I think we can if Barthes' is based on de Saussure's (let's just assume for the moment that it is).

You need to read chapter 3 of Kumiko Tanaka-Ishii's excellent book The Semiotics of Programming which ties together Peircean triadic Semiotics and Saussurean dyadic Semiology. The main mistake made here is that there is the attempt to equate Representamen as Signifier and Object as Signified, in a naive approach. This might suggest that either Saussure's work is missing something, or CSP's work contains superfluous notions, that interpretant is inconsequential -- whereas it is central to Peirce.

Tanaka-Ishii's thesis is that (off the top of my head!) the Signified mental image is that of the Immediate Object, one of Peirce's subdivisions of signs -- it is the object as originally conceived. It contains none of the dynamism of Peirce's work and is, to my mind, indicative of the difference between the two systems, where Peirce's model is composite (signs producing further signs) and Saussure's is atomic (parole defining definition). We see this in Computer Science where its two foundations are Turing's atomic access to/processing of values on a paper tape, and Church's composite notion of accessing values via functions (well, lambda!) which may involve further functions. Advertisement: my own research is that CS needs to re-examine these foundations!

But, don't take my word for it - read Tanaka-Ishii's book(!) Then, can we equate Bathes to Saussure?

Barthes' semiology (dans l'Aventure sémiologique) is based on Louis Hjelmslevs semiotic view of language and other sign systems, in Prolegomena to a Theory of Language. The idea of metalanguage and connotative language, essential to Barthes' analysis of secondary meanings, stems directly from the Hjelmslevian embedding of semiotic functions in other semiotic functions, either in the form of expression (connotation) or in the form of content (metalanguage). So this analysis is a sort of semiotic syntax. Whereas Peirce's classifications are paradigmatic. Just combine the former, syntagmatic, and the latter, paradigmatic, and you have a perfect combination, à la Roman Jakobson. — I do not want to add a bibliography of people who already did this, because the two theories (Saussure, Peirce) are incompatible if you view them as competing: Saussure's is sociological, Peirce's is a logician's elucubration. Pick from both as indicated. NB You have to do this by yourself, in order to fully understand what you are doing.

Besides technical crosses (perfectly possible), the issue here is not semiotic but philosophical. You can compare some topics and even say (in example) that there is some relationship between the peircean interpretant and the barthesian (an saussurean) signify (sorry if this is not the word used in english, I read Barthes and Saussure in spanish and french), but you would be in problems trying to combine their semiotics in a deep level, basically because one base his sign in ontology and metaphysics (Peirce) and the other in social use (Barthes and all the saussurean semiotics).

In an early paper named "On a New List of Categories" (that I consider the best to start teaching and discussing Peirce), Peirce states "[CP 1.547 ...] Before any comparison or discrimination can be made between what is present, what is present must have been recognized as such, as it, and subsequently the metaphysical parts which are recognized by abstraction are attributed to this it, but the it cannot itself be made a predicate. This it is thus neither predicated of a subject, nor in a subject, and accordingly is identical with the conception of substance".

In this quote (and in the entire paper) you can see that the semiosis process in Peirce is very far from the signification theorized by Saussure and those who continued with his work.

I think that Benveniste has a good approach to this difference in both volumes of Problemes de linguistique générale (I don't know if there is an english version, there is a spanish one published by Siglo XXI).

Benveniste is unknown in Anglosaxon scholarship, especially in linguistics. His concept of enunciation would be ranged within the pragmatic field, surely. And since the 'force' of connotation in Barthes' media analysis is a performative force, this would fit into Peirce's indexicality. Anyway, as Joaquin says, one has to be careful because of the ontological differences. But it is easy to see that connotations are metonymic, and hence symbolic, which accounts for their performativity (as ideological propagandism, for example).

While it is absolutely right to note the philosophical differences here between Barthes and Pierce, you might look at Deleuze's work on cinema for one attempt to bridge the two. His work with Guattari reworks Hjelmslev, and Guattari discusses his particular understanding of the concept of enunciation in his notes for Anti-Oedipus. Not sure whether that's the path you wish to take, though!

Icons of symbols, such as the Paris Match photo of a black soldier honoring a colonialist French flag (Barthes' famous example) are both emotional (from the icon) and compelling (from the symbol). Connotations can thus be specified by a sign analysis à la Peirce. But Peirce's semiotics is often messy and in some aspects hopelessly confused.

Sí. Nada como el triángulo de Pierce para comprender el grado cero de Barthes, y, por supuesto, la semiosis infinita de Verón.

Sí, lo uso como dos ejes fundamentales para explicar la base epistemológica de los estudios del discurso. Y si se suma Eliseo Verón, como propone Yamile Haber Guerra , se entiende mejor ciertos procesos de discursividad.

Infinite semiosis means the the meaning is in the interpretant of the sign structure, and since the interpretant is again a sign, the recursion is infinite. What Peirce is saying through this is that instead of describing directly the conceptual meaning of what is signified, we can just look at how it is understood, and to again understand this understanding, produce our new sign — In a sense, this is absurd, but it works for pragmaticists, because it eliminates semantics altogether. I do not recommend this, though, because a semiotics without semantics is a lame duck.

Respetables colegas Aimé y Per. Muchas gracias. Y gracias a RG por prestarnos el escenario.

En mi afán por entrecruzar más que por abstraer o deslindar, he venido defendiendo la cuestión de la interpretabilidad: https://dialnet.unirioja.es/servlet/articulo?codigo=2292008

Mi polémica semiosfera metamedia:

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/331571115_2_Tecnofilia_alternidad_o_pensamiento_acrataMetamediacion_y_periodismo_complejo

(...) intenta seguir a Peirce en tanto el signo puede ser objeto y a la vez interpretante; el interpretante, objeto y signo, así ad infinitum.

Es lo que pasa, por ejemplo, en los fenómenos transmediales on line, donde los enunciatarios, concepto que me ha gustado sostener:

(http://www.redalyc.org/articulo.oa?id=64916989009), producen y consumen contenidos y sentidos en un proceso del cual es difícil determinar principio o fin.

Así sucede en las redes sociales on line con las comunidades fandom y los múltiples finales alternativos, o con los referenda virtuales y la toma de decisiones políticas. Eso es semiosis (social) infinita: es Verón. No solo Verón. Es Bajtin: es dialogismo. Es Lotman: polifonía. Es Bourdieu: habitus.

Es Eco con el (re) surgimiento de los nuevos tipos de paquetes textuales.

Y, por supuesto, intentando cerrar el permeable círculo hermenéutico, son las nuevas gramáticas que nadie como Chomsky podría explicar.

