’s Philosophy’. Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society. Vol. 45, No. 3, 273–307. Ibri, I. 2010. ‘Peircean Seeds for a Philosophy of Art’. Semiotics: ‘The Semiotics of Space.’ K. Haworth, J. Hogue and L. Sbrocchi (eds). New York: Legas Publishers, 1–16. Innis, R. 1994. Consciousness and the Play of Signs. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Innis, R. 2007. ‘Dimensions of an Aesthetic Encounter’. In Semiotic Rotations: Modes of Meaning in Cultural Worlds (eds) SunHee Kim Gertz, Jaan Valsiner, and Jean-Paul Breaux. Charlotte, NC : Information Age Publishing, pp. 113–134. Innis, R. 2009. Susanne Langer in Focus: The Symbolic Mind. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

184

Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Peircean Semiotics

Innis, R. 2010. ‘Minding Feeling’. Integrative Psychological and Behavioral Science 44, 197–207. Innis, R. 2011. ‘The “Quality” of Philosophy: On the Aesthetic Matrix of Dewey’s Pragmatism’. The Continuing Relevance of John Dewey: Reflections on Aesthetics, Morality, Science, and Society, L.A. Hickman, M.C. Flamm, K. Skowronski and J.A. Rea (eds). Amsterdam: Rodopi, 43–60. Innis, R. 2012a. ‘Signs of Feeling: Susanne Langer’s Aesthetic Model of Minding’. The American Journal of Semiotics 28.1–2, 43–61. Innis, R. 2012b. ‘The Reach of the Aesthetic and Religious Naturalism: Peircean and Polanyi Reflections’. Tradition and Discovery 38/3, 31–50. Innis, R. 2013. ‘Peirce’s Categories and Langer’s Aesthetics: On Dividing the Semiotic Continuum’. Cognitio 14.1 2013: 35–50. Reprinted in Journal Phänomenologie (2016). Innis, R. 2014. ‘Dewey’s Peircean Aesthetics’. Cuadernos de Sistemática Peirceana, 139–160. Innis, R. 2016. ‘Energies of Objects: Between Dewey and Langer’. Das Entkommende Denken, F. Engel and S. Marienberg (eds). Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 21–38. Innis, R. 2020. ‘Between Nature and Art: Some Analytical Exemplifications of Dewey’s Aesthetics’. American Aesthetics Today: Theory and Practice. Walter Gulick and Gary Slater (eds.). Albany: State University of New York Press. Jappy, T. 2013. Introduction to Peircean Visual Semiotics. London: Bloomsbury. Jappy, T. 2017. Peirce’s Twenty-Eight Classes of Signs and the Philosophy of Representation. London: Bloomsbury. Langer, S. 1942. Philosophy in a New Key. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press. Langer, S. 1953. Feeling and Form. New York: Scribner’s. Langer, S. 1967. Mind: An Essay on Human Feeling, Vol. 1. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Pallasmaa, J. 2009. The Thinking Hand: Existential and Embodied Wisdom in Architecture. New York: Wiley. Pallasmaa, J. 2012. The Eyes of the Skin. New York: Wiley. Randall Jr., J. 1958. ‘Qualities, Qualification, and the Aesthetic Transaction.’ Nature and Historical Experience. New York: Columbia University Press, 270–295. Raposa, M. 1989. Peirce’s Philosophy of Religion. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Short, T.L. 2007. Peirce’s Theory of Signs. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Stjernfelt, F. 2007. Diagrammatology. Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands. Wentworth, N. 2004. The Phenomenology of Painting. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

6

Abduction: The Logic of Creativity Sara Barrena and Jaime Nubiola

Introduction C.S. Peirce made relevant contributions in very different fields, but he was primarily interested in the logic of science, and more especially in what he called ‘abduction’ – as opposed to deduction and induction – which is the process whereby hypotheses are generated in order to explain surprising facts (Nubiola 2005). Although there are stirrings of it in Aristotle’s notion of apagoge, the modern idea of abduction comes from Peirce (Woods 2017: 137). In fact, Peirce considered abduction to be at the heart not only of scientific research, but also of all ordinary human activities, and in particular artistic creativity (Barrena 2015). In this chapter, first, the nature of abduction will be explained, providing several key textual sources from Peirce’s manuscripts. Second, scientific and artistic creativity will be described in some detail, highlighting that imagination, which plays a central role in abduction, is at the heart of reasoning. Finally, a number of contemporary applications of abduction from the philosophy of science, artificial intelligence and logic will be mentioned. We point out the richness of Peirce’s conception of abduction that far surpasses the contemporary accounts of creativity.

The classification of arguments Since the time of his early works in logic, Peirce had been interested in the classification of arguments (W2: 23–48, 1867), in particular the several modes of inference, that is, of the different ways in which a true conclusion follows necessarily or probably from two premises. In 1878, in the series Illustrations of the Logic of Science, Peirce published in Popular Science Monthly his paper 185

186

Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Peircean Semiotics

‘Deduction, Induction and Hypothesis’, which contains a classic exposition of the three modes of inference. According to Peirce, all deduction is nothing more than the application of a rule to a case in order to state a result: The so-called major premise lays down this rule; as, for example, All men are mortal. The other or minor premise states a case under the rule; as, Enoch was a man. The conclusion applies the rule to the case and states the result: Enoch is mortal. All deduction is of this character; it is merely the application of general rules to particular cases. CP 2.620; W3: 324, 1878

Not all forms of reasoning are reducible to deduction and can be expressed by a syllogism of this type. Moreover, inductive reasoning never can be reduced to this form, because it is ‘something more than the mere application of a general rule to a particular case’ (CP 2.620; W3: 324, 1878). In order to illustrate the contrast between the different kinds of reasoning, Peirce employs the wellknown example of the bag of beans, which has not always been well explained and well understood (CP 2.621–623; W3: 324–326, 1878): Let us imagine that we enter a room in which there are several bags of beans. If, from a bag of beans (of which we know that all are white), we take a handful, we can assert before looking at them that the handful of beans is white (if the rule is true). This has been a necessary deduction, the application of a rule to a case to state a result. We have, in effect, the following syllogism: Rule: All the beans from this bag are white. Case: These beans are from this bag. Result: These beans are white. Let us imagine now that without knowing the colour of the beans of the bag, we take a handful at random and, finding that all of the beans in the handful are white, we conclude that all the beans in the bag are white. The induction then is the inference of the rule from the case and result: Case: These beans are from this bag. Result: These beans are white. Rule: All the beans from this bag are white. In this case the inference is not necessary and it is an inversion of the deductive syllogism. Deductive reasoning is analytic, since the conclusion does not add anything to what it is already in the premises. On the contrary, the inductive reasoning is synthetic or ampliative, since what is asserted in the conclusion was not in the premises.

Abduction: The Logic of Creativity

187

But there is a second way of inverting a deductive syllogism to produce a synthetic inference. Let us suppose a new situation in which we enter in a room in which there are a number of bags, containing different kinds of beans. We find on the table a handful of white beans, and after some searching we find that one of the bags contains white beans only. Then we infer – ‘as a probability, or as a fair guess‘ – that very likely the handful on the table was taken out of that bag. ‘This sort of inference is called making an hypothesis. It is the inference of a case from a rule and result’ (CP 2.623; W3: 325, 1878): Rule: All the beans from this bag are white. Result: These beans are white. Case: These beans are from this bag.

In this paper, Peirce does not use still the term ‘abduction’ for this kind of inference. He uses the terms ‘hypothesis’, ‘a fair guess’ or ‘supposition’. As in the case of induction, this hypothetical inference is not necessary, but merely probable and is also a kind of ampliative or synthetic reasoning. Hypotheses may be very diverse, but all of them have in common that they are formulated to explain an observed phenomenon. Peirce illustrates his exposition with examples from natural science (from the presence of marine fossils in the interior of the country we infer that the sea once was upon this land) and from the human sciences (from the documents that refer to Napoleon Bonaparte we infer that he really existed), and with a very appealing personal experience that deserves quotation: I once landed at a seaport in a Turkish province; and, as I was walking up to the house which I was to visit, I met a man upon horseback, surrounded by four horsemen holding a canopy over his head. As the governor of the province was the only personage I could think of who would be so greatly honored, I inferred that this was he. This was an hypothesis. CP 2.625; W3: 326, 1878

The consideration of abduction as inference, however, suffered an evolution over the years that must be taken into account for the correct understanding of this notion. Kuang Thi Fann argued, in a widely quoted study, that there were two distinct periods in the history of this concept. Peirce called it ‘hypothesis’ at the beginning, while later he gave it the name of ‘abduction’ or ‘retroduction’. Between the two periods, separated approximately by the turn of the century, there is a fundamental evolution: Peirce goes from considering deduction, induction and hypothesis as three types of inference to consider them as stages of a single process of research. This change is not a contradiction, but an expanded way of

188

Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Peircean Semiotics

considering the forms of inference in a new direction, an evolution that can only be seen to the light of the first period (Fann 1970: 10). Peirce speaks in that second period of three kinds of arguments (CP 2.96, c. 1902) or reasoning (CP 5.145, 1903; 5.161, 1903). He carries out an extension of the concept of inference to that of reasoning to include the methodological function. Inferences are considered, in addition to mental actions, as parts of a methodological process, as interdependent and intertwined stages of the scientific method of research. The three types of inference will then appear as steps of a single process aimed at the discovery of truth and the advance of rational investigation. In this second period, the generalizations or empirical laws from particular cases are obtained also by abduction, while induction simply confirms or denies: as we will see below it is the conclusive step of investigation. Although Peirce differentiated them from the beginning, he himself considered that the distinction of abduction and induction he had made as different forms of inference was not enough, and Peirce affirmed that he had confused induction with hypotheses in some aspects. He explains it this way around 1902: Upon this subject, my doctrine has been immensely improved since my essay ‘A Theory of Probable Inference’ was published in 1883. In what I there said about ‘Hypothetic Inference’ I was an explorer upon untrodden ground. I committed, though I half corrected, a slight positive error, which is easily set right without essentially altering my position. But my capital error was a negative one, in not perceiving that, according to my own principles, the reasoning with which I was there dealing could not be the reasoning by which we are led to adopt a hypothesis, although I all but stated as much. But I was too much taken up in considering syllogistic forms and the doctrine of logical extension and comprehension, both of which I made more fundamental than they really are. As long as I held that opinion, my conceptions of Abduction necessarily confused two different kinds of reasoning. CP 2.102, c. 1902

In the second period, when Peirce talks about stages within scientific methodology, abduction is clarified and defined as the only type of synthetic reasoning (CP 2.777, 1901). It is one thing to discover, to create, to imagine hypotheses and another to justify, to affirm or to deny them. The latter would be the role of induction. Abduction was then the only logical operation that could explain the appearance of new conceptions. We will see below what Peirce properly understands by abduction.

Abduction: The Logic of Creativity

189

The nature of abduction For Peirce, ‘not the smallest advance can be made in knowledge beyond the stage of vacant staring, without making an abduction at every step’ (R692, 27, 1901). Peirce attributes the emergence of the first insight, in which the whole force of the discovery is already contained, to abduction, which ‘consists in examining a mass of facts and in allowing these facts to suggest a theory’ (CP 8.209, 1905). Peirce refers on other occasions to abduction as ‘the only logical operation which introduces any new idea’ (CP 5.171, 1903). It is, according to Peirce, a synthesis of the highest kind, that which the mind is compelled to make not by the inward attractions of the feelings, nor by a transcendental force of necessity, but in the interest of intelligibility. Abduction is that process in which the mind goes over all the facts [of] the case, absorbs them, digests them, sleeps over them, assimilates them, dreams of them, and finally is prompted to deliver them in a form, which, if it adds something to them, does so only because the addition serves to render intelligible what without it, is unintelligible. R857: 4–5, n.d.

That synthesis is done by introducing an idea not contained in the data, which gives them connections which they would not otherwise have had (CP 1.383, c. 1890). Abduction is a kind of inference characterized by probability. The conclusion reached by abduction is conjectural, thus only probable. Abduction is considered by Peirce as the weakest and most insecure type of reasoning; its uberty is high, but the security is low (CP 8.385–388, 1913). It is an extremely fallible reasoning: The abductive suggestion comes to us like a flash. It is an act of insight, although of extremely fallible insight. It is true that the different elements of the hypothesis were in our minds before; but it is the idea of putting together what we had never before dreamed of putting together which flashes the new suggestion before our contemplation. CP 5.181, 1903

However, the hypothesis that arises, although fallible, can be proved or embodied in a theory or in a work of art, and that is what differentiates it, as Santaella has written, from mental confusions, delusions, sterile daydreams and frivolous games (Santaella 1991: 127). In his later years Peirce dedicated a lot of writings – a good amount of them still unpublished – to the study of this operation. The study of abduction became

190

Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Peircean Semiotics

so important for Peirce that he did not hesitate to write that the question of pragmatism ‘is nothing else than the question of the logic of abduction’ (CP 5.196, 1903). According to Peirce, Abduction is that kind of operation which suggests a statement in no wise contained in the data from which it sets out. There is a more familiar name for it than abduction; for it is neither more nor less than guessing. A given object presents an extraordinary combination of characters of which we should like to have an explanation. That there is any explanation of them is a pure assumption; and if there be, it is some one hidden fact which explains them; while there are, perhaps, a million other possible ways of explaining them, if they were not all, unfortunately, false. A man is found in the streets of New York stabbed in the back. The chief of police might open a directory and put his finger on any name and guess that that is the name of the murderer. How much would such a guess be worth? But the number of names in the directory does not approach the multitude of possible laws of attraction which would have accounted for Keppler’s [sic] laws of planetary motion and in advance of verification by predictions of perturbations etc., would have accounted for them to perfection. Newton, you will say, assumed that the law would be a simple one. But what was that but piling guess on guess? Surely, vastly more phenomena in nature are complex than simple. By its very definition abduction leads to a hypothesis which is entirely foreign to the data. To assert the truth of its conclusion ever so dubiously would be too much. There is no warrant for doing more than putting it as an interrogation. To do that would seem to be innocent; yet if the interrogation means anything, it means that the hypothesis is to be tested. R692: 24; 23–25, 1901

We are now in a better position to understand clearly that abduction has a logical form and it is inserted in the domain of thirdness. It is a form of reasoning and, as such, it is possible a rational control over it, because inference is always essentially deliberate, and self-controlled (CP 5.108, 1903), although that control is sometimes weak and there is no force in the reasoning (CP 8.209, c. 1905). If rational control over abduction were not possible, it would not make sense to give it value. According to Peirce’s explanation in the seventh of his ‘Lectures on Pragmatism’, the logic structure of abduction is the following (CP 5.189, 1903): The surprising fact, C, is observed; But if A were true, C would be a matter of course, Hence, there is reason to suspect that A is true.

Abduction: The Logic of Creativity

191

This is the logical structure of all abductions. The key for understanding it properly is to realize that the trigger of abduction is the surprising character of the fact referred to in the first premise, and the ‘motor’ the work of imagination in the second premise. In the second premise, one discovers that if some hypothesis were true it would render the surprising fact to be a matter of course, something normal, reasonable, and thus something not surprising. If this is the case it is reasonable to think that A is true. Not only detective stories are full of abductive reasoning, but our everyday lives contain many examples of its effective use. Medical diagnoses, for instance, follow its structure: from certain surprising symptoms and a classification of diseases, some particular disease is chosen to make those symptoms reasonable (Eco and Sebeok 1983; Niño 2001).

Generating new ideas: the role of surprise and rational instinct But, how does the right new idea spring? Peirce was deeply impressed by the phenomenon of the introduction of new ideas in scientific research, which is totally unexplained by a mere calculation of probabilities. Research always starts with the acknowledgment of some anomaly, of something surprising. But what makes a phenomenon surprising? It is not mere irregularity. ‘Nobody is surprised that the trees in a forest do not form a regular pattern, or asks for any explanation of such a fact. So, irregularity does not prompt us to ask for an explanation’ (CP 7.189, 1901). Mere irregularity creates no surprise where no definite regularity is expected, because in our life irregularity is ‘the overwhelmingly preponderant rule of experience, and regularity only the strange exception’ (CP 7.189, 1901). In what a state of amazement should I pass my life, if I were to wonder why there was no regularity connecting days upon which I receive an even number of letters by mail and nights on which I notice an even number of shooting stars! But who would seek explanations for irregularities like that? CP 7.189, 1901

An event that can be answered in a habitual form does not cause any surprise. On the contrary, a surprising fact requires a change in our rational habit of belief; it demands an explanation. An explanation makes the fact rational, that is, it enables the acquisition of a belief that explains the fact, rendering it reasonable. When the phenomenon is reasonable it is no longer surprising. In Peirce’s words:

192

Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Peircean Semiotics

What an explanation of a phenomenon does is to supply a proposition which, if it had been known to be true before the phenomenon presented itself, would have rendered that phenomenon predictable, if not with certainty, at least as something very likely to occur. It thus renders that phenomenon rational, –that is, makes it a logical consequence, necessary or probable. CP 7.192, 1901

The phenomenon of surprise has no relation to Cartesian doubt, which for Peirce is a mere ‘paper-doubt’ (CP 5.445, 1905; 5.416, 1905). Genuine doubt always has an external origin, usually from surprise, and cannot be produced by an act of the will (CP 5.443, 1905). ‘There is every reason to suppose that belief came first, and the power of doubting long after. Doubt, usually, perhaps always, takes its rise from surprise, which supposes previous belief; and surprises come with novel environment’ (CP 5.512, 1905). Surprise produces some irritation and demands a hypothesis; it forces us to seek an abduction which turns the surprising phenomenon into a reasonable one. In that search for explanations, a remarkable feature of scientific investigation is that it can reach a true explanation after a relatively small number of attempts (Génova 1997: 68). This is illustrated by Peirce in the sixth of his ‘Lectures on Pragmatism’ (1903): A man must be downright crazy to deny that science has made many true discoveries. But every single item of scientific theory which stands established today has been due to Abduction. But how is it that all this truth has ever been lit up by a process in which there is no compulsiveness nor tendency toward compulsiveness? Is it by chance? Consider the multitude of theories that might have been suggested. A physicist comes across some new phenomenon in his laboratory. How does he know but the conjunctions of the planets have something to do with it or that it is not perhaps because the dowager empress of China has at that same time a year ago chanced to pronounce some word of mystical power or some invisible jinnee may be present. Think of what trillions of trillions of hypotheses might be made of which one only is true; and yet after two or three or at the very most a dozen guesses, the physicist hits pretty nearly on the correct hypothesis. By chance he would not have been likely to do so in the whole time that has elapsed since the earth was solidified. CP 5.172, 1903

This is the question that lies at the foundation of all the scientific enterprise: Why we get theories right and why we do it in a relatively easy way? For Peirce, the explanation of this surprising phenomenon of the human ability to choose easily

Abduction: The Logic of Creativity

193

and correctly between those innumerable hypotheses lies in ‘that man’s mind must have been attuned to the truth of things in order to discover what he has discovered. It is the very bedrock of logical truth’ (CP 6.476, 1908). Peirce appeals in his ‘A Neglected Argument for the Reality of God’(CP 6.452–485, 1908) and in several other places (CP 1.80, c. 1896; 1.630, 1898; 5.589, 1898, 6.10, 1891; 6.567, 1905) to il lume naturale – borrowing the expression from Galileo – in order to explain this surprising ability to guess the right answer from a great variety of possibilities. It is: The simpler Hypothesis in the sense of the more facile and natural, the one that instinct suggests, that must be preferred; for the reason that, unless man have a natural bent in accordance with nature’s, he has no chance of understanding nature at all. CP 6.477, 1908

In Peirce’s mature thought this plausibility, this intuitive force of abduction, is where its validity resides: ‘probability proper had nothing to do with the validity of Abduction, unless in a doubly indirect manner’ (CP 2.102, 1903). When Peirce raises the question of the validity of this type of reasoning he asserts: All the ideas of science come to it by the way of Abduction. Abduction consists in studying facts and devising a theory to explain them. Its only justification is that if we are ever to understand things at all, it must be in that way. CP 5.145, 1903

On another occasion Peirce also writes: ‘if there be any attainable truth . . . it is plain that the only way in which it is to be attained is by trying the hypotheses which seem reasonable and which lead to such consequences as are observed’ (CP 2.776, 1901). Peirce considers that this argument is far from being a logical justification for its validity and affirms: ‘It is more to the purpose, however, to urge that the strength of the impulse is a symptom of its being instinctive’ (CP 6.476, 1908). That is, in the end, abduction depends for its validity on instinct, ‘it is really an appeal to instinct’ (CP 1.630, 1898), although that does not mean that it is irrational. If that instinct did not exist, it would be impossible to explain knowledge (CP 5.603, 1903; 2.753, 1883). This ability of guessing right is neither blind nor infallible, but is an instinctive ability, similar to the animal instinct of flying or nest-building of ordinary birds. Instinct allows humans to survive, and also allows them to raise far above the general level of their intelligence in those performances that are their proper function: to embody general ideas in art creations, in utilities, and above all in theoretical cognition (CP 6.476, 1908). That spontaneous ability to guess is

194

Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Peircean Semiotics

therefore an instinct comparable to that of animals. The ability to abduct the proper hypothesis is for Peirce the distinctive and highest human instinct: This Faculty is at the same time of the general nature of Instinct, resembling the instincts of the animals in its so far surpassing the general powers of our reason and for its directing us as if we were in possession of facts that are entirely beyond the reach of our senses. It resembles instinct too in its small liability to error; for though it goes wrong oftener than right, yet the relative frequency with which it is right is on the whole the most wonderful thing in our constitution. CP 5.173, 1903

Since abduction is a kind of instinctive and rational inference at the same time, Ayim has suggested calling this ability the rational instinct. This guessing instinct is a result of the development of our animal instincts and of the process of rational adaptation to our environment (Ayim 1974: 42). It could be also called creativity. However, that natural light that sustains abduction is a peculiar instinct, because it requires to be put to test. Il lume naturale would not serve for the effective advancement of knowledge, even if it justifies it, without further proof, since abduction is, as has already been said, fallible: ‘we are driven oftentimes in science to try the suggestions of instinct; but we only try them, we compare them with experience, we hold ourselves ready to throw them overboard at a moment’s notice from experience’ (CP 1.634, 1898). In this sense Ayim affirmed that, for Peirce, the operation of il lume naturale marks the first and indispensable step of all scientific advance. But unless based on cold and solid observations and scientific experiments, intuition has no more relevance than that of a common reverie (Ayim 1974: 57). Proof is required, and therefore abduction must be continued by the next steps of scientific method.

Scientific creativity For Peirce, science is a strongly creative activity aimed at discovering the truth. The peculiar application of the scientific methodology allows us to face reality in a creative way and to build explanations to understand it: ‘That which constitutes science, then, is not so much correct conclusions, as it is a correct method’ (CP 6.428, 1893), holds Peirce. The phenomenon of scientific creativity involves the combination of abduction, deduction and induction. The Peircean scientific methodology

Abduction: The Logic of Creativity

195

includes a process with abductive, deductive and inductive moments, in which the conclusions of one investigation become new starting points for further investigations. To abduction corresponds the task of introducing new ideas in science; in a word, creativity. Deduction draws the necessary and verifiable conclusions that should follow if the hypothesis would be true, and induction confirms experimentally the hypothesis in a certain number of cases. They are three kinds of reasoning that do not occur independently or in parallel, but integrated and cooperating in the successive steps of the scientific method. Génova 1997: 56–57

The starting point of that process of research is always abduction. Peirce describes as follows that first stage of inquiry: The whole series of mental performances between the notice of the wonderful phenomenon and the acceptance of the hypothesis, during which the usually docile understanding seems to hold the bit between its teeth and to have us at its mercy, the search for pertinent circumstances and the laying hold of them, sometimes without our cognizance, the scrutiny of them, the dark laboring, the bursting out of the startling conjecture, the remarking of its smooth fitting to the anomaly, as it is turned back and forth like a key in a lock, and the final estimation of its Plausibility, I reckon as composing the First Stage of Inquiry. CP 6.469, 1908

Abduction generates the hypothesis that suggests what experiments must be performed, in which directions it is necessary to look. The scientist, without a previous hypothesis, cannot determine what experiments are necessary for further research. For this reason, it is striking that most of the contemporary philosophers of science who analyse the scientific method tend to ignore completely the logical problem of the source of hypotheses or scientific theories (Génova 1997: 117; Hanson 1961: 20). For them, scientific method starts when a theory is available to be confirmed or refuted by experiments; the origin of the new ideas is considered an issue belonging to psychology or the sociology of knowledge. The origin of hypothesis is regarded as a question totally alien to logic; it is considered, in Peirce’s term, ‘a sort of logical supernumerary‘ (R692 26, 1901). Peirce, however, explains through abduction the emergence of a hypothesis that is provisionally adopted until it is proved. For that, it must be first explained and clarified through deduction: ‘the first thing that will be done, as soon as a hypothesis has been adopted, will be to trace out its necessary and probable

196

Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Peircean Semiotics

experiential consequences. This step is deduction’ (CP 7.203, 1901). Hypotheses are subject to the law of growth and they tend to be more and more defined (CP 6.466, 1908). When explained by deduction, the idea becomes a more precise one. Then, those consequences that have been deduced must be experimentally proved through induction: they must be capable of experimental verification (CP 5.197, 1903). It is the moment of making experiments and comparing those predictions with the actual results of the experiments (CP 7.206, 1901). Induction is the operation that induces an assent, this assent or modified assent being regarded as a provisional result (CP 5.590, 1903), for the achievements of science can always be improved or refuted in the future. But only after induction can a significant value be attached to the creative hypothesis. In summary, science consists in a process in which abduction merely suggests that something may be; deduction proves that something must be; and induction shows that something actually is operative (CP 5.171, 1903). Creativity goes beyond the invention of the hypothesis and extends throughout the whole method. The success of science is not a stroke of luck, but depends on continued work. It is not a cluster of brilliant intuitions, but a process, and imagination is fundamental for the development of this process. Without imagination it is not possible to do science. As Peirce writes: When a man desires ardently to know the truth, his first effort will be to imagine what that truth can be. He cannot prosecute his pursuit long without finding that imagination unbridled is sure to carry him off the track. Yet nevertheless, it remains true that there is, after all, nothing but imagination that can ever supply him an inkling of the truth. He can stare stupidly at phenomena; but in the absence of imagination they will not connect themselves together in any rational way. CP 1.46, c. 1896

Imagination, essential for abduction, allows us to explain reality and to unravel its laws. Thus, abduction makes it clear that there are other dimensions intermingled with reason; otherwise the hypothesis could not arise. In the search for an explanation the understanding seems to run wild. The ability to take a leap would not be explained without the key involvement of the imagination. In 1893, Peirce defended the need for the imaginative capacity: People who build castles in the air do not, for the most part, accomplish much, it is true; but every man who does accomplish great things is given to building elaborate castles in the air and then painfully copying them on solid ground. Indeed, the whole business of ratiocination, and all that makes us intellectual

Abduction: The Logic of Creativity

197

beings, is performed in imagination . . . Mere imagination would indeed be mere trifling; only no imagination is mere. CP 6.286, 1893

Imagination is therefore necessary for abduction and for the development of science. ‘It is not too much to say’ – Peirce states – ‘that next after the passion to learn there is no quality so indispensable to the successful prosecution of science as imagination’ (CP 1.47, c. 1896). The investigation advances by weighing the value of the observed, and imagining possible explanations until something that appears to us as plausible arises. Abduction involves the development of ideas in the imagination: ‘its theatre, Peirce writes, is the plastic inner world’ (R318:44, c. 1907). ‘The scientific imagination dreams of explanations and laws’ (CP 1.48, c. 1896). Reason, as abduction shows us, is essentially creative. In the context of his pragmaticism, Peirce writes: What he adores, if he is a good pragmaticist, is power; not the sham power of brute force, which, even in its own specialty of spoiling things, secures such slight results; but the creative power of reasonableness, which subdues all other powers, and rules over them with its sceptre, knowledge, and its globe, love. CP 5.520, c. 1905

Artistic creativity Although it may seem that Peirce’s interests were far removed from aesthetics and art, his philosophy, as Hans Joas has pointed out, was determined to find a place for artistic creativity in an era characterized by the domination of science (Joas 1998: 5). What Peirce pointed out about scientific creativity applies also to art. There is an artistic abduction by which relationships that had never before been established are obtained. In that sense, as Peirce affirms, the poet’s or the novelist’s work is not so different from that of the scientist: The work of the poet or novelist is not so utterly different from that of the scientific man. The artist introduces a fiction; but it is not an arbitrary one; it exhibits affinities to which the mind accords a certain approval in pronouncing them beautiful, which if it is not exactly the same as saying that the synthesis is true, is something of the same general kind. CP 1.383, 1887

198

Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Peircean Semiotics

Artistic abduction must start – like any other – from experience. The artist will be precisely the one who sees things as they appear. Artists, Peirce holds, are much finer and more accurate observers than scientists are, except of the special minutiae that the scientific man is looking for (CP 1.315, 1903). The ability to observe the world in an aesthetic way, to discern the world without judging it, is not something that is done just like that, but requires discipline and training. The artist is the one who has that preparation, who is able to recognize sensations with accuracy, rigour and depth. Peirce describes that extraordinary capacity for perception in the following way: When the ground is covered by snow on which the sun shines brightly except where shadows fall, if you ask any ordinary man what its color appears to be, he will tell you white, pure white, whiter in the sunlight, a little greyish in the shadow. But that is not what is before his eyes that he is describing; it is his theory of what ought to be seen. The artist will tell him that the shadows are not grey but a dull blue and that the snow in the sunshine is of a rich yellow. That artist’s observational power is what is most wanted in the study of phenomenology. CP 5.42, 1903

Therefore, the artistic abduction begins, like the scientific one, with a surprising fact, which in the case of art is perhaps a state of restlessness, a feeling that in some sense the world is not felt as it should be. The artist then tries to fill that void of experience. That which the artist perceives will be expressed in a thirdness, in something original and intelligible that can be interpreted by others. This Peircean idea of art as expression means that the variety of experience and human sensations, albeit diverse and ungraspable, is also rationalizable, because the artist manages to express feelings by giving them shape and embodying them in a third. The artist deals with feelings that are possibilities; she perceives the world in its being present, in its firstness, and plays with the imagination giving rise to a thirdness that allows to express in some way that firstness. Art is creation, discovery of a way to embody reasonableness; art is to find a way to express that which cannot be expressed, to communicate a feeling that is internal by giving it a reasonable form and making it external. The hypothesis that arises through artistic abduction is nevertheless only one of the possible ways in which that quality could be embodied, and it is only a first idea that must be worked on until it acquires its definitive form. Douglas Anderson developed in his book Creativity and the Philosophy of C. S. Peirce (Anderson 1987) an analogy between scientific and artistic creativity. Anderson considers that abduction in art, as in science, is followed by a phase of deduction

Abduction: The Logic of Creativity

199

and another of induction. It is necessary to explain and ‘prove’ the artistic hypothesis, which otherwise would be reduced to mere emotion. Abduction is only the starting point of a process in which the artist loves her idea and lets it develop, allowing it to suggest its own perfection. Based on that first hypothesis, the artist in the first place projects what the work of art will be like. Through deduction, the creative idea becomes an existing work of art; it becomes a likeness, a model that can be tested by contemplating it, for example by making a first design, as Peirce explains: Another example of the use of a likeness is the design an artist draws of a statue, pictorial composition, architectural elevation, or piece of decoration, by the contemplation of which he can ascertain whether what he proposes will be beautiful and satisfactory. CP 2.281, 1893

As in science, artistic abduction is not infallible. Many times the artist will reject her first idea as it begins to take shape and she realizes that it does not meet her expectations. The deductive phase of art does not consist in predicting consequences as in science, but in eliminating possibilities that do not satisfy the aim of the artist. In this sense, the creative process of the artist – although different in other aspects – is very similar to that of the scientist, since it requires experimentation. After abduction, subsequent phases involve self-critical corrections and the elimination of errors that are part of the creative process itself. Many times the plan of the artist is modified in the very execution of the work, in the materialization of the idea. In the inductive phase, the truth of the hypothesis that deduction has materialized is verified. There is a feedback between the ideal plan and the concrete work that emerges. Through induction the artist has to judge his work. Unlike science, art can only be true with respect to itself, insofar as it fulfils its purpose of creating what is admirable in itself, as aesthetics points out. It is not a matter of seeing if there is correspondence with the facts but of seeing if the work is admirable, if it satisfies its purpose, that is, if it has managed to beautifully express a feeling by making it reasonable. The artist must judge for herself and she also must submit her work, as in science, to the judgment of a community in an indefinite time. In the end the generations do, or do not, approve the works of art. Peirce does not hold an aesthetic subjectivism where anything goes, but the work of art must fulfil its purpose. The three stages of the Peircean method are intermingled also in art until they give rise to a work that will always be incomplete in some sense. As happens in science, the work of art will always be open to later refutations.

200

Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Peircean Semiotics

Artistic abduction seeks to capture sensations, restlessness and feelings, while the scientist seeks rational explanations. There is more freedom in artistic abduction. Scientific hypotheses, although they are also creations, can only afford to be original if they explain the facts in question (Anderson 1987: 44). Imagination in science is not entirely free, since hypotheses cannot be released from the hand of reality. Speaking of Kepler’s work, Peirce thus distinguished the scientific imagination from the poetic one: What kind of an imagination is required to form a mental diagram of a complicated state of facts? Not that poet-imagination that ‘bodies forth the forms of things unknowne,’ but a docile imagination, quick to take the Dame Nature’s hints. The poet-imagination riots in ornaments and accessories; a Keppler’s [sic] makes the clothing and the flesh drop off, and the apparition of the naked skeleton of truth to stand revealed before him. R1284: 12–13, c. 1892

Science is interested in discovering the truth, in conforming reason to the facts of experience. The artist, on the other hand, seeks to create what is admirable in itself. While scientific reasoning ends with reasonable ideas, art ends with reasonable feelings (Anderson 1897: 60). But both science and art are driven by abduction.

Contemporary applications of abduction As we have seen, abduction pervades common-sense reasoning, scientific inquiry and artistic creativity. Peirce saw the importance of this way of reasoning and proposed the abductive logic as the motor for the growth of human knowledge; since then, abduction has been applied in areas like the theory of scientific research, artificial intelligence or computational logic. In recent decades, abduction has been extensively studied in logic, semiotics, the philosophy of science, computer science and cognitive science in a desire to recover and extend rationality (Park 2017: 1). Abduction has attracted a lot of attention in artificial intelligence (A.I.), in areas like programming, knowledge assimilation or diagnosis, and also for databases and knowledge bases. In this context, the general trend interprets abduction as ‘backwards deduction plus additional conditions’ (Aliseda 2006: 40). Aliseda has pointed out that Peirce’s formulation of abduction goes beyond that of a logical argument to become an epistemic process which has given rise

Abduction: The Logic of Creativity

201

in the field of A.I. to close connections with theories of belief revision (Aliseda 2006: 177). Peirce sustained through abduction an epistemic transition between the states of doubt and belief, and so in A.I. has appeared an ‘abductive expansion’ and an ‘abductive revision’ where abduction would apply to the revision of beliefs (Aliseda 2006: 180–184). In the field of logic, we can highlight the proposal of Gabbay and Woods, who have tried to apply abduction to the practical logic of cognitive systems, and in particular to the resolution of problems by cognitive agents (Gabbay and Woods 2005). Also in this field, Aliseda has proposed semantic tableaux as a natural vehicle for implementing abduction, since they allow for a clear formulation of what counts as an abductive explanation, while being flexible and suggestive as to possible modifications and extensions (Aliseda 2006: 130). In the field of logic programming, abduction has been used as a form of computing, specifically as a ‘repair mechanism’ completing a program with the facts needed for a query to succeed (Aliseda 2006: 41); abduction as a control mechanism is different from the blind deduction and it is used to control which outcomes will occur. The work of Kowalski (1979) and Kakas (1995) can be mentioned in this area. In the field of epistemology, Haig has pointed out that traditionally inductive and hypothetic-deductive methods have been considered, but that in recent years more comprehensive methods have been proposed, methods that begin with phenomena that must be explained and not with theories that have to be analysed (Haig 2005: 371). Thus, theories such as ATOM (Abductive Theory of Method) appear, as Haig calls it, or TEC (Theory of Explanatory Coherence), proposed by Thagard, who determines the coherence of an explanatory theory in terms of three criteria: consilience, simplicity and analogy (Thagard 1988, 1992). The above are just a small sample of the numerous contemporary applications of abduction. However, it should be noted that abduction has not always been correctly interpreted at least according to the original version of Charles S. Peirce. In many of these applications, abduction has been understood as inference to the best explanation, that is, to the more simple and coherent explanation (Harman 1965; Day & Kincaid 1994; Lipton 2004). At other times, abduction has been used as a tool for the justification of hypotheses. It must be stressed here that abduction understood in the Peircean sense not only explains the selection of hypotheses, but also their generation. According to Peirce there is a logic of creativity, ‘a purely logical doctrine of how discovery must take place’ and ‘in addition to this, there may be a psychological

202

Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Peircean Semiotics

account of the matter, of the utmost importance’ (CP 2.107, 1892). Abduction is not equivalent to a generalization or to a type of induction, as it has sometimes been confused in some of the contemporary applications. Flach and Kakas, for example, maintain that there are explanatory hypotheses and inductive or generalizing hypotheses (Flach & Kakas 2000), which would be a contradiction in itself, since induction implies for Peirce the acceptance or final refutation of the hypotheses while abduction does not value hypotheses nor can it provide proof of their validity. In summary, it can be affirmed that although it is remarkable to notice the ubiquity of abduction well beyond the boundary of logic or philosophy, we should also grant that those authors have failed to secure the core meaning of abduction (Park 2017: 1). According to Niño: ‘I note that between the features of current abduction and Peirce’s abduction – in general – there is a distance similar to that between Dalton’s atom and Bohr’s, and in that sense, I’m not sure that the developments (uses) around abduction in contemporary fields are developments (in the sense of progress) of Peirce’s abduction’ (Niño 2007: 348). Peircean abduction is a kind of inference, but a peculiar inference that would not be possible without instinct and imagination. It has not always been understood and applied in this way; sometimes, it has been forgotten that abduction starts with a surprise and not with the mere analysis of data, that it is a reasoning that goes backwards and that it is verifiable – and must be verified – through deduction and induction. All these elements are present in the Peircean abduction and make it a richer explanation for the modifications in the background theory which explains an amazing fact (Aliseda 2006: 198). That is, Peircean abduction is a much richer and more powerful understanding of human creativity than most of the available current theories: its potential development should be explored in the future with more detail and attention. Peirce’s thought is always a trove, but particularly in this issue of creativity.

References Aliseda, A. 2006. Abductive Reasoning: Logical Investigations into Discovery and Explanation. Dordrecht: Springer. Anderson, D. 1987. Creativity and the Philosophy of C. S. Peirce. Dordrecht: Nijhoff. Ayim, M. 1982. Peirce’s View of the Roles of Reason and Instinct in Scientific Inquiry. Meerut, India: Anu Prakashan. Barrena, S. 2007. La razón creativa. Crecimiento y finalidad del ser humano según C. S. Peirce. Madrid: Rialp.

Abduction: The Logic of Creativity

203

Barrena, S. 2015. La belleza en Charles S. Peirce: Origen y alcance de sus ideas estéticas. Pamplona: Ediciones Universidad de Navarra. Day, T. and H. Kincaid. 1994. ‘Putting Inference to the Best Explanation in its Place’, Synthese, 98: 271–295. Eco, U. and T.A. Sebeok, (eds.). 1983. The Sign of Three: Dupin, Holmes and Peirce. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press Fann, K.I. 1970. Peirce’s Theory of Abduction. The Hague: Nijhoff. Flach, P. and A. Kakas. 2000. ‘Abductive and Inductive Reasoning: Background and Issues’. In P. Flach and A. Kakas (eds). Abduction and Induction. Essays on their Relation and Integration. Dordrecht: Kluwer. Gabbay, D. and J. Woods. 2005. The Reach of Abduction: Insight and Trial. Amsterdam: Elsevier. Génova, G. 1997. Charles S. Peirce: La lógica del descubrimiento. Pamplona: Cuadernos de Anuario Filosófico. Haig, B.D. 2005. ‘An Abductive Theory of Scientific Method’. Psychological Methods, 10(4): 371–388. Harman, G. 1965. ‘The Inference to the Best Explanation’. Philosophical Review, 74: 88–95. Hanson, N.R. 1961. ‘Is There a Logic of Scientific Discovery?’ In H. Feigl, Herbert and G. Maxwell (eds). Current Issues in the Philosophy of Science. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. Joas, H. 1996. The Creativity of Action. Cambridge: Polity Press. Kakas, A., R.A. Kowalski and F. Toni. 1995. ‘Abductive Logic Programming’, Journal of Logic and Computation, 2(6): 719–770. Kowalski, R.A. 1979. Logic for Problem Solving. New York: Elsevier. Lipton, P. 2004. Inference to the Best Explanation. London: Routledge. Niño, D. 2001. ‘Peirce, abducción y práctica médica’. Anuario Filosófico, 34(1): 57–74. Niño, D. 2007. ‘Abducting Abduction. Avatares sobre la comprensión de la abducción de Charles S. Peirce.’ PhD thesis, Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Bogotá; Available online: www.unav.es/gep/TesisDoctorales.html. Nubiola, J. 2005. ‘Abduction or the Logic of Surprise’. Semiotica, 153: 117–130. Park, W. 2017. Abduction in Context. The Conjectural Dynamics of Scientific Reasoning. Cham: Springer. Santaella, L. 1991. ‘Instinct, Logic, or the Logic of Instinct’. Semiotica, 83: 123–141. Thagard, P. 1988. Computational Philosophy of Science. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Thagard, P. 1992. Conceptual Revolutions. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Woods, J. 2017. ‘Reorienting the Logic of Abduction’. In L. Magnani and T. Bertolotti (eds). Springer Handbook of Model-Based Science. Dordrecht: Springer

204

7

Abduction as an Explanatory Strategy in Narrative James Jakób Liszka and Genie Babb

William James argued what is commonly thought: ‘To say that all human thinking is essentially of two kinds – reasoning on the one hand, and narrative, descriptive, contemplative thinking on the other – is to say only what every reader’s experience will corroborate’ (1983: 2). This opinion is strongly reinforced by the psychologist, Jerome Bruner: There are two modes of cognitive functioning, two modes of thought, each providing distinctive ways of ordering experience, of constructing reality. The two (though complementary) are irreducible to one another . . . Each of the ways of knowing, moreover, has operating principles of its own and its own criteria of well-formedness. They differ radically in their procedure for verification. A good story and a well-formed argument are different natural kinds. 1986: 11

We aim to show that this severe distinction between reasoning and narrative may not be entirely warranted. The distinction has already been called into question to a certain extent by Thomas Sebeok, Jean Umiker-Sebeok and Nancy Harrowitz, who have shown how characters in the detective genre, such as Sherlock Holmes and C. Auguste Dupin, use abduction in solving cases (1983). However, we want to argue that abductive reasoning plays a fundamental role in all narratives and is not limited to the thinking of detective characters or the detective genre. The argument here is that one type of scientific reasoning – what Charles Peirce called abduction – is a key factor in explaining how narratives – particularly in regard to plot – are constructed and read. We begin with a summary of Peirce’s concept of abduction, followed by a review of the work of Sebeok, Umiker-Sebeok and Harrowitz on abduction and 205

206

Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Peircean Semiotics

the detective genre. Next, we analyse how the insights of narratology and readerresponse theory point to the abductive features of narrative. We then look at abduction and narrative in two types of examples, the medical case study and the short story. A study by Ronald Schleifer and Jerry Vannatta shows how abductive thinking in medical diagnoses is itself narrative in character and tied to patients’ stories about their symptoms (2006). Two short stories by H.G. Wells, who was educated in the scientific method by Thomas Huxley, explicitly narrativize scientific reasoning and school the reader on good abductive thinking. These examples challenge the conceptual boundary between ‘story’ and ‘argument’, showing that abduction and narrative are much more interconnected, and that abduction is not simply illustrative of the sort of thinking typical of brilliant detective characters.

Peirce’s theory of abduction Abduction (also called retroduction or hypothesis) is one of Peirce’s most original contributions to understanding scientific thinking. He was the first thinker to bring to light what Norwood Hanson argued in his classic study of scientific discovery: that there was a certain pattern and logic to the formation of novel hypotheses in scientific practice (Hanson 1958). As Peirce articulated it, the experimental method is constituted by an interlocking and reiterative process of three types of reasoning: Abduction, deduction and induction. The work of all three could be modelled as a conical helix, moving upward toward an apex as a smaller set of alternative hypotheses survive severe tests, leading to hypotheses that are ostensibly free from error. Abduction is concerned with the formation of a new hypothesis, or the modification of an existing one, in light of experimental or observational anomalies or puzzles. As Peirce says, ‘a given object presents an extraordinary combination of characters of which we should like to have an explanation’ (1902: R692). Sometimes he calls this process Retroduction, since it is a sort of reasoning backwards from the result or observed fact to its explanation. Deduction in this context, determines what must follow from the adoption of the novel hypothesis, that is, what the experimenter should expect to observe under experimental conditions. Finally, induction, in its varieties, is the means by which error or lack of error is detected in either adopting or rejecting the hypothesis, based on the expected results of the experiment. Should the results of the experiment favour rejecting the hypothesis, then the cycle begins again

Abduction as an Explanatory Strategy in Narrative

207

with a new abduction. As Peirce explains this cycle, once a hypothesis has been formed through abduction: That which is to be done with the hypothesis is to trace outs its consequences by deduction, to compare them with results of experiment by induction, and to discard the hypothesis, and try another, as soon as the first has been refuted; as it presumably will be. CP 7.220, c. 1901

One of the better, more mature formulations of abduction is the following: The surprising fact, C, is observed But if A were true, C would be a matter of course Hence, there is reason to suspect that A is true (CP 5.189, 1903). As Peirce explains: Abduction makes its start from the facts, without, at the outset, having any particular theory in view, though it is motivated by the feeling that a theory is needed to explain the surprising facts. Induction makes its start from a hypothesis which seems to recommend itself, without at the outset having any particular facts in view, though it feels the need of facts to support the theory. Abduction seeks a theory. Induction seeks for facts. In induction the study of the hypothesis suggests the experiments which bring to light the very facts to which the hypothesis had pointed. CP 7.218, 1901

Abduction is contextual since scientists already work in the context of a set of hypotheses and theories about the world. As experiment and testing of these hypotheses go on, the results often produce anomalies, puzzles and generate problems that need solving. It is a weak form of inference, more like guesswork or surmise (CP 2.625, 1878). ‘Abduction is, after all, nothing but good guessing’, Peirce says (CP 7.219, 1901). These days, most thinkers accept abduction in some form as a crucial part of scientific reasoning (Harré 1988; Psillos 2000; Lipton 2004). Gilbert Harman called it ‘the inference to best explanation’, although he thought that the better explanation among alternatives would be a warrant for the truth of the hypothesis (1965). Much of current accounts of abduction also take up this position (Douven, 2017; Schupack and Springer, 2011; Schurz, 2008). Although Peirce sometimes gives an account of abduction that lends itself to that view (CP 5.189, 1903), Peirce would certainly reject Harman’s claim. As William McCauliffe points out, Peirce’s abduction is not a method to determine the truth of a hypothesis, but to determine whether the

208

Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Peircean Semiotics

explanation it provides is a good reason to adopt the hypothesis for testing by induction (2015: 301). Peirce notes that providing explanations of known data ‘. . . is a very proper and needful inquiry’, But it is Abduction, not Induction, and proves nothing but the ingenuity with which the hypothesis has been adapted to the facts of the case. To take this for Induction . . . is one of the greatest errors of reasoning that can be made. It is the post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy, if so understood. But if understood to be a process antecedent to the application of induction, not intended to test the hypothesis, but intended to aid in perfecting that hypothesis and making it more definite, this proceeding is an essential part of a well-conducted inquiry. CP 7.114, 1903

At best, a good explanation will make the hypothesis plausible, and only inductive testing can sort out whether it has a chance of being true. Abduction is primarily concerned with deciding on which hypotheses to test experimentally – not as an inference to the truth of the hypothesis. Indeed, Peirce argues that abduction is that process of reasoning which would ‘explain (that is, render necessary) that which is surprising in the phenomena’. But, on that basis, the experimenter ‘accepts that theory so far as to give it a high place in the list of theories of those phenomena which call for further examination’ (CP 2.776, 1902). Good abduction leads to plausible hypotheses, not true ones. In this respect, it might be likened to a prosecutor’s decision of whether to bring a case to trial, based on the likelihood of success. That alone is not sufficient to make a determination of guilt or innocence; that is something determined in the test of the trial itself. Indeed, Peirce uses the same analogy: ‘For abduction commits us to nothing. It merely causes a hypothesis to be set down upon our docket of cases to be tried’ (CP 602, 1898). As Peirce clarifies later on ‘by plausible, I mean that a theory that has not yet been subjected to any test, although more or less surprising phenomena have occurred which it would explain if it were true, is in itself of such a character as to recommend it for further examination or, if it be highly plausible, justify us in seriously inclining toward belief in it, as long as the phenomena be inexplicable otherwise’ (CP 2.662, 1910). Thus, abduction in this aspect is a process of reasoning that sorts out plausible from implausible hypotheses based on how well it explains the facts that prompted the explanation in the first place. One is reminded, in this regard, of a funny scene from the film A Shot in the Dark (1964), in which the bumbling detective Clousseau, lays out his hypothesis to his long-suffering assistant, Hercule LaJoy, concerning Maria Gambrelli, who is a

Abduction as an Explanatory Strategy in Narrative

209

maid employed by the wealthy Benjamin Ballon, and a suspect in the murder of Ballon’s chauffeur: Clousseau: Facts, Hercule, nothing matters but the facts. Without them the science of criminal investigation is no more than a guessing game. You listen to me, Hercule, and you will learn something. Now then . . . The facts in this case are: the body of the chauffeur was found in the bedroom of the second maid. Fact! Cause of death, four bullets in the chest. Fact! The bullets were fired at close range from a .25 caliber automatic. Fact! Maria Gambrelli was discovered with the murder weapon in her hand. Fact! The murder weapon was registered in the name of the deceased, Miguel Ostos – and kept – mind you – in the glove compartment of the Ballon Rolls Royce. Fact! Now, then, members of the household have testified that Miguel Ostos beat . . . Maria Gambrelli frequently. And now, finally comes the sworn statement of Monsieur and Madame Ballon, as well as all the members of the staff, each of them with perfect alibis. Now then, Hercule, what is the inescapable conclusion? Hercule LaJoy: Maria Gambrelli killed the chauffeur. Clouseau: What? You idiot! It’s impossible. She’s protecting someone. Hercule LaJoy: How do you know that? Clousseau: Instinct! Hercule LaJoy: But the facts . . .

Of course, the irony is, as it turns out, Clousseau is right about Maria’s innocence, although wrong about the explanation. His abduction that Maria is protecting someone seems implausible in light of the facts he has enumerated; a much more plausible abduction would be that she’s being framed, which turns out to be the case. What makes one hypothesis a more plausible explanation than another, according to Peirce? In the first place, it must actually provide an explanation of the surprising or anomalous event or observation. Consider Carl Hempel’s recounting of Ignaz Semmelweis’s discovery of the cause of puerperal fever among childbearing women in the Vienna General Hospital in the midnineteenth century. Semmelweis was in charge of obstetrics. The puzzle was a much higher incidence of puerperal fever in the first than the second division. One hypothesis proposed was that the difference was due to ‘telluric-atmospheric conditions’ – in ordinary parlance, ‘something in the air’. However, since patients in both the first and second divisions breathed the same air, this could not explain the difference in the incidents of puerperal fever, and so was not a

210

Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Peircean Semiotics

plausible hypothesis (Hempel 1966: 4). What about the case where there are a number of hypotheses that do explain the surprising or anomalous event? How are differences in plausibility discerned? Peirce provides a couple of examples that suggest an answer. He discusses the case of Eusapia Palladino, a well-known spiritualist and medium who was a sensation in Europe in the early 1900s. In her visit to America she was tested by Hereward Carrington who, as Peirce relates, was able to expose many of her tricks. However, for those he could not expose, Carrington hypothesized that these were indeed cases of the supernatural. Peirce points out the more plausible hypothesis given that he had already detected a number of her frauds: would it not more likely be the case that Palladino was simply too clever for him? (CP 2.662, 1910). In other words, since sample cases of her fraud were already actually found, and the supernatural hypothesis has the absence of evidence, it is more likely that the others were remaining cases of undetected fraud than instances of supernatural phenomena. It would be much more fruitful to test that more plausible hypothesis, than the hypothesis that these undetected cases were instances of genuine supernatural phenomena. In another example, Peirce relates his wife’s hypothesis that lighting struck a particular tree because an eagle known to be nesting nearby was carrying a piece of metal that deflected the lighting in that direction. Eagles are known to pick up shiny objects for their nests. Peirce argues that the explanation is implausible precisely because of the unlikeliness of the eagle carrying a piece of metal at just the right angle and at just the right moment to deflect the lightning strike to that particular tree. Moreover it would be extremely difficult, if not impossible, to reproduce the circumstances to test the hypothesis (CP 2.662, 1878). In Peirce’s third example, a person is puzzled as to the authorship of an anonymously written piece of writing found on a torn piece of paper. The surprising fact is discovered that it fits exactly with another torn piece of paper sitting on the desk of a person who is known to have the only access to that desk. Since, as Peirce says, ‘two torn pieces of paper are extremely unlikely to fit together by accident’, the hypothesis that this person is the author of the writing is therefore plausible (CP 2.632, 1878). From this example and others, plausibility is based on the probability of the events that carry the explanation of the surprising event. While explanatory plausibility is the most important, elsewhere Peirce adds two other criteria, testability and economy, for determining what makes a ‘good’ abduction (CP 7.220, c. 1901). Some hypotheses, such as his wife’s explanation of the lightning strike, are practically untestable. The criterion of economy depends on three factors: expense, support among scientists, and its comparison to

Abduction as an Explanatory Strategy in Narrative

211

alternatives. Some less plausible hypotheses might be worth testing if the expense and effort are small. Similarly, if there are significant numbers of scientists who think the existence of evidence already makes the hypothesis likely, that would also favour testing it (CP 2.663, 1910). The third factor, comparison among alternatives, is based on three considerations: simplicity, caution and breadth (CP 7.220, c. 1901). If a hypothesis is simpler than others (incomplex) then that would favour its testing (CP 7.221, c. 1901). By caution, Peirce means that the hypothesis is skilfully formulated so that when it is tested, the results exclude a large swath of alternative hypotheses. Suppose, he says, there are thirty-two different possible ways of explaining a set of phenomena, ‘then, thirty-one hypotheses must be rejected. The most economical procedure, when it is practicable, will be to find some observable fact which, under conditions easily brought about, would result from sixteen of the hypotheses and not from any of the other sixteen’ (CP 6.529, c. 1901). By breadth, Peirce means that the hypothesis would apply to wide range of phenomena in other subjects, for example, a hypothesis concerning the kinetical theory of gases, might also apply to other non-conservative phenomena (CP 7.221, c. 1901). With these criteria, Peirce clarifies that abduction is concerned with choosing which hypothesis among competing alternatives would be best to bring forward for testing. As he says elsewhere, the central aim of abduction is to ‘recommend a course of action’ (R637: 5, 1909). Altogether, hypotheses that have explanatory plausibility, are testable and simpler than alternatives, whose results would exclude a number of alternative hypotheses and be relevant to a larger number of phenomena, are the most robust abductions. They should have priority for testing, assuming they are not extraordinarily expensive to conduct. There is still something about abduction that is not explained by these various criteria of plausibility, namely, how is it that people light upon their hypotheses in the first place; in particular, how is it that people often instinctively propose hypotheses that turn out to be true? Peirce suggests a bio-psychological explanation. ‘You cannot seriously think that every little chicken, that is hatched, has to rummage through all possible theories until it lights upon the good idea of picking up something and eating it . . . But if you are going to think every poor chicken endowed with an innate tendency toward a positive truth, why should you think that to man alone this gift is denied?’ Peirce argues that ‘man’s mind has a natural adaptation to imagining correct theories of some kinds’. In short, the instincts conducive to assimilation of food, and the instincts conducive to reproduction, must have involved from the beginning certain

212

Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Peircean Semiotics

tendencies to think truly about physics, on the one hand, and about psychics, on the other. It is somehow more than a mere figure of speech to say that nature fecundates the mind of man with ideas which, when those ideas grow up, will resemble their father, Nature. CP 5.591, 1898

‘If man had not had the gift, which every other animal has, of a mind adapted to his requirements’, Peirce insists, ‘he not only could not have acquired any knowledge, but he could not have maintained his existence for a single generation’ (CP 5.603, 1898). Peirce concludes that ‘if the universe conforms, with any approach to accuracy, to certain highly pervasive laws, and if man’s mind has been developed under the influence of those laws, it is to be expected that he should have a natural light, or light of nature, or instinctive insight, or genius, tending to make him guess those laws aright, or nearly aright’ (CP 5.604, 1898). Peirce ties his point elsewhere to probability theory: ‘According to the doctrine of chances it would be practically impossible for any being, by pure chance to guess the cause of any phenomenon’ (1929: 269). ‘Retroduction goes upon the hope that there is sufficient affinity between the reasoner’s mind and nature to render guessing not altogether hopeless, provided each guess is checked by comparison with observation’ (CP 1.121, 1903). It is clear that Peirce thought that abduction is not only a key type of reasoning in science, but also part and parcel of everyday life: Looking out my window this lively spring morning I see an azalea in full bloom. No, no! I do not see that; though that is the only way I can describe what I see. That is a proposition, a sentence, a fact; but what I perceive is not proposition, sentence, fact, but only an image, which I make intelligible in part by means of a statement of fact. This statement is abstract; but what I see is concrete. I perform an abduction when I so much as express in a sentence anything I see. The truth is that the whole fabric of our knowledge is one matted felt of pure hypothesis confirmed and refined by induction. Not the smallest advance can be made in knowledge beyond the stage of vacant staring, without making an abduction at every step. R692, 1901

Clearly Peirce believed that the abductive process was far broader than the strict methods used to conduct rigorous scientific research. In this passage, he does not seem to draw the hard-and-fast line between ‘reasoning’ and ‘narrative’, ‘story’ and ‘argument’, quoted in James and Bruner at the beginning of this essay.

Abduction as an Explanatory Strategy in Narrative

213

Abduction and detection Thomas Sebeok and Jean Umiker-Sebeok have shown the parallels between Peirce’s notion of abduction and the reasoning processes in Sherlock Holmes’s method of detection, as authored by Conan Doyle (1983). They also showed how Conan Doyle himself was influenced by such reasoning through his medical training, particularly with the methods of medical diagnosis employed by his teacher, Dr Joseph Bell at the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh who, apparently had a keen sense of observation similar to what is attributed to Holmes (1983: 30). Sebeok and Umiker-Sebeok provide a striking illustration of Holmes’s methodology. In The Sign of Four, in a conversation with Watson, Holmes claims that Watson has been to the Wigmore Street post office to send a telegram. Astounded that Holmes should know such a thing, Watson asks for an explanation of the process of reasoning by which he came to that true conclusion. As Holmes explains, he observed a piece of red mould on Watson’s shoes; he also observed that there was construction around the post office that left a relatively unique reddish soil exposed, making it easy for passers-by to trample on. Second, as to the hypothesis that Watson was there to send a telegram, Holmes had noticed that there were plenty of stamps in Watson’s desk, and he remembered he had not seen Watson writing any letters that morning. Since the only other service that the post office provided was sending telegrams and, the other two of buying stamps or sending letters were eliminated, it had to be the telegram (Doyle 1890: 6–7; 1983: 20). As Sebeok and Umiker-Sebeok point out this process of reasoning is clearly abductive (1983: 21). First, there was the notice of some surprising event (the red mould on Watson’s shoes), the observation of the red mud around the Wigmore post office, and the surmise that Watson had visited the Wigmore post office. That is, from the observation of the surprising event, the abductive hypothesis seeks to explain it. In A Study in Scarlet, Holmes does recognize this, as Peirce does, as a sort of ‘reasoning backwards’: [Holmes]: In solving a problem of this sort, the grand thing is to be able to reason backward . . . In the everyday affairs of life it is more useful to reason forward, and so the other comes to be neglected . . . Most people, if you describe a train of events to them, will tell you what the result would be. They can put those events together in their minds, and argue from them that something will come to pass. There are few people, however, who, if you told them a result, would be able to evolve from their own inner consciousness what the steps were which led up to that result. This power is what I mean when I talk of reasoning backward, or analytically. 1983: 39

214

Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Peircean Semiotics

The visit to the Wigmore post office would explain the red mould on Watson’s shoe, but what would explain his visit? The simplest explanation (or what Peirce would call the most incomplex explanation) would be the typical reasons people visit post offices: to buy stamps, envelopes, to send a letter, or, in Victorian England, to send a telegram. Having eliminated two of those by means of other observations (Peirce’s notion of caution), Holmes is left with the third as the most likely. However, at least in these passages, Sebeok and Umiker-Sebeok fail to mention the other two important processes in scientific reasoning implicit in Holmes’s thinking: deduction in Peirce’s sense and induction. Holmes performs a number of implicit deductions in Peirce’s sense: if Watson visited the post office to mail a letter, then I should have observed his writing one; if he wanted to purchase stamps or envelopes, then I should observe no stamps or envelopes in his secretary. Holmes did not see Watson write a letter, and observed a hearty supply of stamps and envelopes. In The Five Orange Pips, as Sebeok and Umiker-Sebeok point out, Holmes does recognize this sort of deduction in Peirce’s sense: ‘the ideal reasoned . . . would, when he had once been shown a single fact in all its bearings, deduce from it not only the chain of events which led up to it but also the results which would follow from it. As Cuvier could correctly describe a whole animal by the contemplation of a single bone, so the observer who has thoroughly understood one link in a series of incidents should be able to accurately state all the other ones, both before and after’ (1983: 41). Once Holmes had formulated his hypotheses, deduced their consequences and observed which ones conformed with the observation of their consequences, he could more easily light upon the more likely, verisimilar hypothesis – that Watson went to the post office to send a telegram. But Holmes’s hypothesis is not a certain ‘deduction’ as he characterizes it. As Sebeok and Umiker-Sebeok rightly argue, there are a number of other explanations for the observations as well (1983: 21). Perhaps Watson went for a walk and just happened to pass the post office, or he was simply curious about the pavement repairs, etc. Thus, what Holmes still needs is confirmation of his abduction by induction – which he gets straight from the source in Watson’s affirmation. As Peirce says succinctly: ‘. . . abduction . . . furnishes the reasoner with the problematic theory which induction verifies’ (CP 2.776, c. 1902). Nancy Harrowitz (1983) and Paul Grimstad (2005) make a similar comparison of Peirce’s abduction and Poe’s notion of analysis, as defined by the narrator of ‘The Murders in the Rue Morgue’ and exemplified in the person of Poe’s detectivecharacter, C. Auguste Dupin.1 The narrator of the story describes Dupin’s ‘analysis’

Abduction as an Explanatory Strategy in Narrative

215

as a process of observation and inference, which ‘[lies] not so much in the validity of the inference as in the quality of the observation. The necessary knowledge is that of what to observe’ (Poe 1841: 79; Harrowitz 1983: 187). Dupin uses the process of ‘analysis’ to uncover the perpetrator of the murders in the Rue Morgue. The circumstances of the murders include a number of perplexing and surprising facts, which the brilliant Dupin analyses carefully to hypothesize that these heinous acts were committed, not by a human being, but by an orangutan. His abduction is confirmed when the orangutan’s owner, a sailor on leave, arrives seeking his missing pet. Harrowitz argues that ‘detective fiction has been and still is today the literary form which is devoted to the expression of abduction’ (1983: 197). Indeed, what the detective and the scientist have in common is the retrospective nature of the problem. Something surprising has occurred, whether it be a murder, a lightning strike, or a torn piece of paper, and the detective-scientist formulates a hypothesis – an abduction – to explain what has happened. The mystery genre’s retrospective conventions align well with the scientific process of hypothesis and testing.

Abduction and plot But is abduction confined to the detective genre? And is it confined to the thinking processes of the detective character? The argument here is that abductive thinking is characteristic of any narrative, both in terms of its construction by the storyteller and its reading by some audience. This claim, of course, requires some analysis of narrative. E.M. Forster famously argued for a distinction between story and plot2: ‘The king died and then the queen died’ is a story. ‘The king died, and then the queen died of grief ’ is a plot . . . Consider the death of the queen. If it is in a story we say ‘and then?’ If it is in a plot we ask ‘why?’. 1927: 130

Plot, as Forster describes it, involves not the mere description of a sequence of events, but the explanation of why one event follows another. For this reason, he claims that plot is ‘the novel in its logical intellectual aspect’ (1927: 103). To know that the queen died after the king is one thing, but to know that the queen died after the king because of her grief over his death is another matter. Plot does at least two things according to Forster. It creates surprise in the reader and then explains that surprise (1927: 137). Every plot, he says, has a

216

Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Peircean Semiotics

‘detective element’ in it – the ‘element of surprise or mystery’: ‘Mystery is essential to a plot, and cannot be appreciated without intelligence. To the curious it is just another “and then____” To appreciate a mystery, part of the mind must be left behind, brooding, while the other part goes marching on’ (1927: 132). If this is the case, the abductive thinking of the detective must also be characteristic of the storyteller constructing any plot, and of the reader decoding it. The competent author or storyteller organizes the plot in a manner that will likely evoke surprise and encourage an abductive response. The author or storyteller must create an explanation of the surprising events that outfoxes readers, on the one hand, but is still cognitively comprehensible and plausible, on the other. That is to say, the explanation of the surprising or puzzling event should be neither so obvious as to bore the reader, nor so implausible as to leave the reader unsatisfied. A surprise by its very nature is a foiling of expectations. To say that a reader is surprised is to say, as Peirce does, that one’s existing beliefs about the world and its events are in error. Beliefs are hypotheses and, whether explicitly or implicitly formulated, are used to navigate the world by anticipating its events and outcomes. If people hypothesize that their neighbours are not likely to be killers, then it is a surprise when a neighbour murders someone (as typified in the predictably befuddled reactions: ‘he was such a quiet guy; I never dreamed he could do such a thing’). Of course, the beliefs of the reader of a fictional story are relative to the world that is created by the author through the storyteller. If the world of the story is one in which heroes have superpowers, it will not be a surprise that they are able to fly through the air, but that would be quite an anomaly in a historical novel set in Victorian England. If surprise is a foiling of expectations based on a set of beliefs or hypotheses, then the surprise will usually provoke a modification of those beliefs. If the protagonist is characterized initially in the story as honest and forthright, yet readers discover midway through the plot that he leads a double-life full of deceit and treachery, then readers are forced to re-evaluate their beliefs about the protagonist. Forster gives an example of how surprise works, using the actions of Laetitia Dale in George Meredith’s The Egoist. Laetitia is twice jilted by Sir Willoughby Patterne. But when Sir Willoughby returns to ask her for her hand, now that he is uncertain of his fiancée, Clara, Laetitia rejects his offer. That is a surprise not only to Willoughby but also to the reader. Up until now, Laetitia appears to be susceptible to Sir Willoughby’s charms, sentimental, and devoted to Sir Willoughby despite the fact that two other women, his first fiancée, Constantia and, now, his second, Clara, have discovered his conceited shallowness. Why, despite the fact that she is blind to his egoism, and has accepted his

Abduction as an Explanatory Strategy in Narrative

217

proposals before, does she now reject the offer? The explanation as the story unfolds is the change in Laetitia’s attitude toward Sir Willoughby, a lifting of the veil that occluded her vision, that lets her see him for what he is – a shallow egoist. The plot is designed by Meredith to hide those reflections from the reader in order to create the surprise (1927: 139). Hayden White provides an analogous explanation of plot in the context of the difference between annals and historical narratives. Both have temporal contiguity – one event follows another asymmetrically in time (even if there are flashbacks, they can be reconstructed as the contiguity of events). However, although temporal contiguity is essential to any narrative, it is not sufficient to explain its coherence and understandability. Annals, such as those of St Gall, simply list events without their concatenation (White 1987: 9). The Annals list the following events: ‘718. Charles devastated the Saxon with great destruction’, followed by ‘720. Charles fought against the Saxons’. However, the list alone does not amount to anything like a story even though it is chronologically ordered. To make it into a story, what is required is an explanation of why one event followed another. If, in 718, Charles defeated the Saxons with great destruction, why did he need to fight them again two years later? The answer to that question, its explanation, would make an interesting plot (1987: 176). By plot, Hayden writes, ‘. . . we mean a structure of relationships by which the events contained in the account are endowed with a meaning by being identified as parts of an integrated whole’ (1987: 9). ‘The effect of such emplotment’, White continues, ‘may be regarded as an explanation’ of the temporally contiguous events (1987: 44). Following W.B. Gallie (1968), Paul Ricoeur calls this latter process followability. Followability is not about the power to predict the next series of events or the conclusion of the story. Followability is created by showing how later events are the result of some causal, intentional or motivational configuration of the earlier ones – even if these earlier events do not apparently presage the later ones. Explaining how one thing follows from another ties the sequence of events together as about something. As Ricoeur represents Gallie’s notion, To follow a story, in effect, is to understand the successive actions, thoughts and feelings in the story inasumuch as they present a particular ‘directedness’ . . . we are ‘pulled forward’ by the development, as soon as we respond to this force with expectations concerning the completion and outcome of the whole process . . . It is only when the process is interrupted or blocked that we demand an explanation as a supplement. 1983: 150

218

Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Peircean Semiotics

Surprise thwarts expectations and prompts an explanation, but that is a good thing in a story since ‘a story that included no surprises or coincidences or encounters or recognition scenes would not hold our attention’ (1983: 150). ‘Every story, we have said, in principle explains itself. In other words, narrative answers the question “Why?” at the same time that it answers the question “what?” To tell what has happened is to tell why it happened’. As Ricoeur continues, . . . following a story is a difficult, laborious process, which can be interrupted or blocked. A story, we also said, has to be acceptable after all . . . The ‘one because of the other’ is not always easy to extract from the ‘one after the other’. 1983: 152

The followability of a story does not entail the power to predict the conclusion deductively, but only to see its rightness and acceptability, a sense of ‘the main bond of logical continuity which makes its elements intelligible’ (1983: 150). ‘Rather than being predictable, a narrative’s conclusion has to be acceptable. Looking back from the conclusion toward the intermediary episodes, we must be able to say that this end demanded those events and that chain of actions’ (1983: 150). Prospectively, we may not be able to predict that Desdemona will be killed by Othello, but given that it happens, it is followable to the extent that it is shown through the story to be the result of Othello’s jealousy and Iago’s treachery: ‘Looking back from the conclusion toward the intermediary episodes, we must be able to say that this end demanded those events and that chain of actions. Yet this backward look is itself made possible by the teleologically oriented movement of our expectations when we were following the story’ (1983: 150). Followability focuses on the rightness and acceptability of the plot, or what Peirce would call its plausibility. To follow a story – quoting Gallie – is ‘to find [the events] intellectually acceptable after all’ (Gallie 1968: 31). In other words, the reader is judging the storyteller’s ability to make a good abduction about the surprising events and weaving them together into a good explanation of the ending or outcome. A good abduction by the storyteller in this case makes for a good story. In turn, in following the story, readers are often called by the storyteller to make their own abductions, against which, they match wits with the storyteller. However, Ricoeur leaves out some important aspects of Gallie’s notion of followability. ‘It is worth noticing’, Gallie says, ‘once embarked on a good story, we cannot properly be said to choose to follow it. It would be better to say that we are pulled along by it . . . by a far more compelling part of our human make-up

Abduction as an Explanatory Strategy in Narrative

219

than our intellectual presumptions and expectations’. These are based more on the ‘elemental feelings of sympathy with and antipathy for our fellows’. Granted that followability rests on the plausible explanation of events, it is the fact that readers also care about the happenings and events of the characters that drives the reader onward to find out what happens next (1968: 44–45). This calls up another way to understand the notion of followability, in the framework of reader-response theory, specifically in terms of Wolfgang Iser’s notion of the implied reader. The implied reader is not any actual reader, but the sorts of roles, responses and expectations that the storyteller supposes in order to make the story readable and followable for any reader, even if some readers fail to do so. In this sense, to use the Kantian language he does, he is looking at the conditions which make followability possible (1978: 38). Iser explains what he means by the implied reader: if, then, we are to try and understand the effects caused and the responses elicited by literary works, we must allow for the reader’s presence without in any way predetermining his character or his historical situation. We may call him, for want of a better term, the implied reader. He embodies all those predispositions necessary for a literary work to exercise its effect – predispositions laid down, not by an empirical outside reality, but by the text itself. 1978: 34

As Iser explains, ‘the concept of the implied reader is . . . a textual structure anticipating the presence of a recipient without necessarily defining him: this concept prestructures the role to be assumed by each recipient . . .’ Iser continues, ‘. . . the concept of the implied reader designates a network of response-inviting structures, which impel the reader to grasp the text’ (1978: 34). In this way, no matter who the reader actually is, the reader is offered a particular role to play, and those roles are what constitutes the implied reader (1978: 34–35). Whether they are realized in actual readers is a matter of contingency based on the craft competence of the storyteller and the reader competence of the audience. Iser sees all of this as a dynamic play among author, text and reader, such that the ‘. . . author and reader are to share the game of the imagination . . .’ (1978: 108). ‘Reading is an activity that is guided by the text; this must be processed by the reader, who is then, in turn, affected by what he has processed’ (1978: 163). Iser argues, ‘We may assume that every literary text represents a perspective view of the world put together by the author . . . It is in no way a mere copy of the given world – it constructs a world of its own out of the material available to it. It is the way in which this world is constructed that brings about the perspective

220

Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Peircean Semiotics

intended by the author’ (1978: 35). ‘The literary text is like the world in so far as it outlines a rival world. But it differs from existing ideas of the world in that it cannot be completely deduced from prevailing concepts of reality’ (1978: 181). The fictional world is a world in the sense in which the real world is a world, with norms, expectations, conventions, rules, procedures, and the like, but as Theodore Adorno quipped, ‘art is actually the world all over again, as like it as unlike it’ (Iser, 1978: 181). ‘In simple terms, we may say that fictional language provides instructions for the building of a situation and so for the production of an imaginary object’ (1978: 64). Plot is one of the principal ways in which this constructed world takes place (1978: 35). The storyteller creates a plot in such a manner that it is not obviously predictable to the reader, but nonetheless followable in Gallie and Ricoeur’s sense. Fiction writing ‘relates to conventions which it carries with it, and it also entails procedures which, in the form of strategies, help to guide the reader to an understanding of the selective processes underlying the text’ (1978: 61). At the same time, particularly in regard to plot, the storytellers, as Iser says, aim ‘to thwart stabilized expectations’. ‘From the very beginning each text arouses particular expectations, proceeds then to change these . . .’ (1978: 128). As an example, Iser discusses the character of Allworthy in Henry Fielding’s Tom Jones. Allworthy is constructed as ‘the perfect man’, yet when he interacts with a hypocrite, Master Blifil, and is fooled by his feigned piety, readers must re-evaluate their understanding of the character. Allworthy is an icon of a perfect man, yet there is some surprise in the way in which the qualities are constructed: In our present example, the consequence is that the ‘perfect man’s’ lack of judgment causes the reader to redefine what he means by perfection, for the signified which he has built up in turn becomes a signifier: it invokes his own concepts of perfection by means of this significant qualification (the ‘perfect man’s’ lack of judgment), not only bringing them into the conscious mind but also demanding some form of correction. Through such transformations, guided by the signs of the text, the reader is induced to construct the imaginary object. It follows that in the involvement of the reader is essential to the fulfillment of the text, for materially speaking this exists only as a potential reality – it requires a ‘subject’ (i.e., a reader) for the potential to be actualized. 1978: 66

He continues, ‘. . . an unpredictable event has to be fitted into the overall picture, and in this case the adjustment is all the finer because the reader has had to modify the signified, which he himself had produced. Thus, the reader’s

Abduction as an Explanatory Strategy in Narrative

221

communication with the text is a dynamic process of self-correction, as he formulates the signified which he must then continually modify’ (1978: 67). These sorts of disruptions create at least two effects in the reader, one is aesthetic pleasure, particularly when the problem or disruption is solved, but also critical thought. Indeed, Iser notes the long tradition of seeing the work of literary art as constituted by conflict and solution, but he argues that the better story is one in which the solution is not presented on a platter to the reader, but one in which the resolution causes critical reflection in the reader on any norms or expectations that the reader holds about the real world (1978: 43–44). In this way, Iser argues, ‘. . . fiction is a means of telling us something about reality’ (1978: 53). In this context, Iser approvingly quotes Benbow Ritchie: . . . much of our enjoyment [from reading stories] is derived from surprises, from betrayals of our expectations . . . On the other hand, surprise merely causes a temporary cessation of the exploratory phase of the experience, and a recourse to intense contemplation and scrutiny. In the latter phase the surprising elements are seen in their connection with what has gone before, with the whole drift of the experience, and the enjoyment of these values is then extremely intense. Finally, it appears that there must always be some degree of novelty or surprise in all these values if there is a progressive specification of the direction of the total act . . . and any aesthetic experience tends to exhibit a continuous interplay between ‘deductive’ and ‘inductive’ operations. 1965: 230f

Indeed, what is missing in Ritchie’s analysis is the notion of abduction, which is key here. Iser is claiming that the fictional objects – characters, events, actions, the fictional world as such – are iconic in the sense that the storyteller provides certain cues or schemata, instructions for their performative construction by the reader. But in order to make such efforts functional for telling a story and its followability, the storyteller also creates disruptions, surprises and anomalies that encourage self-correction and self-reflection on the part of the reader.

Medical diagnosis as an abductive reading of the patient’s narrative If plot involves abductive reasoning, is abductive reasoning as practised in science plot-like? If true, this would suggest that abductive reasoning has characteristics that lend itself to storytelling. Consider a study by Ronald

222

Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Peircean Semiotics

Schleifer and Jerry Vannatta, who claim that the reasoning involved in medical diagnosis involves an abductive reading of a story told by ill patients. It is interesting to note in this respect, as Sebeok and Umiker-Sebeok point out, that Arthur Conan Doyle was trained as a physician by his teacher, Joseph Bell, whose keen powers of observation serve as a model for Sherlock Holmes. Doyle followed Bell in regarding diagnoses as a matter involving the entire personality and life of the patient (1983: 30). They provide an interesting example of Bell being able to discern that a patient was recently discharged from the army, served as a non-commissioned officer in a Highland regiment, and was stationed in Barbados, on the basis of a few observations. The man was respectful but did not remove his hat, which soldiers do not do; since he did not, he must have been recently discharged; he had an air of authority but not the demeanour of an officer, which would suggest a non-commissioned officer; he was Scottish, so must have served in a Highland regiment; his complaint was elephantiasis, which is common in Barbados. Schleifer and Vannatta argue that, in making a diagnosis, the physician is reading a plot as told by patient, and cite Rita Charon’s observations approvingly: Stories have plots. Illnesses have symptoms. In a strange way, when a doctor is trying to diagnose a patient, when a doctor is hearing about many symptoms, events, sensations, feelings, things out of the ordinary from a patient describing new symptoms, in a funny way what the doctor does in diagnosis is pretty much what he or she does in reading for the plot . . . the activity of the reader is to register each event, whether or not they’re told chronologically, and to reconfigure them using our imagination and our memory so that they make at least provisional sense. Schleifer and Vannatta, 2006: 374

As they comment, ‘Charon is describing the ways in which readers and doctors both make hypotheses about what they hear and encounter, gather new evidence, and reflectively reconfigure understanding, again and again. Detective fiction is about these encounters, as Auguste Dupin or Sherlock Holmes encounter stories, create hypotheses, test them, reflect upon them, over and over again. But this happens whenever we encounter narratives’ (2006: 374). As an example, Schleifer and Vannatta relate a story of a resident faced with a puzzling diagnosis in the ER. A woman was brought in, obviously confused and irritable. The resident queried the patient concerning recent events, past history and did a systems review. The initial diagnosis was hyponatremia, low sodium concentration in the blood, a symptom of which is the confusion observed.

Abduction as an Explanatory Strategy in Narrative

223

There can be several different causes: medications, an under-active thyroid gland, excessive water-drinking, congestive heart failure, etc. The resident asked the patient specifically if she took any medications, to which she answered ‘no’, and all other causes were ruled out after a systematic check for those conditions, thus creating a puzzle. The resident gave a report detailing this information to the attending physician, who hypothesized that she was taking medications and that the medication was likely chlorthalidone, which is a diuretic. The attending physician met with the woman the next day. He asked the patient again if she was taking any medication, and she once again denied doing so, but she glanced at her purse. Upon reflection, he couldn’t think of any other cause for her condition but that she was on chlorthalidone. On his next visit, he noticed that the purse was hidden, so he asked the patient directly to see it. She obliged and the chlorthalidone was there inside (2006: 374–375). Mystery solved. Just as a storyteller might hide certain clues or facts from the reader in order to create puzzles or mysteries, so the patient left certain gaps in her account, through embarrassment, forgetfulness, or what have you. The physician must attend to all aspects of the patient’s tale, including non-verbal gestures, such as the glance at the purse (2006: 380). As Schleifer and Vannatta remark, ‘a narrative such as this . . . demonstrates the ways that physicians, in their encounters with patient narratives, pursue hypothesis formation, test the hypothesis against a knowledge base, and develop a reflective understanding of the process’ (2006: 375). The nonverbal cues turned out to be as important as the patient’s verbal responses to the physician’s questions. Schleifer and Vannatta argue that the hypothesis-generating process of diagnosis is closely connected to narrative discourse, particularly the detective genre – ‘the narrative genre that most explicitly focuses upon abduction and hypothesis formation . . .’ (2006: 376). ‘Detective stories provide powerful narrative analogues to both histories of present illness and the diagnose they lead to’ (2006: 364). They continue: ‘Thus it is no accident that Peirce’s exposition of abduction repeatedly offers small narrative situations in order to present the distinction he is making between inductive and abductive logic’ (2006: 376). Indeed, scientific discoveries easily lend themselves to story form. In noting Peirce’s formulation of abduction (as The surprising fact, C, is observed; But if A were true, C would be a matter of course; Hence, there is reason to suspect that A is true (CP 5.189, 1903)), they argue that ‘. . . Peirce does formulate a description of abduction in a syllogism that sounds remarkably like a narrative’ (2006: 365). Schliefer and Vannatta make the point that the patient is a storyteller and the doctor a reader who must gather the elements of the story of the illness into a

224

Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Peircean Semiotics

coherent whole. These include the symptoms, time frame, non-verbal cues, and the relationships among the symptoms (2006: 363). They suggest that the existence of the surprising event in the diagnostic process is ‘an “episode” in a narrative that presents itself as a “meaningful whole” ’ (2006: 368). Abductive reasoning is the means by which events, particularly surprising events are organized into this meaningful whole.