En estas zonas limítrofes de encrucijadas e hibridaciones textuales y escriturales: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/331573025_Who_says_what_to_whom_Need_for_a_new_communication_theory

(...) encontraríamos el grado cero de Barthes.

Salud(os)

Per , I hope I have summarised your last post correctly:

• I do not recommend [instead of describing directly the conceptual meaning of what is signified, we can just look at how it is understood, and to again understand this understanding, produce our new sign], though, because a semiotics without semantics is a lame duck.

By this are you suggesting Semiotics must be absolutist: that something that can mean anything means nothing? In that is it has no [enduring] value?

In Computer Science we have languages which are clearly based on a syntax-semantic dyad: source code maps onto an object code, giving the source meaning in terms of machine instructions. This certainly has enduring value - if I program in C, I'm using a ~50-year-old programming language! However, this lacks the humanity of natural language, where meanings can evolve: my kids speak a different language. I don't see the removal of semi-colons from a programming language as a significant improvement - programming remains expensive, long winded and restricted to [able-bodied] "professionals".

From previous posts, I don't think you're a big fan of Peirce, finding aspects of it "hopelessly confused"; but, while "semiotics without semantics" may be a difficult concept, I suspect it may yet prove to be fruitful. Although, I do take from your first post that this is what I'm doing myself (investigating the 'lame duck') so it might only be myself who understands what I'm doing! Hopefully, some clarification will remove this solipsistic isolation.

Martin, thanks for your thoughts. Semantics can be predominantly instructive, like a system of commands, like in coding and in the army! It can also be epistemic, like the grammar in natural languages that allows humans to describe, argue, and narrate. And it can be affective, as in iconic signs activating our memories. In text analysis, we are doing all of this combined. Peirce is fine for machine coding, because he is interested in functional behavior, not in thoughts or other signified meanings. There is a lot of non-semantic 'bio-semiotics' out there, that either presupposes that meaning is unnecessary, or that the entire universe is meaning, because it is God's thought. The latter two options are equivalent. —

Estimados colegas Aimé, Per, Martin, Joshua, Joaquín.

A propósito de estos ricos intercambios, me gustaría compartir las muy interesante "Observaciones sobre encuentros entre...", de mi amigo el filósofo y filólogo mexicano Juan Nadal Palazón, publicado en el más reciente número 236 de la Revista Mexicana de Ciencias Políticas y Sociales. Les dejo en enlace.

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=http://www.revistas.unam.mx/index.php/rmcpys/article/view/63489&ved=2ahUKEwiZ1-D-_OTiAhXOs1kKHcHcDMwQFjABegQIBhAH&usg=AOvVaw22aTwAo4cGiyg9Es7jt8yZ

Yamile Haber Guerra

Hi Eugene,

Have you looked at the work of Clive Fencott - He used to be a Teesside University, & was my PhD supervisor. You might find some interesting stuff.

Thanks Hannah, good suggestion!

All the best, Eugene

The distinction between semiology à la Barthes and semeiotics à la Peirce is, basically, that the former separates signified meaning and reference, whereas the latter does not. The result is that for Peirce and followers, meaning is entirely situational, pragmatic ('interpretant determined), whereas for the Saussurean semiologists, meaning can work against reference, as in dreams, religion, ideology... Peirce is for business schools, Barthes for the Humanities, shortly put. (Short is always a little brutal, forgive me).

Hi Per,

I just found this forum... (I don't know if anyone is still here) while trying to preempt some questions I might get during my PhD upgrade exam. I am using Peirce's traid (Object, Sign and Interpretant) in photographs to argue that, seen from Vilem Flusser's point of view of the automaticity of the apparatus (the camera, which produces 'the magic' of making us believe that photos represent 'the real'), the triad collapses into, on the one hand, Object-Sign and on the other, the Interpretant. This is because the automaticity of 'the black box' makes the Interpretant believe that she is having a direct perceptual experience of the Object. What would it mean for this argument, in your view, that Barthes separates signified meaning and reference, whereas Peirce does not? The fact that for Peirce Object and reference are the same thing.

Thanks,

Paula

Hi Paula,

Peirce insists in all his writing that his triad cannot be in anyway 'collapsed' into a dyadic sign. The sign - the connection between the Sign and Object is created through the Interpretant - a sign is subjective, dependent on observation. A sign stands for something for somebody.

I certainly agree that seeing something through a camera (particularly a camera obscura!) give the impression that you're seeing something 'live', rather than an image. But it begs the question, how do we see - do we open up our eyes and an image floods in and is projected on the back of our minds? It is really worth not taking the answer from me, but from John Searle, illustrating intentionality (its a 2 hour video, but he nails it in about 10 minutes)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VddLlnOZIfY&t=3137s

Whatever you see, and whatever you think it is, is constructed by you.

Hope this helps and if Per reads this I hope he is keeping well and staying safe!

And good luck with your exam!

Martin.

Hi Martin and Paula: I just posted my article "Pragmatics and Semiotics" on ResearchGate. Maybe you can find it. It has a long discussion on Peirce's semantic triad and Barthes' famous Panzani example, and on complex semiosis. Paula's remark on Peirce's Object and the Referent touches upon one of my standard criticisms of Peirce's entire semeiotics: it does not bother to distinguish between meaning as signified (signifié, conceptual) and referential meaning (matter of affairs referred to). This is due to Peirce's lack of interest in semantics, really. He is a pragmati(ci)st, and the Interpretant is another sign, like in Wittgenstein, where the meaning is the usage.

Thank you Per,

I'll have a look and get back to you.

Best,

Paula

I bookmarked "Pragmatics..." a few weeks ago, and will get to it very soon.....and thanks!

Hi,

I was just reading your paper, and I was interested in the semiotic, 'little machine' you mention. Is that term yours? I saw no author's name attached to it. It reminded me of Eco's mental schemas which, he says, make the Sign fragile. I am of course referring to photographs rather than language, (no element of enunciation in photographs; different forces at work) so it's a slightly different conversation. Still, I attach a diagram I made last year, based on Peirce's triad, where I place Eco's mental schema (which, oddly enough, looks like a little machine) as the giver or setter of 'angles of meaning' between an Object and its Interpretant. The latter term I find very useful when discussing matters of representation in photography (I cannot find the equivalent in Barthes).

Hi Per and Paula,

I have your paper and am going through it now. I have to agree with you that Peirce is a Pragmati(ci)st, that meaning is in usage and that Interpretant is another sign! But this last point surely alludes to the reference that you seek. I have an example...

I have just uploaded a preprint of chapter 1 of the book I have been meaning to write. One of the examples I give in a later chapter is of the phrase "I need three eggs because I am baking a cake" (this can be seen at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ra3P3DcpwY ) This is grounded in language, Sign and Object are utterances, and for the moment I'm assuming that we have an internal monologue which is thought or Interpretant. So the example suggests that 'A because B' is used as in act of deductive reasoning. However, this also implies the two items which are also (need to be) valid utterances (my latest definition is at https://github.com/martinwheatman/enguage/blob/master/assets/concepts/why%2Bbecause.txt). The denotation - to use Hjelmslev's (?) terminology - is the reasoning, but the connotation is that I need 3 eggs, and that I am baking a cake. If you accept my reasoning (A because B) it is also necessary that you accept the references I make. Is this not the signified/referential distinction you seek in Peirce, that Interpretant may involve direct and implied thought? I admit that this is not the 'freshness' alluded to by the net in the famous Panzani example, because these semantics are at a different (metaphysical?) level. But they are described (introduced at a symbolic level) by Barthes. The understanding in the Panzani example is certainly conventional.

This direct/referential though can be seen in Ogden and Richards' The Meaning of Meaning (p11) in their illustration of the Peircean triad as a triangle - the top being labelled "Thought or Reference" Maybe the distinction is not emphasised enough?

My point to Paula, though, is that it is problematic simply to dismiss Peircean semiotics as a dyad in any respect, particularly if your examiner is a grump old Peircean (like me ;^)

Thanks for the paper, I will read it with great interest!

Martin

P.S. There is an analysis by Kumiko Tanaka-Iishi in her book The Semiotics of Programming which states the Saussurean dyadic sign is the link between the Representamen and Immediate Object - the object as defined - but this (Immediate/Dynamic/Final) is another level of Peircean triadic definitions. I admit his work is not simple, but worth it if you can make the leap!

Paula, Eco is viewed as a bridge between the two camps, but I have always found his work muddled - I may need to re-read his Theory of Semiotics - it has been a while! The notion of a 'little machine' I find interesting, as this is how I implement language, and linguists' work often hinges on particular examples. But the diagram you post seems to be a regurgitation of Odgen and Richards 1923 diagram. See attached.

O and R is more informative, in that it shows, with the dotted baseline, that the connection between the sign vehicle and the referent object, is imputed or inferred, it only exists (is created) through Interpretant - hence there is no possible reduction to a dyadic model.

In implementing this model I find that Interpretant is composite - thoughts and references occur.

Martin

P.S. Adequacy is also found in Speech Act Theory as Felicity (as in the ability to find the right thing to say)

Hi Martin,

Thank you for this. It's very helpful -let alone interesting. I only use Peirce's triad because his conceptualization (his language) facilitates a discussion on the ontology of photography. The concept of Interpretant (which is the same as 'thought' or 'reference' if I interpret your image correctly) is very useful in this respect. My thesis however, centers on philosophy, my main question being, how should we think about the use of the photographic representation of human suffering in terms of moral responsibility to those there represented? My first discussion is about what we mean when we speak of 'the real' in a photograph. Going by your image, a photograph would be where 'symbol' is, although photos are not symbols but iconic signs (hypoicons). But in this sense, how is, for instance the utterance 'my party' different to a photograph of my party in terms of 'a real'? I find the concept of dynamic/immediate Object useful here. There are many complexities I do not pursue because, as you may gather, I am not a semiotics expert and am not entering the subject. When I speak of 'collapsing Peirce's triad' I am not arguing that his conceptualization is mistaken or lacking or could be viewed differently, but quite the opposite, I emphasize that the 'collapse' illustrates the fallacy of the 'naive observe' (Flusser's term), who believes that, because of the automaticity of the photographic camera, he can access 'the real party' as if he had been there (the message without a code.. and perhaps not even a message but the thing itself). And yet of course, we know it's just a representation, the triad was always intact. As you can see in one of my other images, I place the dotted line from the Interpretant to the Object (because the interpretant is fooled by the camera into believing he has a non-mediated relation or perceptual experience with the dynamic object).

I am actually very glad to have encountered a grump old Peircian. Would you still object to my use of the concept of the triad in this, very minimal way?

Thanks to Paula and two Martins for your valuable reflections. Pictures are iconic signs, and as signs they have a sensibilis aspect, if you will, and an intelligibilis aspect. In Europe, a signifier and a signified. The signifier is carved out of stuff you can perceive, and the signified is piece of thought, which refers to what a thought refers to (itself, another thought, a worldly circumstance...). A picture indeed has enunciation, in the semiotic sense: it shows things from an angle, referring to the enunciator, and it is framed, calling for the enunciatee's attention. It would be useful to discuss sign types and meaning types further. But since Peirce has many different semeiotic theories, one after another, and has a style of writing that makes every one of them unreadable, it might be a good idea to try some examples from life instead. My "little machines", translated from the French, les petites machines (du sens), title of a book manuscript also to be found on Researchgate, refers to the semantic schemas that cognitive semantics and semiotics study as a particularly important part of the syntax of meaning — they are the mind's diagrammatic devices for assembling ideas.

Can a photograph really have enunciation?? I'm not sure about this. A particular angle or framing may have been an accident (or from a street cam). I think the (conscientious) photographer might have certain intentions with regards to angle, light, posture and so on, but once the photo is out there in google images, what happens to this enunciation? Is it fixed? If so for how long?. Someone who appears to be 'smiling' in a photo, might actually have been giving a smirk (had we been there we would have known this from culture/context). Mmm... I like the idea of photographic enunciation, but does it come from the interpreter, the photo or the photographer? I see a triad coming along...

Hi everyone. As I see it, the photo is only activated by those who "construct" it, and it then takes part of the ongoing narrative of the one who observes it. Meaning does not reside in the image, it was part or even an accident of the photographer's intention and its existence is then left to the sociocognitive reception of embodied minds which activate it. There are many variables to be taken into account here, we would have to consider the distributed, situated, dissipative, etc. dimensions of cognition. Burke calls it the "oceanic mind".

Meaning may not reside in the image (and Laruelle has a lot to say about this) but the problem is that we act as though it did, as we do with any object. We use photos as evidence or proof of existence (in court and in Science). Marta, if someone asked you, 'What is a photograph?' (an ontological question) what would you say, that would exclude a painting?

Yes, Paula, I agree with you, I attribute that to the social dimension of cognition. For example, what is tradition? Does it always involve certain history of repetition? Not really, it is what a certain community decides it is. About the question "what is a photograph?", it has to do with distributed cognition, what it is and what it is not is a convention with some shared knowledge and the individual experience of it. The shared knowledge is not fixed but the important thing is that we humans are constrained by our perception (being the different conceptualizations context-dependent) and so we can agree on main simple blocks of knowledge for communicative purposes. I would exclude a painting and I could be tricked into thinking that a painting is a photograph. An expert artistic photographer or a lens manufacturer would give a diferente definition, yet we can understand why, it is the continous interplay of distributed/situated.