H.G. Wells: Narratives about the scientific method Today, H.G. Wells is remembered primarily for his innovative science fiction. During his lifetime, however, Wells (1866–1946) was ‘perhaps the most influential Anglophone writer of the first half of the twentieth century’ whose ideas influenced world leaders and ordinary people alike (S. James ix–x). Writing in 1941, George Orwell paid tribute to Wells’s enormous impact on a whole generation: ‘Thinking people who were born about the beginning of this century are in some sense Wells’s own creation . . . The minds of all of us, and therefore the physical world, would be perceptibly different if Wells had never existed’ (1941: 153). Wells is relevant to Peirce’s scientific thinking and his concept of abduction in particular in several ways. First, Wells had extensive formal training in science. In the 1880s, he studied biology under the eminent Thomas Huxley (‘Darwin’s Bulldog’) at the Normal School of Science in South Kensington (subsequently renamed the Royal College), where he also took courses in mathematics and several different branches of science. As Simon James notes, Wells ‘was arguably both the first writer in the canon of English Literature to have been trained as a pure scientist (a word not in use until the late nineteenth century), but also, according to Roslynn D. Haynes, “the last great literary writer to have been so strongly influenced by science” ’ (qtd. in S. James 2012: 13). Second, Wells did more than institute the now-familiar conventions we’ve come to associate with the genre of science fiction. The scientific orientation was bedrock to Wells’s outlook and output as a writer: His speculative fiction displays the scientific method in action, and his non-fiction essays, books, and speeches are aimed at educating the public on scientific methods and advances. In ‘The Discovery of the Future’, for example, first delivered as an address to the Royal Institution on 24 January 1902, Wells explains that scientific evidence is not an ‘aimless collection of little facts . . .’ on which scientists perform a ‘conjuring [trick]’ to produce ‘accidental’ discoveries (1902: 77). Facts are only the ‘raw

Abduction as an Explanatory Strategy in Narrative

225

material’ of science, ‘the essential thing’ being ‘not the collection of facts, but the analysis of facts’ (1902: 77; emphasis added). In a number of his novels and short stories, he illustrates explicitly what he means by scientific ‘analysis’, which bears the hallmarks of Peirce’s notions of abduction, deduction and induction. This resemblance is not surprising, however, because while there is no direct evidence that he knew Peirce’s work, Wells was familiar with pragmatism and found it a congenial philosophy. He and William James were acquaintances, and the two men knew and admired each other’s work (Smith, 1986: 95, 514).3 Another connection between Wells and Peirce comes through Spiritualism and, indirectly, Karl Pearson. Both Peirce and Wells reviewed works produced by The Society for Psychical Research (SPR): Peirce reviewed Phantasms of the Living (1886) and Wells Apparitions and Thought-Transference (1894). The two men critiqued the SPR along similar lines.4 In his review, Peirce was very critical of the methodology, the use of statistics, and the lack of proper scientific attitude of the researchers (1887). In his review, Wells states bluntly that the investigators are ‘by no means instinct with the scientific method’, pointing to their ‘lack of critical capacity’ due to what we would now call confirmation bias (‘severe confirmatory inquiry’), cherry-picking evidence, hasty generalization, and other types of fallacies associated with flawed scientific reasoning (1894: 51).5 As an example, Wells cites the treatment of the Boston medium, Mrs Piper, by the eminent physicist Oliver Lodge, who gave Mrs Piper the benefit of the doubt, despite the fact that she often ‘gabbled, made chance shots, “fished” for information, and was generally a transparent enough imposition’. But because she ‘occasionally’ got something right, the investigators ‘give her credit, and forgive all her failures’ (1894: 49). As can be seen, Wells’s critique is similar to Peirce’s critique of Carrington’s overly generous conclusions regarding Eusapia Palladino (CP 2.662, 1910). Wells’s review was supported by Karl Pearson, who, in a published response, joined with Wells to denounce the SPR’s ‘want of scientific acumen’, as he (Pearson) put it, writing that ‘Mr H. G. Wells disposes very aptly of most of the claims set up by Mr Podmore and his colleagues to be real scientific investigators’ (1894: 153). Clearly, Pearson saw the parallels between his own outlook and Wells’s, and the connections between Pearson and Peirce have been well documented.6 Despite some obvious differences, Peirce, Pearson and Wells shared a similar conception of the scientific method and a fervent belief that only its utilization would enable humankind to flourish. Much of Wells’s early fiction exemplifies the scientific method at work. This point has been made by a number of scholars about Wells’s ‘scientific romances’,

226

Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Peircean Semiotics

though no one has made the connection to Peirce’s concept of abduction. As Michael Sherborne notes, Wells’s plots are given an ‘appropriately “scientific” structure’: ‘theories [are] formulated and discarded as the evidence is pieced together, until the real truth appears’ (2010: 43). In The Time Machine: An Invention (1895), for example, the Time Traveller goes through a series of abductions to account for what he experiences in the year 802,701 ce, which models the reasoning involved in a reader’s negotiation of a new story world and its inhabitants. As the Time Traveller gains new information about the environment and its inhabitants, he forms one hypothesis after another, each one more complete than the last, until he reaches the final chilling conclusion that the hideous Morlocks feed on the frail but beautiful Eloi. Even so, his conclusion is never confirmed, and readers have pointed out clues that even this final hypothesis may have been incorrect. Here we turn to two 1897 short stories to show the confluence among the various themes in this essay: ‘Mr. Marshall’s Doppelgänger’ and ‘The Star’. These stories illustrate the scientific method as a kind of narrative competence, whereby one judges the soundness of a hypothesis (or abduction) on the basis of how well a narrative associated with it accounts for all aspects of a phenomenon. The first story is set up like a mystery, and therefore follows a similar pattern to the Sherlock Holmes and Auguste Dupin examples already referenced. The second story, however, is built on suspense. We argue that abduction is equally present in both types of stories and therefore plays a fundamental role in all narratives. In ‘Mr. Marshall’s Doppelgänger’, Wells imitates the way the SPR set up their investigations into ‘veridical hallucinations’ and made them available to the public. In it, a psychic researcher recounts the investigation into the sighting of a doppelgänger in a small English village on a frosty Christmas Eve (1897: 356– 357). Mr Marshall, a local farmer, has been seen in two places simultaneously: outside the vicarage, spewing forth ‘a volley of curses’ at the vicar and his curate; and outside the Seven Thorns, ‘helplessly drunk’ and being carried home to his wife, who in disgust directs his bearers to leave him on the kitchen floor (1897: 356). The narrator, a ‘once active member of the Society for the Rehabilitation of Abnormal Phenomena’ (an obvious play on the SPR), investigates the mystery at the request of the Reverend Burwash, who is an avid Spiritualist. The narrator interrogates the villagers, the vicar, the curate, and Mrs Marshall, ‘sift[ing] and weigh[ing] every scrap of evidence’ and assessing the probabilities of various explanations. Marshall looks nothing like any of the other villagers, so the narrator rules out mistaken identity. Mrs Marshall complains that her mince pie and sausages vanished the same night, but the narrator dismisses that detail as

Abduction as an Explanatory Strategy in Narrative

227

completely irrelevant. He concludes that the personage seen by Burwash and his curate was not Marshall at all, but his doppelgänger: ‘I . . . could see no way to reconcile the two [sightings] except by . . . admitting a belief in doppelgängers’. The narrator writes up the results for the Society, whose members are thrilled at the seemingly unassailable proof of this ‘occult phenomenon’ (1897: 356). Unfortunately for the Society, some weeks later the curate Wendover discovers a much more plausible explanation. Wendover, who, as the narrator observes ruefully, ‘will not have psychic phenomena at any price’, momentarily mistakes another villager, Mr Franks, for Marshall. Franks has his back to Wendover, and he’s wearing Marshall’s cast-off trousers, which were distinctively light-coloured (1897: 356). Recollecting a cryptic remark made by Franks about Mrs Marshall’s culinary skills, Wendover puts two and two together and wangles a confession from Franks that the drunken villagers had delivered him, not Marshall, to the kitchen, and when he regained consciousness in the wee hours of the morning, Franks had absconded with the mince pie and sausages and left the door open for Marshall (who was outside sleeping off his own intoxication). The festive spirits and darkness of Christmas Eve had allowed the mistaken identity to go undetected, serendipitously masking the identity of the thief. The story clearly lampoons those in the SPR who were searching for real doppelgängers.7 But it also provides a good example of abduction. It begins with the ‘extraordinary contradiction between two perfectly credible stories’, which the narrator sums up succinctly: ‘On the one hand, two clergymen . . . witness that Marshall was in one place, and on the other, four indisputably honest villagers and the man’s own wife testify as emphatically that he was in quite another place’ (1897: 356). The narrator considers but rejects the possibility that the clergymen mistook someone else for Marshall, because they got a good look at his distinctive face, with its ‘noticeably long nose, a fresh complexion, and a large mouth’ (1897: 356). At this point, the narrator states his own abduction as to what explains the contradiction:‘It was doppelgänger or nothing. Doppelgänger, to my mind, seemed the more credible climax. In the whole course of my career as a psychic inquirer, I had certainly never come upon any occult phenomenon so absolutely a tried and proven thing’ (1897: 356). Wendover, the curate, on the other hand, challenges the plausibility of the narrator’s conclusion: ‘If facts prove arrant nonsense’, the skeptical curate proclaims, it shows there’s ‘a flaw somewhere’ (1897: 357). Wendover finds the flaw by paying attention to all the aspects of the case, including the missing pie and sausages, which the narrator dismisses as ‘a side issue’ and ‘a troublesome irrelevance’ (1897: 357). Thus Wendover’s abduction explains all the circumstances, rather than only some of them. Wendover also

228

Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Peircean Semiotics

inadvertently ‘tests’ the discarded ‘mistaken identity’ hypothesis by himself mistaking Franks for Marshall, due to his clothing, not his face. When Wendover investigates further, he realizes that Franks and Marshall are unreliable as witnesses because each has something to hide: the theft of the pie and sausages in the case of Franks, and extreme inebriation in the case of Marshall. Moreover, while the vicar and curate saw Marshall clearly, the conditions were favourable for Franks to be mistaken as Marshall – it was a dark, cold night, and the villagers who carried ‘Marshall’ home, were ‘seasonably inebriated’. Mrs Marshall, though sober, was not in any better position to observe; because she was ‘in a déshabille that she considered unbecoming’, she watched by candlelight from the upstairs landing as the villagers brought in her ‘husband’ and ‘deposit[ed]’ him in the kitchen (1897: 356). ‘Mr. Marshall’s Doppelgänger’ illustrates the flawed forms of abduction that both Peirce and Wells criticized in the psychic research produced by the SPR. The narrator’s proposed narrative does not provide the most plausible explanation of the phenomena. The hypothesis is untestable since the doppelgänger cannot be produced and observed. The witnesses lack scientific training, and moreover a number of them are falling down drunk when the events occur. In addition, the culprit has a vested interest in supporting the doppelgänger theory because he wants to keep his thievery a secret. The narrator has a vested interest because his reputation is on the line. He does not weigh the probabilities carefully enough and dismisses relevant facts out of hand. Mr Wendover’s more plausible explanation on the other hand, involves an abduction that explains all the events; it takes into account the abilities, dispositions, and special interests of the participants; and it is in line with the common experience of humankind. ‘Mr. Marshall’s Doppelgänger’ has the structure of a mystery, like the Sherlock Holmes and Dupin stories: something mysterious has happened in the past, and the characters work to solve the mystery. In Wells’s story, however, the reader does not passively follow the abductive thinking of a brilliant detective, but of ordinary people who abduct more or less successfully. The story illustrates what makes a good abduction, and by extension, good scientific methodology, by contrasting Wendover’s plausible hypothesis with the narrator’s implausible one. But is abduction only at work in detective plots or can it be seen in other kinds of plots? What if a story is structured around suspense about the future, rather than a mystery in the past? To answer this question, we turn to another story by Wells, ‘The Star’. Published in the same year as ‘Mr. Marshall’s Doppelgänger’ (and the first instalment of The War of the Worlds), ‘The Star’ tells the story of a meteorite that

Abduction as an Explanatory Strategy in Narrative

229

appears in the sky, hits Neptune, and barrels toward the sun with the earth directly in its path. When the ‘star’ first appears, only the astronomers notice because they have the equipment to see it and the scientific training to understand the implications. The public starts to take notice when the star gets bright enough to see with the naked eye, but people around the world have many different reactions and interpretations. It is only when the star begins to wreak havoc that there is universal concern among human beings. The extreme heat and gravitational pull causes melting ice, floods, sea level rise, and earthquakes. Loss of life is heavy. Though the star does not actually collide with the earth, but continues past it on ‘its headlong journey downward into the sun’, it leaves devastation in its wake, as well as permanent climate change: ‘everywhere the days were hotter . . . and the sun larger, and the moon, shrunk to a third of its former size, took now fourscore days between its new and new’ (1897a: 289). The end of the story hints at the emergence of a ‘new brotherhood [that] grew among men’ after the catastrophe and concludes with a mention of Martian astronomers who observed the phenomenon from afar. In contrast to the plot of a detective story, the plot of ‘The Star’ is driven by suspense: it is future-oriented, not past-oriented. The question of what has happened – where the meteorite came from, how it hit Neptune – is not at issue; rather the immediate concern for the characters (and readers) is what will happen. What does this new, rapidly approaching heavenly body mean for earth’s inhabitants? Is it the end of the world? The question for our argument is whether such a future-oriented suspense plot shows evidence of abduction. We believe that it does. Abduction is at work in characters as they try to interpret the meaning of the star and predict its significance. They form varied and conflicting hypotheses about the implications of the surprising appearance of a new heavenly body, and the narrative can be seen as testing these different hypotheses. Scientific training and specialized equipment first alert astronomers to the surprising ‘retardation’ of Neptune’s orbital velocity, which then becomes ‘very erratic’. Lay people, on the other hand, are initially indifferent: these observations were ‘scarcely calculated to interest a world the greater portion of whose inhabitants were unaware of the existence of the planet Neptune’ (1897a: 281). The discrepancy between scientific and lay opinion builds suspense by prompting the reader to question which abduction is more accurate. The suspense increases when a ‘London paper’ publishes an article with the headline ‘A Planetary Collision’ relating the astronomer Duchaine’s abduction that ‘this strange new planet would probably collide with Neptune’ (1897a: 282). In the cities, where people

230

Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Peircean Semiotics

read newspapers,‘thousands of men turned their eyes skyward’ in the ‘expectation, however vague’ that there will be ‘some imminent phenomenon in the sky’ (1897a: 82). They aren’t disappointed: ‘a great white star, [came] suddenly into the westward sky!’ (1897a: 282). At this point, people all around the globe can see the ‘small round clear shining disc’ and the abductions – the hypotheses as to what this new star will portend – are varied. Some interpret it according to tradition or superstition: ‘where science has not reached, men stared and feared, telling one another of the wars and pestilences foreshadowed by these fiery signs in the Heavens’ (1897a: 282). Some interpret it personally, as the lovers who say ‘That is our star’ and feel ‘strangely comforted by the sweet brilliance of its light’ (1897a: 284). Up to this point, however, most spectators view the star as nothing more than an exotic spectacle with little reference to them. After the meteor hits Neptune, the average viewer notices that the star is ‘brighter’, but the astronomers in the ‘dim observatories’ are sobered because they realize that the star is brighter because it is ‘nearer’ (1897a: 283). Many still do not realize the import of the star being nearer, but one scientifically oriented schoolboy ponders: ‘Stop a planet in its flight, rob it of its centrifugal force, what then? Centripetal has it, and down it falls into the sun! . . . Do we come in the way? I wonder – ’ (1897a: 283). The boy’s realization that it is possible that the star could hit the earth amounts to an abduction. The schoolboy’s intuition is borne out by the ‘momentous calculation’ of a ‘master mathematician’ who announces to his students and to the world that ‘Man has lived in vain’ (1897a: 284). He has determined the star will pass close to Jupiter, which would cause ‘the greatest of the planets’ to be ‘deflected from his orbit into an elliptical path, and the burning star, swung by his attraction wide of its sunward rush, would “describe a curved path” and perhaps collide with, and certainly pass very close to, our earth’ (1897a: 285). Even if the star doesn’t hit the earth, the mathematician predicts dire consequences: ‘Earthquakes, volcanic outbreaks, cyclones, sea waves, floods, and a steady rise in temperature’ (1897a: 285). Reactions to this hypothesis form another set of abductions – how to avoid this catastrophe. The mathematician faces his fate ‘as one might look into the eyes of a brave enemy’, but some others turn to religious solutions. Church bells ring ‘in a million belfry towers and steeples, summoning the people to sleep no more, to sin no more, but to gather in their churches and pray’ (1897a: 285). Still others take a skeptical view, relying on habit and ‘common sense’ which was ‘sturdy everywhere, scornful, jesting, a little inclined to persecute the obdurate fearful’ (1897a: 286). Each of these responses involves abduction – hypotheses about what will happen and how to behave. Unfortunately, the mathematician is

Abduction as an Explanatory Strategy in Narrative

231

closest to the mark, and when the star begins to wreak the havoc he had predicted, the ‘the laughter ceased’ (1897a: 286). Once the catastrophic effects ensue, human beings go into survival mode, a ‘rudderless confusion’ (1897a: 287). When the star starts receding, most survivors ‘regarded it . . . with that dull stupidity that hunger, fatigue, heat and despair engender’, but a few ‘perceive the meaning of these signs’ and form another abduction that the earth has been spared (1897a: 288). Alongside the characters in the story, the reader makes abductions. As the star races towards the earth, the reader forms conjectures as to what will happen. Presumably, at least one person has survived because the narrator lives to tell the tale. Once it becomes clear that the earth has been bypassed, the reader wonders what will happen to humankind. Will civilization be rebuilt? The narrator hints that attitudes are radically changed by this close call, and a ‘new brotherhood’ begins to emerge, along with ‘the saving of laws and books and machines’. Migration occurs ‘northward and southward towards the poles’ due to a warmer climate (1897a: 289). In both stories, the ‘followability’ of Wells’s narratives privileges scientific expertise as a predictor of sound abduction. The characters in both stories who hew closest to scientific understanding are the most successful in their abductions. Explicitly or implicitly, the stories school the reader as to when conclusions can be provisionally drawn, and when conclusions should remain open-ended and amenable to further information. As such, Wells is training the reader how to read plots, whether past- or future-oriented, scientifically and abductively. Wells conceives of scientific explanations as narratives that join together all the elements of a given situation into the most plausible causal chain. Read in tandem with the Wells’s review of Apparitions, it becomes evident that Wells’s stories illustrate and experiment with the scientific method to foster the attitude of ‘sceptical caution’ touted in his review.

Conclusion Contrary to the received view by many scholars, we have argued for an interconnection between scientific reasoning and narrative thinking. In particular, we have examined the relation between abduction, storytelling and reading plot. Our claim goes beyond the more restricted one of Sebeok, UmikerSebeok and Harrowitz, namely, that abduction is exemplified in the detective genre by the characteristic thinking of detectives. As the analyses of narrative by

232

Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Peircean Semiotics

Forster, White, Gallie, Ricoeur and Iser show, to the extent that there are elements of surprise and the explanation of surprise, narratives involve a thinking similar if not identical to abductive reasoning, as Peirce construed it in the context of scientific practice. To further support this claim, we discussed the work of Schleifer and Vannatta, who argue that there is a narrative character to the sort of abductive reasoning found in medical diagnoses, and we have discussed some of the works of H.G. Wells, in which he shows how readers should employ scientific reasoning in reading stories. Moreover, as ‘The Star’ illustrates, suspense can be understood abductively as the rivalry between two or more hypotheses concerning future events, based on the clues or incidents laid out in the plot. As a result, Wells demonstrates not only that the logic in reading plot is scientific in character, but that stories can help school readers in good, scientific reasoning.

References Aristotle [n.d.] 1952. De Poetica. In W.D. Ross (ed.), The Works of Aristotle. Translated by Ingram Bywater. Oxford: Clarendon Press. A Shot in the Dark, 1964 [film]. Directed by Blake Edwards. Britain: Mirisch Films. Bal, M. 2004. Narratology: Introduction to the Theory of Narrative. Translated by Christine von Boheemen. 2nd ed. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Bruner, J. 1986. Actual Minds, Possible Worlds. Cambridge, MA : Harvard University Press. Chatman, S. 1978. Story and Discourse. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Douven, I. 2017. ‘What is Inference to the Best Explanation? And Why Should We Care?’ In Poston, T. and K. McCain (eds), Best Explanations: New Essays on Inference to the Best Explanation. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Doyle, A.C. [1890] 2016. The Sign of Four. New York: Jungle Land Publishing. Forster, E. 1927. Aspects of the Novel. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co. Gallie, W.B. 1968. Philosophy and the Historical Understanding. New York: Schocken. Grimstad, P. 2005. ‘C. Auguste Dupin and Charles S. Peirce: An Abductive Affinity’. The Edgar Allan Poe Review. 6(2): 22–30. Gurney, E., F. W. H. Myers and F. Podmore. 1886. Phantasms of the Living. 2 vols. London: Trübner and Co. Hanson, N.R. 1958. Patterns of Discovery: An Inquiry into the Conceptual Foundations of Science. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Harman, G. 1965. ‘The Inference to the Best Explanation’. Philosophical Review 74: 88–95. Harré, R. 1988. ‘Realism and Ontology’. Philosophia Naturalis 25: 386–398.

Abduction as an Explanatory Strategy in Narrative

233

Harrowitz, N. 1983. ‘The Body of the Detective Model: Charles S. Peirce and Edgar Allan Poe’. In U. Eco and T. Sebeok (eds), The Sign of Three. Bloomington, IN : Indiana University Press, 179–197. Haynes, R.D. 1980. H.G. Wells Discoverer of the Future: The Influence of Science on his Thought. New York: New York University Press. Hempel, C. 1966. Philosophy of Natural Science. Englewood Cliffs, NJ : Prentice-Hall. Iser, W. 1978. The Act of Reading: A Theory of Aesthetic Response. Baltimore, MD : Johns Hopkins University Press. James, W. 1983. ‘Brute and Human Intellect’. In Essays in Psychology. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. James, S. 2012. Maps of Utopia: H.G. Wells, Modernity, and the End of Culture. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Levi, I. 1980. ‘Induction as Self Correcting According to Peirce’. In D.H. Mellor (ed.), Science Belief and Behaviour. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lipton, P. 2004. Inference to the Best Explanation. London: Routledge. McCauliffe, W. 2015. ‘How Did Abduction Get Confused with Inference to the Best Explanation’. Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society Vol. 51(3): 300–319. Murray, B. 1990. H.G. Wells. New York: Continuum. Orwell, G. [1941] 2008. ‘Wells, Hitler and the World State’. All Art Is Propaganda: Critical Essays. Orlando, FL : Harcourt, 148–155. Pearson, K. 1894. ‘Letter to the Editor, “Peculiarities of Psychical Research”’. Nature 51: 153. Peirce, C.S. 1887. ‘Criticism on “Phantasms of the Living.” An Examination of the Argument of Messrs. Gurney, Myers, and Podmore’. Proceedings of the American Society for Psychical Research 1: 157–179. Peirce, C.S. 1929. Guessing. The Hound and Horn 2: 267–282. Peirce, C.S. 1931. The Collected Papers of Charles S. Peirce. C. Hartshorne, P. Weiss, and A.W. Burks (eds). 8 vols. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. [References to Peirce’s Papers will be designated CP, followed by volume and paragraph number] Peirce, C.S. 1967. Manuscripts in the Houghton Library of Harvard University, as identified by Richard Robin, Annotated Catalogue of the Papers of Charles S. Peirce. Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press. [References to the Peirce manuscripts will be designated by R, followed by page number]. Podmore, F. 1894. Apparitions and Thought-Transference: An Examination of the Evidence for Telepathy. London: Walter Scott. Poe, E.A. [1841] 2014. ‘The Murders in the Rue Morgue’. C. Auguste Dupin Collection. New York: Enhanced Ebooks Edition. Psillos, S. 2000. ‘Abduction: Between Conceptual Richness and Computational Complexity’. In A.K. Kakas and P. Flach (eds), Abduction and Induction: Essays on Their Relation and Integration. Dordrecht: Kluwer, 59–74. Ritchie, B. 1965. ‘The Formal Structure of the Aesthetic Object’. In E. Vivas and M. Krieger (eds). The Problems of Aesthetics. New York: Holt, 225–233.

234

Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Peircean Semiotics

Ricoeur, P. 1983. Time and Narrative. Translated by K. McLaughlin and D. Pellauer. 3 vols. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Rovine, M. and D. Anderson. 2004. ‘Peirce and Bowditch: An American Contribution to Correlation and Regression’. The American Statistician 58(3), 232–236. Schleifer, R. and J. Vannatta. 2006. ‘The Logic of Diagnosis: Peirce, Literary Narrative, and the History of Present Illness’. Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 31(4): 363–384. Schupbach, J. and J. Springer. 2011. ‘The Logic of Explanatory Power. Philosophy of Science 78: 105–127. Schurz, G. 2008. ‘Patterns of Abduction.’ Synthese 164, 201–234. Sebeok, T. and J. Umiker-Sebeok. 1983. ‘ “You Know my Method”: A Juxtaposition of Charles Peirce and Sherlock Holmes’. In U. Eco and T. Sebeok (eds). The Sign of Three. Bloomington, IN : Indiana University Press, 11–54. Sherborne, M. 2010. H.G. Wells: Another Kind of Life. London: Peter Owen. Shklovsky, V. 1965. ‘Sterne’s Tristram Shandy: Stylistic Commentary’. In Lee L. and M. Reis (eds). Russian Formalist Criticism: Four Essays. Lincoln, NB : University of Nebraska Press, 25–57. Shurrz, G. 2008. ‘Patterns of Abduction’. Synthese 164: 201–234. Smith, D.C. 1986. H.G. Wells: Desperately Mortal. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Stigler, Stephen. 1978. ‘Mathematical Statistics in the Early States’. The Annals of Statistics 6 (2), 239–265. Wells, H.G. [1894] 2008. ‘Peculiarities of Psychical Research’. In John S. Partington (ed.). H.G. Wells in Nature, 1893–1946: A Reception Reader. Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 47–51. Wells, H.G. 1897. ‘Mr. Marshall’s Doppelgänger’. The Gentlewoman 15.376 (18 Sept). Wells, H.G. [1897a] 1998. ‘The Star’. In John Hammond (ed.). The Complete Short Stories of H. G. Wells, 281–289. Wells, H.G. [1902] 2008. ‘The Discovery of the Future’. In J.S. Partington (ed.), H.G. Wells in Nature, 1893–1946: A Reception Reader. Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 67–86. Wells, H.G. 1908. First and Last Things: A Confession of Faith and Rule of Life. London: Archibald Constable. Wells, H. G. 1917. God the Invisible King. New York: Macmillan. Wells, H. G. 1919. The Idea of the League of Nations. Boston: Atlantic Monthly Press. White, H. 1987. The Content of the Form: Narrative Discourse and Historical Representation. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Williams, K. 2007. H. G. Wells: Modernity and the Movies. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press.

8

Logic and Dialogic in Peirce’s Conception of Argumentation* Augusto Ponzio

In inference the relation between premises and conclusion may be considered in terms of dialogue between interpreted signs and interpretant signs. The degree of dialogism and alterity is low in deduction (where the conclusion is a necessary derivation from the premises in a relation of the indexical type), and in induction (where the relation between premises and conclusion is determined by habit and is symbolic). More specifically, in deduction the degree of dialogism in the relation (an indexical relation) between interpreted (premises) and interpretant (conclusion) is minimal: once the premises are accepted the conclusion follows automatically. Induction (where the relation between premises and conclusion is symbolic) is also characterized by unilinear inferential processes: identity and repetition dominate, but the relation between premises and conclusion does not necessarily hold. Instead, in abduction the relation between the argumentative parts is dialogic in a substantial sense. Here the relation between premises and conclusion is predominantly iconic, therefore a relation of reciprocal autonomy. Consequently, abductive inference can generate sign processes at high degrees of dialogism and otherness. This type of inference is risky, inventive and creative. The margin for convention, or symbolicity, and mechanical necessity, or indexicality, is minimal. The ‘if . . . then’ inference, or hypothesis formation, indeed any ‘chain of thought’ is, in different degrees, dialogic in itself. Typology of signs (symbol, index, and icon) and typology of forms of inference are, in Peirce, interconnected, and this interconnection results in terms of dialogue.

*

Translated from the Italian by Susan Petrilli.

235

236

Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Peircean Semiotics

The dialogic nature of the thinking self Two important ‘typologies’ proposed by Peirce – his triad symbol, index, icon, and his tripartition of inference into deduction, induction, abduction – are not simply separate and mutually indifferent classifications. On the contrary, the different ‘types of signs’ – or rather, as Thomas A. Sebeok in particular has shown, ‘aspects of signs’– and the different modalities of inferences (or arguments) are interconnected to varying degrees relative to their dialogic import (concerning Sebeok on this point, see Petrilli and Ponzio 2001a: 183). With Peirce, the question of argumentation and interpretation is inevitably connected to the question of the self and of the other, not only the other from self, but the other of self. The self is double because it is a sign. The self, Peirce says, is not absolutely individual: ‘his thoughts are what he is “saying to himself,” that is, is saying to that other self that is just coming into life in the flow of time. When one reasons, it is that critical self that one is trying to persuade; and all thought whatsoever is a sign, and is mostly of the nature of language’ (CP 5.421, 1905). The self is a sign, and not only a sign for another self that renders him an object of interpretation, as in the case of ‘you’ or ‘he’. ‘Doubleness’ concerns the self as a sign for self, in the position of self. The position of self presupposes a doubling in interpreted and interpretant. Each time there is an ‘I feel’, ‘I think’, ‘I want’, there is a self-interpreted by an interpretant self. Therefore, the I is not someone else’s self, but one’s own self rendered an interpreted by the same self in the position of interpretant (see Petrilli and Ponzio 2005); Petrilli (2012) and (2013); Petrilli and Ponzio 2016). The I consists in the interpreted–interpretant relationship and insofar as it is a sign, the interpretant refers, in turn, to another interpretant and so forth in an open chain of deferrals so that there is no firm point, no final interpretant. Identity of the sign calls for a continuous shifting movement, so that each time the sign is interpreted it becomes other: it is, in fact, another sign which acts as an interpretant. This is also true of the I’s identity. This necessary other is functional to the I’s identity, to the process of becoming an I, its condition of possibility. The I is structured in temporal terms and emerges as a paradox of the I–other relationship, of identity and difference. The I is the ideal limit of an open identification process where, through cognitive and practical activity, alterations are superseded in the protension beyond the I’s present and identical being. The subject uses signs, is a sign, as Peirce claims. As such, it is continuously shifted, rendered other, in deferral processes from one interpretant to another. Rather than preceding the sign and controlling it, the subject presupposes the sign, belongs to it, emerges as the interpretant of a preceding sign. The I’s consciousness

Logic and Dialogic in Peirce’s Argumentation

237

is no more than a relation between a ‘sign-object’ and a ‘sign-subject’, a ‘meta-sign’, or more explicitly the relation between a sign and its interpretant. The dialogical character of the subject is inevitable. Peirce traces otherness in the subject, itself an open dialogue between sign and interpretant. Otherness is the basis of communication not only with others but also between I and myself (see Petrilli 2016). Thought for Peirce is structured dialogically. The relation between sign and interpretant is never one of mere equality, similarity, reduction of differences, of equivalence without a residue, substitution of the identical with the identical. When we think, the thought-sign forming the I is interpreted by a subsequent thought without which the former could not have the value of thought-sign. Each thought-sign is translated and interpreted in a subsequent thought-sign, in an open chain of deferrals among multiple I/self-signs constituting the thought of the ‘same person’. Each cognition or representation consists of interpretive relations among mental states at different moments (see CP 5.64–317, 1905; Ponzio, Petrilli and Sebeok (2001). The self is the chain of sign–interpretant relationships in which one recognizes oneself; to the point that experience of the other self is not a more complex problem than recognizing certain sign–interpretant relations as ‘my own’, those through which the ‘I’ becomes conscious of myself: ‘The recognition by one person of another’s personality takes place by means to some extent identical with the means by which he is conscious of his own personality’ (CP 6.160, 1892). Dialogue does not commence from a subject intending to communicate something about an object to another subject. Any thought, any reasoning is sign, is semiosis, and consequently is dialogically structured because it is founded on interpreted–interpretant dialogue.

Dialogism in semiosis and argumentation Peirce’s conception of logic considered in its close connection with his conception of sign reveals the dialogic nature of inference. Here I continue my reflections on the connection between logic and dialogue – where dialogue is here understood not as formal, external dialogue, similar to a conversation between two people, but as internal dialogue, an essential form of internal reasoning, in interpretation, in deliberation, even in perception. I take up and develop my reflections as expressed on different occasions where I have taken up and developed my interest in the dialogic nature of the sign, in this particular case shown by Peirce to be unlimited dialogue in an unlimited chain of interpretants (cf. specifically

238

Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Peircean Semiotics

Ponzio 1985a, 1985b, 1990, 1993a, 2004, 2005, 2006b, 2009a, 2009b; Petrilli and Ponzio 2005: 35–70. See also Petrilli 2004b). In deduction, where once the premises are accepted the conclusion follows automatically, the relation between the premises and the conclusion is indexical, and the degree of dialogism is minimal. In induction, which is also characterized by a unilinear inferential process, the conclusion is determined by convention, habit, commonplace, and is of the symbolic order. Here, identity and repetition dominate through the relation between premises and conclusion, even though the conclusion no longer follows automatically. By contrast, in abduction the relation between premises and conclusion is iconic and dialogic in a substantial sense. In other words, it is characterized by high degrees of dialogism and inventiveness as well as by a high-risk margin for error. Claiming that abductive argumentative procedures are risky means that they are mostly tentative and hypothetical with just a minimal margin for convention (symbolicity) and mechanical necessity (indexicality). Therefore, abductive inferential processes engender sign processes at the highest levels of otherness and dialogism. A preliminary examination of the Peircean idea of the relation between symbol, icon and index is necessary here, given that it has often been misunderstood. In fact, symbol, icon and index are often understood to denote three clearly distinguished and different types of sign, to the point of excluding each other. This is because these three different aspects of the sign have often been conceived as three different types of sign, completely separate from each other. As Sebeok especially has stressed on various occasions (see Sebeok 1986, 1991a, 1991b, 2000, 2001), Peirce with his typology classifies aspects of the sign and not types of sign. Signs that are exclusively symbols, icons or indexes do not exist in the real world. Therefore, in Peirce’s theory a symbol is a mere abstraction (see also Ponzio 1990: 197–214).

The interdependence of symbol, index and icon The symbol is never conceived as a pure symbol but is always more or less mixed with indexicality and iconicity. In Peirce’s words, it is always more or less degenerate (in the mathematical sense). This implies that icon and index represent different levels of the degeneracy of the symbol, instead of being two separate and autonomous classes of signs. The symbol, in the typology described by Peirce, is a sign mainly as a consequence of the mediation of a habit, or convention (see CP 4.531, 1906); in other words, a sign which to subsist as such

Logic and Dialogic in Peirce’s Argumentation

239

requires recourse to mediation based on a convention, is a symbol. The symbol is never pure but contains varying degrees of indexicality and iconicity; similarly, a sign may be characterized as an index or icon but it will always maintain the characteristics of symbolicity, that is, it requires the mediation of an interpretant and recourse to a convention. The symbol is not just a symbol alone; it clearly assumes some of the characteristics of either the icon or index. The symbol, the sign par excellence, is such because alterity and identity co-exist in it. In the Peircean conception of the symbol, alterity is constitutive of the very identity of the sign. The symbol can be represented iconically as a body in a state of unstable equilibrium where the stabilizing symbolic force is counteracted by the iconic and indexical forces. But this image establishes a relation of contrast between symbol, index and icon when, in fact, they are neither distinct, nor in a relation of opposition. Indexicality is at the core of the symbol for the very reason that the symbol depends upon the interpretant, owing to its relation to the object. This is what makes a sign a symbol. On the other hand, insofar as it is determined by the instances of what it denotes and insofar as it is a general type of law, the symbol entails indexicality. In the sign considered as a symbol, identity hinges upon the alterity of the sign which is determined by the mediation of the interpretant. Therefore, insofar as it is a symbol, ‘a sign is something by knowing which we know something more’ (CP 8.332, 1908). But this is true because the sign is not only a symbol, or better: the fact of being a symbol involves iconicity and indexicality, given that Thirdness – the mode of existence of the symbol – presupposes, according to Peircean terminology, Firstness and Secondness, or originality and obsistence, the modes of being respectively of the icon and index. Roman Jakobson – who with Sebeok contributed importantly to knowledge of Peirce’s Semiotics in the United States (see L. Ponzio 2017) – demonstrated in ‘Quest for the Essence of Language’ (1965) that in verbal language conventionality or, in Peirce’s terminology, symbolicity, is never pure: in a conventional language, as in verbal language, symbol, index and icon coexist and are in a relation of a mutual support (on this question see L. Ponzio 2015: 54–52, also section  1.7, ‘Jakobson e Peirce’). There are no signs that are purely icons or indexes and not simultaneously symbols, nor symbols with no trace of iconicity or indexicality. Perhaps the best image accounting for the symbol-index-icon relation is that of a filigreed transparency, with uneven traces of iconicity and indexicality, the opposite of pure transparency. The icon is characterized by a relation of similarity between the sign and its object. However, similarity is not sufficient to determine an iconic sign.

240

Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Peircean Semiotics

Twins look similar but they are not signs of each other. My reflexion in the mirror looks like me but it is not an iconic sign. For iconic signs to obtain, the effect of convention, habit, social practices or special functions must be added to similarity. Iconic similarity is a special kind of similarity: it is an abstraction on the basis of a convention, and it privileges only certain traits of similarity. The similarity of one banknote to another worth $50 is no doubt a sign that the first banknote, too, is worth $50. But if similarity is complete to the point that the serial numbers of both banknotes are identical, we have a false banknote that cannot carry out its legitimate function as an iconic sign on the money market. All the same, as Peirce affirms, the icon is the most independent sign from both convention and causality/contiguity: ‘An icon is a sign which would possess the character which renders it significant, even though its object had no existence; such as a lead-pencil streak as representing a geometrical line’ (CP 2.304, 1901) The index is a sign that signifies principally by a relation of contiguity, causality or by some other physical connection. However, this relation also depends on a habit or convention: for example, the relation between a knock at the door and someone on the other side of the door who wants to enter. Here convention plays its part in relating the knocking and the knocker, but contiguity/ causality predominates to the point that we are surprised if we open the door and nobody is there. Types of index include: (1) symptoms, medical, psychological, of natural phenomena (actual contiguity + actual causality); (2) clues, natural phenomena, attitudes and inclinations (presumed contiguity + non-actual causality); (3) traces, physical or mental (non-actual contiguity + presumed causality). ‘An index’, says Peirce, ‘is a sign which would, at once, lose the character which makes it a sign if its object were removed, but would not lose that character if there were no interpretant’ (CP 2.304, 1901).

Semiosis/interpretation, sign/argument, semiotics/logic In Peirce, the connection between semiosis and interpretation implies the connection between sign and argument, and therefore the connection between semiotics and logic. That, indivisibility of logic and language implicates also the connection between semiotics and philosophy of language (on this theme, see Petrilli and Ponzio 2016). We are led to awareness that, in Peirce’s viewpoint, the problem of the connection between identity and alterity in the sign is not just a problem of semiotics, but also concerns logic as theory of argumentation.

Logic and Dialogic in Peirce’s Argumentation

241

In Peirce this problem directly concerns logic, which as theory of argumentation also involves the problem of dialogue. Considered from the point of view of its relation to the object, the sign is a symbol insofar as it involves the mediation of an interpretant; from the point of view of its relation to the interpretant, the sign-symbol is an Argument. This is true if the sign-symbol distinctly represents the interpretant which it determines as its conclusion through a proposition that forms its premise or, more generally, its premises (see CP 2.95, 1902). Depending on the type of sign relation that comes to be established in the argument between premise and conclusion, three kinds of arguments are possible: Deduction, Induction and Abduction. The overlap of symbols, indexes and icons is particularly interesting since in Peircean semiotics if the symbol were to be of a purely symbolic nature, the relation between premises and conclusion would paradoxically be indexical and not symbolic. Let us suppose that the relation between conclusion and premises is of a purely analytical type, thus remaining wholly within the symbolic universe, the conventional/arbitrary, the Law; let us suppose, then, that there is a mere relation of identity between symbol and interpretant. In this case given the relation of constriction between the terms in question, the relation between conclusion and premise would be deductive and indexical. All this tells of reciprocal complicity in argumentation between symbol, icon and index. These three different ‘shades’ of the sign are, in turn, implicated in the argumentative process. This means that they are, at once, categories of both logic and semiotics. This is important for the character of the Argument and the role of index, icon and symbol in the three types of argumentation. The interpretants of a sign can generally be actual or potential. Instead, the argument aims at determining the interpretant, its conclusion, in a precise and programmed fashion. In the argument, the sign or more exactly the symbol (and given its degeneracy, the other signs as well) directly encounters its interpretant, its conclusion. In this case, a relation of alterity, implicit and virtual in the sign in general, is explicit and actualized. It might lead us to represent the Argument as divided (a division between premises and conclusion) between the two participators of a dialogue. Now, in the case of the Obsistent Argument, in Peirce’s terminology, or Deduction, both speakers are compelled (see CP 2.96, 1902) to acknowledge that the facts asserted in the premises by both or only one of the speakers could not obtain if the fact stated in the conclusion did not exist. On the other hand, in the Originary Argument or Abduction, and in the Transuasive Argument or Induction, speakers can only be inclined to admit that the conclusion is true – as

242

Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Peircean Semiotics

the rule the conclusion is drawn from the case and result (induction), or as the case it is drawn from the rule and result (abduction) (see CP 2.619-631, 1878) – because the speakers are in the condition to accept the premises without being obliged to accept the conclusion as well. This division of the Argument into parts where each one is supported by a subject accounts for the difference between a proposition, a sign for which nobody takes responsibility, on the one hand, and an assertion for which instead somebody does take responsibility, on the other – responsibility for the truth of a proposition through judgement which is precisely the act wherewith one resolves to adhere to a proposition. Dialogic division between the parts enables us to consider the level of dialogic complexity, that is, of alterity, differentiation, distance and novelty established in the argument between the sign and the interpretant. The dialogic character of logic is discussed in a medieval tractatus on logic entitled Summule logicales by Peter of Spain (Petrus Hispanicus, It. trans. 2010), a text known to Peirce. It is not incidental that Peirce should have used the term Speculative Rhetoric to designate transuasional logic (see Peirce CP 2.93), the doctrine of the general conditions whereby symbols and other signs refer to and determine interpretants. In fact, the term Rhetoric implies reference to the addressee, the interlocutor, and recalls such terms as to converse, to argue, to convince and to account for. Furthermore, it represents a break in a conception of reason and reasoning which originated with Descartes, and therefore it alludes to the uncertain, probabilistic, and approximative nature of human knowledge. Peircean logic is presented as dialogic. It is closely related to the conception of sign (with its various shades of degeneracy beginning with the genuineness of symbol) as identity/ alterity. In fact, the sign is actualized in a dialogic relation of alterity to the interpretant, without which any specific conferral of sense would be impossible. The interconnection of iconicity, indexicality and symbolicity involves different levels of dialogue and alterity of the interpretant (conclusion) with respect to the initial propositions of the argument (premises). However, this is independent of the fact of whether the subjects that determine propositions through judgements and transform them into assertions, or subjects that reason among themselves, are external to each other or part of the same person. In other words, we can have a situation where dialogue among two or more interlocutors is only formal, that is, there is no effective relation of alterity; or we can have a situation where dialogic interaction among the selves of one and the same person is substantial.

Logic and Dialogic in Peirce’s Argumentation

243

Degrees of alterity and dialogue in deduction, induction and abduction In deduction the type of relation to the interpretant is indexical; in induction it is symbolic; in abduction iconic. In deduction there is no relation of alterity (or at least it exists at a minimal level because there is always a certain amount of distancing in the deferment and renvoi to the interpretant between the two parts of the argument, that is to say, between premises and interpretant-conclusion). Once the premises have been accepted, the conclusion imposes itself, making its acceptance compulsory. We are dealing with obsistence which characterizes the category of secondness and is typical of the index. Firstness (in-itselfness) is the name given to one of the three categories of phenomena in the universe identified by Peirce, the other two are Secondness and Thirdness. Firstness helps to explain logico-cognitive processes and therefore, at the same time, the formation of signs. Analysed in terms of Peirce’s typology of signs, Firstness coincides with the sphere of iconicity. Something which presents itself as Firstness, presence, ‘suchness’, or pure quality is characterized by a relation of similarity (cf. CP 1.356–358, 1889). Secondness (obsistence, over-againstness), together with Firstness and Thirdness, is the omnipresent categories of mind, sign and reality (cf. CP 2.84–2.94, 1902). Secondness is the category according to which something is considered relatively to, or over against something else. It involves binarity, a relation of opposition or reaction. From the viewpoint of signs, Secondness is connected with the index. Whereas the icon, which is governed by Firstness, presents itself as an original sign, and the symbol, which is governed by Thirdness, presents itself as a transuasional sign, the index, which is governed by Secondness, is an obsistent sign (cf. CP 2.89–92, 1902). Thirdness (in-betweenness, transuasion) guides and stimulates interpretation and therefore has a heuristic value. The sign exemplifies the category of Thirdness, it embodies a triadic relation between itself, its object and the interpretant. A sign always plays the role of the third part, for it mediates between the interpretant sign and its object. Symbolicity is the dimension of the sign most shared in Thirdness, it is characterized by mediation (or in-betweenness), while iconicity by Firstness or immediacy (or in-itselfness), and indexicality by Secondness (or over-againstness). Firstness is the mode of being of that which is such as it is, positively and without reference to anything else; Secondness is the mode of being of that which is such

244

Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Peircean Semiotics

as it is, with respect to a second but regardless of any third; Thirdness is the mode of being of that which is such as it is, in bringing a second and third into relation to each other. cf. CP 8.329, 1908

In Peirce with respect to the typology of signs, Firstness, Secondness and Thirdness correspond to iconicity, indexicality and symbolicity; with respect to logic they correspond to abduction, deduction and induction. In deduction, premises and conclusion are connected to each other by a relation of dependence and reciprocal imposition. Neither of the two would have alterity: ‘If x, therefore y’, ‘If y, therefore x’. Peirce connected indexicality and deduction: An Obsistent Argument, or Deduction, is an argument representing facts in the Premise, such that when we come to represent them in a Diagram we find ourselves compelled to represent the fact stated in the Conclusion; so that the conclusion is drawn to recognize that, quite independently of whether it be if the fact stated in the Conclusion were not. There, that is to say, the Conclusion is drawn in acknowledgement that the facts in the premises constitute an Index of the fact which it is thus compelled to acknowledge. CP 2.96, 1902

The two speakers between whom a deductive type of argument is hypothetically divided are connected by a relation of reciprocal dependence and constraint. Despite the fact that each has their own identity, these speakers are not reciprocally other, exactly like husband and wife, where one cannot exist without the other (see CP 2.84, 1902). In deductive argument, the premise determines the conclusion, that is, the precedent determines the consequent with the same force of compulsion with which the past imposes itself upon the present. The conclusion must passively acknowledge the premise which has already been formulated like a ‘fait accompli’: [. . .] the Conclusion is drawn to recognize that, quite independently of whether it be recognized or not, the facts stated in the premises are such as could not be if the fact stated in the Conclusion were not there; that is to say, the Conclusion is drawn in acknowledgement that the facts stated in the Premise constitute an Index of the fact which it is thus compelled to acknowledge. CP 2.96, 1902

In induction, on the other hand, the conclusion is not imposed by the premises and is susceptible to modification. The value of the facts stated in the premises depends on their predictive character. The premises, therefore, refer to the

Logic and Dialogic in Peirce’s Argumentation

245

interpretant (conclusion) on which their meaning depends, as well as to their status as assertions and not mere propositions. Thus, the first part of the argument, which is completely oriented towards the second part (the interpretant), is a predominantly symbolic type of sign. Here one part of the argument is not predetermined by another, as is the case in deduction. They are independent of each other to a degree, in the sense that if the assertion of the premises is definitely a function of the conclusion, the facts stated could exist even if the fact stated in the conclusion did not. The category of mediation or Thirdness with its characteristic element of Transuasion, dominates (see CP 2.86, 1902). Given that in induction the consequent is not determined by the precedent, as occurs instead in deduction, memory and the past do not weigh on the argument as much as prediction, expectation and orientation towards the future. The premise predisposes the interpretant, feeds the conclusion and is its foil. There is an adjustment to the future in the sense that the formulation of premises (whatever they may be), and the very statement of the facts would not have been possible without a third element, prediction. By contrast, in a deductive argument which is dominated by the category of Obsistence, the transuasive argument or induction offers the possibility of broadening belief thanks to its opening to the future, to the importance it attaches to the interpretant, and to the fact that the relation between the conclusion and the premises is not of mechanical dependence. However, in spite of all this, inductive argument is merely repetitive and quantitative, for its sphere of validity remains that of the fact, that is, of the totality of facts on the basis of which alone is it possible to infer the future. As in deduction, the inductive process is unilinear and moves in a precise order of succession from the point of departure to the point of arrival without interruption, reversal or retroaction, unlike abduction which, as we will see, moves backwards from the consequent to the antecedent. In abduction the relation between Premise and Conclusion is one of similarity: the facts in the premise form an icon of the facts stated in the conclusion. Renvoi to the interpretant is of the iconic type. Furthermore, whatever is stated in the premises is independent of the conclusion in the sense that its validity is independent of the truth value of the conclusion. The category of Originality dominates in abduction, ‘Originality is being such as that being is, regardless of aught else’ (CP 2.89, 1902). This very capacity of being regardless of anything else constitutes alterity. The other is other because it is independent from reference to a viewpoint, a function, an objective, a

246

Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Peircean Semiotics

relation of distinction or opposition, or from insertion into a unitary story. For this reason, the other is a surplus external to the totality, to the totality of the Self and Sameness which is in the order of binarity and mediation, insofar as it is a unit, a teleological system. Firstness, or Orience, or Originality is ‘something which is what it is without reference to anything else within it or without it, regardless of all force and of all reason’ (CP 2.85). For this reason, it cannot be incorporated by the totality. On the contrary, it stimulates a breach, a renewal, a reopening and reorganization of a totality which is never definitively concluded and systematized. Knowledge, totality, binarity and mediation, cognition understood as adjustment to objects, presuppose orience, that is, alterity. But orience, alterity is the lack of adjustment par excellence, the surpassing of objectifying thought, of the subject/object, and the means/end relationship. In its more innovative aspects abduction ventures beyond the limits of a defined totality without the guarantee of return or reconciliation to the principles that exist in it. There is a movement towards alterity which exceeds notions of intentionality (the latter belongs to objectification and the subject/object relation) or of need. Given that the process of abduction is present in every moment of psychic life including sensation, the inherent opening to alterity is the foundation of all totalizing operations. However, this opening is not satisfied, concluded or exhausted in such operations: it does not find its own justification in them. Furthermore, the opening to alterity is relative to the different levels of freedom and creativity in abductive ‘orience’. At the higher levels of abductive creativity an effective dialogic relation is established between the parts of the argument. This is due to two main factors: the interpretant is relatively independent of the premises; and the rest of the argument includes relations of alterity with respect to the interpretant (conclusion) which are determined by the level of novelty in abductive conclusion. We make inferences from case through interpretation on the basis of a rule and a datum or result. The rule, therefore, is not given antecedently to and outside the process of interpretation – there are no pre-established rules that orient the relation between the parts of the argument mono-directionally. The conclusion is the interpretant of the statement that describes a certain datum or result. From this interpretation arises the law or general principle with respect to which the interpretant is determined. The thought-sign (premises) and the thought-interpretant (conclusion) are connected by a dialogic relation which is not pre-determined by the pre-dialogic selection of a law. Retroaction of the interpretant on the premise to the point that interpretation determines the

Logic and Dialogic in Peirce’s Argumentation

247

major premise is precisely what makes us define this type of reasoning as retroduction or abduction. Iconicity in abduction consists in establishing a relation between what is not originally and naturally related: imaginative representation attempts an approach to that which is given as other in order to lead it back to a relation of similarity. Similarity is listed by Peirce with all that is associated with the category of obsistence; Originality or Firstness is surpassed by Secondness or Obsistence when whatever exists autonomously is related to something else. To understand alterity in a sense means to exceed it. Therefore, the innovative, creative, displacing capacity of abduction can be traced in the capacity for the autonomously other, rather than in the image which draws nearer that which seems to evade all constraints. In the abductive process we run the risk of surpassing the datum, thus developing an interpretant that has its own alterity and autonomy in so far as it is not motivated, justified or compensated by the object datum it specifically refers to. Such self-sufficiency of the abductive interpretant, that is, its iconicity and originality, presents a challenge, a provocation with regard to the concept of identity and totality. It thus questions even what seems established and definitive, what exhibits an image which can neither be incorporated nor accounted for, whether through immediate reference to the fact or datum or on the basis of a system of preestablished laws. In the light of logic that goes beyond the logic of exchange and equilibrium, it is possible for an argument to actualize Firstness, Originality, or alterity at the very core of the symbolic, of the law, of the transuasional. Although the argument bears traces of symbolicity and indexicality, it also has the characteristics of iconic invention whose value ‘consists in its exhibiting the features of a state of things regarded as if it were purely imaginary’ (CP 4.448, 1903). As we can see, the Peircean conception of Sign allows a revision of the traditional concept of image. In all Western thought, from Plato to our own times, the image has always been conceived as a means of reduction to sameness. It is in the image that the subject finds and recognizes itself: the image is nothing but the reflection of whoever produces it. In this sense, the myth of Narcissus is particularly significant. Peirce offers a new conception of the image, that is, of the iconic dimension of the symbol: rather than as confirmation and repetition, a moment of encounter and recognition, from the Peircean perspective the image is déplacement, an opening towards alterity, the beginning of a journey in which the return chez soi is not guaranteed. In Peirce reason – or rather reasonableness – creativity, and love are

248

Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Peircean Semiotics

grounded in the logic of otherness and dialogism (cf. Peirce 1923, see Petrilli and Ponzio 2017). In the succession deduction–induction–abduction the degree of alterity increases. According to Peirce: Abduction is the process of forming an explanatory hypothesis. It is the only logical operation which introduces any new idea; for induction does nothing but determine a value, and deduction merely evolves the necessary consequences of a pure hypothesis. Deduction proves that something must be; induction shows that something actually is operative; abduction merely suggests that something may be. C P 5.172, 1903

Abduction is the inferential process by which the rule that explains the fact is hypothesized through a relation of similarity (an iconic relation) to that fact. The rule acting as general premise may be taken from a field of discourse that is close to or distant from that to which the fact belongs, or it may be invented ex novo. If the conclusion is confirmed, it retroacts on the rule and convalidates it (ab- or retro-duction). Such retroactive procedure makes abductive inference risky, exposing it to the possibility of error; at the same time, if the hypothesis is correct, abduction is innovative, inventive and sometimes even surprising.

To conclude and to indicate further perspectives Signs and arguments are formally dialogic as the result of a dialogue between ‘interpreteds’ and ‘interpretants’, according to varying degrees of dialogism. From a semiotic perspective, the relationship between interpreteds and interpretants produces signs which (on a scale ranging from a maximum degree of monologism to a maximum degree of dialogism, otherness and creativity) may be prevalently ‘indexical’, ‘symbolic’, or ‘iconic’. From this perspective, in logic the relationship between interpreteds (premises) and interpretants (conclusion) results in arguments or inferences, which may be ‘deductive’, ‘inductive’ or ‘abductive’. The varying balance in indexicality, symbolicity and iconicity in any given sign situation (whether formally dialogic or not) involves variations in the degree of otherness and dialogism regulating the relationship between the interpreted (premise) and interpretant (conclusion) of an argument: therefore, argumentative value may also be measured in terms of the degree of substantial dialogism.

Logic and Dialogic in Peirce’s Argumentation

249

Therefore, not only Russian philosopher Mikhail Bakhtin (1895–1975) and his so-called circle (see Bachtin e il suo Circolo 2014) which counts the scholars Valentin N. Vološinov and Pavel N. Medvedev among its representatives, but also Charles S. Peirce contributes to showing the fundamental role of dialogism in semiotics. The relation between Peirce and Bakhtin has been at the centre of my attention from the early 1980s (among most recent works, see A. Ponzio 2008, Bachtin e il suo Circolo 2014). 1980 is the year in which my first monograph on Bakhtin appeared (Ponzio 1980) and also the year of publication of the volume Semiotica containing writings by Peirce translated in Italian under the editorship of M.A. Bonfantini (Peirce 1980). Subsequently, in 2003, the same Bonfantini included this volume, re-elaborated and revised into the larger volume Opere (Peirce 2003). 2003 is also the year of publication of the second edition of Bonfantini’s book, La semiotica e l’abduzione (first ed. 1987) and of the revised and enlarged version of my own Tra semiotica e letteratura – Introduzione a Michail Bachtin, Ponzio (2015a). (On Peirce and on the topic of dialogue by Bonfantini, see also Bonfantini and Kloesel 1988 and 1990; Bonfantini et  al., 1993, 2006, 2015; Bonfantini and Ponzio (2010) and A. Ponzio (2012)). According to Peirce, dialogue is not only formal dialogue, dialogue between two interlocutors. There is a necessary, inevitable relationship between dialogue, interpretation and argumentation. Each time we reason, we do so within the context of a dialogic relationship with another person, even when this other person is our own interior double self through which we evaluate the validity of a given argument. The problem of dialogue with the other implies not only the problem of the other understood as another person, but also the other as the internal double. Signs and arguments are dialogic as the result of dialogue between ‘interpreted’ and ‘interpretant’, according to varying degrees of dialogism. From a semiotic perspective, the relationship between interpreted and interpretant produces signs which (on a scale ranging from a maximum degree of monologism to a maximum degree of dialogism, otherness and creativity) may be prevalently ‘indexical’, ‘symbolic’, or ‘iconic’. From the perspective of logic, the relationship between interpreteds (premises) and interpretants (conclusion) results in arguments or inferences which may be ‘deductive’, ‘inductive’ or ‘abductive’. The varying balance in indexicality, symbolicity and iconicity in any given sign situation (whether formally dialogic or not) involves variations in the degree of otherness and dialogism regulating the relationship between the interpreted (premise) and interpretant (conclusion) of an argument: therefore, argumentative value may also be measured in terms of the degree of substantial dialogism.

250

Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Peircean Semiotics

It follows that (and we read Peirce in this sense) it is necessary – not in contrast to the logic of identity but in dialogue with it – to work, in the course of semiotic search, and in the course of life, on and for a logic of alterity respectively.

References Bachtin, M. 2008. In dialogo. Conversazioni del 1973 con Victor Duvakin (ed.) A. Ponzio, trans. R.S. Cassotti, Naples: ESI. Bachtin, M. 2014. Opere 1919–1930. Bilingual Russian/Italian edition, trans. (with L. Ponzio), introduction and commentary A. Ponzio. Series ‘Il Pensiero Occidentale’, Milan: Bompiani. Bonfantini, M. 2003. La semiosi e l’abduzione. Milan: Bompiani. Bonfantini, M., R. Fabbrichesi and S. Zingale. 2015. Su Peirce. Interpretazioni ricerche, prospettive. Milan: Bompiani. Bonfantini, M. and C. Kloesel (eds). 1988. Peirceana, Versus, 48. Bonfantini, M. 1990. Peiceana Two, Versus, 55/56. Bonfantini, M. and A. Martone (eds). 1993. Peirce in Italia. Naples: Liguori. Bonfantini, M., S. Petrilli and A. Ponzio, 2006. Dialoghi semiotici, Naples: ESI. Bonfantini, M. and A. Ponzio, 2010. Dialogo sui dialoghi, Naples: EESI. Danesi, M. and T.A. Sebeok. 2000. The Forms of Meanings. Modeling Systems Theory and Semiotic Analysis, Berlin: Mouton de Gruyer. Danesi, M., S. Petrilli and A. Ponzio, 2004. Semiotica globale. Il corpo nel segno. Introduzione a Thomas A. Sebeok. Bari: Graphis. Jakobson, R. 1965. ‘Quest for the Essence of Language’, Diogène. Problèmes du Langage. Special issue. Trans. L. Del Grosso Destrieri. ‘Alla ricerca dell’essenza del linguaggio’. Problemi attuali della linguistica. Milan: Bompiani. Peirce, C.S., 1980. Semiotica. M. Bonfantini (ed.). Turin: Einaudi. Peirce, C.S. 1984. Le leggi dell’ipotesi, M. Bonfantini (ed.). Series ‘Il campo semiotico’, Milan: Bompiani. Peirce, C.S. 2003. Opere. M. Bonfantini (ed.). Milan: Bompiani. Petrilli, S. (ed.). 2004. Ideology Logic, and Dialogue in Semioethic Perspective. Semiotica, 148, 1/4. Petrilli, S. 2012. Un mondo di segni. L’avere senso e il significare qualcosa. Bari: Giuseppe Laterza. Petrilli, S. 2013. The Self as a Sign, the World, and the Other, Living Semiotics. A. Ponzio Foreword. New Brunswick: Transaction. Petrilli, S. 2016. The Global World and Its Manifold Faces. Otherness as the Basis of Communication. Bern: Peter Lang. Petrilli, S. and A. Ponzio, 2001a. I segni e la vita. La semiotica globale di Thomas A. Sebeok. Milan: Spirali.

Logic and Dialogic in Peirce’s Argumentation

251

Petrilli, S. and A. Ponzio, 2001b. Thomas Sebeok and the Signs of Life, Cambridge: Icon Books. Petrilli, S. and A. Ponzio, 2004. ‘Global Communication, Proximity, and Responsibility: Beyond the Logic of Identity’. Semiotica, 150, 1/4: 151–167. Petrilli, S. and A. Ponzio, 2005. Semiotics Unbounded. Toronto: Toronto University Press. Petrilli, S. and A. Ponzio, 2016. Lineamenti di semiotica e di filosofia del linguaggio. Perugia: Guerra Edizioni. Petrilli, S. and A. Ponzio, 2017. ‘Deed, Otherness and Love in Bakhtin and Peirce’, New Semiotics. Between Tradition and Innovation, Proceedings of the XII World Congress of the International Association for Semiotic Studies (IASS/AIS). Sofia 2014, 16–20 September. K. Bankov (ed.). Sophia: NBU Publishing House & IASS Publications: 227–236. Petrilli, S., A. Ponzio and T.A. Sebeok. 2001. Semiotica dell’io, Rome: Meltemi. Pietro Ispano, 2010. Trattato di logica. Summule logicales. Ed. and trans. A. Ponzio, Milan: Bompiani. Ponzio, A. 1980. Michail Bachtin e la semiotica russa. Bari: Dedalo. Ponzio, A. 1984. ‘Semiotics between Peirce and Bakhtin’. Recherches Semiotiques. 3–4: 293–302. Ponzio, A. 1985a. ‘The Symbol, Alterity, and Abduction’. Semiotica, 56, 3–4: 261–278. Ponzio, A. 1985b. ‘Abduzione e alterità’. in A. Ponzio, Filosofia del linguaggio. Bari: Adriatica, 183–200. Ponzio, A. 1990. Man as a Sign. Intro., trans. and ed. S. Petrilli. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Ponzio, A. 1993a. Signs, Dialogue and Ideology. Ed. and trans. S. Petrilli. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Ponzio, A. 1993b. ‘Bachtin e Peirce: segno, interpretazione, comprensione’. In Bachtin e . . . A. Ponzio and P. Jachia (eds). Bari-Rome: Laterza, 89–100. Ponzio, A. 2004. Semiotica e dialettica. Bari: Edizioni dal Sud. Ponzio, A. 2005. ‘Dialogic Gradation in the Logic of Interpretation. Deduction, Induction, Abduction’, Semiotica, 153 1/4: 155–173. Ponzio, A. 2006a. ‘Metaphor and Poetic Logic in Vico’, Semiotica, 161 1/4: 231–248. Ponzio, A. 2006b. The Dialogic Nature of Sign. Ottawa: Legas. Ponzio, A. 2008. A revolusão bakhtiniana, São Paulo: Contexto. Ponzio, A. 2009a. ‘Semiotics and Dialogue between Logic and Ethics’ (with M. Bonfantini e S. Petrilli). Communication: Understanding / Misunderstanding. Proceedings of the 9th Congress of the ASS/AIS – Helsinki-Imatra: 11–17 June 2007, E. Tarasti (ed.). Acta Semiotica Fennica XXXIV. Tartu: Greif, 1372–1384. Ponzio, A. 2009b. ‘The Dialogic Nature of Sign’. Chinese Semiotic Studies. Vol. I, 54–67. Ponzio, A. 2012. Dialogando sobre o diálogo na perspectiva bakhtiniana. Dialogues with M. Bonfantini, W. Krysinski and S. Petrilli. São Carlos: Pedro & João Editores. Ponzio, A. 2015. Tra semiotica e letteratura. Introduzione a Michail Bachtin, Series ‘Il campo semiotico’. Milan: Bompiani.

252

Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Peircean Semiotics

Ponzio, A. 2015b. ‘Peirce e Bachtin’, in M. Bonfantini, R. Fabbrichesi and S. Zingale, 201–211. Ponzio, A. 2017. ‘Language, Mind, and Culture’. In L. Tateo (ed.). Giambattsia Vico and the New Psychological Science. Foreword by J. Valsiner. New Brunswick: Transaction, 151–171. Ponzio, L. 2015. Roman Jakbson e I fondamenti della semiotica, Milan: Mimesis. Ponzio, L. 2017. ‘Due maestri di segni: Roman Jakobson e Thomas Sebeok’. Cultura & Comunicazione. Perugia: Guerra Edizioni, 33–38. Sebeok, T.A. 1979. The Sign and Its Masters, Austin: University of Texas Press. Trans., intro, and ed. S. Petrilli, Bari: Adriatica. Sebeok, T.A. 1986. I think I am a verb, New York: Plenum. Trans., intro. and ed. S. Petrilli. Penso di essere un verbo, Palermo: Sellerio. Sebeok, T.A. 1981. Semiotics in the United States, Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Trans., intro and ed. S. Petrilli. Sguardo sulla semiotica Americana. Series ‘Il campo semiotico’, Milan: Bompiani. Sebeok, T.A. 1998. A Sign is Just a Sign. Trans., intro. and ed. S. Petrilli. A Sign is Just a Sign. La semiotica globale. Milan: Spirali. Sebeok, T.A. 2000. Segni. Introduzione alla semiotica. Trans., intro. and ed. S. Petrilli. Roma: Carocci. Sebeok, T.A. 2001. Global Semiotics. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Sebeok, T.A., S. Petrilli and A. Ponzio. 2001. Semiotica dell’io, Rome: Meltemi. Sebeok, T.A. and M. Danesi. 2000. The Forms of Meanings. Modeling Systems Theory and Semiotic Analysis, Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

9

A Peircean Semiotics of Technological Artefacts Bent Sørensen, Torkild Thellefsen and Martin Thellefsen

Introduction Most of us are surrounded by and interact with technological artefacts daily. We do this to achieve practical ends, to be informed, to be entertained, and for numerous other purposes. Sometimes highly trained specialists in hospitals use sophisticated technological artefacts to examine us or to perform complicated surgery on our bodies. Technological artefacts affect our lives and our societies and it is safe to assume that they do that in more ways and more significantly than ever (see also Olsen, Pedersen and Hendricks 2009). We understand technological artefacts as semiotic entities; hence, we see them as involving and as involved in processes of signification and/or communication. Furthermore, we try to understand technological artefacts from the perspective of Charles Peirce’s semiotics. It is not new to study technological artefacts from this perspective. In 1887 Peirce himself wrote the article ‘Logical Machines’ (W6: 65–72); to Peirce logic was synonymous with semiotics and he analysed the logical machines of Jevons and Marquand as performing reasoning to a certain degree (see also Ketner 1988; Nöth 2003). Contemporary scholars also study technological artefacts from the perspective of Peirce’s semiotics; however, to the best of our knowledge, these studies are still rather few in number. We can say that the contemporary studies, grosso modo, fall into two groups: programmatic studies (e.g. Jensen 1990; Innis 2012) and studies of concrete technological artefacts where concepts stemming from Peirce are used analytically (e.g. Nadin 2001; Nöth 2003). In this chapter, we will try to join the programmatic group. We will sketch a ‘Peircean Semiotics of Technological Artefacts’ (henceforth PSTA). We understand technological artefacts as intrinsically semiotic. They are (i) some-thing, they are (ii) designed, and, they are, in most cases, (iii) used, but only (iv) because the technological artefacts involve and are 253

254

Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Peircean Semiotics

involved in processes of signification and/or communication. We believe that Peirce’s semiotics can help us to understand how for (at least) four reasons. The semiotics can provide us with a consistent object of study; it has a standard set of methodological tools; it makes it possible to put forth hypotheses and thereby make predictions (in this chapter we will not, however, touch on this aspect); and finally, the semiotics has a defined place within Peirce’s classification of the sciences where it receives fundamental principles from ethics and aesthetics, making it open to normative questions. Peirce divides semiotics into three branches: grammar, logic and universal rhetoric. We will use this tri-division as the framework for our PSTA; hence, in our programmatic outline we will propose three perspectives from which to study the technological artefact – technological grammar, technological logic and technological rhetoric. To demonstrate our programmatic position, we will use a thorough-going example of a technological artefact, namely the self-driving car. When we speak of the self-driving car in this chapter, we mean a car which, to some degree, can perform driving tasks autonomously or independently of human inputs (see the classification of levels of automatization published by SAE International)1 We have chosen the self-driving car as our example because it is an advanced technological artefact involving numerous technological systems and subsystems; hence, no matter how trivial or how lofty our programmatic points might be, we believe, that they can be exemplified via the self-driving car. Let us begin, however, with a few lines concerning Peirce’s semiotics.

Peirce’s semiotics Peirce’s semiotics or theory of signs is both broad and deep (see, for example, Savan 1988; Johansen 1993; Liszka 1996; Short 2007). Peirce understands the universe as composed of signs (CP 5.448, n1, 1903), and every thought and every process of thinking depends on the use of signs (EP1: 30, 1868; see also W1: 324, 1865). Peirce’s semiotics is formal as well as normative. First, it is formal because it is concerned with the conditions without which something cannot be what it is – for example a sign or a type of sign. Second, it is normative because it is concerned with what ought to be regarding truth-values – it determines criteria for what can be classified as true (see CP 5.39, 1903). In similar vein, Peirce can define semiotic as ‘. . . the science of the necessary laws of signs’ (CP 5.121, 1903). Therefore, semiotics is also of utmost importance for Peirce concerning the development of the methodology of science. It is easy to understand that the

A Peircean Semiotics of Technological Artefacts

255

scope of Peirce’s sign theory is very wide ranging: every subject seems to be open for a semiotic analysis (SS 85–86) – including technological artefacts, we may add. Peirce divides semiotics into three different, but inter-related, branches: namely, grammar, logic and universal rhetoric. Let us, therefore, look at the three branches of semiotics and see to what extent we will be able to use these as a coherent framework for our PSTA.

Technological grammar According to Peirce, in his ‘Syllabus’, grammar is ‘. . . the general theory of the nature and meanings of signs, whether they be icons, indices, or symbols’ (EP2: 260; 1903). Grammar concerns the formal conditions which must be fulfilled such that an object may embody meaning (see also CP 2.229, 1897). If, from Peirce’s perspective, we want to formulate a grammar concerning technological artefacts or, in short, a ‘technological grammar’, we must study: ● ●

●

the technological artefact as a formal object; the conditions without which the technological artefact cannot embody meaning; the technological artefacts’ modes of signifying.

In the quotation above, Peirce himself points toward the three types of signs – icons, indices and symbols – as having central importance for grammar. These three types of signs, of course, stem from Peirce’s most famous and, according to him and many contemporary semioticians, most important ‘second sign trichotomy’ (e.g. see W5: 243, 1885; Johansen 1993). We have, therefore, chosen the icons, indices and symbols, to be the central categories of our technological grammar. We cannot rule out, of course, that there should be more categories and that they might even turn out to be more central than the icons, indices and symbols. However, we believe, that the second trichotomy will, at least, be a good place to begin. This is because we understand the technological artefact as: ● ●

● ●

some-thing; an object which, in some ways, stands outside processes of signification and/or communication; an object which determines processes of signification and/or communication; an object which can be perceived but also known within processes of signification and/or communication.

256

Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Peircean Semiotics

These characteristics, indeed, seem to fit very nicely with the way Peirce works with his second trichotomy and how he differentiates between the two objects of the sign. In ‘Prolegomena to an Apology for Pragmatism’, Peirce stresses that: . . . we have to distinguish the Immediate Object, which is the object as the Sign itself represents it, and whose Being is thus dependent upon the Representation of it in the Sign, from the Dynamical Object, which is the Reality which by some means contrives to determine the Sign to its Representation. CP 4.536, 1906

Looking at Peirce’s ‘second sign trichotomy’, we can see that, in ‘Notes on Hume’s “Treatise on Human Nature” ’, he defines icons, indices and symbols as follows: In their relation to their Dyadic Objects, Signs are 1st, those which refer to their objects by virtue of their independent possession of some character of those objects . . . 2nd, those signs which refer to their objects by virtue of being really related to them in existence . . . 3rd, those signs which refer to their objects . . . by virtue of the circumstance that they will interpreted as referring to those objects. I term these three kinds icon, index, symbol. R939: 45–46, 1905

Hence, icons represent their dynamical object by a qualitative relation, indices represent their dynamical object by an existential relation, while, finally, symbols represent their dynamical object by a general, or conceptual relation. We will, soon, mention more defining characteristics of the three sign types; the question is, however, how do icons, indices and symbols, as central categories, underlie the technological artefact as a dynamic object (perhaps involving different, more or less complex, entities), and, thereby, its significative possibilities? Before giving a few tentative answers to that question, we need to remember, though, that every grammar will involve certain rules. From Peirce we can derive, at least, four such rules: ●

●

To have a significative potential every technological artefact (and its different entities) must involve all three types of signs; this rule is derived from Peirce’s phenomenology where every phenomenon which appears for the mind will involve, to be intelligible, three general classes of elements – quality, existence and generality; the icons, indices and symbols are, of course, parallel to these three general classes of elements. Although the three types of signs will combine to make up the significative potential of the technological artefact, one of the three sign types will always be dominant in the specific technological artefact; this rule is also derived

A Peircean Semiotics of Technological Artefacts

●

●

257

from Peirce’s phenomenology, where one of the three general classes of elements – quality, existence and generality – will predominate over the others when a phenomenon appears to the mind – for example, in a process of perception the percepts will primarily involve a relation of existence (between perceiver and perceived), whereas the perceptual judgement will primarily involve a relation of generality (when the percepts become classified, for example, as one sees ‘this is a chair’). The ‘rule of inclusion’: in order to make up the significative potentials of the technological artefact the symbols, indices and icons will be involved in each other in a certain order; hence, symbols will include indices (directly) and icons (indirectly); whereas indices will involve icons (directly). This rule is derived from Peirce’s ‘logic of relatives’, a mathematical discipline, where Peirce shows how triadic relations are always three and involve dyadic relations and dyadic relations are always two and involve monadic relations; hence, symbols are triadic, where indices are dyadic and icons monadic respectively (see for example W5: 242–247, 1885) The ‘rule of non-reduction’: the symbols, indices and icons, making up the significative potential of the technological artefact, cannot be reduced to combinations of each other: hence, the symbols cannot be reduced to combinations of indices and the indices cannot be reduced to combinations of icons. This rule is also derived from Peirce’s ‘logic of relatives’, where Peirce proves how triadic relations cannot be reduced to combinations of dyadic relations, and dyadic relations cannot be reduced to combinations of monadic relation (W5: 244, 1885).

Some might ask, why derive rules for technological grammar from Peirce’s phenomenology and mathematics? When we look at Peirce’s systematization of the sciences this is a fully legitimate move. For Peirce, learning from Comte, the sciences are organized into a system of dependencies where some sciences are more fundamental than others (CP 3.427, 1903); hence, both phenomenology and mathematics are more fundamental sciences than semiotics (their objects are, for example, more general, or more abstract) – therefore, semiotics will, naturally, draw regulating principles from these two disciplines. Summing up, then: no matter how the technological artefact appears – it will, from the perspective of technological grammar, be some-thing, a dynamical object; and three central categories, icons, indices and symbols, will, according to at least four overall rules, underlie its significative potentials. With the abovementioned in mind let us now then take a brief look at a specific technological

258

Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Peircean Semiotics

artefact, namely the above-mentioned self-driving car; we wish to give some examples of how certain significative potentials of this artefact come about, whereby the artefact, in actu, can represent different functionalities as a selfdriving car. A self-driving car is an advanced technological artefact capable of doing several tasks. It must navigate safely to a destination, thereby avoiding obstacles (e.g. other cars, motorbikes and pedestrians) before it can park itself at the destination at the end of the drive – and all this takes place, perhaps, in a complex, urban environment. To do the tasks, the self-driving car must be capable of identifying and locating objects (and itself), planning, and continuously changing its course, and controlling, mechanically, for example, steering, throttle and brake (Pendleton et  al., 2017: 2). Most self-driving cars combine three different systems to perceive their visual surroundings: high-powered digital video cameras, RADAR and LIDAR (Zhao et al., 2018). We understand these systems as inter-related semiotic systems,2 which operate on the three central categories – icons, indices, symbols – and the four grammatical rules, to represent their technological functions in actu. Seen from the perspective of semiotic grammar, LIDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) primarily builds on indices; the rotating roof-top LIDAR emits infrared light waves from a laser in 360 degrees, and when the light waves hit a non-absorbing object the light reflects to a scanner (Shahian-Jahromi, 2017: 2–3). This is, indeed, where we see how indices make up one of the central significative potentials of the self-driving car, because they make possible: ●

●

●

The representation of an existential relation; as Peirce stresses in Lowell Lecture IX: ‘An index represents its object by a real correspondence with it’ (W1: 475, 1866); or we can say that the indices make possible the representation of a direct physical relation between the emitted infrared light waves and the object hit (see also W5: 245, 1885). The representation of a relation of action and reaction; Peirce explains in ‘An Elementary Account of the Logic of Relatives’ that: ‘The index . . . depend[s] upon a real reaction between the [sign] and the external world at the moment when the index reacts’ (W5: 379, 1886); hence, this concerns the moment when the infrared light hits an object and reflects to the scanner. The representation of a spatial reference: Peirce states in ‘Exact Logic’: ‘[The] Index . . . refers to its object . . . because it is in dynamical . . . including spatial . . . connection’ (CP 2.305, 1901); and in ‘On the Algebra of Logic’: ‘The index asserts nothing; it only says “There!” It . . . forcibly directs . . .’

A Peircean Semiotics of Technological Artefacts

259

(W5: 163, 1885). This is exactly what happens when the LIDAR points toward an object via the emitted infrared light. However, there is (much) more to the three bullet points than this; first, because the LIDAR system calculates the time it takes for the infrared light to hit an object and reflect back to the scanner. For Peirce time is a continuum and continua and calculations concern symbols; in the ‘Syllabus’ Peirce writes how: ‘A Symbol is a sign which refers to the Object that it denotes by virtue of a law, usually an association of general ideas’ (EP2: 292, 1903). The general relation which the symbols convey concerning the calculation of the ‘Time of Flight’ reads: d = (Et x c) ___________ where c is the speed of light 2 Hence, in the LIDAR system the indices and the symbols work together: the symbolic collections of measurements involve the information made possible by the indices (the third rule of inclusion); however, the symbol cannot be reduced to this information (the fourth rule of non-reduction). The LIDAR system will continuously make calculations, but the concrete information stemming from the indices cannot exhaust the potential of the general relation which the symbols convey. Second, each point of the calculations can be combined to make a three-dimensional map representing the objects in the environment of the self-driving car (via an Inertial Measurement Unit and a GNSS receiver3). When speaking of maps with Peirce we are speaking of icons; to be more precise maps concern the iconic sub-types of diagrams. In the ‘Syllabus’, Peirce defines the diagram in the following way: ‘those which represent the relation, mainly dyadic, or so regarded, of the parts of one thing by analogous relations in their own parts, are diagrams’ (EP2: 273, 1903). In the LIDAR system the three-dimensional map represents spatio-temporal relations, which even make the identification of objects as specific objects possible – for example other cars, bicycles and pedestrians; this is because the diagram itself involves another iconic sub-type, namely, the image. Again, in the ‘Syllabus’ Peirce defines the image thus: ‘Those [hypoicons] which partake of . . . qualities are images’ (EP2: 273, 1903). Hence, the image gives contours, forms and qualities to the diagram. Operating on the information conveyed by indices and the three-dimensional mappings conveyed by icons, the LIDAR system can continuously make predictions via symbols and thereby navigate in relation to other moving objects

260

Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Peircean Semiotics

Figure 9.1 A self-driving car making sense of its surroundings. Reproduced with permission from Catherina Vaeversted Lauritzen.

in real time. Here, then, the symbol is central because as Peirce states in ‘Logical Traits’ concerning symbols: ‘Every symbol . . . consists in a regularity; now every regularity consists in the future conditional occurrence of facts not themselves that regularity [indices; our inserting]’ (CP 4.464, 1903). Hence, without LIDAR as a semiotic system operating on, primarily, the basis of indices, but also in close connection with symbols and icons (the first rule), and thereby operating on a technological grammar, the self-driving car will not be capable of identifying objects in its environment (obstacles), measuring the distance to the objects – where after the self-driving car can begin to locate its own position and navigate in the environment (Figure 9.1). Of course, the LIDAR system cannot function on its own; the self-driving car will need other related semiotic systems – for example high-powered digital cameras and Global Positioning Software (GPS). However, with our admittedly rather simple example, we wish to point toward the possibility of a technological grammar, and we believe that the semiotic analysis of technological artefacts, indeed, can benefit from the three central categories and the four rules described in the above – mostly because, perhaps, in this way the technological artefact (and its related entities) can be understood, systematically as a dynamical object with a significative potential.