Hi,

Thank you for that. My problem is that, to say that a photograph is (or is not), 'a convention with some shared knowledge and the individual experience of it' does not differentiate it from any other object or concept within our perception. I could define anything in those very same terms. So how useful a definition is it? I guess, to answer myself, that to look for an ontology of photographs is in itself useless in order to understand what photographs are, and that we should concentrate rather on what photographs do (pragmatics). However, the fact that they are difficult to place ontologically, does something to the way we use them. It is true that we cannot 'see behind life' as Dilthy said, but photographs have a magic of their own.

Thank you for sharing your angle on this. It is all useful to me.

It is an interesting discussion. Do you see there being a greater overlap between paintings and photographs, which you don't get with, say, a CCTV image. What about a photograph of a painting which you may find in a museum gift shop - I may not be able to own the Mona Lisa, but for 9.99 I may have a reproduction. Is there any overlap in the intentions of a painter and that of a the print-maker several centuries later? I suspect it all come down to James' 'cash value'?

This is certainly interesting, guys, and touches other big questions such as "what is art?" and the artist as print maker Warhol was. Everything "is" in its relation with other things and how do we consider them. It is all about social convention, it is prestigious and cool to own a well known painting but a print is something cheap and with no value, just as a perfect reproduction or falsification is, it might look just the same but if it lacks the "authenticity" seal it is nothing. Onthe other hand, I am interested in neuroaesthetics, our ability to be "artistic" and to be touched by beauty in am unconscious manner (Mark Turner's The Artistic Mind).

Hi Paula,

Sorry, I missed one of your posts! I think you have just about got it. Ogden and Richards were primarily interested in language, so they do rework / simplify some of Peirce’s ideas, but the diagram is useful. It is a model, so worthy of scientific discourse, but it is a model of subjectivity - that meaning is dependent on observation - the link between two things are defined by interpretation. So yes, the image might be hypoiconic, but Peircean signs are complex, so it could include symbolic elements — a bit off subject might be like Katherine Hamnett’s tee-shirts - it’s an image and it carries a message.

In that you have a solid line from Sign to Object it would suggest to me that you are ‘collapsing’ the triad - as if there is some short-cut or a stereotype(?) or assumption being made. I can see what you’re attempting, but I thing this is working at a conceptually different level. But Peirce has another classification of signs in how they are used (in immediate/dynamic and final) and I have my own illustration in attempting to understand it (it is in a submitted paper awaiting review). There is the immediate object and interpretant, how the sign is initially used. I suspect this is is how a sign is defined, as Kumiko Tanaka-Ishii states that this is Saussure’s dyadic sign. Then there is the dynamic use and interpretation of the sign - how it gets used. And then there is the final interpretant - how the habits of the sign users change on continued use. How we get used to a sign. This, Peirce states, is a fully functioning sign.

I’m guessing that this is what you’re after, in that when we get used to it, by habit, we take a particular stance on something. Possibly this is how we act, for example, when we talk about ‘compassion fatigue’?

I don’t think the dotted line illustrates ‘fooling’, it means that there is an inferred relationship - the link is only there because the interpretant draws them together. Although Umberto Eco does say that where ever there is a possibility of lying signs are in action. Does any of this help?

(If I may criticise my own diagram, the Dyadic sign should only go to the midway point - there is no interpretation involved, it is simply between signifier and signified - presumably defined by some 'higher power' - a parent, teacher or academic perhaps? Perhaps Per can put me right on this?)

Interesting Marta, but if a print has no value because it is cheap, does that mean there is no inherent beauty? Does the original only have worth through its originality (and inherent scarcity)? Scarcity would give it monetary worth. Surely we don't value art in monetary terms? As a pan-semiotician every thing is a sign - even the spaces between things. As a Peircean, it is to what extent that we consider something - the number of ways, or the profundity of interpretation - that not only makes it art, but gives it value as art. Your 'Kiss-Me-Quick' hat may hold sentimental value which may in a sense make it art, but your Guernica may have more 'worth'?

Thank you Martin, of course it helps. I'm not sure I understand why having a solid line between Object and Sign means 'collapsing' the triad (I'm thinking through your words). Is it because to do this discards the interpretant in some form? As if the interpretant was between Object and Sign? In your drawing all three are placed consecutively, meaning the triangular element sits elsewhere. As you say, it is the interpretant that brings forth the connection of meaning (inference). Did Peirce use a triangle himself when developing the idea? Maybe a pyramid instead, or even a 4D triangle might convey the complexities better. Perhaps 2D is constraining us or misleading, or maybe the concepts are irreducible into one single diagram (Feynman would be good here).

In your drawing, you have 3 different thickness lines. It seems like it means something. Strong to more tenuous connections? It matters.

An aside: animals can also interpret signs, right? i.e.: marked territory and other scents, scents which act as signs, and signs which cause a particular behaviour. We don't call it 'reasoning' or 'convention' though, but demote it to 'instinct'. But maybe 'neuroaesthetics' is just a fancy word for human instinct around art.

And I find it interesting that a painting can be forged, but we cannot forge a photograph (the latter can only be manipulated after the event -photoshop). And what has more value and/or worth? After all, a forgery of Picasso is as unique and valuable as the original for as long as it remains undetected as a forgery. What does that mean for the original? Does it means that value or worth is only in the 'knowing' and not in the thing itself? Many a treasure have been found in car boot sales, devalued because of 'not knowing'. I wrote about this while thinking on issues of representation (many drafts ago).

Just to add some more questions, this all reminds me of the distinction between cognitive semiotics and biosemiotics, should one of them contain the other?

About the "neuro-" in neuroaesthetics it just makes this certainly rich discipline to focus on mirror neurons and empathy together with affective neuroscience. The response to intense emotions has a quick neurofunctional path (for an evolutionary reason) and we humans can be driven through that path when moved by beauty (a painting, a thunderstorm, a Pynchon's novel, a floating plastic bag...). Neuroaesthetics studies this, not the hermeneutics and philosophical considerations we construct later.

On the ontology of photography: as the term indicates, photography is obtained by "letting the light write" and then by editing the result. Painting does not let the light write, but instead lets the artist do the projection from visual sources to the canvas, through principles of composition. This is an important distinction, because photographical ART then can focus on framing, chromatic qualities, vagueness, viewpoint, distance, choice of motif, rather than on figurativity as such. It makes photographic art more individualistic, more personal, and less "style"-oriented than painting. The difference is substantial and clearly emotional.

On sign models: try to describe the meaning of your arrows and lines explicitly, and you will discover their fuzziness. If you complexify what is already fuzzy in its simplest form, you will end in a very thick fog.

Paula,

I do apologise if I've confused my argument with too many diagrams! The Ogden and Richards is the main idea - that the implied (dotted) link between Sign and Object only really exists (solid lines) through thought and reference (Interpretant). So the dotted-ness signifies that it doesn't exist, whereas the solid lines are real. Meaning is always mediated, it requires observation.

My own diagram, attempting to illustrate the different levels of interpretation, is just a draft - my poor attempt to interpret his words. The thickest line is the best guess at where the dyadic sign sits, and the thin vertical lines are just guides to the Sign/Object/Interpretant layers. The dotted line to the Final Interpretant is the possibility of a fully functioning sign changing the habit of the sign user (Perhaps, as Wittgenstein says, I should 'pull up the ladder' and remove the picture!) Another of my pictures, published at a conference in 2011, is a triangular-based pyramid illustrating his notion of Quasi-mind, but I'll draw the line at that, and I think you've already pre-figured it!

And, yes, Peirce does had a thing about threes - most, if not everything he did - Phenomenology, Reasoning, Semiotics etc. - was with triads! He did have 10 valid sign types, coming from his three-by-three classification of signs. But he never (certainly not in his Collected Papers) have a 'Semiotic triangle' (not to my knowledge)

Cheers,

martin

P.S. Zoosemiotics is Thomas Seebok's area, which follows Peirce, but it's not an area I'm familiar with. But then there's Ivan Pavlov, and the Behaviourists (which is out of fashion nowadays)

Biosemiotics: My colleague the biologist Jesper Hoffmeyer, in Copenhagen, was a prominent biosemiotician. We never agreed on much, since he hated language and linguists. To him , there was meaning in the entire natural world, and "especially" in the animated world. His background monist philosophy led him to believe that things are material and spiritual, neural systems have nothing much to do with it. His liked Peirce a lot, since he was a monist too (monism decides that there is only once substance in the world, and it contains thinking and materiality as complementary aspects. To him, any exchange of "information", chemical or mechanical, was loaded with meaning. To me, that is deism disguised as semiotics. Kalevi Kull, Tartu, thinks like Hoffmeyer. So did Sebeok in Bloomington.

Alternatives to monistic mysticism? Cartesian cognitive rationalisms.

What about the second cognitive revolution, embodiment and meaning emergence, the Descartes'Error by Antonio Damasio? All conversations I have had so far about biosemiotics have been with primatologists, it makes it really challenging and exciting when thinking about "what makes us "human"? Turner's conceptual blend is always somehow there as a shadow.

Having studied neuroscience together with linguistics and literature is not easy, there is always a feeling of not-belonging, but it is exciting at the same time. I always think in the counter-intuituve non-conscious part of our dynamic cognitive-emotinal performance and how the lab can change pre-stablished ideas, but also how can humanities disturb eegs and fmri.

Dear Per Aage, all you have said about Hoffmeyer reminded me of Shintoism :)

Marta: Damasio is wrong about Descartes, but pleases the Spinoza-fans of the US. Spinoza is the father of modern pragmatist monism. In his work, Damasio is, ironically enough, Cartesian: he wants to understand the interaction of mind and body, like we all do. The philosophical confusion in the cognitive camp is amazing, if not surprising. My colleague Mark Turner resists semiotization of the blending model because it would hurt the monist presupposition, namely that mental spaces do not need to be signified, they do not just pop up from the world-mind. But they do need to be signified. Semiotics is inherently dualist in the ontological sense that it resuses to reduced mind to matter and inversely. Therefore semiotics can study culture, where mind and matter are mainly related through signs; otherwise every body would be its own culture only.

Thank you Per for your valuable vision. Neurobiologists such as Martín-Loeches affirm now that the mind is not symbolic, language is. What do you think Bout this? Art would directly exploit visual aspects of reality (since neanderthals) so there would not be, neccesarily, a direct link between a symbolic mind and creation. I have yet to read the thread about language and thought, but from a 2nd cognitive revolution perspective thought is pre-linguistic...

Marta: We should refuse to reduce mind to matter and inversely; so that is a philosophical issue to pursue. Language is symbolic and iconic, but thought in itself is not, it uses presemiotic diagrams that afterwards slide into communication as gesture, drawings, schemas of language and signs. Art goes back to pre-semiotic thought, and so do other forms of scientific and philosophical imagination.

This is being very clarifying, thank you! Are pre-semiotic diagrams and image-schemas the same?

Marta: mental diagrams and dynamic schemas ("image-" is a naïve idea from California) are of the same sort, only difference is that we are constantly inventing new diagrams, whereas the schemas seem to freeze into forms of communicated semantics — to serve blending stabilization, for example.

So Per, do you know what mind is? A signifier is a material thing, and the signified mental image is (within?) the mind? What I'm trying to get at is the mind separate from the body - spiritual even?

The present, the past and the future, walk into a bar...

It was a very tense situation.

Thank you Martin,

It's funny that Peirce 'had a thing' about triads but never saw them in a triangular formation. Usually, a dyad or triad implies 2 or 3 points or aspects; some kind of relationship among them which separates them into 3, or else why not just say '3 aspects' rather than call it a 'triad'. It's hard to conceive of a triad without thinking about a triangular relationship of sorts. This reminds me of Laruelle's vision-stance or vision-force. For him, in the beginning, there was no 'word', but an object to be seen (his book: The concept of non-photography). So,

Marta if you believe that thought is pre-linguistic, is this a particular kind of thought that excludes the concept of time? How is time conceived of, outside language? All this also reminds me of:

'Since the days of Greek philosophy sight has been recognized as the most excellent of the senses. The noblest activity of the mind, theoria, is described in metaphors mostly taken from the visual field. Plato, and western philosophy after him, speaks of the "eye of the soul" and of the "light of reason."

Aristotle in the same passage sums up its virtues by stating that it is the sense yielding the most knowledge and excelling in differentiation' (Met.A, 980 a 25)

Jonas, H. (1954). The Nobility of Sight. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 14(4), 507–519. JSTOR. https://doi.org/10.2307/2103230

Martin W: signifiers are conceptual, remember: phonemes, for examples are not res extensa. So words connect a signifying concept with a signified concept. Words integrate in sentences, which have deictic bindings to the enunciative situation. Sentence syntax is rather iconic, by the way.

Paula: thought & time: as a musician, I find temporal cognition very important. It is not at all language-bound, though.

There is a lenghty discussion here on Thinking and Language. You are invited to find it.