A Peircean Semiotics of Technological Artefacts

261

This said, let us now turn our attention to technological logic, the next branch of the PSTA.

Technological logic Earlier we wrote that a technological artefact is some-thing; furthermore, we wrote, that a technological artefact is designed and, hopefully, that it is also used. To this, we will now add that a technological artefact can be a ‘reasoning something’, and that the design and use of technological artefacts involve reasoning. With affinity, we see three perspectives concerning a ‘technological logic’, namely: ● ● ●

reasoning and the technological artefact per se; reasoning and the design of technological artefacts; reasoning and the use of technological artefacts.

In the following, we will look a little closer at the two first mentioned perspectives;4 but to begin with, we need to describe a few premises concerning the two perspectives. Reasoning and the technological artefact per se – as mentioned in the introduction, Peirce discusses the ‘logical machines’ invented by Jevons and Marquand. According to Peirce these machines reason, since, as he asks rhetorically: ‘If from true premises they always yield true conclusions what more could be desired?’ (CP 2.31, 1887). Peirce furthermore states in ‘Logical Machines’ that it is ‘all very simple’, because ‘It is whatever relations among the objects reasoned about is destined to be the hinge of a ratiocination, the same general relation must be capable of being introduced between certain parts of the machine’ (W6: 69, 1887). In these machines, a passing occurs from premises to a conclusion; and the machines are, therefore, subject to the rules concerning logic. Peirce describes the sort of relation we need in a reasoning machine if we, for example, want the machine to perform a syllogism such as: If A then B, If B then C, Therefore, if A then C. The machines must involve a relation, as Peirce writes: . . . which can be introduced at will, such that when one event A occurs in the machine, another event B must also occur. This connection being introduced

262

Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Peircean Semiotics

between A and B, and also between B and C, it is necessarily virtually introduced between B and C. W6: 69, 1887

The relation used rests on rules that are established conventionally, as in a logical algebra, Peirce stresses. In our technological logic we should expect, then, technological artefacts as reasoning machines as described by Peirce. However, since Peirce’s time there has been a continuing rapid development of certain technological artefacts, concerning, for example, the computational potentialities of some technological artefacts. This means, we believe, that these artefacts are reasoning machines in a stronger sense than that proposed by Peirce. We will, however, return to this point later. The bottom line is still, with Peirce, that technological artefacts involve reasoning, and that a PSTA must also reflect this point. Reasoning and the design and use of technological artefacts – to the extent that the design and use of technological artefacts are performed in a deliberate, voluntary, critical and self-controlled manner (CP 2.182, 1902) reasoning will be involved. For Peirce, reasoning means, as he writes in ‘Logical Machines’ that we: ‘construct an image in our fancy under certain general conditions and observe the result’ (W6: 70, 1887). This is reasoning described in its, perhaps, most abstract form. Peirce, however, also sets out to analyse, classify and evaluate the different types of reasoning (e.g. see CP 1.191, 1903; 2.203, 1902; Liszka 1996: 163). Of central importance for Peirce is the leading principle of each type of reasoning: the leading principle enables the movement from premises to conclusion (CP 2.462–65, 1867; Liszka 1996: 175). According to Peirce there are three leading principles corresponding to the three types of reasoning: abduction, deduction and induction. In ‘Deduction, Induction and Hypothesis’ Peirce defines the three types of reasoning as follows (note that abduction is here called hypothesis): Hypothesis Rule. – All the beans from this bag are white Result. – These beans are white Case. – These beans are from this bag Deduction Rule. – All the beans from this bag are white Case. – These beans are from this bag Result. – These beans are white

A Peircean Semiotics of Technological Artefacts

263

Induction Rule. – These beans are from this bag Result. – These beans are white Case. – All the beans from this bag are white (CP 2.623, 1878)

Simply put: in abduction there is a possible relation between the premises and the conclusion, whereas the relation is necessary in deduction and probable in induction. Abduction draws a case from a rule and a result; deduction applies a rule to a case and thereby shows a result; induction draws a rule from the result of cases. What of reasoning and the design and use of technological artefacts in relation to the above mentioned? Well, when designers and users reason on technological artefacts they make use of all three types of reasoning: abductions, deductions and inductions. These three types of reasoning also, most importantly, occur in combination (CP 2.774, 1902). Furthermore, when reasoning, the designers and users of technological artefacts control their thoughts; thereby, they can form judgements concerning the artefact, judgements which they understand as conducive to the truth. After describing these few premises, let us focus, then, on technological logic. We will look at the two first-mentioned perspectives and we will begin with the reasoning processes and the design of technological artefacts. Again, we will use the self-driving car as our example.

First perspective – reasoning and the design of technological artefacts Designing a technological artefact is a process with a (more or less) well-defined purpose: the process is intentional and (more or less) planned and self-controlled. In short, the process involves reasoning. Designing a self-driving car or parts thereof concerns finding a solution to various types of problem. To come up with a solution to the problem the designer (or typically a design team) must more or less explicitly and formally formulate a hypothesis which explains a solution to the problem at hand. Or, put another way, the designer must reason via abduction. Peirce defines the abductive type of reasoning in ‘Harvard Lectures on Pragmatism’ as follows: The surprising fact, C, is observed But if A were true, C would be a matter of course, Hence, there is reason to suspect that A is true CP 5.189, 1903

264

Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Peircean Semiotics

If we imagine that the explanation of the solution to a problem concerns the interior of a self-driving car5 the formulation of the hypothesis – where the conclusion ‘follows as a matter of course’ – may become visible on a sketchpad and/or a computer screen where proportions, dimensions and lines become specified. We can also say that the designer, via the hypothesis/abduction, tries to see the potential in something concerning the interior. However, the designer of the self-driving car’s interior needs to view and analyse conceivable experiential effects of the possible design – because the hypothesis (and the explanation) can only be a possibility or a ‘may-be’. Therefore, the designer must now reason via deduction. As Peirce writes in ‘Lowell Lectures’: The Deductions which we base upon the hypothesis which has resulted from Abduction produce conditional predictions concerning our future experience. That is to say, we infer by Deduction that if the hypothesis be true, any future phenomena of certain descriptions must present such and such characters. CP 7.115, note 27, 1903

To deduce conceivable experiential effects of the possible interior design, the designer may choose to use a virtual data model where the data are projected

Figure 9.2 Designers working with a wall-sized screen making deductions concerning the interior of a self-driving car. Reproduced with permission from Catherina Vaeversted Lauritzen.

A Peircean Semiotics of Technological Artefacts

265

onto a big wall-sized screen, which shows the interior in its correct size and dimensions as well as its different features and elements. Also, full-scale industrial clay models are often used to deduce qualities in three dimensions. We must remember that interior design, for example, concerns ergonomics, comfort, safety, functionality and aesthetics. However, the process must go further than deductions – because it must be known to what extent the deductive predictions are fulfilled concerning the interior. This means reasoning via induction. Peirce writes again in the ‘Lowell Lectures’: I mean the entire operation either of producing or of searching out a state of things to which the conditional predictions deduced from hypothesis shall be applicable and of noting how far the predictions are fulfilled. CP 7.115, note 27, 1903

Therefore, the interior and/or parts thereof will be tested under real-life conditions (Figure 9.2). It does not matter whether these conditions are brought about via, for example, VR goggles or a full-scale clay model where all interior details are incorporated, and people, therefore, can sit inside and feel the ambience of the cabin. Or just think of how the interior of a self-driving car will be exposed to sunlight; parts of the interior will be in sunlight, while other parts will be in shadow – an investigation of the interior under real lighting conditions can therefore give valuable information concerning where to place elements of the interior, such as on-board screens. In short, then, the key word is ‘test’, and in this way induction before the design process can terminate, resulting in a commitment to production. It is important to stress that to the extent that the interior design of the self-driving car involves reasoning, judgements are formed about the design, and there is a more or less deliberate approval or disapproval of the conclusions concerning the design. We can also see it as a critical review, and the review will suppose certain interior design characteristics to be valid. No doubt cerebral processes are also involved in design; however, these concern instinct, unconscious habits, etc., and, therefore, seen from a Peircean perspective, do not count as reasoning. Designing the interior of a self-driving car is a process of a certain complexity (involving, for example, a great number of specialists and several sub-processes). However, we believe that no matter what type of technological artefact we are talking about, the design process will, to some degree, involve intentions, self-control and critique, together with abduction, deduction and induction, and combinations thereof. Hence, in the design process reasoning will also take place. One task of the Technological logic, then, will be to explain and describe that.

266

Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Peircean Semiotics

The second perspective – reasoning and the technological artefact Do technological artefacts, per se, reason? We believe that some do. Peirce also mentions, as noted more than once above, the existence of ‘reasoning machines’. Some self-driving cars, we can add, perform, perhaps surprisingly, deductions in order to make safety-critical decisions. The decision making is broken down into certain steps whereby each step can be processed accordingly. The steps are manually coded into algorithms and concern rules. These are causal and link responses of the self-driving car to different traffic situations/conditions. The rules are expressed explicitly and they are organized in complex hierarchies. This means that the rules come with a priority; in other words, they are rank-ordered. Let us think of a scenario when the self-driving car overtakes another vehicle on a highway. The overtaking manoeuvre means, that the self-driving car must perform three phases of driving. The self-driving car first changes its lane, then it passes the other vehicle and, finally, returns to the lane where it began the overtaking. When changing its lane, driving phase one, the premise is that the self-driving car must keep a safe distance from other vehicles in the fast lane. Therefore, the rule reads, ‘If overtaking, then keep at a safe distance from other vehicles in the fast lane’. Furthermore, when returning to the original lane the premise is that the self-driving car must not obstruct the overtaken vehicle. Therefore, another rule reads: ‘If overtaking another vehicle, then the overtaken vehicle must not be obstructed’. Finally, yet another rule concerns the speed of the self-driving car and this rule reads: ‘If at safe distance with respect to other vehicles, then maintain the speed’. Processed input from the sensors systems of the self-driving car, including images from cameras, provides the decision-making system with relevant measurements, and the system works to make the driving conform to the rules. Planning the path of the self-driving car, for example, means that the decision-making system continuously evaluates potential paths via an algorithm, and, thereafter selects the path which corresponds with the hierarchy of rules. However, the decision-making system will, if necessary, due to the traffic situations/conditions, break rules. The rules lowest in the hierarchy will be broken first, of course (Ackerman 2016). We can see, then, that stages in the decisionmaking system of the self-driving car involve deductions: the system is provided with rules concerning relations between responses of the self-driving car and certain traffic situations/conditions: ‘If this type of situation/condition, then this type of driving response’. However, each possible relation, and with it the driving response, is always evaluated by the system on the basis of a hierarchy of rules.

A Peircean Semiotics of Technological Artefacts

267

As a ‘reasoning machine’ the self-driving car, seen from the perspective of the decision-making system, is both similar to and different from the reasoning machines Peirce describes. It is similar to these machines because the system, prior to the actual driving, is provided with sets of rules and hierarchies – as Peirce states in ‘Logical Machines’): ‘Every reasoning machine . . . cannot feed itself ’ (W6: 70, 1887). However, the self-driving car also differs from ‘Peirce’s reasoning machines’, as the decision-making system will break rules and make selections between different possibilities concerning types of driving responses and types of traffic situations/conditions. This, then, differs from Peirce’s statement in ‘Logical Machines’: ‘[the reasoning machine] cannot direct itself between different possible procedures’ (W6: 70, 1887). However, it does not stop there, since some self-driving cars do also learn from experience, or we can say that they perform inductions. This has to do with the fact that the self-driving car not only follows rules, it also makes new rules owing to the perception system of the self-driving car. This has algorithms which are trained, via vast datasets (simulated and/or real-world data from sensors and cameras), to extract patterns (Stilgoe 2018), and these algorithms enable, for example, visual tasks such as lane detection and object recognition. When the algorithms learn, they make models; and the models are built on input samples. Consequently, the decision-making system and the control-system rely on data-driven inputs (Wachenfeld and Winner 2007). In the case of the object recognition of, let us say pedestrians, the sample inputs can be video images of pedestrians; and from these sample inputs of video images of pedestrians the learning algorithm will perform inductions. The algorithm will, at first, not recognize the video image of an object as a pedestrian; therefore, the algorithm must be coded – as a rule – to give the output answer ‘yes, this is a pedestrian’ to the input of the video image of a pedestrian. But giving the algorithm more video images of pedestrians will begin to strengthen and/adjust the rule. Hence, the more video images of pedestrians the algorithm has as inputs the more it will adjust its rules, and the more accurate its recognition of pedestrians will be. Basically, remembering Peirce’s bean bag example above, we can say that while learning, the algorithm is acquiring more and more beans from the bag (video images from a simulated and/or real-world environment) enabling it to continuously strengthen or adjust its rule(s).6 We have now looked briefly at how deductions and inductions are involved in different tasks performed by some self-driving cars’ systems, namely, the decisionmaking system and the perception system. Without going further, it should be mentioned at this point that a description of the architecture of the self-driving cars’

268

Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Peircean Semiotics

different systems and their functions could, indeed, be structured as (inter) relations of reasonings which also make it possible to explain the exchange of information between the systems. With technological logic, then, it can be argued that some technological artefacts do reason. Furthermore, it can be shown how some technological artefacts reason: the description will be a high-level and non-technical description in the sense that the description does not rely on, at least directly, engineering and computer science. Some technological artefacts can reason, then. However, all technological artefacts are, to some degree, also represented in meaningful messages – not least because most, if not all, technological artefacts are commodities aimed at markets. Let us now, therefore, take a look at Technological rhetoric.

Technological rhetoric Technological artefacts are semiotically omnipresent – they are massively circulated, as meaningful messages, for numerous of purposes; we can just think of how technological artefacts are represented in print and digital advertising and branding, popular culture film, TV and literature, as well as public information campaigns. We believe that a PSTA should also address this fact. Technological artefacts, as meaningful messages, potentially mean something for somebody; and, inspired by Peirce, we will say that technological artefacts have an important rhetorical dimension, since they refer to interpretants involving a power to appeal to minds. Hence, we propose a technological rhetoric. For Peirce, rhetoric studies, as he states in ‘Logic of Mathematics’: ‘the necessary conditions of the transmissions of meaning by signs from mind to mind’ (CP 1.444, circa 1896), and as already stated in ‘On a New List of Categories’: ‘the formal conditions of the force of [signs], or of their power of appealing to mind’ (CP 1.559, 1867). It makes sense, we believe, to adjust the scope of technological rhetoric to that of Peirce. Therefore, we will say that technological rhetoric: ●

Should study the transmission of meaning by signs from mind to mind concerning technological artefacts with a particular focus on how the artefacts, as meaningful messages, appeal to mind.

In order to study this transmission, however, we need to have at least a rudimentary model of communication – representing the elements of communication and their processual relations; and first from there, we then can begin to understand the ‘technological rhetorical appeal to mind’.

A Peircean Semiotics of Technological Artefacts

269

The Peircean communication model and technological rhetoric A model of communication can be deduced from concepts stemming from Peirce (for a Peircean model of communication see also Johansen 1993; Liszka 1996). A Peircean model of communication distinguishes five elements of communication that are necessary for communication to take place (Thellefsen, Sørensen and Thellefsen 2011; see also Liszka 1996). (1) a sign, because as Peirce writes in ‘The Basis of Pragmatism’ a sign is: ‘a medium of communication’ (EP2: 390, 1906); (2) an utterer; (3) an interpreter – concerning the relation between sign, utterer and interpreter Peirce states in the manuscript ‘Pragmatism’: ‘A sign is whatever there may be whose intent is to mediate between an utterer and an interpreter of it . . . by conveying a meaning from the former to the latter’ (R318: 18, 1907). Hence, behind every meaningful message concerning technological artefacts there is an utterer; and the utterer uses signs to convey meaning to an interpreter. However, for the communication between the utterer and the interpreter to take place they must share a referential context. Communication requires (4) a universe of discourse, as Peirce writes in ‘Dictionary of Philosophy and Psychology’: ‘The universe must be well known and mutually known to be known and agreed to exist, in some sense, between [utterer and interpreter]’ (CP 3.621, 1902). The universe of discourse is acquired through (5) collateral experience, which, with Peirce’s words from his review of Lady Welby’s ‘What is Meaning’ is: ‘the previous acquaintance with that the sign denotes’ (CP 8.179, 1901). Collateral experience, then, concerns the fact that the minds of the utterer and the interpreter are determined by the technological artefact involved before the concrete act of communication. However, because we want to study how technological artefacts, as meaningful messages, appeal to mind, we also need to see the model of communication from the perspective of the ‘significant effect of the sign’. Hence, we need to add more elements to the communication model, namely certain types of interpretants. Peirce, indeed in relation to communication, introduces the following trichotomy of interpretants in a letter to Lady Welby: There is the intentional interpretant, which is a determination of the mind of the utterer; the effectual interpretant, which is a determination of the mind of the interpreter; and the . . . cominterpretant, which is a determination of that mind into which the minds of the utterer and the interpreter have to be fused in order that any communication should take place. EP2: 478, 1906

The intentional interpretant concerns the sign, which the utterer intends for his/ her communication, that is, the sign which serves the purpose of his/her

270

Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Peircean Semiotics

communication. The effectual interpretant, on the other hand, concerns the idea that the interpreter can be affected by the sign communicated by the utterer. Finally, the cominterpretant concerns the ‘welding’ of the utterer and the interpreter in communication. It concerns, we argue, the universe of discourse seen from the perspective of the interpretant, because as Peirce writes in the letter to Lady Welby: ‘it consists of all that is, and must be, well understood between utterer and interpreter in the outset, in order that the sign in question should fulfil its function’ (EP2: 478, 1906). Peirce furthermore mentions, in another letter to Lady Welby (1908) that the actual effect produced on a mind by a sign (or the dynamical interpretant; CP 8.343, 1908, 4.536, 1906) can be divided into three interpretants, namely, the ‘sympathetic, shocking, [and] usual [interpretant]’ (CP 8.370, 1908). Peirce, unfortunately, leaves these three interpretants with no further comments. Nevertheless, as actual effects produced on a mind of a sign we understand the three interpretants, in a straightforward way, as appreciating, shocking, and normal effects respectively. When the CEO of Tesla Motors, Elon Musk, tweets concerning their cars with self-driving technology he is, of course, an utterer using signs: ‘It is super messed up that a Tesla crash resulting in a broken ankle is front page news and the – 40,000 people who died in US auto accidents alone in past year get almost no coverage’ (@elonmusk, 10.54 pm, 14 May 2018). To understand Musk’s tweet the interpreter must know, for example, about Tesla cars, including their selfdriving technologies, that there exist US statistics concerning automotiverelated accidents, but also that this tweet is Musk’s response to how he conceives the media coverage of a Tesla Autopilot incident. This, obviously, concerns the universe of discourse between Musk as an utterer and his interpreters. But what is the purpose behind Musk’s tweet? Musk’s intentional interpretant, or his appeal to the mind of the interpreters’ concerns, it seems, what he conceives as the medias’ unjust coverage of the Tesla Autopilot incident and, with it, their lack of a sense of proportion. But who, then, are the interpreters of Musk’s tweet? Well, there seem to be, at least, three groups: first, his followers on Twitter, as he has chosen this social medium for his message; second, the news media that he accuses of not having their priorities right; and third, the general public, because Musk is also here, of course, defending the Tesla brand and their self-driving technology. Looking at Musk’s Twitter account we can see examples of the actual effect of the tweet on the interpreters’ minds: 116,000 interpreters, for example, from the day of Musk’s tweet until two days after, answered the tweet ‘with sympathetic interpretants’, namely with tweets such as: ‘Keep it up, autopilot is better than humans’, ‘The media just hate Tesla, whatever bad news happen it’s

A Peircean Semiotics of Technological Artefacts

271

Figure 9.3 Technological artefacts are also meaningful messages and can have rhetorical effects. Reproduced with permission from Catherina Vaeversted Lauritzen.

always on the front page’, and ‘This is getting out of hand . . . Journalism has lost its integrity’ (Figure 9.3). The above example concerning Elon Musk’s tweet is, of course, a very simple example, but we believe that the elements and the relations between the elements of the communication model make up points of focus concerning how technological artefacts, as meaningful messages, appeal to the mind. We furthermore believe that, at least, the following elements and relations merit focus (there are, most likely, more foci, however these will do to begin with): 1.

The identification of the utterer: the messages representing the technological artefact can involve more than one utterer. Looking at, for example, messages on websites where car manufacturers communicate information on self-driving car technology we find representatives from the management, engineers/technicians and users giving testimonials all within the same message. Furthermore, it is important to notice the distinction between the explicit utterer and the implicit utterer: for example, if the message is a futuristic poem from the 1920s about technological artefacts, there is a difference between the writer of the poem and the persona in the poem.

272

2.

Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Peircean Semiotics

The identification of the intentions of the utterer: this involves analysing the relation between the utterer and the intentional interpretant. To describe the intentions of the utterer we take interpretative freedom and divide the intentional interpretant into three; from this perspective we will ask whether the utterer, via the intentional interpretant, appeals (primarily) to: – – –

3.

4.

5.

the feelings of the interpreter the conduct/actions of the interpreter the thoughts of the interpreter

Of course, the intentions of the utterer will normally not solely rely on one type of intentional interpretant. Rather, the utterer will use combinations of intentional interpretants. Hence, as we can see from the example above when Musk tweets to his interpreters he is appealing both to their feeling of injustice and to their sense of proportion. The identification of the modes of utterance: this involves analysing the type of signs of which the message concerning the technological artefact is composed. We have already mentioned Peirce’s trichotomy, icon, index and symbol (the sign-object relation). But the trichotomies, qualisign, sinsign and legisign (the sign itself), and rheme, dicent and argument (the sign-interpretant relation) should also be considered. We can expect an affinity between the modes of utterance, the composition of signs, and the intentions of the utterer: for example, if the utterer (primarily) appeals to the thoughts of the interpreter, then he/she will use arguments. The identification of the interpreter: this concerns the relation between the signs and the interpreter and the analysis of the characteristics, attributes, but also, the semiotic competences the interpreter is endowed with. The identification of the universe of discourse: this concerns the analysis of the relation of the signs to what are supposed to be experiences common to both utterer and interpreter. With Peirce we can say that there are three types of universes of discourse, as in ‘A Neglected for the Argument for the Reality of God’ he writes: Of the three universes of experience familiar to us all, the first comprises all mere ideas, those airy nothings to which the mind of the poet, pure mathematician, or another might give local habitation and a name within that mind . . . The second universe is that of the brute actuality of things and facts . . . The third universe comprises everything whose being consists

A Peircean Semiotics of Technological Artefacts

273

in the active power to establish connections between different objects . . . especially in different universes. CP 6.455, 1908

6.

We expect, for example, that fictitious messages concerning technological artefacts will partake of the first universe; but also, for example, advertising and branding messages where new technological artefacts are displayed will be represented in this universe as possibilities. Furthermore, as we are dealing with messages from public information campaigns, we expect that these, primarily, represent the technological artefact from the perspective of the third universe accentuating reason, regularities and (inherent) usefulness. The identification of the actual effects on the interpreter: this concerns the trichotomy – sympathetic, shocking, normal – and here we will enter the area of empirical studies, where the methodologies are numerous and diverse, of course, and we will not opt for one particular method. However, let us just mention that we believe that irrespective of method the previous points 1–5 should be understood, at least, as conceptual premises.

Hence technological rhetoric aims at discovering rhetorical consequences, and we believe that the above-mentioned points of focus can contribute to the understanding and analysis of ‘who appeals to what minds, in what ways, and with what effects – concerning technological artefacts as meaningful messages’.

Concluding remarks We have made a sketch for a PSTA. A sketch is, of course, just something rather simple without many details. Perhaps, therefore, ‘programmatic points’ do not belong in a sketch. On the other hand, a sketch is also an outline, and we still believe that Peircean semiotics offers a framework for understanding and analysing technological artefacts. Technological artefacts are much more than just things with a use value represented in certain functions. Technological artefacts also have an important semiotic dimension: they embody meaning and they involve and are involved in processes of signification and/or communication. However, four facts come to our attention: first, certain conditions must be fulfilled before technological artefacts can embody meaning; second, technological artefacts are designed and reasoning is involved in the design process. Furthermore, third, some technological artefacts also reason to perform their technical functions. Finally, technological

274

Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Peircean Semiotics

artefacts are omnipresent – they are represented, for numerous purposes, in messages across various types of discourses/semiotic systems. Looking for a framework that can reflect these four facts is why we have sketched a Peircean Semiotics of Technology involving three specific branches: Technological grammar, Technological logic, and Technological rhetoric. In his very interesting programmatic article ‘Semiotics of Technology’ (2009), Innis writes: ‘the semiotics of technology can take its place alongside . . . the ethical and other frameworks of analysis and evaluation’ (Innis 2009 145). We do not agree with Innis’ statement. We believe that a PSTA, for example, should, also, by itself, at some point, reflect norms and ideals concerning technological artefacts. We only, indirectly and very vaguely, touched on this point in the above, for example, in relation to the deductive hierarchy of self-driving cars’ decisionmaking system. However, remembering Peirce’s classification of the sciences, as mentioned in the introduction, we know that this classification concerns a certain hierarchy. This means that ethics and aesthetics, as normative sciences, can contribute to semiotics (itself a normative science). Ethics, aesthetics, and semiotics share the same general ideal, the highest good. For Peirce this ideal concerns, as he writes in ‘An Attempted Classification of Ends’, ‘the rationalization of the universe’ (CP 1.590, 1903). Hence, reflecting norms and ideals in relation to technological artefacts the PSTA should involve this highest good. One way for the PSTA to work with this ideal is to ask for the formal conditions concerning the way technological artefacts can contribute to the highest ideal – including how the technologies ought to be related to and influence the feelings (aesthetics), actions (ethics), as well as thoughts (semiotics) of man.

References Ackerman, E. 2016. ‘nuTonomy to Test World’s First Fully Autonomous Taxi Service in Singapore this Year’. IEE SPECTRUM. https://spectrum.ieee.org/cars-that-think/ transportation/self-driving/nutonomy-to-launch-worlds-first-fully-autonomoustaxi-service-in-singapore-this-year [Accessed 1 August 2018]. Innis, R.E. 2009. ‘Semiotics of Technology’ in A Companion to the Philosophy of Technology, Friis, J.K.B.O., S.A. Pedersen and V.F. Hendricks (eds). New Jersey : Wiley-Blackwell, 141–145. Jensen, J.F. 1994. Teknologi-semiotik. To essays om teknologi, tegn og betydning. Aalborg: Skrifter fra Nordisk Sommeruniversitet. Johansen, J.D. 1993. Dialogic Semiosis. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

A Peircean Semiotics of Technological Artefacts

275

Ketner, K.L. and Stewart A.F. 1984. ‘The Early History of Computer Design: Charles Sanders Peirce and Marquand’s Logical Machines’, The Princeton University Library Chronicle, Vol. 45(3), 187–211. Liszka, J.J. 1996. A General Introduction to the Semeiotic of Charles Sanders Peirce. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Nadin, M. 1988. ‘Interface Design: A Semiotic Paradigm’. Semiotica, Vol. 69 Issue 3/4, 269–302. Nöth, W. 2003. ‘Semiotic Machines’. S.E.E.D. Journal, Vol. 3, 81–99. Pendleton, S.D., H. Andersen, X. Du, X. Shen, M. Meghjani, Y.H. Eng, D. Rus and M.H. Ang. 2017. ‘Perception, Planning, Control and Coordination for Autonomous Vehicles’. Machines, Vol. 5(5), 1–54. Savan, D., 1988. An Introduction to Peirce’s Full System of Semeiotic. Toronto: Victoria College. Shahian-Jahromi B., A.H. Syed, B. Karakas and S. Cetin. 2017. ‘Control of Autonomous Ground Vehicles: A Brief Technical Review’. IOP Conference Series: Material Science and Engineering, Vol. 224, 1–6. Short, T.L. 2007. Peirce’s Theory of Signs. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Stilgoe, J. 2018. ‘Machine Learning, Social Learning and the Governance of Self-driving Cars’. Social Studies of Science, Vol. 48(1), 25–56. Thellefsen, T., B. Sørensen and M. Thellefsen. 2011. ‘The Significance Effect is a Communicational Effect: Introducing the DynaCom’. Sign Systems Studies. Vol. 39(1), 209–223. Wachenfeld, W. and H. Winner. 2016. ‘Do Autonomous Vehicles Learn?’ Autonomous Driving – Technical, Legal and Social Aspects. M. Maurer et al. (eds). Heidelberg: Springer-Verlag, 451–471. Zhao, J., B. Liang, and Q. Chen. ‘The key technology toward the self-driving car’. International Journal of Intelligent Unmanned Systems, Vol. 6(1), 2–20.

276

10

The Semiotic Nonagon: Peirce’s Categories as Design Thinking Claudio F. Guerri

Introduction In addition to having been initiated in Peircean semiotics in the context of the Faculty of Architecture, I am going to use the sign ‘Architecture’ as an example of the application of the Semiotic Nonagon with its clear subdivision into three logical and sequential aspects: design, construction and habitability. These three aspects are respectively Firstness, Secondness and Thirdness, and at the same time, first, second and third Correlates of the sign Architecture. On the other hand, it is worth remembering that these three aspects have remained stable since 10 BC, when the first treatise, Marco Vitruvio Polion (1567, LI, C III, §2), drew attention to the three main Values of architecture as firmitas, utilitas and venustas – obviously, not in Peircean order – which, to date, have never been reconsidered. On the other hand, in a metaphorical or literary way, we could say that reality does not exist. It would not make sense to think about designing – projecting, composing, creating – if it were not a fact that reality can never be said or drawn definitively. Thus, paraphrasing and decontextualizing a well-known saying by Jacques Lacan (1972–1973 [1981]: 113–114) we could also argue that reality is that which ‘does not cease not to be inscribed’ symbolically. It is on this basis – the possibility that you can really think, build and contribute to something – that the Semiotic Nonagon (Guerri 1984; 2000; 2001; 2003; Guerri-Huff 2005; 2006; 2007a; 2007b; Guerri et  al. 2014; 2016) can be considered a valid tool for qualitative research and systematic knowledge production.

277

278

Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Peircean Semiotics

The Semiotic Nonagon The Semiotic Nonagon – as with all other possibilities of thinking – implies a concrete epistemological Form or Firstness, and consequently also a concrete ideological structure. Since humans cannot attain to the possibility of real attainment of truth, one strategy is to learn as much as possible about how knowledge is constructed through the different languages, in an iconic, indexical and symbolic way. Even if the Semiotic Nonagon was originally imagined for Architecture (Guerri 1984; 1988), all disciplines can benefit from the use of this logico-operative device since it helps to place the incommensurable complexity of all kinds of conceptual problems, products or cultural aspects under visual and cognitive control. The semiotic nonagon – as a diagrammatic icon1 is an operative model that relies on the logic of the three Categories (CP 1.300,2 1894) proposed by Charles S. Peirce, and the geometric structure of the diagram itself. The nine-box matrix establishes taxonomic differences for each box to provide systematic information of the sign which, at the same time, always implies complex interrelations of forms – theoretical considerations – actualizations – economical considerations – and strategies – political considerations. ‘We cannot make a machine that will reason as the human mind reasons until we can make a logical machine . . . which shall be endowed with a genuine power of self-control’ (EP2: 387, 1906, my emphasis). Nevertheless, the semiotic nonagon can be considered ‘a machine to think with’. It can be characterized as a ‘logical machine’ that responds to ‘a genuine power of self-control’ given by the recursive logic3 of the Peircean triadic categories (CP 1.417, 1896) and the geometrical logic of the grid. The semiotic nonagon is proposed as an operational – practical and effective – model to analyse any kind of problem, concrete or conceptual, that may arise in the course of qualitative research. The nonagon provides no final solution to any problem but, essentially, it is a tool that enables mapping the complexity of a problem by representing it with a relational logic of the different aspects included. Everything is considered a sign for Semiotics, and for Peirce. Because of his conception of the categories being recursive every aspect of the sign, or subsign, is also a sign (Figure 10.1). The Categories of Firstness, Secondness and Thirdness are, for Peirce, notions with a high level of generality and explanatory scope: I seemed to be lost in a pathless forest, until by minute application of the first principles, I found that the categories, which I had been led to neglect from not

Peirce’s Categories as Design Thinking

279

Figure 10.1 Diagram of the definition of sign by Peirce (CP 2.228, 1897). In bold the three Categories and on the right side, the terminology proposed for the Semiotic Nonagon. seeing how they were to be applied, must and in fact did furnish the clue that guided me through the maze. CP 2.102, 1902

The Semiotic Nonagon (Table 10.1) aims to recover a few basic concepts from the vast work of Peirce to build a new text that has the ability to analyse, produce and understand different kinds of signs. It is not about making an exegesis of Peirce’s work but to understand how to use and take advantage of the concept of the triadic categories – which he considered his most important contribution – and to apply it to a social practice,4 as is Design, or any qualitative research. The construction of the semiotic nonagon, as a diagrammatic icon with which to increase knowledge and keep knowledge under control during research or design practice, requires a series of conceptual and terminological operations. The first is to accept the proposal by Magariños de Morentin (1984: 195) to replace Peirce’s nomenclature with which to refer to the three categories – Firstness, Secondness and Thirdness (CP 1.417, 1896) – of the sign with Form, Existence and Value, thus establishing an epistemological and necessary distance from the original philosophical proposal. The second operation is conceptual and concerns the recursiveness of the sign, that is, the ability to analyse each of the aspects that compose it as new signs, thus recognizing three new sub-aspects. This results in a second division of the sign into nine sub-signs, and it is from this possibility of the diagram that the semiotic nonagon takes its name. The semiotic nonagon (Table 10.1) appears as an empty grid of three rows and three columns – a double-entry table, a matrix of three Correlates (CP 2.235, 1897, 1903) and three Trichotomies (CP 2.238, 1897). As we shall see, the matrix can act in two ways: providing a taxonomy – a phenomenological description of the object – or allowing an approach from the internal cognitive processes that

280

Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Peircean Semiotics

Table 10.1 Diagram of the Semiotic Nonagon with its nine aspects of the sign. In italics the original terminology by Peirce (CP 2.243, 1897), and in regular the terminology proposed by Magariños de Morentin (1983: 91; 1984: 195) to differentiate the practical application of the categories and subsigns in the semiotic nonagon from the original logico-philosophical proposal of Peirce. The diagonal difference-different-differentiation was proposed by Martin Krampen (2003)

SIGN

1st. Trichotomy F FORM possibility

2nd. Trichotomy E EXISTENCE actualization

3rd. Trichotomy V VALUE necessity or law

1st. Correlate

Form of Form

Existence of Form

Value of Form

F

FORM

possibility

Difference

Qualisign

2nd. Correlate

Form of Existence

E EXISTENCE actualization 3rd. Correlate

Icon Existence of Existence

Sinsign Different Form of Value

Rheme Value of Existence

Index

Existence of Value

Dicisign Value of Value

V VALUE necessity or law

Legisign

Symbol Differentiation Argument

the grid itself offers as logically interdependent relationships. The semiotic nonagon can also be considered as a particular mechanism of Design Thinking, a holistic approach to the inherent complexity of any object of study. The semiotic nonagon is a device that is characterized by being a graphic and relational structure with which: 1. 2. 3.

to account for logical and relational spaces – Firstness – and not for absolute contents since it is a diagrammatic icon; to privilege the relationship between spaces – Secondness – to the effects of a cognitive construction since it is an operative model; and to favour planning – Thirdness – since it allows design thinking, thanks to the analytical recursiveness guaranteed by Peircean theory through a compositional nomenclature with which start a relational program of intersections5 (Voto 2016: 65, 99): Form of Form, Existence of Form, and so on.

Three different words for the same object? Three names for the same sign? No, three names for three different aspects of the same sign. If Peirce’s theory of signs could access a realistic representation, this would happen in the multi-dimensionality of hyperspace, thereby exhibiting that

Peirce’s Categories as Design Thinking

281

infinite play of interpretants and representations. At the same time, given its complexity, this multidimensional hyperspace could not access any concrete representation that could be fruitful for a research project or a design practice. The semiotic nonagon starts by keeping the core concepts of Peirce’s theory of the sign, but cutting the hyperspace that represents the sign, turning it into a diagram by flattening the relationships of the sign and showing them in their graphical extension – in a two-dimensional space – and therefore, operable on the surface of a desk and on a simple sheet of paper. Each box of this empty grid – each logical space, each intersection – shows an aspect of the semiotic object6 being analysed – ‘percept, image, or Vorstellung’ (CP 5.606, 1901) – and at the same time, the nine boxes show the interdependent relationships established between them.

The categories revisited Firstness What is interesting in this context is to show that there is a practical applicability and an enormous need to be able to use Peirce’s concepts in complex processes of reasoning, in qualitative research projects, or in design projects in general. The semiotic nonagon of the sign Architecture (Table 10.2) – despite its difficulty of realization of good Architecture in the context of cities in general – is highly accessible and didactic to account for the triadic logic. In relation to Firstness, Peirce writes: We remark among phenomena three categories of elements. The first comprises the qualities of phenomena, such as red, bitter, tedious, hard, heartrending, noble . . . Beginners in philosophy may object that these are not qualities of things and are not in the world at all, but are mere sensations. CP 1.418, 1896

Firstness has to do, then, with that part of the definition of the sign that speaks of ‘in some respect or capacity’. Since there are qualities in Firstness, Peirce asks: ‘What, then, is a quality?’ (original emphasis), and answers: ‘a quality is a mere abstract potentiality’ (CP 1.422, 1896). Therefore, it is precisely the concept of ‘abstract potentiality’ that we find extremely useful for our purpose of applying Peirce. In this way, Firstness is, on the one hand, the result of a process of abstraction of the material manifestation of phenomena, as it can be apprehended by the senses or how it can be conceived conceptually; on the other, it is the mere

282

Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Peircean Semiotics

formal possibility of conceptualizing. In other words, all our iconic possibilities of being able to think anything about some entity are shown in Firstness: either for the construction of a conceptual difference, both in something simple and daily, or for understanding or proposing a complex theory. In the case of the sign Architecture, it is about conceiving Form when designing, when projecting, when drawing up plans, or deciding a certain aesthetic outcome for a building, and so, Design – as the first Correlate – is only the possibility of Architecture. However, we would discover that the Firstness of the sign Architecture, Design, cannot be described just as basic quality or as a mere sensation, but it turns out to be a quality and a possibility as complex – and at the same time as concrete – as the sign from which it comes. Thus, Design, as an enabling quality, constitutes at the same time, the point of greatest difficulty in resolving the sign at a practical and professional level. Our proposal is that all first qualities must inevitably include some quantifiable aspects, since a Firstness if pure quality would be unable to incarnate in a Secondness, in a materiality. A certain quantity of quality is needed for an embodiment. The first Correlate of Architecture, Design (Table 10.2), includes knowledge about colour, visual texture and form in Form of Form – Qualisign – and in turn, form implies knowledge about graphic languages: conic, orthogonal and relational projections.7 On the other hand, in the Existence of the Form – Icon – a concrete representation of the project is updated through the graphic languages. Finally, in the Value of the Form – Rheme – aesthetic decisions are taken that involve qualitative and quantitative values about form, construction and habitability of the architectural project.

Secondness Secondness always refers to some concrete update, be it an object, a behaviour or an action; it alludes to ‘the current facts [that are] perfectly individual [and] happens here and now’ (CP 1.419, 1896). This second category concerns ‘what logicians call the contingent, that is, the accidentally real . . . force without law or reason, brute force’ (CP 1.427. 1896). Secondness has to do, then, with the ‘for something’ of the definition of the Peircean sign. At the same time, Secondness needs to be put in relation to Firstness and Thirdness, so as not to be reduced only to the ‘individual fact [that] insists on being here regardless of any reason’ (CP 1.434, 1896). In this sense, for the sign Architecture, Secondness – Construction – consists of an update of that ‘abstract potentiality’, that is, the project. If the first

Peirce’s Categories as Design Thinking

283

correlate constitutes the possible difference, secondness consists in the manifestation of what is different. But the most important aspect is that what is different can only be understood if we know and possess the difference.8 This means that reality – as pure ‘brute force’ of fact (CP 1.21, 1903) – does not help us to understand differences, nor to comprehend what is different, nor to establish – as we will see in Thirdness – a differentiation. With the exclusion of Firstness and Thirdness, any fact, any object or event is reduced to a ‘force without law or reason’ to a ‘brute force’ (CP 1.427, 1896), from which nothing can be said or imagined.

Thirdness Thirdness, says Peirce, ‘consists of what we call laws . . . Thoughts are neither qualities nor facts . . . because they can be produced and grow [can be] good or bad’ (CP 1.420, 1896). The third is related to the ‘for someone’ of the definition of the Peircean sign, it is the interpretant, as a generic-social and non-psychological interpreter. Thirdness recovers, in this way, the system of values of a sign for a certain community and for a certain time. Related to the other categories, Thirdness – according to a certain laws or social needs – consists in the evaluation of Secondness updated from the possibilities available in Firstness. In others words, if Firstness is the difference and Secondness is what is different, Thirdness can be understood as the possibility of differentiation – cognitive, conceptual, cultural – that is, the value or the sociocultural criterion by which, of all the available possibilities, one in particular has been updated. If we return to the example of Architecture, we can say that Thirdness consists in certain housing needs treasured by a given community at a given time. This assessment of a certain type of habitability established as Thirdness of the sign Architecture is what allows us to explain the choice and updating of a certain type of building among the many formal possibilities available from Design and, to be able to recognize the housing strategy chosen to solve the need of habitability.

Two thousand years of the sign architecture The first practical, triadic subdivision of the sign Architecture identifies the three Correlates. The Correlates can be characterized as material or operational categories (Sheriff 1994: 41) and refer to modes of manifestation or being of the sign. If we consider the sign Architecture, we can analyse it according to

284

Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Peircean Semiotics

its three main aspects: Design, Construction, and Habitability (Table 10.2). From a logical point of view, these three aspects correspond to the three Correlates of the sign: 1. 2.

3.

Design – first Correlate – is just the pure possibility of Architecture. Design is the pure form that enables Construction and Habitability; Construction – second Correlate – is the material aspect of Architecture, it can only acquire the form provided for by Design, and in turn, it will strongly condition Habitability; and Habitability – third Correlate – represents the functional value of Architecture: it is the cultural necessity that gives meaning to Construction and strongly influences Design, through the logical principle that symbols grow (CP 2.302, 1895).

For Peirce everything is a sign and therefore subsigns can be also analysed triadically. The partition of each subsign, again into three aspects, leads to the semiotic nonagon and to the vertical reading of the grid: the Trichotomies. ‘Signs are divisible by three Trichotomies; first, according [to] the sign in itself; . . . secondly, according [to] the relation of the sign to its object; . . . thirdly, according [to] its Interpretant’ (CP 2.243, 1903). The Trichotomies can be characterized as formal or theoretical categories; they allude to a conceptual way of understanding the sign and its aspects. The first Trichotomy of the sign Architecture (Table  10.2) establishes the innumerable theoretical and practical varieties of knowledge needed to develop, subsequently, the design practice (EF): 1.

2.

3.

All the necessary knowledge for Design (FF) – which we summarize as graphic languages since those are the most important operational aspects for EF – ranging from Mathematics and Geometry to the theories of colour, visual texture and form; All the technical knowledge necessary for Construction (FE), from Physics and Chemistry through materials and construction technologies; and All the socio-cultural knowledge regarding Habitability (FV), which includes different historical contexts, and very different strategic purposes in each community in terms of Anthropology, Sociology and Psychology of dwelling.9

The second Trichotomy of each correlate refers to the relationship between the sign and its object. Again referring to Architecture, the second Trichotomy

Peirce’s Categories as Design Thinking

285

(Table 10.2) meets the three aspects of the Correlates of this sign: plans, buildings and dwelling behaviours. The second Trichotomy enables the analysis of the three social practices (Althusser 1965 [1996]: pp. 186–197): 1. 2. 3.

a theoretical practice related to the process of designing (EF), that in relation to Architecture is only a possibility to be; an economical practice related to the actual construction of the building (EE), that is only the material aspect of Architecture; and a political practice related to concrete behaviour (EV) in that building, that shows the strategic value that a concrete community gives to that construction.

The third Trichotomy refers to the relationship of the sign to its interpretant – for Peirce a general-socio-cultural interpretant, not an individual interpreter – that is, for Architecture, this Trichotomy meets the strategic criteria considered necessary for a given culture in a given time: 1. 2.

3.

aesthetic strategies (VF) – qualitative and quantitative criteria – for the graphical output of the design process; economic strategies (VE) – quantitative criteria – for construction, like quality and cost of material, thermal and structural resistance, durability; and political strategies (VV) – qualitative criteria – for solving the different needs of habitability that a given society may have.

Another practical way to envisage the Trichotomies is to take into consideration the role they fulfil in a logical temporality: past, present and future (Table 10.2). The first Trichotomy recapitulates the state of knowledge on design, on the available materials and technologies, and on the sociocultural and political conditions in which the sign is produced. This Trichotomy shapes the past of the sign, everything that is historically and logically previous to the action to be developed in the second Trichotomy. It is the enabling instance of any update in the second Trichotomy. A careful study of the first trichotomy enables replenishing in the nonagon everything that is perceptible, feasible and thinkable (Rancière 2008 [2009]: 72). The second Trichotomy forms the present of the sign, it shows the contingent actualization according to formal, material and evaluative modes of manifestation. This column of the present makes it possible to describe, register, and relieve social practices: formal qualities, facts and behaviours that respond to a particular

286

Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Peircean Semiotics

Table 10.2 Synthetic semiotic nonagon of the sign Architecture analysed in its three and nine aspects – Correlates and Trichotomies (Guerri 2003: 161; 2012: 2014: 27; 2016: 32). Incidentally, the nonagon makes it possible to place in their specific significant context what Marcus Vitruvius Pollio (23–27 BC [1556]: L1, 2) proposed as the core values of Architecture: firmitas, utilitas and venustas10 Form

Existence

Value

Knowledge Past

Social Practice Present

Cultural values Future

FF

EF

VF

– Graph. Lang. TSD DESIGN – Monge Formal aspects, the system Available possibility of reaching graphic languages (in VF) an – Perspective architectonic value to be Architecture

– Tracings – Plan, elevation, section Drawings plans models – Perspectives

– Aesthetic values of: 1. Pure form, 2. Construction, 3. Habitability. Venustas

Existence

FE

EE

VE

CONSTRUCTION Existential aspect or the material or concrete manifestation of Architecture

– Physics-ChemistryPhysiology – Materials, equipment, workers, inhabitants. – Calculus, Technology

– Concrete building/s (e.g.: Ville Savoie by Le Corbusier)

Concrete quantifiable values of construction, analyzed in the context of its concrete location in the world. Firmitas

Value

FV

EV

VV

HABITABILITY The value, function, or social need of Architecture

– Anthropology – Sociology of Hygiene dwelling – Psychology

Concrete inhabiting behaviour in relation to the building considered in EE

Strategic values of habitability according to FV and EV. Argument that enables abduction, for DESIGN. Vitruvius Utilitas

ARCHITECTURE

Form

contingency. For the sign Architecture, it involves three sequential presents: first designing, then building, and, finally, inhabiting. The third Trichotomy shapes the desired future for the sign, that is, the strategic or cultural values of each of the Correlates, since all value or strategy is designed to generate a logically posterior effect. This third column allows us to account for the ways in which the sign intervenes or operates with the possibilities gathered in the column of the past, where everything imaginable, feasible and wished for is available for a certain community and for a certain time. The third Trichotomy allows us to understand the degree of coherence between aesthetic,

Peirce’s Categories as Design Thinking

287

material and political strategies; or, on the contrary, the contradictions or tensions that are present in them. So far, we have seen how the semiotic nonagon can be used as an operative tool to de-construct the sign Architecture, a very complex sign that involves a huge combination of variables and implies a very difficult synthesis to accomplish the project.

The sign graphic language At this point, it is worth noting that the nonagon of the sign Architecture (Table  10.2) shows only the salient or dominant aspects of each of the nine subsigns. This is why, in FF, only graphic languages are named, since they are the outstanding aspects that are necessary to be able to draw, design, and make plans and models in EF. However, the necessary theoretical knowledge in FF includes mathematics and geometry and also colour, visual texture and form – through geometric projections – as well as the respective psychological theories about colour, texture and form – as in Gestalt Theory. Each graphic language emerges and is systematized historically as a response to a socio-cultural need of a certain era. As can be seen (Table  10.3), the development of each of the graphic representation systems follows the Symbols grow rule. The need to systematize a certain aspect of the representable was born with the Perspective due to the emergence of the bourgeoisie in the Renaissance, continues with Ing. Gaspar Monge in the industrial era, and ends only in the twentieth century as a consequence of the formal concerns of the Modern Movement, colour theory and Gestalt, and the studies of vision and perception. The Graphic Language TSD allows one to account for the ‘pure design operations’ (Jannello 1980: 5–6) which, by means of tracings, complex configurations and tree-hierarchical structures, offers a morpho-syntactic explication of the architectonicity of a work or of what traditionally and intuitively has been called the style of an author or of an era. Its specificity consists of allowing a denotative description and explanation of the diagrammatic11 aspects of a work in a systematic and comparable way. Fundamentally, TSD makes it possible to define, from the purely morphosyntactic form – from a grammar – what is considered of architectonic value in a given work of architecture.

288

Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Peircean Semiotics

Table 10.3 Synthetic semiotic nonagon of the sign Graphic Languages analysed in its three and nine aspects – Correlates and Trichotomies. There is a semiotic specificity in each system of representation, a differential point of view or Weltanschauung that makes them necessarily complementary. Nevertheless, from Thirdness to Firstness, some inferences can be made GRAPHIC LANGUAGES

Form

Existence

Value

Knowledge

Social Practice

Cultural values

Form

FF

EF

VF

– Morphic paradigm, the dictionary of TSD Relational projections possible forms – Tactic paradigm, the grammar of form – Combinatorial 20th century strategies

– Tracings – Simple and complex configurations – Tree of hierarchical structures

– Aesthetic values of logic harmonies. – Etic values of logic harmonies. – Logic of form.

Existence

FE

EE

VE

18th century

– Rules and methodology for the quantitative representation of the materiality of construction

– Sketches – Models – Plans, elevations and sections of a concrete construction.

– Aesthetic of construction. – Ethic of construction – Constructive logic of form

Value

FV

EV

VV

– Rules and methodology for the qualitative representation of habitable space.

– Sketches – Representation of space qualities. – Perspectives

– Aesthetic of dwelling – Ethic of dwelling – Logic of habitability.

MONGE SYSTEM Orthogonal projections

PERPECTIVE Conic projections 15th century

The conceptual matters of design are, in Peircean-logic-order: colour, visual texture (Jannello 1963) and form (Guerri 2012). Colour as a theoretical possibility with iconic values – Firstness – visual texture as a concrete embodiment of a colour in some materiality – Secondness – and form – Thirdness – as a delimitation of a coloured-texture. By materializing on a background or a concrete context a colour difference with a certain texture, a form will take shape. If the form is not just a formless stain, but possesses certain isotopies, certain spatial relationship, certain concrete recurrences in colour and texture, it will be possible, by means of mathematics and geometry, to assign them a name: triangle, square, etcetera. On this matter, César Jannello (1984 [1988]: 483) wrote: ‘En ce qui concerne la matière delimitation,12 la géométrie ne fournit que des répertoires non ordonnés de types de figures’. TSD is the graphic language setting an orderly description of these figures – the Morphic Paradigm (Jannello 1984 [1988]:

Peirce’s Categories as Design Thinking

289

484–488) – and their possible combinations – the Tactic Paradigm (Guerri 1984 [1988]: 352–353; 1988: 398–401; 2003: 169–171; 2012: 122–136). All languages – verbal, graphic, gestural, etcetera – construct a different reality, as do Perspective – the quality of the dwelling space – and Monge – the quantity of matter in space – in regard to the representation of some aspect of space. Thus, TSD was created to address the representation of the qualities of space with regard to pure-form and form-relation. On the other hand, TSD is the first system of graphic representation that has been conceived as a language; consisting of a dictionary of possible figures – the Morphic Paradigm – and a grammar of all combinatorial possibilities of those figures – the Tactic Paradigm. The Morphic Paradigm is a geometric-logic-graphic-structure (Figures 10.2 and 10.3) that generates all Figures as a continuous group of possibilities for the selection of form. It can be considered a dictionary of the permissible figures of the TSD system. The morphic dimensions of a figure are three: Formatrix, Saturation and Size.13 With TSD the entitative and taxonomic concept presented by Geometry disappears, and a general-relational-criterion is proposed, thereby placing all the figures that a designer must have under logical and instrumental control when designing on the same level of comparability. The morphic paradigm was derived by Jannello from the colour system by Wilhelm Ostwald

Figure 10.2 A radial section of the Morphic Paradigm – a page of the dictionary of TSD – showing lines of invariant saturation (St), same area size (Sz), and superimposed triangles and pentagons, having same size (Sz) and saturation (St). Two oblique dotted lines of same saturation and two hyperbolic dotted lines of same area size are shown; the shaded triangle and shaded pentagon have same St but different Sz.

290

Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Peircean Semiotics

Figure 10.3 The semi cone of the Morphic Paradigm – the complete dictionary – of an infinite number of pages, from triangle to circle. Any figure is defined by three dimensions (Fx, Sz, St). the intersection of the three surfaces of same formatix – Fx, a triangular surface – same area size – Sz, a hyperbolic surface – and same saturation – St, a conic surface.

(1916; 1917), and so, a morphic relation – a coherent bundle of morphic dimensions – will also allow logic-harmony of form, like for colour. The Tactic Paradigm of TSD organizes the continuum of all combinatory possibilities – as well as all harmonious and symmetric variables – of any two figures: the Simple Configurations. It can be considered a grammar for all legal possibilities of figure combination in the TSD system. The Tactic Dimensions are also three: Tactrix, Separation – vertical and horizontal – and Attitude (Figures 10.4 and 10.5). The morphic relations of the two chosen figures define a Tactrix: two squares of different size, with 0° rotation (Figure 10.5), the squares are saturated figures, rectangles are not. The three morphic dimensions of each figure are necessary and sufficient to define a simple configuration. Resuming, since Geometry studies form only as singular entities and since that is insufficient for designers, Geometry had to be reorganized as a designing method, as happened with the conic and the orthogonal projections. Therefore, independently of the fact that Architecture existed also much before the organization of the first graphic languages – because an architectural inference is always possible from any kind of representation – it is also true that after the systematization of both traditional graphic languages, Architecture also underwent some important changes.

Peirce’s Categories as Design Thinking

291

Figures 10.4a, 10.4b and 10.4c A cylinder with a hollow centre that has invariant Tactrix – of two Figures – can represent the Tactic Paradigm of any Simple Configuration. The cylindrical volume is characterized by a sequence of infinite radial sections of invariant Attitude (Figure 10.4a); a sequence of infinite horizontal sections of invariant Vertical Separation (Figure 10.4b), and a sequence of infinite cylindrical sections of invariant Horizontal Separation (Figure 10.4c). The intersection of these three planes, defines a Simple Configuration.

Figure 10.5 A radial section of invariant Attitude of the four quadrants (I, II, III and IV) of a Simple Configuration of two different-sized squares. The image shows the sequence of tactic relations: interiority, penetration and closeness; two squares of dotted lines show interior and exterior tangency. Examples of mirror reflection – along the indicated mirror axes; twofold proper rotation (D); fourfold improper rotation (A, B or C); concentric dilation (B) and eccentric dilation and translation (C or A).

292

Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Peircean Semiotics

What is always emphasized in a work of Architecture is the aesthetic aspect; nevertheless, until recently, there was no specific graphic language for it. Perspective has a specific denotative capacity for representing the dwellingquality of space, and the Monge System is very specific regarding the quantity of constructed space, but both graphic systems have some important areas of ambiguity (Figures 10.6 to 10.9 and 10.10 to 10.13).

Figure 10.6 Abbey of Saint Blaise by Pierre Michel d’Ixnard, Germany, 1783.

Figure 10.7 Villa Rotonda, by Palladio, Vicenza, Italy, 1566.

Peirce’s Categories as Design Thinking

293

Figure 10.8 Dominican Motherhouse by Louis Kahn, Pennsylvania, USA, 1965–1969.

Figure 10.9 Curutchet House by Le Corbusier, La Plata, Argentina, 1948.

By comparing Figures 10.6 and 10.8, it can be easily seen that Kahn received a very strong influence from the plan of St Blaise. On the contrary, having only the graphic information of the plan by Palladio (Figure  10.7) and that of the house by Le Corbusier (Figure 10.9), nobody can imagine any formal relation. However, when analysing the complex configuration14 of the tracings with the TSD Graphic Language, it is very evident, perceivable and understandable that

294

Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Peircean Semiotics

Figure 10.10 Tracings on the plan of the Abbey of Saint Blaise.

Figure 10.11 Tracings on the plan of the Villa Rotunda.

Peirce’s Categories as Design Thinking

Figure 10.12 Tracings on the plan of the Dominican Motherhouse.

Figure 10.13 Tracings on the plan of the Curutchet House.

295

296

Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Peircean Semiotics

the pure design operations are completely different in the case by Louis Kahn, and that they are very similar in the case of Palladio and Le Corbusier. It can be seen that there is a design coherence in each example: ●

●

a very static and symmetric configuration for the neoclassic Abbey (Figure 10.10), and a very dynamic and asymmetric configuration for the Dominican Motherhouse (Figure 10.12); and an absolute symmetry – in form and in construction – was necessary at the time of Palladio (Figure 10.11), and was absolutely forbidden in the time of Le Corbusier (Figure 10.13), nevertheless, we could say that both configurations of design differ by only by a few degrees of rotation of the squares.

At this point, it is very clear that these observations are made possible only by the existence of this new graphic system of representation.

The logical possibilities of using colour The theory of the syntax of colour, in numerous variations, and the perception of colour have both been comprehensively addressed over the past two centuries. The problem of the treatment – or use, in the broadest sense – of colour, while routinely accommodated, has never been satisfactorily sorted out since Goethe’s attempt with Zur Farbenlehre of 1810. In 2001, William Huff presented a thesis on the treatment of colour at the congress of SEMA – Sociedad de Estudios Morfológicos de la Argentina – based on a list of thirty-five criteria of discrete treatments of colour. The SEMA presentation was Huff ’s latest formulation of an ongoing quest that he had initiated at the Carnegie Institute of Technology in 1964 and had continued to pursue – not in a channelled research setting, but in the unpredictable classroom setting of Basic Design studies. The list – a non-organized sequence of items with no beginning nor necessary end – was perfectly illustrated with several examples produced by artists or researchers. By challenging the coherence of a list, the Semiotic Nonagon was proposed for a systematic approach to that problem.15 For this study, the basic nine-box Nonagon was fractaled into a twenty-seven-box Nonagon (Guerri and Huff 2005: 1521–1524; 2006: 191–202). It was noted, after subjecting the first semiotic essay to the rigour of the Semiotic Nonagon, that the list of criteria was reduced to twenty-four due to conceptual repetitions that the verbal language concealed in different formulations: some criteria on the prior list were discarded as

Peirce’s Categories as Design Thinking

297

Table 10.4 Synthetic semiotic nonagon of the sign Treatment of Colour analysed in its three and nine aspects – Correlates and Trichotomies. Once again, it is shown that it is most important to have a logical criterion to analyse a list, a concept or any problem. There can be only three general logic criteria for using colour: 1. Colour as a possibility in itself, syntactic of colour; 2. Colour as a concrete possibility by virtue of its materiality, semantics of colour; and 3. Colour as a cultural possibility in response to social needs, pragmatics of colour Form

Existence

Value

TREATMENT OF COLOUR

Theoretical, material, and mediated knowledge. Conceptual difference.

Social Practice. Theoretical, material, and mediated practice of different colours.

Theoretical, material, and mediated strategies for differentiation with colour.

Form

FF

EF

VF

Theory of syntax and perception of colour. Treating hue, intensity, saturation, regarding contrast: emphasis or camouflage.

Treating colour empirically. Colour atlas: Newton, Göthe, Ostwald, Munsell, etc. Copying colours as they are. Interaction in colour.

Iconic strategic functions. Treating colour systematically and concerning its aesthetic (harmonic) potentials.

Existence

FE

EE

VE

Physical, material, symptomatic, practical manifestations and economical use of colour.

Colour materials; Spectral and pigmentary media. Physics and chemistry of colour. Colour technology.

Treating colour as a symptomatic property. Indexical identification.

Indexical strategic functions Treating colour in relation to its material performances: quality, money’s worth, durability.

Value

FV

EV

VV

Mediated, cultural, political functions or treatment of colour. Symbolic use of colour.

Treating colour to address humanistic needs; evoking sociological and psychological effects like belonging or identity.

Treating colour as to its symbolic capacity, in representational and conventional ways. Symbolic practices.

Rhetorical or strategic functions. Treating colour in relation to cultural strategies that can serve human needs.

Abstract conceptualization of colour. Theoretical use of colour.

inappropriate; others were seen as different aspects of the same criteria and were merged. In the process of sifting, not all twenty-seven prescribed criteria were evident, for in the reapportionment, some boxes turned up empty. Notwithstanding, a diagnosis could be made about what might go into any empty box: credible, unforeseen criteria were suggested (Table 10.4).

298

Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Peircean Semiotics

Twenty-seven different Arguments show the story of colour in its numerous modalities to be an important part of the communicative necessities of man. The twenty-seven-box Nonagon is, in fact, three Nonagons that conform to Peirce’s triad of categories. The Firstness Nonagon of colour treatment covers abstraction – theory of colour – and treats contrast, perceptual phenomena, colour theory, harmony. The Secondness Nonagon covers technology – materiality of colour – and treats light and concrete pigments, physiological and physical effects and durability etc. The Thirdness Nonagon covers conventionality – cultural values of colour – and treats psychological effects, symbolic tagging, and cultural usages, like identity by colour, symbolic and rhetoric values, status, etcetera.

Brief conclusions Both Design – as we know it today – and Semiotics are disciplines that began to develop only in the last century. Both disciplines pose formal or abstract problems – problems of Firstness – valid only if they have, logically below in the Semiotic Nonagon (Tables 10.1 to 10.4), a socio-cultural need in Thirdness, that will be related also to some materiality, some materialization, or some behaviour in Secondness. It is in this respect that Peirce wrote: ‘Symbols grow’ (CP 2.302, 1895). The history of architecture is a clear example of that growth. The history of the sign Architecture was born from a certain human need for habitability (VV), which grew over millions of years along with the improvements achieved by humankind in the construction of the habitat (EE). The possibility of a certain control over the construction appeared also bit by bit with the abstract conceptualization of form through Geometry (FF). The drawing methods – today’s graphic languages (Secondness in FF) – appeared only a few millennia later (Table 10.2). What I am proposing is to understand that all three aspects have always been present throughout the history of man, for the primitive man was also, very surely, able to kill to get for his group the cave that had a better form. Could this be considered a primitive operation of design? The project, by designing, will be always linked to technology and to housing needs, or vice versa. Integration is necessary and inevitable. The development of TSD – as a need to access a morpho-syntactic grammar of pure form relations – also needed Peircean logic – and the Semiotic Nonagon – to go from Jannello’s (1977; 1984) Theory of Delimitation to the Graphic Language TSD (Guerri 1984; 1988; 2003; 2012).

Peirce’s Categories as Design Thinking

299

The Semiotic Nonagon is an efficacious cognitive instrument applicable to any situation of human knowledge, be it theoretical or practical. It is a tool for reasoning that is part of an art, but in the rhetorical sense, of a tekhné. The semiotic nonagon is a tool, an operational model capable of guiding any qualitative research, but above all capable of showing the provisional nature of this ordering. Each place in that empty grid, each logical space, shows an aspect of the semiotic object that is being analysed while, and fundamentally, allows the relations that are established between them to be transparent. The challenge of operating with the nonagon consists in assuming, from the beginning, the complexity that every sign, that every social product, presents; however simple or modest it may seem, in a first approximation. The semiotic nonagon shows and proves. This powerful conjunction of two seemingly alien logics rests on the power of the diagrammatic icon that sustains the entire set of relationships. As stated above, the semiotic nonagon can also be considered a particular mechanism of Design Thinking, a holistic approach to the inherent complexity of any object of study. Considering this capacity, the semiotic nonagon is a toolbox that conspires against the constructions of closed knowledge. In a very broad sense, Peirce’s intellectual project consisted of developing a theory to explain thought as a dynamic process, essentially an action that oscillates between the mental states of doubt and belief. While the essence of the belief is the ‘establishment of a habit’ (CP 5.197, 5.398, 1877), a satisfactory and peaceful state in which every human wants to remain, the doubt ‘stimulates us to inquiry until it is destroyed’ (CP 5.373, 1877). Thus, in the duo doubt-belief, doubt is the engine of knowledge and belief, a state of peace, relatively stable – provisional by the way – that makes the interpretative or projective action possible. Thus, the semiotic nonagon is proposed as a powerful instrument to get out of the state of doubt, of chaos, of any order of thought and re-establish a state of belief that, force is to recognize it, hardly has stability. The nine boxes – or the intersections – have a double virtue: they are consistent and therefore organize, but at the same time show the provisional nature of that organization.

References Althusser, L. 1973. Pour Marx. Paris: La Découverte. Guerri, C. 1988. ‘Semiotic Characteristics of the Architectural Design Based on the Model by Charles S. Peirce’. In M. Herzfeld and L. Melazzo (eds). Semiotic Theory and

300

Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Peircean Semiotics

Practice, Proceedings of the III Congress of the IASS-AIS . Palermo 1984, Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 347–356. Guerri, C. 1988. ‘Architectural Design, and Space Semiotic in Argentina’. In T.A. Sebeok and J. Umiker-Sebeok (eds), The Semiotic Web 1987, Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 389–419. Guerri, C. 2000. ‘Gebaute Zeichen: Die Semiotik der Architektur‘. In U. Wirth (ed.), Die Welt als Zeichen und Hypothese. Perspectiven des semiotischen Pragmatismus von Charles S. Peirce, Frankfurt: Suhrkamp. 375–389. Guerri, C. 2001. ‘Lenguajes, Diseño y Arquitectura’. Cuadernos 17, 211–250. Guerri, C. 2003. ‘El nonágono semiótico: un ícono diagramático y tres niveles de iconicidad’. deSignis 4, 157–174. Guerri, C. 2012. Lenguaje gráfico TDE. Más allá de la perspectiva. Buenos Aires: EUDEBA . Guerri, C. and W. Huff, 2005. ‘A Comprehensive Treatment of Color, Submitted to the Semiotic Nonagon I.’ In J. L. Nieves and J. Hernández-Andrés (eds), Proceedings of the 10th Congress of the International Colour Association, vol. 2, Granada: AIC , 1521–1524. Guerri, C. and W. Huff. 2006. ‘A Comprehensive Treatment of Color, Submitted to the Semiotic Nonagon II ’. In J.L. Caivano and M. López (eds), Color: ciencia, artes, proyecto y enseñanza, Buenos Aires: Nobuko, 191–202. Guerri, C. and W. Huff, 2007a. ‘Tres maestros del Curso Preliminar de Diseño en la Bauhaus’. deSignis 11, 185–194. Guerri, C. and W. Huff, 2007b. ‘Yves Klein’s Monochrome, or why Examples Fail to Convey Meaning Congruently’. In Communications. Proceedings of the VIII Congress of the IAVS-AISV , Vol. 1, Istambul: Kultur University, 91–98. Guerri, C. et al. 2016. Nonágono Semiótico. Un modelo operativo para la investigación cualitativa. Buenos Aires: EUDEBA , 2nd ed. Göthe, J.W. von. 1810. Zur Farbenlehre. 2 Vols. Tübingen: Cotta. Jannello, C.V. 1961. ‘Texture as a Visual Phenomenon’. Architectural Design, V. 33, N. 8, 1963, 396. Jannello, C.V. 1977. ‘Para una poética de la prefiguración’. Summarios 9–10, 24–28. Jannello, C.V. 1980. Diseño, lenguaje y arquitectura. Buenos Aires: FAU-UNBA . Jannello, C.V. 1988. ‘Fondements pour une sémiotique scientifique de la conformation délimitant des objets du monde natural’. In M. Herzfeld and L. Melazzo (eds), Semiotic Theory and Practice, Proceedings of the III Congress of the IASS-AIS , Palermo 1984, Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 483–496. Lacan, J. 1972–1973. Encore-Aún. El Seminario XX . Buenos Aires: Paidós, 1981. Magariños de Morentin, J.A. 1984. El mensaje publicitario. Buenos Aires: Hachette. Magariños de Morentin, J.A. 2008. La semiótica de los bordes. Córdoba (Arg.): Comunicarte. Ostwald, W. 1916. Die Farbenfibel. Leipzig: Unesma. Ostwald, W. 1917. Der Farbatlas. Leipzig: Unesma.

Peirce’s Categories as Design Thinking

301

Rancière, J. 2008. The Emancipated Spectator. London: Verso, 2009. Sheriff, J.K. 1994. Charles Peirce’s Guess at the Riddle. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Vitruvio Polion, M. 1567. 10 b.C. Dieci libri dell’archittectura. Trad. by Mons. D. Barbaro. Siena: de’Francheschi. Voto, C. 2016. Cartografía del Diseño Audiovisual. Mapas para atravesar un territorio de intersecciones. Doctoral Thesis at the Facultad de Arquitectura, Diseño y Urbanismo of the Universidad de Buenos Aires, unpublished.

302

11

Pragmatism and Semiotics in Teaching Drawing Today1 Seymour Simmons

Life in the twenty-first century by many accounts is gravitating increasingly toward the visual.2 Visual media from magazines and TV to the internet bombard us with visual information. Visual imaging technologies are essential in medicine and other fields. Teachers in every subject depend on visual aids, and ‘visual literacy’ is an educational buzzword. As a result, ‘visual thinking’ (Arnheim, 1969) is no longer assumed to reside solely within the visual arts, but to apply across numerous disciplines and domains. Given such conditions, this chapter argues for the importance of teaching ‘drawing as thinking’ (visual and otherwise) both in the study of visual arts and in general education based, perhaps surprisingly, on the example of Charles Sanders Peirce. Though not an artist himself, Peirce, like Leonardo da Vinci, drew throughout his life, employing a variety of graphic means to serve a diversity of cognitive ends: in science, mathematics, philosophy, and more. As well as exemplifying the processes of thinking in and through drawing, Peirce provides evidence of drawing at the intersection of perception and cognition through his research with psychologist Joseph Jastrow3 on bistable images, drawings whose shapes shift even as you look. Most important, Peirce’s pragmatism and semiotics offer explanations of how drawing operates as a ‘medium of the mind’ in its many modes, from the freedom of thought that invites insight and inspiration to the most rigorous processes of logical analysis and creative synthesis. To begin, I will put the argument for teaching ‘drawing as thinking’ in context by reviewing the history of drawing instruction as a frame for more recent debates about teaching drawing that may benefit from a Peircean perspective. I then discuss the three aspects of Peirce’s work mentioned above that can be called upon in making the case for ‘drawing as thinking’. This is followed by a focus on five ways Peirce himself drew with implications for teaching ‘drawing as 303

304

Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Peircean Semiotics

thinking’ in and beyond the arts. To conclude, I present Peirce and his pictorial thinking as a model for the postmodern mind.

Drawing instruction in crisis The urge to draw is a fundamental fact of human life. This is demonstrated by the historical record where the first known drawing now dates back over 70,000 years.4 It is equally evident every day as we watch children come into the world ready to make their mark on every available surface with any available implement (Winner, 1986). Besides these untutored examples, drawing instruction has played a part across the millennia, not only in professional preparation in the visual arts but also in general education (Efland, 1990). Yet, despite historical precedent and developmental realities, and even despite the impact of the visual in contemporary society, the teaching of drawing has become a bone of contention among practitioners and teachers in art, architecture, and design, as well as among pre-K12 art educators. To understand the present situation and the discussion to follow, it is necessary to appreciate the preeminent position drawing instruction held in visual arts study until quite recently. According to Deanna Petherbridge (2010: 210), ‘[b]efore the late 20th century, learning to be an artist or architect as an apprentice in a studio or attending an academy or art school was entirely predicated on learning to draw. Drawing was conceived of as a way of learning about past and present art, about recording the everyday world and achieving control of processes of representation, as well as perfecting the conduit between hand and imagination through practice’.5 Implied in that last statement was the view that drawing was considered the ‘intellectual’ or ‘cognitive’ component of art and design. Besides its practical role in planning a painting or laying out the floorplan of a building, drawing was the means of creative ideation.6 Today, practical, cognitive, and creative values of drawing seem equally forgotten in schools where, outside the art room, drawing is often treated more as a distraction than a medium for learning.7 Further, with school art programmes constantly being cut due to lack of funds or the need for more academics in the age of high-stakes standardized assessment, fewer and fewer students have a chance to learn to draw in any form, let alone as an aid to thinking in or across subject areas.8 In fact, as Petherbridge implies, drawing instruction is even ‘at risk’ in college programmes of art, architecture, and design. For more than half a century, debate has raged in these institutions not only about how and how much drawing should be taught, but whether drawing should be taught at all!9

Pragmatism and Semiotics in Teaching Drawing

305

Initially, differences over drawing instruction arose as part of the modernist revolt against the dominance of art academies where drawing was targeted because, as primarily the study of classical and Renaissance models, it turned attention away from the present and back to the past, but also because it imposed a single standard for what counted as art in an era of increasingly pluralistic visions.10 With postmodernism, pluralism has multiplied ten-fold.11 Even more, drawing instruction has come under fire due to the emergence of digital media, which has had a particularly strong impact on teaching in architecture and design programmes. To give a sense of the intensity of argument about this topic, as early as 1989, then Harvard professor of architecture William J. Mitchell (1989), anticipating the potential power of Computer Aided Design (CAD) compared to pencil on drafting paper, proclaimed: ‘The Death of Drawing’. Thirty years later, the phrase still resonates.12 Anti-academic art movements and digital technologies also have had an impact on pre-K12 art education.13 Mid-twentieth-century art educators like Viktor Lowenfeld (1957) opposed both academic and realist traditions of drawing instruction because each in its own way imposed adult-level artistic imagery on young minds, thereby discouraging them from expressing themselves in developmentally appropriate and individual ways. In the digital age, young people who find learning to draw difficult can avoid making the effort by turning to an ever-expanding arsenal of alternative visual media including animation programmes that even can be used by elementary-age children,14 or, they can surf the internet to find ‘secondhand’15 images to reprocess in traditional or digital media.16 Fortunately, there is another side to the debate, one which supports drawing instruction not only in the service of cognition, but also for creativity and communication. For instance, at a recent international symposium at the Yale School of Architecture on the question, ‘Is Drawing Dead?’17 leading architects like Michael Graves just said ‘no!’ Their reasons: the ongoing value of drawing by hand, including on the proverbial napkin, for creative ideation as well as for communicating between colleagues and clients. Central to this renewed interest in drawing is the ‘Drawing Research Network’ (DRN)18 with its online journal, Tracey, which looks at the subject more broadly to consider drawing not only in architecture and design, but equally in fine arts and outside the arts entirely. In terms of education, DRN concerns range from pre-K12 to higher education. For example, this paper was first presented at the DRN symposium, ‘Drawing at the University Today’ (University of Porto, Portugal). Related to the DRN, another international, interdisciplinary network

306

Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Peircean Semiotics

has recently emerged to focus specifically on the topic addressed in this chapter: ‘Thinking through Drawing’ (TtD). TtD symposia on the subject, held at Teachers College Columbia University, the Metropolitan Museum of Art (NYC), and the University of the Arts, London, etc., bring artists and art educators together with researchers studying drawing from perspectives like cognitive science, neurobiology, and developmental psychology, as well as faculty and practitioners in engineering, medicine, mathematics, etc., who use drawing in their work.19 Such gatherings have spawned research initiatives including a study of K12 lessons involving drawing in ‘STEAM’20, wedding the arts to ‘STEM’ subjects: science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (Kantrowitz and Simmons, 2016). Other movements that involve drawing as thinking in general education today include ‘Design Thinking’, teaching people in non-arts fields to think like designers,21 and ‘Graphicacy’,22 thinking in images, as a necessary complement to literacy (thinking in words) and numeracy (thinking in numbers) in the common core curriculum.23 Often, in these contexts, Leonardo da Vinci is cited for his use of drawing as thinking across a range of ‘non-arts’ disciplines.24 That is also where Charles Sanders Peirce comes in. One aim of this chapter is to offer philosophical perspectives on drawing derived from Peirce’s endeavours to complement the research brought together by the DRN, TtD, and others.

Drawing for Peirce This section reviews the ways Peirce serves as a point of reference in making the case for teaching ‘drawing as thinking’ in the twenty-first century: by exemplifying the processes, by providing evidence of how they function, and by offering explanations for why they are important cognitively and creatively. In my view, making this case today depends on bringing to bear each of these forms of argumentation.25 Peirce stands out, as discussed below, because he embodies all three types of argument in his life and work.

Peirce as exemplar of drawing as thinking26 In a letter from c. 1896, C. S. Peirce admitted that he drew ‘incessantly’, but quickly added that he had ‘never drawn a prize’.27 With no artistic pretensions and recognizing his relatively limited skills, Peirce peppered his notebooks and worksheets with drawings of many kinds: ‘. . . diagrams and texts mingled with repetitive doodles, obsessive scribbles, pictographs, and most commonly

Pragmatism and Semiotics in Teaching Drawing

307

caricatures of heads and figures’ (Leja, 2012: 139–140). Even if this apparently casual sketching served mostly as a release from his intellectual efforts, Peirce was capable also of devoting serious time to drawing in ways that were related implicitly or explicitly to his philosophical concerns, among others.28 Nubiola and Barrena (2012) acknowledge that Peirce never developed ‘a full aesthetics or theory of art’, but say he was sensitive to aesthetic experience, both the beautiful and the sublime in art and nature. This is especially revealed in letters interwoven with drawings from his first trip to Europe. Discussing the value of these written and pictorial records for Peirce, the authors explain that, in his letters, he ‘often dwelt on his admiration for beauty, whether in nature or in artefacts, and he enjoyed sharing with his reader the feelings that the contemplation of beautiful things elicited in him’ (2012: 176). Peirce’s drawings were another way of sharing these feelings. Yet, even if his travel sketches, most of which were drawn directly from observation, focused on aesthetic experiences of beauty, many of Peirce’s other representational drawings, mostly done from imagination, were decidedly unbeautiful, even grotesque. He also produced a wide range of nonrepresentational drawings, including experiments with mark-making, diagrams, and abstract patterns. Each of these ways of drawing is discussed with examples in the next section, but before speaking about Peirce’s specific drawing practices, we need to delve more deeply into why Peirce found drawing in general an activity so appropriate to his habits of mind. One answer according to Leja (2012: 139), may be Peirce’s self-proclaimed ‘ “intellectual lefthandedness” which separated him from most of his associates’. As Leja explains: Charles Sanders Peirce felt a strong orientation in his natural patterns of thought and reasoning toward graphic representation and visual symbols . . . As he put it, ‘I do not think I ever reflect in words: I employ visual diagrams, firstly, because this way of thinking is my natural language of self-communication, and secondly, because I am convinced that it is the best system for the purpose’. (MS 619, 1909) The visuality Peirce saw as characteristic of his own mind was grounded in the graphic representation of thoughts and arguments and in diagramming relations among them. From his earliest years to his last, he developed and employed totalizing systems for visualizing ideas and their relations. 2012: 139

In addition to drawing’s role in facilitating visualization and conceptualization, Peirce also may have found drawing a useful cognitive tool based on the prominence he attributed to perception in general, and visual perception in

308

Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Peircean Semiotics

particular. This prominence, as Viola (2012) reports, was reflected in his claim that science, mathematics, and even philosophy are essentially matters of observation. Regarding philosophy, Viola says Peirce conceived it as an ‘observational enterprise, or cenoscopy (a word he borrowed from Bentham); that is, one dealing with “observations such as come within the range of every man’s normal experience.” Philosophy may, in this sense, be described as no less than a training of the eye . . .’ (2012: 118) Viola then goes on to note that phenomenology, the first branch of philosophy for Peirce, ‘is itself characterized by means of a visual metaphor: it “just contemplates phenomena as they are, simply opens its eyes and describes what it sees” (EP2: 143)’. (2012: 119) Similarly, semeiotics for Peirce starts, not with concepts, but with percepts and feelings, which are then ‘represented’ by signs, including drawings. In fact, Peirce initially referred to signs themselves as ‘representations’ (Short 2007).

Drawing as evidence in Peirce’s research In seeming contradiction to what was just said about phenomenology, Peirce in collaboration with his former student, the psychologist Joseph Jastrow, used a particular class of drawings to refute the common assumption that seeing is simply a matter of opening one’s eyes. Doing so, they provided evidence of how drawings stimulate thought via the conjunction of perception and cognition (Viola, 2012: 124).29 The drawings in question were ‘bistable images’ (Figures 11.1 and 11.2): pictures that ‘can be read in two different and mutually exclusive ways’ (Viola: 116). The aim of these experiments was to challenge common assumptions about perception while demonstrating an epistemological premise essential to Peirce’s pragmatism and semeiotics. These two drawings are among the most familiar examples of bistable images.30 Unlike ordinary drawings where the image is obviously one thing or another, either a duck or a rabbit, the ‘Duck-Rabbit’ could be read in both ways,

Figure 11.1 ‘Duck/Rabbit’. Duck-Rabbit illusion: https://commons.wikimedia.org/ wiki/Category:Rabbit–duck_illusion (Accessed 3 May 2019).

Pragmatism and Semiotics in Teaching Drawing

309

Figure 11.2 ‘Schröder Stairs’. http://www.newopticalillusions.com/wp-content/ uploads/2017/06/Optical-Illusion-With-Staircases-1.png (Accessed 3 May 2019).

wherein one way excludes the other. Similarly, the ‘Schröder Stairs’ can be read as seen from above looking down or below looking up. In each case, the subject flips not so much by an effort of will, but, as Peirce says, because the mind tires of seeing it one way and turns to the other (2012: 122). What makes these drawings so important for Peirce is that they demonstrate the necessary interdependence that he recognized between perception and thought, with the latter taking the form of a judgement or an interpretation. This theory, central to pragmatism, opposed conceptions of perception common both to classical empiricism and to the then current ‘mechanistic account’ of optical vision. Although different in certain details, both formulations divided perception into two distinct processes: one outer, physical, and objective; one inner, mental, and subjective. Hoel (2012: 256) summarizes the two modes as: ‘visual sensation, i.e. the formation of the retinal image . . .; and perception proper, i.e. the subsequent “internal” treatment or processing of this image’. For Peirce, perception was more of a continuum in which ‘the percept is immediately interpreted in the perceptual judgement’. There is no need for a division between functions, outer and inner, because perception itself is ‘inherently interpretive’. (2012: 261) Nor did Peirce consider the interpretive process ‘subjective’. Rather, as Hoel explains,‘the interpretative element is conceived in terms of mediating apparatuses that orchestrate vision in more or less systematic ways and temporarily allow the vision of different individuals to converge’. Mediating apparatuses discussed in Hoel’s article include composite photographs (a single image, say of an ‘average man’ made by blending several images of individual men) as well as diagrams. As I understand it, other mediating apparatuses relevant to the subject of this chapter could include drawings of a generic person of a specific type (i.e. a stereotype) rather than a portrait of a particular individual. However, even looking at particular people, according to Peirce, generates a general idea in the mind. This occurs because the perceptual judgement recognizes in the perception of the individual an example of a general class of similar objects, a man, a tree, a car, etc.

310

Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Peircean Semiotics

In turn, such judgements entail some continuity between perception and imagination, like in connecting the subject with past memories or future possibilities, etc.31 It also allows for intentional acts of attention. Here, the example of the bistable image is mentioned again in that, if we choose, we can try to see these images in one particular way, at least for a time. However, I believe the critical point in regard to thinking to be derived from bistable images for Peirce is that all percepts, but especially indefinite or ambiguous ones, call up questions: What is it that I am seeing? Is it this or that, or something else? In response, we make a guess, or rather form a hypothesis, which is then tested out by closer observation or other actions intended to settle the matter. Although in ordinary perception this process often occurs almost instantaneously at a subconscious level, it is a prime example of what Peirce calls abductive reasoning,32 an essential feature of pragmatism. Perception is also fundamental for Peirce’s semeiotics, primarily in terms of ‘icons’, signs that refer to their objects by virtue of common characteristics. Below, I will show how these processes apply to drawing both from observation and imagination.

Peirce’s explanatory frameworks for understanding drawing as thinking For Peirce, pragmatism and semeiotics developed separately but, late in life, he recognized and defined continuities between the two. I will follow a similar course, focusing first on pragmatism as did Peirce, then on semeiotics, finally attempting to tie the two together in an archetypal drawing process. In each case, I will spell out points related to teaching ‘drawing as thinking’ in the manner in question, and how they reflect the principles indicated by Peirce. I also note that the teaching methods in both cases arose in the early to mid-twentieth century when Peirce’s influence was beginning to be felt. One reason to align these methods more directly with Peirce’s ideas is to demonstrate to those outside the arts that drawing is indeed a domain of thinking: critical, creative, and reflective. Another aim is to encourage visual arts educators to recognize the value of a Peircean perspective in articulating the kinds of thinking drawing entails, and to use Peirce’s ideas to extend the effort to teach drawing as thinking in and beyond the arts.

Drawing and pragmatism Pragmatism for Peirce began as part of his theory of inquiry, albeit without the term, ‘pragmatism’. In his essay, ‘How to Make Our Ideas Clear’, Scheffler says

Pragmatism and Semiotics in Teaching Drawing

311

(1974) Peirce critiqued ‘traditional [i.e., rationalist] notions of clarity and distinctness, arguing that they have been made obsolete by the newer science, and proposing a new principle of his own as a method for the attainment of a higher degree of clarity’ (1974: 76). In Peirce’s critique, clarity as attributed to Descartes meant that ideas under consideration must be recognized intuitively as ‘agreeable to reason’, and must ‘have nothing unclear about them’ (1974: 77). Distinctness, as added by Leibniz, meant requiring ‘an abstract definition of every important term [in the idea]’. To these purely intellectual tests, Peirce’s ‘Pragmatic Maxim’ added an experiential/experimental criterion involving action and developing habits of action: ‘Consider what effects, which might conceivably have practical bearings, we conceive the object of our conception to have. Then, our conception of these effects is the whole of our conception of the object’ (1974: 77–78). To explain, Scheffler says, ‘An effect with practical bearings is, more precisely, a sensible or perceptible consequence contingent on our practice or action’. These are articulated in ‘if-then’ phrases, anticipating a certain outcome as a result of a certain action. Assuming a stone is hard, if I press on it, then it will resist; if I strike something fragile with it, then the other object will break or be otherwise damaged. Adding ‘if-then’ formulas together, ‘[o]ur conception of hardness . . . is just our conception of all those sensible effects resulting from practical operations upon hard things’ (1974: 77–78). In epistemological terms, the new theory of inquiry defines coming to know something as no longer an entirely mental matter, as rationalists assumed, nor is it merely a matter of passively acquiring data through the senses, as empiricists claimed. Instead inquiry is an active, often physical, process of engaging with or ‘operating on’ the object to see what it is made of and what can be done with it. Dewey (1910) defined this process in terms of ‘reflective thinking’, and explained coming to know in terms of ‘doing and undergoing’: doing something to the object or idea in question and undergoing the consequences. Over time, these practical activities in turn evolve into habits of action with the object and beliefs about the object, which enable us to ‘act toward it in accordance with its supposed [traits] in pursuit of [our] purposes’ (1974: 78). A broader theoretical implication of Peirce’s pragmatic view of inquiry is that, in directly connecting thought and action, it displaces the rationalist’s assumption of a dualism between mind and body in which the former is ‘spiritual’ and the latter merely ‘mechanical’. Similarly, Peirce’s theory of perception contradicts the empiricist’s supposition of dualism between the external, mechanical intake of sensory data and the internal, mental process of turning raw data into something meaningful. The continuities Peirce recognized between mind and body in inquiry

312

Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Peircean Semiotics

and between percept and perceptual judgement in perception are both examples of ‘abductive reasoning’, the process of coming to know (and to ‘know how’) based on forming a hypothesis about the object of perception, then testing it out in experience. By calling thinking through hypothesizing ‘abduction’ (identified with pragmatism), Peirce distinguished it from the more common forms of reasoning: deduction (identified with rationalism) and induction (identified with empiricism). Scheffler (1965) aligned each form of reasoning with a ‘model science’ to which it was most applicable: deduction with mathematics, induction with natural science, and abduction with experimental science. Following Scheffler’s example, I have argued elsewhere (1988, 1992, and 2012) that each of these modes of thinking can be aligned with a particular approach to drawing instruction. These alignments are described below: Deductive reasoning begins with general or universal premises from which conclusions about particulars are deduced necessarily in a logical, step by step process. Similarly, in a simplified version of the ‘academic method’ common to many popular ‘how-to-draw . . .’ books, study starts by learning how to draw a set of basic geometric shapes (circles, ellipses, squares, rectangles, and triangles) and/or forms (spheres, cubes, pyramids, etc.).33 Eventually, these are combined, modified, and embellished to draw anything from a person to an automobile to the natural elements in a landscape. When applied to one of these subjects, drawing proceeds in a logical stepwise manner from simple to complex. Thus, a figure begins with three blocks for the head, torso, and pelvis arranged on a straight or curving line representing the spine. Then, limbs in the form of simple cylinders are added with wedge shapes for hands and feet.34 As the drawing proceeds, these schematic structures are refined and, finally, details are added to distinguish the specific subject. By contrast, induction starts with particular instances from which a generalized conclusion is inferred. Similarly, drawing with an ‘innocent eye’ as Ruskin (1857) put it, starts with specific observed details which, when assembled, add up to the final whole. Drawing study based on this method might begin by rendering relatively simple natural objects from direct observation, advancing to more complex objects, adding more details, etc. Drawing a figure based on this paradigm may best be done as a ‘blind outline’, with ‘blind’ meaning drawing with the eye glued to the subject, not looking at the paper at all while drawing. Outline drawing involves a set of lines that follow edges, including those that set the figure apart from the background as well as those where one form overlaps another. Wherever it starts, the line continues until it reaches its end, either fading out, or running into another line, at which point, the drawer picks up

Pragmatism and Semiotics in Teaching Drawing

313

another edge and continues in this way all around the figure as long as time allows.35 The challenge is to keep looking while making sure the eye and hand stay coordinated, sticking closely to the observed edge. Finally, abduction begins with a problem to which possible solutions are hypothesized and tested through experiment and experience, doing and undergoing. Similarly, learning to draw in the spirit of abduction may begin with experimentation with media and mark-making, then applying these experimentally to diverse subjects to determine what works best to solve the representational, or other given problem. The working out of abductive hypotheses through drawing is visible, among other things, in pentimenti, traces of previously drawn ideas that underlie more finished drawings. In such cases, hypotheses initially may take the form of roughly drawn schemata that are then revised rapidly, and often radically, as they are being developed. E.H. Gombrich (1960) associates this process with ‘the sketch’, and uses it to distinguish medieval from postmedieval art as well as to identify a connection between postmedieval art and science in ways that recall C. S. Peirce: To the Middle Ages, the schema is the image; to the postmedieval artist, it is the starting point for corrections, adjustments, adaptations, the means to probe reality and to wrestle with the particular. The hallmark of the medieval artist is the firm line that testifies to the mastery of his craft. That of the postmedieval artist is not facility, which he avoids, but constant alertness. Its symptom is the sketch, or rather the many sketches which precede the finished work and, for all the skill of hand and eye that marks the master, a constant readiness to learn, to make and match and remake till the portrayal ceases to be a secondhand formula and reflects the unique and unrepeatable experience the artist wishes to seize and hold. It is this constant search, this sacred discontent, which constitutes the leaven of the Western mind since the Renaissance and pervades our art no less than our science. For it is not only the scientist . . . who can examine the schema and test its validity. Since the time of Leonardo, at least, every great artist has done the same, consciously or unconsciously. 1960: 173–174

Compared to the confidence of drawing with familiar schemata, or the care and concentration required for an outline to follow one edge at a time, sketching is an uncertain, messy process, as is scientific investigation, experiential learning, or any activity where abduction is the modus operandi. While education, at least today, seems to abhor the vacuum of uncertainty, Peirce celebrated ‘fallibilism’, claiming that abduction was the only system of reasoning that yields new knowledge and creative solutions.36

314

Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Peircean Semiotics

The fallibilistic, experiential/experimental approach to drawing instruction is nowhere better articulated than in the 1941 figure drawing book, The Natural Way to Draw, by Kimon Nicolaides. Explaining his title, Nicolaides says: ‘There is only one right way to learn to draw and that is a perfectly natural way. It has nothing to do with artifice or technique. It has nothing to do with aesthetics or conception. It has only to do with the act of correct observation, and by that I mean a physical contact with all sorts of objects through all the senses’ (1941: xiii). Shortly after, he speaks indirectly about fallibilism by warning students not to worry about making technical mistakes. ‘you should understand that these mistakes are unavoidable. the sooner you make your first five thousand mistakes, the sooner you will be able to correct them ’ (1941: 2–3). Fallibilism is most evident in the set of quick exercises called ‘gesture drawing’, where gesture (1941: 13) means ‘the function of action, life, or expression . . .’, but that is the second lesson in Nicolaides’ book. He introduces the experiential approach to drawing in his first lesson, which actually involves drawing edges. Like the outline drawing described earlier, this is another ‘blind drawing’ in which students cannot look at the paper as long they are drawing. However, for Nicolaides, the edge is not the outline, i.e., the line of demarcation between figure and ground, but the contour, i.e., the three-dimensional edge of the figure where the surface turns away in space. Where drawing an outline may simply be a matter of taking in visual data (how long the line is, where it turns, etc.) without interpretation, following a contour requires constant perceptual judgement regarding the textural quality of the surface of which the edge is a part, the depth of a fold, even the weight and density of the substance being drawn. Such judgements show up as changes in ‘line quality’, the thickness, darkness, smoothness, etc., the line takes in response to imagined tactile sensations. Nicolaides uses this exercise to exemplify his ‘natural’, i.e. experiential, way to draw involving not just the eye but all the senses including especially touch. Gesture involves other ‘natural’ processes, including kinesthetic/proprioceptive awareness and empathy. As such, gesture is not about the object’s shape or edges at all; it is about capturing the activity of the subject, including even inanimate objects (Figure 11.3). Thus, where contour drawing is meant to be done slowly and ‘painstakingly’ with poses lasting half an hour or more, gesture drawing is done fast and ‘furiously’: The model is asked to take a very active pose for a minute or less . . . As the model takes the pose . . . you are to draw, letting your pencil swing around the paper almost at will, being impelled by the sense of action you feel. Draw rapidly and

Pragmatism and Semiotics in Teaching Drawing

315

continuously in a ceaseless line, from top to bottom, around and around, without taking your pencil off the paper. Let the pencil roam, reporting the gesture. you should draw, not what the [subject] looks like, not even what it is, but what it is doing. Feel how the figure lifts or droops – pushes forward here – pulls back there – pushes out here – drops down easily there. Suppose that the model takes the pose of a fighter with fists clenched and jaw thrust forward angrily. Try to draw the actual thrust of the jaw, the clenching of the hand. A drawing of prize fighters should show the push, from foot to fist, behind their blows that make them hurt. 1941: 14–15

Reference to the fighter’s pose and punch indicates the key to gesture drawing: empathetic identification of artist with model, imagining being the fighter who throws the punch, the victim who receives the punch, or both. The process of drawing ‘in a ceaseless line, from top to bottom . . .’ without taking the pencil off the paper is illustrated in Figure 11.4, below.

Figure 11.3 ‘Contour versus gesture’. From The Natural Way To Draw by Kimon Nicolaides. © 1941, and renewed 1969 by Anne Nicolaides. Reprinted by permission of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.

Figure 11.4 ‘Figurative gesture’. From The Natural Way To Draw by Kimon Nicolaides. © 1941, and renewed 1969 by Anne Nicolaides. Reprinted by permission of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.

316

Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Peircean Semiotics

As such, gesture follows another ‘natural’ phenomenon, the movement of the eye, which normally does not follow edges at all, let alone slowly and painstakingly, unless it is forced to do so, and, even then, it skips ahead and has to be forcibly held back or pulled back to keep the drawing going as required. Left to its natural tendencies, the eye moves with incredible speed from point to point in a series of saccades and fixations. Images made by devices that record eye movement look a lot like gesture drawings.37 Nicolaides notes that a gesture drawing done in the spirit intended may end up looking more like ‘a tangle of fishing line’ than a recognizable figure. Ideally, the figure will emerge from the tangle to exude the energy both of the model and the artist, in which case the seemingly extraneous lines will add to that energy. Getting back to abduction, all these lines represent informed guesses as to what the figure is actually doing or feeling. And, though gesture drawing is not supposed to involve intentional measurements, proportions are intuitively attempted and corrected in the process of sketching, and balance is adjusted as the drawer more accurately senses the model’s weight distribution. Besides doing gesture drawings of active subjects like people or animals, gesture can also be applied to immobile subjects like landscapes conveying plains, mountains, or seas as they stretch toward the horizon and clouds moving across the sky, or trees in their rootedness below and their expansive reach above. Equally important, gesture often is employed in quickly working out compositions, whatever the subject matter.38 These aspects of ‘drawing as thinking’ are discussed at the end of this section where I return to the gesture to consider relationships between pragmatism and semeiotics.

Drawing and semiotics, or, as Peirce spelled it, ‘semeiotics’ Semiotics can be defined as the philosophical field dealing with signs, symbols, and signification. As such, often, semiotics is assumed to be limited to intentional humanmade signs: works of art, diagrams, words, etc., but Peirce’s view was far more encompassing, or rather, all encompassing, as Michael Shapiro (1983: 25) explains: Peirce’s theory of signs, or semeiotic, is intended by him to apply in the most general manner possible, to everything capable of being a sign, which is to say everything that can be interpreted – by a feeling, an action, or a thought. His ‘general Semeiotic’ (H118) articulates a compass for the analysis of signs which is as large as the universe itself, for, according to Peirce, ‘all this universe is perfused with signs, if it is not composed exclusively of signs’. 5.448.n

Pragmatism and Semiotics in Teaching Drawing

317

Signs are thus not limited to human-made, nor to those that can be interpreted by the human mind. Animals and even plants can and do interpret signs. Dogs sniff tree trunks for signs of previous dogs, bees signal each other about where to find pollen, sunflowers follow the sun, tides follow the moon, etc. This is not the only way in which Peirce defined signs and semiotics differently than others. For example, many theorists, like Ferdinand de Saussure who, with Peirce, is considered a ‘father of modern semiotics’ (e.g., Smith-Shank, 2004), view symbolization in terms of a two-part composite entity consisting of the sign and its object, an arbitrary or conventional relationship typified by the relationship of words to their objects (Jappy, 2013: 70–71). By contrast, Peirce had a tripartite conception of symbolization integrating the sign, its object, and an interpretant, meaning, not the person who interprets the sign, but, more broadly, the effect of the sign on the receiver, human or otherwise.39 Nor did Peirce view the relationship between the three parts as a ‘complexus’ of dyadic relations, but rather insisted that it was a true triadic relationship in which none of the parts – the sign, the object, and the interpretant – would have its role except by virtue of its relationship to the other two (Short, 2007: 18). Further, admitting non-conventional signification like resemblance (icons) and causality (indexes) enabled Peirce to extend semiotics beyond culture-based signs like words and numbers to include natural signs, such as smoke signalling a possible fire, as well as non-conventional human signification as often found in the visual arts. Finally, where bipartite signs are generally interpreted conceptually with widespread agreement about what each sign means, Peirce’s interpretants could equally take the form of a feeling or an action, which is one reason his semeiotics was applicable to non-humans as well as to humans. Moreover, even or especially with humans, interpretation could vary from individual to individual, and with the same individual from moment to moment. Applied to the topic of this essay, while bipartite semiotics addresses primarily conventional drawings (e.g. technical drawings or architectural plans, and, at the most basic level, emoticons), Peirce’s system accommodates a full range of drawings, from conventional to highly individualized, from representational to abstract. To accommodate this vast spectrum of signs and signification, Peirce set out a complex set of interrelated tripartite systems, or ‘trichotomies’, all echoing in distinct though interdependent ways the general trichotomy of firstness, secondness, and thirdness. Nubiola and Barrena (2012: 177) introduce these categories in the context of explaining Peirce’s appreciation of art and the aesthetic:

318

Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Peircean Semiotics

Contrary to those conceptions that see aesthetics as something completely opposed to rationality, Peirce saw art as representing a form of thirdness, or reasonableness. The artistic phenomenon requires the combination of three elements. To begin with, there is firstness, the quality of feeling that the artist perceives without even being conscious thered [sic]; then there is the reaction to this firstness, as it appears in writing, in painting, or in other forms of creation, thus giving rise to something that exists in the actual world, a work of art in a world of facts, which in Peircean terms is of the order of secondness. Finally, there is representation (which, in Peircean terms, is of the order of thirdness), which is the capacity to grasp ineffable firstness and translate it into something communicable by means of sentences, lines, or a succession of musical sounds. Together, the three categories are at the heart of the artistic phenomenon.

According to Jappy (2013), the general categories of ‘Firstness’, ‘Secondness’, and ‘Thirdness’, ‘represent collectively Peirce’s way of indexing “what appears in the world, that is what can be present to the mind . . .”’ More specifically, Jappy explains that, for Peirce, ‘Firstness, which he likened to freedom and independence, covers qualities, properties, feelings; Secondness, which he likened to effort and resistance, covers the phenomena of individuality, fact, existence and brute action; Thirdness, which he assimilated to generality, mediation and continuity, covers the complex phenomena of system, intelligence, thought, and, of course, signs’ (2013: 66). Based on the three general categories, Peirce went on to generate a number of other trichotomies addressing different levels and functions of signs. The most well-known, at least in art, is his ‘icon’, ‘index’ and ‘symbol’, which refers to relationships between signs and their objects. An icon relates to its object by sharing a common quality or characteristic, such as a visual resemblance. However, Leja (2012: 142–143) indicates that many more images could count as icons than ‘realistic representations’, pictures that look just like their subject. This is ‘because Peirce classified as icons both mimetic images and diagrams, both illusionistic landscape paintings and maps. This elision of what might loosely be termed “perceptual” and “conceptual” resemblances is an idiosyncrasy of Peirce’s semiotics that places him in a particular cultural history’. An index relates to its object by an actual, or ‘existential’ relationship to it. The term ‘index’ thus relates to the more common term, ‘indicate’. Indexical relationships in drawing take on several forms. One example is a schematic drawing of an arrow pointing toward (i.e. indicating) an exit. A second, and quite different, example of an indexical relationship are the actual marks made by the artist, indicating her or his physical movements as well as the kind of implement used and the surface drawn upon.

Pragmatism and Semiotics in Teaching Drawing

319

Finally, symbols relate to their object, as Peirce puts it, ‘by virtue of a law, usually an association of general ideas’ (Jappy, 2013: 91). These are the conventional images mentioned before, where whatever is in the picture stands for a particular thing by general agreement. The stars on the American flag stand for the fifty current states while the stripes stand for the original thirteen. Another familiar example, a swastika on a Nazi flag means something quite different than swastikas do in Hindu or Native American cultures. Despite similarity of appearance, what they symbolize differs solely due to agreed-upon interpretations. Icons reflect the first facet of the first of three ‘trichotomies’ in which Peirce claimed signs can be divided: ‘qualisigns’. In Peirce’s words, ‘[a] Qualisign is a quality which is a sign’ (Peirce, 1998: 291). What he is referring to here is not, however, a quality as experienced in a particular instance. Rather, qualisigns are attributes abstractable from any number of instances, for example, the qualities of ‘roughness’, or ‘depth’, which can occur in different forms and contexts. Actual instances (objects or events), in which qualities such as these can occur are called ‘sinsigns’, the ‘sin’ referring to ‘single’ or ‘simple’, or, as Peirce puts it, ‘being only once’. A drawing representing a roughhewn wooden object, like the handle of an old plough, would be a ‘sinsign’ embodying the ‘qualisign’ of roughness. The third facet of this trichotomy is called a ‘legisign’, which is ‘a law that is a sign’. Such laws are generally conventions established by human beings, consisting not of single objects, but of general types, agreed upon as being significant in a particular way. In drawing, linear perspective may be an example of a legisign: a conventional system that is widely (though not universally) agreed upon systematically to signify the qualisign of ‘depth’. In the following section, I will discuss these concepts as they play out in Peirce’s own drawing, with implications in each case for how drawing as thinking might be taught. First, I will consider drawing instruction with semiotic undertones. One approach to teaching drawing that I believe aligns well with Peircean semiotics is found in Paul Klee’s Pedagogical Sketchbook (1953). Based on courses Klee taught at the Bauhaus in the 1920s, as well as his own work as a leading modernist artist, the Sketchbook is replete with playful but thought-provoking explorations of the abstract and representational uses of drawing elements like line, shape and form. As David Rosand (2006) explains, Klee starts ‘by introducing the concept of a line as an independent force, a momentum: “An active line on a walk, moving freely without goal. A walk for a walk’s sake” ’ (Figure 11.5a.). From there, Klee introduces constraints on the line (Figure 11.5b.), but ultimately the line (as a sign) becomes a force unto itself, imposing itself on the creator.

320

Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Peircean Semiotics

Figures 11.5a and 11.5b S. ‘Line exercises’. Paul Klee, Pedagogical Sketchbook (1972).

Once begun, the line becomes more than a means toward an end. Insinuating itself into the drawing process, it insists upon its own role as protagonist, on establishing a reciprocal relationship with its maker. Whatever initial intention may have inspired the making of a drawing, whatever external stimulus, the draftsman inevitably finds his attention being commanded by his own line. Whatever its intended function in the structure of representation, the line becomes an active participant in the act of drawing, in the processes of its own making, even asserting its own creative independence. 2006: 1240

Drawing and the relationship between pragmatism and semiotics Klee’s approach, starting with abstract elements and taking them in different directions while allowing them their own lead is very much a modernist approach to practising art, first, because it begins with the most basic elements; second because it recognizes that despite, or rather, due to, the absence of subject matter, these elements convey definite meanings; third, because those meanings are emergent, not necessarily imposed by the artist, but there as a result of her or his interaction with the media, subject matter, etc.; fourth, because what happens between the medium, the elements, and the artist is unpredictable ahead of time and so can provoke invention and discovery.

Pragmatism and Semiotics in Teaching Drawing

321

This discussion thus brings up relationships between semiotics and pragmatism, for, as the artist attempts one thing and something else occurs (a result of falliblism), the image – the combination of lines and spaces, colours and shapes, or whatever there is – talks back in semiotic terms, implying new directions. As the artist ‘reads’ the signs, s/he can decide to move forward or back. In either case, the action is the result of abductive reasoning, forming a hypothesis based on perceptions, testing it out in action and undergoing the consequences. At this point, we can look at how Peirce himself drew, and what his ways of working might suggest about teaching drawing as thinking, today.

Peirce’s uses of drawing with implications for drawing instruction at diverse levels As Leja (2012) says, Peirce’s graphic work explored in particular his trichotomy: icon, index, and symbol. Typical examples of icons among Peirce’s drawings include his representations (including caricatures) of people, animals, and objects, but in Peirce’s more expansive definition of icons (Leja, Hoel, 2012), it could also include diagrams, schematics, and more. Indexical drawings by Peirce include scribbles and doodles as well experiments in mark-making. And, for symbols, Peirce occasionally drew conventional images such as hearts and moons, but the most important were his abstract ‘designs’ related to pictorial logic (Stjernfelt, 2012) and his existential graphs (Shin, 2012). Still other of Peirce’s pictographs turn out to ‘test and subvert the boundaries of his categories . . . [vacillating] between iconic resemblance, symbolic convention, and indexical markings’ (Leja, 2012: 144). The following subsections refer to these aspects of Peirce’s personal drawing practice to suggest drawing activities intended explicitly to evoke thinking of various kinds. While, at first glance, some of these suggestions may seem all too familiar, hopefully they will appear differently when viewed from a Peircean perspective.

Drawing from observation From a practical point of view in an era before cameras could be carried easily in purses or pockets, Peirce recognized the value of drawing to record his visual experiences while travelling. Examples from his first trip to Europe include attempts to render things he saw (artworks, buildings, mountains) as well as maps tracing where he went (Figure 11.6). As Nubiola and Barrena (2012) point out,

322

Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Peircean Semiotics

Figure 11.6 ‘Letter, October 14, 1870, p. 5, with map of St. Peters in Rome’. Houghton Library, Harvard University. Am 1631, MS L341.

Pragmatism and Semiotics in Teaching Drawing

323

these apparently simple illustrations actually reflect Peirce’s views on reason and thought. They are, in fact, ‘outstanding examples of one of Peirce’s deepest convictions: reason is not a mechanical skill and thought is not a linear or purely linguistic process’. The authors then go on to say that ‘[a] broader notion of reason, that is, reasonableness, makes sense of Peirce’s use of drawings and diagrams since imagination is one of the key elements of reasonableness. According to Peirce, reasoning is also a visual and diagrammatic process. In his letters, Peirce includes drawings that illustrate and clarify what he means’ (2012: 175). Instructional Implications: Keeping a reflective sketchbook/journal.41 Sketchbooks have played important roles in a life of drawing since long before the Renaissance. But Leonardo da Vinci, and later, C.S. Peirce, used them in distinctive and important ways: Not only did they apply drawing to concentrated work in several specific subjects, they used drawing to facilitate the flow of thought and association from one discipline or domain to another. In this way, drawing engaged another aspect of Peirce’s semeiotics, ‘the doctrine of Synechism, which regards everything as continuous’ (Hoel, 2012: 261). Similarly, da Vinci and Peirce integrated words and pictures42 as they annotated images, illustrated texts and calculations, or reflected in writing upon the visual knowledge they thus were acquiring. Students at all levels, from elementary school to graduate school,43 not to mention their teachers and other ‘life-long learners’, can take a page from Leonardo and Peirce in forming the pragmatic habit of keeping reflective sketchbook/journals with them at all times. Portable and inexpensive, sketchbooks facilitate drawing directly from observation to gather on-site multi-sensory experiences – sights, sounds, smells, textures, and so on. Recalling what was said earlier about ‘cenoscopy’ and ‘phenomenology’, sketchbooks used in this way serve not only art and science, but philosophy itself as vehicles for the ‘training of the eye’. One implication of this is that learning to think for oneself depends on learning to see for oneself rather than relying on visual information pre-mediated by others. Beside facilitating visual awareness and other types of sensory experience, sketchbooks also encourage creative processing of such experience in inventive ways by merging different subjects that happen to be recorded on the same page, or by inviting playful and thoughtful development of such subjects over multiple pages. Complementing these forms of thinking in action, the habit of journalkeeping also provides an excuse to step back and consider the kinds of thinking that went on while processing visual information, or transforming it into alternative forms through iteration and revision. Accumulation of specific thoughts can then be turned into fodder for a Peircean metacognitive stance, thinking about thinking in general, then applying those thoughts back into

324

Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Peircean Semiotics

action. In this way, one becomes what Schön (1983) would call a ‘reflective practitioner’. Besides the benefit of self-knowledge reflective practice provides, recording it may help us better to communicate the cognitive processes in drawing to others in and outside the arts.

Drawing from imagination Peirce’s desire to retain memories of beautiful objects or awe-inspiring settings motivated his attempts to draw what he saw, but often he was frustrated when he failed to capture the qualities he perceived. Perhaps for that reason, the majority of his representational drawings were done from imagination, predominantly caricatures, some grotesque and disturbing, others humorous and expressive, like Figure 11.7a, with its provocative title, ‘Epistêmy’. In particular, Hoel (2012) among others has noted Peirce’s fascination with noses, saying: ‘Peirce seems to

a

b Figures 11.7a ‘Epistêmy’ and 11.7b ‘Caricatures of Noses’. Houghton Library, Harvard University. Am 1631, MS 1538.

Pragmatism and Semiotics in Teaching Drawing

325

amuse himself by playing with the shapes of noses’, some of which ‘take this endeavor to the extreme, and seem to explore the limits of “noseness,” or, perhaps, what could be reckoned as a “permissible” variation of a nose’ (2012: 269). These include noses transformed into trumpets, faucets, funnels, swords . . . (Figure  11.7b). Such drawings were frequently done in a series of similar or disparate subjects following in rows and filling whole sheets of paper.44 As Hoel (2012) explains, some pages of similar drawings show Peirce seeming ‘to play with seriality’, but the play probably has a purpose. Discussing one page with nine imagined faces in profile, all turned in the same direction, Hoel says: ‘This set-up, which facilitates comparison, seems to explore the changes in facial expression that result from small variations in the outlined features’. The process may also be described as a ‘feedback loop’ of doing and undergoing in which experiments with profiles and noses lead to even wilder experiments with profiles and noses. As Leja notes, Peirce’s face drawings ‘delight in differences of character type and expression that can result from simple variations in lines – the way a slight change in the angle of an eyebrow can turn a face from bemused to angry’ (2012: 140). Such exercises focus not so much on drawings of quality, ones that might ‘draw a prize’, but drawings of qualities – differences in the qualities of drawn marks that in turn convey different qualities of feeling to the viewer. Instructional implications: the uses of seriality. As an art student myself, and later as both an art teacher and an art-teacher educator, I have found plenty of instructional resources on how to draw from observation, but far fewer on how to draw from imagination, for these would have to involve teaching both the technical skills necessary to draw convincingly what is envisioned and the envisioning skills themselves. One way to teach both might be ‘seriality’, which can combine pragmatism (abduction and fallibilism) and semiotics (interpreting signs in reference to their objects). As such, Hoel says seriality can also involve ‘the doctrine of Synechism’ (2012: 261). Playing with serial images, students may seek or simply stumble upon connections between things that ordinarily seem unrelated, but even when this does not happen, repetition and variation are important skillbuilding processes, as when practising a musical instrument. Students’ reflections on these processes and their feelings about them could also go into their journals.

Mark-making Speaking of practising, Peirce’s notebooks include pages where, in the midst of some intellectual activity, he gives himself an exercise in non-representational

326

Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Peircean Semiotics

Figure 11.8 ‘Labyrinth with Minotaur’. Houghton Library, Harvard University. Am 1632, MS 1537.

mark-making, exploring techniques like ‘hatching’, building tonal areas out of closely placed parallel lines. More overtly experimental mark-making practices include doodles and scribbles, as well as passages in caricatures where, as noted above, Peirce intentionally or accidentally tries different kinds of marks to see how they mean. Some pages, however, show signs of what might be considered obsessive-compulsive behaviour, as in Figure 11.8. Alternatively, the page may simply be an extreme example of what was said about Klee’s line exercises, that once marks are made, they somehow suggest making certain other marks or transforming those marks into some subject. Figure  11.8 gives evidence of both these processes. First is the all-consuming spiral. Second is the impulse to add an element of surprise, which, in semiotic terms, makes this piece an example of how drawings can combine indexical, iconic, and symbolic elements. The maze, initially at least, is indexical, indicating the carefully coordinated, continuously spiralling motion of the hand, as well as the intense concentration that must have guided it. This, in turn, indicates the consistent pressure Peirce maintained on the point while infusing inventive variety into the spiralling

Pragmatism and Semiotics in Teaching Drawing

327

patterns and maintaining a global awareness of the overall unity of the design on the page. The iconic element emerges both in the figure of the minotaur and how its appearance transforms the spiral into a maze, and not just any maze: one with mythological, i.e. symbolic, implications. Yet another lesson to be learned from this figure is how, as Rosand says, drawings engage the viewer in an imaginative reconstruction of the image as it was created. If we observe the drawing with even a modicum of the attention Peirce obviously put into it, and follow the single, seemingly (but probably not actually) continuous, line he so carefully laid down, it is easy to imagine the state of mind he must have been in when doing the drawing. In the process, we might partake in that state for a moment, though, for him, it must have lasted quite a while. Educational Implications: Meaning Making and ‘Musement’. While playful and/or obsessive mental states are not encouraged in schools and universities these days, they sometimes occur when drawing, as exemplified in Figure 11.8. Further, such states may be significant in terms of cognition, creativity, and communication. In Betty Edwards’ terms (1979) they can involve the imaginative, intuitive functions located on the right side of the brain. Czikszentmihalyi (1990) might call it ‘flow’, when all one’s faculties are focused on the task at hand and time passes almost unnoticed. Peirce would probably have called it a matter of ‘musement’. As opposed to ‘amusement’, which is more a state of distraction, Nubiola and Barrena (2012) say that, for Peirce ‘musement’ reflected the very nature of thought and reason, or in his words, ‘reasonableness’.45 ‘Reasonable beings are creative beings, growing, seeking to expand their ideas, generating new meanings, seeking truth through science and developing habits that help them live and communicate better . . .’ (2012: 178–179). Playing with lines and other elements while experimenting with materials with no particular problem to solve or end in view may truly seem like ‘a waste of precious class time’, but following Peirce, it can not only spark the creative process, it might even reveal the nature of creativity itself,46 at least for the moment. In any case, the possibility gives students another subject to reflect upon and record in their journals.

Diagrams and abstraction If experimentation with mark-making represents one side of Peirce’s pictorial thinking, diagrams and abstract designs represent an apparent opposite in that they are typically carefully planned, rendered, and arranged on the page. Yet, as

328

Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Peircean Semiotics

Figure 11.9 ‘Kandinskys’. Houghton Library, Harvard University. Am 1632 MS 725.

Peirce indicates, loose experimentation and tight designs are connected since both are icons as well as aspects of reasonableness, and both can be experienced in terms of ‘musement’. Even so, drawing diagrams was obviously a natural part of Peirce’s diagrammatic thinking as applied to his study of logic, semeiotics, science, mathematics, etc.47 There is, however, one set of ninety-nine diagrams that look more like abstract art than anything associated with academics (Figure  11.9), so Stjernfelt (2012) calls them ‘Kandinskys’.48 Yet, aesthetically appealing though they may be, Stjernfelt says their purpose was probably cognitive, as part of Peirce’s pictorial research into ‘natural classes’ (2012: 103). The most famous examples of Peirce’s pictorial thinking are his ‘Existential Graphs’, diagrams combining words with visual elements (circles, ellipses, lines,

Pragmatism and Semiotics in Teaching Drawing

329

etc.) to represent forms of relations, and to ‘show what a relation is’ (Shin, 2012: 221). In this process, Jappy (2013: 155) says, ‘Peirce was developing a complex, diagrammatic, that is non-symbolic, representation of the successive stages of human reasoning . . .’ or, in Peirce’s own words (CP: 4.11), a ‘moving picture of thought’ (Peirce, 1998: xxxvii). Instructional Implications: Diagramming for Cross-Disciplinary Dialogue. Peirce’s diagrams use the same elements and principles as works of abstract art, but, in serving cognitive ends these elements stand for specific concepts, categories, or relationships, applicable to domains outside the arts. For Peirce, according to Hoel, abstractions and diagrams were not simply ways of simplifying the subject by the negative process of ‘taking away’ all extraneous elements to leave only the bare essentials. Rather they were creative acts seeking new relationships or discovering unnoticed aspects of the subject. Students in drawing classes might be given similar projects: working with subject matter, or better, collaborators, from outside the arts, they could develop a series of diagrammatic designs addressing issues from the other discipline, e.g. economics, politics, philosophy, or history. The task would begin in finding elements that appropriately symbolized the factors under consideration, then arranging them both as individual images and in a sequence to document the development of thought. Preferably this should be done as part of a dialogue with students from the discipline in question. Such exercises would prepare students to bring their visual thinking skills into whatever sphere they find for themselves, to facilitate communication as well as to foster creative problemsolving.

Drawing as demonstration Speaking of a ‘moving picture of thought’, this section takes that idea literally! In Peirce’s 1903 Harvard Lectures on Pragmatism, he again resorted to a bistable image to demonstrate the epistemological difference between pragmatism and empiricism. That is, for empiricism, perception is a two-part process of passive sensory input followed by active intellectual analysis; for pragmatism, it is a continuum where interpretation is an integral part of perception. To demonstrate the point, Peirce turned again to drawing.49 This time, however, he made the drawing himself, and he did it in public. As evidenced by Figure 11.10, Peirce practised making the image he had in mind many times before the actual lecture. There, he reproduced the drawing as his audience watched, wondering what he

330

Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Peircean Semiotics

Figure 11.10 ‘Serpentine Line/Stone Wall’. Houghton Library, Harvard University. Am 1632, MS 315, fol.5 recto.

was up to. Consciously or not, they formed hypotheses and tested them out until finally the ‘serpentine’ line transformed into a stone wall. Instructional implications: The interdependence of showing and telling. Building upon the previous suggestion for using dialogue and diagrams to develop ideas in fields outside the arts, the implication for this example is to use emerging drawings as vehicles for a group creative process. This, in turn, entails thinking and talking while drawing, a difficult skillset to master, but one that may be increasingly valuable as the working world becomes more visual. Such skills are commonly used today in

Pragmatism and Semiotics in Teaching Drawing

331

brain-storming sessions in business and industry not to mention in collaborative artistic endeavours like film-making. The process is also fundamental for designers and architects working with clients, so, if ‘design thinking’ gains prominence in more fields, opportunities might open up for people who can think, talk, and draw on their feet while engaging others in collaborative problem solving, etc. In these situations, pictorial thinking might require diagrams, representational drawings, or something in between, depending on the topic and the problem at hand. Thus, students will need to be competent in a variety of ‘visual languages’ in order to respond to whatever situations await them in the unforeseeable future. Beyond developing professional skills, a bigger issue here is the importance of visual communication in the twenty-first century. Alongside the explosion in visual information, globalization demands a degree of multilingualism that few will ever develop. On the other hand, drawing, as Benjamin Franklin once said, is a ‘universal language’.50 Even with drawing, however, cross-cultural communication can easily lead to miscommunication and misunderstanding, thus all the more reason to be able to think and tell as well as show.51

Conclusion: Charles Sanders Peirce as a model for the postmodern mind In concluding, I will offer two more examples of how Peirce’s ideas and example might be applied to teaching drawing today. In the process, I will add another layer to Peirce’s ongoing relevance by situating these examples within a larger framework addressing postmodern concerns. The framework is Five Minds for the Future (2008), a book by psychologist Howard Gardner, that ‘outlines the specific cognitive abilities that will be sought and cultivated by leaders in the years ahead’.52 These are: ●

●

●

●

●

The disciplinary mind: the mastery of major schools of thought, including science, mathematics, and history, and of at least one professional craft. The synthesizing mind: the ability to integrate ideas from different disciplines or spheres into a coherent whole and to communicate that integration to others. The creating mind: the capacity to uncover and clarify new problems, questions, and phenomena. The respectful mind: awareness of and appreciation for differences among human beings and human groups. The ethical mind: fulfilment of one’s responsibilities as a worker and as a citizen.

332

Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Peircean Semiotics

As discussed above, Charles Sanders Peirce fits Gardner’s first three minds to a tee.53 Further, Peirce’s preference for visual thinking, his research on bistable images, and his formulations of pragmatism and semiotics combine to demonstrate how such thinking applies within diverse disciplines, while his doctrine of Synechism explains cross-disciplinary connections. Finally, his use of drawings and diagrams indicates practical means by which to pursue both disciplinary and interdisciplinary thinking (McKim 1972; Simmons 2012). It now remains to suggest some ways his approaches to drawing and philosophy might impact the two remaining minds: the respectful and the ethical.54 Drawing and the respectful mind: For Gardner, the respectful mind, always a concern, has become much more so in light of globalization and the growing need for diverse populations to interact with one another. Speaking on the topic of respect in personal terms, Gardner (2009: 8) says, . . . whether I am (or you are) writing, researching, or managing, it is important to avoid stereotyping or caricaturing. I must try to understand other persons on their own terms, make an imaginative leap when necessary, seek to convey my trust in them, and try so far as possible to make common cause with them and be worthy of their trust. This stance does not mean that I ignore my own beliefs, nor that I necessarily accept or pardon all that I encounter . . . But I am obliged to make the effort, and not merely to assume that what I had once believed on the basis of scattered impressions is necessarily true. Such humility may in turn engender positive responses in others.

Reference to ‘caricature’ and ‘stereotyping’ recalls the amusement Peirce found in exaggerating features, especially noses, which he often took to inventive extremes (Hoel, 2012: 270). These were, of course, private drawings, not meant for public consumption, but in the public sphere, caricatures can be powerful and dangerous, even provoking violence against individuals and groups by reinforcing negative stereotypes.55 This subject is well within the purview of drawing instruction and should be studied historically and contemporaneously for at least two reasons. One is to address head on the immediate social and moral issues they entail. The other is more analytical: to use the language of semiotics, especially icons, to understand how caricatures can have such force. In both cases, drawing students will be challenged to reflect on issues of social responsibility and to become more aware of the power of art for good or ill. As a complement to addressing negative concerns, students should have the opportunity to study portraiture; not exactly the opposite of caricature, but aimed in an opposite direction. While caricatures are often (though not always

Pragmatism and Semiotics in Teaching Drawing

333

or necessarily) intended to deride their subject, portraits often (though, again, not always or necessarily) aim to ennoble their subject, or at least to depict the subject respectfully. By drawing a portrait as tellingly and/or expressively as possible, working preferably from direct observation rather than from a photograph, the artist is confronted with the living presence of another in ways not usually possible. One reason for that is simply the amount of time spent in the other’s presence, and the opportunity that offers to get to know the model through conversation or at least extended observation. Regarding observation, the often-frustrating attempt to replicate another person’s features, posture, expression, etc., requires really looking at them, and not just when they are posing. Moreover, from a Peircean perspective, the drawing process, involving perceptual judgement and abductive reasoning as manifest through the constant corrections and adjustments required to get even a partial resemblance, means challenging what we think we see, getting past the generic type, to get at what distinguishes the actual person from everyone else. Typically, like the sketch described by Gombrich, the portrait may start out with a generic shape for a head, neck, torso, etc., in a particular position and viewed from a particular angle. As it develops, adding bone structure, features, etc., the sketch is constantly reassessed to determine what makes this particular person at this time unique and distinct. Yet, a real work of art goes much further, transcending superficial appearance to touch our common humanity, the ultimate basis of respect. The ethical mind is, of course, related to and in some sense dependent on the respectful one. However, as Gardner uses the term, ethics relates to other people ‘in a more abstract way. In taking ethical stances, an individual tries to understand his or her role as a worker and his or her role as a citizen of a region, a nation, and the planet . . . And, to take an even wider perspective, what kind of world would I like to live in . . . [and] [w]hat is my responsibility in bringing such a world into being?’ (2008: 8–9.) For students of art, architecture, and design, this is not an idle thought, because many of them will go on to create work that does attempt to change the world or at least human behaviour in some measure. As Winston Churchill famously said of architecture, ‘We shape our buildings; thereafter they shape us’.56 The same could certainly be said about fine art, illustration, and all manner of design, but especially advertising design, which intentionally aims to shape the way we look, live, love, spend, vote, and more. Peirce’s ideas apply here as they did in the previous example. His use of diagrams to analyse all manner of subject matter offers a means for analysing ads, his

334

Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Peircean Semiotics

semeiotics in general provides a language for recognizing and explaining how they work, and his pragmatism explains relationships between beliefs and habits of action. Together such perspectives can inform reflection on processes of manipulation, and the responsibility arts professionals have in this hidden network of influence.57 Classes addressing respect and ethics are not particularly common in art schools these days, but if they were, they could use these Peircean approaches. The examples above are meant only as suggestions for how the work of C.S. Peirce, applied to drawing instruction, might have a constructive impact on our increasingly visual world. More broadly, they are intended to encourage professionals in the visual arts (artists and designers as well as those who teach art and design), along with general educators and the general public, to look beyond formulas like ‘icon, index and symbol’ to discern the principles that underlie them and the practices they entail – for example, the critical analysis of matters we often take for granted, like perception, cognition, and creativity. Peirce sets a high standard for self-reflection. As such, he challenges us to go further and provides us with the tools, including drawing, to do so.

References Ackerman, G.M. 2003. Charles Bargue with the Collaboration of Jean-Léon Gerome: Drawing Course. Paris: ACR Edition Internationale. Andreu-Lanoë, G. 2013. Le dessin dans l’Egypte ancienne. Paris: Louvre. Arnheim, R. 1969. Visual Thinking. Berkeley : University of California Press. Arnheim, R. 2006. The Genesis of a Painting: Picasso’s Guernica. Berkeley : University of California Press Balchin, W.G.V. 1972. ‘Graphicacy’. In Geography 57(3), 185–195. Bambach, C.C. 2017. Michelangelo: Divine Draftsman and Designer. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art. Barrett, D. 2013: ‘Creativity: A Cure for the Common Curriculum’. Chronicle of Higher Education, on line: www.chronicle.com/article/The-Creativity-Cure/138203/ [Accessed 31 December 18]. Basta, S. 2015. Transmission: recreation et repetition. Paris: Beaux-Arts de Paris editions, 174–177. Beck, J. 1979. Leonardo’s Rules of Painting. New York: Viking Press. Bridgeman, G. 1952. Bridgeman’s Complete Guide to Drawing from Life. New York: Random House. Commens: Digital Companion to C. S. Peirce: www.commens.org/dictionary/term/ diagram) [Accessed: 7 September 18].

Pragmatism and Semiotics in Teaching Drawing

335

Czikszentmihalyi, M. 1990. Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. New York: Harper and Row. Dewey, J. 1910. How We Think. Boston: D.C. Heath. Dewey, J. 1897. ‘The Kindergarten and Child Study’. Kindergarten Review, Vol. 8(1), 22–24. Dewey J. 1934/1958. Art as Experience. New York: Putnam. Edwards, B. 1979. Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain. Los Angeles: Tarcher. Efland, A.D. 1990. A History of Art Education. New York: Teachers College Press. Farthing, S. and J. McKenzie (eds). 2014. The Drawn Word. New York: Studio International. Gardner, H. 1993. Creating Minds. New York: Basic Books. Gardner, H. 2008. Five Minds for the Future. Boston: Harvard Business Press. Gardner, H. and K. Davis. 2013. The App Generation: How Today’s Youth Navigate Identity, Intimacy, and Imagination in a Digital World. New Haven: Yale University Press. Garner, S. 2011. ‘Understanding Graphicacy’. Foreword, in E. Norman and N. Seery (eds). Idator Online Conference: Graphicacy and Modeling. Loughborough: Design Education Research Group. Goldstein, C. 1996. Teaching Art: Academies and Schools from Vasari to Albers. Cambridge (UK): Cambridge University Press. Gombrich, E.H. 1960. Art and Illusion. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Gombrich, E.H. 1966. Norm and Form. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Hale, R. B. 1964/2009. Drawing Lessons from the Great Masters. New York: Watson-Guptill. Henshilwood et al. 2018. ‘An abstract drawing from the 73,000-year-old levels at Blombos Cave, South Africa’, Nature. Nature 562, 115-118: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-0180514-3; 2018 [Accessed 3 May 19]. Hetland, L., E. Winner, S. Veenema and K.M Sheridan. 2007. Studio Thinking: The Real Benefits of Visual Arts Education. New York: Teachers College Press. Hoel, A.S. 2012. ‘Lines of Sight: Peirce on Diagrammatic Abstraction’. Chapter in F. Engel, M. Queisner and T. Viola (eds). Das bildnerische Denken: Charles S. Peirce. Berlin: Akademie Verlag. Hull, K.A. and R.K. Atkins (eds). 2017. Peirce on Perception and Reasoning. New York: Routledge. Jappy, T. 2013. Introduction to Peircean Visual Semiotics. London: Bloomsbury. Jastrow, J. 1900. Fact and Fable in Psychology. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin and Company. Kantrowitz, A., A. Brew and M. Fava (eds). 2012. Thinking Through Drawing: Practice into Knowledge. New York: Teachers College. Kantrowitz, A., S. Simmons and K. Sloane. 2013. ‘The Case for Drawing Today’, FATE in Review. Vol. 35, 2013–2014, 8–17. Kantrowitz, A., and S. Simmons. 2016. ‘Drawing in STEAM’. Unpublished manuscript.

336

Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Peircean Semiotics

Kemp, M. 2014. ‘A Page Out of Leonardo’s Book’. In Farthing, S. and J. McKenzie (eds). The Drawn Word. New York: Studio International, 14–16. Klee, P. 1953. Pedagogical Sketchbook. New York: Praeger. Klonis, S. 1964. ‘Introduction’, in R.B. Hale (ed.). Drawing Lessons from the Great Masters. New York: Watson-Guptill. Leja, M. 2012. ‘Peirce, Visuality, and the Semiotics of Pictures’. Chapter in F. Engel, M. Queisner and T. Viola (eds). Das bildnerische Denken: Charles S. Peirce. Berlin: Akademie Verlag. Levin, H. 2002. ‘A Response to William Mitchell on “The Death of Drawing” ’, Leonardo, Vol. 35(1), 117–118. Logan, F.M. 1955. Growth of Art in American Schools. New York: Harper and Brothers. London, P. 1989. No More Secondhand Art. Boston: Shambala. Loomis, A. 1943. Figure Drawing for All It’s Worth. New York: The Viking Press. Loomis, A. 1951. Successful Drawing. New York: The Viking Press. Lowenfeld, V. 1957. Creative and Mental Growth. 3rd ed. New York: Macmillan. Lyotard, J-F. 1979. The Post-modern Condition: A Report on Knowledge. Manchester (UK): Manchester University Press. Maynard, P. 2005. Drawing Distinctions. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. McKim, R.H. 1972. Experiences in Visual Thinking. Belmont (CA): Brooks/Cole. Mitchell, W.H. 1989. ‘The Death of Drawing’, UCLA Architectural Journal 2, 64–69. Moore, J. 1991. William James and Art: Perspectives for Art Education. Thesis, Harvard Graduate School of Education. Cambridge MA: Harvard University. Nicolaides, K. 1941. The Natural Way to Draw. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co. Noton, D. and L. Stark. 1974. ‘Eye Movements and Visual Perception’. Chapter in: R. Held (compiler), Readings from Scientific American: Image, Object, and Illusion. San Francisco: W. H. Freeman and Company. Nubiola, J. and S. Barrena. 2012. ‘Drawings, Diagrams, and Reasonableness. Peirce’s Letters from his First Visit to Europe (1870–71)’. Chapter in F. Engel, M. Queisner and T. Viola (eds). Das bildnerische Denken: Charles S. Peirce. Berlin: Akademie Verlag. Panofsky, I. 1968. Idea: A Concept in Art Theory. New York: Harper and Row. Peirce, C. S. 1998, The Essential Peirce, Selected Philosophical Writings, Volume 2 (1893-1913), Peirce Edition Project (eds). Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Petherbridge, D. 2010. The Primacy of Drawing. New Haven: Yale University Press. Pevsner, N. 1973. Academies of Art, Past and Present. New York: De Capo. Rosand, D. 2002. Drawing Acts: Studies in Graphic Expression and Representation. Cambridge (UK): Cambridge University Press. Ruskin, J. 1857/1971. The Elements of Drawing. 1857: London: Smith, Elder, and Co.; 1971: Mineola: Dover. Scheffler, I. 1965. Conditions of Knowledge. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Scheffler, I. 1974. Four Pragmatists. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Scheffler, I. 2009. Worlds of Truth. Chichester (UK): Wiley-Blackwell.

Pragmatism and Semiotics in Teaching Drawing

337

Schjeldahl, P. 2018. ‘Out of Time: Hilma of Klint’s Visionary Painting’. The New Yorker. 22 October 18, 92. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/10/22/hilma-afklints-visionary-paintings [Accessed: 3 May 19] Schön, D. 1983. The Reflective Practitioner. New York: Basic Books. Shapiro, M. 1983. The Sense of Grammar: Language as Semeiotic. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Sheer, D.R. 2014. The Death of Drawing: Architecture in the Age of Simulation. New York: Routledge, Taylor and Francis Group. Shin, S-J. 2012. ‘How Do Existential Graphs Show What They Show?’ Chapter in F. Engel, M. Queisner and T. Viola (eds). Das bildnerische Denken: Charles S. Peirce. Berlin: Akademie Verlag. Short, T.L. 2007. Peirce’s Theory of Signs. Cambridge (UK): Cambridge University Press. Silvers, A. 1978. ‘Show and Tell: The Arts, Cognition, and Basic Modes of Referring’. In S. Madeja (ed.). The Arts, Cognition, and Basic Skills, St. Louis: CEMREL. Simmons, S. 1988. Bringing Art to Mind: Theory and Practice in the Teaching of Drawing. Thesis, Harvard Graduate School of Education. Simmons, S. 1992. ‘Philosophical Dimensions of Drawing Instruction’, chapter in D. Thistlewood (ed.). Drawing: Research and Development, London: Longman Group. Simmons, S. 2012. ‘Philosophical Dimensions of Drawing Instruction’. Chapter in A. Kantrowitz, A. Brew and M. Fava (eds). Thinking Through Drawing: Practice into Knowledge. New York: Teachers College. Smith-Shank, D.L. 2004. ‘Introduction’, in D.L. Smith-Shank (ed.). Semiotics and Visual Culture: Sights, Signs, and Significance. Reston: National Art Education Association. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (2001/2014), ‘Charles Sanders Peirce’. https:// plato.stanford.edu/entries/peirce/ [Accessed 20 September 18]. Stjernfelt, F. 2012. ‘Cows, Red Cows, and Red Herrings. A Graphical Experiment Addressing Natural Classes in the Young Peirce’. In F. Engel, M. Queisner and T. Viola (eds). Das bildnerische Denken: Charles S. Peirce. Berlin: Akademie Verlag. Viola, T. 2012. ‘Pragmatism, Bistable Images and the Serpentine Line. A Chapter in the Prehistory of the Duck-Rabbit’. In F. Engel, M. Queisner and T. Viola (eds). Das bilnerische Denken: Charles S. Peirce. Berlin: Akademie Verlag. Yale. 2012. ‘Is Drawing Dead?’ Yale School of Architecture Symposium. [ONLINE] Available at: www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL79A5264A0ADED746. [Accessed 31 March 13]. Yanagi, S. and B. Leach. 1990. The Unknown Craftsman: A Japanese Insight into Beauty. Tokyo: Kodansha. Winner, E. 1986. ‘Where Pelicans Kiss Seals’. Psychology Today, Vol. 20(8) 24–35. Winner, E. and S. Simmons (eds). 1991. Arts PROPEL: Visual Arts Handbook. Cambridge (MA): Harvard Project Zero.

338

12

From Gestures to Habits: A Link between Semiotics and Pragmatism Rossella Fabbrichesi

Sign and interpretant Charles Sanders Peirce’s semiotics distinguishes itself – in particular from Ferdinand De Saussure’s, which has dominated the European scene since the 1920s – for the essential role it gives to the ‘interpretant’. De Saussure thought of signs as two-faced entities: signifier and signified (or meaning). The latter consists of a mental image, which De Saussure would at times depict as a natural image. In this view, the sign appears as a compound of body (the signifier) and soul (the meaning-concept). By contrast, according to Peirce, the sign is a purely relational structure which relates a Representamen (cf. CP 1.540–41, 1903) to an Object and is activated by an Interpretant. While the latter can very well be an idea or representation, it cannot be a private or merely interior idea; the interpretant is always in the making, in the long run of public interpretations.1 Rather than a particular idea or interpreter, Peirce conceives of the interpretant as a general interpretative practice. The sign does not refer to it by virtue of a dyadic relation, as if it were an entity physically connected to another. It is rather the interpretant that establishes the sign as such thanks to the mediating role it plays by relating it to its proper object. This is a triadic relation in which the interpretant at once establishes and is established by its own terms of reference, which could not develop independently. Early in the twentieth century, Peirce defined this process as ‘semiosis’. It is important to understand what I mean by semiosis. All dynamical action, or action of brute force, physical or psychical, either takes place between two subjects [whether they react equally upon each other, or one is agent and the other patient, entirely or partially] or at any rate is a resultant of such actions between pairs. But by ‘semiosis’ I mean, on the contrary, an action, or influence, 339

340

Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Peircean Semiotics

which is, or involves, a coöperation of three subjects, such as a sign, its object, and its interpretant, this tri-relative influence not being in any way resolvable into actions between pairs. CP 5.484, 19072

We shall reflect below on the significance of the interpretant from a pragmatist perspective. It is now sufficient to recall one among the many definitions of the connection between sign and interpretant, a definition which exemplifies very well the foregoing system of references: Sign. Anything which determines something else (its interpretant) to refer to an object to which itself refers (its object) in the same way, the interpretant becoming in turn a sign, and so on ad infinitum. No doubt, intelligent consciousness must enter into the series. If the series of successive interpretants comes to an end, the sign is thereby rendered imperfect, at least. If, an interpretant idea having been determined in an individual consciousness, it determines no outward sign, but that consciousness becomes annihilated, or otherwise loses all memory or other significant effect of the sign, it becomes absolutely undiscoverable that there ever was such an idea in that consciousness; and in that case it is difficult to see how it could have any meaning to say that that consciousness ever had the idea, since the saying so would be an interpretant of that idea. CP 2.303, c. 1902

In Survey of Pragmaticism, however, Peirce points out that the interpretant is the ‘proper significate outcome of a sign’ or ‘proper significate effect’ (CP 5.473; 475). Even a military command such as ‘Ground arms!’ produces a response which consists of the command’s interpretant. This shows that the interpretant ‘need not be of a mental mode of being . . . [It is] all that is explicit in the sign itself apart from its context and circumstances of utterance’ (CP 5.473; 5.475). In my opinion, it is Peirce’s consistent attention to the interpretant which frames the largely theoretical and philosophical horizon nourishing his semiotic vision. In addition, the interpretant, in particular what Peirce calls the final logical interpretant, represents the threshold between semiotics and pragmatism and, to a certain extent, their binding root. In the absence of this broader interpretative horizon – which proceeds from the theory of categories to the theory of signs, from the theory of meaning to the theory of habits and their embodiment in the ontological and cosmological fabric of the universe – we could not adequately understand the theoretical depth and epistemic richness of Peirce’s research. I will now introduce some important aspects of my interpretation.

From Gestures to Habits: Semiotics and Pragmatism

341

Interpretant and habit A Survey of Pragmaticism (1907) is one of the last writings devoted to semiotic and pragmatist themes. Though Peirce was not able to publish it, we have at least five different versions of it. In an important passage of this text, Peirce clarifies that while concepts, assertions, desires and expectations can function as signs and logical interpretants, only a habit, namely, a ‘tendency actually to behave in a similar way under similar circumstances in the future’ (CP 5.487), can function as a final logical interpretant. We find in this claim many key ideas of Peirce’s analysis: (i) any thought or concept is a sign,3 (ii) the meaning of a sign lies in its reference to an interpretant which, in turn, becomes a sign in a process of infinite semiosis, (iii) this is no merely intellectual or representational process, but finds its explication in the emergence of a habit understood as a disposition to respond, resolution to act, or tendency toward a reiterated behaviour. Here is a simple example: I see a dark sky, covered with clouds (sign), which clearly indicates the imminent rain (object). I demonstrate my apprehension of the sign’s meaning when I grasp the general and dispositional interpretant which is actualized by the act of taking the umbrella before going out. My taking the umbrella is an interpretative act (we said: a general interpretative practice) embodied in an efficient habit of response. The concept expressed by the assertion ‘it rains’ coincides with the action (conceivably articulated) that follows the conclusion ‘I shall take the umbrella’. Consequently, as the irritation of doubt – as Peirce puts it in How to Make our Ideas Clear (1878) – is removed by the acquisition of a belief and the establishment of a rule of action, the semiosis ends with the production of a habit of response. Such a habit, of course, modifies and transforms itself, thus becoming a new sign for new interpretants, but it also somehow confers a sense of stability on the inferential chain. We could say that the unlimited semiosis is always limited by the adoption of repeated habits of behaviour which efficiently punctuate our forms of life. Semiotics is thus developed in distinctively pragmatist fashion, while pragmatism had always been understood by Peirce, since the 1870s, as a theory of logical meaning (not of truth). Let us recall the so-called ‘pragmatic maxim’, asserted in the text which, with The Fixation of Belief (1877), inaugurated the pragmatist turn: ‘Consider what effects, that might conceivably have practical bearings, we conceive the object of our conception to have. Then, our conception of these effects is the whole of our conception of the object’ How to Make Our Ideas Clear, (CP 5.402, 1878). In other words:

342

Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Peircean Semiotics

the whole function of thought is to produce habits of action; To develop its meaning, we have, therefore, simply to determine what habits it produces, for what a thing means is simply what habits it involves. Now, the identity of a habit depends on how it might lead us to act, not merely under such circumstances as are likely to arise, but under such as might possibly occur, no matter how improbable they may be [. . .] Thus, we come down to what is tangible and conceivably practical, as the root of every real distinction of thought, no matter how subtle it may be; and there is no distinction of meaning so fine as to consist in anything but a possible difference of practice. CP 5.400, 1898

Peirce never changed his mind, from the Illustrations of the Logic of Sciences of 1877–1878 to the pragmaticist writings published in the Monist in 1905, which were to be followed by A Survey of Pragmaticism, dated a few years later. In these last essays, distancing himself from William James, Peirce asserts the general and conditional character of the maxim’s reference to practical effects; but he does not disavow the equation of logical significance with its embodiment in habits or ‘conditional general resolutions to act’ (5.402n3, 1906). While the original formulation of the pragmatic maxim stated that ideas are clarified by their effects, here Peirce emphasizes that any symbol (any thought-sign) consists in the general modes of rational conduct to which it conduces: ‘The entire intellectual purport of any symbol consists in the total of all general modes of rational conduct which, conditionally upon all the possible different circumstances and desires, would ensue upon the acceptance of the symbol’ (CP 5.438, 1905). Peirce adopts the notion of habit from a very ancient tradition, one which may be said to originate with Aristotle (who identified exis – from echein, ‘to have’ – as an entity’s disposition to have a certain activity or virtue), from the medieval thinkers, and the English empiricists and utilitarians, Bentham among them.4 James Mill, John Stuart Mill and Alexander Bain – from whom Peirce claims to have borrowed the altogether pragmatist definition of belief as ‘that upon which a man is prepared to act’ (R318, 2, 1907) – are especially important for the development of Peirce’s thought. But, with Peirce, the notion of habit is stripped of any psychologistic or, on the other hand, naturalistic infiltrations. It indicates precisely the constitutive threshold between the mental and material domains. Actions are never conceived in the indicative (immediate and actual) mode, but in the conditional sense; what reveal their meaning are ‘the “would-acts” of habitual behaviour’ (1907, 7–8). Interestingly, Peirce adds: ‘and no agglomeration of actual happenings can ever completely fill up the meaning of a “would-be”’ (1907, 7–8).5

From Gestures to Habits: Semiotics and Pragmatism

343

Habit is thus a disposition to respond (CP 5.440, 1905). Notice the persistence of the emphasis on the conditional, future, general and merely conceivable (not immediately practical and actual) nature of the habitual response. Peirce would never cease to reaffirm his position against the vulgar Pragmatism expressed by James, Papini and Schiller: According to that logical doctrine which the present writer first formulated in 1873 and named Pragmatism, the true meaning of any product of the intellect lies in whatever unitary determination it would impart to practical conduct under any and every conceivable circumstance, supposing such conduct to be guided by reflexion carried to an ultimate limit. CP 6.490, 1910

There is no meaning which, if true, does not develop into a habit and there is no habit which is devoid of an intrinsic symbolic significance, however unconscious or automatic. Even the reiterative process of certain behaviours takes the form of a sign-like recognition.

Habits, indices and gestures In Peirce’s articulation of it, the notion of habit enables us to demolish the traditional dualistic definitions of philosophical thought. Habit traces out the territory preceding the distinction between physical and mental, unconscious and conscious. It simply denotes a mode of behaviour that is recurrent, habitual, that we are often unaware and yet ‘wise’ in its own way, sustained by the practices that determine it. Habit signals the presence of the living being and its role within nature, but it can be extended also to the inorganic (CP 5.492): a river takes on the habit of eroding rocks, a plant of capturing sunlight, while human beings adopt general habits that become guiding principles of inference. Habit is simply the propensity to act. It is a non-mental and non-voluntary disposition: a know-how that can be extended to the whole environment because it simply amounts to the tendency actually to behave in a similar way under similar circumstances in the future. It may become, in its most perfect forms, the readiness to act in a certain precise way ‘when actuated by a given motive’, and so it is ‘a deliberate, or self-controlled habit’ (CP 5.480). It is the true general, that which identifies at the same time the meaningful proposition and the act that translates it into behaviour. Mead (1934: Ch. 2) would then improve upon this idea by interpreting the role of the ‘habitual’ act in a social sense. Not only is the

344

Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Peircean Semiotics

act as a whole already present in determining the process of perception and manipulation; and not only is the adoption of a meaning equivalent to the freeing of a series of consequent responses, but the act is also inevitably social, never individual, and it is accomplished starting from a ‘conversation of gestures’. It is evident, then, that we are here on a ridge where the old sensation– intellection, praxis–theory, private–public dualism teeters before falling. For pragmatists – for the whole pragmatist school – ideas are fit instruments for achieving a more effective intervention in the world and have value only to the extent that they are incorporated into living practices. The horizon of the mental and representational no longer governs the theory of meaning. Put more simply, interpretation is never an intellectual state; it is a being ready to act in a context of social actions. But how do you develop a habit? Above I recalled Mead’s well-known ‘conversation of gestures’ (Mead 1934: 42ff ). I will now slightly distance myself from the letter of Peirce’s text in order to incorporate a few suggestions by Mead – suggestions which may hopefully contribute to the contemporary debate and allow us to bring our analysis further. Let us recall Mead’s hypothesis. He thought that each and every symbol develops from an original gesture. Gestures are not expressions of emotions, as Darwin thought (Darwin 1872), but the early stages of social acts (Mead 1934: 15), a sort of zero level of communication and semiosis. Mead’s classic example is that of a dogfight: a dog growls and puts himself in attack mode, the other answers, not because he understands the symbolic significance of what is going on, but simply because he converses in gestures (instinctively, as Mead also puts it) with the other dog. One behaviourstimulus ensues a behaviour-response as an immediate rebound. Gestures allow us to entertain a conversation which cannot be translated into words and specific concepts, and which does not appeal to an idea or common sentiment. At this level, an emotion does not emerge as a cause of the act, but as its consequence; psychical states derive from acts which, in their originally gestural nucleus, are performed without the implication of a thought or symbolic recognition. Analogously, consciousness – this is Mead’s great contribution to pragmatism – is a result of the conversational and communicative process itself.6 ‘The term “gesture” may be identified with these beginnings of social acts which are stimuli for the response of other forms’ (Mead 1934: 43). As in the case of the parent’s relationship to the child, there is a series of progressive adjustments which produces a shared social act. We find here those emotions which Darwin thought of as being prior to the behavioural attitudes. Gestures do indeed tend to become significant symbols:

From Gestures to Habits: Semiotics and Pragmatism

345

Only in terms of gestures as significant symbols is the existence of minds or intelligence possible; for only in terms of gestures which are significant symbols can think – which is simply an internalization or implicit conversation of the thinking individual with himself by means of such gestures – take place. The internalization in our experience of the external conversation of gestures which we carry on with other individuals in the social process is the essence of thinking. Mead 1934: 47

In my opinion, Peirce would have unreservedly concurred with Mead’s conclusion, especially for its strong and radical pragmatic valence: ‘In the very beginning the other person’s gesture means what you are going to do about it. It does not mean what he is thinking about or even his emotion’ (Mead 1934:49). And yet, Peirce did not as much study gestures. In his writings, the term itself occurs very rarely. The most interesting instance is occasioned by an observation similar to one put forth by Mead: if logicians had to invent a new language, they would need prepositions to indicate the temporal (before, after, at the same time), spatial (adjoining, containing, to the left of), and geographic relations (across, seaward), etc. ‘But when we examine actual languages, it would seem as though they had supplied the place of many of these distinctions by gestures’ (CP 2.290n2, 1902). As Peirce writes in ‘The nature of assertion’ in 1895 (CP 2.337), ‘Tones and looks are the indices of the real world’. Gestures are here decidedly identified with indices. ‘Often, too, the index is not of the nature of a noun. It may be, as we have seen, a mere look or gesture’ (CP 2.338). In this text, which is entirely dedicated to the nature of assertion, Peirce claims that the subjects of a proposition may be identified with indices, insofar as they point to the object of the assertion itself. While they do not necessarily coincide with the grammatical subjects (a noun can be placed in an oblique form), their essential function is indexical. Indeed, the subject-index may be no more than a look or gesture. ‘A tone or gesture is often the most definite part of what is said’ (CP 5.568, 1901). In each kind of gesture, there is an iconic and metaphorical (cf. Fabbrichesi 2017) or, more simply, an indexical and symbolic root. Gestures are regarded by Peirce as pure tonalities (or categorial firsts) – widely qualifying tonalities. Yet, their indexical nature is as implicit as their symbolical nature, which is never absent from socially shared gestures. We could then say that, for Peirce, gestures represent the synthesis of a complex semiotic process. This is a process in which logical forms are intertwined with decidedly extra-logical references. Notwithstanding Peirce’s limited attention to the topic, he tended to identify gestures primarily with indices. This confirms what has been said above anyway: gestures are a sort of primitive sign, a not yet fully symbolic or conventional one.

346

Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Peircean Semiotics

In fact, Peirce’s definition of index goes as follows: ‘An index is a sign which refers to the Object that it denotes by virtue of being really affected by that Object’ (CP 2.248, 1903), owing to a dual and physical connection, as Peirce had already explained in A New List of Categories of 1867 (‘a correspondence in fact’). Peirce’s examples include the weathercock (an index of atmospheric movement), the thermometer, but also proper names, the letters of a diagram and relative pronouns. In the most important triad, which classifies signs with respect to their relationship to their objects – icon, index and symbol7 – the index is a sign which forces one’s attention thanks to an ‘existential relation’ (CP 2.283, c.1902) between two physically identifiable individuals. The pointed finger is a perfect example of an index (CP 2.286, 1895); and this is indeed a mere gesture.8

Gesture as the gestation of habit Let us focus on the etymology of ‘gesture’ and try to interpret the gesture as the gestation of a habit. Gesture comes from the Latin word gestum, which in turn derives from gerere – to carry, bear, bring with oneself, generate (whence the term ‘gestation’, which seems at first to have little to do with gesture). In a slightly derivative and yet strictly related sense (note the assonance between gerere and agere), gerere also means to have, behave, show, act. Gesture thus refers to the generation, actualization, production of something, such as a meaning, as we could say in terms congenial to the purposes of this chapter. But also: a gesture shows by acting, by generating an action. The gesture brings us somewhere else, indicates a here for an elsewhere. Sign par excellence, it is a presence which alludes to an absence in a quasi-physical way. A gesture leads us toward its own meaning, generating it little by little. At least at first, there is nothing symbolical about it. It does not appear to be conventional. It may not even be voluntary or motivated. It is mostly impersonal: it passes through whoever is putting it forth as if it were coming from outside – as if this very outside were asking to be signalized. In this connection, let us recall Peirce’s general definition of sign as something which ‘stands for something else’, that is, something which is in such a ‘relation to another that for certain purposes it is treated by some mind as if it were that other’ (CP 2.273, Baldwin’s Dictionary). A gesture opens up a world, writes Carlo Sini (1996: 20),9 who devoted many extensive studies to this notion. Gestures function as the first form of communication, and this happens in both the human and animal worlds. It could be shown that plants and planets also gesticulate, for they produce signs so

From Gestures to Habits: Semiotics and Pragmatism

347

Figure 12.1 Sraffa’s Neapolitan gesture quoted by Wittgenstein c. 1940. Courtesy Filippo Di Lorenzo.

as to elicit an effect. However, semiotics should help us understand how to go from a performative to a symbolic sign. Recall Sraffa’s notorious Neapolitan gesture to his friend Wittgenstein (Figure  12.1), performing which he asked: ‘What is the logical form of this?’ (Malcolm 2001: 83). The great philosopher understood immediately, as in a quick vision, that a gesture cannot be subsumed by the representational mechanisms of logical propositions. Nonetheless, it remains a formidable expressive tool, fully symbolic (but with prominent iconic and indexical elements, as Peirce would say, who went so far as to locate such elements in propositional assertions themselves). After mentioning his extensive discussions with Sraffa, in the introduction to Philosophical Investigations, Wittgenstein wrote: ‘I am indebted to this stimulus for the most consequential ideas in this book’ (1953: Preface). As is well known, such fundamental ideas concern language games and their ensuing practices (precisely the pragmatist aspects of the late Wittgenstein’s thought).10 The semiotic nature of gestures deserves a proper analysis, one which has received little attention so far, both in the logical-semiotic and theoretical fields. There are, however, a few important studies which develop in fruitful directions, from the arts and mathematics as well as philosophy.11

348

Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Peircean Semiotics

Figure 12.2 Drawing from Carlo Sini’s Archive. Statue of the Great Goddess of Nature and Life in Cnossos, 2018. Courtesy Carlo Sini (www.archiviocarlosini.it).

Let us consider those gestures which are yet to acquire a fully symbolic status, gestures which appear as signals to be connected to a certain form of life: the gestures of canine conversation or those represented in sacred drawings of ancient religions and studied by K. Kerényi during his long work as an anthropologist and historian of mythologies (Kerényi 1996: 19). In these expressions the gesture traces a furrow between the unexpressed world and an expression of it which indicates something to do or see (Figure 12.2). A gesture can thus be interpreted as an emergence that changes the surrounding horizon, tracing in it a crossing path. It is the pragmatic unit par excellence, even if barely hinted at, because it points to something that has to be done or brought to light (gestation). In its opening itself up, the gesture calls for an answer: it lays out the harmonic threshold of the responding and corresponding, thereby allowing syntony, the shared resounding of living beings. The gesture, then, is initially the simple incentive that triggers a social response. It is the gesture that enables the reciprocal adjustments between different individual organisms, which ‘pro-vokes’ (calls for) an appropriate response, within which a second organism performs its own part, contributing to the

From Gestures to Habits: Semiotics and Pragmatism

349

Figure 12.3 The birth of smile between mother and child, 1993. Courtesy Family Leo.

constitution of the act in its wholeness and producing a behavioural analogy. Let us take another case of ‘basic’ gesture, that of a mother who smiles at her child (Figure  12.3). The mother’s smile generates that of her child and, in turn, the child’s first smile generates a happy and emotional mother. The gesture, in this case, is not symbolic or self-conscious; nor is it properly personal. It is produced as a sign in relation to its object in a way which is anything but conventional; it is generated as the infant himself/herself has been generated with his/her birth. A situation is thus created of shared gesturality, tuning and affective contagion. The whole pragmatic act is actualized in virtue of the responses each individual offers the other. It is like throwing a ball almost involuntarily held firm back at the one who threw it at me, so as to receive it again. The gestural act is first and original: each behaviour stems from a gesture which is to be considered as the germinal nucleus of any habit. The habit is embodied in the gesture, which may nonetheless decline without being socially developed and symbolically stabilized. At this level, as Mead would point out, there is no consciousness which is intentionally actualizing such a gesture; no mental image to which we can appeal. There is only the emergence of an efficacious response (‘what you are going to do about it’, Mead 1934: 49), one in which the significant act which ‘stands for’ is first and original.

350

Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Peircean Semiotics

As with habit, gesture establishes a deep connection between semiotic and pragmatist themes. As we have seen, a gesture is first and foremost a sign, and in particular an index (even though there are always iconic and symbolic elements in it). Yet, as an embryonal nucleus of a habitual act, a gesture at the same time indicates a standing for something to do, not for something to represent. It refers less to an object than to an action. It points to somewhere else while signalling a pragmatic path to be travelled. The goddess indicates a sacred action to be performed, Sraffa’s gesture indicates a kind of nonchalance to which we should appeal in certain kinds of relationship, an infant’s smile calls for an emphatically correspondent response. Gestures lead to doing and producing effects, not only to seeing and representing. Even when it is expressed by a proposition, a gesture belongs less to the logical than to the practical domain. I contend that its Object (what it stands for) is not a thing or fact to represent, but an act which embodies an implicit meaning. I also contend that a gesture, as a sign, has a bodily valence which is absent from both icons and symbols – to which, I believe, Peirce should have devoted greater attention (and which Wittgenstein had well understood). Let us return to the initial claim of this chapter: the interpretant is the real engine of Peircean semiotics – the interpretant understood as habit and attitude to respond. A sign points to its object to the extent that the object emerges in the web of interpretative links which are determined by our capacity to act and work. Reinterpreting and actualizing Peirce’s thought, we could say that a sign does not stand for an object, but for a web of practices. The gesture is its matrix. The foregoing reflection invokes the sense of Peirce’s entire pragmatism. A habit is produced by a gesture, or web of gestures, which are at first instinctive and then symbolic, and which are often unconsciously actualized: a gesture which is understood, reiterated, recognized and shared is transformed into a habit.12 The habit is constituted by the web of meanings and behaviours which are publicly practised, namely, by the recognition of the efficacy of those gestures which are capable of producing conceivably practical and productive effects. If, as Peirce claims, a habit-belief consists in being prepared to act and respond, a gesture anticipates it in virtue of its signifying and pragmatic emergence. The habit simply introduces the element of disposition, of preparedness – a habituality which is recognized and awaited by the gesticulation. Recall the case of the umbrella: a gesture each one of us performs automatically whenever we realize that the sky is cloudy. It has become an inveterate habit, a pragmatic synthesis of an experientially valid logical inference.

From Gestures to Habits: Semiotics and Pragmatism

351

The gesture as writing As Carlo Sini points out (1996: 20), throughout his gestural conversations, a dog deals with experiential stimuli by generating a host of habits in response to the aggressiveness or sociability of other dogs. ‘Each gesture outlines a worldly horizon as a place of stimulus-response reciprocity. This outlining is a kind of forming, limiting, drawing the body and world which are established in the very gestural relation which outdistances and connects them’ (1996: 20). This is the reason why Sini proposes that we define the gesture as ‘grapheme’, a writing of the body and world, a writing which traces the opening of experience by means of signs which are engraved in the body, the environment, the forms of pictorial and ideography writing. ‘In this sense, the gesture is the original writing of experience’ (1996: 20). I would also add that if each gesture is an original gramma (in Greek: writing, character, depiction), it is also a pragma, an action guided by a certain interest. Let us consider the case of logical writing, to which more space and attention should be dedicated than we can afford in this chapter. It is well known that Peirce gave much importance to his inquiry of graphs and diagrams. After 1896, he began to articulate a system of ‘Existential Graphs‘, which he considered his ‘chef d’oeuvre’.13 ‘From Peirce’s Existential Graphs we will be able to observe the semiotic structure of gestures understood as embodied in synthetic reasoning’ (Maddalena & Zalamea 2012: 56). One among several Peirce’s expositions is to be found in the article published in 1906 by the Monist, ‘Prolegomena to an Apology for Pragmaticism’. It is no coincidence that Peirce conceives his work on the graphs as a fundamental component of his pragmaticist project. A considerable amount of work has been dedicated to logical and technical explanations of this project. I will limit myself to underlining the pragmatic (as well as semiotic) significance of the graphs as a moving picture of thought and as its gesture of inscription. As Peirce puts it, they constitute ‘a system of diagrammatization by means of which any course of thought can be represented with exactitude’ (CP 4.530, 1906). Crucial for the functioning of this system and its constitutive operations is the gesture of the person Peirce calls the ‘Graphist’. The first convention concerns ‘the Agency of the Scripture’; the second concerns ‘the Matter of the Scripture’ (CP 552–553). The Graphist shall responsibly scribe each original graph which will then be interpreted, corrected, integrated and transformed by the Interpreter. On the Phemic Sheet or Sheet of Assertion, which represents the Universe of Reality, various gestures are exhibited which indicate (and perhaps produce) the corresponding thoughts and propositions. The resulting picture is the fruit of a common work, a shared gesturality, one which is very similar to what we have analyzed above in relation to

352

Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Peircean Semiotics

Mead’s work. Indeed, Peirce emphasizes the power of ‘the act of writing’ (CP 4.430, 1903, my emphasis), noting that ‘Thinking in general terms is not enough. It is necessary that something should be DONE’ (CP 4.233, 1902). Peirce is here referring to the ‘theorematics’ or, more generally, mathematical reasoning, as well as to the need of schemes and diagrams that may strengthen and facilitate our pursuit of this kind of reasoning. But a good mathematician knows that this rule can be transposed to the whole field of thought and regarded as a general improvement of the art of reasoning. According to Fernando Zalamea, a great interpreter of Peirce’s mathematics and theory of graphs: ‘Intuitionism, topology and visualization get thus strongly entangled. It is striking that such powerful achievements are so simple at the end, and that they can be captured by soft and precise gestures. This shows again the profound harmony between logic, mathematics and art, encrypted in some basic movements of the very human body’ (Zalamea 2018).14 As Maddalena concludes in his wide-ranging work on the notion of gesture: ‘Mathematical gestures and graphs are parts of a broader synthetic tool, which is gesture in general’ (Maddalena 2015a: 69). Peirce’s graphs show with great clarity that the gestures of writing, especially logical-diagrammatic ones (cutting, incising, colouring, erasing), play a fundamental role in the emergence of a meaningful horizon. Moreover, Peirce himself points to the pragmatic role of writing gestures: any gesture calls for an interpreter, much as a mere ink spot invariably tends to have a meaning for those who read it. Indeed, ‘[these] ink spots will have certain effects on the conduct, mental and bodily, of the interpreter’ (CP 4.431, 1903) who will welcome them, modify them, appeal to them in order to elaborate new theories. In a word, their meaning will be expressed in and modelled upon an ongoing mathematical and reflective work. In conclusion, for Peirce every concept is expressed pragmatically in a habit and graphically in a scripture. I propose to interpret Peirce’s thought in this way: there is no difference between grammata (scriptures) and pragmata (habits); both exist in nuce as gestures. Gestures are scriptures of the world in the form of embryonic acts.