Paula, cognition is pre-linguistic, thought can exist without language but language cannot exist without thought. Our perception of the world (the continuum world-body-mind dymamic) is constrained by our senses, time then would be (sorry for being ultra reductive) a perception of change and movenent in space (in conceptual metaphor studies time was believed to be the target domain and space the source adding structure, but this also works inversely). The "idea" of time is different in each culture and context-dependent, the perception of change would be universal and not a human exclusivity.

Per, I have heard the argument somewhere that both signifier and signified are both mental concepts. So is this an Idealist position? The diagram on folio 27 (page 11 in my copy of Duckworth!) with two heads facing each other with the circuit travelling from mouth to ear in both directions, which would suggest there is a physical aspect to communication. Saussure talks of physical process, physiological process and psychological phenomena folio 28 (pp12), although he also 'makes no claim' that this analysis is complete. Perhaps phonemes are not res cogitans because a sound does not signify anything? (with the exception of onomatopoeic words?) Sounds are a physical side of his 'circuit', perhaps it is the physiological conversion of sound waves to brain impulses that is the interface between body and mind, but the sign works at the next level up in the higher functioning of the mind - concepts signifying concepts. I'm sure Saussure modelled words as signifiers (both written and spoken) which signify a signified mental image. But his circuit suggest, broadly, three layers.

On the subject of three - Paula - Peirce does do a lot of mathematics diagrammatically, and argues that triads can build any structure, where as dyads can only build linear structures. But he uses three lines converging on a central point, a three pointed star rather than a triangle.

Martin, do you know the Ramachandran and Hubbard' s kiki/bouba effect?

Martin, but wouldn't the central point (where the 3 lines converge) give rise to a fourth point? What does the point of convergence mean for Peirce?

Marta, I have heard of the kiki/bouba effect. I'm sure it must be the root of onomatopoeia. As a Spanish native speaker, I find intriguing how different cultures call for a cats' attention (puss-puss in English; minou-minou in French; but in Spanish it's cuchito-cuchito (coo-chee-toh), more of a kiki sound, whereas the others are more bouba-ishy, meaning soft. I'm sure you've heard of the McGurk effect (vision overrides hearing) which I always show my students when discussing why Spanish people do not differentiate the v and b sound as the English do. In Spanish it would be context overriding vision and hearing.

Paula, where come you from exactly? I am also a Spanish native speaker and I use an m and s sound to call cats, like a msssmsss sound :)

Hi Marta,

I'm from Santiago de Chile, but I've lived in UK since 1988. What about you?

Paula, I am Spanish, from the Canary Islands (I live in Madrid, though) :)

Martin W: To talk about concepts do not make you an idealist :) The difference between a sound and a tone (a musical note), is a difference between substance and form, in Hjelmslev's terms. We perceive intentionally produced physical sounds, gestures, graphs AS something, and the X AS Y is essential to all human expression. Intentionality and the AS function are basic in the human world, and so natural to us that we never think about them, unless we are linguists or semioticians. The concept-to-concept function we call 'sign' seems to have started with person names, because we 'called' them out loudly, and used a sort of song to carry the call over distance. We still do that. Now we 'call' a concept by using another concept, even in semantics: metaphor, metonymy do that same thing.

Kalevi: Yes, monism is scientifically absurd; very poetic but harmful to social science and the humanities, where meaning is on the table... The challenging fact is that concepts can be shared! How? Well, I think, because minds build concepts the same way, by uniting categories and schemas in internal diagramming (like building maps).

Paula and Marta: Im from Argentina, but Danish and living in France. :)

Well, that's the Spanish empire represented here, in part. Although our surnames are not all that Spanish-sounding. My second surname is Aguilar, and Silvera is also okay I suppose. What about you, Martin and Kalevi?

Per, would you include substance and form (sound & tone) as elements of pre-linguistic thought? And are you distinguishing between animal and human here? Also, thanks Martin for the Searle lecture video, which I watched in its entirety. It's really helped me position 'the real' in terms of the Object in a photograph. And Per, I read your article too. I really appreciate the generosity of everyone's thinking in this forum.

Paula: substance and form, for example as phonetics versus phonemics, sound vs. tone, is important in all human and animal vociferations; if message-oriented, they focus on the form of the substance; if aesthetics-oriented, then the substance of the form, because substance means force, dynamics 'around' the form. They presuppose each other in communication. Aristotle has a lot about this in his Categories. In thought, 'things' have both, and so have 'signs', but form can be abstracted from substance, so you get geometry, pure form, schema; and the elements, pure formless substance.

Three lines, four points? A good point! Peirce insisted - I believe he could be quite argumentative - that with three 'arms' you can make any structure, but with two you are limited to linear structures.

For the record, I am English and live in the north of England.

Here is a little semiotic observation. One difference between 'thing' and "sign' is that the sign is only relevant in one sense modality, whereas the thing as relevant in all it has to offer. If a thing is made into a sign, it is only considered so in one of its sense modalities. (Hammer and sickle). This is due to the fact that we can only monitor one expressive sense modality at a time. Form is foregrounded by the reduction of sense modalities, Paula —

Very true. The 'duck-rabbit' picture is often given as an example of this, too, Per.

In a farm, I would never switch between a duck and a rabbit in the yard. It comes to my mind that when I have the chance admire a naked woman, even if I were in a farm, she would become an image, a 2D sign, in one sense modality — so: erotic deformation of things into signs (of love) is rooted in our wonderful biology. This may be why I became a semiotician!...

Per, but isn't the sign just a way to guide meaning not containing meaning by itself? The eroticism in the case of the 2D sign is configurated by you, with an important part of unconscious arousal and hiring memories, actual effects of the perception, expectations, recreation (actually a positive stimulous of strong arousal will suppose a quick and intense response that interestingly will not last in time as much as a negative one -Luis Carretié's experiments). The shared knowledge and personal experience of "the thing" is already a "deformation" to use your word here.

Marta: signs 'guide' meaning, I would agree. And firstly, we have to be able to perform the operation of reducing perception to one modality, in itself a curious capacity in need of research (Carretié?). My contribution to that research, here, was to remind us of the erotically reduced perception (and performance FOR that perception!), which also exists in other forms of theatrical, playful and demonstrative behavior, where the 'tableau' effect counts. Here is a possible origin of sign formation. Where there is a signifier, we are ready to be 'guided' towards a signified, following the direction of the attention of the signer. Communication is a sort of seduction.