A Survey of Pragmaticism: the study of signs is the study of habits The link between gesture and habit is well exhibited, however implicitly so, in A Survey of Pragmaticism (1907) – a text to which we shall now return. Without a

From Gestures to Habits: Semiotics and Pragmatism

353

doubt, this is one of the most important essays for understanding what pragmatism is, as well as how it sheds light upon and is in turn completed by semiotics. Indeed, this is Peirce’s starting point (CP 5.464): pragmatism is neither a metaphysical doctrine nor a theory of truth. It is no more than a method for ascertaining the meaning of abstract concepts and clarifying our ideas, as Peirce had already written in 1878 (CP 5.394ff ). As he points out, any version of pragmatism tends to converge upon the fact that the meaning of a concept ‘expresses itself either in the shape of conduct to be recommended or of experience to be expected’ (CP 5.466). But to which concepts is Peirce referring? Only to those which may be defined as intellectual conceptions, which Peirce also defines as sign-burdens (CP 5.467). They convey not only a relative feeling or matter of fact, but ‘some implication concerning the general behaviour’ (CP 5.467) either of some conscious being or of some other objects. They convey the ‘would-acts’ or ‘would-dos’ of habitual behaviour, whereby ‘no agglomeration of actual happenings can ever completely fill up the meaning of a “would-be” ’ (CP 5.467). Notice the close connection between concept, sign, meaning, behaviour, would-act, would-do, and would-be. Peirce’s semiotics cannot help descending from a philosophical pragmatism and this pragmatism, in turn, cannot help having a scholastic realist matrix.15 It would be important to show how, in the following sections of his essay, Peirce binds his vision with the theory of categories and the logic of relatives; but we now need to jump to his semiotic observations, which are extremely important. Here Peirce distinguishes two types of objects and three types of interpretants. We find this classification in many other places,16 all approximately from the same period. While the ‘Immediate Object’ is the mental representation which is produced by the sign (elsewhere: ‘the Object as the sign itself represents it’ (CP 4.536, 1906)), the Dynamic or Existent Object is what the sign is dynamically forced to represent, thereby identifying itself with reality. Having established this distinction, Peirce proceeds to classify the interpretants within a triadic structure. He admits that it is not easy to discriminate between object and interpretant (perhaps this is the reason why Saussure did not distinguish them), but he proposes to limit the use of the word interpretant to everything which, in logic, belongs to the predicate of an assertion (CP 5.473, 1907). ‘Object’, by contrast, refers to what is denoted by its subject(s). Now, only by studying the interpretants will we be able to determine what a meaning is. There are three types of interpretant: the Emotional Interpretant, which is the feeling produced in a semiotic relation; the Energetic Interpretant which always consists of an effort, whether muscular or mental (an

354

Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Peircean Semiotics

exertion upon the inner world). Yet, since they are not general in nature, these interpretants cannot constitute the logical meaning of a sign. What other kinds of effect could a sign produce? Naturally, it can produce a thought, which is another sign: that is why we call it Logical Interpretant. But if this sign was purely intellectual, it should have another logical interpretant, in which case it could not represent the ultimate logical interpretant of that concept. What is thus the best candidate for playing this role? It can be proved that the only mental effect that can be so produced and that is not a sign but is of a general application is a habit-change; meaning by a habitchange a modification of a person’s tendencies toward action, resulting from previous experiences or from previous exertions of his will or acts, or from a complexus of both kinds of cause. CP 5.476, 1907

Habits emerge, adapt, change and consolidate in accordance with the necessities of interpretation, namely, of the life of meanings. A habit’s iteration is as fundamental as its association with other habits. Peirce mulls over the analysis of this disposition which is neither natural nor innate, but, as we could say, transnatural. It leads us toward an ongoing work of formation and transformation of our modes of response to what happens. Interestingly, Peirce goes on by introducing the notion of conjecture which, in his opinion, precedes and prepares the adoption of the habit per se. In light of what has been said above, we could associate a conjecture to the idea of gesture. ‘Every concept, every general proposition of the great edifice of science, first came to us as a conjecture. These ideas are the first logical interpretants of the phenomena that suggest them, and which, as suggesting them, are signs, of which they are the (really conjectural) interpretant [. . .] do not forget that every conjecture is equivalent to, or is expressive of, such a habit’ (CP 5.480). Gestures can themselves be interpreted as first logical interpretants; as such, gestures prepare the ultimate logical interpretants, namely, habits. In the aforementioned terms: each gesture announces and is expressive of a certain habit, and each habit has a gestural (conjectural) nucleus. We could exert some pressure on Peirce’s thought and invoke conjectures as the infinite mental and bodily dispositions by virtue of which we ‘taste’ the surrounding world and leave a trace in it. If, as we have seen above, the essence of the logical interpretant cannot help but be a habit (CP 5.486),17 and if the adoption of a proper habit is prepared by a conjectural abduction, how is a habit produced and conserved? Peirce’s answer might remind us of the notion of

From Gestures to Habits: Semiotics and Pragmatism

355

‘spiritual exercise’ inaugurated by the Stoics and brought back into vogue by thinkers such as Hadot and Foucault.18 A habit is exactly an exercise: an exercise capable of strengthening certain abilities, a reiteration of some forms of expression, perception, imagination, bodily and mental work, conscious or unconscious attitudes (unconscious with respect to our doing and thinking).19 In every case, after some preliminaries, the activity takes the form of experimentation in the inner world; and the conclusion (if it comes to a definite conclusion), is that under given conditions, the interpreter will have formed the habit of acting in a given way whenever he may desire a given kind of result. The real and living logical conclusion is that habit; the verbal formulation merely expresses it. CP 5.491

Only a habit can represent a veritable and living conclusion of an inferential process: The habit alone, which though it may be a sign in some other way, is not a sign in that way in which that sign of which it is the logical interpretant is the sign. The habit conjoined with the motive and the conditions has the action for its energetic interpretant; but action cannot be a logical interpretant, because it lacks generality. The concept which is a logical interpretant is only imperfectly so . . . The deliberately formed, self-analyzing habit – self-analyzing because formed by the aid of analysis of the exercises that nourished it – is the living definition, the veritable and final logical interpretant. Consequently, the most perfect account of a concept that words can convey will consist in a description of the habit which that concept is calculated to produce. But how otherwise can a habit be described than by a description of the kind of action to which it gives rise, with the specification of the conditions and of the motive? CP 5.491

Equalizing habit and interpretant amounts to minimizing the centrality of mind and consciousness and their capacity to generate the semiotic movement: ‘habit is by no means exclusively a mental fact’, we read soon after. As we have seen above, Mead will take it from here, inaugurating an anti-representational and anti-mentalist version of mind and communication. If the engine of semiosis is the interpretant, its operative gear can only be explained by habits. The sign is no mere empirical or purely intellectual tool; by virtue of the interpretant, it refers us to a ‘being ready to do’, a complex web of exercises and practices to avail oneself of (and be availed by). Philosophy

356

Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Peircean Semiotics

and semiotics, in Peirce, are bound up by the introduction of general modes of rational conduct which can be constantly self-controlled. As Peirce explains with a well-known example in What Pragmatism is (1905): the truth of the general proposition ‘Stuffy air is malsain’ leads me to stand up and open the window. A real general – a general sign such as a proposition – can therefore be physically efficient (CP 5.431) and generate meaningful modifications of what happens within and around me. ‘The argument upon which I rested the maxim in my original paper was that belief consists in being deliberately prepared to adopt the formula believed in as the guide to action’ (CP 5.27, 1903). Peirce goes back to where he started: the meaning of signs is true and congruent if it is gravid with practical relevance, becoming a plan of action. Ideas can only be clarified by specifying the habits they determine, the effects of truth they produce, the conceivably practical results which, in the long run of interpretations, they are ‘fated’ or ‘destined’ to bring about (CP 5.407n.1, 1878).

References Bellucci, F. 2017. Peirce’s Speculative Grammar. New York: Routledge. Bergman, M. 2016. Beyond Explication: Meaning and Habit-Change in Peirce’s Pragmatism, in West, D.E. and Anderson M. (eds). Consensus on Peirce’s Concept of Habit. Before and Beyond Consciousness. 171–198, Dordrecht: Springer. Boler, J. 1963. Peirce and Scholastic Realism. Seattle: University of Washington Press. Carlisle, C. 2014. On Habits. New York: Routledge. Darwin, C. 1872. The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals. London: John Murray, 1st edition. Fabbrichesi, R. 2011. ‘Iconic Thought and Diagrammatical Scripture. Peirce and the Leibnizian Tradition’, in J. Queiroz and F. Stjernfelt (eds). Special Issue: Diagrammatical Reasoning and Peircean Logic Representations, Semiotica. 186(1/4): 111–127. Fabbrichesi, R. 2014. ‘Peirce’s Iconism: from Gesture to Scripture’, in Hongbing Yu (ed.). Proceedings of the 11th World Congress of the IASS / AIS (Vol. 1). Nanjing: Hohai University Press. Fabbrichesi, R. 2015. ‘Gesture, act, consciousness. The social interpretation of the Self in G. H. Mead’, in P. Gori (ed.). Special Issue: Anti-Metaphysical Psychology, Philosophical Readings. 7(2): 98–118 https://philosophicalreadings.org Fabbrichesi, R. 2017. ‘The Iconic Ground of Gestures: Peirce, Wittgenstein, and Foucault’, in K. Hull and R. Atkins (eds). Peirce on Perception and Reasoning: from Icons to Logic. 54–60, London and New York: Routledge.

From Gestures to Habits: Semiotics and Pragmatism

357

Formis, B. 2008. Gestes à l’oeuvre. Le Havre: L’Incidence (2nd Ed. 2015). Foucault, M. 2005. The Hermeneutics of the Subject. Lectures at the Collège de France 1981–1982, F. Gros, F. Ewald and A. Fontana (eds). A. Davidson (English edition). G. Burchell (transl.). Hampshire and New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Hadot, P. 1987. Exercises spirituels et philosophie antique. Paris: Études Augustiniennes. Hausman, C. 1993. Peirce’s Evolutionary Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Heidegger, M. 2010. Being and Time. New York: SUNY. Husserl, E. 1970. ‘Zur Logik der Zeichen (Semiotik)’, in Husserliana, Vol. XII. Den Haag: Nijhoff. Hutchinson, A. and M.T. Sparrow (eds). 2013. A History of Habit: From Aristotle to Bourdieu. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books. Ibri, I.A. 2017. Kósmos Noetós. The Metaphysical Architecture of Charles S. Peirce. Dordrecht: Springer. Joas, H. 1997. G.H. Mead. A Contemporary Re-examination of his Thought. Cambridge: MIT Press. Kendon, A. 2004. Gesture: Visible Action as Utterance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kerényi, C. 1996. Dionysos: Archetypal Image of Indestructible Life. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Maddalena, G. and F. Zalamea. 2012. ‘A New Analytic/Synthetic/Horotic Paradigm. From Mathematical Gesture to Synthetic/Horotic Reasoning’. European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, IV(2): 208–224. Maddalena, G. 2015a. The Philosophy of Gesture. Completing Pragmatists’ Incomplete Revolution. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press. Maddalena, G. 2015b. ‘Attraper le geste et pouvoir continuer. For a new kind of mathematical constructivism’, Cuadernos de Sistematica Peirceana. 7:27–40. Malcolm, N. 2001. Ludwig Wittgenstein: A Memoir. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Nöth, W. 2010. ‘The Criterion of Habit in Peirce’s Definitions of the Symbol’, Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society. 46(1): 82–93. Nöth, W. 2016. ‘Habits, Habit Change, and the Habit of Habit Change According to Peirce’ in West, D.E. and Anderson M. (eds). Consensus on Peirce’s Concept of Habit. Before and Beyond Consciousness. 35–64, Dordrecht: Springer. Queiroz J. and F. Stjernfelt (eds). 2011. Diagrammatical Reasoning and Peircean Logic Representations, Special Issue: Semiotica. 186(1/4). Roberts, D.D. 1973. The Existential Graphs of Charles S. Peirce. The Hague: Mouton. Sebeok. T 1995. ‘Indexicality’ in Ketner K.L. (ed.). Peirce and Contemporary Thought. New York: Fordham University Press. Short, T.L. 2007. Peirce’s Theory of Signs. New York: Cambridge University Press. Sini C. 1996. Gli abiti, le pratiche, i saperi, Milano: Jaca Book. Reprint in Opere. Il pensiero delle pratiche, ed. by F. Cambria, Vol. IV, Tome II, Section I. Milano: Jaca Book, 2014. Sini, C., 2009. Ethics of Writing. New York: SUNY.

358

Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Peircean Semiotics

Sini, C. 2013. Opere. Il foglio-mondo, ed. by F. Cambria, Vol. III, Tome II, Sect. 1.2. Milano: Jaca Book. Thibaud, P. 1975. La logique de Charles Sanders Peirce. De l’algèbre aux graphes. Aix-enProvence: Editions de l’Université de Provence. West, D.E. and M. Anderson (eds). 2016. Consensus on Peirce’s Concept of Habit. Before and Beyond Consciousness. Dordrecht: Springer. Wittgenstein, L. 1953. Philosophical Investigations. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Zalamea, F. 2010. ‘Towards a Complex Variable Interpretation of Peirce’s Existential Graphs’, in M. Bergman et al. (eds). Ideas in Action. Proceedings of the Applying Peirce Conference, 254–264, Helsinki: Nordic Pragmatism Network. Zalamea, F. 2012. Synthetic Philosophy of Contemporary Mathematics. New York: Urbanomic Press. Zalamea, F. 2018. ‘Two New Gestures. On Peirce’s Continuum and the Existential Graphs’, in G. Baggio and S. Oliva (eds). Special Issue: Sul gesto. Lebenswelt, 13.

13

Peirce and Welby: For an Ethics of the Man–Sign Relation Susan Petrilli

‘Semiotic and significs’. The Peirce/Welby correspondence The relationship between Charles S. Peirce (1839–1914), with his ‘semiotic’, and Victoria Lady Welby (1837–1912), with her ‘significs’ – the neologism she elected for her theory of meaning and special focus on sense and significance – is particularly interesting in the study of signs and language today and not only for historical reconstruction. This connection is truly a resource for possible future developments and regeneration of the present-day multiple and largely diversified disciplines involved. From this perspective ‘semioethics’ is an expression introduced by Augusto Ponzio and me (2003, 2005, 2010) to indicate a special direction in the study of signs, language and meaning – what we believe to be a necessary turn in semiotics studies today – deriving from Welby and her significs no less than from Peirce, in consideration also of his interest in the normative sciences, including ethics. Like Peircean semiotics and Welbian significs, semioethics presents an extension beyond logico-gnoseological or epistemological boundaries of mainstream approaches to sign studies in order to focus on the relation of signs to values and thus on the axiological-practical dimension of sign activity. This is in line with what Thomas Sebeok (1920–2001) denominated the ‘major tradition’ in semiotic studies – beginning from Hippocrates and Galen and passing through John Locke – with its twentieth-century developments in terms of ‘interpretation semiotics’, or ‘significance semiotics’, guided by the lodestar Peirce, and, as we now know, in the company of Welby and others still who came after, such as Charles Morris, the same Thomas Sebeok, Roman Jakobson, Mikhail Bakhtin, Emmanuel Levinas, and in Italy Ferruccio Rossi-Landi, Umberto Eco, Massimo Bonfantini and Augusto Ponzio, all of whom though not our direct 359

360

Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Peircean Semiotics

object of discussion are in the background of the present chapter. From a semioethical perspective these developments exemplify the human disposition for evaluation, responsibility, critique and creativity as opposed to the tendency towards dogmatism and unquestioning acceptance of the established order. ‘Semioethics’ is also a development on Sebeok’s ‘global semiotics’, which posits that semiosis and life coincide to concern all life over the planet (Sebeok 2001), thereby evidencing the condition of interdependency, intercorporeity, interconnectedness among all life forms, the condition of coimplication and for what concerns human semiosis the centrality of the question of ‘responsibility’. Welby and her significs have only relatively recently been taken into consideration in semiotic circles in any substantial sense. Her two books What Is Meaning?, 1903, and Significs and Language, 1911, were re-proposed in new editions, respectively, by Achim Eschbach in 1983 and by Walter Schmitz (in a volume collecting other texts by Welby under the title Significs and Language) in 1985.1 On publication What Is Meaning? was reviewed by Peirce in association with Bertrand Russell’s The Principles of Mathematics, Vol. 1, it too published in 1903, for The Nation (now SS: 157–159). Following this review, epistolary exchanges between Peirce and Welby, initiated in 1903, became regular, ending only after eight years, in 1911, when Welby was taken ill. Their relationship significantly influenced the development of Peirce’s own research on a theoretical level over the last decade of his life. In Welby, Peirce found a dedicated listener, so to speak, responsive and creative, which most probably influenced his focus on ‘semeiotic’ from his Harvard and Lowell lectures of 1903 onward, even the direction and emphases thereof (see Fisch 1986: 341).2 To Welby and her gratitude for his interest in her work of a life-time, Peirce in fact responded underlining the shared focus of their attention: But I smiled at your speaking of my having been ‘kindly interested’ in your work, as if it were a divergence – I should say a deviation, from my ordinary line of attention. Know that from the day when at the age of 12 or 13, I took up, in my elder brother’s room a copy of Whately’s ‘Logic,’ and asked him what Logic was, and getting some simple answer, flung myself on the floor and buried myself in it, it has never been in my power to study anything – mathematics, ethics, metaphysics gravitation, thermodynamics, optics, chemistry, comparative anatomy, astronomy, psychology, phonetics, economic [sic], the history of science, whist, men and women, wine, metrology, except as a study of semeiotic. SS: 85–86, 1908

Peirce and Welby: An Ethics of the Man–Sign Relation

361

In Peirce’s conception semeiotic and logic are closely related, though his understanding of the relation changed as he became ever more aware of the basic role in logic not only of symbols, but also of indexes and icons. As he moved towards the final stages in the development of his conceptual architectonics, logic and semeiotic were seen to converge, as Locke had already envisaged. However, in Peirce’s description they overlap without identifying with each other – with respect to logic semeiotic presents an excess (see letters by Peirce to Welby, 23 December 1908 and 14 March 1909, SS: 78–80 and 118, respectively). Peirce knew full well that Welby was concerned with signs as much as he was, which led him to formulate some of his most articulate expositions on signs in his letters to her, setting himself the task from the very beginning of their exchanges. His mission was to convince her that ‘the highest grade of reality is only reached by signs’, paradoxical as this sounded: ‘but when I have devolved to you my whole theory of signs, it will seem less so’. And in pedagogical tones Peirce continues ‘I think that I will today explain the outlines of my classification of signs’ (SS: 23, 1904; see also Jappy 2017: 41–49). He in turn was interested in her opinion about his writings encouraging her to express them rather than keep silent as did those who considered his work of no consequence (SS: 66, 1908; also, CP 8.376). Peirce referred to significs as involving a great deal of logical analysis – the direction of his own special talent (see Roberts 1973) – encouraging Welby to study his existential graphs, his system of ‘logic diagrams’ which he claimed would reveal the true nature and method of logic itself (SS: 69–70). He described his existential graph system as an ‘icon of thought’, in formal respects of the ‘highest exactitude’, studying which would help prevent its student from ‘rashly interfering with the arrangements of nature’ (SS: 96, 1909). Considering that whatever man does is an arrangement of nature, these statements reveal his vision of the inexorable interdependency among the domains of semeiotic (more commonly semiotic), pragmatics and ethics. Welby had already discovered his existential graphs in 1906 when she read his Monist essay, ‘Prolegomena to an Apology for Pragmaticism’ (SS: 91, 1909). Nevertheless he wrote some of his best texts on existential graphs in letters to her.3 Peirce suggested that significs in Welby’s conception coincided with that part of semeiotic which inquires into the relation of signs to their interpretants (SS: 80, 1908). On other occasions he also stated that significs inquires into the relation of signs to their objects and into the relation between these different sets of relations. On her part Welby responded to Peirce’s prompts agreeing that significs could indeed be related to semeiotic as the scientific and philosophic form thereof. Interestingly from the viewpoint of semioethics and in accord with Peirce’s own

362

Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Peircean Semiotics

vision, she too considered logic as an ‘application of morality’, as already outlined with her original concept of ‘primal sense’ (also denominated ‘mother sense’,‘original sense’, ‘native sense’, ‘primary sense’, ‘matrix’, see Petrilli 2009: 559, 573, 590): Of course I am fully aware that Semeiotic may be considered the scientific and philosophic form of that study which I hope may become generally known as Significs. Though I don’t think you need despair of the acceptance of your own more abstract, logically abstruse, philosophically profound conception of Semeiotic. Of course I assent to your definition of a logical inference, and agree that Logic is in fact an application of morality in the largest and highest sense of the word. That is entirely consonant with the witness of Primal Sense. Alas, there is no word (except religion) more dangerously taken in vain than morality. SS: 91, 1909

The term ‘significs’ tells of Welby’s special approach to signs, language and meaning, which she focused on sense and significance, the direction and import of signifying processes – to evoke the meaning implications of the French equivalent of ‘sense’, i.e. ‘sens’ (SS: 87, 1909), which means both direction and sense – or, what amounts to the same thing, the relation of signs to behaviour and values. And the propensity for sense and significance is connected with what Welby denominates ‘primal sense’ or ‘mother-sense’, an other-oriented, valueconferring, humanizing capacity connected with the human ‘primary modelling’ device (Sebeok 1991: 49–59; Petrilli and Ponzio 2015). Primal sense, or mothersense is an a priori and condition of possibility for the acquisition of experience, its expression and communication in the properly human world through the development of verbal and nonverbal languages, for the human signifying capacity, therefore the ability to connect ideas that may even seem to contradict each other, and to identify common elements in relations of understanding (Petrilli and Ponzio 2005: 343–376; Petrilli 2009: 573–730). Welby’s theory of meaning was signalled by Charles Ogden (1889–1957) and Ivor Richards (1893–1979) in their renowned 1923 book The Meaning of Meaning (a title I would claim ultimately inspired by Lady Welby). As a young Cambridge student Ogden had been influenced by Welby and at the time was even indicated by her as a ‘neophyte for Significs’ (Petrilli 2009: 80). Moreover, in addition to his enthusiasm for the possibilities of significs, Welby thought Ogden to be a potential recruit for Peirce’s existential graphs (2 May 1911, 2009: 139). She had passed them on to Ogden for his perusal – ‘a formidable undertaking’, as he wrote to her in a letter dated 12 April 1911 (Petrilli 2009: 776). Thanks to Welby, who was in the habit of sharing her ideas, her contacts and any materials

Peirce and Welby: An Ethics of the Man–Sign Relation

363

in her possession, Ogden and Richards were able to include a text by Peirce in an Appendix to The Meaning of Meaning, making his semeiotic available at first hand to the general public, in turn contributing to the dissemination of his ideas ([1923] 1989: 279–290). The 1989 edition of this book bears an introduction by Umberto Eco in which he evokes the Welby/Ogden connection and for the occasion being aware of my work on Welby and her significs consulted with me – at the time in addition to having published essays on her I had already published the first of three anthologies of her writings in Italian translation. Welby’s fame in semiotic studies began with publication of the Peirce/Welby correspondence in the 1977 edition by Charles Hardwick, Semiotic and Significs,4 which also includes her 1911 entry ‘Significs’ originally commissioned for publication in The Encyclopaedia Britannica. At the same time their correspondence and Welby’s connections, including with Ogden, were instrumental to informing a much larger audience (United Kingdom, Continental Europe) of Peirce’s work.5 In Italy, Welby first came to attention with publication of the 1971 Einaudi edition of Giovanni Vailati’s (1863–1909) correspondence, which included his exchanges with her (Petrilli 2009: 407–419). Vailati, a philosopher and mathematician, introduced pragmatism into the Italian intellectual scene in the version conceived by Peirce (discovered thanks to Welby), rather than William James’s (for Peirce, questionable) interpretation thereof (Peirce in fact took his distance by introducing the neologism ‘pragmaticism’). Given Welby’s presence in Italy Augusto Ponzio and I were invited to contribute a chapter (through mediation of the Italian philosopher and semiotician Ferruccio Rossi-Landi who in 1967 had edited a volume of Vailati’s writings) to the volume Essays on Significs (1990), at the time in preparation under the editorship of the German scholar, Walter Schmitz. Published on the occasion of the 150th anniversary of Welby’s birth, this volume was intended to develop an editorial project originally conceived by her contemporaries, George F. Stout and John W. Slaughter, the editors, dedicated to key concepts in significs, but which never saw publication though almost complete. Peirce was to contribute the chapter ‘Assurance from Reasoning’, of which existing drafts testify to the fact that his last creative efforts were in honour of Welby. Welby’s choice of the term ‘significs’ derived from the question ‘what does it signify’ where the allusion is not only to linguistic meaning, but to the ethicalpragmatic implications of what one claims, thinks, proposes and does through language: beyond meaning intention, ‘significs’ alludes to the ultimate value and import of one’s words and actions. In this framework, Welby distinguished

364

Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Peircean Semiotics

‘meaning’ from ‘significance’ as another American semiotician philosopher and under certain aspects continuator of Peirce’s vision, Charles Morris (1901–1979) did after her, though independently, distinguishing ‘signification’ from ‘significance’ (Morris 1964). Vailati undersigned Welby’s approach. However, like Peirce, he suggested she replace the expression ‘significs’ with ‘semiotics’ recalling a tradition that went back to Locke at least: ‘I would subordinately object to the word “Significs”: it could, as it seems to me, with some advantage, be replaced by “Semiotics”, which has already been appropriated to the very same meaning by no less an authority than that of Locke’ (Essay IV, 21, in fine) (Vailati 1971: 143; in Petrilli 2009: 410). However, Welby stood her ground, explaining that the word ‘Significs’ was chosen first because unlike ‘semiotic’, ‘semasiology’, ‘semantic’, etc., it had not been used before; and second because in English idiom it appealed not merely to the student and the scholar but also to ‘the Man in the street’. People ask naturally ‘What does it Signify?’ and ignore what it does not signify, thereby unconsciously giving the sign its true place and value. Welby appreciated the unconsciously philosophical popular instinct, which could favour progress in thought to the advantage of all, although in different ways. She also pointed out that neither Locke nor any other thinker had yet analysed on ‘signific’ lines the conception of ‘Meaning’ itself (Welby to Vailati, 28 March 1903, in Petrilli 2009: 410). A contribution to disseminating Welby’s ideas in relation to Peirce’s is my book Signifying and Understanding which in over 1,000 pages presents, with my research on Welby and her significs, a consistent selection from her writings, published and unpublished, and from her letter exchanges (with over 450 correspondents), specifically with Bertrand Russell, André Lalande, Charles K. Ogden, Ferdinand C.S. Schiller, Giovanni Vailati, among others, as well as with Frederik van Eeden who introduced Welby’s significs to the Netherlands, where it developed as a movement over the first half of the twentieth century. The volume includes an anthology of writings by first-generation significians, with writings by Gerrit Mannoury, L.E.J. Bouwer and David Vuysje in addition to van Eeden (Petrilli 2009: 829–885).6

Peirce and Welby: a meaningful relation in the study of signs and language Requisites for progress in knowledge, the search for truth and critique include dialogical encounter, listening to the words of others and participative

Peirce and Welby: An Ethics of the Man–Sign Relation

365

understanding. Peirce and Welby knew that scientific research could not be successful in isolation, was not monological or separatistic, but involved sharing a common ideal for cooperation and dialogue. Welby privileged the epistolary genre as a platform for verification of the problems that engaged her attention. For progress in science and philosophy it was important to ask questions that indicate new research pathways and open to new questions, without claims to final responses. She exchanged ideas with major exponents of the most diverse disciplines and scientific fields, speaking their different languages with proficiency, even competently discussing specialized issues with them, convinced that different signifying specificities and specializations could enhance each other, contributing to a unitary and dialogic vision of life and communication. Oriented philosophically, Welby’s interests no less than Peirce’s covered the natural and hard sciences, especially biology, but also cosmology, astrology, mathematics, physics, chemistry, and the human sciences, the social sciences, the so-called soft sciences, including biblical exegesis, linguistics, literature, semiotics, logic, epistemology, philology, sociology, anthropology, pedagogy, hermeneutics, politics. Welby was always informed of the latest developments in scientific research which she would comment upon, entering the debates of the time, whether a question of radiology with the invention of X-rays (in Petrilli 2009: 107–108), or of eugenics and its speculations on how best to perfect the human race (2009: 590–597). She channelled her polyhedral interests into an overarching theory of meaning intended as a general model, developed in terms of the philosophy of interpretation, translation and significance, and capable of accounting for expression and communication in the human world overall as she interweaved the threads of different discourses into a unitary text, her significs, which implied de-totalizing specialized sectorializations while dealing with the general question of meaning (Petrilli 2007). Progress in knowledge and the quest for truth, as both Peirce and Welby knew, called for what today is commonly recognized as a ‘multidisciplinarity’, indeed ‘transdisciplinarity’ method. Nor did Peirce consider science in terms of a body of knowledge defined, possessed and systematized once and for all. On the contrary and in accord with his vision of infinite semiosis, scientific research involved dialogue among researchers open to interrogation and ongoing inquiry in plurioriented directions. His observations on the topic in his exchanges with Welby on ‘logic’ and ‘semeiotic’ and their multiform nature are interesting. Specifically, from the letter cited above in the opening section:

366

Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Peircean Semiotics

In a paper of 1867 . . ., I defined logic as the doctrine of the formal conditions of the truth of symbols; i.e. of the reference of symbols to their objects [‘On a New List of Categories’, CP 1.545–559]. Later, when I had recognized that science consists in inquiry, not in ‘doctrine’ . . . and when I according recognized that, in order that the lines of demarcation between what we call ‘sciences’ should be real, in view of the rapid growth of sciences and the impossibility of allowing for future discoveries, those lines can only represent the separations between the different groups of men who devote their lives to the advance of different studies, I saw that for a long time those who devoted themselves to discovering the truth about the general reference of symbols to their objects would be obliged to make researches into the reference to their interpretants, too, as well as into other characters of symbols, and not of symbols alone but of all sort of signs. So that, for the present, the man who makes researches into the reference of symbols to their objects will be forced to make original studies into all branches of the general theory of signs. SS: 79–80, 1908

Inspired by Peirce’s contributions to James M. Baldwin’s Dictionary of Philosophy and Psychology in Three Volumes (1901–1905), Welby initiated their correspondence sending him a copy of What Is Meaning?,7 hoping for comments from him. Many questions in his writings were of interest to her from her own special ‘significal’ perspective: This is markedly the case in your contributions to the Philosophical Dictionary. Among these I would mention what you say about ‘Laws of Thought,’ and especially about the ‘contradictory’ and the ‘principle of contradiction’. Also, about the lack of any definite meaning in philosophy of the word ‘opposite’. Again, your criticism of the misunderstanding as to the proper meaning of ‘axiom’ and of ‘postulate’ . . . It is, unfortunately, one thing to see the needless traps of which language is full and quite another to succeed in avoiding them. In some cases indeed as you and others show, there is no commonly received alternative. SS: 2, 1903

Sensitive to her interests, Peirce referenced his essays ‘The Fixation of Belief ’ (1877) and ‘How to Make Our Ideas Clear’ (1878). On mentioning his doctrine ‘pragmatism’ with its adherents in Oxford, Ferdinand Schiller and Henry Sturt, he immediately specified ‘I do not subscribe to all their extensions’ and announced publication plans for his Lowell Institute Lectures of 1903 (SS: 3). Subsequently he sent her his review of What Is Meaning? with other texts about British science published in The Nation, and announced imminent publication

Peirce and Welby: An Ethics of the Man–Sign Relation

367

of his pamphlet ‘A Syllabus of Certain Topics in Logic’ which he promised to send (SS: 4–5). In his review Peirce recognizes the ethical dimension of Welby’s theory, and relates significs to logic: Lady Victoria, however, does not wish the matter to be agitated in the logician’s study alone. She urges that people do not sufficiently take to heart the ethics of language. She thinks that modern conceptions call for a modern imagery of speech. But we fear that she does not realize how deep the knife would have to go into the body of speech to make it really scientific. We should have to form words like those the chemists use – if they can be called words. In particular, she preaches making logic – ‘significs,’ she calls it, but it would be logic – the basis or core of education . . . SS: 159

In a letter of 18 November 1903, Welby clarified that significs did not indicate a branch of logic, as Peirce thought, nor did it coincide with semiotic, as Vailati suggested, but rather was a ‘practical extension’ of the latter: . . . Prof. G. Vailati, who shares your view of the importance of that – may I call it, practical extension? – of the office and field of Logic proper, which I have called Significs. For the latter seems to see as I do that the acceptance of such an extension will bring a time when no one with any sense will any longer say ‘Oh, I don’t care for (or, am incapable of) the study of Logic. That isn’t my line.’ For that would be to announce indifference not merely to rational order, but also to the very attribute which may be said to give its human value to life, – that is (1) its ‘Sense’ and sense-power in every sense from the biological to the logical, (2) its intention, conscious and increasingly definite and rational, which we call ‘Meaning’ and (profess to) use language to express, (3) its Significance, its bearing upon, its place among, its interpretation of, all other cosmical facts. SS: 6

Welby took her distances from what she considered a descriptive approach to studies on language and knowledge, one that ignored the relation to valuation and lost sight of the ethical, aesthetic and axiological dimension of signifying processes, all covered by what we now describe as the ‘semioethical’ dimension (Petrilli 2014: 5–13, 277–281). For an adequate understanding of human semiosis Welby underlined the importance of relating logic to ethics, cognitive theory and epistemology to axiology. In his 1903 Nation review Peirce describes Welby’s What Is Meaning? and Russell’s The Principles of Mathematics as ‘Two really important works on logic’,

368

Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Peircean Semiotics

though he at once signalled their total diversity – ‘it is almost grotesque to name them together, so utterly disparate are their characters’. She mentions Peirce’s considerations in her correspondence with Vailati modestly commenting that ‘It is of course the question itself and not my defective treatment of it, of which he thus speaks’ (Petrilli 2009: 290–291, 411). Welby herself had views on mathematics (see ‘Mathematics’, in Petrilli 2009: 568) which today are undergoing a revival, as observed by Jean Paul Van Bendegem who in his essay ‘Significs and mathematics: Creative and other subjects’ exemplifies the connection with Gerrit Mannoury’s legacy, among others (in Colapietro, Nuessel and Petrilli 2013: 307–323). Central to Peirce’s work in logical analysis was the question of triadism (see Jappy 2013: 13–14), which rendered his attraction to Welby’s treatment of it inevitable. Peirce related Welby’s triadism to Hegel’s three stages of thought (but she also drew attention to Auguste Comte’s approach): . . . her three kinds of meaning correspond roughly to Hegel’s three stages of thought. Her distinction, too, partly coincides with what was long ago said,8 that to understand a word or formula may, in the first place, consist in such familiarity with it as will enable one to apply it correctly; or secondly, may consist in an abstract analysis of the conception or understanding of its intellectual relations to other concepts; or, thirdly, may consist in a knowledge of the possible phenomenal and practical upshot of the assertion of the concept. We might point out other interesting affiliations of her thought, sufficient to show that she must be upon the right track. SS: 159

To Peirce’s observations Welby responded by explaining that although she knew Hegel’s triadic system well she was critical of it, and that in any case she had worked independently from him (Petrilli 2009: Ch. 2): With regard to the relation between the triad I suggest and that of Hegel (also that of Comte) I may say that long before I knew anything about Hegel, I was asking myself why my thinking, when I tried to make it clear, fell naturally into triads. Then I looked round and found more or less the same tendency everywhere. At first therefore I was inclined to think that Hegel had got what the French call ‘le mot de l´enigme.’ But the more I studied all that could be read of his in English, and the comments of his followers, the deeper was my disappointment SS: 7, 1903

Given that the triadic order was everywhere, including in the objective reality of physical and biological phenomena, Welby hoped her own treatment thereof would be taken into serious consideration:

Peirce and Welby: An Ethics of the Man–Sign Relation

369

With regard to the triads, I am quite aware that error may take a triadic form and thus indeed put on a specious value. That seems to me an additional reason why the subject should be brought forward. I have hesitated long whether to send you enclosed proof of a sadly incoherent attempt to deal with triadism [reference is to her unpublished paper on triadism, now in Petrilli 2009: 331–340], and to use it as a mode of expression or as an expressive order. You will however easily gather its general sense. I wish some competent mind would take up the subject on a really broad basis. For apparently the same tendency to a triadic order is found objectively in physical and biological phenomena. I have been much struck with this in my rather extensive scientific reading and was surprised to find that no one seemed to notice it. SS: 14

In a brief note on What Is Meaning?, probably written in 1909 (now included in Collected Papers), Peirce emphasized the importance of Welby’s ‘three modes of meaning’: A little book by Lady Victoria Welby has lately appeared, entitled ‘What is Meaning.’ The book has sundry merits, among them that of showing that there are three modes of meaning. But the best feature of it is that it presses home the question ‘What is Meaning?’. A word has meaning for us in so far as we are able to make use of it in communicating our knowledge to others and in getting at the knowledge that these others seek to communicate to us. That is the lowest grade of meaning. The meaning of a word is more fully the sum total of all the conditional predictions which the person who uses it intends to make himself responsible for or intends to deny. That conscious or quasi-conscious intention in using the word is the second grade of meaning. But besides the consequences to which the person who accepts a word knowingly commits himself to, there is a vast ocean of unforeseen consequences which the acceptance of the word is destined to bring about, not mere consequences of knowing but perhaps revolutions of society. One cannot tell what power there may be in a word or a phrase to change the face of the world; and the sum of these consequences makes up the third grade of meaning. CP 8.1769

In addition to agreeing with Welby à propos the general tendency towards triadism, which he had acknowledged in his earlier research with such categories as ‘firstness’, ‘secondness’, and ‘thirdness’, and again ‘qualisign’, ‘sinsign’, and ‘legisign’, Peirce considered that Welby’s meaning triad ‘sense’, ‘meaning’, and ‘significance’, nearly coincided with his own tripartition of the interpretant into ‘immediate interpretant’, ‘dynamical interpretant’ and ‘final interpretant’: his

370

Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Peircean Semiotics

‘immediate interpretant’ concerns the meaning of the sign as used ordinarily and habitually by the interpreter, the immediate response to signs, corresponding to Welby’s ‘sense’; his ‘dynamical interpretant’ concerns the sign’s signification in a specific context and corresponded to Welby’s ‘meaning’, the second level in her triad; lastly, his ‘final interpretant’ like Welby’s ‘significance’, indicated the extreme limits of the sign’s interpretive possibilities, the creative potential of signs, implying all possible responses in a potentially unlimited chain of interpretants. This particular correspondence shows how, for Peirce too, signifying potential was essentially a question of valuational orientation and pragmatic consequence engendered in the relation between signs, values, and behaviour (see SS: 108– 111, 1909).

Logic and love, semiosis beyond gnoseology A posthumous collection of Peirce’s writings, published in 1923, bears the title Chance, Love and Logic. This encourages me to use the word ‘love’ in the title of this section, a choice whose relevance I hope to exemplify in what follows. Peirce and Welby both aimed to construct a universal science of signs and meaning, capable of accounting for semiosic processes generally, human and nonhuman, verbal and nonverbal. In relation to the specifically human world, Welby’s significance and Peirce’s final interpretant, which he claimed coincided perfectly, highlight the ethical-pragmatic import of human sign action. Clearly, for an adequate understanding of the workings of signs, their import and consequence for the single individual no less than for the larger community where each life is interconnected with every other, we cannot claim neutrality or maintain a purely descriptive attitude. This principle has inspired our approach to ‘semioethics’. The expression ‘semioethics’, introduced as the title of a 2003 study coauthored by Augusto Ponzio and me in Italian, Semioetica, stresses the ‘unifying function of semiotics’. ‘Semioethics’ identifies three aspects of this function: ‘descriptive-explanatory’, ‘methodological’ and ‘ethical’. Semiotics must not only describe and explain signs, it must search for methods of inquiry and knowledge acquisition and, furthermore, make proposals for future human behaviour and social programming. ‘Semioethics’ was originally introduced as a critical response to the present-day world where communication is subservient to dominant social reproduction systems. In keeping with the early vocation of semiotics understood as medical semeiotics (or symptomatology with reference

Peirce and Welby: An Ethics of the Man–Sign Relation

371

to the ancient ‘protosemioticians’ Hippocrates and Galen), semioethics examines symptoms – in our case symptoms of worldwide social malaise – generated by the current communication order and its passive reproduction. Semioethics proposes a critical reading of the world-as-it-is, and is committed to the search for possible remedies and improvements. As the general science of signs, semiotics must overcome parochial specialism, any form of separatism among the sciences. The ethical aspect of semiotics is projectual, aiming to elaborate proposals for the critical orientation of human practice generally and covering all aspects of life from the biological to the sociocultural, paying attention to reconnect that which is experienced as separate. The terms introduced for the ethical slant in semiotics, based from the beginning on the Peirce/Welby connection, include ‘ethosemiotics’, ‘telosemiotics’ or ‘teleosemiotics’ (from ‘telos’ = end), and most recently ‘semioethics’ (Petrilli and Ponzio 2005: 562). Welby’s significs emphasizes the axiological dimension of signifying processes, the emotional, pragmatic and ethical dimension beyond the abstractly gnoseological, the relation of signs to values, the scope, relevance, import and consequence of signs and language for human behaviour. Coherently with his pragmatism, Peirce too developed his cognitive semiotics in tandem with his studies of social behaviour and human interests overall. For Peirce the problem of knowledge and truth transcended gnoseologism in a pragmatic-ethical (or operative-evaluational) direction, necessarily involving the logical and evaluational, mental and moral, intellectual and emotional, rational and volitional, precisely, as the above-mentioned title, Chance, Love and Logic, already indicates. Moreover, Peirce’s sign theory develops in terms of dialogism and otherness. Semiosis results from the dialogical relation among interpretants, presupposing otherness as the condition for the generation of meaning, interpretive processes generally, sign identity, with implications for our conception of self insofar as it is sign. Peirce’s thought-sign theory exemplifies the dialogical structure of self, self as dialogue between a thought acting as sign and another sign acting as interpretant (see Ponzio 2006). Otherness and dialogism are a condition for Peirce’s doctrine of continuity, or synechism, the principle that ‘all that exists is continuous’ in the development of the universe and the subject that inhabits it, for continuity in the creative process overall (see CP 1.172). The dialogic relation between self and other – the other from self and the other of self – is a condition for the growth of ‘reasonableness’, that is, open-ended, synechetic, dialectic-dialogic semiosic activity, unfinished and unfinalizable, unbiased by prejudice, oriented by the logic of love and otherness (CP 1.615, 2.195, 5.3).

372

Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Peircean Semiotics

Thanks to reasonableness (as compared to ‘reason’), abstract gnoseologism is superseded in favour of the pragmatic-ethical dimension of semiosis as we are discussing it. It was especially during the last phase of his research (from roughly 1887 to 1914) – superbly documented by Gérard Deledalle in his 1987 monograph on Peirce, and entitled ‘Arisbe’ (from the name with which Peirce baptized his Milford home in Pennsylvania, where he lived until the end of his days) – that Peirce turned his attention specifically to the normative sciences. In addition to logic, he contemplated aesthetics and ethics, which involved such issues as the ultimate good or summum bonum identified neither in individual pleasure (hedonism) nor in the good of society (English utilitarianism), but in the ‘evolutionary process’ itself, in the ‘growth of reasonableness’ exactly. In the Preface to his 1903 ‘Lectures on Pragmatism’ (CP, Vol. 5, Bk. I), Peirce makes the following statement (cited from his 1902 dictionary entry ‘Pragmatic and Pragmatism’): Almost everybody will now agree that the ultimate good lies in the evolutionary process in some way. If so, it is not in individual reactions in their segregation, but in something general or continuous. Synechism is founded on the notion that the coalescence, the becoming continuous, the becoming governed by laws, the becoming instinct with general ideas, are but phases of one and the same process of the growth of reasonableness. This is first shown to be true with mathematical exactitude in the field of logic, and is thence inferred to hold good metaphysically. It is not opposed to pragmatism in the manner in which C. S. Peirce applied it, but includes that procedure as a step. CP 5.4

According to his agapastic theory of evolution as developed in his 1893 paper ‘Evolutionary Love’ (CP 6.287–317), the most advanced developments in knowledge towards truth are achieved by reason, but on one condition, that it be accompanied by the creativity of reasonableness, therefore that it be inspired by love, agape: the ‘impulse projecting creations into independency and drawing them into harmony’ (CP 6.288). Love is directed to the concrete, not to abstractions; towards one’s neighbour, not necessarily in a spatial sense, locally, but in the sense of affinity and similarity notwithstanding distance in space, somebody ‘we live near, not locally perhaps, but in life and feeling’ (CP 6.288). In Peirce’s conception of evolution agape is a driving force typical of logical abductive procedure, which is dominated by iconicity (rather then symbolicity and indexicality) and is characterized by its propensity for creativity. Mind develops largely through love thus understood. In Peirce’s conception of evolution, developed with reference to Saint John’s Gospel and Emanuel

Peirce and Welby: An Ethics of the Man–Sign Relation

373

Swedenborg’s theosophy, reason is enhanced by love, orientation towards the other, care for the other and as such becomes reasonableness. And reasonableness is endowed with the power to transform one’s horror of the stranger, the alien, fear of the other (of the other foreign to oneself) into sympathy for the other. On such issues Peirce references his 1893 essay, ‘The Law of Mind’ (CP 6.102–165), asserting that the type of evolution foreseen by synechism is evolution through the agency of love, whereby reason warmed by love becomes reasonableness and the hateful becomes lovely: Everybody can see that the statement of St. John is the formula of an evolutionary philosophy, which teaches that growth comes only from love, from I will not say self-sacrifice, but from the ardent impulse to fulfil another’s highest impulse . . . It is not dealing out cold justice to the circle of my ideas that I can make them grow, but by cherishing and tending them as I would the flowers in my garden. The philosophy we draw from John’s gospel is that this is the way mind develops; and as for the cosmos, only so far as it yet is mind, and so has life, is it capable of further evolution. Love, recognizing germs of loveliness in the hateful, gradually warms it into life, and makes it lovely. That is the sort of evolution which every careful student of my essay ‘The Law of Mind’ must see that synechism calls for. CP 6.289

Peirce polemically contrasted progress achieved through relations of sympathy among neighbours, the ‘Gospel of Christ’, with the ‘Gospel of Greed’ which reflected the dominant ideology of his day, encouraging the individual to assert one’s own rights and interests, one’s own individuality or egoistic identity over the other, at the other’s expense even (CP 6.294). The Peircean concept of reason fired by love recalls Welby’s own association of logic with love. She too theorized love and otherness in relation to the concrete, criticizing the tendency towards vague and void abstractions: May I say in conclusion that I see strongly how much we have lost and are losing by the barrier which we set up between emotion and intellect, between feeling and reasoning. Distinction must of course remain. I am the last person to wish this blurred. But I should like to put it thus: The difference e.g. between our highest standards of love and the animal’s is that they imply knowledge in logical order. We know that, what, how and overall, why we love. Thus the logic is bound up in that very feeling which we contrast with it. But while in our eyes logic is merely ‘formal’, merely structural, merely a question of argument, ‘cold and hard’, we need a word which shall express the combination of ‘logic and love’. And this I have tried to supply in ‘Significs’. Welby to Peirce, 22 December 1903, SS: 15

374

Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Peircean Semiotics

In an advanced phase of his studies Peirce described subjectivity as a set of actions, practices, habits, identifying one of its essential characteristics in ‘power’ as opposed to ‘force’. The incarnated self is a centre of power oriented towards an end, a ‘purpose’, Welby’s ‘purport’ and ‘ultimate value’ in her description of the meaning value of the third element of her triad, ‘significance’ (the other two being ‘meaning’ and ‘sense’). Power is not ‘brute force’ but the ‘creative power of reasonableness’ accompanied by doubt although not amiable, which thanks to its agapastic orientation rules over all other powers (cf. CP 5.520). We could say that ‘power’ as understood by Peirce – the ideal of reasonableness – is the capacity for opening to the attraction exerted on self by the other. It coincides with the disposition to respond to the other, and the modality of such a disposition is dialogue. Self as understood by Peirce is not an individual in an absolute sense, it is not an undivided, closed totality, coherent and non-contradictory identity. As sign material subjectivity is relational, doubled into interpreted and interpretant, at least. As the activities of speaking, deciding, arguing, discussing, and coming to consciousness make manifestly obvious, subjectivity is structurally other. Far from the monologism of univocality, it is modelled from a multiplicity of voices, logics, parts in dialogue. Hence identity is dialogic, plurivocal, detotalized, a community endowed with a capacity for criticism and projectuality, interacting with the larger social community conceived as a sort of more fluid and less compact person, from which it evolves (cf. CP 5.421). The other is structural to identity and at once represents the external force of attraction that shapes it, steered – at least in potentia – by agape, attraction for the other, the affective, cognitive, ethical and aesthetic other.

Myself as other Like Welby who based her theory of subjectivity on her theory of sign and meaning, Peirce’s sign theory contributes importantly to redefining the subject despite the lack of a systematic corpus of writings on the topic. He developed his ‘semiotics of self ’ across three basic stages: writings of 1867 and 1868 in the Journal of Speculative Philosophy; five Monist articles beginning from 1891; later writings on pragmaticism. Welby wrote the bulk of her subjectivity papers between 1903 and 1910, unpublished during her lifetime and now available in Signifying and Understanding (Petrilli 2009: 597–617, 640–670).

Peirce and Welby: An Ethics of the Man–Sign Relation

375

On Peirce’s account, self, mind, language consist of verbal and nonverbal sign activity. Man as sign is thought and language, verbal and nonverbal (Petrilli, ‘Man, Word, and the Other’, in Thellefsen and Sørensen 2014: 5–12; see also Sebeok, Petrilli and Ponzio 2001). As an expression of the dialogic-otherness relation between utterance and interpretation, man as sign derives from an infinity of interpretive trajectories, interconnected and interdependent, which he in turn contributes to re/generating with new signifying implications (Petrilli and Ponzio 2005: 47–59, 329–340). ‘Men and words reciprocally educate each other; each increase of a man’s information involves and is involved by, a corresponding increase of a word’s information’, as Peirce says (CP 5.313). Even more: . . . there is no element whatever of man’s consciousness which has not something corresponding to it in the word; . . . It is that the word or sign which man uses is the man himself. For, as the fact that every thought is a sign, taken in conjunction with the fact that life is a train of thought, proves that man is a sign; so, that every thought is an external sign, proves that man is an external sign. That it is to say, the man and the external sign are identical, in the same sense in which the words homo and man are identical. Thus my language is the sum total of myself; for the man is the thought. CP 5.314, 1868

As sign material in becoming, the self is dialogic and relational, an ongoing open-ended process in the intrapersonal and interpersonal relation with other signs and other subjects. Hence the self ’s boundaries are never defined once and for all, but are those of encounter with the other: The individual man, since his separate existence is manifested only by ignorance and error, so far as he is anything apart from his fellows, and from what he and they are to be, is only a negation. This is man, ‘. . . proud man, Most ignorant of what he’s most assured, His glassy essence.’

CP 5.317

Man is born into society, flourishing relatedly to the experience of all other members, never separately, always interconnectedly. His physical life, health, thoughts, actions evolve from the influence of others, across generations, caught in a network of relations to one’s neighbour, similar and dissimilar. Impossible isolation, man’s birth is indebted to others; the other’s thought, language and

376

Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Peircean Semiotics

words follow him in his solitude: the individual, an expression of ‘solidarity’ in time and space (cf. Melli 2005: 17–19). Again in Peirce’s own words: We know that man is not whole as long as he is single, that he is essentially a possible member of society. Especially, one man’s experience is nothing, if it stands alone. If he sees what others cannot, we call it hallucination. It is not ‘my’ experience, but ‘our’ experience that has to be thought of; and this ‘us’ has indefinite possibilities. CP 5.402 n2, 1878

In the framework of his other-oriented and dialogic approach to subjectivity, Peirce describes the ‘person’ as a community composed of different parts in dialogue, no less so than the larger community of dialogically interrelated selves, ‘a sort of loosely compacted person’: Two things here are all-important to assure oneself of and to remember. The first is that a person is not absolutely an individual. His thoughts are what he is ‘saying to himself ’, that is, is saying to that other self that is just coming into life in the flow of time. When one reasons, it is that critical self that one is trying to persuade; and all thought whatsoever is a sign, and is mostly of the nature of language. The second thing to remember is that the man’s circle of society (however widely or narrowly this phrase may be understood), is a sort of loosely compacted person, in some respects of higher rank than the person of an individual organism. CP 5.421

Traces of Peirce’s dialogic conception of subjectivity are present in his early writings and are developed over the entire course of his research. Subjectivity is intersubjectivity, intercorporeality, a fact of communication among interlocutors constantly changing role from speaker/utterer to listener/interpreter. The body itself is an interrelational entity, sign material through which subjectivity acts, expresses itself and communicates. To evoke Mikhail M. Bakhtin (1895–1975), self ’s discourse is never one’s own, but rings with the discourse of others. The word is not neutral, but is impregnated with the word of others, with their intonations, thoughts, experiences, actions, and feelings (Bakhtin 1981). But to return to Peirce: When I communicate my thought and my sentiments to a friend with whom I am in full sympathy, so that my feelings pass into him and I am conscious of what he feels, do I not live in his brain as well as in my own – most literally? True, my animal life is not there but my soul, my feeling thought attention are . . . Each man has an identity which far transcends the mere animal; – an essence, a

Peirce and Welby: An Ethics of the Man–Sign Relation

377

meaning subtile as it may be. He cannot know his own essential significance; of his eye it is eyebeam. But that he truly has this outreaching identity – such as a word has – is the true and exact expression of the fact of sympathy, fellow feeling – together with all unselfish interests – and all that makes us feel that he has an absolute worth. CP 7.591

The individual self is intercorporeality, sociality, history and psychic activity. It is an incarnate, embodied self, yet identity transcends the mere animal. Identity is ‘outreaching identity’, and as embodied identity, intercorporeal identity the self is not imprisoned in the body. Psychic activity, involving thought and language, is conscious and unconscious or ‘semiconscious’. The semiosic processes that constitute the unconscious are not fully conscious inferences, neither illuminated nor controlled by reason. And though an ‘obscure part’ of the psyche, the unconscious forms the principal part of this complex sphere that is the activity of mind. The unconscious or semiconscious exceeds the conscious in terms of quantity and is richer in signifying potential, ‘almost infinitely more delicate in its sensibilities’ than thought processes controlled by reason, than fully conscious inferences. Consider the following passage from Peirce’s 1905 paper ‘Logic and Spiritualism’ (CP 6.557–87) where in support of his reflections on the ‘obscure part’ of mind, he discusses behaviour governed by intuition, sense, his so-called ‘mother-wit’: Swarming facts positively leave no doubt that vivid consciousness, subject to attention and control, embraces at any one moment a mere scrap of our psychical activity. Without attempting accuracy of statement demanding long explanations, and irrelevant to present purposes, three propositions may be laid down. (1) The obscure part of the mind is the principal part. (2) It acts with far more unerring accuracy than the rest. (3) It is almost infinitely more delicate in its sensibilities. Man’s fully conscious inferences have no quantitative delicacy, except where they repose on arithmetic and measurement, which are mechanical processes; and they are almost as likely as not to be downright blunders. But unconscious or semi-conscious irreflective judgments of mother-wit, like instinctive inferences of brutes, answer questions of ‘how much’ with curious accuracy; and are seldom totally mistaken. CP 6.569, c. 1905; cf. also CP 7.555

Reading Peirce and Welby together on mind and subjectivity soon reveals how under many aspects we can describe their relation as one of affinity.10 For Welby no less than for Peirce we know that subjectivity is a community of distinct but not separate parts, emerging from the dialogic interrelation among

378

Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Peircean Semiotics

these parts, which defer to each other and to the outside world. With respect to its parts subjectivity implies ‘extralocalization’ as the condition for relations that are effectively dialogic, for substantial dialogism, to evoke Bakhtin once again, as seen in the Greek root of the word ‘dialogue’. Far from excluding one another, these parts, what Welby calls ‘selves’, are interconnected by a relation of reciprocal dependency. They are grounded in the logic of otherness and unindifference among differences, which excludes the possibility of non-differentiated confusion among them, of levelling out specificities and singularities, of levelling the other with the self, thereby reducing polylogic other-oriented identity to monologism indifferent to the multiplicity of different voices, ultimately indifferent to the other. As Welby says, to confound is to sacrifice distinction (11 December 1906, in Petrilli 2009: 645–646). From the point of view of values, signs characteristic of the human – not only in the obvious sense that they are generated by humans, but are expressive of the properly human, that is, open to the other, value-conferring, humanizing – have a structural tendency towards instability, uncertainty, restlessness. Signs of the properly human are open, critical and in demand of constant verification through dialogic encounter with signs that are other. As sign material, the subject itself elicits interrogation of past interpretations, acquired knowledge, received facts, habits and beliefs. Always open to questioning, subjectivity emerges from semiosis as an existential adventure in becoming wherein, thanks to ongoing dialogue among signs and subjects, fixed points, beliefs, and truths are constantly challenged. As an open semiosic process oriented by otherness and dialogism, subjectivity is not trapped in the boundaries of ontology and being, but instead is characterized by potential for transformation, development, displacement beyond being, its roles and definitions. Before Emmanuel Levinas and the advent of his philosophy of otherness, both Peirce and Welby had already outlined an ‘otherwise than being’ in semiotic terms (Levinas 1974; Petrilli and Ponzio 2005: 431–454). On this account the critical instance of philosophy of language towards the sign science does not limit its attention to the cognitive dimension of semiosis, but also focuses on the pragmatic dimension, precisely on the wellbeing of semiosis, life, on care for life. Welby’s unpublished manuscripts include the file ‘I and Self ’ (in Petrilli 2009: 640–670), which analyze the problem of subjectivity in terms of the complex and articulate other-oriented relationship between ‘I’ (or introducing a neologism ‘Ident’) and ‘self ’ (or ‘ephemeron’). Human identity is the ongoing, generative, and dynamic expression of the dialogic relation between self and Ident. In

Peirce and Welby: An Ethics of the Man–Sign Relation

379

Welby’s analyses no less than in Peirce’s dialogic otherness is a condition for the constitution of subjectivity, where the other is both the other belonging to me, constitutive of my own identity and the other external to my identity and yet which concerns me and relates to me, such that it is in this very relation that the other subsists for me as other. The ‘Ident’ develops through its relations to the ‘self ’, or rather to the many selves forming the multiform faces, the ‘masks’ of the ‘Ident’: ‘the self is included in “I”, but not conversely . . . The race, like the individual, has a Self because it is an I’ (‘The I and the Self ’, Petrilli 2009: 609). Self is a representation of I, a part of it, what we have and therefore cannot be; I is what we are and therefore cannot possess. My ‘I’ belongs to others just as ‘mine’ belongs to (but does not coincide with) me. To convey the idea of distancing between the parts in dialogue constitutive of subjectivity, Welby evoked the ancient use of the word ‘person’ to refer to the masks of the actor. The I or Ident is associated with ‘mother-sense’, the ‘matrix’ whereas the self, person or mask is one of its possible ‘representations’. The self does not coincide with the I but is one of its expressions, openings, an instrument, or modality, but never an end in itself (Petrilli 2009: 606–615). The Ident coincides with that aspect of human identity that resists dogmatism, authoritarianism of the official order and is other in the continuous flow of change through the succession, superimposition, multiplication and cohabitation of our multiple selves. Thus construed, identity is not a unit but something more, an excess with respect to its parts. Contrary to the tendency to exalt the self, to establish between self and I a relationship of substitution, usurpation, identification, identity derives from relations of dialogic otherness among the multiple selves constitutive of it, but respect to which it maintains its uniqueness: The ‘I’ effectively IS; since it belongs to the creative element of the universe, the energy of conception which includes the begetter and is both reproducer and evolvant (or evolutant?). Thus the I is one with the active and with the ‘actor’ who can and does impersonate and play an inexhaustible variety of persons and parts, while remaining inviolably identical and illimitably representative. ‘I and Self ’, 23 November 1907, in Petrilli 2009: 650 To the extent that it presents an excess with respect to the sum of its parts, Ident is not the ‘individual’ (etymologically the non-divisible) but the ‘unique’: . . . for we may represent the Unique. That is the word which might well supersede the intolerably untrue ‘individual.’ It is in fact just our dividuality which constitutes the richness of our gifts. We can, but must not be, divided; we must

380

Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Peircean Semiotics

include the divisible in the greatest of Wholes, the organic Whole, which has risen to the level of the human, may crown each one of us as unique. ‘I and self ’, June 1907, in Petrilli 2009: 648

Here, what Welby understood by ‘unique’ – which has no association with the monadic separatism of Max Stirner’s conception of the unique, of singularity – can be translated with the concept of ‘non-relative otherness’ as theorized by Levinas (1961), or with his concept of ‘significance’, also theorized by Welby in the context of her meaning triad ‘sense’, ‘meaning’, and ‘significance’. Like Peirce, in Welby’s description the unique alludes to the other at the very heart of identity. To be an I is always to be other, in dialogue with the other. The condition of interrelatedness, intercorporeality does not imply sacrifice of uniqueness, nor does uniqueness call for sacrifice of dialogical interrelation, intercorporeal communication. Keeping account of the dynamic, generative conception of the world as described by scientific research of the time, translated in terms of human existence for Welby the Ident is energy, a prime mover that manifests itself in the self, energizes the self – our multiple and ephemeral selves. Her generative conception of language and consciousness recalls Peirce’s when he maintains that just as we say that a body is in motion, and not that motion is in a body, we ought to say that we are in thought and not that thoughts are in us (CP 5.289n.1). Like the body, the self, the ephemeron is mortal, ephemeral. In contrast, the I tends towards immortality beyond the mortality of body and self. I coincides with the activity of giving, beyond the logic of equal, symmetrical exchange, beyond possession (The ‘I and the self ’, 9 January 1910, in Petrilli 2009: 606–617). The relation between speaker and listener, utterer and interpreter, encoding sign and decoding sign, interpreted sign and interpretant sign is not one of equal exchange, but rather is characterized by excess, the production of signifying/ interpretive residues, a propensity for gift logic (cf. Petrilli 2013: 119–124).11 Humanizing signs are open to displacement; they lead outside and beyond themselves, beyond the body that incarnates them, beyond the limitations of do ut des logic, which facilitates encounter as participative dialogue, co-operation, mutual understanding, listening, hospitality, polylogic multivoicedness, to evoke language characteristic of Bakhtin. Like Peirce when he maintains that ‘self-love is no love’ (CP 6.288), the ultimate ‘sin’, says Welby (in ‘Who ARE We and What HAVE We’, 9 April 1910), ‘consists in OUR giving our selves leave to demand and secure gratification, pleasure, ease, for their own sake: to be greedy of welfare at some human expense’

Peirce and Welby: An Ethics of the Man–Sign Relation

381

(in Petrilli 2009: 612, 657), in allowing self to transform selfness into selfishness. Although the centripetal forces of self may be necessary to ‘self-preservation here’, to ‘survival now’, the condition of being oriented univocally towards self generally defeats evolutionary development to the extent that it generates ‘selfregarding selfishness’: ‘egotism, however, properly speaking, is impossible: I cannot love or centre upon I, for I am essentially That which radiates: that which IS the knowing, living, activity: it is only selfism that we mean; not egoism’ (‘The I and the Self ’, 1907, in Petrilli 2009: 663). Hedonist ethics – which Welby described as corresponding to the dominant ideology of the time, just like Peirce who pointed to the Gospel of Greed as the dominant creed – implies a reduction of the multiform cosmos to the status of mere annex of the planetary egoist. Therefore, it implies a reduction of differences between I and self in a relation where self tends to overpower I, to the advantage of monologic identity. On the contrary, identity emerges in the dialogic relation among its parts, by virtue of which it is modelled as multiplex, plurifaceted, and plurivocal identity. Identity is becoming, acting, doing, giving: Supreme function of the Ident’s self is to put itself at the service of the Ident and to collaborate in generating, knowing, serving, mastering and transfiguring our actual and possible worlds; the mission of our selves being to master the worlds for Identity in difference . . . The Ident is one in all, but also All in each. The Ident’s name is first multiplex – We, Us, then complex, I, Me. That Ident has, possesses, works through – a self, or even many selves. ‘I and Self ’, 19 January 1910

Conventionalization of human consciousness, its monologization, constrains and reduces its potential for responsivity towards the other, for dialogism and critique. But Welby contends that the properly human is maximum opening to the other, intercorporeal involvement and coparticipation with the other. As an example, she cites the motions of love and passion, altruistic love, creativity of the genius, and literature – all places of discourse in which our secret, unknowable, elusive, and relational being emerges in the play of seduction among signs, veiling and unveiling: the discourse of passion exemplifies the otherness relation in language and its infinite signifying nuances. The relation between I and self, between the sign and its interpretants, is clearly not of equality, convergence, reduction of differences, but rather one of deferral, reciprocal otherness and dialogism (see Petrilli 2013, 2015b). Otherness is not external to the sign, it is not mechanically opposed to identity, subjectivity, the interpreting thought, but rather is constitutive of the sign, internal to it.

382

Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Peircean Semiotics

Otherness is present in the very process through which subjective identity is constituted, it is the internal condition, the very modality of existence, structural to subjectivity. For this reason, the relation to the other, the external other, the other from self is not different from the relation to the internal other, the other of self, continuously experimented by the I, the relation to the multiple selves in dialogue with each other thanks to which the I is effectively able to develop, dialectically and dialogically, as I. An Ident is always other. Identity develops in the play of deferral to its multiple selves, thereby transcending the centripetal forces polarized in the self though necessary for self to subsist as self, as ephemeron. Thus described subjectivity emerges in the open space of relations with the other, is delineated in deferral among its multiple selves, its multiple voices, without ever being reduced to any one of them. As the knower, I is unknowable, as the possessor I is elusive, as the utterer I is unutterable. The Ident is an orientation towards the other, towards self insofar as it is other. With respect to self, the Ident is an excess, a continuous transcending and transferral with respect to the limits of ontology. Whilst self represents what to a certain extent can be defined, measured, calculated, Ident can only be approached through approximation, tentatively and hypothetically, but never captured, and only by working with the instruments at our disposal – our selves. Welby’s analyses recall Bakhtin’s (who came later) when he describes the processes of centralization and decentralization, of unification and disunification that intersect in the utterance, also read the subject: ‘Alongside the centripetal forces, the centrifugal forces of language carry on their uninterrupted work; alongside verbal-ideological centralization and unification, the uninterrupted processes of decentralization and disunification go forward’ (Bakhtin 1981: 272).

With Peirce and Welby on the way to semioethics As Welby says, a training in significs, in language and meaning, is training in ‘diagnostic’, in our terminology in ‘symptomatology’, the capacity to interpret and respond to symptoms: It is unfortunate that custom decrees the limitation of the term diagnosis to the pathological field. It would be difficult to find a better one for that power of ‘knowing through,’ which a training in Significs would carry. We must be brought up to take for granted that we are diagnosts, that we are to cultivate to the utmost the power to see real distinctions and to read the signs, however faint, which

Peirce and Welby: An Ethics of the Man–Sign Relation

383

reveal sense and meaning. Diagnostic may be called the typical process of Significs as Translation is its typical form. Welby [1903] 1983: 51

As ‘global semiotics’ the general sign science reconnects with ancient medical semeiotics not only contributing to a historical reconnaissance of semiotics, but recovering its goals, readapting it to historical reality today: to keep life alias semiosis over the planet, in all its manifestations, safe and secure. This is not a question of the destiny of humanity alone, but of every other life-form connected to the latter. Nor is it a question of humanity in an abstract sense. Implication of the destiny of each in the destiny of all life over the planet has never been so manifest as in the present-day era of globalization. And as global semiotics teaches us the sign sciences are interrelated with the life sciences. An important task for semiotics today is to recover the pragmatic-critical and ethicalaxiological dimensions of human semiosis following the landmarks set by such authors as those named in this chapter, and develop new interpretive trajectories as demanded by an evolving global communication world. To meet the task global semiotics must be adequately founded in cognitive semiotics, but is also open to a third dimension beyond the quantitative and the theoretical that is the ethical. Given that this third dimension concerns the ends towards which we strive, in earlier writings we also denominated it ‘teleosemiotics’ or ‘telosemiotics’. Viewed together these different perspectives on sign activity in the global communication network afford a fuller understanding of the extent to which humans are responsible for the health of semiosis in all its forms, for the quality of life, human and nonhuman. As the study of significance, significs develops a methodeutics of everyday life and science founded on such values as responsibility, unindifference, listening, care, critique, creativity in common with the other scholars discussed here. Signs and language in relation to values is not only the object of study, but the very perspective and measure of the semantico-pragmatic and ethical validity of all action, experience and human knowledge. The capacity to establish relations with things, ourselves and others and to translate these relations into ever larger networks enhancing and regenerating the former, is interdependent upon, indeed derives from the capacity itself for the generation of meaning and expression, for significance and interpretation. Reading Peirce and Welby, but also Bakhtin and Levinas, points to a new form of humanism, what Levinas (1972) calls ‘humanism of the other man’, humanism of otherness, which semioethics fully endorses and aims to develop.

384

Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Peircean Semiotics

Otherness obliges the totality to reorganize itself ever anew in a process related to infinity (Levinas 1961), to infinite semiosis (Peirce). The relation to infinity is more than a cognitive issue: beyond the established order, the symbolic order, conventions and habits, it tells of involvement and responsibility. The relation to infinity is a relation to absolute otherness, to what is most refractory to the totality. It implies a relation to the otherness of others, to the otherness of the other person, not in the sense of another self like myself, another alter ego, another I belonging to the same community, but to the alien other, the other in its extraneousness, diversity, difference, towards whom indifference is not possible despite all efforts and guarantees offered by identity to the contrary. ‘Semiotics’ is not only the name of the general sign science, but of the human species-specific capacity for ‘metasemiosis’, for reflection upon semiosis, and deliberation, for understanding. Metasemiosis is connected to the human capacity for responsibility. In the context of sign studies according to trends leading back to Peirce, the human is defined as a ‘semiotic animal’ (Deely, Petrilli and Ponzio 2005). The human is the only semiotic animal to exist, the only animal endowed with metasemiosis, the only animal capable of accounting for sign behaviour, a responsible agent capable of signs of signs, of mediation, reflection and awareness with respect to semiosis over the entire globe. The human ‘semiotic’ or ‘metasemiosic’ capacity implies the third species-specific modality of being-in-the-world we have been describing, beyond the biosemiosic and the semiotic, the semioethic. The ‘semiotic animal’ is a ‘semioethic animal’ (Petrilli 2004b), a notion that keeps account of Peirce’s ‘reasonableness’ beyond ‘reason’, no less than of Welby’s ‘mother sense’. Reasonableness, agape and creativity, represented in Welby’s ‘mother-sense’, are oriented by otherness and dialogism in the evolutionary dynamics of semiosis. And given their unique, species-specific capacity as semiotic animals for metasemiosis, human beings are invested with responsibility by semiosis (metasesmiosis) for semiosis, for all life-forms, for our habitat overall. As semiotic animals humans are capable of a global view of life and communication: hence the question, central to semioethics, why are we responsible for semiosis, for life throughout the semio(bio)sphere, what is our responsibility to life and the universe in its globality? (Petrilli and Ponzio 2010: 157). In our discussion of responsibility, reference is not to limited responsibility, responsibility with alibis, but to unlimited responsibility, responsibility without alibis, absolute responsibility. Responsibility towards life (which coincides with signs and communication) in the late capitalist communication-production

Peirce and Welby: An Ethics of the Man–Sign Relation

385

phase of development is unbounded, also in the sense that responsibility is not limited to human life, but involves all life-forms in the planetary ecosystem with which human life is interconnected. As the study of signs, semiotics cannot evade this issue (Petrilli 2012, 2015b). The task of recovering the semioethical dimension of semiosis is urgent, considering the nature of communication between the historical-social sphere and the biological, the cultural sphere and the natural, the semiosphere and the biosphere, where interference is ever more destructive at a planetary level. In terms of social semiotics, in addition to embracing questions traditionally pertaining to ethics as much as to aesthetics, the semioethic approach to sign studies, linguistic and non-linguistic, verbal and nonverbal, also concerns ideology (Rossi-Landi 1978 and 1992). Semioethics does not orient semiotics according to a specific ideological programme, though it does keep account of another triple dimension of semiosis, the ‘logic’, ‘dialogic’ and ‘ideologic’. The relational character of signs implies their structural dialogic nature and projectual capacity which, beyond contextual pragmatics and programmes connected to the needs of the present, turns its gaze to the future according to ideological planning with implications that today are necessarily global (Petrilli 2004a). As a properly responsible actor we know that the semiotic animal is capable of critical awareness, thus of suspending action and deliberating, of taking a standpoint with respect to semiosis in its various aspects and of changing the course of behaviour. This is foreseen by our capacity for logical analysis, which is also logical action, when it is inspired by love and dialogical otherness, to recall by Peirce and Welby as described above. In terms of logical value, not only is subjectivity developed through the processes of deduction and induction, but in consideration of the creative aspects of mind, language and subjectivity, through abduction. Creative love and reasonableness associate knowledge, the search for truth, and experience to the pragmatic-ethical dimension of signifying/ interpretive processes. If we do not persist in proceeding in a contrary sense and separate, even juxtapose processes that, instead, should integrate and complete each other, it is soon obvious that to transcend the limits of a strictly gnoseological approach to the study of sign processes is not only appropriate, but necessary (see Petrilli 2014: 67–83). The semiotician concerned with the health of semiosis, of life focuses on symptoms (of individual and social disorders), but not as a general practitioner or specialist of some sort. The semiotician’s interest in symptoms bears a resemblance to Freudian analysis given the central role played by interpretation and the inclination to listen to the other, decisive for interpretation. But listening

386

Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Peircean Semiotics

is not understood here in the medical sense: to listen to the other is not to auscultate (Petrilli 2018). And if semiotic or semioethic analysis of symptoms is similar to Freudian analysis, it shares nothing with the practice of institutionalized and medicalized psychiatry, as practised ever more in today’s globalized world (Petrilli 2013: 237–252). If semiotics today is to meet its commitment to the health of semiosis and to cultivate its capacity to understand the entire semiosic universe, it must constantly refine its auditory and critical functions – its capacity for listening and critique. To accomplish the task, the trichotomy that distinguishes among (1) cognitive semiotics, (2) global semiotics, and (3) semioethics is no less than decisive, not only in theoretical terms but also for therapeutic reasons. To the question why each human being must be responsible for semiosis, for life over the whole planet, our response distinguishes between ethics and semioethics. In fact, from the point of view of ethics, this question does not necessarily require an answer: to be responsible for life on the planet is a moral principle, a categorical imperative. Instead, from the point of view of semioethics this question does require an answer: unlike ethics, semioethics involves scientific research, argumentation, interpretation, an otherness-oriented dialogic response, and questioning. It formulates a definition of the human being as a semiotic animal, also a semioethic animal. The ‘semioethic turn’ proceeds from ongoing confrontation with different trends in semiotic inquiry, in dialogue with different key figures as they have emerged on the semiotic scene. This orientation has a vocation for critique not only in relation to semiotics and its history, but even towards itself. A whole philosophical tradition can be evoked here, one beginning from Immanuel Kant (1724–1804), where the expression ‘critique’ resounds in a special sense, the ‘ethical’, in the sense of the obligation to respond, to ‘answer to self ’ and to ‘answer for self ’, even before, or at least simultaneously to, the request for reasons and justifications from others. More key authors in this particular philosophical tradition on the concept of ‘critique’ include, in addition to Welby and her significs, Peirce with his return to Kantism and critique of Cartesian dogmatism (see ‘On a New List of Categories’, 1867, CP 1.545–567), Karl Marx with his ‘critique of political economy’, an expression in the subtitle of most of his basic texts, and Bakhtin (1993) who recovers neo-Kantism – critically – as developed by the Marburg School (led by Hermann Cohen and counting such prominent representatives as Ernst Cassirer and Paul Natorp). The approach we are outlining relates semiotics and axiology, signs and values, signification and significance, meaning and sense, semantics and

Peirce and Welby: An Ethics of the Man–Sign Relation

387

pragmatics. It also calls for a study of the concepts of model and structure, therefore of the relation between modelling systems theory and different trends that have gone under the name of ‘structuralism’ (Petrilli 2006, 2016; Petrilli and Ponzio 2015). This involves confrontation between Sebeok’s global semiotics and semiotics practised as ‘semiology’ at the beginning of the twentieth century. Semiology interrupted the connection not only with semiotics in Locke’s interpretation, but with much earlier roots, the origins as traced by Sebeok in ancient medical semeiotics (see Cobley et al. 2011). After various phases in the development of semiotics tagged ‘code semiotics’ (or ‘decodification semiotics’) and ‘interpretation semiotics’ (Bonfantini 1981), the boundaries of the sign sciences now need to expand further, to include studies that focus more closely upon the relation between signs and values. This relation is inscribed in the very make-up of semiotics, in its very history. Semioethics focuses on the relation between sign and sense, on the question of significance as value. But Welby in the nineteenth century had already introduced the term ‘significs’ for the same purpose, marking her distance from ‘semantics’ and ‘semiotics’ as understood at the time. For her invaluable contribution to our understanding of signs and meaning not only from a historico-chronological perspective, but in theoretical terms she too deserves a place in the reconstruction of the history of semiotics and in fact is now emerging as the mother-founder of modern semiotics alongside Peirce, the father-founder (Petrilli and Ponzio 2005: 35–79, 80–137). Thinkers like those mentioned can be considered as the representatives of a theoretical trend that focuses on the relationship between social signs, values and human behaviour by contrast with philosophical analyses conducted exclusively in abstract gnoseological terms divorced from social practice. If, in agreement with Peirce we claim that man is a sign, a direct consequence is that with respect to signs, humani nihil a me alienum puto (nothing human is alien to me). An important implication of this statement is that signs in the human world should not be studied separately from valuational orientations, nor should there be an exclusive focus on truth value and its conditions. A truly general sign theory should account for all aspects of human life, for all values, not just truth value. Signs provide the material from which self is modelled and developed, no less than the material of values. While signs can exist without values, values cannot exist without signs (Petrilli 2010: 137–158). From the point of view of the social, to exemplify the sign nature of the human has a counterpart (particularly on a practical level) in asserting the human, properly human nature of signs.

388

Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Peircean Semiotics

Semioethics arises as a response and continuation of the critical approach to sign studies just outlined and is intended to contrast the tendency towards abstract theoreticism characteristic of ‘official semiotics’. Associated with a new form of humanism, the ‘humanism of otherness’, the semioethic approach is inscribed in the analysis, understanding and production of values in signifying processes. As much as the term ‘semiotics’ (understood as the global science of signs, covering meaning and significance relative to human semiosis) strictly speaking should suffice, ‘semioethics’ demonstrates an approach to sign studies that is not purely descriptive, that does not make claims to neutrality, to concentrate instead on problems of an axiological order, pertaining to values, therefore to ethics, aesthetics and ideology. In this sense the expression ‘semioethics’ is intended to signal with greater decision the direction semiotics is called upon to follow today.

References Bakhtin, M.M. [1920–1924]. 1993. Toward a Philosophy of the Act, trans. by V. Liapunov (ed.) by M. Holquist, Austin: University of Texas Press. Bakhtin, M.M. 1981. The Dialogic Imagination, Austin: University of Texas Press. Baldwin, J.M. (ed.). 1901–1905. Dictionary of Philosophy and Psychology in Three Volumes. London: Macmillan. Bonfantini, M.A. 1981. ‘Le tre tendenze semiotiche del novecento’, Versus 30, 273–294. Cobley, P., (ed. and intro., 3–12). 2010. The Routledge Companion to Semiotics, London: Routledge. Cobley, P., J. Deely, K. Kull and S. Petrilli, (eds. and intro., 1–17). 2011. ‘Semiotics Continues to Astonish’: Thomas A. Sebeok and the Doctrine of Signs, Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. Colapietro, V. 1989. Peirce’s Approach to the Self, Albany : University of New York Press. Colapietro, V., N. Frank and S. Petrilli, (ed. and intro., 1–12). 2013 On and Beyond Significs: Centennial Issue for Victoria Lady Welby (1837–1912). Semiotica 196, 1–4. Cust, E. (Mrs Henry), (ed.). 1931. Other Dimensions: A Selection from the Later Correspondence of Victoria Lady Welby. London: Jonathan Cape. Deely, J., Petrilli, S. and A. Ponzio. 2005. The Semiotic Animal, New York, Ottawa, Toronto: Legas. Deledalle, G. 1987. Charles Peirce: Phénomenologue et sémioticien, Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Fisch, M.H. 1986. Peirce, Semeiotic, and Pragmatism, Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Hardwick, C.S. 1977. Semiotic and Significs. The Correspondence Between Charles S. Peirce and Victoria Lady Welby, Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Peirce and Welby: An Ethics of the Man–Sign Relation

389

Jappy, T. 2013. Introduction to Peircean Visual Semiotics, London: Bloomsbury. Jappy, T. 2017. Peirce’s Twenty-Eight Classes of Signs and the Philosophy of Representation, London: Bloomsbury. Levinas, E. 1961. Totalité et Infini. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. Levinas, E. 1972. Humanisme de l’autre homme, Montpellier: Fata Morgana. Levinas, E. 1974. Autrement qu’être ou au-dela de l’essence, The Hague: Nijhoff. Lieb, I.C. (ed.). 1953. Charles S. Peirce’s Letters to Lady Welby. New Haven: Whitlock’s. Melli, G. 2005. Etica e solidarietà, Lecce: Rosato. Morris, Charles. 1964. Signification and Significance. A Study of the Relations of Signs and Values, Cambridge: MIT Press. Ogden, C.K. and I.A. Richards. 1923. The Meaning of Meaning. A Study of the Influence of Language upon Thought and of the Science of Symbolism. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul; New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1989. Peirce, C.S. 1980. Semiotica. I fondamenti della semiotica cognitivia, Turin: Einaudi. Peirce, C.S. 1993. À la recherche d’une méthode [1893], Perpignan: Presses Universitaires de Perpignan. Peirce, C.S. 2003. Opere, M.A. Bonfantini and G.-P. Proni (ed.). Milan: Bompiani. Petrilli, S. 1998. Su Victoria Welby. Significs e filosofia del linguaggio, Naples: ESI. Petrilli, S. (ed.). 2004a. Ideology, Logic and Dialogue in Semioethic Perspective. Semiotica 148–1/4. Petrilli, S. 2004b. ‘The Responsibility of Power and the Power of Responsibility: From the “Semiotic” to the “Semioethic” Animal’, in G. Withalm and J. Wallmannsberger, (eds). Macht der Zeichen, Zeichen der Macht/Signs of Power, Power of Signs. Essays in Honor of Jeff Bernard. INST, Wien 2004, 103–119. Petrilli, S. 2006. ‘Social semiotics’, ‘Structure and structuralism, semiotic approaches to’, and ‘Significs’, in Encyclopedia of Language & Linguistics. Second Edition, Oxford, Elsevier. Petrilli, S. 2007. ‘Translation, Interpretation, and Common Meaning: Victoria Welby’s Significal Perspective’, TTR. Études sur le texte et ses transformations, Vol. XX, (1), 13–98, 2007, A. Chapdeleine (dir.). Petrilli, S. 2009. Signifying and Understanding. Reading the Works of Victoria Welby and the Signific Movement. Foreword by P. Cobley, vii–x, Berlin: Mouton. Petrilli, S. 2010. Sign Crossroads in Global Perspective. Semioethics and Responsibility, Preface by J. Deely, vii–ix, and xi–xiii, New Brunswick: Transaction. Petrilli, S, 2012. Expression and Interpretation in Language, Foreword by V. Colapietro, xi–xv, New Brunswick: Transaction. Petrilli, S. 2013. The Self as a Sign, the World, and the Other. Living Semiotics, Foreword by A. Ponzio, xiii–xvi, New Brunswick: Transaction. Petrilli, S. 2014. Sign Studies and Semioethics, Berlin: Mouton De Gruyter. Petrilli, S. 2015a. Victoria Welby and the Science of Signs, Foreword by F. Nuessel, xi–xviii, New Brunswick: Transaction. Petrilli, S. 2015b. ‘Identity Today and the Critical Task of Semioethics’, in International Handbook of Semiotics, P. Trifonas (ed.). 847–897, New York: Springer.

390

Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Peircean Semiotics

Petrilli, S. 2015c. ‘For Humanism Open to the Other. The Gift Below and Beyond Exchange’, The International Journal of Critical Cultural Studies, Vol. 13, Issue 3, 2015, 43–65. Petrilli, S. 2016. The Global World and Its Manifold Faces, Berne: Peter Lang. Petrilli, S. 2018. Signs, Language and Listening, Ottawa: Legas. Petrilli, S. and A. Ponzio. 2003. Semioetica, Roma: Meltemi. Petrilli, S. and A. Ponzio. 2005. Semiotics Unbounded, Toronto: Toronto University Press. Petrilli, S. and A. Ponzio. 2010. ‘Semioethics’, in P. Cobley 2010, 150–162. Petrilli, S. and A. Ponzio. 2015. ‘Language as primary modeling and natural languages: a biosemiotic perspective’, in E. Velmezova, K. Kull and S.J. Cowley (eds). Biosemiotic Perspectives on Language and Linguistics. New York: Springer. Ponzio, A. 2006. The Dialogic Nature of Sign. Ottawa: Legas. Roberts, D.D. 1973. The Existential Graphs of Charles S. Peirce, The Hague: Mouton. Rossi-Landi, F. 1978. Ideologia. Milan: ISEDI, new expanded ed. 1982; Eng. trans. Marxism and Ideology (from 1982 ed.), by R. Griffin, Oxford: Clarendon Press. Rossi-Landi, Ferruccio. 1992. Between Signs and Non-Signs, ed. and intro. by S. Petrilli, Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Schmitz, W.H. (ed. & Pref., i–ix). 1990. Essays on Significs, Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Sebeok, T.A. 1976. Contributions to the Doctrine of Signs, Bloomington: Indiana University Press; 2nd ed., Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1985. Sebeok, T.A. 1991. A Sign Is Just a Sign, Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Sebeok, T.A. 2001. Global Semiotics, Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Sebeok, T.A., Petrilli, S. and A. Ponzio. 2001. Semiotica dell’io, Rome: Meltemi. Thellesfen, T. and B. Sørensen (eds). Charles Sanders Peirce in His Own Words. Berlin: De Gruyter. Vailati, G. 1967. Il metodo della filosofia. Scritti scelti, ed. and intro., by F. Rossi-Landi, Bari: Laterza. Vailati, G. 1971. Epistolario 1891–1909 (ed.). G. Lanaro, intro. M. Dal Pra, Turin: Einaudi. Vaughan, G. 1997. For-Giving. A Feminist Criticism of Exchange, Austin, TX: Plainview, Anomaly Press. Vaughan, G. 2015. The Gift in the Heart of Language, pref. S. Petrilli. Milan: Mimesis. Welby, V. 1898. The Witness of Science to Linguistic Anarchy. Grantham: W. Clarke. Welby, V. 1903. What Is Meaning? Studies in the Development of Significance. London: Macmillan, 2nd ed. 1983. Welby, V. 1911a. Significs and Language. The Articulate Form of Our Expressive and Interpretative Resources. London, Macmillan; 2nd ed. in W.H. Schmitz 1985. Welby, V. 1911b. ‘Significs’, in The Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th ed., Vol. XXV, 78–81, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; now in C.S. Hardwick, 1977, 167–175. Welby, V. 1985a. Significs and Language, ed. and intro., by W.H. Schmitz, Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Welby, V. 1985b. Significato, metafora, interpretazione, ed., intro., trans., by S. Petrilli, Bari: Adriatica. Welby, V. 2007. Senso, significato, significatività, ed., intro., trans. by S. Petrilli, Bari: Graphis.

14

Peircean Semiotic for Language and Linguistics Jamin Pelkey

Nominalism, continuity and Peirce’s ‘List of Horrid Things’ In an early fragment of philosophical writing, C.S. Peirce once made the following self-observation (R921, 1859): List of Horrid Things I am: Realist Materialist Transcendentalist Idealist Peirce penned these words at the age of twenty. While some consider the stray fragment to be mere ‘unpublished juvenilia’ (Fisch 1967: 162), others insist that he was already sufficiently well-qualified and self-aware to make this observation with accuracy (Roberts 1970, Mayorga 2007). By this time, after all, Peirce was already rooted and grounded in years of reading, training and exposure to such opposing systems of thought. It is important to note as well that this same open-but-critical approach to extreme philosophical perspectives continued to distinguish his thought. In John Deely’s estimation (1994, 2001), for instance, it is Peirce’s unique ability to move beyond the strict realism/idealism dichotomy endemic to modernism that makes him a genuinely postmodern thinker. In the process, Peirce does not merely dispense with the old extremes or neutralize them into some Hegelian synthesis; instead, he manages to embrace both – transforming them in the process. Let me suggest, before moving on, that this same spirit of critical openness to oppositions is needed in disciplines far flung from philosophy. In fact, my concern in this chapter, is to apply Peircean thought to the field of contemporary linguistics. The study of language, along with much related research on linguistic varieties and 391

392

Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Peircean Semiotics

communities of practice are now strewn with oppositional approaches and presumably incompatible assumptions. Formalists, functionalists, nativists and behaviourists continue to collide (Chomsky 2017, Pinker 2013, Evans and Levinson 2009, Dor et al. 2014); variationists, structuralists, poststructuralists and typologists continue to choose sides (Kretschmar 2010, Lazard 2012, Givón 2016, Janicki 2012). Linguistics and its many branches seem destined for a future of increasing fragmentation. Even would-be unifying movements such as Cognitive Linguistics and Integrational Linguistics come to be pitted against each other (Pable and Hutton 2015). Following a review of the twentieth-century history and current state of the art in linguistics with these problems in mind, this chapter discusses the importance of architectonic reasoning, arguing that the unification of linguistics is not only possible but possible in a way that fosters and enhances diverse perspectives. This, however, requires the resituation of linguistics within a general semiotic – one already well worked out in the pragmati(ci)sm of C.S. Peirce. To better appreciate how Peirce’s carefully considered pragmatism might transform linguistic theory and methodology, it is helpful to return to the Realist/Idealist example above. Different scholars argue persuasively that the mature Peirce is both an extreme realist (see Roberts 1970) and an absolute idealist (see Dea 2015). His reconciliation (and transformation) of the old opposition, can be attributed to a lifelong commitment to open inquiry that he once expressed as follows: the first step toward finding out is to acknowledge you do not satisfactorily know already; so that no blight can so surely arrest all intellectual growth as the blight of cocksureness . . . Indeed, out of a contrite fallibilism, combined with a high faith in the reality of knowledge, and an intense desire to find things out, all my philosophy has always seemed to me to grow. CP 1.13–14, 1893

Peirce’s contrite fallibilism is ‘a linchpin of his philosophy’ (Houser 2006: 3), as is the attitude of critically open inquiry that it fosters – an attitude fuelled as much by desire as by discontent (Pelkey 2008). But this attitude is not aimless. Rather, Peirce desires to develop an architectonic pragmatism (CP 5.5, c. 1907) integrated with a general theory of logic as semiotic (EP2, 1904) – all grounded famously in three ontological categories (CP 1.530, 1903): Quality (Firstness), Reaction (Secondness) and Mediation (Thirdness). He is also discontent with any suggestion or system of thought that blocks the way of inquiry or severs knower from known, subject from object, mind from matter. All such problems stem from variations of nominalism – a philosophy that Peirce patently rejects.

Peircean Semiotic for Language and Linguistics

393

It is worth noting that the label ‘Nominalist’ is conspicuously absent from the 1859 list reproduced above – this being at least one ‘horrid thing’ that Peirce does not identify with. It is also worth noting that in his own estimation, this position sets him at odds with the full ranks of modernist thought, since ‘all modern philosophy of every sect has been nominalistic’ (CP 1.19, 1903). He skewers such philosophies as ‘crass’ (CP 4.635, 1908) ‘sterilizing’ (CP 2.761, c. 1905) and ‘superficial’ (CP 1.70, c. 1896), being characterized by a ‘loose and slapdash style of thinking’ (CP 1.27, 1909) entertained by philosophers who ‘do not reason logically about anything’ (CP 1.165 c. 1897), ‘continually supposing things to be absolutely inexplicable’ (CP 1.170, c. 1897). In every case, these unflattering sentiments are no mere ad hominem attacks. Each of these takedowns belongs to a carefully considered argument; but neither does Peirce consider himself immune from residual nominalist assumptions. He reminds us that ‘it is not modern philosophers only who are nominalists. The nominalistic Weltanschauung has become incorporated into what I will venture to call the very flesh and blood of the average modern mind’ (CP 5.61, 1903). In the intervening century of positivism, structuralism and post-structuralism that has passed since Peirce penned these words, nominalist presuppositions have not faded. Indeed, some argue that they have intensified (see e.g. Deely 2003: 30). It might be unsurprising to discover, under these circumstances, that most contemporary linguists are inveterate nominalists – a point to which we will return in further detail in the third section of this chapter. As a potent antidote to nominalism in any domain – whether in linguistics, philosophy or ‘the average modern mind’ – Peirce prescribes ‘the theory of continuity’ (CP 1.170, c. 1897), such that all ways of knowing and types of being are temporally and logically related along continua that are real but indeterminate, instead of being fixed or absolute. Frederik Stjernfelt (2007: 3) has observed that the ‘concept of continuity is so central and basic to Peirce that it is not too much to say that he built the whole final version of his philosophy around it’. Of note for the discussion that follows in this chapter, Peirce also discusses continuity-in-process as ‘synechism’ (< Greek συνεχής ‘continuous’) – a coinage that emerges in a broader discussion of the nature of evolution and its relation to semiosis. In fact, Peirce identifies synechism closely with the semiosis of Thirdness (or ‘Agapasm’) in evolution, arguing that continuity-in-process is necessary for the transformation of random selection into patterned regularity (see discussion in Pelkey 2015a: 108). All of these connections hold promise for the field of contemporary linguistics. In this chapter, I present an outline of ways in which the field of linguistics could

394

Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Peircean Semiotics

benefit from adopting a more critically open fallibilist stance, grounded in a synechistic evolutionary framework, bent on integration with general semiotic. But mine is not a lone voice crying in the wilderness. Many others have paved the way. First, we turn to a review of the state of the art in Peircean linguistics.

Advances in Peircean semiotic for the study of language To appreciate recent advances in (neo)Peircean linguistics, it is helpful to begin by considering Peirce’s own contributions to the science of language: a topic explored in some detail by Winfried Nöth (1999, 2002, 2008), who, following up on an earlier, more general suggestion by Roman Jakobson (1977), identifies Peirce as a ‘pathfinder in linguistics’. By Nöth’s accounting, Peirce wrote no fewer than 127 papers on topics directly related to language and linguistics (2002, 2008: 94). In addition to treating aspects of Greek, Latin, Italian, Spanish, Basque, French, German, English and Arabic, Peirce contributes to a wide variety of topics and subfields within linguistics, ranging from ‘phonetics, graphemics, morphology, grammar, lexicography, semantics, translation studies, from historical and evolutionary linguistics to general and comparative linguistics’ (Nöth 2002: 1). Peirce’s conceptual influence on linguistics is also of note. His distinction between ‘type’ and ‘token’ is now in wide use, for example, and his insights into the pervasive presence of iconicity (relationships of real resemblance) in language have inspired prominent strains of scholarship in the field. This can be noted across the past fifty years in the enduring development of poetics and stylistics following Roman Jakobson (e.g., i1919–1979), in a slow-grinding reformation movement within historical and comparative linguists (see e.g. Anttila 1989, Shapiro 1991, Pelkey 2013), in a long-running series devoted to iconicity in language and literature (Fischer and Ljungberg i.1999–2017), and in contemporary trends in the field of Linguistic Anthropology (Reyes 2014: 371, Enfield et al. 2014). And yet, in spite of these movements, the full magnitude or import of Peirce’s ideas regarding the fundamentally iconic nature of language has yet to register in mainstream approaches to the science of language. Nöth (1999, 2008) implies that this is especially apparent when we consider the pervasive presence of diagrammatic iconicity in language – a distinction that should be considered one of Peirce’s most promising contributions-in-waiting for linguistics. As I discuss in further detail below, this is an insight set to release the study of language from nominalist presuppositions into the realm of fallible realism. To better appreciate the significance of this perspectival shift, it is first

Peircean Semiotic for Language and Linguistics

395

helpful to consider (or reconstruct) Peirce’s position on the nature of language proper – i.e. language as a complex, situated semiotic system. In spite of writing more than 100 papers on linguistic topics and making key contributions to the field, Nöth observes that Peirce has, nonetheless, ‘said little [directly] about language as a system, being always more interested in sign processes (processes of semiosis), i.e., in speech acts and in the cognitive processes involved in verbal thought and dialogue, than in language as a system or in any other sign system’ (2008: 94). Nonetheless, it is clear from Peirce’s broader system of thought itself that, far from being a mere collection of symbols (much less a system of arbitrary symbols), language as a complex system should be conceived of as a diagram type or ‘rhematic, iconic Legisign’ (2008: 94) – a sign of possibility devoid of truth value, affirmation or argument that can only be realized via replicas, or diagram tokens, known in Peircean semiotic as ‘iconic Sinsigns’ (Nöth 2008: 94; CP 2.246, Peirce 1903). Peirce describes an iconic legisign as ‘a diagram, apart from its factual individuality’ or . . . any general law or type, in so far as it requires each instance of it to embody a definite quality which renders it fit to call up in the mind the idea of a like object. Being an Icon, it must be a Rheme. Being a Legisign, its mode of being is that of governing single Replicas, each of which will be an Iconic Sinsign of a peculiar kind. CP 2.258, 1903

In the Peircean sense, a diagram is an ‘Icon of intelligible relations’ (1906). This can include familiar visual schematics like charts, graphs, tree models, subway maps and even formulas or syllogisms written out in algebraic notation (Stjernfelt 2007); but this also includes patterned relationships in any modality or cognitive capacity across all natural and cultural orders. According to Peirce, diagrams ‘represent the relations . . . of the parts of one thing by analogous relations in their own parts’ (CP 2.277, 1902). Observations of such relationships enable us to guess productively according to a general pattern. As such, all analogies are diagrams; and the term itself is synonymous with concepts such as ‘schema’, ‘structure’ and ‘construction’ (Nöth 2008: 88). At this juncture, it is helpful to return to the type-token distinction mentioned above. Although contemporary linguistic theories have nominally absorbed the type-token distinction (Nöth 2002: 5), the uptake has been superficial since the place and purpose of the distinction within Peirce’s general semiotic is still largely unconsidered. As introduced above, diagram tokens, whether linguistic or non-linguistic, function as ‘iconic sinsigns’ while diagram types function as

396

Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Peircean Semiotics

‘iconic legisigns’. Thus ‘types’ consist of real relationships of resemblance that are nonetheless rather vague (i.e. ‘rhematic’) and flexible like loose analogies. These relations are also predominantly subliminal for those whose behaviour is constrained by them. The rhematic quality of diagram types in their function as ‘Legisigns’ entails that those who are constrained by them will also be implicated in an unwitting search for better fit between parts and wholes, forms and meanings. Linguistically this may be noted in processes of structural simplification or ‘paradigm leveling’, such as we find in the development of English morphology across the past millennium. This is apparent up to the present, for example, whenever someone says ‘oxes’ instead of ‘oxen’ or ‘swimmed’ instead of ‘swam’. Diagram tokens, by contrast, are perpetually variable in their function as ‘Sinsigns’ but necessarily contribute to the emergence of diagram types due to their natural availability for selection when perceived (usually subliminally) to function with better fit relative to the overall system. In a linguistic context this availability for selection is equally relevant for comprehension and production as a speaking population works together toward the general end of sense making. In the performance of language, iconic sinsigns may include phenomena at every level, from idiolectal speech sounds (phonetic and phonological), nonce formations (morphological and lexical) and novel utterances (morpho-syntactic) to the real-time unfolding of live speech events (syntax, discourse pragmatics and conversation). The dynamic relationship between linguistic types and tokens requires us to re-think the fundamental nature of language; and it is here that (neo)Peircean linguistics has made the most promising progress. Pioneering linguists like Thomas Sebeok, Raimo Anttila and Michael Shapiro have done the hard work of scouting out and opening up this new territory, but Roman Jakobson is notably the first to discover it (Nöth 2008: 96). This he did in identifying the critical distinction between structural relations and diagrammatic relations (1987). The former are the domain of old-world linguistics – the heritage of Saussure, Bloomfield and their descendants. The latter lie in the new world of general semiotic, where language and linguistics belong (Sebeok 1991; CP 8.378, Peirce 1908). Traditionally conceived, structural relations are arbitrary (nominal), binary (oppositional) and pre-determined (necessary), while diagrammatic relations, are iconic (and thus real), gradient (and thus triadic or continuous) and open (and thus fallible or growth-oriented). In Jakobson’s prescient estimation, a diagrammatic linguistics ‘invalidates Saussure’s dogma of arbitrariness’ (1965: 426). But rather than being a wholesale rejection of structuralism, or its antithesis, a diagrammatic linguistics can be seen as the emancipation of structuralism – structuralism coming into its own. After all, oppositional relations are just as

Peircean Semiotic for Language and Linguistics

397

necessary for Peirce as they are for Saussure (see Shapiro 1983: 7); and neither necessary causation nor (perceptually) arbitrary relations are completely out of place. Only nominalism is unwelcome. Once again, then, the fallible realism of Peirce turns the tide, opening a way for linguistics to return to the rightful homeland of language: diagrammatic iconicity, grounded in continuity and understood through collateral evidence. Raimo Anttila’s developments point to a more in-depth Peircean linguistics by pulling these strands together and reminding us of two additional connections that are crucial for approaching and understanding language – the indexical and the analogical. Through Anttila’s insight we come to see that the object of linguistics is in a relationship of congruent continuity with the methods of the linguist. He stresses the importance of collateral evidence and validates interpretive, or hermeneutic, methodology (1994), noting that such approaches were the norm among the scientists of language known as ‘philologists’ until various ahistorical (nominalist) trends in the twentieth century led to the neglect of such approaches (1989, 1994). Peirce, insists that ‘an assemblage of symptoms [is] not only an entity but necessarily a concrete thing’ (EP2: 223, 1903). The same stance is necessary for identifying and defining languages and the speech varieties with which they are in continuity (Pelkey 2011, 2014). General symptoms are indexical legisigns grounded in indexical sinsigns (Sebeok 2001: 71). Individual languages are, likewise, indexical legisigns of their many varieties, which stand as indexical sinsigns. On these grounds I suggest that the perennial distinction between language vs. languages can be identified as a macro-level relationship shared between ‘iconic legisign’ (the complex system) and ‘indexical legisign’ (the aggregate population). Likewise, linguistic performance, which is also commonly referred to as ‘language’ can be distinguished as the action of symbolic legisigns.1 Conceived in terms of legisigns, then, language qua ‘language’ is primarily iconic (or diagrammatic), language qua ‘a language’ is primarily indexical (or symptomatic) and language qua ‘speech’ is primarily symbolic (or conventional). Following up further on Anttila’s collaterality insight, we should also consider that the best approach to understanding language and explaining linguistic phenomena will be the one that searches broadest and deepest for related clues – in non-linguistic domains as well as in narrowly linguistic domains (Anttila 1998: 21, 286). Our ability to guess according to a pattern to slowly find out the truth involves abductive inference in the service of analogical reasoning (see also Givón 1989), and analogy in Anttila’s estimation, is so thoroughly identified with language that he declares it to be ‘the backbone of universal

398

Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Peircean Semiotics

grammar’ (1989: 439). Since analogy involves form-meaning pairings in search of better fit with a more general type, this leads us back into the realm of diagrammatic iconicity and the work of Michael Shapiro. Michael Shapiro’s work to establish a ‘Neo-Peircean’ Linguistics (2002) extends Anttila’s project in many important capacities, in addition to making many other crucial contributions. In his watershed work The Sense of Grammar (1983), he identifies a relationship between linguistic markedness and the interpretant that is still ahead of its time if the critical gap in Haspelmath (2006) is any indication. He also maps out an insightful ‘Peircean theory of grammar’ that is oriented to two subsystems of language: sounds (the expression subsystem) and meanings (the content subsystem). But Shapiro’s most salient contributions for purposes of the present chapter are to be found in his follow-up volume The Sense of Change (1991). Here he clarifies that language is not so much a system (as implied above) as it is a ‘constant systematization’ (1991: 4) – not so much a diagram as an ongoing ‘diagrammatization’ (1991: 13, see also 2002) through which changes ‘contribute to the better fit between expression and content’ (1991: 13) as they are filtered through the ‘collective legitimation of fluctuations’ (1991: 5). This activity of semiosis ushers language back into the realm of process and suggests the presence of an end-directed type of causation that cannot be reduced to the mechanical, the necessary or the efficient (2002, see also Pelkey 2013). Recalling that continuity is necessary for diagrammatic relations to hold at all (CP 6.185–6.213, Peirce 1898; Stjernfelt 2007: ix, 22), Shapiro’s crucial extension of diagrammatic relations into the processual realm of diagrammatization brings back into focus the logical/temporal nature of continuity and its necessary role in a realist-oriented theory of language capable of moving linguistics beyond the endless schisms of nominalism.

Nominalist schisms in linguistics As mentioned above, the contemporary study of language, along with mainstream research on linguistic varieties and communities of practice, have come to be characterized by entrenched, polarizing positions taken up by linguists whose philosophical presuppositions are presumably incompatible. Schisms between formalists and functionalists continue to develop alongside schisms between ‘I-Language’ nativists and ‘E-Language’ behaviourists (see e.g. Chomsky 1966, 2017; Pinker 1994, 2013; Evans 2014; Evans and Levinson 2009; Dor et al. 2014). And the ‘list of horrid things’ continues to expand, as variationists vie with

Peircean Semiotic for Language and Linguistics

399

structuralists and descriptive typologists contend with critical poststructuralists (see e.g. Kretschmar 2010, Lazard 2012, Givón 2016, Janicki 2014). Levinson and Evans (2010) summarize their own version of the current state of oppositional linguistics mnemonically by pitting ‘D-Linguists’ against ‘C-Linguistics’. The former are said to be ‘data-driven, diversity-oriented and Darwinian’ while the latter are said to be ‘Chomskyan and constituency-oriented’. The possibility that a linguist might somehow identify with both sides of any pair of these horrid things is seldom considered, much less systematized. Before considering potential programmatic grounds for reconciling (and moving beyond) these oppositions, it is important to inquire into their origins. Where do these contentious dichotomies come from? In terms of recent history, the answer lies in twentieth-century linguistic nominalism, which found its earliest statement in the diametrically opposed positions of Ferdinand de Saussure and Leonard Bloomfield. While Saussure (1916) embraces a deductive rationalism, Bloomfield (1933) champions an inductive behaviourism. Taking Saussure’s famous langue vs. parole distinction as an orientation point, we can say that Bloomfield asserts the primacy of parole, or speech variation, at the expense of timeless structure, langue, which he holds to be an illusion. This position is in direct opposition to Saussure, who asserts that the study of langue should be taken up as an end in itself while the study of parole is an unnecessary distraction. In short, what is real for one is illusory for the other, and never the twain shall meet. This way of telling the story is popular and at least partially correct, but it misses something crucial and explanatory in the process, especially since the missed connection in question is often considered to be a matter on which both Saussure and Bloomfield agree: viz., the focal status of synchrony. Both theorists are widely thought to have agreed that linguistics should be focused on synchrony (language in the present) instead of diachrony (language through the past). The dichotomy itself was invented by Saussure (1916), and Bloomfield (1933) clearly adopts it for his own theory building. The problem that has escaped the notice of language theorists and historians of linguistics to date is that Bloomfield’s implicit version of the distinction is only superficially drawn from Saussure. A closer look reveals that the two versions of synchrony vs. diachrony are themselves diametrically opposed. As Figure 14.1 illustrates, the clues that point most directly to this conundrum lie in something more fundamental than langue, parole, synchrony or diachrony. This more fundamental opposition can be identified as ‘variation’ vs. ‘invariance’. Note the opposite ways in which the two theorists treat this distinction relative to synchrony and diachrony.

400

Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Peircean Semiotics

To be sure, the concept of synchrony is intelligible only in diametric contradistinction to diachrony, its opposite. In the words of Saussure, ‘The opposition between . . . the synchronic and the diachronic, is absolute and allows no compromise’ (1916: 83); the two ‘have nothing in common’ (1916: 91). While Bloomfield (1933) does not use the terms ‘synchronic’ and ‘diachronic’ (or langue/ parole for that matter), he clearly applies these Saussurean concepts throughout his treatise Language. Later in life Bloomfield would write to a friend concerning Saussure, ‘my Language text book . . . reflects his Cours on every page’ (cited in Koerner 2002: 70). Indeed, many of the concepts shared between the two are mirror images of each other. Other points of reflection might be mentioned in addition to those already under discussion here. To Saussure, for instance, only deductive generalizations are useful; while, for Bloomfield, only inductive generalizations are useful. Both Saussure (1916) and Bloomfield (1933) agree that language is to be approached as a structural system at the level of dyadic facts, through the discovery of binary differences or cause– effect relationships; and both agree that this approach should be carried out synchronically. For Saussure, however, synchrony corresponds with the systemic invariance of langue. Bloomfield holds the opposite: on his account, synchrony corresponds with speech variation (parole). Parole variation for Saussure, in turn, is to be equated with diachrony (1916: 98): ‘in spite of certain appearances to the contrary, diachronic events are always accidental and particular’ he says (1916: 93). For Bloomfield, however, diachrony (or ‘change’), is the only domain of linguistic invariance (1933: 20) and our folk perceptions of synchronic

Figure 14.1 The nominalist dialectics of synchrony and diachrony in Saussure and Bloomfield.

Peircean Semiotic for Language and Linguistics

401

invariance (i.e. ‘a stable structure of lexical and grammatical habits’) is the true illusion (1933: 281).

Sign categories, functions and types for language and linguistics Variation is first, invariance is second and growth is third. This is a rough way of summarizing my argument in this section; and, in spite of its flaws, it provides an immediate bridge between the pernicious dichotomy unearthed in the previous section and the potentially bewildering array of triadic structures under consideration in the present. One principle of fallible realism applied to diagrammatic reasoning is that ‘reasoning tends to correct itself, and the more so the more wisely its plan is laid’ (EP2: 43, 1898). In this case the wisely laid plan is an architectonic logic – or logic as semiotic – a logic worked out by Peirce in domains as diverse as mathematics, phenomenology and chemistry and applied rigorously to many dozens of other fields over the course of his lifetime. As this section goes on to show, applying this logic to language and linguistics diagrammatically – even if tentatively and partially – yields many unifying insights and shows a way forward beyond the nominalist gridlock of contemporary linguistic dualisms. Whatever variation and invariance are, and however they may apply to language and linguistics, the two sides of the opposition are certainly not selfsufficient. One cannot be considered an illusion in favour of the other; nor can one be reduced to the other; neither are they self-contained. Variation may be first (i.e. qualitative), but it is a firstness with its own secondness (or reactive property) and thirdness (or mediating process), as I go on to show. Likewise, invariance may be second, but it is a secondness with its own firstness and thirdness. Something like ‘growth’ may mediate between them, but not without manifesting some of the qualities or dynamics of the first and second, such that one aspect of linguistic growth can be expected to be more open-ended (i.e. as the firstness of thirdness), a second aspect of linguistic growth can be expected to be more closed-ended (i.e. as the secondness of thirdness), and a third aspect of linguistic growth can be expected to serve as the unifying force majeure not only of linguistic thirdness, but of the whole complex systematization. As I conclude in this section and elaborate in the next, applying one of Michael Shapiro’s watershed insights, this thirdness of thirdness for language and linguistics is best understood as ‘diagrammatization’.

402

Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Peircean Semiotics

Indeed, all of these claims are diagrammatic; and in order to elaborate on them (and better understand them), it is helpful to continue diagrammatically. As I have suggested elsewhere (Pelkey 2015a, 2015b), following Thellefsen (2001), one fruitful way of doing so involves not only mapping linguistic phenomena to Peirce’s nine sign functions, as suggested above, but also mapping the nine sign functions to the nine elements of evolution Peirce describes in his Monist metaphysical project (i1890–1892: W8). In this series of articles Peirce famously identifies three modes of evolution (W8.194, 1892): 1. 2. 3.

Evolutionary chance: Tychasm – ‘evolution by fortuitous variation’ Evolutionary law: Anancasm – ‘evolution by mechanical necessity’ Evolutionary habit taking: Agapasm – ‘evolution by creative love’

Peirce identifies agapasm as being conspicuously absent from mainstream theories of evolution, with the possible exception in his own era of Lamarckian ideas. It might seem that little has changed in the intervening century, until we recognize the progress that has been made in highlighting the vital role of ontogeny (as distinct from but interdependent with phylogeny and ecology) in evolutionary frameworks, as I argue in more detail elsewhere (Pelkey 2015a). Indeed, if we consider these categories in terms of contemporary biology, tychasm, anancasm and agapasm may be found to correspond with ecology, phylogeny and ontogeny respectively. Peircean tychasm maps onto ‘ecology’, since it is engaged with environmental factors that introduce chance variation. Anancasm maps onto ‘phylogeny’ since it involves the mechanical replication of inherited genetic traits. Agapasm maps onto ‘ontogeny’ since it constitutes the meeting ground of both phylogeny and ecology as individuals (and individual groups) develop and grow through space and time. Notably this third mode of evolution (whether framed as ‘ontogeny’ or as ‘agapasm’) transpires via habittaking and habit-breaking toward some developing function or general idea. This activity, in turn, corresponds with the role of the Interpretant in Peirce’s analytic model of the sign. Such connections are promising, but can they be mapped out more systematically? Thellefsen (2001), building on Brier (2000) and Peirce (W8, i1890–1892), demonstrates that Peirce’s three modes of evolution, and the nine evolutionary functions these modes entail, are diagrammatically continuous with the semiotic triad (Representamen, Object, Interpretant) and its nine sign functions, as illustrated in Figure  14.2. This diagrammatic move enables us to map Peirce’s analytic model of the sign into a processual model of semiosis. In this model, the three modes of evolution and their semiotic corollaries are always interdependent

Peircean Semiotic for Language and Linguistics

403

Figure 14.2 Diagrammatic reasoning from the analytic sign to processual semiosis in Peirce.

or integrated, and the three modes of Thirdness play this role as functions of the Interpretant: i.e., that which a system or organism or person is predisposed toward or prepared to discover and yet in some important sense still lacks. Peirce describes these modes as Chance, Law and Habit Taking (W8.109–110, 1891). Applied to processes of semiosis, then, a specific symptom (i.e. a rhematic indexical sinsign) can be identified as an isolated sense of reaction to a persistent, or inherited, underlying trait that is encountered by chance. Collateral symptoms by contrast (i.e. rhematic indexical legisigns and dicent indexical legisigns) may be characterized as general concepts or classes of phenomena that emerge from a collective set of persistent traits. These symptoms may be realized either vaguely and tentatively (i.e. rhematically) or with lawlike regularity (i.e. as dicisigns). As such, a basic congruence between the development, existence and identification of a given species like canis lupus familiaris (dogs) or felis catus (cats) can be asserted from the evidence of collateral indexes, based on diagrammatic iconicities (i.e. rhematic iconic sinsigns and legisigns, as discussed above) in spite of widespread species-internal variation. Insofar as shared variations are vaguely or tentatively considered, the aggregate sign is rhematic. Insofar as shared variations are determined to be actual and lawlike, the aggregate sign is a dicisign. The evolutionary dynamics that lead to the development of

404

Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Peircean Semiotics

these species are the same dynamics in play in the identification of these species, allowing for congruence between them. The same may be said of the evolution, existence and identification of a specific language like French or Swahili. In fact, it will now be helpful to turn the discussion of sign categories, functions and classes from evolutionary process in general toward an evolutionary account of languages and linguistics in particular. To do so, it will be helpful to resume discussion of the dichotomy introduced in the previous section: variation vs. invariance. Applied to language(s) and linguistic phenomena, variation corresponds with Firstness while invariance corresponds with Secondness. The former is the domain of performance or parole that Bloomfield identifies with synchrony and Saussure identifies with diachrony. The latter is the domain of systematic structural correspondences that Saussure identifies with synchrony and Bloomfield identifies with diachrony. If we attempt to diagram these dynamics onto sign relations proper, the semiotic representamen in Saussurean formalism is considered to be the semiotic object in Bloomfieldian behaviourism; and the Bloomfieldian object of inquiry is considered to be an illusory representamen by Saussure. Such is the nature of nominalist debates: that which is taken to be the whole point by one is considered worthy of dismissal by another, as discussed above. Peircean semiotic offers two immediate strategies for moving beyond such gridlock: the first is a triadic move toward the interpretant. The second is a diagrammatic move toward integration with a more enriched account of sign functions and sign processes. First, it should be noted that the oscillating dynamics explored above using Saussure and Bloomfield as figureheads cannot ultimately be forced into Peircean semiotic on their own terms (i.e. as a composite dyad), since representamen and object are what they are only in relation to an interpretant. In the words of T.L. Short, All three items are triadic in the sense that none is what it is – a sign, an object, or an interpretant – except by virtue of its relation to the other two. But that does not mean that any of the three is in itself a triad; if the object, the sign, or the interpretant is in itself triadic, that must be for another reason. Peirce’s and Saussure’s ideas of sign differ, then, not only in number of items combined but in the way they are combined. It is the difference between a composite entity and a relational property. Short 2007: 19–20

The nature of linguistic variation and linguistic invariance and the relationships they share can only be identified and understood by relating both to a third process

Peircean Semiotic for Language and Linguistics

405

that mediates between them – a process (or processes) capable of turning variation into invariance and invariance into variation. Above I have referred to this as ‘growth’, while suggesting (following Shapiro 1991, 2002) that ‘diagrammatization’ would represent the process most fully. With these things in mind, it will be helpful to extend the diagrammatic relations illustrated in Figure 14.2 more clearly into the domain of language and linguistics. To this end, I propose the Figure  14.3 schematic as ‘a preliminary overview of a new vision for an evolutionary linguistics with deep roots in a Peircean process ontology’ (Pelkey 2015b: 589; cf. Pelkey 2013, 2015a). First, note that the most prototypical manifestation of a linguistic sign category shifts position relative to the status in question. Language variation at its most prototypical corresponds to a node on the diagram representing the firstness of firstness, while the most prototypical analogue of linguistic ‘invariance’ emerges as inheritance – the secondness of secondness – and diagrammatization emerges as a thirdness of thirdness. Notice too that the term ‘invariance’ is not directly proposed as a linguistic sign function at all. Given the evolutionary model under consideration in Figure  14.2, it makes more sense to discuss features that are inherited (and as a result replicated and thus, at least temporarily, invariant) than it does to discuss features that are somehow inherently and timelessly invariant.

Figure 14.3 Diagrammatic reasoning toward Peircean semiotic for language and linguistics.

406

Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Peircean Semiotics

Reflexively speaking, this insight illustrates how reasoning diagrammatically can serve a self-corrective role for theory building as long as fallible realist assumptions are maintained. Second, notice the interplay between categories and functions. Linguistic variations present themselves to consciousness when someone, whether wittingly or unwittingly, introduces new potential into the system such as a novel turn of phrase or a word-level nonce-formation. If the new pattern is picked up by others, it becomes a shared innovation. But such dynamics do not happen without interplay from other linguistic sign types and functions. For an innovation to be perceived, it must be perceived to differ from other inherited forms (as a rhematic indexical sinsign), and it must make sense by vague analogy with forms it resembles (as a rhematic iconic sinsign or ‘diagram token’). For an innovation to begin to be shared at large it must become automated by inheritance (or replication) as a dicent indexical legisign or collateral index, all while conforming to one or more general types analogically. Third, notice the more general relationships that this calls into question within contemporary linguistics as a discipline. Researchers working in the various subbranches of linguistic inquiry mentioned above usually attempt to specialize in either linguistic firstness to the exclusion of secondness or linguistic secondness to the exclusion firstness – with neither showing much interest in processes of thirdness. Comparative linguists, usage-based linguists, corpus linguists, frequency linguists and dialect geographers tend to emphasize aspects of linguistic firstness (i.e. variation, innovation and shared innovation) over dynamics of linguistic secondness (i.e. resemblance, inheritance and structure). Given the neglect of the latter, variationist linguists rarely make attempts to identify processes that might motivate or mediate between the two. Extreme approaches to linguistic firstness, such as dialectometry, even feature attempts to study variation directly without concern for the description or explanation of innovations, shared or otherwise. Elsewhere, structural linguists, genetic linguists, linguistic formalists, descriptive typologists and documentary linguists are all too often content to ignore variation in pursuit of systematic or programmatic analyses that are grammatical, lexical and/or phonological in scope. In most such cases, the system under consideration is supposed to be represented either by the intuitions of the linguists themselves or by a handful of speakers from a single location, in spite of variation elsewhere. Unless we are to rest content with nominalist conclusions (e.g. that studies by linguists in ideologically oppositional sub-fields are somehow unimportant, illusory or irrelevant for the adequate interpretation of results in other fields), narrow attempts to study one mode of linguistic evolution reductively without

Peircean Semiotic for Language and Linguistics

407

reference to other dynamics should be recognized as suspect, if not impossible. And yet such nominalist assumptions continue to proliferate. We even find their influence stretching into the pre-Saussurean period in long-standing disputes between genetic linguists and dialect geographers. What I am attempting to articulate in this chapter is that all such diverse strands can be integrated via a (neo)Peircean linguistics grounded in a pragmatist semiotic. Elsewhere, attempts to study aspects of linguistic thirdness directly, tend to come closer to integrative accounts. Such approaches often court semiotic theory unwittingly and stand to benefit just as much from diagrammatic reasoning in a fallible realist mode. Advances in grammaticalization theory, for instance (see e.g. Brinton and Traugott 2005), seem to demonstrate a vague awareness that such processes must be understood as operating in continuity between variation and inheritance. Cognitive linguistic approaches in general are also sympatico with such assumptions, with founders such as Bernd Heine (1997: 36, 146) insisting that language universals and linguistic relativity should be combined and still earlier founders such as Lakoff and Johnson arguing for an ‘experientialist synthesis’ (1980: 192–193) in linguistics. This latter point works from the assumption that continuity between embodied experience and conceptual structures can serve to integrate objectivist reduction and relativist deconstruction (the former being secondness oriented, the latter firstness oriented). But none of these models attempt to situate linguistics within a general semiotic that is itself grounded in an evolutionary framework. As I have argued elsewhere (Pelkey 2013, 2015a), Peirce’s conception of chance, law and habit taking as three intertwining evolutionary processes should be recognized as priority categories for mapping onto language and linguistics. Of the three, the first two – chance and law – affirm both extremes of various dualist divides (such as free will vs. determinism); and the third mode serves to integrate or mediate the two, while also serving as the ultimate organizing principle for the entire system. In evolution, according to Peirce, habit taking (cf. ‘ontogeny’) mediates natural selection and mechanical replication. Habit taking in other words, ‘plays a double part; it serves to establish the new features, and also to bring them into harmony with the general morphology and function of the [types] to which they belong’ (W8.193, 1892). Given the neglected importance of thirdness, continuity and interdependence in linguistic theory building, a more detailed consideration of linguistic chance, law and habit taking is in order. In the next section I discuss these modalities in ways that are more directly relevant for linguistics as ‘analogy’, ‘automation’ and ‘diagrammatization’, building on prior treatments (Pelkey 2013, 2015a, 2015b).

408

Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Peircean Semiotics

Analogy, automation and diagrammatization: signs of thirdness As the firstness of linguistic thirdness, analogy can be described as the action of guessing or sense making according to perceived or hypothesized patterns. In the preceding section (see especially Figure  14.3), I employ diagrammatic reasoning to identify analogy with linguistic ecology or processual chance. Analogical guesswork may be initiated by external contact and/or internally motivated by bio-neurological processes. Charles-James N. Baily (1982) refers to the former as ‘abnatural change’ and to the latter as ‘conatural change’. When my daughter was four years old she once asked whether or not cranberries were made out of crayons (4 May 2012). Her guess was not based on a taste test as we first supposed (which would involve a non-linguistic analogy); rather, she was noticing a pattern of aural/oral iconicity between adult pronunciations of /kræn/ for ‘crayon’ and the first syllable of ‘/kræn/berries’. The analogy was both internally and externally motivated: externally, due to contact with speakers of a nonhousehold variety of English; internally, due to guessing according to an inherited diagram or paradigm. A sketch of this paradigm is represented in Example 1. Note that in most cases ‘berry’ compounds tend to be modified in the pre-head slot by a term of intelligible or ‘semantically analyzable’ origin. The would-be morpheme ‘/kræn/’ poses an exception to this rule: Example 1: A sketch of analyzable and unanalyzable ‘berry’ compounds

blue black straw

+ + +

berry berry berry

cran

+

berry (?)

Since the inherited paradigm constitutes a strong pattern, any member of the set without a semantically analyzable component in the pre-head slot automatically presents an internal puzzle that chance encounters in the surrounding context might help to resolve. The search for better fit between diagram token and diagram type (a.k.a. ‘diagrammatization’) is the motivation for analogy, and contact with new speakers, speech varieties and contexts all provide potential raw material for engaging the guessing instinct. The ultimate (or ‘final’) cause of this search is not analogy for the sake of analogy but rather analogy for the sake of diagrammatization, a distinct but interdependent process that I will discussion briefly. First note that in this isolated example, the diagrammatization process was deferred. Once my

Peircean Semiotic for Language and Linguistics

409

daughter was duly informed that ‘no, crayons are not made of cranberries’, she had to settle once more for an imperfectly isomorphic diagram. Elsewhere, though, linguistic diagrams are capable of broadscale reanalysis. The paradigm levelling of inflectional morphology on ‘strong verb’ (now irregular) paradigms in Middle English is an example of such a process. Working collectively, over the course of a few hundred years, speakers of Middle English gradually simplified the past temporal marking system by extending the -ed suffix not only to simple past constructions but also to past perfect marking strategies across many irregular paradigms. This process was facilitated by widespread contact with second-language (L2) English speakers from North Germanic and Norman French backgrounds who had settled in England alongside AngloSaxons. The process remains incomplete, however, as child language learners and L2 English learners all too naturally call to our attention. A sketch of the general pattern and its exceptions is provided in Example 2 below: Example 2: A sample sketch of regular (weak) and irregular (strong) verbs in English

Verb walk watch listen taste touch smell cook tie wrap leak

Preterit walked watched listened tasted touched smelled cooked tied wrapped leaked

Perfect have/has walked have/has watched have/has listened have/has tasted have/has touched have/has smelled have/has cooked have/has tied have/has wrapped have/has leaked

run ride grow swim

ran rode grew swam

have/has run have/has ridden have/has grown have/has swum

(?) (?) (?) (?)

The resilience of competing paradigms can be attributed to token frequency that serves to maintain the salience of alternative patterning. The process that enabled a broad-scale reanalysis of strong verb paradigms is analogy, motivated by diagrammatization; but the process that stabilizes old paradigms and entrenches new ones is something different from either, requiring us to turn our attention to the role of automation.

410

Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Peircean Semiotics

Automation can be described as the processes of replicating and maintaining innovations (whether old or new) through token frequency with increasing efficiency and predictability once they have been introduced by analogy according to various diagram types. In the preceding section (see especially Figure 14.3), I identify automation with linguistic ‘phylogeny’ or processual ‘law’. The automation of a shared linguistic habit across a population can be identified as that populations’ ‘collective legitimation’ (Shapiro 1991: 5) of the new construction or structure, due its fitting conformity to some general type. This results in new linguistic facts at the structural level that relate to and contrast with other structural facts. Automation occurs neurophysiologically as ‘the human brain adjusts to repeated access by creating shortcuts’ (Bybee 2010: 50), but linguistic automation processes are just as much pragmatically and contextually motivated as they are motivated by neurological or psychological tendencies toward ease of expression or access. Widely discussed processes such as lexicalization and grammaticalization necessarily involve an automating component. The efficient replication of inherited patterns across generations often leads to the collective loss of memory regarding the original motivation of linguistic facts; and this dynamic can be credited with the illusion of arbitrariness within and among linguistic constructions at the level of the symbolic legisign. Such dynamics map on to Peircean ‘anancasm’, or mechanically driven evolution since they describe ‘the process whereby accidental characters become fixed’ (1891: W8.110). The accidental characters are selected via analogy; so the two work in tandem but should not be conflated. Joan Bybee (e.g. 2010) provides some of the most striking analyses in support of this point in her discussions of linguistic ‘reduction’ and ‘conservation’ processes. Reducing effects can be noted in cases like the slow lexicalization of ‘goodbye’ from the traditional expression ‘God be with you’ or the fusion of Old English halig + butte (‘holy + flat fish’) into Modern English ‘halibut’. In all such cases, repetition slowly begets semantic bleaching and the loss of morpheme boundaries as internal structure erodes through use. Conserving effects, by contrast, can be noted in the stubborn persistence of alternative paradigms in spite of the pull of some emergent paradigm that is dominant. Examples of this are provided immediately above in the resistance of certain strong verbs to the pull of the dominant ‘weak verb’ paradigm. Both are related to token frequency. For the time being it will be sufficient to clarify the analogy vs. automation distinction with reference to linguistic reduction (a.k.a. ‘chunking’), which is,

Peircean Semiotic for Language and Linguistics

411

according to Bybee, ‘directly caused by neuromotor practice and the consequent overlapping and reduction of articulatory gestures’ (2010: 75). Because of this, Bybee and others insist that the underlying ‘mechanism of change is not analogical’ (2010: 75). The selection of chance variation according to a general pattern (analogy) is a distinct process from the incremental repetition of the selection as it becomes more and more efficiently accessed and habituated by a given population of speakers (automation); and yet the two are interdependent in processes of language change. As I have noted elsewhere (Pelkey 2013: 182), ‘relative frequency of use partially determines which constructions are susceptible to analogical change and analogical change partially determines the acceleration of token frequency’. Ultimately, though, neither analogy nor automation would emerge as aspects of linguistic thirdness without the future-oriented influence of a third process mediating between the two: i.e., the diagrammatic causality or ‘diagrammatization’ of the overall system. If automation works ‘to render inefficient relations efficient’ in linguistics, in order ‘to establish a habit or general rule’ (CP 8.332, 1904), we have to inquire into the nature of the habit – its origins, constitution and ends. If analogy is habit-suggesting and habit-selecting, and automation is habitestablishing and habit-entrenching, diagrammatization is habit-shaping and habit breaking. According to Shapiro, Diagrammatization can be seen as one species of the process by which unconformities in languages are reduced or eliminated over time . . . Diagrams and diagrammatizations in language are states, resp. processes, whereby relations mirror relations, as between form and content (isomorphism) or between form and form (automorphism). They are states in synchrony and real tendencies in diachrony. 2002: 118

With this in mind, we can identify diagrammatization with processual habit taking or linguistic growth through space and time. According to the evolutionary analogy adopted above (see especially Figures 14.2 and 14.3), diagrammatization corresponds most closely with ontogeny or the growth of individuals (and their individual groups). To grow is to learn, and to learn is to take up new habits. As Jesper Hoffmeyer notes, Peirce considered ‘the tendency [of things] to take habits’ [CP 1.409, 1890] – or in more modern parlance ‘self-organization’ (the tendency for new regularities to arise in natural systems) – as the most fundamental characteristic of nature. And living systems are examples par excellence of the tendency, to take notice, that is

412

Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Peircean Semiotics

to say, to detect regularities in their surroundings that, if properly interpreted, might guide them to perform well. 2008: 62

These dynamics also typify the core of linguistic diagrammatization, a process that I have identified elsewhere with ‘ontogeny’ (Pelkey 2015a), as noted above. Although discussions of language ontogeny are often assumed to refer exclusively to the development of language in early childhood, in truth language development never ceases. Diagrammatization as linguistic ontogeny justifiably includes the ‘lifetime growth of polylectal individuals and unique groups of polylectal individuals’ (Pelkey 2015b: 593) synechistically or continuously, both logically and temporally. The relationship between diagrammatization and end-directed causation is also of note. Developing ideas from Peirce, John Deely has termed this mode of causation ‘objective causality’ (2001: 631), a mode of causality involved in the often unwitting or subconscious modelling of potential futures relative to the inherited past and the chance events of the present. Such action inevitably results in the reorganization of previously established relationships. Deely frames the process more succinctly as, ‘the virtual influence of the future upon the present changing the relevance of the past’ (2008: 481). This is another way of discussing linguistic diagrammatization or the re-organization of linguistic diagrams. As discussed in more detail above, ‘mental diagrams are inherent in morphology, syntax, and texts’ (Nöth 2008: 98). Diagrammatic relations in process are necessarily subject to the reconfiguration of parts and wholes based on vaguely observed similarities and discontinuities. Diagrammatization is concerned with the often ‘unnoticed and hidden relations among the parts’ (CP 3.363, 1885) of such diagram types, including their relationships with each other and with diagram tokens. In addition to the action of diagrammatization at these levels, the end-directed process is also centre-stage in language acquisition and in processes of grammaticalization and lexicalization. It is also arguably the cause or goal of dialect differentiation, embodied modelling, interpersonal empathy, along with many modes of joking and word play. Diagrammatization manifests that which Peirce discusses as the ‘disposition . . . to catch the general idea . . . and thus to subserve the general purpose’ (W8.194, i1890–1892). It is a process that leads to discoveries of a ‘fuller realization of the values specific to one’s type’ (Shapiro 2002: 118). The process is never complete; rather it is constantly evolving. This never-ending search for better fit, or enhanced equilibrium, between perceived resemblances or gaps that hold between part–whole schemas and their efficient relations is also largely unwitting and governed by vague (i.e. ‘rhematic’) alertness.

Peircean Semiotic for Language and Linguistics

413

Finally, given the context of this chapter in particular, it is important to note that diagrammatization provides the critically needed element of continuity (Peircean ‘synechism’) discussed above: the element that prevents any theory or system from defaulting to nominalism while still retaining a contrite or fallible approach to the reality of linguistic relations. Grounded in iconic and indexical legisigns, language and linguistic systems persist as perceived and remembered resemblances that are cognitively organized into integrated part– whole schemas even though they are not in themselves existing things (CP 4.447, 1903). The incorporation of diagrammatization into linguistic theory, along with the interdependent roles of analogy and automation, allows the discipline to steer clear of the nominalist traps reviewed earlier in this chapter. This enables linguistic theory to embrace presumably oppositional approaches and move beyond them by introducing three process-oriented elements that mediate between variation and invariance. This also enables the study of language to be properly situated within an architectonic pragmatism or general semiotic: the proper home of all disciplines.

General semiotic for language and linguistics Standard accounts of language and linguistics tend to neglect Thirdness. The absence of Thirdness in contemporary linguistic theory is manifest in the nominalist/dualist schisms introduced above in at least two critical ways: the absence of continuity and the missing interpretant. In short, contemporary linguists not only tend to ignore the possibility of vital continuity between their own positions and those held by others with opposite positions, they also tend to leave the interpretant role vacant when it comes to theory, explanation and description. The role of the interpretant is that which a system (or population or individual) is prepared to select or prefer based on the development of previous habits and needs as the system grows toward some general type. Since semiosis (whether linguistic or otherwise) relies on the action of the interpretant, it seems fair to say that any theory that attempts to proceed without it will tend toward futility by outputting facts for the sake of facts. But this does not mean that the facts of contemporary linguistic dualism are without value. On the contrary, both sides of a given divide are often brimming with insight. My argument in this chapter is that such insights will be more robust if brought together and situated within a general semiotic.

414

Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Peircean Semiotics

As I have argued above, the polarized positions that mark contemporary linguistics may be traced back to a fundamental divide premised on the incompatibility of variation and invariance, leading to polarized allegiances in the discipline toward the description, explanation and theorization of language variation on one hand or linguistic invariance on the other. I have suggested that variationist approaches to the study of language considered in terms of a general Peircean semiotic are necessarily devoted to Firstness-oriented phenomena that coincide with the functions of the semiotic representamen. Secondness-oriented phenomena, on the other hand, are the concern of linguists who have devoted themselves to the study of linguistic invariance or language universals. Such concerns correspond with the functions of the semiotic object. As discussed above, the mistake is to assume that no process of continuity might mediate between variation and invariance. What brings the two together and situates them within a general semiotic are the sign functions of the interpretant in-process. Building on the work of others, above, I have identified the three principal functions of the linguistic interpretant as analogy, automation and diagrammatization (see also Pelkey 2013, 2015a, 2015b). Diagrammatization mediates between analogy and automation; and all three work together to mediate between language variation and linguistic inheritance, as complex linguistic systems grow toward some more systematic type. Analogy functions to suggest new possibilities for better fit between parts and wholes, attempting by guesswork to solve the riddles posed by imperfect diagrams. Automation works toward the efficiency and predictability of relations in the macro-linguistic organization as linguistic constructions fossilize and institutionalize due to token-frequency and familiarity. Diagrammatization works to integrate new habits and dispense with old ones in order to realize better fit according to a general pattern. And the general pattern Peirce helps us identify can be used to situate linguistics beyond the pale of nominalism within a general semiotic.

References Anttila, R. 1989. Historical and Comparative Linguistics, 2nd ed. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Anttila, R. 1994. ‘Collaterality and Genetic Linguistics’, in M. Shapiro (ed.). The Peirce Seminar Papers: Essays in Semiotic Analysis, Vol. 2. Oxford: Berghahn Books, 29–46. Bailey, C.-J.N. 1982. On the Yin and Yang Nature of Language. Ann Arbor: Karoma.

Peircean Semiotic for Language and Linguistics

415

Bloomfield, L. 1933. Language, New York: Henry Holt and Company. Brier, S. 2000. ‘Biosemiotics as a Possible Bridge Between Embodiment in Cognitive Semantics and the Motivation Concept of Animal Cognition in Ethology’. Cybernetics and Human Knowing, 7(1) 57–75. Brinton, L.J., and E.C. Traugott, 2005. Lexicalization and Language Change, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bybee, J. 2007. ‘Diachronic Linguistics’, in D. Geeraerts and H. Cuyckens (eds). The Oxford Handbook of Cognitive Linguistics. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 945–987. Bybee, J. 2010. Language, Usage and Cognition, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Chomsky, N. 1966. Cartesian Linguistics. New York: Harper & Row. Chomsky, N. 2017. ‘The Language Capacity: Architecture and Evolution’, Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 24(1) 200–203. Dea, S. 2015. ‘A House at War Against Itself: Absolute Versus Pluralistic Idealism in Spinoza, Peirce, James and Royce’. British Journal for the History of Philosophy 23(4) 710–731. Deely, J.N. 1994. ‘Peirce: Editorial Introduction to the electronic edition of The Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce’, in C. Hartshorne, P. Weiss and A.W. Burks (eds). The Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce. 8 Vols, Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Deely, J.N. 2001. Four Ages of Understanding: The First Postmodern Survey of Philosophy from Ancient Times to the Turn of the Twenty-First Century. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Deely, J.N. 2003. ‘The Quasi-Error of the External World’, Cybernetics and Human Knowing, 10(1) 25–46. Deely, J.N. 2008. ‘From Semiosis to Semioethics: The Full Vista of the Action of Signs’, Sign System Studies, 38(2) 437–491. Deely, J.N. 2012. ‘Analytic Philosophy and the Doctrine of Signs’, The American Journal of Semiotics, 28 (3–4) 325–363. Dor, D., C. Knight and J. Lewis. 2014. The Social Origins of Language. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Enfield, N.J., P. Kockelman and J. Sidnell (eds). 2014. The Cambridge Handbook of Linguistic Anthropology, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Evans, V. 2014. The Language Myth: Why Language is Not an Instinct, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Evans, N. and S.C. Levinson 2009. ‘The Myth of Language Universals: Language Diversity and its Importance for Cognitive Science’, Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 32(5) 429–492. Fisch, M.H. 1967. ‘Peirce’s Progress from Nominalism Toward Realism’, The Monist, 51(2) 159–178. Fischer, O. and C. Ljungberg (eds). (i1999–2017). Iconicity in Language and Literature (book series: 15 Vols. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

416

Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Peircean Semiotics

Giacalone Ramat, A., C. Mauri, and P. Molinelli (eds). 2013. Synchrony and Diachrony: A Dynamic Interface, Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Givón, T. 1989. Mind, Code and Context: Essays in Pragmatics, New York: Psychology Press. Givón, T. 2016. ‘Beyond Structuralism’, Studies in Language, 40(3) 681–704. Heine, B. 1997. Cognitive Foundations of Grammar, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Haspelmath, M. 2006. ‘Against Markedness (and What to Replace It With)’, Journal of Linguistics 42(1) 25–70. Hoffmeyer, J. 2008. Biosemiotics: An Examination into the Signs of Life and the Life of Signs, Scranton: University of Scranton Press. Houser, N. 2006. ‘Peirce’s Contrite Fallibilism’, in R. Fabbrichesi Leo and S. Marietti (eds). Semiotics and Philosophy in Charles Sanders Peirce. 1–14, Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Press. Jakobson, R. 1965. ‘Quest for the Essence of Language’, in Jakobson (i1919–1979), 413–427. Jakobson, R. 1977. ‘A Few Remarks on Peirce, Pathfinder in the Science of Language’. MLN , 92(5) 1026–1032. Jakobson, R. 1919–1979. Language in Literature. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1985. Janicki, K. 2012. Language Misconceived: Arguing for Applied Cognitive Sociolinguistics. London: Routledge. Kretzschmar, W.A., Jr. 2010. ‘Language Variation and Complex Systems’. American Speech, 85(3) 263–286. Koerner, E.F.K. 2002. Toward a History of American Linguistics, London: Routledge. Lakoff, G. and M. Johnson 1980. Metaphors We Live by, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Lazard, G. 2012. ‘The Case for Pure Linguistics’, Studies in Language, 36(2) 241–259. Levinson, S.C. and N. Evans. 2010. ‘Time for a Sea-Change in Linguistics: Response to Comments on “The Myth of Language Universals” ’, Lingua 120: 2733–2758. Mayorga, R.M.P.-T. 2007. From Realism to ‘Realicism’: The Metaphysics of Charles Sanders Peirce, Plymouth: Lexington Books. Nöth, W. 1999. ‘Peircean Semiotics in the Study of Iconicity in Language’, Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 35.3, 613–619. Nöth, W. 2002. ‘Charles Sanders Peirce, Pathfinder in Linguistics’, Interdisciplinary Journal for Germanic Linguistics and Semiotic Analysis 7(1) 1–14. Nöth, W. 2008. ‘Semiotic Foundations of Natural Linguistics and Diagrammatic Iconicity’, in K. Willems and L. De Cuypere (eds). Naturalness and Iconicity in Language. Iconicity in Language and Literature 7. 73–100, Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Pable, A. and C. Hutton 2015. Signs, Meaning and Experience: Integrational Approaches to Linguistics and Semiotics, Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. Peirce, C.S. 1890–1892. ‘The Monist Metaphysical Project’, in Peirce Edition Project (ed.). Writings of Charles S. Peirce: A Chronological Edition, Vol. 8 (1890–1892). 83–205, Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Cited as W8.

Peircean Semiotic for Language and Linguistics

417

Peirce, C.S. 1893–1913. The Essential Peirce: Selected Philosophical Writings, Vol. 2, Peirce Edition Project (eds). Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1998. Cited as EP2. Peirce, C.S. 1867–1913. Unpublished manuscripts are dated according to the Annotated Catalogue of the Papers of Charles S. Peirce, ed. Richard Robin (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1967. and confirmed by the Peirce Edition Project (Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis). Cited as MS. Pelkey, J. 2011. Dialectology as Dialectic: Interpreting Phula Variation. Trends in Linguistics: Studies and Monographs 229. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. Pelkey, J. 2013. ‘Analogy, Automation and Diagrammatic Causation: The Evolution of Tibeto-Burman *lak’. Studies in Language, 37(1) 144–195. Pelkey, J. 2014. ‘Diagnostic Dialectology: Interpreting Ngwi Variation in China’s Red River Valley’, in A. Barysevich, A. d’Arcy and D. Heap (eds). Proceedings of Methods XIV: Papers from the Fourteenth International Conference on Methods in Dialectology, 2011. Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 236–248. Pelkey, J. 2015a. ‘Deep Congruence between Linguistic and Biotic Growth: Evidence for Semiotic Foundations’, in E. Velmezova, S. Cowley and K. Kull (eds). Biosemiotic Perspectives on Language and Linguistics. Berlin: Springer, 97–119. Pelkey, J. 2015b. ‘Peircean Evolutionary Linguistics: A Prospectus’ in J. Pelkey, S. Walsh Matthews and L. Sbrocchi (eds). Semiotics 2014: The Semiotics of Paradox. Ottawa: Legas, 585–597. Pelkey, J. 2018. ‘Emptiness and Desire in the First Rule of Logic’. Sign Systems Studies 46(4) 467–490. Pinker, S. 1994. The Language Instinct: How the Mind Creates Language. New York: Harper Collins. Pinker, S. 2013. Language, Cognition, and Human Nature: Selected Articles. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Reyes, A. 2014. ‘Linguistic Anthropology in 2013: Super-New-Big’. American Anthropologist 116(2) 366–378. Roberts, D.D. 1970. ‘On Peirce’s Realism’, Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 6(2) 67–83. Saussure, F. de. 1916. Cours de Linguistique Générale. Paris: Payot, trans. into English with annotations by Wade Baskin as Course in General Linguistics. New York: Philosophical Library (1959). Sebeok, T.A. 1991. ‘Linguistics and Semiotics’, in T.A. Sebeok (ed.). A Sign is Just a Sign, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 59–67. Sebeok, T.A. 2001. Signs: An Introduction to Semiotics. 2nd ed. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Shapiro, M. 1983. The Sense of Grammar: Language as Semeiotic. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Shapiro, M. 1991. The Sense of Change: Language as History. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

418

Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Peircean Semiotics

Shapiro, M. 2002. ‘Aspects of a Neo-Peircean Linguistics: Language History as Linguistic Theory’, in M. Shapiro (ed.). The Peirce Seminar Papers: Essays in Semiotic Analysis, Vol. 5, Oxford: Berghahn, 108–125. Short, T.L. 2007. Peirce’s Theory of Signs. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Stjernfelt, F. 2007. Diagrammatology: An Investigation on the Borderlines of Phenomenology, Ontology, and Semiotics. Dordrecht: Springer. Thellefsen, T. 2001. ‘C. S. Peirce’s Evolutionary Sign: An Analysis of Depth and Complexity within Peircean Sign Types and Peircean Evolution Theory’, SEED: Semiotics, Evolution, Energy, and Development, 1(2) 1–45.

15

Co-localization as the Syntax of Multimodal Propositions: An Amazing Peircean Idea and Some Implications for the Semiotics of Truth Frederik Stjernfelt

This chapter develops an idea advanced by Peirce during the construction of his mature theory of propositions in the years after 1900. It is the idea that, in a generalized notion of propositions (including multimodal propositions not linguistic or only partially linguistic), the unity of Subject and Predicate is signalled by the co-localization of those two constituents in a spatio-temporal neighbourhood of some sort. The core idea is briefly indicated by Peirce in passing and never developed in detail. I believe, however, that there are some basic, important and fertile possibilities in the idea which ought to be developed further.1 A first such development is what I attempt in this chapter. The co-localization idea is evident in a recurrent example of a proposition suggested by Peirce: a painting with a title. Unlike most analytical philosophers, preferring staple examples like ‘The sky is blue’ or ‘The cat is on the mat’, Peirce, without further ado, often selects examples of propositions which are only partially linguistic: A proposition is, in short, a Dicisign that is a Symbol. But an Index, likewise, may be a Dicisign. A man’s portrait with a man’s name written under it is strictly a proposition, although its syntax is not that of speech, and although the portrait itself not only represents, but is a Hypoicon. Syllabus, EP2: 282, 2: 320, 19032

The ‘syntax is not that of speech’, Peirce says. A purely negative definition, but elsewhere, Peirce elaborates on what would more positively characterize such a non-linguistic syntax – namely that the Subject and Predicate are somehow subjected to a ‘form of conjunction’3 which, in itself, functions as a symbol of their unity. More precisely, ‘juxtaposition’,4 that is, some spatio-temporal 419

420

Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Peircean Semiotics

conjunction is what unites Subject and Predicate to form a proposition. I think Peirce has found here a very important, elementary and ubiquitous structure of the expression of truth-claiming signs – which is, at one and the same time, deep and banal, the latter to such a degree that the phenomenon most often escapes notice: that it is possible to make a truth claim about something by spatially connecting a sign referring to the Object with a sign describing that Object. I find it is an elementary sign function with deep roots in biosemiotics and with a plethora of different application in human semiotics. This chapter is intended to present Peirce’s basic idea, based on his theory of the syntax of propositions in general, and to elaborate Peirce’s sketch-like ideas in much more detail, elucidating it through the analyses of examples from a wide array of different semiotic contexts.5 As you will find, many of the examples analysed in the following will border on the banal or trivial. Still, I believe the fertility of Peirce’s idea lies in three things: drawing attention to a widespread complex of semiotic issues often escaping notice; synthesizing all of these seemingly insignificant trivia within an overarching theoretical framework expressing deep principles of logic and semiotics – and, very relevant in an age of ‘fake news’, giving far greater prominence to the wide variety of sign complexes able to state truth claims, a function which is, on this account, much more ubiquitous than often assumed.

The syntax of propositions In Peirce’s mature semiotics, from around 1902–1903, a number of basic presuppositions changed. In the Minute Logic of 1902, a new principle was introduced. Until then, Peirce’s main terminological toolbox in semiotics was the triadic distinction of signs after their Object reference, icon-index-symbol, while the other important distinction, the classical logical triad of term-propositionargument of old, was most often seen as a further subdivision of the sign type of symbols. Now, Peirce realized that such distinctions did not simply refer to kinds of signs, but rather to kinds of sign aspects, and that, in order to reach a taxonomy of kinds of signs, the different triads of sign aspects had to be combined to form sign types. During the elaboration of the 1903 Syllabus, arguably the mostquoted source of Peirce sign definitions, he went from the combination of two triads to three triads, now adding the new triad of qualisign-sinsign-legisign pertaining to the sign vehicle itself, to the two trichotomies mentioned. Now, there were trichotomies referring to each of the sign’s three constituents, the sign

Co-localization as the Syntax of Multimodal Propositions

421

vehicle itself, the sign object, and the sign interpretant. It is also well known how the three trichotomies of sign aspects do not combine freely (which would have given 3 × 3 × 3 = 27 sign types). A more restricted principle of combination6 gave rise to a total of ten sign types, famously presented as a main conclusion of the Syllabus. A prerequisite to this combination strategy was that all the trichotomies involved had to be generalized so as to cover, each of them, all signs, in order to grant that the combination of them cover the same field, namely, all signs. The age-old logical trichotomy of term-proposition-argument thus ceased to be a subdivision of symbols, but was now generalized to cover all signs, which had the implication, among other things, of a generalization of the concept of proposition from covering linguistically expressed, symbolic, general statements only, now to cover, instead, all signs able to take a truth value, no matter whether symbolic or linguistic or not.7 Consequently, the new, more general concept of proposition required a new notion, for which Peirce chose ‘Dicent’ or ‘Dicisign’ (a sign saying something about something). Peirce realized that such signs no longer had to be restricted to the medium of language. Immediately, working out the new combinatory of sign aspects in the Syllabus, he furthermore saw that as propositions were no longer linguistic only, the issue of their internal composition could no longer be understood by more or less implicit reference to linguistic syntax. This lies behind his long, rather complicated argument pertaining to the ‘deduction of the Dicisign’ in the Syllabus, highlighting the issue of what unites the parts of a Dicisign. Here, I shall restrict myself to a brief summary of the argument.8 The issue is: what connects the Predicate and the Subject(s) of a proposition? On a basic level, Peirce’s idea is that propositions mirror the fact which was later called their ‘truthmaker’ (whether such a fact actually holds or not) – a picture theory of propositions in some respects not unlike the early Wittgenstein’s. Thus, he was able to state that ‘Every informational sign thus involves a fact, which is its Syntax’ (Syllabus, EP2: 282, 2.320). Consequently, the combination, in reality, of a property or relation with some Object(s), constituting a fact, is the very same combination which furnishes the syntax uniting Predicate and Subject(s) in the proposition sign.9 This simple mirror idea, however, has some underlying complications, for even if it does account for the possible truth of a proposition (the particular combination of Subjects and Predicate is true, if the corresponding combination of Objects and Property occurs in a real fact), it does not account for the proposition’s character of claiming that truth (or its potential for being used to do so). The truth-claim involves a hidden self-reference in a proposition. Peirce claims that what, on the surface, is a sign claiming ‘The sky is blue’, is in

422

Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Peircean Semiotics

reality a sign speaking about itself in the following way: ‘This sign is really connected to its Object, the sky, which is why this sign is able to make the claim that that Object can be described as “blue”.’ Thus, the truth claim is analysed as a self-referring claim that the sign has a real, indexical connection to the Object pointed out by the Subject of the sign. As this claimed connection is referred to by the sign, it follows, furthermore, that that connection must, in itself, form part of the reference Object, about which the sign speaks. This implies that the Object of a proposition is double: the denoted referent Object (whether it exists or not), plus the claimed reference relation between sign and Object (this is a first version of the distinction developed as Dynamic vs. Immediate Object). But now, this claimed indexical connection of the sign with its Object must also be described by the sign, that is, pictured iconically by the sign – which it what the sign achieves by presenting its Subject tokens as connected to the Predicate token, that is, by co-localizing them spatio-temporally. In the linguistic version: the Subject ‘Sky’ must be placed so as to occupy the empty slot of the Predicate ‘_is blue’, in a juxtaposition of Subject and Predicate, in order for the proposition to be realized. As Peirce says: ‘. . . it is the juxtaposition which connects words. Otherwise they might be left in their places in the dictionary’ (‘Kaina Stoicheia’, EP2: 310, 1904). But the important implication of Peirce’s Deduction of the Dicisign is that some such sort of juxtaposition must hold for all truth-claiming signs, for it is that juxtaposition which serves to describe the sign’s own claimed indexical relation to its Object – and so makes possible the expression of that truth claim. Thus, the co-localization of Subject and Predicate is a sign that the resulting proposition is connected to its Object. Peirce does not himself use the notion of ‘co-localization’, but I think it constitutes a technical term offering a fair summary of the various examples that he gives (using shifting notions like ‘syntax’, ‘connection’, ‘juxtaposition’ etc., but never deciding upon a fixed terminological choice). Let us take a look at these examples. One is a photograph, which, Peirce realizes, rather to his own surprise it seems, may function, in itself, as a proposition. The reason is that the physical process connecting the photograph with the Objects emanating the light rays caught by the photo-sensitive plate, implies that the resulting traces on the plate, as a cross-section of the rays, may function as Subjects referring to those Objects, and the shapes of those traces, correlatively, are iconic Predicate signs describing those Objects. Thus, the photograph simultaneously realizes the Subject–Object connection and the Predicate description of the same Object – as he says, ‘It will be remarked that this connection of the print, which is the quasi-Predicate of the photograph, with the section of the rays, which is the quasi-Subject, is the Syntax of the

Co-localization as the Syntax of Multimodal Propositions

423

Dicisign . . .’ (Syllabus, EP2: 282, CP 2.320, 1903). Here, the connection establishing the syntax is due to the physical process of photographic recording, as in another classic Peirce example, that of a weathercock where the physical connection between the wind and the direction of the pointer constitutes its syntax. In other cases, however, the connection may be purposive rather than causal (corresponding to Peirce’s distinction between two kinds of Indices, Reagents and Designators, causal and purposive, respectively). In the following quotation, Peirce elaborates upon his painting-with-a-legend example: So, if a symbol is to signify anything, and not be mere verbiage, or an empty logical form, it must ultimately appeal to icons to monstrate the elementary characters, both of sense and of conception. One of the simplest examples of a symbol that can readily be found is, say, the portrait of a man having printed under it: ANDREAS ACHENBACH. This form of conjunction of an icon and an index is a symbol telling me that the celebrated artist looked like that. It has that signification, because of the rule that names so prominently printed under portraits are those of the Subjects of the portraits. Were the same name to be found written small upon the portrait in one of the lower corners, something altogether different, and not so simple, would be conveyed. Ms. 1147 c. 1900, the largest of several drafts of the article ‘Exact Logic’ for the Baldwin Dictionary, 12

The print of the German landscape painter Achenbach (1815–1910) on the occasion of his eightieth birthday in 1895 (Figure 15.1) fits Peirce’s description and could have been the very portrait to which Peirce referred. The basic idea, of course, is that ‘. . . the rule that names so prominently printed under portraits are those of the Subjects of the portraits’, a convention common in Western painting (extending also to journalism and other branches where text under a picture is often taken to provide the reference of that picture).10 That it is indeed a convention is seen from Peirce’s counterexample: ‘Were the same name to be found written small upon the portrait in one of the lower corners, something altogether different, and not so simple, would be conveyed’. The alternative rule which Peirce refers to, of course, says that a name in one of those corners refers to the painter or photographer (or, in some cases, the printer) of the picture. These conventions, it is possible to imagine, could have been different; the Object could have been indicated by the corner name and the painter by the large name below. What could not have been different, however (and is thus not subject to convention), is that both names, each in their way, must form a ‘conjunction’ by means of ‘juxtaposition’ with the painted surface by means of

424

Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Peircean Semiotics

Figure 15.1 A photographic print of Andreas Achenbach.

co-localization. Taken together, the three would form one synthetic proposition, saying something like ‘This painting portrays Andreas Achenbach and was made by (say) Dauthage’ – as is in fact the case with the print by Adolf Dauthage from 1883 (Figure 15.2). Indeed, the artist’s signature appears in the lower left of the print motif itself, with the year of execution added. Here, however, still further propositions are realized by the co-localization of other names, this time with the function of those names related to the print explicitly indicated: in the lower left corner, the publisher is indicated as one Adolf Eckstein, while in the lower right corner the printer is given as L. Schilling. In this way, effectively, this complex as a whole is equivalent to the joint proposition involving the print: ‘This print portrays A. Achenbach, was drawn by Dauthage, published by Adolf Eckstein and printed by L. Schilling’. The explicit addition of the functions of Eckstein and Schilling indicates that there is no stable convention to place the publisher in the lower left and the printer in the lower right corner on the margins of the print. The colocalization of all four Subject tokens in each their position in the vicinity around the graphic Predicate, however, remains a pre-conventional syntactic fact. Such

Co-localization as the Syntax of Multimodal Propositions

425

Figure 15.2 Dauthage’s portrait of Achenbach, Wikimedia Commons.

Subject clusters in painting-with-legend examples realize the parsing of Subjects to assume different syntactic roles as in case grammar, and give you the idea that linguistic grammar, with all its subtleties and combinations possibilities, is but a special, sophisticated version of co-localization where grammatical roles have been conventionalized by means of sequence, conjugation, morphemes, lexical items, governance and other features from the linguistic toolbox – but that all of them are but refinements of that elementary syntax that functions by placing Subject and Predicate side by side.

What kind of sign is co-localization syntax? Peirce vacillates considerably in his description of the conjunct sign of the type of the Achenbach print: is it an index (as when he takes the painting-with-alegend as an example of the Dicent Sinsign category), is it an icon, as he claimed

426

Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Peircean Semiotics

about co-localization in the Syllabus deduction of the Dicisign, or is it a symbol, as in the quotation given above? The confusion may stem from the fact that the meaning of co-localizing the two constituent signs is indeed general – it is the same from one sign to the next, namely that the Subject refers to the same Object which the Predicate describes – while the use of that general meaning is to confer a much more particular meaning (here, the profile and shape of this individualized portrait) to an individual Object (here, the German painter). In a certain sense, this need not confuse us much, for the fact is that Predicates come in a vast range of generalities. Thus, picture-with-legend propositions may be found where the iconic Predicate can be much more general, e.g. using the technique of composite photographs in which Peirce took an interest (the superposition of many related photographs in order to obtain a general photo of e.g. ‘woman of the year’).11 Such a photo proposition will qualify as a Dicent Symbol, for its meaning and Object are no individual thing or event, but a general structure shared by many women. Diagrams of all sorts may serve as predicates on many different levels of generality. This leaves, however, the interesting and, I think, deep question of whether syntax (logical, linguistic, or other) is in general iconic, indexical or symbolic. In the 1885 ‘Algebra of Logic’, Peirce strongly argues for logical syntax to be iconic, because syntax shows the relations between the logical items it connects, and no other sign but icons, either indexical or symbolic signs, can show anything. This is why algebras are here taken as a central example of the icon type of diagrams, facilitating reasoning exactly because they display relations. Later, in the 1890s, he equally strongly emphasizes that syntax is symbolic, for the reason that its meaning is general; it relates its relata in the same, significant way across many indefinite individual occasions (here also because of the fact that he still held syntax responsible for the proposition’s character of assertion, an idea he gave up with his later idea that the same syntactical proposition may form the basis for different speech acts, of which assertion is but one). In the 1904 text ‘Kaina Stoicheia’ he insisted that syntax is indexical, because it brings together, in the actual here and now, two physical objects, namely the individual token replicas of the signs Predicate and Subject.12 There may be a deeper reason for this seeming confusion. When constructing his final 2-D logic formalism of Existential Graphs around 1900,13 Peirce’s central syntactical tool in the Beta part addressing Predicate logic is the ‘Line of Identity’ taking care, at one and the same time, of identity, predication, subsumption and quantification (without knowing it, thus countering the Frege-Russell criticism of the ambiguity of the

Co-localization as the Syntax of Multimodal Propositions

427

‘is’ copula, effectively claiming that these four functions can be adequately depicted by the same sign and actually do possess one and the same root). In the two Beta Graphs (Figure  15.3), the Line of Identity is the line that connects the two Predicates ‘_is good’ and ‘_is ugly’ to form the two propositions ‘Something exists which is good and ugly’ and ‘Nothing exists which is good and not ugly’ (or ‘All that is good is ugly’; the closed curve signifies negation). Here, Peirce proudly insists that this conventional syntactical sign, the Line of Identity, has an almost perfect balance of icon, index, and symbol, respectively: The value of an icon consists in its exhibiting the features of a state of things regarded as if it were purely imaginary. The value of an index is that it assures us of positive fact. The value of a symbol is that it serves to make thought and conduct rational and enables us to predict the future. It is frequently desirable that a representamen should exercise one of those three functions to the exclusion of the other two, or two of them to the exclusion of the third; but the most perfect of signs are those in which the iconic, indicative, and symbolic characters are blended as equally as possible. Of this sort of signs the line of identity is an interesting example. As a conventional sign, it is a symbol; and the symbolic character, when present in a sign, is of its nature predominant over the others. The line of identity is not, however, arbitrarily conventional nor purely conventional. Consider any portion of it taken arbitrarily (with certain possible exceptions shortly to be considered) and it is an ordinary graph for which Fig.  81 might perfectly well be substituted. But when we consider the --is identical with-- Fig. 81 connexion of this portion with a next adjacent portion, although the two together make up the same graph, yet the identification of the something, to which the hook of the one refers, with the something, to which the hook of the other refers, is beyond the power of any graph to effect, since a graph, as a symbol, is of the nature of a law, and is therefore general, while here there must be an identification of individuals. This identification is effected not by the pure symbol, but by its replica which is a thing. The termination of one portion and the beginning of the next portion denote the same individual by virtue of a factual connexion, and that the closest possible;

Figure 15.3 Two Beta Graphs.