As regard to Kalevi Kull 's answer to the question, are Saussure and Barthes 's points of vue the same ? I thought not

Claire: to Kalevi, it looks the same, he is a bio-monist Peircean. But Barthes followed Hjelmslev in his 'semiological adventure', who criticized Saussure for not being consequent, and who then added the form/substance distinction to the expression/content distinction, so you got four values. Signs were only about the form-of-expression and the form-of-content, whereas the substances were left out (since not immanent). Barthes used Hjelmslev's embedding of semiosis in semiosis concretely in his analyses. Saussure had no model allowing this.

Kalevi may have something to say on this point?

I think, Per, you may have misunderstood? This is the duck rabbit-picture, an optical illusion from 1892:

https://img.theepochtimes.com/assets/uploads/2016/02/15/duckrabbit-700x420.png

Having seen this over several decades, it now just looks like a bad picture of anything(!), but it helps to illustrates modality - that the brain flips between interpretation. Meaning-space is not composed of consecutive values, as mathematicians might want.

While I think that Saussure and Peirce are closer in approach than is often recognised (and it the origin of this thread!), the reason why Peirce is chosen by the Computing community - a pragmatic bunch(!) - he attempts to set a mechanism by which this modality can be evaluated. Barthes seems to 'define' the meaning of things - such as that the bag represents 'a haul' or 'freshness' or whatever. And this is similar approach of many of Saussure's other interpreters Hjelmslev, Lacan, Benvenist, Levi-Strauss, Baudrillard, and I'd even include Morris. I'm not saying the bag doesn't represent things, it is just that this is a Francophone approach. Whereas the Anglophone approach is more democratic - it is up to all of us as to what things mean - it is pragmatic: if it works, use it.

As evidence, I'd call on the phrase 'le weekend', for which there is no French equivalent, as I understanding it, so the English word is adopted, presumably to the consternation of those who 'define' the language?

Does this make sense for anyone?

Hi Martin,

I've been struggling to understand the specifics of why the Interpretant is another sign. Why is it exactly that Peirce doesn't say 'immediate', 'dynamic' and 'final' interpreter? Take the passage attached, does he mean 'agency' by interpretant?

I'd appreciate your insight.

Thanks,

Paula

Martin W: Everybody knows the duck-rabbit, as everybody knows the Necker cube, and for the same reason: illustrating gestalt-switching processes in visual perception. But Saussure/Peirce is not a semiotic gestalt switching, it is s far more theoretical business. Anglo-semiotics (since you introduce the ethnic alternative) is semiotics without semantics, a fact that makes engineers very happy, but makes the analysis a lame duck in the approach of art and literature, where meaning must be addressed. Anglos are happy to un-address meaning, otherwise anglo-politics (politico-spastic behavior) might have looked otherwise. Euro-semiotics is art-and-literature-oriented and cannot work without semantics; Barthes is an example, look at his œuvre. Linguistics needs semantics, otherwise you get anglo-mechanical grammar, which might be why anglos cannot learn languages very well. To park meaning in the interpretant and let this interpretant be another sign to interpret is very funny but the stupidest thing a semiotician could do. Note that Peirce did not care, because he was not a semiotician, but a monist philosopher.

Yes, this passage is interesting!

We think of interpreters as (active) people who make sense of (passive) things, or in my line, as programs which make sense of (i.e. act upon) instructions typed by a programmer. Peirce talks of Interpretant as the thing created in the mind of the interpreter, so this is possibly the thoughts of the interpreter (although he doesn't use this term as it is metaphysical!), this is from Vol. 2 para. 228. The clue to the passage is also in this paragraph, in that a sign is an 'idea'. So he is talking about what we might call ‘brain state’ - something which can react, develop and mature (as immediate, dynamic and final interpretant) within an interpreter. Peirce often gets criticised for all sorts of things but essentially he is mapping out, through Pragmatism - observing the effects - a prototypical neural model, that the mind is ‘plastic’. So to this passage: a sign is interpreted inside another sign, and it imparts an effect - as we may put it, it plants the seed of an idea. Perhaps the whole point of an idea is that it is a seed? Does this help?

A sign plants the seed of another sign. Je sème à tous les vents, as Larousse famously wrote on the cover of his dictionary. Very poetic indeed, but it does not tell anyone what it is that is so disseminated and inseminated, or just seminated. Why not understand that ideas have inherent semantic structures and that sign composition, by simulating those, makes it possible to communicate ideas and create cultures, shared thinking, shared feeling and shared humanity. Peirce's philosophy is not humanistic, it is better for economists: an investment is an investment is an investment, interpreted by another investment. You see what I mean.

Per, I do apologise for bringing in an ethnio-centric definition, it is the last refuge of the scoundrel! But in this crucible I think you have made a insightful and interesting distinction between semantics and Interpretant. I think the two semiotic families are closer than we may think, and may overlap because I place Informatics engineers in the Saussurean camp. Let me explain.

Computers were conceived in the 1930s, and were born in the mid-to-late 1940s. The Church-Turing thesis states that all data processing systems map onto a Turing machine. In modern parlance, all programming languages are the same in that they all map onto the machine code which operates the silicon machine. And, this is it: a computer program, which is written artefact created by a human being, is given meaning - interpreted - by a machine. It is the fixed, essentially deterministic meaning inherited and developed by Morris - that there is Syntax and Semantics (structure and meaning), and how it is used is pragmatics - all in the 1930s. Linguists of the 1950s, particularly Austin and Grice to a different approach dropping this insistence on meaning-through-structure (Structuralism), but meaning-by-use (Pragmatism). So while Structuralism is THE cultural compass in the 1960s, pieces like Barthes' examination of the use of a string bag to indicate a haul in a fishing net, and the colours to indicate freshness, suggests a work of analysis of the use of visual metaphors, essentially of pragmatism - how things are used (I know you'll probably disagree on this last point!).

But, the point is, my colleagues and I, when we arrive at work in 9 hours time will all still using the technology conceived in the 1930s, with all its connotations and attitudes.

And I just feel there has got to be a better way.

Investments being investments, interpretant as interpretant - this is your point about monist, that it is all homogeneous? The overuse of metaphor gives no traction - nothing to get hold of? I think that would be a valid criticism.

But by the very same analysis, Syntax and Semantics are far too limiting in the pursuit of meaning. That you must have a structure upon which you can place meaning, gives you a dogma which is hard to see beyond. This thinking which cannot see the value in abstract painting, such as by Jackson Pollock - where there is no structure, just paint on canvas. Does the art critic give the painting meaning by ascribing it with words - Abstract Expressionism, or Action Painting?

Peirce gets underneath this structure to give us meaning at a more abstract level - Interpretant is the essence of metaphor - without the name, because to give it a name (metaphor, metonym, trope,…) would be to taint it with the thing he is trying to address - meaning.