428

Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Peircean Semiotics

for both are points, and they are one and the same point. In this respect, therefore, the line of identity is of the nature of an index. To be sure, this does not affect the ordinary parts of a line of identity, but so soon as it is even conceived, [it is conceived] as composed of two portions, and it is only the factual junction of the replicas of these portions that makes them refer to the same individual. The line of identity is, moreover, in the highest degree iconic. For it appears as nothing but a continuum of dots, and the fact of the identity of a thing, seen under two aspects, consists merely in the continuity of being in passing from one apparition to another. Thus uniting, as the line of identity does, the natures of symbol, index, and icon, it is fitted for playing an extraordinary part in this system of representation. ‘Logical Tracts’, No. 2, CP 4.448, 1903

My contention is that Peirce’s characterization of this specially selected conventional syntactical sign of the EG system, as simultaneously iconic, indexical and symbolic, may hold, with some provisos, for syntax in general as well. Syntax is iconic, for it directly shows the structure of relations; it is indexical, for it makes actual connections between sign tokens, and it is symbolic, for it has a general, repeatable meaning from one use to the next. This is not to say that all grammars and all syntactic means of co-localizing signs share the same perfect balance between the three, which Peirce claims for his particular invented sign from the Existential Graph system. Rather, our hypothesis would be the more general one that all syntax must make use of all three sign aspects, maybe in different ratios and weightings. We shall return below to some corollaries of this idea.

Labels An enlightening example as to the function of co-localization syntax is the following: Every proposition has three elements. 1st an indication of the universe to which it relates, 2nd its general terms, 3rd connection of the terms . . . Every proposition relates to something which can only be pointed out or designated but cannot be specified in general terms. ‘No admittance, except on business’ over a door is a general proposition, but it relates to that door which may have no qualities different from these of some other door in some other planet or in some other tri-dimensional space of which there may be any number scattered through a quinqui-dimensional continuum without anywhere touching one another. But the hanging of the sign over this door indicates that this is the one referred to. The indescribable but designable Object to which a proposition refers always has

Co-localization as the Syntax of Multimodal Propositions

429

connected with it a variety of possibilities, often an endless variety. In the example we have taken, these possibilities are all the actions that can have a relation to that door. The proposition declares that among all these actions there is not to be found any permitted passage through the door except on business. Ms. 789, n.d.

Again, Peirce does not illustrate his example which might have looked something like the sign on Figure 15.4. The important issue here is Peirce’s insistence that every proposition points out its Object in a way which cannot be ultimately translated into any combination of general meanings.14 It is the Peircean version of Kant’s famous insistence that existence is not a predicate. No amount of general description suffices to identify an individual – but must be aided by some version of direct acquaintance (or a reference to such acquaintance or a description of how to achieve it). In this case – unlike the painting-with-legend type examples – the Predicate is colocalized not with a Subject index but with the very Object of the sign itself (in this case, that door to which the sign refers). This simple type of co-localization, where the Predicate is directly attached to the Object or forms part of the Object, could be termed labelling and is found in an immense number of social and biological cases, from consumer goods labels, naming and describing the ware inside the package, over name tags on conference attendants or sports players, species names attached to stuffed animals, to book titles on the front cover, or signs on buildings yielding information about the persons, companies, or activities inside them. In biology, labels in this sense are found in the characteristic looks of a species used to connect to or scare conspecifics or members of other species – or in the scent marks used to delimit a territory: ‘this territory right

Figure 15.4 No Admittance sign.

430

Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Peircean Semiotics

here belongs to an agency smelling like this’, where the scent mark thus has two objects, one (the territory) present, the other (the author of the mark) absent. Labels thus attached directly onto the Objects to which they refer form a particularly primitive subset of propositions. The fact that such labels, taken together with the Objects to which they are attached, constitute truth claims can be seen from the fact that the falsification of them is ripe with consequences for the falsifier if detected, ranging from criticism over sacking to juridical cases against the falsifier or even violent attack. To give but one example: the food producer misidentifying the chemical additives of his product on its label is liable to prosecution and punishment. Documents with the function of identifying the bearer (such as passports), similarly function as labels in this sense, and serious trouble may follow from posing as another person by using his or her passport when trying to cross borders. An important sub-subset to the subset of labels is traffic signs, an old staple of semiotic analysis. Traffic signs are typical propositions, some of them assertions, some of them realizing other speech acts such as warnings, imperatives, prohibitions, conditional imperatives, etc. The important thing in the label context, however, is that traffic signs signify by the implicit reference to the place where they sit or stand. Parking is prohibited, ‘not on some other planet’, as Peirce would say, but here, under the sign or in its proximate vicinity. If a more specific subset of the surroundings of the sign is intended, the sign is typically supplemented by means of an auxiliary sign indicating that parking is prohibited fifty metres in a certain direction during certain hours of the day, etc., referring to the location of the sign as the origo of such further spatio-temporal restrictions. Again, failing to recognize the elementary labelling Predicate-Subject co-localization axis of such a sign may bring the road user problems with the local authorities. Labels in this propositional sense of the word are so widespread and their precise localization so important that everyday behaviour is, to varying degrees, aided, guided, determined, or forced by them. In all public spaces like auditoriums, hotels, airports, bus stations, etc., for instance, some doors are co-localized with the sign ‘EXIT’ to indicate an escape-way in case of fire, flood, attack or other such force majeure emergency events. This simple sign and its placement, taken together by means of co-localization syntax, means: in case of urgency, take this door to reach an escape-way from the room you are presently in. This is a propositional content, and if placed erroneously, indicating escape where there is none, such signs will constitute false propositions and make the owner of the building liable to legal prosecution because sign readers may face grave problems unsuccessfully trying to escape.

Co-localization as the Syntax of Multimodal Propositions

431

A most peculiar feature of such simple propositions is that they require little learning in order to be understood. The word ‘EXIT’ in itself, to be sure, requires learning the English language, but once known, the very combination of that sign with the door over which it hangs require little explicit teaching. There is a semantic fit, to be sure, between the EXIT meaning ‘way out’ and the actual door as a well-known technology taking you to another room, which makes a semantically good pair out of the two, all of which involves learning. But in a hall with many doors, it is the simple syntactical structure of co-localization which is the important feature telling you which of the doors to select in case of emergency. Co-localization is hardly a convention learned, it is rather the other way around: co-localization is a prerequisite for learning. Labels seem to come in at least two basic classes: natural and imposed. Putting a sign over a door restricting access is evidently an imposed label, just as are given names, brands on the wrapping of goods, and much more. A natural label would be a property of the thing itself serving to identify or classify it by some observer. As with all Peircean distinctions, we should be open to intermediary cases; there are imposed labels which stick to the degree that they are hardly removable or changeable (tattoos); just as there are natural labels which may vanish by themselves over time (freckles) or which may be surgically or otherwise removed (birthmarks or moles). Biological labels evolve over time to adapt to surroundings – like a walking stick assuming the appearance of a branch for mimicry reasons. In a certain sense, then, such a natural label is imposed by selection pressure over many generations, so the natural/imposed distinction is far from exclusive but rather involves a continuum where natural signs may be imposed over long timescales. An orthogonal continuum, independent of the natural/imposed distinction, concerns the relative distance of the label to its object: body odour as an identifying label may be perceived nearby or at a distance, road signs may identify a city at its entry, but may also appear at any number of kilometres’ distance from the city, with a pointer and distance indication added. Such continua should not confuse us, but rather give an elementary idea of the variability space of labels.

Co-localization syntax in early human semiotics Once you have grasped the principle, co-localization propositions appear as ubiquitous in human semiotics, even across cultures. Cultures on many levels, of course, will add particular conventions specific to local traditions, but as further

432

Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Peircean Semiotics

icing on the base of the co-localization principle which remains indispensable. Pictures with accompanying text, video clips or news footage with voiceover speech, brand names on consumer goods, gesture combined with language or images . . . such propositions come in a vast array of types and appearances. A hypothesis that such multimodal propositions should be a particular, late product of our visual age with print, TV and internet technologies may sound tempting but is most certainly wrong. Rather, multimodal co-localization seems to be found along with some of the earliest occurrences of writing. Take the intriguing example of multimodal Egyptian propositions from around 2900 BC on Figure 15.5. This is a small ivory tablet or label15 (5.4 × 4.5cm, London British Museum EA 55586), seemingly originally attached to a pair of sandals or a jar of wine – the unclear sign on its flip side may mean either. It is one among twenty such tablets from the tomb of King Den/T’an in Abydos, mid-first Dynasty (ca. 2900 BC) excavated by the British archaeologist Flinders Petrie in the late nineteenth century. The main face of the label shows a pharaoh to the left, easily recognizable by the Uraeus snake symbol on his headdress, lifting his weapon

Figure 15.5 King Den ivory tablet, Abydos.

Co-localization as the Syntax of Multimodal Propositions

433

against a kneeling enemy. The pair of fighters are surrounded by no fewer than four co-localized groups of hieroglyphs. The analysis on Figure 15.6 is due to the German Egyptologists Kammerzell and Peust.16 The uppermost of the four hieroglyph groups here rendered in grey reads ‘Horus T’an’, that is King Den, the pharaoh’s traditional ‘Horus name’ identified by the royal Horus falcon on top of a rectangle whose contents further indicate the name of the particular pharaoh. It simply functions as a name label for the human figure under it, effectively forming the joint proposition ‘This figure is King Den’. The rightmost hieroglyph group reads ‘The first time of defeating the East’ and may be taken as a sort of headline of the whole scene depicted, supported by the fact that the (tendential) reading convention goes from right to left so it will be the first linguistic message the reader meets interpreting the label.17 Thus, that message, co-localized with the whole scenery of the label, makes a statement which identifies it as a war scene from the first Egyptian victory over the Eastern enemies. The hieroglyph group to the left presents the proper name ‘Jakurjan’; it seems uncertain whether it refers to the artist behind the drawing of the scenery or maybe the owner of the label (and, indexically, of the Object to which the label may have been attached). This leaves the last, small, central hieroglyph group reading ‘They shall be finished!’. This text item, situated

Figure 15.6 Decipherment of the King Den tablet.

434

Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Peircean Semiotics

in the space intermediary between the two fighting opponents, probably indicates an oral utterance on the part of the pharaoh about his slain or soon-tobe-slain enemy, reassuringly addressing the reader (and maybe his own army) and referring to the enemy in the third person: ‘They shall be finished’. Pharaoh and enemy, of course, are metonymies of their respective armies, which did the actual fighting. Kammerzell and Peust state: The document shown in [this figure] is not only the first case of a recorded speech report in Ancient Egypt – and probably in human history as well – but also marks the onset of a long tradition in Egypt of associating written texts rendering the contents of a speech with depictions representing the respective speaker. Its typological similarity to modern comic strips is astonishing. 2002: 294

We return to co-localization in comics below. Thus, the fourth hieroglyph group of this label might be the first historic appearance of what we now call a speech bubble – in the sense of recorded speech cited within the confines of a picture by placing the cited utterance close to the person supposed to pronounce it – expressing, along with the Den figure, a joint proposition which may be paraphrased as ‘King Den says: “They shall be finished!” ’, one proposition nested within another. The drawn bubble itself is a later pictographic invention, of course,18 but the fact that early Egyptians dealt in quotes of recorded speech is supported by the appearance, a couple of centuries later, of various types of quotation marks the hieroglyphic use of which is traceable all the way down to the fourth century ce (Kammerzell and Peust 2002: 295–296). The label is doubly remarkable. One thing is the early appearance of multimodal propositions, combining drawn figures with text in order to make assertions. It is obvious that the four propositions are presented, implicitly, as conjunct, so that if each of them is true, their conjunction will be true: ‘This label (owned or drawn by Jakurjan) depicts the first victory over the East, in which King Den beat the enemy, exclaiming “They shall be finished!” ’ Another notable feature is the four different functions of co-localization within one and the same sign, effectively constituting four elementary propositions. If the analysis given is correct, there is an overall proposition taking the whole scenery as its Predicate, identified by the Subject headline claiming that this depiction refers to the first victorious battle against the Eastern enemies. On a lower level, then, is the identification of the main character inside the picture – standard painting-with-a-legend – and on an even lower level of enunciation, then, there follows the utterance by the pharaoh so identified. More

Co-localization as the Syntax of Multimodal Propositions

435

uncertain is the role of the last, leftmost proper name, as we do not know who the individual Jakurjan might have been, but it seems certain it does not colocalize with any particular part of the depicted content, so the most obvious conclusion is that it refers to some person’s relation to the material sign vehicle of the label as a whole, maybe identifying its creator. There does not seem to be a fixed set of conventions for the placement of the text in relation to the pictures – with the possible exception of the ‘headline’ to the right. The two text items ‘in’ the picture seem to function immediately by means of their relative proximity to the royal figure. It might be objected that the spoken sentence is no closer to the king than to his enemy; indeed, it is closer to the mouth of the latter than of the former. Still, naming one figure but not the other seems to act as a sort of scope sign that indicates that what is said is produced by the named figure, the main character of the picture. These analyses suggest two ideas: (1) co-localization may be used to attach a number of Subject tokens to a Predicate picture, each with different grammatical roles; (2) co-localization may display structured levels of enunciation so that some co-localized messages occur within a scope defined by higher-order such messages – here: (a) headline of whole picture -> (b) figure named -> (c) figure speaking. If the proper name is indeed the artist, he may be added at the uppermost level of enunciation, as the author of the whole quoted three-level structure, effectively giving four distinct levels of enunciation.

Co-localization in comics and diagrams Kammerzell and Peust point to the structural similarity between the Den label and modern comics. In present-day comics, cartoons, caricatures, etc., we do actually find different types and levels of co-localization propositions. Figure 15.7 display the initial frames of a Donald Duck classic, Carl Barks’ ‘Only a Poor Old Man’ from 1952. The opening splash panel’s picture with Donald witnessing Uncle Scrooge money-diving in the fortunes of his money bin comes with a handful of colocalized text items. Just as Scrooge is foregrounded in the picture, his name is foregrounded in the title complex to the upper left, effectively tying the two of them together in one proposition, simultaneously naming and describing the main character of the frame (and of the story to follow). Just as in the Den label case, the named central figure produces an utterance: ‘I dive around in it like a porpoise!’ – the first of Scrooge’s classic triad of mottos about money gymnastics,

436

Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Peircean Semiotics

Figure 15.7 Introductory Donald Duck image sequence (© Disney).

the other two lines following in the next two frames. As in the Den case, the other animate figure – here Donald Duck – remains silent. And here, too, there is a higher-level statement forming a proposition along with the whole scenery: the voice-over narrator in the upper middle box speaking directly to the reader: ‘If you had a fortune of umpteen-centrifugillion dollars, what would you do with it? Well, rich old Scrooge McDuck has that much money, and this is what he does with it!’ – effectively forming the parallel to the right-side headline in the Den label case. Finally, as in the Den label, a proper name is also added at the margins of the whole scenery – that of Walt Disney. In this case, a genitive s indicates that Uncle Scrooge as a figure belongs to him, in some sense. He certainly did, as Disney held the copyright to the Scrooge figure, but we should not mistake this

Co-localization as the Syntax of Multimodal Propositions

437

for him creating the character. While Disney did create Donald, it was his employee Carl Barks who created Scrooge (and wrote and drew all the early stories about him), although he was never credited as an author in his own creations and only gradually became known after his retirement in the sixties. If Jakurjan refers to the owner of the label (and its attached object), rather than to the draughtsman, we may have a similar structure there, with the artist remaining anonymous in the drawing. The text complex at the upper left adds another function, one not present in the Den label, for obvious reasons – a reference not to the present frame exclusively but to the whole ensuing narrative which has no equivalent in the Den label: the Hollywood convention of ‘starring’ in a movie is mimicked in the circle giving the overall title of the whole story ‘Only a poor old man’. But parallels to all of the four co-localization propositions of the Den label are actually found in this Duck comics frame. In the next frame, yet another function is introduced, that of sounds emanating from events and actions within the picture: the ‘Blubbidy Blub’ of Scrooge’s ‘under-money’ breathing. While a modified speech bubble here indicates the animate source of the sound, more generally event sounds are depicted as emanating directly from their acoustic source in the picture – the relevant event often highlighted by motion lines – so the ‘CRASH!’ is presented close to two colliding objects, effectively constituting the proposition that the event drawn sounds like indicated. Kammerzell and Peust were indeed right when they pointed to the structural similarity between the Den label and modern comics, with respect to the amount and types of co-localized propositions. But picture-with-legend types of dicisigns are not restricted to pictorial representations in any narrow sense. The vast realm of different types of diagrams also makes use of the syntax of co-localization. Take geometrical diagrams (Figure 15.8), for example. Here, lower-case a, b and c refer to the three sides of the triangle respectively, effectively saying ‘this side is called a’, etc., while the capital letters A, B, and C, in turn, refer to the three angles in so many similar propositions. In this case, the propositions act as stipulative definitions – the meaning is that in the proof to follow, the line segments and angles will be referred to after the naming convention given by the six such propositions of the diagram.19 Look at the letter ‘B’ – it is a little closer to the two adjacent sides than it actually is to the angle summit. But this does not make the observer doubt that it refers to the angle, partly because the two sides are already named, but also because of the fact that the angle summit, as a singularity, holds a special diagrammatical prominence. Very often, in diagrams, singularities are pointed out for some reason by means of arrows, line crossings, small point-like line segments, etc., and equipped with

438

Figure 15.8

Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Peircean Semiotics

Diagram of a geometrical triangle.

some name or description so as to form label propositions. Take the Cartesian plane on Figure 15.9, for example. The integers, of course, refer to the singularities marked on the axes by means of small, perpendicular line segments marked with smaller line breadths – and not to points infinitesimally close to those singular points, even if they are no farther from the number tokens. The ‘1’ refers to the singular point indicated, not to the value one micrometre to the right of that point. ‘0’ refers to the intersection point of the origo, and thus doubly refers to both axes, while ‘x’ and ‘y’, neither of them close to any marked singular point, are easily taken as higher-level references to the variables of each of the two axes as a whole. All of these signs constitute propositions when taken together with their co-localized points. Such contents, of course, are processed so quickly, easily and below the threshold of consciousness as usually to escape attention. What really interests a diagram

Figure 15.9 A Cartesian plane.

Co-localization as the Syntax of Multimodal Propositions

439

reader, of course, is the shape of the curve and what it communicates about the relation between the x and y variables – but in the finer details of the machinery of meaning making such interpretation possible, co-localization plays its indispensable role at many places in the diagram. The diagram type of maps is equally impossible without co-localization. Figure 15.10 is a segment of a topographical map of southern Germany. Cities are not points, but they are comparatively small enough that they or their city centres are depicted by tiny circles, and their names are communicated by putting one end of the token of their name close to the localization of the city symbol token on the map, like, in this case, ‘Straubing’ and ‘Regensburg’, the latter with a larger symbol and the name in a larger typeface to indicate it belongs to a class of larger cities. River names are written in parallel to the streams they refer to (and, using iconicity, in the same blue colour). Over the whole of the section, the landscape or region name ‘Falkensteiner Vorwald’ is spatialized so as to indicate that this forest name does not refer to any particular quasi-singularity on the map, but rather (unlike the city name case) to the whole extended area covered by the name. All of these names, co-localized in different ways with partial area depictions on the map, constitute so many propositions: ‘Here sits Regensburg’, ‘Here flows Donau’, ‘Here spreads the Falkensteiner Vorwald’. Thus, it should come as no surprise that maps, in general, make truth claims. They may

Figure 15.10 Segment of a topographical map of southern Germany. Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported licence. Attribution: Thomas Römer.

440

Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Peircean Semiotics

be erroneous (like early maps of North America taking California to be an island), they may be outdated (old maps failing to represent recent motorways), they may be deliberately deceptive (like falsified military maps leaked to the enemy), they may be too coarse to be truthful for certain purposes (the Germany map appears as if no villages existed), etc. – different types of falsities which go to show that in general, maps are intended to be truthful and so possess a truth value. Of course, they may be true in some respects, false in others, just as with a linguistically articulated text. They assert that a named area has the structure depicted, and that particular points, lines and subareas of the map refer to significant substructures of the landscape of the same reference names in reality. As is evident from these trivial examples, such propositions are extremely elementary, to the point that most comics readers, diagram interpreters, map users, etc., automatically process such propositions unproblematically, most often without being aware of it. I am slightly embarrassed to annoy the reader with examples this simple. It is, however, to prove my point: if there is anything strange here, it is the unrecognized ubiquity of this co-localization propositional sign function and the considerable ease with which such propositions are uttered, read, interpreted, and acted upon. And, of course, the strange thing that such signs have generally not been categorized as propositional, this having most often been taken as the privilege of a much more restricted set of linguistically expressed truth claims only.

Framing – the topological character of co-localization As already indicated above, co-localization of Subject and Predicate in a proposition could not simply be the issue of a short metric distance between them. A Subject sign on one side of a newspaper page may be micrometres from a Predicate sign on the flip side, but this short distance does not unite the two into a proposition. Co-localization is rather topological in a sense to be further explored. The space in which the two parts or functions of a proposition are colocalized is a connected neighbourhood or field – connexity being the elementary property of topological spaces, and the presence of such a field must be communicated and recognized in some sense by the sign interpreter, explicitly or implicitly. If co-localized inside such a connected field, the two sign tokens of Predicate and Subject may fuse into a proposition while another sign token, even if metrically located very closely nearby, does not so fuse if not included in the particular, connected field.

Co-localization as the Syntax of Multimodal Propositions

441

In the graphical 2-D formalism for logic representation called Existential Graphs (EGs) which Peirce developed from 1897 onwards, the sheet on which the representations for logical structure are drawn is called the ‘Sheet of Assertion’ or the ‘Phemic Sheet’, representing in an implicit, ‘undeveloped’ sense all the true propositions of the given Universe of Discourse. Writing particular propositions, predicates, logical relation symbols on the Sheet corresponds to photographically developing some of the propositions implicitly given and making them explicit. In Peirce’s conventions for the EGs, the presentation of two propositions side by side means their conjunction (he first experimented with the alternative ‘Entitative Graphs’ where the same co-localization meant their disjunction, but he gave up that version because he considered it more iconic if co-localization of propositions meant ‘and’ rather than ‘or’). Furthermore, we could add, choosing the first option selects the convention which is operative in most actually occurring co-localized propositions ‘in the wild’ where propositions placed within the same frame are most often taken to be conjunct (at least, if relations such as negation or disjunction are intended, they seem to require further spatial conventions or the addition of special signs). This issue of the co-localization of several propositions and the higher-level meaning of such juxtapositions is a different issue, of course, from the more elementary co-localization constituting those propositions in the first place (which is addressed, as we saw, in the Beta predicate logic part of EGs where ‘Lines of Identity’ take care of connecting Predicates and Subjects to form propositions). Thus, both the elementary constitution of propositions from Predicates and Subjects and the simple logical operation of conjunction of several propositions are performed by two differently marked versions of co-localization (with and without an additional special sign, respectively). In a certain sense, then, our notion of a ‘connected propositional field’ is a generalization of Peirce’s concept of Sheet of Assertion (or, vice versa, Peirce’s concept forms a special, abstracted, technically more precisely defined, version of such fields). In comparison to the linguistic case, simple versions of the connected field here correspond to the sentence or period of linguistically expressed propositions, although in larger-scale cases, such as the topographical map, the comprehension of it may make a comparison to the whole text page or a text section more pertinent. Both levels of co-localization expressed in Peirce’s EGs may appear ‘in the wild’: the co-localization of Subject and Predicate to constitute propositions, and the co-localization of propositions to constitute conjunctions. An important issue here is if and how other logical relations than conjunction are presented in co-localized propositions ‘in the wild’ (in ordinary or formal

442

Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Peircean Semiotics

languages, of course, special constructions in the shape of word classes or explicitly designed signs take care of such possibilities, of course). Disjunction may sometimes be expressed by a list or a side-by-side presentation of parallel possibilities, e.g. ‘first goal scorer’ in a particular soccer match where odds for the different, mutually exclusive outcomes are presented in a list of individual players with their respective odds for scoring the first goal. A standard pictorial way of expressing negation is, of course, the crossing-out of the negated content or proposition – or the addition of the negation words like ‘no’, ‘non’, ‘never’ or the minus symbol, etc., to a diagram or picture. Spatial sequential presentation may be used to express implication (such as in the ‘before-after’ images in certain types of marketing). Initially the sequence may appear to be temporal only, but it is really conditional (if you use our product then the ‘before’ conditions will disappear to the benefit of the ‘after’ conditions, as in photographs of the same man with a bald head and another with more hair, in that sequence). Subsumption may be indicated by Porphyrian trees, explicitly or more implicitly – or by means of a superordinate level expressed by an upper proposition in large font, and a subordinate level with smaller font: OXFORD UNIVERSITY Bodleian Library – expressing the Rylean fact that the Bodleian Library constitutes a part of Oxford University. Thus, it is certainly not the case that other logical functions than conjunction cannot be more or less spontaneously expressed in a connected propositional field in the wild by different means – the bottom line is that they seem to require special contexts or further conventions to deviate from the standard conjunction which prevails between several expressed propositions as a default value. A more elementary question is: by which means can the presence of a connected propositional field be recognized? An explicit marker to delimit and define such a topologically connected field is that of the frame, often explicitly expressed by means of a printed or drawn line or a material limit, in other cases implicitly present only. Take the examples of the Egyptian label and the cartoon above. In both cases, there is an immediate and easily palpable limit of the connected space allowing for the expression of propositions. In the King Den label, it is simply the edge of the small ivory tablet which constitutes, simultaneously, the limit of propositional space. The flip side contains a space of

Co-localization as the Syntax of Multimodal Propositions

443

its own with another expression, the double sign there assumedly meaning ‘sandals’ or ‘wine’ which constitutes a proposition of itself, in contradistinction to the propositional complex on the front side dealing with the king’s military achievements. In many cases, such a material border immediately constitutes the topological space within which a proposition is synthesized – the tombstone’s physical limits, the edge of a book cover, the rim of a metal traffic sign, the limit of the poster or billboard, the edge of the blackboard or of the programme window or the whole of the computer screen. The early development from papyri scrolls to parchment codices takes us from a simple case where the limit of propositional space is the edge of the long sheet of papyrus to the convention that a number of similar-shaped parchment or paper bits bound together constitute one coherent, sequential propositional space addressable by what is characteristically called ‘scrolling’ through the book. Take the book cover as example (Figure 15.11). It most often contains at least three co-localized text items – the title of the book, its author, and its publisher, effectively coming together in the proposition: ‘This book is Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, written by J.K. Rowling, published by Bloomsbury’.20 Very often, there is a difference in font size indicating a hierarchy between the co-localized information. Here, author and title share the same typeface, but the main character part of the title appears in large font with the author next and the subtitle third, all sharing the same column so that line length determines font size. The publisher, in a slightly different font, does not share the column, indicating information on another level. Very often, the proposition is supplemented by further illustration (here, a photo of a red mineral supposedly the stone of the title) adding further information about the book’s contents to the final, synthetized proposition complex of the front cover. You may ask: but is all of this not only an issue of ‘association by contiguity’, the standard psychological notion for the process of connecting ideas perceived in close spatio-temporal juxtaposition? In a certain sense, yes, but the reason why such an analysis is correct, but not sufficient, is that the propositional complex is not just a symmetric association between several ideas – it is asymmetric and has a truth value: it actually claims that this book is Harry Potter, written by Rowling, etc. If, by some publishing house error, the author of that book was given as Daniel Defoe on the cover, Bloomsbury would have to withdraw the book from the market in order to correct the error. As in the book cover case, various pragmatic contexts have developed subgenres where we expect a certain set of propositional information given. In a tombstone (Figure 15.12), the name and lifespan of the deceased is the standard

444

Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Peircean Semiotics

Figure 15.11 The cover of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone.

label attached to the place beneath which the coffin or urn containing the remains of the person concerned is buried.21 Sometimes, additional information can be attached, maybe his or her occupation, maybe an additional expression of the emotions of the relatives left behind, maybe a quote, maybe a small pictorial symbol, a cross, an angel, a bird, rarely much more than that. In other cases, like that of posters and homepages, less fixed-genre structures are present. Very often though, the feature of a ‘headline’ is used, making a high-level proposition referring to all that follows, indicating that the main theme is that announced by the uppermost text bit in large graphic font. The cartoon example shows a different strategy from material framing: a line separates a subspace from a larger connected field, and within this graphical

Co-localization as the Syntax of Multimodal Propositions

445

Figure 15.12 The Peirces’ tombstone, Milford PA (author’s collection).

frame, Predicates and Subjects may come together to synthesize into propositions. In cartoons, the standard technical term for the drawn rectangle (more rarely, circle or other closed curve) segregating the proposition field is indeed ‘frame’, and what we are addressing here is framing in an elementary, topological sense of the word (not in the widespread, more metaphorical version of the term where it refers to contextualizing a message in different significant ways). Here, it involves cutting out a topological field of propositionality, in which the different signs presented are presumed to be fused in the characteristic way giving rise to propositional truth claims. The cartoon frame is a convention, claiming that what is depicted inside it is a scene actually happening, taking place over a relatively short period of time, ranging from the snapshot instant to maybe around ten seconds of time (exceptional cases may extend this time limit

446

Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Peircean Semiotics

by various tools, but here we address the typical cartoon frame). An immediate idea might be that cartoon frames are rather like drawn snapshots of an event, but that is really only rarely the case. The presence of speech bubbles in many if not most cartoon frames ensures that the frame depicts a moment lasting at least as long as it takes to utter the sentences represented. Often, the turn-taking of a dialogue segment is presented in one frame with a number of speech bubbles representing so many lines spoken, effectively claiming that this conversation takes place in the sequence as recorded by the speech bubbles, often with an implicit time vector in the reading direction (first lines represented in the top of the frame to the left, later replies represented lower and more to the right). Another means of ‘stretching’ the moment is movement lines of different sorts, indicating a temporal sequence of an object’s displacement within the frame. We shall not go deeply into comic frame conventions here;22 these remarks serve simply to give the idea that the proposition complex which the frame frames does not relate to an instant without extension, but rather to the extended moment of the events of a brief scene which the comics proposition claims to happen. Another sort of framing is that from which the general concept borrows its expression: that of physically crafted frames added to and enclosing the selected topological space, well-known from the different painting frames of art history. Such frames emphasize the margin of the propositional field and makes it conspicuous that what is inside really differs from non-propositional space around it. As an extended object, the frame may develop into a subspace of its own, adding further content to the space inside it. The decoration of the frame, e.g. with ornament, gilding, etc., may ennoble the propositions expressed by the canvas or by the canvas-plus-frame complex in various ways, just as the frame gives an extra space which may be used for propositional purposes – like the addition of the name of the person portrayed, or, in other cases, the location of a landscape painting or, more generally, the title of the painting. Such a frame, of course, may be copied in the sense that it may be drawn, printed or otherwise reproduced on a piece of paper, a computer screen or elsewhere. The ornamentation of the frame adding some kind of elevation, celebration or even sacralization of the proposition inside it has its special prehistory in the cartouche, having an early root in the Egyptian tradition of presenting the names of gods or rulers in an oval enclosure.23 In many Middle Eastern and Western traditions, this developed into the funeral cartouche ennobling the name of the deceased inside it; later a branch of the cartouche tradition identified it with a stylized military shield, giving rise to the heraldic tradition of armouries for noble houses

Co-localization as the Syntax of Multimodal Propositions

447

(with all of the special, narrow conventions of their representation of ancestry, titles and territories) as well as to the tradition of military insignia characterizing the weapon, building or person labelled by them – and expressing the proposition that they belong to this or that regiment or other military unit. Such ornamented frames thus add more or less explicit further claims to the basic proposition expressed within their confines. The presentation of the topological field permitting the fusion of Predicate and Subject may use still other means. In the geometric examples above, there was no frame indicated (apart from the implicit one of the text column or book page on which they appear). They manage instead to present the topological space by means of the synthetic unity of the figure itself. The triangle is a closed, finished Object floating in an indefinite, empty space, and the letter names of its parts are given with the same typeface, adding to the unity of the figure. Quite different is the Cartesian plane, which is, in principle, open in all four directions indicated by the axes, even if, very often, only the upper right quadrant corresponding to positive x, y-coordinates is made explicit. Still, the figure of the Cartesian plane is so widespread and entrenched that it has become a stable sign, so to speak, able to stand its ground and synthesize its parts, all in order, of course, to serve the understanding of the points or curves represented in it (in a certain sense, the Cartesian plane is, in itself, a particular kind of frame giving meaning to those points and curves expressed in the metrical field given by the axes). Thus, certain propositional picture-text complexes may be so traditionalized as to be in no need of further framing around them in order to be understood as synthetic proposition-bearing topological fields. The curve itself is a proposition claiming a specific relation between x and y; in empirical cases, many statistical apparatuses have been developed in order to grant the most well-supported curve connection between data points given, effectively forming a general assertion uniting the particular assertions stated by each data point. Another way of establishing the topological field for co-localization is stylistic. Using the same typeface, for instance, for the different messages assembled in a poster, an advertisement or a homepage, is a way of indicating that all these messages address the same state of things in the same universe of discourse (as Peirce would say), so that the area over which they spread, an area often also containing non-linguistic sign material, is a topologically connected propositional space. Such stylistic unity may be achieved by a multitude of means: typeface, shape, colour, common historical, geographical, ethnic reference (e.g. period typefaces for period films). In the Bloomsbury title reproduced above, such stylistic unity is ensured by picking the same typeface for the three text bits.

448

Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Peircean Semiotics

The explicit, adorned frame and the stylistic unity as markers of propositional topological space are examples of cases where the sign explicitly communicates that it is indeed a sign. This gives some substance to Peirce’s potentially surprising claim from the Syllabus: namely that the proposition not only makes a claim about some fact or state of things, but it also makes a claim about the sign itself, a claim that it is a sign which stands in a certain, indexical connection to its Object, in turn granting its truth. This might occur as a strange, over-complicated claim about simple linguistic or painting-with-a-label propositions. But the very delineation of a topological field of propositional expression in the middle of the ordinary perceptual field forms exactly such a self-reference. Stylistic unity basically communicates this – all of the content stylistically synthesized is indicated as belonging to one and the same topological field and should be interpreted together as a propositional complex referring to the same complex of facts in the same universe of discourse. Take again the trivial example of traffic signs. Before any particular message of theirs is expressed, the road user has first of all to acknowledge that here is a sign. Such a message is conveyed by means of the structurally similar design of all traffic signs. They are composed from a strict selection of few focal colours (typically red, white, black for the most important ones, going into blue and yellow for the less important ones, while green and brown are used to a lesser degree and orange and purple almost never), printed with strongly reflecting paint on metal so that they light up in the dark when hit by car lights. Their design is stylized, often with simple shapes (round, rectangular or triangular) and a broad frame or rim enclosing their message. All of these features of the traffic sign serve to communicate, before any particular propositional content of the single sign type, that this is a propositional sign, as a first message intended to make the road user take a closer look and try to understand the sign’s further message. Therefore, Peirce’s insistence, in his deduction of the Dicisign, that propositions involve a self-reference is supported by this observation that, in actually occurring signs, the very establishment of the topological field of co-localization in the eyes of the interpreter is dependent upon the sign first communicating that it is indeed a sign. That it is indeed a sign, furthermore, which claims to be a truthful index of its Object, as Peirce says, is often underpinned by institutional means. In traffic signs, their expensive, standardized and stylized character points to public traffic regulation and the authority and government-funded policy behind them (a bit like the peacock’s famous tail as a sign of its health, strength and good genes) as a guarantee that their signalling is generally truthful and can indeed be taken as an index of road conditions as well as of the enforcement of traffic rules (there is an obstacle

Co-localization as the Syntax of Multimodal Propositions

449

on the road ahead, and authorities will try to punish you if you do not slow down, etc.)

Co-localization and linguistics The general issue of connecting Predicate and Subject is an issue of syntax, Peirce said, but different from linguistic syntax. That is certainly correct, but the question is whether this difference is categorical and refers to two completely different modes of conjunction, or whether it is rather a difference of degree. I tend to opt for the latter. Some of the label examples we have discussed (the book front cover, the tombstone) may make use of linguistic items only, and many multimodal propositions unproblematically include linguistic parts. On top of that comes the fact that linguistic syntax proper only holds within the confines of the sentence, the elementary linguistic field of co-localization. As soon as we pass into transphrastic linguistics – the combination of sentences into periods, periods into sections, sections into genre-structured texts, etc. – we are dealing with the co-localization of linguistic items within that especially restrained field of co-localization which is the one-dimensional string of lexemes. But the isolation of that string is, in itself, to some degree an artifice of text linguistics. Take books, for example. The book consisting of text only, in one one-dimensional ‘tube’ from (but not including) the title page to the final one, is, in the larger perspective, an exception rather than a rule. Illustrated texts, books, magazines, newspapers, internet pages, texts including paintings, photos, drawings, prints, diagrams in the shapes of maps, graphs, tables, matrices are, in the larger perspective, the multimodal semiotic rule rather than the exception. On top of that, such illustrations most often are also accompanied by paratext fusing with them to constitute propositions of their own, so that illustrations are not the secondary, auxiliary means added besides the main text as they are sometimes understood to be – indeed, in many scientific papers, diagrams form the centre of attention, and the accompanying text rather serves to make understandable that central synthesis of data, hypotheses and theory which is presented in a synthetical diagram. Linguists may accept such claims but add the counterargument that such issues are really the concern of pragmatics, an additional, tertiary discipline pertaining to language use, after the more crucial ones of syntax and semantics, forming the centre of the study of signification. The great irony here is that this very taxonomy – syntax-semantics-pragmatics – actually arose from Charles Morris’ reinterpretation of Peirce’s logico-semiotic

450

Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Peircean Semiotics

triad of speculative grammar, critical logic and methodeutic or rhetoric. But to Peirce the pragmatist, pragmatics would never come last in any sense of being secondary or least important. To him, syntax and semantics (or semiotics and logic, as he would rather call them), are motivated through and through by their pragmatic purposes so that the isolation of them may indeed be a practical tool for focusing investigation but not an ontological claim for their autonomy and priority. In this light, we should rather conceive of linguistic syntax as a very special case of more general propositional co-localization, often restricted to a one-dimensional space and with the sophisticated development of a large number of linguistic tools to articulate propositions more unanimously, process them quicker, make possible a recursive hierarchy of propositions talking about other propositions, cross-identify items across levels, etc. A linguistic tradition which may point in this direction is that indicated by the so-called localist hypothesis discussed in linguistics for some centuries and which recently has enjoyed a renaissance within cognitive linguistics (cf. Talmy, Langacker, etc.).24 A basic idea in this context is that central syntactico-semantic issues like case structure and prepositions should be understood in spatial terms; perhaps there is even a spatial element in most or all of semantics. In our multimodal examples (like the Egyptian tablet and the comics frame), the roles of the linguistically represented Subject terms, filling in slots around a central pictorial Predicate, may easily be paraphrased by prepositional or case grammar means. The label theme is about the first victory over the East, Den is the name of the king, the exclamation of victory is uttered by the king, and the label is owned or drawn by Jakurjan. This being the case, what would, linguistically, be expressed and linearized by means of prepositions or grammatical cases, is multimodally expressed (albeit in a less precise or explicit manner) by different types of colocalization. A corollary of Peirce’s hypothesis is that propositions are no privilege of language – propositions of many sorts abound outside of language, and they existed long before human language (cf. the discussion of biosemiotics below). In such an overall conception, language appears instead to be a late, hyperspecialized, detailed, strongly controlled and restricted version of a colocalization field, giving rise to new levels of precision, processing, speed, and recursion. But what is indeed the basis of the ubiquity of propositions originating in colocalization? My contention is that this very basic status of the co-localization syntax of propositions can be described in two registers: an ontological or metaphysical register and, empirically, in a phylogenetic, biological register. Let us take the empirical case first.

Co-localization as the Syntax of Multimodal Propositions

451

Co-localization in biosemiotics In biosemiotics25 my contention is that Peircean signs will be found from the most primitive beginnings of semiotics among bacteria. Therefore, I reject the idea that simple signs occurred early which later combined into more complicated signs. Rather, the opposite picture: that primitive versions of all Peircean signs are there from the beginning. Primitive propositions enable organisms to be informed about relevant aspects of their environment, and primitive arguments permit them to draw action inferences based upon inherited habits, in an Uexküll perception-action cycle, important for their survival. I do not claim consciousness need be involved; we have no stable criteria yet to establish the presence of consciousness in other species, especially not in species very different from our own. Isolated icons or indices could not serve an organism in any way if no proposition interconnected such signs to provide information, or if no argument permitted the inference from that information to subsequent action. Sign evolution rather takes place by adding further layers of control, e.g. by means of the evolution of consciousness; further articulation and subdivision of primitive propositions and arguments; further dimensions of freedom in the individual ontogenetic learning of signs. Many people frown at this generalization of ‘proposition’ and ‘argument’ which they prefer to keep as linguistic and human privileges. I take that to rely upon unfounded anthropocentrism and, conversely, a wish to construe biological semiosis as much too close to simple mechanical causal chains, ultimately making Cartesian automata of animals. I shall not go further into that discussion in this context.26 In what follows, I apologize for giving a general, speculative draft only, as well as for revisiting central biosemiotic examples already often covered: the nutrition hunt by the E. coli, the mating signals of fireflies, the aposematic scare signs of wasps, honey bee communication, etc.27 As is well known, E. coli bacteria have the ability to detect the presence of carbohydrates and orient their swimming in the direction of the carbohydrate gradient.28 That ability relies on simple sensory organs able to identify carbohydrates from a specific ‘active site’ on the periphery of the macromolecule. That lies behind their possibility of error, for noncarbohydrates with the same active sites exist – like artificial sweeteners – which give rise to the same behaviour in the bacteria. In this case, the Subject will be the actual molecular interaction establishing the contact between the sensor and the molecule, the Predicate will be the active site shape classification of ‘sugar’ (as opposed to the classification of certain toxins which is also within E. coli capacity). In our context, the important feature is that the Predicate, given by the

452

Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Peircean Semiotics

character of the active site, is attached to the Object, indeed is a peripheral part of it. In this way it constitutes a very primitive case of ‘labelling’ – rather like a sack with the word ‘sugar’ upon it, apart from the fact that no-one is here communicating with the bacterium. There is no distance between sign and Object, and the former is a specific part of the latter. I suggest that there is reason to believe that in most primitive cases, proto-propositions are labels in the sense discussed here. In such cases, there is not yet any marked field of co-localization because co-localization is here taken care of by the elementary mereological structure granting that the sign, as a part of the object, is automatically colocalized with it. Firefly mating signals are, by contrast, communicative – they are also labels in the sense that the Subject (the flashing light against a dark background) and the Predicate (the species-specific flash pattern identifying the kind of insect flashing) are both emitted in the here-and-now window of communication from the body of the communicator about which they also inform. Still, some distance is introduced: there is no immediate chemical contact between the two parties which comes only later. But Subject and Object are co-localized as aspects of one and the same signal whose extension forms an emerging if brief, spatiotemporal field of co-localization. In the wasp aposematic example, the yellow-and-black striping is recognized as a signal of danger across species, scaring predators from attacking the poisonous wasp. As in the firefly example, the sign claiming that it is a sign has made the appearance: the sign has evolved so as to stand apart from its nonsemiotic surroundings – there are generally few natural flashes in the dark, and the yellow-black combination stands out against green foliage and grey-beigebrown-black colour range of the ground. In this way the striping communicates that it is a sign, and the proposition it claims is something like ‘This is a dangerous creature’. Here, too, the strategy is an example of labelling, the pattern being part of the communicating animal itself. In the case of an animal leaving scent marks to delimit a territory, the proposition presented to competing conspecifics can be paraphrased along the lines of ‘This territory belongs to the originator of this particular scent’. In relation to the territory, this proposition is a label, but not so in relation to the animal which may be far away at the time of its rival interpreting the sign. Both, however, form aspects of one and the same sign which approach a minimal field of co-localization. The same goes for the predator tracing its prey from involuntarily left traces like footprints, scent marks, etc., – here it goes without saying that the prey has left behind propositional signs interpreted by the predator, signs which preserve a here-and-now index serving as

Co-localization as the Syntax of Multimodal Propositions

453

the Subject of the proposition combining with a Predicate, the species-revealing composition of the smell or shape of the prints, to give something like ‘a hare was here’ – and, in combination with several such signs: ‘it left in that direction’. Therefore, I imagine that biological evolution began with very simple, non-communicative label propositions, only to evolve into full, communicative propositions with possible absence of the Object, with the development of long-distance perception possibilities like smelling, hearing, vision and their subsequent integration into environmental maps which E. coli could not at all be said to possess. This anecdotal summary of some biosemiotic cases should not count as evidence, rather as giving an overall scheme for the possible evolution of propositional signs emerging from simple labels where propositional interpretation is closely tied to simple sensation in direct Object contact, in a certain sense, an extreme co-localization. An important constraint, however, seems to prevail, all the way up to human semiotics – namely the small spatio-temporal window in which the synthesizing cognition of co-localized Subject and Predicate is possible. Here, I owe much to my Estonian colleague Kalevi Kull who has insisted upon bringing Ernst Pöppel’s concept of the present into biosemiotics. A large amount of biosemiotic sign exchange takes place based on habits acquired on an evolutionary timescale of at least many thousands, more often millions of years. Yet, the actual sign exchange takes place typically in the matter of seconds. The male firefly flies around in the dark, emitting flashes, while the females sit, perched in the grass, responding. This dialogue sequence takes place in the present now and may lead to the male diving in order to meet the female. This exchange, in which the Subject-Predicate couplings are performed by the two genders, take place in a very brief time window. Already insects may artificially extend this window by some short-term memory, as when the honey-bee is able to inform her conspecifics in the cube, by means of ‘waggle dancing’, about nectar she has found several hundred metres away, several minutes or maybe even hours ago. This communication has a very detailed propositional content – paraphrasable as ‘Nectar can be found 150 metres away in the direction of 25 degrees from the present position of the sun’. The bee is even able to correct for the sun’s movement since the initial time of observation. This obviously requires a pretty impressive amount of short-term memory, considerably enlarging what can be communicated about. But again, the very sign exchange spreading the crucial information to her colleagues and combining Subject and Predicate in the waggle dance, is performed by the bee in the present now shared with the fellow bees watching. Here, the waggle movement – which is used during communication only – communicates that the sign is indeed a sign, and the relatively small spatio-temporal extension of that

454

Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Peircean Semiotics

movement forms an early example of a field of co-localization where the two object-identifying subject indices, direction (relative to the sun) and the distance (the length of the dance) are expressed simultaneously (the Predicate ‘nectar’ being implicit). This relatively small extension of the communicative time window, probably rarely much more than a matter of seconds, appears as the temporal equivalent to the delimited extension of the spatial, topological field permitting the unity of Subject and Predicate. As Kull says, referring to the development of the concepts of ‘moment’ and ‘specious present’ in K.E. von Baer and William James: ‘. . . the existence of the specious present is coextensive with semiosis’ (Kull 2018: 137). Human spoken language exploits a similar time window, losing cohesion and meaning if more than a number of seconds elapse between the uttering of each word.29 With the evolution of central nervous systems, of cross-modal integration of perceptions (so that different sense modalities may be perceived as referring to one and the same object), of hard-wired propositional parsing of perceptions,30 of short-term memory, of ontogenetic learning adding to inherited habits, of semantic memory, of episodic memory, of explicit syntheses in consciousness – with a long series of evolutionary scaffolding achievements, the abilities of detailed understanding and acting in this brief time window are multiplied immensely. The experiential, perceptive-active core at the centre of semiotic activity, however, seems to remain tied to this rather small time window of perceptual processing, the spatial correlate of which seems to be the delimited topological field of co-localization. In a certain sense, then, co-localization is essentially spatio-temporal and given by the perceptual experience window, the more precise size of which depends upon the species discussed. This is not to deny that higher animals may have both short term, long term and semantic memory and maybe even to some degree episodic memory, all of which support coherent or even planned activity in time and space stretching far beyond that small spatiotemporal window – but still these abilities seem to merge, fuse or synthesize experiential moments with, in each case, far more restricted spatiotemporal extension. But in that delimited spatio-temporal extension, the central synthesis of Subject and Predicate of general propositions takes place.

The ontology of propositional truth It is well known that the notion of ‘truth’ has been the subject of centuries of philosophical debate, attempts at redefinition and even at eradication seeking to

Co-localization as the Syntax of Multimodal Propositions

455

replace it with ontologically less demanding notions (based on coherence, consensus, regularity, utility and more). The notion of truth inherent in Peirce’s general concept of proposition may merit a consideration in the context of the ontology of propositions. It also is well known that Peirce was a realist in no fewer than two senses: (1) a basic scientific sense, in which reality is that which is independent of any particular representation of it; (2) a more ambitious, ‘scholastic’ sense, claiming the reality of certain universals, particularly those investigated scientifically – the competing notion being nominalism claiming that all universals are but human-invented, imposed labels with no fundamentum in re.31 These realisms provide the backdrop of Peirce’s theory of facts – which are, in present-day parlance, the truthmakers of propositions:32 (1) The truth of a proposition is independent of who thinks or utters it; (2) True propositions exist which involve general terms – which is Peirce’s basic reason for accepting that some of these general terms must possess reality. This can be called truthmaker realism: If a certain fact holds, the correspondent proposition claiming that fact, is true. Indeed, the whole of Peirce’s edifice is based on the Kantian idea of beginning with assuming the existence of true propositions and defining ontological commitments from the principle that the real is that which is presupposed by true propositions. Facts are correlatively defined as so much of reality as is represented by a true proposition. This Peircean conception contrasts with the more general notion of ‘occurrence’, which is some spatio-temporal section of reality. A fact, by contrast, is a part of reality which is structured like a proposition.33 Two important caveats should be added here, an ontological and a sociological. Peirce does not, by this theory, subscribe to any doctrine about ‘elementary facts’, ‘logical atoms’ or anything which in this way assumes some fixed ontological bottom. Facts may occur at all levels of reality, from mathematics through logic and metaphysics to all of the special sciences, physics, biology, psychology, history and so forth. This is directly connected to his logical theory, whose doctrine of reference is inherited from de Morgan and Boole’s notion of ‘universe of discourse’. Any proposition is related, more or less explicitly, to a universe of discourse which is some selected subset of reality or imagination (but imagination itself is a special, dependent part of reality). Universes of Discourse may range from containing all possibilities, over all reality past and future to the here and now, over the various realms investigated by each special science and to very select and local subsets such as the room in which I am now, the confines of this chapter you are now reading, the fictive world of Uncle Scrooge – and the truth of propositions is thus always relative to some such Universe of Discourse. In the Duckburg universe it is simply false to claim that

456

Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Peircean Semiotics

Donald is the world’s richest duck. This in contradistinction to Russell’s and Wittgenstein’s rigid and simplistic idea that the Object of logical propositions is invariably the whole of reality and that their ultimate truth grant must lie in ‘logical atoms’ or anything like it. To the special and typical speech act function of asserting a proposition Peirce interestingly gives a pragmatic, sociological definition: by asserting something, one makes oneself liable to sanction from relevant authorities if the assertion proves false.34 If I claim that Donald is the world’s richest duck, I shall earn stern rebuke from comic lovers and Carl Barks scholars alike. If, as an academic, I knowingly publish falsified data or ‘fake news’, I may be subject to severe retribution, including the termination of my position. If I falsify signatures in documents, I may face prosecution under criminal legislation. And so on. This criterion seems to corroborate the widespread appearance of multimodal propositions across human society in so far as a vast number of cases can be found in which such propositions have been taken, socially, as truth claims found to contain errors meriting sanction.35 In biology, the failure of an organism (or species) to process propositional information and act appropriately may lead to individual death and collective extinction. In a certain sense, the doctrine of co-localization propositions comes with fairly strong ontological claims, in the sense that it accepts both of Peirce’s conceptions of realism. In another sense, the co-localization hypothesis does not come with strong particular claims to ontology, leaving it to the special sciences to determine which universals in multimodal propositions correspond, in fact, to real kinds, patterns, tendencies or causes. Even ontological sceptics may embrace important and central parts of the theory, however, restricting themselves to accepting Peirce’s sociological doctrine of assertion. There is hardly any doubt possible that social sanction of many different kinds is indeed put to effect against a vast array of falsities expressed by means of co-localized propositions in Peirce’s generalized sense, from white lies and rather innocent deviations from truth to severe cases of intentional and systematic deceit, fraud and cheating. In order to understand such systems of sanctions, no matter whether one finds them just or condemnable, Peirce’s general doctrine of propositions will be helpful. But a general corollary of a Peircean doctrine of co-localization as the general syntax of multimodal propositions will be: many more empirical sign complexes than usually assumed actually carry truth claims and should be investigated as such in our analyses of semiotic exchanges of nature and culture alike. Thanks to Francesco Bellucci, Frank Kammerzell, and Ole Togeby for lucid comments.

Co-localization as the Syntax of Multimodal Propositions

457

References Barks, C. 1983–1990. ‘Only a Poor Old Man’, in The Carl Barks Library, Vol. 3, Scottsdale: Another Rainbow (org. in Uncle Scrooge, #386, March 1952). Barks, C. 2003. Carl Barks: Conversations, D. Ault (ed.). Jackson: Mississippi University Press. Bateman, J., J. Wildfeuer and T. Hilppala. 2017. Multimodality: Foundations, Research and Analysis – A Problem-Oriented Introduction, Berlin/Boston: Walter de Gruyter. Bellucci, F. 2017. Peirce’s Speculative Grammar: Logic as Semiotics. New York and London: Routledge. El-Hani, C., J. Queiroz, and F. Stjernfelt. 2010. ‘Firefly Femmes Fatales. A Case Study in the Semiotics of Deception’, Journal of Biosemiotics, Vol. 3(1) 33–55. Fortis, J.-M. 2011. ‘On Localism in the History of Linguistics’, http://htl.linguist.univparis-diderot.fr/_media/fortis/fortis_on_localism.pdf (accessed 26 September 18). Hoffmeyer, J. 2008. Biosemiotics: An Examination into the Signs of Life and the Life of Signs. Scranton PA : University of Scranton Press. Hoffmeyer, J. and F. Stjernfelt. 2016. ‘The Great Chain of Semiosis: Investigating the Steps in the Evolution of Biosemiotic Competence’. Biosemiotics, Vol. 9(1) 7–29. Hookway, C. 2002. ‘ “. . . a sort of composite photograph”: Pragmatism, Ideas, and Schematism’, Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society, Vol. 38, (1/2) 29–45. Kammerzell, F. and C. Peust. 2002. ‘Reported Speech in Egyptian: Forms, Types and History’, in T. Güldeman and M. von Roncador (eds). Reported Discourse: A Meeting Ground for Different Linguistic Domains. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 289–322. Kress, G. and T. van Leeuwen. 2001. Multimodal Discourse: The Modes and Media of Contemporary Communication. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Kull, K. 2018. ‘On the Logic of Animal Umwelten: The Animal Subjective Present and Zoosemiotics of Choice and Learning’, in G. Marrone and D. Mangano (eds). Semiotics of Animals in Culture: Zoosemiotics 2.0, 135–148. Kull, K., T. Deacon, C. Emmeche, J. Hoffmeyer, and F. Stjernfelt. 2011. ‘Theses on Biosemiotics: Prolegomena to a Theoretical Biology’, in C. Emmeche and K. Kull (eds). Towards a Semiotic Biology: Life is the Action of Signs, London: Imperial College Press, 25–41. Østergaard, S. and F. Stjernfelt. 2013. ‘FONK! HONK! WHAM! OOF! Representation of Events in Carl Barks – And in the Aesthetics of Comics in General’, in N. Pedri and L. Petit (eds). Picturing the Language of Images, Cambridge MA : Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 483–508. Pietarinen, A. (in press). Charles S. Peirce: Logic of the Future: Peirce’s Writings on Existential Graphs. Pöppel, E. and Y. Bao. 2014. ‘Temporal Windows as a Bridge from Objective to Subjective Time’, In V. Arstila and D. Lloyd (eds). Subjective Time: The Philosophy, Psychology, and Neuroscience of Temporality, Cambridge: MIT Press, 241–262.

458

Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Peircean Semiotics

Queiroz, J. and F. Stjernfelt (guest editors, in press), special issue of Semiotica on ‘Peirce’s Extended Theory and Classifications of Signs’. Smith, B. 1999. ‘Truthmaker Realism’, Australasian Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 77(3), 274–291. Stjernfelt, F. 2002. ‘Tractatus Hoffmeyerensis: Biosemiotics as Expressed in 22 Basic Hypotheses’, Sign Systems Studies, Vol. 30(1), 337–345. Stjernfelt, F. 2007. Diagrammatology. An Investigation on the Borderlines of Phenomenology, Ontology, and Semiotics. Dordrecht: Springer. Stjernfelt, F. 2014. Natural Propositions: The Actuality of Peirce’s Doctrine of Dicisigns. Boston: Docent Press. Stjernfelt, F. 2015. ‘Green War Banners in Central Copenhagen: A Recent Political Struggle Over Interpretation – And Some Implications for Art Interpretation as Such’, in P. Bundgaard and F. Stjernfelt (eds). Investigations Into the Phenomenology and the Ontology of the Work of Art: What are Artworks and How Do We Experience Them?. London: Springer Open, 209–224. Stjernfelt, F. 2015a. ‘Dicisigns’, Synthese 192(4), 1019–1054. Stjernfelt, F. 2015b. ‘Iconicity of Logic – and the Roots of the “Iconicity” Concept’, in Hiraga, M. et al. (eds). Iconicity: East Meets West (Iconicity in Language and Literature). Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 35–56. Stjernfelt, F. (in press). ‘The Identity of Sweet Molly Malone: Dicent Indexical Legisigns – a New Element in the Periodic Table of Semiotics?’ Talmy, L. 2000. Toward a Cognitive Semantics, I-II, Cambridge: MIT Press.

Notes Introduction 1 Some of the material for this presentation of Peirce the man is drawn, and indeed repeated in certain cases, from Jappy (2013). 2 ‘Know that from the day when at the age of 12 or 13 I took up, in my elder brother’s room a copy of Whately’s ‘Logic,’ and asked him what Logic was, and getting some simple answer, flung myself on the floor and buried myself in it, it has never been in my power to study anything,—mathematics, ethics, metaphysics, gravitation, thermodynamics, optics, chemistry, comparative anatomy, astronomy, psychology, phonetics, economic [sic], the history of science, whist, men and women, wine, metrology, except as a study of semeiotic’ (SS: 85–86, 1908). 3 Peirce Edition Project, ‘Chronology’: www.iupui.edu/~peirce/peirce/chron.htm (Retrieved September 2018). 4 ‘Bien loin que l’objet précède le point de vue, on dirait que c’est le point de vue qui crée l’objet’ Saussure [1916] 1972: 23. Roughly translated: ‘It’s not at all the object which precedes the point of view; rather, it’s the point of view which creates the object’. 5 See, for example, this extract from a letter written by his friend and benefactor William James and quoted by Gallie 1952: 38: ‘As for Charles Peirce, it is the most curious instance of talents not making a career. He dished himself at Harvard by inspiring dislike in Eliot . . . He is now so mature in character, with rather fixed half-Bohemian habits, and no habit of teaching, that it would be risky to appoint him. I yield to no one in admiration of his genius, but he is paradoxical and unsociable of intellect, and hates to make connection with anyone he is with.’ 6 But see Deely (2006) for a robust defence of the ‘semiotic’ variant. Note that the idea of deriving semiotics from logic was not new. Locke had already made the association in the final chapter of Book Four of the Essay Concerning Human Understanding, though he was almost exclusively concerned with verbal signs: ‘Thirdly, the third branch may be called Σεμιοτική, or the doctrine of signs; the most usual whereof being words, it is aptly enough termed also Λογική, logic; the business whereof is to consider the nature of signs the mind makes use of for the understanding of things, or conveying its knowledge to others. For, since the things the mind contemplates are none of them, besides itself, present to the understanding, it is necessary that something else, as a sign or representation of the thing it considers, should be present to it; and these are ideas’ (Locke [1690] 1964: IV, xxi, 4).

459

460

Notes

7 See Fisch 1982: 139. 8 He later informed Lady Welby that he had modified this ‘old division’ in order to make it applicable to signs generally (SS: 33, 1904), a task which he had accomplished by 1885. 9 American Journal of Mathematics v. 7, n. 2: 180–202, 1885; EP1: 225–228. 10 Peirce borrowed the distinction from Jeremy Bentham (CP 8.199, 1905), dividing sciences into ‘cenoscopic’, the abstract, general sciences, as opposed to the ‘idioscopic’ sciences, which were specialized, required equipment, etc., and contributed to the advancement of knowledge by establishing new facts. 11 ‘I essay an analysis of what appears in the world. It is not metaphysics that we are dealing with: only logic. Therefore, we do not ask what really is, but only what appears to everyone of us in every minute of our lives. I analyze experience, which is the cognitive resultant of our past lives, and find in it three elements. I call them Categories’ (CP 2.84, 1902). 12 See Jappy 2013, Chapter 4, for a discussion and illustrations. 13 Within Peircean semiotics see, for example, Jakobson ([1965] 1971), Pharies (1985), Haiman (1985) and Shapiro (1998). 14 From Peirce’s Logic Notebook, R339: 239v. Although to be found on a page dating from 1904, the sketch clearly refers back to the ten classes of 1903.

Chapter 2 1 Peirce’s original terms ‘semiosis’ and ‘trirelative’ were shown in parentheses in Qian’s analysis. 2 Here, Qian directly cited the Collected Papers, which is the first time that Peirce’s work was quoted by Chinese scholars. 3 For more information about semiotics at Sichuan University, see: www.semiotics.net. cn/index.php/group.

Chapter 3 1 Peirce defines these verbal indices as ‘sub-indices’. Unlike true indices, which are singular, individual and existential sinsigns, these verbal referring expressions are indexical legisigns and therefore general (CP 2.284, 1903). 2 Some of the material in this section is drawn from Jappy (2018c). 3 A slightly different version of the concept of the commens is to be found in the ‘Prolegomena’ text of 1906, where Peirce refers to two quasi-minds which become as one in the signifying process: ‘Moreover, signs require at least two Quasi-minds; a

Notes

4

5 6 7 8 9 10

11

461

Quasi-utterer and a Quasi-interpreter; and although these two are at one (i.e. are one mind) in the sign itself, they must nevertheless be distinct. In the Sign they are, so to say, welded. Accordingly, it is not merely a fact of human Psychology, but a necessity of Logic, that every logical evolution of thought should be dialogic’ (CP 4.551, 1906). The two quasi-minds provide a logical context for signification. For Peirce the term ‘utter’ had a more general sense than simply to produce verbal signs: ‘To signify that a person puts forth a sign whether vocal, ocular, or by touch, —and conventional signs mostly are of one or other of these three kinds or by taste, smell, and a sense of temperature which are the media of many natural tests and symptoms, —I like the word utter’ (R793: 14, 1906). In this way, painters and photographers can be considered as ‘utterers’. See Jappy 2016: 67–72 for a discussion and references. Jappy (2018a) discusses and illustrates intentionality in two cases of transmodal iconoclasm. E.g. Savan (1988: 53), Anderson (1995: 140), Freadman (2004: 160), Short (2007) and Bellucci (2018: 334–335). Peirce never constructed a table of this typology and never set out his tables across the page as on Table 3.1. His usually consisted of three vertical columns. See Chapter 5 of Jappy 2016 for a discussion. Herewith Peirce’s analysis of the first sign: ‘For instance, suppose I awake in the morning before my wife, and that afterwards she wakes up and inquires, “What sort of a day is it?” This is a sign, whose Object, as expressed, is the weather at that time, but whose Dynamical Object is the impression which I have presumably derived from peeping between the window-curtains. Whose Interpretant, as expressed, is the quality of the weather, but whose Dynamical Interpretant, is my answering her question. But beyond that, there is a third Interpretant. The Immediate Interpretant is what the Question expresses, all that it immediately expresses, which I have imperfectly restated above. The Dynamical Interpretant is the actual effect that it has upon me, its interpreter. But the Significance of it, the Ultimate, or Final, Interpretant is her purpose in asking it, what effect its answer will have as to her plans for the ensuing day’ (EP2: 498, 1909). For a discussion of how the theoretical framework of semiosis of 1908 justifies the iconicity of metaphor introduced by Peirce in 1903, see Jappy (2018b) and Jappy (2019).

Chapter 4 1 For other studies on the classification of the sixty-six classes of signs, see Weiss and Burks 1945; Farias and Queiroz 2003, 2006; Sanders 1970; Merkle 2001; Romanini 2006.

462

Notes

2 Peirce 1908: EP2: 483–491; 1908: CP 8.353–365; Weiss and Burks 1945; Sanders 1970; Müller 1994; Liszka 1996; Merkle 2001, Queiroz 2002; Farias and Queiroz 2003, 2006; Borges 2009, 2010, 2014. 3 For a more detailed view of this process, which involves the whole system of sixty-six sign classes, see ‘Confidence through the semiotic process’, Borges, in press.

Chapter 5 1 My discussion in this chapter is primarily based upon, synthesizes, and at times incorporates parts of the following interconnected essays that engage in different ways Peirce’s aesthetic relevance: ‘Dimensions of an Aesthetic Encounter: Perception, Interpretation, and the Signs of Art’ (2007), ‘Minding Feeling’ (2010), ‘The “Quality” of Philosophy: On the Aesthetic Matrix of Dewey’s Pragmatism’ (2011), ‘Signs of Feeling: Susanne Langer’s Aesthetic Model of Minding’ (2011), ‘The Reach of the Aesthetic and Religious Naturalism’ (2012), ‘Peirce’s Categories and Langer’s Aesthetics: On Dividing the Semiotic Continuum’ (2013), ‘Dewey’s Peircean Aesthetics’ (2014). 2 Parabase Freudig war vor vielen Jahren[Happy I was many years ago] Eifrig so der Geist bestrebt,[So eagerly does the spirit strive,] Zu erforschen, zu erfahren,/[To examine deeply, to experience,] Wie Natur im Schaffen lebt./[How Nature lives in creative doing.] Und es ist das ewig Eine,/[And it is the eternal One,] Das sich vielfach offenbart;/[That reveals itself multifariously;] Klein das Große, groß das Kleine,/[Small is the Great, great is the Small,] Alles nach der eignen Art./[Everything according to its kind.] Immer wechselnd, fest sich haltend,/[Always changing, while persisting,] Nah und fern und fern und nah;[Near and far and far and near] So gestaltend, umgestaltend – [So forming, then transforming] Zum Erstaunen bin ich da.[Astonished stand I there before it all]. [My translation.] Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: Berliner Ausgabe. Poetische Werke [Band 1–16], Band 1, Berlin 1960 ff, 542–543. 3 I am aware that there are other divisions of objects and interpretants such as the division of objects into dynamic and immediate and interpretants into immediate, dynamic, final. They play a rather different role in Peirce’s systems of triads by

Notes

463

introducing a hexadic framework for the further classification of signs. Whether and how their theoretical upshot or epistemological point can be exemplified in different ways with sufficient pay-off is a question eminently worth pursuing. I will advert at times to their aesthetic implications and relevance in what follows, but one should turn to Jappy’s 2017 for indications of how to proceed. 4 In James Bunn, Wave Forms: A Natural Syntax for Rhythmic Language (2002: xii–xiii) we find the following passage characterizing the deep structures of art and nature: Why should literary and artistic people interest themselves in the sometimes recondite theory of symmetry? In every art form one finds a rhythmic pattern as a base. These patterns, though formal, are everywhere evidence of material in action. Principles of symmetry provide a way of explaining how aesthetic patterns are enactments of the very principles that structure the universe in rhythmic patterns. Every artwork, whatever its nature, is constructed of materials that make the patterns develop at the same deep level as the laws of physics and biology. Perhaps the most important thesis is that the principles of symmetry can help explain the ways that nature distributes patterns as stabilizing structures. If symmetry conserves structures in rhythmic patterns of material, works of art also should enact those same kinds of harmonic principles but in wonderfully strange and sometimes discordant harmonies of form. So a fair answer to the question is, I believe, that symmetry theory can explain why the arts are not just an ‘add-on’, but that they demonstrate in different media and by different enactments the ways that the world works, moves, and stabilizes itself in rhythms. What I have called natural syntax is a way of describing these physical transformations of pattern.

Chapter 7 1 Peirce was certainly familiar with Poe, but whether Poe’s character influenced Peirce’s notion of abduction is unclear (CP 6.460, 1908). Poe is considered the originator of the detective genre in its modern form and was certainly an influence on Conan Doyle’s creation, Sherlock Holmes. 2 Although the vocabularies are different, and nuances abundant, this distinction between story and plot has a long tradition backwards to classical sources and forward to more modern and contemporary thinkers. Aristotle defines plot (mythos) as the organization of characters and events in the story (De Poetica, 1450a5). The Russian formalists, such as Viktor Shklovsky, made the distinction between fabula and syuzhet, the former defined as the events in the story, and the latter, the way in which the story is organized, often associated with plot (Shklovsky, 1965). Similarly,

464

3

4

5 6

Notes

Seymour Chatman makes a distinction between histoire, the stuff out of which a narrative is constructed and the discourse, the organization of those elements (1978, p. 19). Narratologists, such as Mieke Bal, make more subtle distinctions. She avoids the term ‘plot’ in favour of fabula, understood as ‘a series of logically and chronologically related events that are caused or experienced by actors’ (2004, p. 5). Events and actors are elements of the fabula. The fabula is distinct from story, which is the manner in which the fabula is presented (2004, p. 5). Aspects of the story may include things, such as changing the sequential order of events in the story, focalization, choice of scene and place, among others (2004, p. 78). In First and Last Things (1908), Wells utilized ideas he gleaned from James: ‘Wells puts the case that all beliefs must be provisional. Since we need beliefs of some sort, he adopts the pragmatic view that where they cannot be established scientifically they must be justified by personal effectiveness . . . taking his cue from . . . William James’ (Sherborne, 2010: 188). This is certainly consistent with Peirce’s fallibilism and his pragmatic maxim, which places an emphasis on the meaning of concepts in terms of their ‘practical bearings’. In turn, James quotes Wells’s First and Last Things in his (James’s) ‘The Moral Equivalent of War’ (Smith, 1986: 242; see also Murray, 1990: 59, 163). In his 1917 work, God the Invisible King, Wells references conversations with William James (Smith, 1986: 230). In a pamphlet written around the same time, The Idea of the League of Nations, Wells borrows the phrase ‘The Moral Equivalent of War’ as the centrepiece of his argument (1919: 42). Founded in 1882 in Britain and 1885 in North America, the SPR distanced itself from the more outlandish of the Spiritualist groups and ostensibly eschewed any claims to the supernatural. Though many scientists rejected Spiritualism as so much superstition, others, some of them quite eminent, argued that occult phenomena should be investigated as one would any other phenomena, and the SPR was founded to do just that. The SPR published findings in the periodical The Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research, as well as the two stand-alone volumes in 1886 and 1894 reviewed by Peirce and Wells respectively. Peirce insisted on predesignation of the outcomes of a hypothesis in order to avoid confirmation bias (CP 5.584, 1898). As the prominent historian of statistics, Stephen Stigler, notes, Peirce can be seen as standing in a continuous line with Francis Galton, Francis Edgeworth, and Karl Pearson, and then on to the modern frequentists, Jerzy Neyman and Pearson’s son, Egon (1978, p. 240). See also Isaac Levi: ‘Peirce’s inductions are inferences according to rules specified in advance of drawing the inferences where the properties of the rules which make the inferences good ones concern the probability of success in using the rules. These are features of the rules which followers of the NeymanPearson approach to confidence interval estimation would insist upon’ (1980: 138). Among the many contributions Peirce made to statistics, Michael Rovine and

Notes

465

Douglas Anderson argue that he developed a precursor to Karl Pearson’s correlation coefficient, which measured better the regression to the mean theory than his teacher, Galton, had made. They also note that the work of Peirce’s close friend, Henry Bowditch, predated Galton’s work on correlation tables, and which he communicated to Galton (2004). Peirce had made a negative review of Pearson’s Grammar of Science, but the dispute was mostly metaphysical. He believed that Pearson had characterized science too nominalistically. Peirce, as is well known, was a strong realist in this respect. In the review, he also mentions some disagreement with Pearson’s statistical theory, but he does not specify what it is (CP 8.155, 1901). 7 Though he does not mention ‘Mr. Marshall’s Doppelgänger’, Keith Williams sees the doppelgänger theme as an indication of film’s influence: ‘the prevalence of Doppelgänger themes in Wells and contemporaries suggests a wider anxiety within the cultural climate, not just about psychic duality, but about such virtual duplication, particularly intensified by the coming of film’ (2007: 34).

Chapter 9 1 SAE International is a US-based professional association for engineers and standards developing organization concerning the mobility industry such as automotive, aerospace, and commercial vehicles: www.sae.org/. 2 Involved in the overall cyber-physical system of the self-driving car combining computation, communication and control. 3 A GNSS receiver is an electronic device; it receives signals from a satellite constellation; by digitally processing the signals from the satellite constellation the position, velocity, as well as time of the receiver can be conveyed. 4 Owing to limitations of space we will not here go into the third perspective; not that we do not believe that this perspective is as important as the two first-mentioned perspectives, reasoning and the technological artefact per se and reasoning and the design of technological artefacts; however, because we are here trying to work from a ‘programmatic point of view’ we believe it is best to ‘take first things first’: namely – those technological artefacts which perform reasoning must reason first before they can be used; and all technological artefacts must, obviously, be designed before they can be used. 5 The description below concerning the design of the interior of a self-driving car is inspired by looking into how big international automobile manufacturers involved in developing self-driving cars describe their interior design processes. 6 Without going further into the fact that the inductions performed by the self-driving car, of course, are made possible by deep learning and, consequently, the development of neural networks.

466

Notes

Chapter 10 1 Herewith a number quotes concerning the concept and use of the iconic diagram by Peirce: ‘All valid necessary reasoning is in fact thus diagrammatic’ (CP 1.54, 1896); ‘there are three kinds of signs which are all indispensable in all reasoning; the first is the diagrammatic sign or icon’ (CP 1.369, 1890); ‘the particular requisite to success in the critic of arguments is exact and diagrammatic thinking’ (CP 3.406, 1892, my emphasis). ‘Exact logic will be that doctrine of the conditions of establishment of stable belief which rests upon perfectly undoubted observations and upon mathematical, that is, upon diagrammatical, or, iconic, thought’ (CP 3.429, 1896, original emphasis). ‘What we have to do . . . is to form a perfectly consistent method of expressing any assertion diagrammatically’ (CP 4.430, 1903). ‘Diagrammatic reasoning is the only really fertile reasoning’ (CP 4.571, 1906); ‘All necessary reasoning without exception is diagrammatic’ (CP 5.162, 1903). ‘Now the clue . . . consists in making our thought diagrammatic and mathematical, by treating generality from the point of view of geometrical continuity, and by experimenting upon the diagram’ (CP 6.204, 1898). 2 Quotes from The Collected Papers of Charles S. Peirce have been made in accordance with the established standards: CP, for the title, followed by the volume number and the paragraph referred to. 3 ‘Even without Kant’s categories, the recurrence of triads in logic was quite marked, and must be the croppings out of some fundamental conceptions’ (CP 4.3, 1898). 4 The notion of ‘social practice’ is proposed by Louis Althusser in his book Pour Marx (1965 [1973]). Althusser recognizes, within the social practice, three classes of practices: the theoretical or ideological practice, the economic practice and the political practice. If we recover the Peircean categories, we can see how each of the social practices corresponds to Firstness, Secondness and Thirdness, respectively. It is very possible that this reasoning occurred to Althusser in the seminars that François Recanati dictated in Paris, on Peirce. 5 In her doctoral thesis, Cristina Voto (2016) proposes to consider the nine boxes of the semiotic nonagon as intersections, which is consistent with Peirce’s philosophy and with the proposed terminology: FF, EF, VF, etcetera. 6 ‘Semiotic object’ is the nomenclature proposed by Magariños de Morentin (2008: 50) for Peirce’s immediate object. On this concept, see also: CP 2.293, 1902; 4.536/539, 1906; 5.238/241, 5.286, 1868–1893; 5.473, 5.501, 1905; 6.393, 1901; 8.16/17/18, 1871; 8.183, 1903; 8.261, 1905; 8.314, 1909; 8.336, 1904; 8.343/344/354/355/367, 1908. 7 Anticipating what will be discussed later, Perspective – Dürer and Brunelleschi, 1500 – Monge System – 1800 – and Graphic Language TSD – Jannello and Guerri, 2000. Perspective is specific for habitability – Thirdness – Monge System is practical for construction – Secondness – and TSD for understanding the strategy of form

Notes

8 9

10

11

12

13

14

15

467

as a ‘grammar’, as the aesthetic aspect of Architecture – Firstness – (Guerri 1984; 2012). Most likely, the day the difference will be known, that is, what cancer really is, it will also be possible to cure it definitively. Despite the importance of these kinds of expertise, and the disastrous effects their absence can have on housing and on cities, this is a knowledge that is mostly not integrated into the curriculum of architectural schools. Not in Peircean logic order, because at that time – and due to lack of criteria for structural calculation – the main Vitruvian concern was that constructions do not fall down: firmitas. Peirce seems to explain the semiotic proposal of the graphic language TSD: ‘We form in the imagination some sort of diagrammatic, that is, iconic, representation of the facts, as skeletonized as possible’ (CP 2.778, 1902). ‘[The] purpose of the System of Existential Graphs, [is] to afford a method (1) as simple as possible (that is to say, with as small a number of arbitrary conventions as possible), for representing propositions (2) as iconically, or diagrammatically and (3) as analytically as possible’ (CP 4.561, 1906). ‘. . . mathematical reasoning is diagrammatic. This is as true of algebra as of geometry’ (CP 5.148, 1903). Jannello started with the first phase of this research – the Morphic Paradigm – in the 1970s and called his idea Theory of Delimitation (1984 [1988]: 483–496). At that time, the concept of graphic language was not imaginable. Three is not a fortuitous coincidence, but a necessary relation to Peircean logic. Anyway, the history of knowledge will show the same results for Vitruvius (Table 10.4), for colour – hue (Firstness), intensity (Secondness), chromaticity (Thirdness) – for music – timbre, intensity, pitch, etc. A complex configuration is a set of simple configurations that allow describing a pure design operation. Again, Peirce seems to explain it avant la lettre and very clearly: ‘What we want . . . is a method of representing diagrammatically any possible set of premises, this diagram to be such that we can observe the transformation of these premises into the conclusion by a series of steps each of the utmost possible simplicity’ (CP 4.429, 1903; emphasis added). ‘The entire graph, or all that is drawn on the sheet, is to express a proposition, which the act of writing is to assert’ (CP 4.430, 1903). The Semiotic Nonagon has since been tried in other collaborative studies with William Huff, including defining basic design, Three Bauhaus Masters (2007a, www.academia.edu/30686076/TresMaestros_DESIGNIS_2007.pdf ), Yves Klein’s Monochrome (2007b) and Louis Kahn. Amended again, The Treatment of Color, analysed through the Nonagon, was presented at two congresses on colour [GAC, Buenos Aires 2004; AIC, Granada 2005], and based on a proposal by Frank Hess, the 27-box Nonagon was redesigned in a leporello shape that can be seen at

468

Notes

www.academia.edu/16332326/A_Comprehensive_Treatment_of_Color_Submitted_ to_the_Semiotic_Nonagon.

Chapter 11 1 The ideas in this chapter were initially presented at two conferences: ‘Drawing at the University Today’, University of Porto, Portugal (2013); and The Charles S. Peirce International Centennial Congress (2014). Some of this material was published in the proceedings of the Porto conference edited by Paulo L. Almeida, Miguel B. Duarte, and José T. Barbosa and in a special issue of the journal, PSIAX, 2017. Another chapter which addressed these topics was published in an anthology following the Peirce Centennial: Peirce on Perception and Reasoning: From Icons to Logic, Kathleen A. Hull and Richard Kenneth Atkins (eds) (2017). I will also address these topics in: Drawing Instruction for Cognition, Creativity, and Communication Across Disciplines: The Case for Learning to Draw in the Digital Age, Routledge Taylor & Francis Group (in process). I am indebted to Dr Israel Scheffler, Harvard University, who first introduced me to Peirce in his course, ‘Four Pragmatists’; to Dr Michael Shapiro for initiating me into Peirce’s semeiotics in his Columbia University course, ‘Interpretation’; and to Tullio Viola, University of Berlin and co-editor of Das bildnerische Denken: Charles S. Peirce, Berlin: Akademie Verlag, for revealing to me Peirce, the drawer. I wish to thank Dr Shapiro and Professor Tony Jappy for their helpful feedback on an earlier publication and on the present chapter. Also, thanks to Dr Ted Cooke and Dr Shari Tishman for their comments and encouragement, and, again, to Professor Jappy for inviting me to contribute to this volume. 2 For Peirce’s relevance in the visual age, see: ‘Preface’, Hull and Atkins (2017), pp. vii–x. 3 Published in Jastrow, J. (1900). 4 See: Henshilwood et al. (2018). 5 As a relatively recent example of this centuries-old tradition, when Professor Alf Ward, formerly the Chair of the Department of Art and Design at Winthrop University where I taught from 1993 to 2017, attended Gravesend School of Art (UK) in the late 1950s and early 1960s, he was required to take at least one threehour drawing class, four days per week for his entire four to five-year undergraduate programme, and one three-hour class two days per week for the two years of his advanced (i.e. masters) degree in metalsmithing at Canterbury College of Art. Drawing was also infused into other classes at the time, including painting and art history. Prior to enrolling full-time at Gravesend, Ward had already taken drawing classes at the School for two years on Fridays and Saturdays. Earlier still, he said he drew regularly in elementary school and took four years of technical drawing in high school. Ward is from Dartford, Kent, a largely working-class city where, he says,

Notes

469

technical drawing was taught, not to prepare students to be architects, but to work in local factories. Ward credits his training in drawing for his future career in fine arts, product design, and his graduate-level concentration, jewellery and metals (he has silver pieces in the Victoria and Albert Museum and in the collection of the Queen) (personal communication). Under Ward’s leadership, the Winthrop Art and Design programme in the mid-1990s increased its drawing requirements for all Bachelor of Fine Arts (BFA) students by adding a figure drawing class to the two Foundation (first year) drawing classes. Twenty years later, Figure Drawing and Drawing II requirements were dropped, following national and international trends, with some programmes having no drawing requirement at all. Where drawing is taught, instruction frequently differs from school to school and teacher to teacher (see notes 6 and 11). 6 The creative-cognitive conception of drawing may go back as far as Ancient Egypt (Andreu-Lanoë, 2013), where the Pharaoh’s draftsmen, called ‘scribes of contour’ or ‘scribes of form’, served tasks ranging from designing and ornamenting royal tombs to planning public festivals. Petherbridge revives this traditional view of drawing in her belief that ‘[d]rawing is the basis of all art and visual thinking’ (2012: 2). In the Renaissance, the creative-cognitive conception of drawing was embodied in the term, disegno, a word that ‘. . . encompasses the meanings [in English] of both design and drawing’ (Bambach, 2017: 15). This more expansive term accommodated the application of drawing as thinking to the range of uses to which it had always been put, in mathematics, natural science, engineering, etc. Beyond that, disegno also had a metaphysical interpretation aligned with Neoplatonism, in which, through drawing, artists and others could access the realm of divine forms, or ‘ideas’ (Panofsky, 1968). Given this conception of drawing, Renaissance drawing schools were called ‘academies’ after Plato’s peripatetic school of philosophy (Pevsner, 1973). These were informal gatherings where the principal activity was drawing from sculptures that exemplified what was considered divine form and proportions. In time, these informal academies evolved into formal institutions where artists, architects and designers were trained to execute commissions for church and state. Instruction aimed at inculcating not only technical skills in rendering but also a neo-classical aesthetic acquired by copying classical and Renaissance models. The earliest account of drawing as part of general education dates back to ancient Greece, when the ‘chief activity consisted in drawing from live models’ and the ‘chief object of drawing instruction [according to Aristotle] was to make the students judges of the beauty of the human form’ (Efland, 1990, p. 12). By contrast, required drawing courses during the Industrial Revolution including those taken by Ward, focused on ‘design drawing’, ‘technical drawing’, or ‘mechanical drawing’ to prepare students for jobs in manufacturing (Logan 1955; and Efland 1990). Patrick Maynard (2005:7) explains the importance of technical drawing to the modern world, saying, that without such

470

7

8 9

10 11

Notes

drawings, ‘it is hard to see how there would be a modern world. For there would be neither the kinds of technological thinking nor the kinds of manufacture that make industrial and post industrial societies possible, nor their use and maintenance.’ This attitude is captured by a New Yorker cartoon in which an unsympathetic teacher points accusingly at a young boy doodling at his desk, with the caption: ‘Wasting precious class time like that will get you precisely nowhere in life’. By Donald Reilly, The New Yorker 7 December 1998. See, for instance: http://neatoday.org/2014/09/02/the-testing-obsession-and-thedisappearing-curriculum-2/ [Accessed: 3–5–19]. In the introduction to Robert Beverly Hale’s Drawing Lessons from the Great Masters (1964/2009), Stewart Klonis, Executive Director of the Art Students League of New York, described mid-twentieth century trends in regard to figure drawing classes, especially, saying: ‘[a] kind of fever had attacked even the best known art schools. In many places where art was taught, drawing was slighted and even neglected completely’ (1964/2009: 11). To contrast academic and modernist methods of instruction, see Goldstein (1996), Chapter 13, ‘Teaching Modernism’. Peter Schjeldahl (2018), art critic for The New Yorker, recently put it this way: ‘Today . . .“art” has come to mean anything that you can’t think of another word for . . .’ See also, Lyotard (1979). The difference between academic drawing instruction, drawing instruction under modernism, and postmodern instruction with or without drawing was encapsulated in a 2015 exhibition at the École Nationale Supérieure de BeauxArts de Paris. The exhibit, entitled TRANSMISSION recréation et repetition, juxtaposed artefacts from academic art training from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries and modernist art studies from the early twentieth century against the work of current students and contemporary artists. Examples of academic instruction included figure drawings and perspective studies, as well as a cast made from a sculpture by Houdon, Écorché au bras levé (1776), one of thousands like it used by art students across the western world to study anatomy. The modernist tradition was represented by abstract geometric drawing exercises taught by Bauhaus-trained artist and teacher, Josef Albers, in the United States at Black Mountain College and Yale University (Goldstein, 1996). Although the work of Albers and his students was itself a stark contrast to what was done in previous centuries, both parts of the historic display clearly demonstrated the rigour, relative uniformity, and explicit standards that were hallmarks of earlier art instruction. By contrast, the contemporary work reflected a vast diversity in aesthetics and media, including drawings, but also photos, videos, installations, performance art, etc. Two drawings reflect the range that might be seen in postmodern exhibitions anywhere. First is Mladen Stilinovic’s: Bol (kriz)/Pain (cross) 1989 (‘pain’ in French means ‘bread’) a 20.5 by 29.2 cm sheet of rough beige-ish drawing paper (probably

Notes

12 13

14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23

24 25

471

newsprint), without a frame with hand-drawn (in pencil) vertical and horizontal lines crossing each other in the middle of the page and the hand written word ‘BOL’ written at the end of each line. Second is: Air d’Olympia, dit de l’automate, 2013. A mural-sized image, 2.30 m high x 8 m long, a complex and ambiguous digital image depicting a female robot clothed in a plastic-looking white suit with black trim, repetitively depicted whole and in parts, in multiple poses and combinations against a background of intricate white lines against a black ground, which may be meant as a technical drawing of circuitry or else a city planning drawing. The author says it brings together drawing, photography, and lyric singing, notably Offenbach’s ‘Tales of Hoffmann’. In Basta (2015). See, for example, Levin (2002) and Sheer (2014). The emphasis on art as self-expression reflected both artistic and educational trends and extended from early childhood (e.g. Pestalozzi and Froebel) to pre-professional preparation in fine arts. It reflected expressionism in art and also related to art therapy (e.g. Cane and Naumberg). The latter was ‘deeply influenced by Freudian ideas about repression and the ways it can lead to neurotic behavior’. Efland (1990: 200–201). See www.nytimes.com/2008/07/24/technology/24iht-PTHELP24.1.14700575.html [Accessed: 21 September 18] For a pre-internet version of this concern, see London, P. (1989). See, for example, Gardner and Davis (2013). See https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL79A5264A0ADED746 [Accessed 3 May 19]. See www.drawing-research-network.org.uk. See www.thinkingthroughdrawing.org [Accessed: 14 September 18] See http://stemtosteam.org. See https://www.ideou.com. See http://theasideblog.blogspot.com/2015/03/what-is-graphicacy-essential-literacy. html. Interestingly, while STEAM and Design Thinking emerged largely from art/design programmes (Rhode Island School of Design, and the Stanford D. [for ‘design’] School, respectively), then penetrated into general education, it was just the opposite for graphicacy. The concept and term came from geography education (Balchin, 1972) and was taken up by graphic designers (Garner, 2011). See, for example, Martin Kemp: ‘A Page Out of Leonardo’s Book’, in Farthing and McKenzie (2014: 14–16). The types of argument in support of teaching drawing as thinking: Exemplification, world-class figures in various domains in and out of the arts whose work depends upon drawing as thinking; evidence, research from fields like neurobiology, developmental or perceptual psychology, and cognitive science demonstrating the

472

26

27 28

29

30

31

Notes

cognitive processes involved when drawing or looking at drawings; and explanation, conceptual frameworks, philosophical or otherwise, that align thinking in and through drawing with (1) thinking in general, (2) disciplinary thinking fundamental to particular fields of inquiry, and (3) cross-disciplinary thinking that connects seemingly disparate fields. Peirce’s use of drawing is not widely acknowledged in art and art education literature. For example, an anthology on semiotics in art education (Smith Shank, 2004) cites Peirce several times but makes no mention of his drawing. However, his drawings were shown, apparently for the first time at least in the United States, as part of an exhibition at Cranbrook Art Museum (MI). The title is from a quote by Peirce: My Brain is in My Inkstand: Drawing as Thinking and Process, 16 November 13–30 March 14, Cranbrook Academy: https://cranbrookartmuseum.org/exhibition/mybrain-is-in-my-inkstand-drawing-as-thinking-and-process/ [Accessed 3 May 19]. Charles S. Peirce: letter to Judge Francis C. Russell, probably early 1896, MS L387, part 1. Cited in Leja (2012: 139). While Peirce’s propensity to draw and the way he used drawing may have been unique, his interest in the subject at the time was not. During Peirce’s formative years in Cambridge, MA, drawing was being promoted by leading Massachusetts educators including Horace Mann who recommended it both for preparing students to enter the ‘mechanical trades’ and to improve their handwriting. Nor was Peirce alone among American pragmatists in having drawing as either a practice or a topic of research. Peirce’s lifelong friend, William James, who, with Peirce, first formulated the tenets of pragmatism (Scheffler, 1974), briefly prepared for a career in art and was an exceptional draftsman (Moore, 1991). Peirce’s student, John Dewey, supported drawing for children (1897) and also applied pragmatism to aesthetics in Art as Experience (1934). Viola (2012: 124) cites Ian Hacking and others who argued that the paper, ‘On Small Differences of Sensation’ co-authored by Peirce and Jastrow on their ‘psychophysical experiments . . . should be regarded as a milestone in the history of science, both for being probably the first methodologically solid work of experimental psychology conducted in America, and for its highly pioneering, mathematically unrivaled statistical procedures’. Viola (2012: 114) says that Ludwig Wittgenstein treated the ‘duck-rabbit’ in the ‘section of his Philosophische Untersuchungen dealing with perception and “seeingas” ’. Following this lead, the image was referenced by ‘countless philosophers and scholars’. Leonardo da Vinci suggests that such perceptions can generate imaginative flights of fancy with creative consequences: ‘Look at certain walls dirtied with various stains or with a mixture of different kinds of stones. If you have to invent some scene you will be able to see in them a resemblance to various landscapes adorned with mountains,

Notes

32

33 34 35 36

473

rivers, rocks, trees, plains, wide valleys and hills. You will also be able to see various battles and figures in quick movements, and strange expressions on faces, and costumes, and an infinite number of things’ (Beck, 1979: 35). Discussing a similar image considered later in this chapter, a ‘serpentine line [that,] when completely drawn . . . appears to be a stone wall’, Peirce says: ‘The point is that there are two ways of conceiving the matter. Both, I beg you to remark, are general ways of classing the line, general classes under which the line is subsumed. But the very decided preference of our perception for one mode of classing the percept shows that this classification is contained in the perceptual judgement’. He then discusses the Schröder stairs, adding that ‘[i]n all such visual illusions . . . the most striking thing is that a certain theory of interpretation of the figure has all the appearance of being given in perception . . . This shows that these phenomena are true connecting links between abductions and perceptions’ (EP2: 228): (Viola, 2012 122). See, for example, Loomis, 1951. See, for example, Bridgeman, 1952. See, for example, Edwards, 1979. Dan Barrett (2013), in The Chronicle of Higher Education, ‘Creativity: a Cure for the Common Curriculum’, referenced Peirce’s ideas on creativity in regard to current concerns in business and education. Speaking of ‘the value of creativity’ in business, Barrett pointed out that: ‘IBM surveyed 1,500 chief executives in 33 industries around the world in 2010 to gauge how much they valued characteristics like creativity, integrity, management discipline, rigor, and vision in an increasingly volatile, complex, and interconnected world. Creativity topped the list.’ After pointing out that ideas about creativity are widely recognized thanks to psychologists like J. P. Guilford, Barrett adds: ‘The philosophical antecedents [of these ideas] harken to the late 19th and early 20th centuries, when Charles Sanders Peirce, the American pragmatist, drew on the forms of inductive and deductive logic categorized by Aristotle in his Prior Analytics. Peirce added a third strain of logic, which he often called abductive. Each has its advantages. Deductive reasoning confers a high degree of certainty in its conclusions. Inductive logic works well when data are readily observable. Abductive logic, Peirce posited, relies on inference to make creative leaps in situations in which information is incomplete. It yields a large number of possible answers. The emphasis in the curriculum on Peirce’s and Guilford’s ideas is particularly notable given the current context. Colleges are weathering criticism that they fail to prepare students to be productive citizens and effective employees. Traditional humanistic disciplines must continually justify their relevance. The rising cost of college is adding urgency to the popular perception that colleges’ main task is to train students in practical skills that will enable them to get jobs. Practically focused programmes in business have been among the first to embrace creativity and design thinking in their curricula. Such efforts typically serve these programmes’

474

37 38 39

40

41

Notes

efforts to teach entrepreneurship and innovation, which are thought to spark new businesses, create jobs, and stimulate the economy.’ See Noton and Stark, 1971. See Arnheim, 1962, 2006; Gombrich, 1966. The different approaches to drawing exemplify differences between tripartite and bipartite conceptions of symbolization. The bipartite (i.e. conventional) relationship between sign and object is the schematic drawing typical of art in the middle ages which was primarily concerned with the universal rather than the particular. Nor was there encouragement for artists and artisans to express themselves as individuals (Yanagi & Leach, 1990). This, of course, all changed with the Renaissance. Similarly, non-conventional signification is at the essence of modern and postmodern art where more and more latitude is allowed for different effects of signs on viewers. The personification of lines in Klee’s captions illustrates a point Rosand made at the outset where he explains how the undisguised immediacy of many drawings lets the viewer vicariously re-experience the act of their creation. As opposed to paintings, sculptures, craft objects, and architecture which largely mask their making with a more or less finished façade, even the most polished drawing, in David Rosand’s words (2002: 2) ‘will always carry the traces of its surface construction; even when heavily worked, it will reveal the processes of its making and, ultimately, the nature of the surface on which it operates’. Rosand then goes on to explain the act of drawing in explicitly semiotic terms: ‘As a graphic sign [the drawing] is both self-referential and representational, maintaining its own identity even as it alludes to something beyond itself, the object of representation. This semiotic ambivalence invites the interpretation that is requisite for its very functioning: the active participation of the viewer in constructing meaning. The drawn mark is a record of a gesture, an action in time past now fixed permanently in the present; recalling its origins in the movement of the draftsman’s hand, the mark invites us to participate in that recollection of its creation. That invitation to the viewer, to rehearse the creative gestures in his or her imagination, is a distinctive aspect of the appeal of drawing’ (2002: 2). Hoel also discusses the ‘semiotic ambivalence’ of drawing, especially as it pertains to line, drawing’s most distinguishing feature, while pointing out that Peirce was well aware of it. ‘In some of his drawings, Peirce seems to play with the double nature of the line as a visible entity in its own right, and on the other hand as a schematic structure that makes visible.’ As an example, Hoel highlights a line Peirce drew on one page that ‘at first seems to slip aimlessly down the page, and only at the end does it begin to suggest the profile of a human face . . .’ (2012: 268) For an in-depth exploration of this topic, see: ‘Peirce’s Semeiotic and the Implications for Aesthetics in the Visual Arts: a study of the sketchbook and its positions in the hierarchies of making, collecting and exhibition’, PhD thesis by Paul Jonathan Ryan, Wimbledon College of Art, University of the Arts London (2009).

Notes

475

42 See Kemp, in Farthing & McKenzie (2014: 14–16). 43 See Winner and Simmons, 1992, for samples of middle and high school students’ sketchbook/journals. 44 For examples: Tafel XVI: 18; XVII: 19; XIX: 21; XXII: 24, and illustrations: 42, 151, 156, and 157 and 270, loose sheets from MS 1538 in Engel, F., Queisner, M. and Viola, T. (eds) (2012). Das bildnerische Denken: Charles S. Peirce. Berlin: Akademie Verlag. 45 Although the authors apply the term ‘reasonableness’ to Peirce’s view of thinking and reason early on, they explain that actually ‘[t]he term “reasonableness” appears very late in Peirce’s text, covering only the ten years between 1899 and 1908’ (2012: 178, footnote). 46 Nubiola and Barrena (2012: 179) quote Peirce on this subject in a rare poetic turn: ‘I should say, “Enter your skiff of Musement, push off into the lake of thought, and leave the breath of heaven to swell your sail. With your eyes open, awake to what is about or within you, and open conversation with yourself: for such is all meditation.” It is, however, not conversation in words alone, but is illustrated, like a lecture, with diagrams and with experiments (CP 6.461, 1908).’ The authors had earlier explained how such ‘musements’, and drawing in particular, fit into Peirce’s understanding of ‘reasonableness’. ‘Reasonableness is an ideal to be embodied in a creative way, and implies the human ability to introduce new intelligibility, to make sense of one’s own life and to try to make it reasonable together with its surroundings’ (2012: 178–179). Within the broader concept of reasonableness, Peirce is able to relate rationality to action, explaining his statement in terms recalling pragmatism, that ‘The essence of rationality lies in the fact that the rational being will act so as to attain certain ends . . . [Thus] [r]eason is not something separate that dissects consciousness, nor is it merely consciousness. The essence of reason is thirdness, allowing us to connect things together (see CP 6.343. 1908)’. In this way, the authors continue, ‘Peirce overcomes the split that modernity, with its emphasis on the rational, caused between mind and body, between reason – conceived as an analytic and calculating power – and the imaginative or emotional’ (2012: 179). 47 In fact, Hoel (2012) suggests the overarching category of ‘diagrams’ might subsume all of Peirce’s graphic work including the many types of drawing considered here. 48 Kandinsky is widely considered the first painter to work entirely abstractly. However, Peirce’s drawings were made more than twenty years before Kandinsky turned to painting in 1896. As to their purpose, unlike many of Peirce’s diagrams, this series was not annotated with labels, notes, or other explanatory text, so scholars found them puzzling and perhaps purposeless. In fact, Stjernfelt (2012: 95) reports that one correspondent ‘has gone so far as to propose that these drawings are not by Peirce but have been added by another hand’. Stjernfelt disputes this claim in part by noting similar drawings in other unpublished papers by Peirce ‘that clearly establish Peirce as a skilled draughtsman’. For concurrence about Peirce’s skill, see note 49, below.

476

Notes

49 The illustration, a practice page preparing for the actual drawing to be done ‘in real time’ before Peirce’s audience, demonstrates the importance of drawing to the philosophical exposition and Peirce’s attention to the drawn image. The notes for these lectures, which Viola (2012) claims ‘may well be regarded as a key-text in Peirce’s mature philosophy’ (2012: 116), were also ones where ‘he employs drawings of different kinds most extensively, and in a manner that is tightly related to the argument’s development. What is more, this is often done with a manifest care for their formal qualities, draftsmanship and visual incisiveness . . .’ (2012: 117) 50 Efland (1990: 45). 51 See, for example, Silvers (1977). 52 See https://howardgardner.com/five-minds-for-the-future/ [Accessed 1 October 18] 53 Although Peirce lived and worked at the outset of the modernist era, his cognitive abilities seem more in line with the postmodern period in which we live today. Both modernism and postmodernism favour Gardner’s ‘Disciplinary’ and ‘Creating’ minds (Gardner, 1993), but postmodernism has broken down barriers between disciplines, for example, art and religion as subjective realms of feeling and sensation in contrast to science, mathematics and philosophy as exclusively cognitive domains in pursuit of objective knowledge and truth (e.g., Scheffler, 2009). 54 Gardner differentiates the first three as dealing ‘primarily with cognitive forms’, while the last two ‘deal with our relations to other human beings’ (2009: 8). He further points out that the difference between the two groups requires ‘a different set of analyses’, in part because the first three dealt with ‘career specializations’ while the latter are ‘dealing with how human beings [whatever their professions or domains of activity] think and act throughout their whole lives’. 55 See, for example: https://www.themorgan.org/exhibitions/medieval-monsters [Accessed: 3 May 19]. 56 See www.brainyquote.com/quotes/winston_churchill_111316. 57 See Jappy, 2013, pp. 167–193 for a detailed analysis of how ‘Peirce’s philosophy of representation [relates] to the ... world of communication and persuasion’. The suggested exercise was inspired by a ‘Semiotic Evaluation’ of visual communication design assignments based on symbols developed by Martin Mendelsberg for his courses at Metropolitan State University of Denver, Denver, Colorado. Evaluation criteria include ‘Pragmatics’ (i.e. the technical dimension): ‘How accurately can the symbols of communication be transmitted?’; ‘Semantics’: ‘How precisely do the transmitted symbols convey the desired meaning?’; and ‘Effectiveness’: ‘How effectively does the received meaning affect conduct in the desired way?’ The semiotic aspect of these projects is primarily assessed under the ‘Semantic Dimension: The relationship of a visual image to a meaning’. Specific assessment questions addressed under this heading include: ‘How well does this symbol represent the message?’, ‘Do people fail to understand the message that the symbol

Notes

477

denotes?’ and, ‘Do people from various cultures misunderstand this symbol?’ Mendelsberg based this assessment on Symbol Signs, a publication of the AIGA, 1st edition 1993 (www.aiga.org/symbol-signs). Other exercises in this chapter were also based on pictorial thinking practices in educational, professional, and research contexts. ‘Diagramming for Cross-Disciplinary Dialogue’ was inspired by research at Harvard Project Zero on ‘Making Thinking Visible’ (www.pz.harvard.edu/projects/ visible-thinking). ‘The interdependence of showing and telling’ was inspired by the work of artist Renaud Chabrier at the Institut Curie in Paris, who makes animations to demonstrate scientific processes and medical conditions. He also uses drawing to facilitate dialogue between researchers from different disciplines (www.nature.com/ articles/nrm.2017.126).

Chapter 12 1 Peirce writes in his early essay, On a New List of Categories, that the interpretant is ‘a mediating representation which represents the relate to be a representation of the same correlate which this mediating representation represents’ (CP 1.553, 1867). 2 From A Survey of Pragmaticism (CP 464–496, 1907). The title was attributed by the editors of CP, and it is not Peirce’s own. I will return to this text later on, identifying a few key passages in it, because I believe it explicates many of the concepts I would like to clarify, so as to offer the reader an adequate guide within the large production Peirce devoted to semiotics. We have many different versions of this text (cf. R317–324, c. 1907). 3 The sign, however, is not understood as a merely conventional symbol, but as a general law ‘really’ operating in the universe (Peirce is not a nominalist, but a realist, in the medieval sense of the term. Cf. Boler 1963, Hausman 1993, Ibri 2017. I will go back to this theme towards the end.) 4 Very helpful for the purpose of reconstructing the history of the notion of habit is the collection of essays edited by T. Sparrow and A. Hutchinson, A History of Habit. From Aristotle to Bourdieu (2013). See Carlisle 2014 for a more theoretical but equally interesting treatment. Terrance MacMullan, who devotes an essay to pragmatism in the 2013 collection (‘The Fly Wheel of Society: Habit and Social Meliorism in the Pragmatist Tradition’, 229–254), points out that ‘Peirce’s revolutionary approach to belief was to move it from the realm of ideas and warrant to the more naturalistic psychological realm of stimulus and habit. A belief for Peirce is not so much the interior recognition that a particular idea is warranted or not. It is instead a sign that the belief holder has a certain predisposition to the world, predisposition that we call a habit’ (2013: 232). For a careful exploration of Peirce’s

478

5

6

7

8

9

10

Notes

notion of habit, cf. also Nöth 2010, 2016, Bergman 2016, and West, D.E. and M. Anderson (eds). 2016. ‘By a conditional habit, I mean a determination of a man’s occult nature tending to cause him to act in a certain general way in case certain general circumstances should arise and in case he should be animated by a certain purpose’ (CP 5.517n1, 1905). There are many scholarly works on Mead’s thought, even if he is perhaps the least studied among the pragmatists. The most influential is certainly Joas 1997. I have addressed the relation between gesture and consciousness in Fabbrichesi 2015. I cannot dwell on this distinction. For an accurate treatment of this topic, see Short 2007 and Bellucci 2017. On Peirce’s notion of index and his semiotics more generally, see Sebeok 1995. We cannot avoid noticing that authors such as Husserl and Heidegger have identified – even if in passing, having never devoted themselves explicitly to the topic – signs with indices alone. Husserl was among the first to hypothesize, independently of Peirce, the foundation of a science, called ‘semiotics’, capable of inspiring a logical study of signs and an attempt at classifying the semiotic categories (Husserl 1970). Undoubtedly, the phenomenology of logical meanings as lived experiences of thought and judgment is to be distinguished from the phenomenology of linguistic forms, which is not always adequate to those lived experiences and appears to be of a ‘derivative’ level, as well as less lively for the understanding. Husserl’s interest centres upon the intentional acts of consciousness and their correlated logical meanings. The expression is to be inhabited by the sense which, in turn, emerges always and only in virtue of intentionality: most indexical signs, for instance, are devoid of such expressive power. In more radical, perhaps hasty terms, the sign is for Husserl a superficial tool, one thing among others, far from the superior status of an act of thought. Heidegger did not think differently, as shown by paragraphs 15–17 of the first Part, first Section of Being and Time (Heidegger 2010). He introduces the question of the sign in order to clarify what he means by reference (‘Verweisung’). To that purpose, he refers to a particular means, one with a specific character of reference: the sign. Such a means will exhibit a property denoting a universal kind of relation, in that it can offer the ontological thread for the analysis of entity in general, as well as clarify what Heidegger calls ‘significance’ and then ‘worldhood of the world’. The sign will thus function as a simple example of reference. As Heidegger affirms, the specific means-like character of signs is that of indicating; the examples he introduces in this connection are of this kind (the blinking of car signals lights, path signs, etc.) I refer first and foremost to Carlo Sini who, to my knowledge, is among very few authors to have worked, since the 1960s, on the topic of gesture. Cf. Sini 1996 and 2013. His English writings are sparse, but cf. Sini 2009 (Ethics of Writing). Cf. Fabbrichesi 2017 on Wittgenstein and gestures.

Notes

479

11 With the exception of some important contributions in the domain of linguistic semiotics (Kendon 2004), there are very few theoretical treatments of the topic of gesture (but let us remember that great philosophers like Vico, Wundt, Plessner, Emerson and Cavell have worked on it). The most complete book on the topic, which includes an original theoretical proposal, is once again by an Italian, Giovanni Maddalena (The Philosophy of Gesture. Completing Pragmatists’ Incomplete Revolution, 2015a), who appeals to the synthetic reasoning which is at the basis of each gestural act, considered as revolutionary and innovative with respect to the other kinds of reasoning, traditionally conceived. Gesture is ‘any performed act with a beginning and an end that carries a meaning’ (2015a: 69). The gesture is complete when the complexity of phenomena that nourish it is perfect, and it can introduce something new in reasoning. In this connection, Maddalena underlines the incomplete nature of the pragmatist revolution which did not sufficiently dwell on these elements, and appeals to artistic performances and other social and cultural contexts, in which we find cases of complete gestures. See also Maddalena and Zalamea 2012, Maddalena 2015b, Sini 2013 and Formis 2008. I have approached the topic in Fabbrichesi 2014, 2017. 12 As Maddalena observes: ‘. . . gestures carry a possible and vague meaning that progressively gets determinate until a habit (in Peirce’s sense of the word) is established’ (Maddalena 2015a: 79). 13 On Peirce’s Existential Graphs, see Joaˆo Queiroz and Frederik Stjernfelt (eds). (2011). Forthcoming (September 2019): C.S.Peirce. The Logic of Future, ed. by A.-V. Pietarinen, Volume 1-Reasoning, Diagrams, and the Development of Existential Graphs. Berlin: De Gruyter. See also the pioneering work of Roberts (1973) and Thibaud (1975). From the perspective of the proposal outlined in this chapter, see Zalamea 2010, Maddalena and Zalamea 2012 and Maddalena 2015a, who dedicated an entire chapter of his book to this question (Maddalena 2015a: Ch.7, ‘Writing as Complete Gestures’). For a more general perspective, cf. Sini 2013. 14 Zalamea 2018. In this carefully crafted and dense article, Zalamea explains how, through the use of gestures alone, he was able to explain to a student a complex mathematical theory developed by another of his students, a theory related precisely to Peirce’s graphs. For an innovative proposal on the mathematics and logic of continuity based upon Peirce’s teachings, see Zalamea 2012. 15 Immediately afterwards, Peirce criticizes nominalists like Bradley, Taylor, Wundt, Haeckel, Pearson, etc. and argues that the doctrine according to which each thought is a sign is, in fact, more akin to a realist, non-conventionalist thought. ‘I am myself a scholastic realist of a somewhat extreme stripe. Every realist must, as such, admit that a general is a term and therefore a sign’ (CP 5.470). 16 We find the same distinction in Prolegomena to an Apology for Pragmaticism, 1906, CP 4.536. A difference between the immediate and dynamic interpretants is

480

Notes

established at this point (on the model of the distinction between the immediate and dynamic objects) which is then supplemented by the introduction of a final interpretant. In his correspondence with Lady Welby (1908), which is dense with original semiotic observations, Peirce once again distinguishes between immediate, dynamic, and normal interpretant (CP 8.343). Peirce was to continue working on these distinctions without changing much of their logical structure. 17 We could observe that if essence coincides with habit, it is not an essence in the traditional sense of form or eidos. A habit is rather a practical capacity, a being ready to act, thus a dynamis or power, an inclination to do something. 18 Cf. Hadot (1987) and Foucault (2005). 19 Even a river, indeed, exercises itself to widen its own riverbed, as we could add in connection with Peirce’s example (CP 5.492). These exercises are not only human.

Chapter 13 1 See by Frank Nuessel, ‘Susan Petrilli’s archival research on Victoria Welby and its implications for future scholarly inquiry’, and by John Deely, ‘Lady Welby and Lady Petrilli’, both in Colapietro, Nuessel and Petrilli 2013: 13–20, and 111–124. 2 Peirce employed the term ‘semeiotic’, never ‘semiotics’ for the science of signs (Fisch 1986: 322). Morris preferred ‘semiotic’ (Sebeok 1991: 62). The Saussureans identify with ‘sémiologie’, even though ‘signologie’ was in vogue at the time (Engler 1968: 46). Today ‘semiotics’ is the most widely accepted expression (Sebeok 1976, Ch. 2). ‘The denotation of each of these academic jargon terms is . . . the “same”. But each harks back to a different tradition and . . . carries different connotations. Dialectical divisions of this nature are confusing for the public, of course, and have impelled some practitioners to concoct . . ., and then attempt to impose, post hoc divergences in denotation’ (Sebeok 1991: 62). 3 In Italy an important editorial event presenting Peirce’s writings is the 1980 Einaudi collection, Semiotica. I fondamenti della semiotica cognitivia, edited by Massimo Bonfantini, followed by an impressive revised and enlarged 1,300-page edition, Opere, Bompiani, 2003. 4 The earlier 1953 edition, Charles S. Peirce’s Letters to Lady Welby, by Irwin Lieb, only contained Peirce’s letters to Welby. Despite this, Lieb’s volume had been out of print for some time when Hardwick decided to work on a complete edition of the Peirce/ Welby correspondence, exchanged between 1903 and 1911 (Hardwick 1977: ix–xiv; Petrilli 2009: 14–17). Letters from the years 1903–1905 and 1908–1911 were included in Welby’s 1931 epistolary Other Dimensions, edited by Elizabeth Cust, her daughter. Other letters exchanged between Peirce and Welby and between Peirce and

Notes

5

6

7

8 9

10

11

481

John W. Slaughter on Welby’s significs are included in Significs and Language, edited by Schmitz (1985: cxlviii–clvii). See Ahti-Veikko Pietarinen, ‘Christine Ladd-Franklin’s and Victoria Welby’s correspondence with Charles Peirce’, in Colapietro, Nuessel and Petrilli 2013: 139–161. Thomas Sebeok promoted Signifying and Understanding for publication with Mouton De Gruyter and as editor-in-chief of Semiotica. Journal of the International Association for Semiotic Studies, a special issue thereof dedicated to her (Colapietro, Nuessel and Petrilli 2013). These projects came to fruition when he was no longer with us: in the series ‘Semiotics, Communication and Cognition’, thanks to Paul Cobley for Signifying and Understanding, in 2009; and under the editorship of Marcel Danesi for the Semiotica special issue, in 2013. Massimo Bonfantini hosted my first monograph on Welby, Su Victoria Welby, 1998, in his book series ‘Semiosis’, while my third, Victoria Welby and the Science of Signs, appeared with Transactions in 2015. Peirce was introduced to Welby’s work in 1898, when he received from The Open Court her pamphlet The Witness of Science to Linguistic Anarchy, published that same year (see Hardwick 1977: 1). Peirce made a similar distinction in January 1878, see CP 5.388–410 (Hardwick 1977: 159). According to Hardwick (1977: xi, and note 7), this text is not connected to Peirce’s review of Welby’s What Is Meaning?, but was written in 1909 as part of an unpublished manuscript serving as an introduction to a collection of essays on pragmatism. Instead, in his introduction to the 1983 edition of Welby’s 1903 volume Achim Eschbach avers that it was written by Peirce in 1903 as part of a lesson series delivered that same year at the Lowell Institute in Boston (in Welby 1983: xvi). An important study in this sense with a special focus on Peirce’s ‘mother-wit’ and Welby’s ‘mother-sense’ is Vincent Colapietro’s, ‘The life of significance: Cultivating ingenuity no less than signs’ (in Colapietro, Nuessel and Petrilli 2013: 35–56). Among early semiotic approaches to human subjectivity a major study is Colapietro 1989. Through mother-sense the Ident is connected with gifting which Genevieve Vaughan in her essay ‘Mother sense and the image schema of the gift’ associates with a transgender capacity for nurturing (in Colapietro, Nuessel and Petrilli 2013: 57–77; see also Vaughan 1997, 2015 and Petrilli 2015c).

Chapter 14 1 Appreciation goes to my colleague Joseph Harry for reminding me to make this connection.

482

Notes

Chapter 15 1 Thus, the development of this idea may address some of the deep structures of the ongoing research into multimodality as it appears, e.g. in Kress and van Leeuwen (2001) and Bateman et al. (2017). 2 12 October 1904, he repeats the example when illustrating his ten-sign taxonomy of the 1903 Syllabus in a letter to Lady Welby: the seventh sign category comprises ‘Dicent Sinsigns (as a portrait with a legend)’ (8.341). 3 Ms. 1147, cf. the larger quote below. 4 ‘Kaina Stoicheia’,1904, EP2: 310, cf. below. 5 I originally realized the fertility of Peirce’s idea while working on a number of papers that ultimately came together in the book Natural Propositions (2014) about Peirce’s theory of propositions. Pages 62–75 of that book reconstruct Peirce’s argument; pp. 108–114 contain some initial proposals for further development of his basic idea. 6 The combination principle depends on two ordering sequences: in each trichotomy, the sign aspects are ordered 1-2-3 after Peirce’s three categories, and the trichotomies, in turn, are ordered based on the Sign-Object-Interpretant sequence in the sign definition (so that Qualisign-Sinsign-Legisign is first, Icon-Index-Symbol is second, and Rheme-Dicisign-Argument is third). Based on these two sequences, a certain combination of sign aspects is possible if the number of the element from the first trichotomy ≥ the number of the element from the second ≥ the number of the element from the third. Adding new trichotomies, then, it is important in order to generalize this schema that they be sequentially ordered after some principle further extending the Sign-Object-Interpretant sequence. Peirce chose his extended division of Objects and Interpretants for that purpose (immediate vs. dynamic Object; immediate, dynamic, vs. final Interpretant), so that trichotomies were defined after which of these they address in which way. We cannot go further into these issues here. 7 Peirce famously continued that strategy by adding further trichotomies to the combinatory, cf. Queiroz & Stjernfelt (in press). 8 For more thorough discussions, see Stjernfelt (2014) Chapter 3, and Bellucci (2017), Chapter 7. 9 I add a plural possibility in brackets: ‘Object(s)’, ‘Subject(s)’ for the simple reason that just like Frege, Peirce extended his doctrine of Predicates to relational Predicates taking more than one Subject, thus referring to more than one Object. In the following, I shall just say ‘Object’ and ‘Subject’, implicitly suggesting both possibilities. 10 Dicisigns combined from picture predicates and text subjects are so widespread that it is strange that this particular proposition type has often escaped notice: paintings with legends, newsreel with voiceover speech, photos with text, diagrams with explanations, in print, on TV, on homepages, etc. In Stjernfelt (2014) I analyse a

Notes

11 12

13

14

15 16

483

number of examples of how such signs are, in actual social practice, taken as truth claims, with serious consequences for utterers if the relevant proposition turns out to be false. One of the reasons such signs have semiotically escaped notice may be that picture semiotics has often referred to examples which may actively rebel against simple co-localization syntax: ads and modern art. Since the mid-nineteenth century, much modern art has, as a deliberate aesthetic strategy, dispensed with referential titles and instead has made the relation artwork-title to one of experiment. Dispensing totally with any title (‘Ohne Titel’) may be a strategy for urging the observer to supply some reference him/herself; developing strange, not immediately understandable titles may serve as deliberate artistic alienation (surrealism was a strong influence in such titles) – also motivated by the fact that modern art downplays an interest in truthful representation with a preference for other aims like experiment, shock, subjective experience, etc. A semiotic focus upon the special, sophisticated strategies of modern art may thus serve to occlude the basic role of picture-text propositions in much ordinary human communication. Cf. Hookway (2002). ‘It may be asked what is the nature of the sign which joins “Socrates” to “_is wise” so as to make the proposition “Socrates is wise.” I reply that it is an index. But, it may be objected, an index has for its object a thing hic et nunc, while a sign is not such a thing. This is true, if under “thing” we include singular events, which are the only things that are strictly hic et nunc. But it is not the two signs “Socrates” and “wise” that are connected, but the replicas of them used in the sentence . . . No other kind of sign would answer this purpose; no general verb “is” can express it’ (‘Kaina Stoicheia’, EP2: 310, 1904). Peirce’s many writings on the EGs are scattered over the CP, NEM and the two EP volumes; a comprehensive publication of all of Peirce’s writings on the issue will appear in Pietarinen (in press). The proposition in this case is no assertion, but rather an imperative. In Peirce’s germ-like speech act theory, he realizes that one and the same proposition may be put to use in different speech acts, assertion, assent, interrogative, imperative, etc., cf. Stjernfelt (2014: 102). Here, my use of ‘proposition’ also covers such speech acts, even if most of my examples are assertions. Bellucci (2017: 315ff ) argues that the further generalization of the Rheme-Dicisign-Argument triad to Seme-PhemeDelome in 1906 is intended to cover this so that Phemes comprise Dicisigns which are assertive, imperative, etc. ‘Label’ in an archaeological sense of the word which differs from the technical notion of the same name developed in the previous section. Cf. Kammerzell and Peust 2002. The illustration stems from Kammerzell’s presentation at the Humboldt University 2017 conference ‘Pictures and Texts – Pictures as Text: Iconicity and Indexicality in Graphic Communication’ organized by the linguists

484

17

18

19

20

21

22 23 24 25

Notes

Gisela Fehrmann and Silvia Kutscher, and the Egyptologist Aleksandra Lapčić. The debates at this amazing interdisciplinary conference were a central inspiration for the present chapter. Kammerzell and I discussed multimodality and co-localization at the conference, and he was so kind as to permit me to reproduce this slide from his talk, titled ‘The Polycentric Origin of the Egyptian Script’. I thank him for both. Reading directions in Ancient Egyptian is subject to variability, even within the same picture or text sequence. Right to left is most common, but local reading direction is most often indicated by which way the hieroglyphs face – animal hieroglyphs typically facing towards (against) the reading direction; here, they face right, so reading direction is towards left (Kammerzell, personal communication). In medieval art, both in Europe and Mesoamerica, graphic techniques were developed to indicate speech uttered by depicted persons, such as lines from the speaking mouths to the relevant written expressions, the addition to the picture surface of scrolls, ribbons, flags, banderols and paper sheets, etc., with texts displayed. Proper speech balloons seem to have appeared in eighteenth-century western political cartooning of the Enlightenment. Thus, they properly belong to the special type of propositions which Peirce called ‘Dicent Indexical Legisigns’. They are not symbols, but they are general signs because of the generality of the name use claimed by them (see Stjernfelt in press). We shall return to such signs below. The book cover thus forms a label in the sense discussed here. When presented in isolation from the book – as in our illustration or in a book advertisement – it is, of course, no longer a label, but typically additional subject indices will express its relation to the book text behind it. In very simple labels – cf. about biosemiotics below – there will be no need for a topological propositional field, because the sign label is part of or immediately connected to the Object. As soon as the Object is not present, however, some Subject index must be added to indicate the whereabouts of the Object, and this addition of a Subject necessitates a propositional field in which to unite Subject and Predicate. Once constructed, however, a propositional field may be used also in labels, as the book cover example shows. The picture shows the tombstone of the Peirces in Milford Cemetery, PA. The grave was made only after Juliette’s death in 1934, including Peirce’s urn which she had kept until then. Juliette’s birth year was never known. The tombstone is in the process of being supplemented by some more elaborated monument. See Østergaard and Stjernfelt (2013). Which was, of course, what permitted Champollion’s decoding of the hieroglyphs on the Rosetta Stone. More about cartouches can be found in Stjernfelt (2015). Cf. for instance Talmy (2000). See Hoffmeyer (2008), the short introduction in Stjernfelt (2002); see also Hoffmeyer and Stjernfelt (2016).

Notes 26 27 28 29

30

31 32 33

34

35

485

See the relevant chapters of Stjernfelt (2007) and (2014). A bit more can be found in Stjernfelt (2014), Chapters 5–6. See the discussion in Stjernfelt (2007), Chapter 9. This time window in human semiotics seems to be equivalent to the time window permitting rhythm perception: if more than five or ten seconds endures between each beat, it becomes impossible to synthesize the sequence of beats into one coherent melodic-rhythmic unity, just as less than some fraction of a second between beats also loses musical coherence and will rather be perceived as a sort of quivering than an articulated rhythm. Neurobiological evidence seems to point to a hardwired organization of proposition-processing parts of the brains of many higher animals in order for them automatically to parse perceptual content into Subject (where is something happening right now?) and Predicate (what is the general character of that happening?), see the summary and argument in Stjernfelt (2014), Chapter 5. See Stjernfelt (2007), Chapter 2. Cf. Smith (1999). ‘What we call a “fact” is something having the structure of a proposition, but supposed to be an element of the very universe itself. The purpose of every sign is to express “fact,” and by being joined with other signs, to approach as nearly as possible to determining an interpretant which would be the perfect Truth . . .’ (EP2: 304, 1904). ‘. . . an act of assertion supposes that, a proposition being formulated, a person performs an act which renders him liable to the penalties of the social law (or, at any rate, those of the moral law) in case it should not be true, unless he has a definite and sufficient excuse . . .’ (Syllabus, EP2: 278; CP 2.315, 1903) In Natural Propositions, Chapter 7, I analyse some recent Danish cases. The backbone of the infamous ‘Cartoon Crisis’ of 2006 was that the Danish newspaper JyllandsPosten actually claimed, in an accompanying text, that a bundle of drawings depicted Islam’s founder Muhammad, effectively asserting a set of multimodal propositions. The sacking of a Danish TV news journalist (Nybro, 2007) had the background that there was a mismatch between footage and voiceover speech as a joint proposition in a report on the Iraq war that he broadcast. And the case against a Danish neuroscientist (Penkowa, 2011) from the University of Copenhagen had the background that she had (among other things) falsely combined immunehistological images with text to make scientific claims which were not true. In all these cases, multimodal, co-localized propositions were judged by different observers to be false, with severe consequences for the originators of those propositions.

486

Glossary Just as Peirce’s semiotics developed and became more complex over the years, some of the terms that he employed to express his ideas underwent review and redefinition. This glossary is restricted to the basic terms that occur in this volume, but the reader is advised that they may have had slightly different meanings as Peirce developed his logic, the term ‘sign’ being exemplary in this respect: in 1867 it was an alternative term for ‘index’ but by 1903 had acquired the more general meaning that we associate it with now. Note that there are wider-ranging glossaries to be found in Atkin (2015) and Brent (1998) referenced in the Introduction. Anthroposemiosis, see semiosis Argument The argument is a traditional term for types of inference and was the most complex of the ten classes of signs established in 1903. Arguments cover three basic types of inference, abduction, deduction and induction. Abduction Peirce described thus: ‘Abduction is the process of forming an explanatory hypothesis. It is the only logical operation which introduces any new idea’ (CP 5.171, 1903). Below are his simple examples of abduction, deduction and induction from CP 2.623 (1878). Abduction (hypothesis): Rule – All the beans from this bag are white. Result – These beans are white. Case – These beans are from this bag. Deduction: Rule – All the beans from this bag are white. Case – These beans are from this bag. Result – These beans are white. Induction: Case – These beans are from this bag. Result – These beans are white. Rule – All the beans from this bag are white. 487

488

Glossary

Architectonic A concept inherited from Kant which Peirce employed to organize the systematic search for knowledge. The principle involves dividing the general task into branches, working from the more general to the less, in his case from mathematics to phenomenology to the normative sciences and to logic, a system in which each branch inherits research principles from those preceding. The system is a far cry from contemporary theories of the rhizome. Category, phenomenological category, cenopythagorean category Peirce held that all our ideas – everything that might be present to the mind – were obtained from experience, and he grouped them in order of increasing complexity into three general types: Firstness, the least complex, concerned qualities, ideas, feelings; Secondness is the category of fact, physical events, existence and brute, i.e. unintended, force; Thirdness is the most complex and concerned generalities, thought, continuity and intentionality, for example. The categories, which are sorts of predicates, constituted the basis of his phenomenology. Causation, see Intention Cenoscopy, cenoscopic vs. Idioscopy, idioscopic Following Jeremy Bentham Peirce named the basic sciences, to which mathematics and philosophy belong, the ‘cenoscopic sciences’, since they establish the scientific principles common to all types of research; these are followed by the ‘idioscopic’, or special sciences such as linguistics, physics, astronomy and art history: ‘that is . . . sciences, depending upon special observation, which travel or other exploration, or some assistance to the senses, either instrumental or given by training, together with unusual diligence, has put within the power of its students’ (CP 1.241–242, 1902). Classes of signs Combining the subdivisions of trichotomies identified at a given period enabled Peirce to establish first one (1867), then ten (1903), then, finally, twenty-eight (1904, 1908) and sixty-six (1908) distinct classes of signs. For example, within the system of 1903 a symbol is not a class of signs on its own, but when it is associated with a legisign of the sign division and a rheme, the result is the general class of rhematic symbols: the command ‘Listen!’ is an example, and is an actual replica of the general (and therefore infinitely repeatable) class.

Glossary

489

Classification Peirce established his classifications by combining various ‘respects’ – relations holding between the sign and the correlate in 1903, or the correlates themselves in the case of the twenty-eight-class typology of 1908 – with a given set of criteria. In the first case, he employed his three phenomenological categories, and in the second three universes of necessitant, existent and possible entities. See, too, Division. Collateral experience, also collateral observation, collateral acquaintance A series of equivalent late concepts developed in the course of Peirce’s thinking on the nature of the dynamic object, the principle being that the interpreter must have independent knowledge of, or acquaintance with, that object in order to understand the sign. ‘The person who interprets [a] sentence (or any other Sign whatsoever) must be determined by the Object of it through collateral observation quite independently of the action of the Sign’ (EP2: 493, 1909), and ‘. . . no sign can be understood – or at least . . . no proposition can be understood – unless the interpreter has “collateral acquaintance” with every Object of it’ (EP2: 496, 1909). Critic Critic is one of the three branches of Peirce’s grand logic, and is logic in the narrow sense. Following speculative grammar its task was to determine the validity of arguments and reasoning in general. Diagram see Hypoicon Dicent sign, dicisign (proposition) This is the second subdivision of the sign–interpretant relation, and, unlike the rheme, is composed of two readily identifiable parts, traditionally referred to as subject and predicate. In the 1903 system the proposition, a dicisign, was redefined as a ‘double’ – i.e. two-part – sign associating an index and a rheme (CP 2.251), this association being the necessary condition for the dicisign to provide information. In 1906 these two terms were abandoned and Peirce simply referred to the ‘part appropriated to representing the object, and another to representing how [the] sign itself represents that object’ (EP 2: 478); in other words, one part representing the sign’s object (the indexical element of 1903) – a ‘rigid designator’ – and another – the infinitely malleable predicate – signifying the form of the relations concerning this object. It is to this second, malleable part, the rhematic element in the version of 1903, that any rhetorical intent is

490

Glossary

consigned, since the first can do no more than identify what the dicisign is ‘talking’ about. The dicisign is one of Peirce’s most fruitful concepts, as this particular sub-class supports both verbal and non-verbal signification, and is a fundamental instrument of multimodal sign analysis. Division, also trichotomy Peirce’s methodology in logic consisted in classifying signs by a process of definition and division. He first defined the sign with respect to its correlates at a particular point in the evolution of his semiotics (sign plus two correlates in 1903, sign plus five and plus nine in 1908, for example) and then divided the sign according to the relations between the sign and correlates or according to the number of correlates in the process. This method yielded three divisions in 1903 and six and ten in 1908, for example. The resulting divisions were then subdivided with respect first, in 1903, to his three phenomenological categories, and, subsequently in 1908, with respect to three universes of experience/existence. Existential graphs These Peirce considered to be ‘rough and generalized diagram[s] of the mind’ (CP 4.582, 1906). As opposed to the symbolic representation of inference of the tradition that was based on the potentially polysemous and therefore ‘accidental’ verbal elements of natural languages, Peirce was developing a complex diagrammatic representation of the successive stages of human reasoning which he considered to be his chef d’oeuvre in logical analysis (CP 4.347, 1901). This is how he envisaged the process in an early exposition of his graphs: All deductive reasoning, even simple syllogism, involves an element of observation; namely, deduction consists in constructing an icon or diagram the relations of whose parts shall present a complete analogy with those of the parts of the object of reasoning, of experimenting upon this image in the imagination, and of observing the result so as to discover unnoticed and hidden relations among the parts. EP1: 225, 1885

In 1906 he claimed that ‘when I say that Existential Graphs put before us moving pictures of thought, I mean of thought in its essence free from physiological and other accidents’ (CP 4.8). It is not impossible that in view of his constant appeal to photographs and photography as an example of indexical representation, he had been struck by two of the previous century’s major advances in visual technology: Thomas Edison’s invention of the Kinetoscope leading to the rapid increase in moving pictures – ‘movies’ – and the earlier photographic researches of Eadweard

Glossary

491

Muybridge and his representations of animal and human locomotion by means of a multiple camera technique. Hence the striking ‘moving images of thought’ comparison with his observation of the stages in diagrammatic reasoning. Fallibilism A philosophical position held by Peirce that accepts both the ultimate impossibility of perfect human knowledge and the real possibility of human knowledge due to the embeddedness of human inquiry in the very universe out of which it has developed. The truth of fallible realism relies empirically on the success of human inquiry, and it relies rationally on the continuity thesis: i.e. that all phenomena are related to all other phenomena both logically and temporally in ways that are both indeterminate and thus is never fully knowable, and yet real and thus at least partially knowable. (Jamin Pelkey) Hypoicon The three hypoicons, or ‘types of icons’ realize three ways in which a sign can resemble its object. They were obtained by applying the three categories to the Firstness of the icon. In order of increasing complexity Peirce derived the image, an icon in which the sign simply resembles its object by virtue of shared qualities; the diagram, the variety of icon in which the sign resembles its object by virtue of shared structure; finally, metaphor, the variety of icon in which elements in the sign suggest a complex structure in the object that the existential nature of the medium prevents it from representing completely. Peirce is suggesting, for example, that vectorially organized signs are capable of representing by suggestion a two-tiered parallel structure in the object. This tripartite distinction effectively challenges the traditional literal–figurative dichotomy characterizing conventional rhetoric studies. Icon The icon is the least complex of the sign’s three modes of representation and is defined by one or more qualities shared by sign and object. In 1903 Peirce divided the icon into three hypoicons. Image, see Hypoicon Index The index is the second-level subdivision of the sign’s mode of representation defined by a shared spatio-temporal connection between the sign and the object, as in the well-known case of the sign smoke caused by the object fire: no fire, no smoke.

492

Glossary

Inference, see Argument (abduction, deduction, induction) Intention, intentionality; causation Peirce’s final typologies of 1908 included one yielding twenty-eight classes of signs. This was based upon three universes composed of necessitant, existent and possible (purely qualitative) entities as classification criteria in a typology of which the six correlates of semiosis formed the divisions. The necessitant dynamic object was a source of intentionality, whereas an existent dynamic object was a source of causation. Interpretant The interpretant is the effect or reaction produced by a sign on a not necessarily human interpreting agency, and is thus the final stage in the process of signification. This effect or reaction is produced mediately by the sign’s dynamic object. From the mid-1860s to late 1903 Peirce recognized only one interpretant, but in 1904 he developed a more complex system composed of the sign, two objects and three interpretants. After much hesitation in the terminology the latter eventually became the immediate interpretant, the sign’s inherent interpretability; the dynamic interpretant, which is the actual existent but not necessarily physical effect produced by the sign upon the interpreting agency; while the final interpretant, in 1908, is the formation of a habit, an action or a feeling. Language Reconceived in terms of Peircean semiotics, ‘language’ has three distinct, but interrelated, senses, all of which function at the legisign level: language as a complex system is an iconic legisign; a particular language with a speaker population is an indexical legisign; and the performance of language (whether spoken or signed) is a symbolic legisign. (Jamin Pelkey). Legisign In 1903, the legisign was the most complex subdivision of the sign trichotomy. Legisigns are a complex sub-class which, as in the case of verbal signs, for example, have to be learned. Being general, they are only perceivable through their replicas, which are a variety of sinsign. Metaphor, see Hypoicon Methodeutic, also speculative rhetoric Methodeutic is the final branch of Peirce’s grand logic and deals with the logically ideal methods of determining how knowledge is to be obtained. As the third

Glossary

493

branch of logic, it is ‘the last goal of logical study. . .the theory of the advancement of knowledge of all kinds’ (EP2: 256, 1903). Mode of being, modality By 1906 Peirce had begun to envisage three universes of experience (later ‘universes of existence’) as a means of classifying signs instead of the earlier three categories. They were characterized according to three distinct modes of being or modalities: possibility, existence and generality. The universe of possible entities comprised qualities, ideas, feelings; the universe of existents comprised individuals, particulars and the facts concerning them; the universe of necessitant entities comprised generality, habit, thought, entities endowed with intentionality. In the 1908 classification, the sign, the two objects and the three interpretants were defined as potential participants in all three universes. Mode of representation Peirce’s ‘first and most fundamental’ trichotomy identified the three ways in which the sign can represent its object as early as 1867. This universally known trichotomy was established by dividing the relation holding between the sign and the object by means of the categories and identified, in order of increasing complexity, the icon (initially referred to as a likeness), where the relation is one of similarity by virtue of one or more shared qualities (as in a portrait painting or a figurative landscape); the index, the relation in this case an existential connection between the sign and the object that determines it (as in a photograph, or a change in the needle of a barometer); finally, the symbol, the most complex mode of representation, which functions by general convention, and thus has to be learned. Nominalism A philosophical position, held by most modernist thinkers, that establishes a sharp divide between oppositional domains such as body and mind, mind and matter, subject and object or knower and known such that the opposed sides of the dualism in question are claimed to be incompatible, usually resulting in conclusions regarding the ultimate impossibility of human knowledge and/or the ultimate illusory position of the marked opposition. (Jamin Pelkey) Normative sciences ‘A normative science is one which studies what ought to be’ (CP 1.281). For Peirce the three normative sciences are the foundation sciences of enquiry required to establish the ideal methods of knowledge acquisition, and they draw, within his classification of sciences, on a theoretical scaffold provided by mathematics and phenomenology. They form part of an architectonic system in

494

Glossary

which the earlier provided research principles to be employed by the later. They were composed of Aesthetics, which established the research ideals to be pursued; Ethics was the ‘science of right and wrong . . . the theory of self-controlled, or deliberate, conduct’. While Logic, with its three branches, was the ‘the theory of self-controlled, or deliberate, thought’ (CP 1.191, 1903). Peirce had little to say on aesthetics and ethics. Object The object can be defined simply as what the sign stands for, but by 1903 Peirce had come to define the object as determining the interpretant mediately by means of the sign. The object, then, is the origin of any process of representation. In 1904, Peirce identified two objects, the dynamic object, which is the object ‘outside’ the sign, the ‘real’ object in other words, while the immediate object is the object as perceived in the sign. A simple example is the photographic portrait: the dynamic object is the model sitting for the portrait while the immediate is the patches of light and shade and colour on the print enabling us to recognize the model. In 1908, Peirce made the object, which he developed considerably in scope, the origin of semiosis. Phenomenology, later phaneroscopy ‘Phenomenology ascertains and studies the kinds of elements universally present in the phenomenon; meaning by the phenomenon, whatever is present at any time to the mind in any way’ (CP 1.186, 1903). For thirty-five years phenomenology formed the theoretical basis of all Peirce’s work on the classification of signs. See Category Precission, abstraction This was the process of mental abstraction that Peirce introduced into his phenomenological account of sign classes, enabling him to separate the various constituents of a given class of sign: to isolate the iconic elements in an index – a rising column of mercury in an analogical thermometer; or the indexical elements in a symbol – distinguishing referential from non-referential constituents in a verbal utterance, for example. Qualisign, see Sign Real, reality Objects are divided into figments, dreams, etc., on the one hand, and realities on the other. The former are those which exist only inasmuch as you or I or some man imagines them; the latter are those which have an existence

Glossary

495

independent of your mind or mine or that of any number of persons. The real is that which is not whatever we happen to think it, but is unaffected by what we may think of it. CP 8.12, 1871

Replica, occurrence or instance Legisigns were defined as general signs, signs of law, and are thus imperceivable and only available to thought. What we perceive when communicating with our fellows are the replicas of legisigns, e.g. the numberless occurrences of the unique English definite article. Peirce later replaced the legisign by the type, of which the occurrences or instances were the equivalent of the legisign’s replicas. Representamen This was Peirce’s original unit of representation in 1867 but was replaced by the sign by 1903. The representamen at this later time was defined more broadly to be the first correlate of any triadic relation, while the sign was one class of representamens, a representamen that produces a mental interpretant. Semiosis, also later, the action of the sign Semiosis is the very action of signifying and involves all three basic correlates, namely the sign, the object and the interpretant. Unlike the triadic determination sequence of 1903, in which its potential dynamism was irrelevant for classification purposes, semiosis as described by Peirce to Lady Welby in 1908 (SS: 83–84) is a dynamic six-stage process from the dynamic object through to the final interpretant, and in one case formed a complete twenty-eight-class typology. This was how Peirce originally defined the concept: It is important to understand what I mean by semiosis. All dynamical action, or action of brute force, physical or psychical, either takes place between two subjects, – whether they react equally upon each other, or one is agent and the other patient, entirely or partially, – or at any rate is a resultant of such actions between pairs. But by ‘semiosis’ I mean, on the contrary, an action, or influence, which is, or involves, a coöperation of three subjects, such as a sign, its object, and its interpretant, this tri-relative influence not being in any way resolvable into actions between pairs. EP2: 411, 1907

Later biosemioticians such as Thomas Sebeok, Martin Krampen and John Deely extended the scope of semiosis from human communication to that of the plant and animal kingdoms, identifying anthroposemiosis, the varieties of semiosis that concern human sign-users; zoosemiosis, the varieties of semiosis that

496

Glossary

concern communication among animals; and phytosemiosis, the varieties of semiosis that concern communication and adaptation in plant life. In other words, what was originally for Peirce a very advanced principle of logical theory became a more general hypothesis on the ways in which living agencies of all kinds interact with one another. See also Intention. Sign The sign is, within Peircean semiotics, the unit of representation and, unlike the objects and interpretants, the only correlate in semiosis that can be readily identified and classified, although it must have an object and an interpretant in order to qualify as a sign. It functions as a medium between the objects and the interpretants, and in 1903 was divided into three subclasses according to increasing phenomenological complexity. The qualisign, the least complex, was a quality that functioned as a sign and was replaced in the later system of 1908 by the mark or tone; the sinsign, or singular sign, was an existent entity functioning as a sign, and in 1908 was replaced by the token; finally, the legisign, the most complex of the three, was a general sign functioning as a regularity or a law, but was later replaced by the type. Verbal signs are typical cases of legisigns, while barometers, thermometers, photographs and windsocks are typical examples of sinsigns. Speculative grammar Speculative grammar was the first of the three branches of general semiotics, the broader field of logic defined by Peirce in 1903. The scope of this branch of semiotics was to determine the conditions under which an entity qualified as a sign. Within the system of 1903 described in the Introduction it also determined how a sign represented its object and the degree of information it provided with respect to its interpretant. Trichotomy, see Division Token, see Sign Triadic relations These were defined by Peirce in the 1903 Lowell lectures on logic as being composed of three correlates in order of increasing complexity: representamen, object and interpretant (EP 2: 289–290). A sign was defined as a representamen which produced an interpretant in the mind of the interpreter (EP 2 291). Once Peirce introduced sign systems with six correlates, triadic relations were less prominent in his writings.

Glossary

497

Triadomany Peirce’s term for the attaching of ‘a superstitious or fanciful importance to the number three’. As trichotomization was a founding principle of his typologies of signs he sought to defend himself against such a charge. (CP 1.568, 1910) Type In the hexadic system of December 23, 1908 (EP2: 478–483) the type, being necessitant, is the most complex subdivision of the sign trichotomy, which was composed also of the existent token and the ‘possible’ mark or tone. Being necessitant and therefore cognitive, habitual and general in nature, the type is unperceivable, and is instantiated in actual communication as a special form of token. This distinction gave rise (not by Peirce) to the type-token ratio used to measure the lexical density of a text. Although it is tempting to see the type as an equivalent of the earlier legisign, the two belong to two entirely different semiotic systems. In two drafts composed in the days following the letter of December 23 (EP2: 483–490) Peirce set out two ten-division typologies and renamed the sign subdivisions as, in order of decreasing complexity, famisign, actisign and potisign.

498

Index abduction, 1, 5, 9, 16, 21, 41, 48–51, 84, 97, 160, 185–248, 262–265, 312–316, 325, 354, 385, 463, 487, 492 abstraction, 18, 133, 281, 298, 327, 329, 494 (see also precission) abstractive sign, 121, 129, 145–146 Achenbach, A., 423–425 aesthetics, 15, 84–85, 90, 97, 155–184, 197–199, 233, 254–265, 307, 314, 318, 372 normative science, 1, 9, 274, 385, 388, 494 analogy, 22, 198, 201, 208, 349, 397–398, 406–414, 490 anthroposemiosis, 103, 122, 495 Anttila, R. 394–398 architectonic, 10, 16, 155, 287, 392, 401, 413, 488, 493 argument (class of sign), 13, 20–27, 37–53, 140, 143, 151–153, 185, 188, 200, 205–206, 212, 236, 240–249, 272, 306, 386, 395, 420–421, 451, 489 (see also inference) Aristotle, 6, 13, 63, 185, 342, 463n2, 469n6, 743n36 Bakhtin, M., 9, 249, 359, 376–386 Barbieri, M. 104–107, 128–129 Barks, C., 435, 437, 456 Barthes, R., 34, 43 Bellucci, F., 28, 68, 456, 483n14 biosemiotics, 9, 10, 47, 61–67, 103–104, 127, 173, 420, 450–453, 484n20 Burks, A.W., 18, 33, 109, 461n1, 462n2 category, 5, 9–18, 24, 27, 37–42, 85–90, 101, 110, 115–175, 181, 241–247, 278–284, 317–329, 340, 353, 369, 392, 401–407, 425, 488, 494 of representation, 155, 159, 164 vs. universe, 119, 129 causation, 117, 126–129, 397–398, 412

final causation, 56, 492 (see also intention) cenoscopic sciences, 14, 103–104, 112, 127, 308, 460n10, 488 classification of the sciences, 4, 14–17, 134, 254, 274, 493 classification of signs, 10, 21, 40–42, 75–76, 89–91, 101, 105, 113–115, 119–125, 133, 162, 171, 185, 353, 361, 461n1, 463n3, 488–495 (see also typology, sixty-six classes of signs, ten classes of signs, twenty-eight classes of signs) cognition, 19, 40, 57, 62, 66, 158–161, 169, 193, 237, 246, 303–308, 327, 334, 453 Colapietro, V., 68, 368, 480n1, 481n5 collateral experience (of object), 116, 125, 147–148, 269, 489 collateral acquaintance, 116 collateral observation, 116, 125 collective sign, 31, 121–123, 145–147 co-localization, 419–433, 455, 482n10, 484n16 and biosemiotics, 451–454 and comics, 434–440, 450 and framing, 440–448 and linguistics, 449–450 commens, 79, 91–92, 111–112, 460n3 Comte, A. 257, 368 concretive sign, 121, 145, 146 continuity, 18, 84, 121, 136, 160, 218, 310, 318, 371, 391–398, 407, 413–414, 428, 466n1, 479n14, 488, 491 copulant sign, 121–122 Critic, 16, 466n1, 489 Deacon, T., 65–66, 172 deduction, 12, 16, 21, 45–49, 58, 82, 151, 185–202, 206–207, 214, 225, 235–238, 243–248, 262–267, 312, 385, 421–426, 448, 487, 490

499

500

Index

Deely, J., 32, 44, 55–68, 103–104, 384, 391–393, 412, 459n6, 480n1, 495 Deledalle, G., 28, 32, 372 Descartes, 4, 242, 311 descriptive sign 121, 147 designative sign, 121, 147 detection, 48, 50, 213, 258, 267 Dewey, J., 32, 91, 159–184, 311, 462n1, 472n28 diagram (hypoicon), 22–26, 200, 244, 259, 278–289, 395, 398, 405–412, 437–442, 449, 466n1, 467n11, 490 diagrammatic reasoning, 8, 328, 401–408, 466n1, 491 diagrammatization, 351, 398–414 dicent (sign), 20–27, 53, 107–108, 122–123, 129, 140, 143, 151, 272, 403, 406, 421, 425–426, 482n2, 484n19, 489–490 dicisign, 1, 10, 20, 24, 37, 53, 61–65, 114, 129, 280, 403, 419–423, 426, 437, 448, 482n6, 482n10, 483n14, 489–490 division (of signs), 2, 8–13, 17–27, 33, 45, 56, 101, 107–111, 115–129, 144, 163–165, 242, 279, 488–492 (see also trichotomy) drawing, 9, 282, 298, 303–334, 348, 351, 433, 437 as thinking, 306–308, 319 and semiotics, 316–321 dualism, 83, 311, 344, 401, 413, 493 dynamic(al) interpretant, 111–115, 119–120, 479n16, 492 dynamic(al) object, 27, 105, 110–118, 124–129, 142–152, 256–257, 260, 461n10, 480n11, 482n6, 489, 492–495 Eco, U., 32, 41–53, 68, 83, 191, 234, 359, 363 effectual interpretant, 91, 111–112, 269–270 empiricism, 3, 4, 309, 312, 329 ethics, 33, 333–334 normative science, 9, 254, 274, 494 and semioethics, 359–388 ethics of terminology, 14–17, 55, 119 Existential Graphs, 8, 14, 41, 321, 328, 351–352, 361–362, 426, 441, 490

fallibilism, 51, 55, 68, 120, 145, 313–314, 325, 392, 401, 464n3, 491 final interpretant, 56, 115, 120–123, 129, 135, 144, 148–151, 165, 236, 369–370, 492, 495 Firstness, 17–27, 37–39, 86, 96, 117, 129, 136, 140–141, 157–160, 179, 198, 239–247, 277–288, 298, 317–318, 369, 392, 401–408, 414, 488, 491 Fisch, M., 1, 32–33, 44–48, 59, 68, 360, 391, 460n1, 480n2 ‘Fixation of Belief ’, 32, 341, 366 followability, 217–221, 231 Forster, E.M., 215–216, 232 frame (in co-localization), 435–450 Frege, G., 6, 62, 426, 482n9 Gallie, W.B., 34, 37, 217–220, 232 gender, 9, 134, 146–150 gesture, 9, 175, 223, 314–316, 343–354, 432 and writing, 351–352 ground, 13, 88–89, 101, 135 habit, 7, 9, 18, 46, 103, 114–115, 136, 151, 157, 167, 191, 230–240, 265, 311, 323–334, 362, 378, 384, 451–454 and gesture, 339–356 habit-taking, 401–414 Hegel, 368, 391 hexadic sign system, 26–27, 109, 116–126, 162, 463n3, 495, 497 (see also semiosis) hieroglyph, 433–434, 484n17, 484n23 Holmes, Sherlock, 48–50, 205, 213–214, 222–228, 463n1 Houser, N., 1, 32, 151, 158, 392 hypoicon, 22–28, 163, 177, 259, 419, 491 hypothesis, 12, 45, 49, 92, 127, 187–199, 206–215, 223–230, 235, 248, 262–265, 310–312, 321, 344, 428, 432, 450 (see also abduction) Ibri, I., 156–157, 162, 183, 357 icon, 13, 20–27, 37–46, 51–53, 137–139, 162–164, 174, 220, 278–282, 299, 334, 361, 395, 420, 423–428 in icon-index-symbol triad, 1–9, 22, 39–53, 65, 162, 235–265, 272, 318, 321, 346, 428

Index iconicity, 25, 40, 77, 108, 394–398, 403, 408, 439 and indexicality 238–372 ideology, 40–41, 373, 381–388 idioscopic sciences, 16, 103, 104, 127, 460n1, 488 image, as artwork, 161–181 and drawing, 308–329 hypoicon, 422–24, 259, 491 mental image, 339, 349 photographic image, 138–146 immediate interpretant, 27, 37, 56, 111–115, 120, 123, 135, 143–149, 151–152, 369–370, 461n10, 492 immediate object, 27, 63, 110–120, 123, 128, 135, 139–149, 256, 353, 422, 466n6, 492 index, 1, 2, 9, 13–16, 20–27, 35–42, 45–46, 51, 53, 65–66, 105–108, 129, 137, 161–175, 235–244, 255–260, 272, 278–280, 318, 321, 326, 334, 343–350, 397, 406, 413, 419–429, 448–452, 454, 487, 489–494 and gesture, 345–347 and inference, 235–243 indexicality, 40, 235–239, 242–249, 372, 483n16 induction, 12, 16, 21, 45, 48–49, 151, 185–202, 206–208, 212–214, 225, 235–248, 262–267, 312, 385, 487 inference, 9, 12, 16, 46, 48–49, 102, 133, 185–190, 194, 201–202, 207–208, 215, 235–237, 246–249, 288, 290, 343, 350, 362, 377, 397, 451, 454n6, 473n36, 489, 496 (see also argument) information, 5, 7, 11, 17–23, 54, 65, 103, 118, 122, 146, 223–226, 231, 259, 265, 268, 271, 273, 278, 375, 429, 443–444, 451–456, 473n36, 489, 496 visual information, 293, 303, 323, 331 instance, 121, 319, 395, 495 intention, 105, 117–129, 148, 320, 363, 367, 369, 492 (see also causation) intentional interpretant, 91, 111, 114, 269–272 intentionality, 112, 114, 118, 129, 246, 461n6, 478n8, 488, 492–493 Interpretant (in Peirce’s definitions), 19, 26, 45, 52, 60, 83, 91, 110–118, 124,

501

135, 240, 340–341, 353–354, 402–403, 461n3, 477n1, 482n6, 485n33, 489, 495 interpreter, 19–20, 25, 38, 42, 56, 60, 87, 91, 106–112, 144, 147, 164, 169, 269–273, 283, 285, 339, 352, 355, 370, 376, 380, 440, 448, 461n3, 451n10, 489 Iser, W., 219–221, 232 Jakobson, R., 32, 35–39, 48, 68, 176, 239, 359, 394, 396, 460n13 James, W., 3, 5, 25, 91, 119–126, 151, 166, 171, 181, 205, 212, 225, 336, 342–343, 454 Kammerzell, F., 433–437, 456, 433–434n16 Kant, I., 10, 13, 54, 55, 386, 488 Krampen, M., 280, 495 Kull, K., 44, 64, 66, 453–454 label (in co-localization), 429–438, 442, 444, 448–455, 484n20 Langer, S., 169, 172–181 language, 5, 10, 21, 23, 36, 39, 48, 61, 65, 74–85, 134, 138, 145, 160, 172–180, 219–220, 239–240, 296, 307, 331–334, 345, 347, 359–385, 391–414, 421, 431, 432, 449–454, 492 graphic language, 287–292, 466n7, 467n11 legisign, 21–27, 37, 42, 53, 140–142, 150, 272, 280, 319, 369, 395–397, 406, 410, 420, 480n4, 488, 492, 495–497 Lieb, I., 35, 484n4 Liszka, J.J., 28, 68, 78, 80, 205, 254, 262, 269 Locke, J., 5, 359–364, 459n6 logic, 5, 33, 130, 258, 268, 342, 360, 362, 367, 370–371, 377, 420, 423, 426, 459n2, 461n3, 494 as semiotic, 11–12, 35, 45, 75, 103, 129, 392, 401 Logic Notebook, 33, 124, 128, 460n14 logical interpretant, 354–355 final logical interpretant, 340–341, 355 mark, 121, 129, 430, 496 (see also tone) Mead, G., 84, 91, 343–349, 355

502

Index

medical diagnosis (as narrative), 213, 221–222 medium (sign as), 109–112, 117–123, 161, 269, 491 artistic, 160, 168, 181 spiritualist, 210, 225 Merrell, F., 32, 53–54, 68 metaphor, 22–26, 156, 163, 178, 277, 308, 345, 445, 491–492 metaphysics, 15, 33, 78, 86, 103–104, 155–156, 360, 455, 459n2, 460n11 Methodeutic, 8, 16, 83, 450, 492 (see also Speculative Rhetoric) mode of being (of sign), 114, 140–151 of categories, 140, 243–244, 340 of three universes, 395 mode of representation, 14, 19–26, 142, 431, 491, 493 Morris, C., 32–33, 41, 48, 68, 359, 364, 449, 480n2 multimodality, 10, 23, 482n1, 484n16 narrative, 1, 9, 32, 53, 122, 179, 205–206, 215–232, 437, 464n2 necessitant (entity), 107, 117–122, 129, 489–493, 497 ‘Neglected Argument for the Reality of God’, 117, 193 Nöth, W., 32, 51–52, 394–396, 412 nominalism, 392–393, 397–399, 413–414, 455 nonagon, 9, 278–281, 284–288, 296–299, 466n5, 467–468n15 normative science, 15, 85, 155, 274, 359, 372, 488, 493 Object (in Peirce’s definitions), 14, 19, 45, 52, 74–75, 110, 113, 116–118, 124–125, 135, 162, 240, 256–259, 284, 340, 346, 353, 461n10, 483n12, 489 Ogden, C., 6, 11, 32–33, 41, 43, 74, 362–364 ‘On a New List of Categories’, 13, 31, 35, 45, 136, 268, 366, 386, 478n1 ontology, 89, 124, 378, 382, 405, 454–456 percept, 175, 281, 257, 308–312, 473n32 perception, 65–66, 87, 157, 163–172, 175–177, 181, 198, 237, 257, 267,

287, 296–299, 303, 307–312, 329, 334, 344, 355, 451, 453 Petrilli, S., 9, 32, 55–57, 68, 71, 235–240, 248–252, 359–371, 374–390 phaneroscopy, 84–88, 119, 127, 494 phenomenology, 11, 15–18, 23, 84, 88–89, 93, 108–109, 116–119, 129, 170, 198, 256–257, 308, 323, 401, 478n8, 488, 493–494 philosophy, 1, 3, 6–9, 13–17, 31, 36, 55, 62, 68, 73–74, 77, 80, 84, 93, 126–127, 157–160, 180–202, 225, 281, 303, 308, 323, 329, 332, 347, 365–366, 373, 378, 391–393, 488 photograph, 20, 23, 106, 138, 142, 145–146, 333, 422, 493 phytosemiosis, 104, 118, 129, 496 plot, 205, 215–222, 229–232, 463–464n1 Poe, E.A., 48, 215, 463n1 Ponzio, A., 9, 235–240, 248–249, 359–363, 370–371, 375, 378, 384, 387 pragmatic maxim, 311, 341, 342, 464n3 pragmaticism, 9, 31, 44, 75, 78, 171, 197, 374 pragmatism, 1, 3–5, 8–9, 22, 28, 31, 44, 78, 114, 156, 163, 190, 192, 225, 303–316, 320–321, 325, 329, 332–334, 339–344, 350, 353–356, 363, 366, 371–372, 392, 413 precission, 18, 23, 26, 494 (see also abstraction) predicate, 21, 119, 353, 419–454, 484n20, 485n30, 489 ‘Prolegomena to an Apology for Pragmaticism’, 103, 256, 351, 361, 460n3, 479n16 proposition, 13, 20–23, 40, 45, 52–53, 56, 58, 61, 66, 112, 143, 192, 212, 241–245, 343–347, 350–356, 377, 419–456 (see also dicent, dicisign) multimodal proposition, 29, 419, 432–434, 449, 456, 485n35 propositional field, 441–446, 484n20 psychologism, 45, 60–62, 67, 126 purposive signification, 56, 105, 423 qualisign, 21, 24–27, 37, 41–42, 53–54, 121, 140–142, 272, 280, 282, 319, 420, 482n6, 496 quasi-mind, 109, 112, 460–461n3

Index Ransdell, J., 32, 44–50, 58–59, 63, 66, 68 real object, 63, 111, 115, 139, 494 (see also dynamic object) realism, 4, 57, 391, 394, 397, 401, 455–456, 497 replica, 21, 108, 122–123, 129, 142, 147, 395, 426–428, 483n12, 488, 492, 495 representamen, 13–14, 19–20, 22, 26, 36–38, 52, 71, 75, 82, 107–110, 117, 126–127, 135, 339, 402–404, 414, 427, 495–496 representation, 12–21, 44, 51–54, 63, 83, 90, 101–103, 109, 126–127, 135–143, 155, 159–163, 237, 247, 256, 258, 304, 307, 318, 329, 339, 379, 428, 441, 459n6, 476n37, 477n1, 490, 494–496 rheme, 20, 24–27, 37, 53, 272, 280, 282, 395, 488–489 rhetoric, 9, 45, 89, 91, 108, 242, 491 technological, 254–274, 298 Richards, I., 6, 11, 32–33, 41, 43, 73–74, 362–363 Ricoeur, P., 217–218, 232 Roberts, D.D., 361, 391–392, 479n13 Savan, D., 109, 120, 254, 461n7 scientific creativity (and narrative), 194–197 scientific method (and narrative), 188, 194–195, 206, 224–226, 228, 231 Sebeok, T.A., 32, 48–50, 61, 64, 68, 104–105, 191, 205, 213–214, 222, 231, 236–239, 359–362, 375, 387, 495 Secondness, 17–27, 37, 39, 86, 89, 117, 129, 136, 140–141, 157–160, 170, 239–244, 247, 277–283, 288, 298, 317–318, 392, 401–407, 414, 488 self (and subjectivity) 32, 84, 91, 236–237, 246, 249, 371–86 semeiotic, 12, 32, 35, 44, 58–59, 316, 360–365, 459n2, 474n41, 480n2 semioethics, 1, 9, 93, 359–361, 370–371, 382–388 semiosis, 8–11, 26, 31, 36–46, 67, 74–75, 83, 86–89, 93, 101–109, 112–133, 148, 162–163, 172, 177, 237, 240, 339–341, 344, 355, 360, 365, 367,

503

370–372, 378, 383–388, 393–403, 413, 451, 454, 460n1, 461n10, 481n6, 487, 492, 494–496 semiotic animal, 60, 384–386 Shapiro, M., 29, 316, 394–398, 405, 410–412, 460n13, 468n1 Short, T.L., 58–62, 108, 144, 162, 184, 254, 308, 317, 404, 461n7, 478n7 Sign (in Peirce’s definitions), 14, 19, 45, 52, 74, 110, 113, 116–118, 124–125, 135, 162, 239–240, 256, 340, 451n3, 483n12, 489 significs, 359–367, 371, 382–383, 386 Sini, C., 346, 348, 351, 357–358 sinsign, 21–27, 37, 42, 53, 107, 140–142, 272, 280, 319, 369, 395, 403, 406, 420, 425, 482n6, 492 sixty-six classes of signs, 26, 102, 109, 119, 124, 128–133, 140–152, 461n1, 462n3, 488 Speculative Grammar, 16–19, 26, 33, 36, 106, 116, 133, 450 Speculative Rhetoric, 242, 492 (see also Methodeutic) subject, in semiosis 110, 121, 130, 141 in proposition 21, 114, 353, 419–430, 434, 439–441, 447, 449–454, 489 psychological 246–247, 345, 378, 392 subject token 424–429, 435 ‘Survey of Pragmaticism’, 56, 341–342, 352, 477n2 Syllabus, 11–25, 107, 109, 116, 119, 255–259, 367, 419–426, 448, 482n2, 485n34 symbol, 1, 2, 9, 13–27, 37–42, 45–47, 51–53, 65–66, 74, 108, 123, 137, 163, 173–177, 180, 235–243, 247, 256, 259–260, 272, 280, 321, 342–346, 419–428, 432, 439, 442, 444, 477n57, 482n6 synechism, 67, 181, 323–325, 332, 371–373, 393, 413 Talmy, L., 450, 484n24 ten classes of signs, 2, 11, 17, 21, 23–26, 33, 75, 106–108, 117, 126, 133, 140–141, 450n14, 488 Thirdness, 17–20, 24, 27, 37, 39, 71, 86, 117, 129, 136–141, 157–160, 190, 198,

504 239–245, 277–283, 288, 298, 317–318, 392–393, 401–413, 488 token (sign), 13, 41, 62, 115, 121–123, 395, 440 diagram token 395–412 subject token 422–435, 440, 422, 426, 439, 440 token-frequency 408–414 tombstone, 443, 445, 449, 484n21 tone (sign), 43, 122, 154, 345, 496, 497 (see also mark) triad, 1, 23, 37, 40, 54, 65, 81–82, 86, 88, 105, 127–128, 160–164, 171, 176–177, 236, 298, 346, 368–374, 380, 402, 404, 420, 435, 450 triadic relation, 17, 19, 25, 60, 67, 109–110, 117, 128–129, 135–143, 149–151, 163, 243, 257, 317, 339 trichotomy, 9, 13, 18–33, 26, 36–42, 46, 51, 53, 65–67, 76, 84, 94, 116, 119, 124, 126, 137, 140–141, 255–273, 285, 317–321, 386, 420, 421, 490, 497 twenty-eight classes of signs, 26–27, 102, 119–120, 129, 143, 492, 488–489 type (sign) 121, 141, 394–395, 495–497 type-token distinction 41, 43, 395, 497

Index typology, 9–12, 24, 27, 35, 41–42, 107, 115–129, 162, 235, 238, 243–244 (see also classification of signs) Umiker-Sebeok, J., 48–50, 71, 205, 213–214, 222, 234, 300 universe of discourse, 269–272, 441, 447–448, 455 universe of existence, 10, 115, 121, 124–127, 493 universe of experience, 137, 141, 272, 490, 493 universe of necessitants, 115–117, 493 utter, 446, 461n.4 utterer, 91, 109–114, 125–126, 269–272, 376, 380, 382 vagueness (of signs), 55–57, 65–66, 143, 396 vision, 48, 61, 66, 104, 156, 174, 217, 287, 309, 340, 347, 353, 361–365, 405, 453 Weiss, P., 33, 109, 131, 153, 233, 415 Welby, Lady Victoria, 3, 5–11, 27–36, 45, 52, 55, 68, 71, 109–133, 149, 158, 269, 270, 359–390 Wells, H.G., 206, 224–234 Wittgenstein, L., 347, 350–3

505

506

507

508