And while in the world of informatics we relish this versatility - on employment surveys where it asks you to tick which industry you work in, and I have to tick them all (or none) because Informatics spans all human endeavour - the technology is based on syntax and semantics, the structural analysis of language use in the 1930s (and the engineers look through this anachronism). I seek a modern, linguistic approach towards Informatics, and Peirce gives me this idea, this seed.

Hi,

Maybe it means the infinite chain of interpretants, one sign making sense by producing a new interpretant which itself make sense with another interpretant and so on ?

Thanks Martin and Per. As ever, your comments add depth (3-dimensionality) to the issue, which is helpful (because it will never be simple).

I found this in the Plato Stanford site:

'Liszka (1996) and Savan (1988) both emphasize the need to treat interpretants as translations, with Savan even suggesting Peirce should have called it the translatant (Savan 1988, 41)'

I imagine though that a different name doesn't necessarily help unpick the concept (a rose by any other name...)

Per, Peirce's philosophy not humanistic?? And yet, only a human could be an economist, or try, as they say, to rise above his/her nature (or indeed stoop). The interesting thing for me is that Peirce had experience of photometry and was influenced by this Science, which helped him develop a different understanding of signs (a photographed star, looks nothing like its image-sign; it's not a 'hypoicon'). What is the nature of the challenge imposed on the Interpretant by such a sign? As you say Matin, that 'can react, develop and mature (as immediate, dynamic and final interpretant) within an interpreter.'

Thanks everyone.

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/peirce-semiotics/#Int

I think, indeed, he may be. I've never been able to persuade Per that engineers seek meaning: an explanation to meaning through interpretant - the connection between sign and object. Bathes' heritage, the Saussurean sign, seems based on some automatic or unexplained or 'defined-by-expert' connection between signifier and signified. My work demonstrates how interpretant (and sign and object) can be modelled, grounded, by natural language.

Let me try to explain. There are in the history of modern rationalism a line from Descartes to philosophy of science and phenomenology ("dualism"), and a line from Descartes' opponent Spinoza to analytic philosophy ("monism"). The Spinozan line leads to anglo-american pragmatism, including pragmatic 'semeiotics' (Peirce). Pragma-semiotics in this form classifies signs, not texts, has a vericonditional view of meaning as purely referential, and refuses to study the inner articulations of signifieds that make sense cognitively; instead it states that signes are interpreted, and that this is a pragmatic fact. Interpretations are then again signs, which are interpreted ,and that is all you can say. Meaning here means that there are meaningful interpretations of meaning, but that we cannot know what they contain, unless we ourselves produce signs to interpret them, and there signs will again need etc. Signs are just behavior interpreted by behavior. If you find this useful, I say good luck. The Cartesian line admits that signs in combination form representations of thoughts, and that these representations can indeed be analysed; the Saussurean tradition, mostly European, therefore develop analyses and theories of various kinds of structured contents, which are important to literary studies, anthropological studies, discourse sociology etc. Linguistics never gets anything else that pragmatics from the Peirceans.

So the competing schools of semiotics are based on competing philosophies, or 'metaphysics', if you will. Spinoza says, literally that meaning can not be grasped by meaning, because it IS the meaning it grasps. Descartes says that meaning is a possible object of thought like any other — and can be studies like everything else that exists.

Therefore, there are two main sign models, one being a mono-model (Peirce's, which says that the sign is simple in itself but has something out there that it stands for and other signs interpreting it), and the other being a duo-model (Saussure's, saying that signs are internally biplanary: the expression is conceptually structured, and the content likewise). This difference is as irreducable as the difference between the two lines of thinking.

Many thanks for this clarity; this, too, is how I see the difference between the two schools. I would place myself inside the Peircean camp, in that I model utterance, everyday speech, as a sign. So an utterance “i need a coffee” refers to a reply “ok, you need a coffee”, etc. see https://youtu.be/5ra3P3DcpwY for a more convincing example, and the link between the two - the interpretant - is also defined in utterance-thought-reply triads. We no longer need programming language - the dyadic notion of programmer and user is removed when we can talk to our devices. This can be seen as a monist approach because everything is grounded (a Peircean term) in utterance, or speech.

I am not a Spinozan, so I cannot comment on his conclusion, but I would claim, from my research results, that meaning can be captured by meaning (i.e thought is understood by further thoughts) This idea was introduced by Maturana and Varela as Autopoiesis in the 1970s. This would see information as self-sustaining, much like a biological cell; it is the data which exists, requiring corporeal technology (e.g. pen and paper) to exist. Speech is an innate ability, whereas writing is a 5000 year-old technology. So does this recognition of the corporeal/metaphysical place me in the world of Saussure? Certainly, my research points to the necessity of arbitrary reference - a Saussurean term.

I say nothing about behaviour, although I’m beginning to consider the link between feelings and actions - the sad find their hands in the cookie jar, the lovelorn replace their rush with alcohol. However, I’m certain as can be that my results are - as is the Peircean Triad - an unequivocal, repeatable model of subjectivity. If you use language, and you have clearly demonstrated great skill in that Per, then this is what you are doing, there is no ‘luck’.

I believe CSP himself was seen to 'stand his ground'. In this spirit, a limerick:

The Semiotician called Charles Sanders Peirce,

Could have recorded all his ideas in verse,

Pragmaticism's mine!

So’s the Triadic Sign!!

It’s got nothing to do with Saussure’s!!!

Martin and all: calm down and get into a more scientific mood, despite the current debate clima. If you look at it long enough, you will see that Peirce's sign is not even triadic, it is monadic: there is The Sign, and it has a connection to the Object and the Interpretant, but in itself it is just one thing. Whereas the structural sign concept is, I as pointed out, biplanary (signifier, signified) plus referential object and all the Interpretants you can want. This is why there is no Peircean semantics (other than the vericonditional tautology) and no Peircean linguistics (other than pragmatics), since the linguistic sign (word or sentence) must inherently have a phonetic plane and a distinct content plane (lexical and syntactic).

In my research work on the two million year evolution of art and religious behavior, I have never found Peircean semiotics to be of any use. My research focuses on symbols as opposed to sign, as defined by Susanne Langer and subsequent scholars interested in symbols. Further problematic for Peirceans is that several recent studies on Peirce from a religious studies discipline have demonstrated from Peirce's own words that he organized many of his concepts by triads because he thought semiotics should reflect the Christian dogma of the Trinity.

Responding to the original question -- Peirce and Barthes. I highly recommend Ohnuki-Tierney (1994) on the Zero Signifier (attached). Without considering zero signifiers I suggest any ultimate philosophy is an empty shell.

Has anyone heard of normative pragmatics? R Brandom developed a useful language which displaces representationalism and introduces Inferentialism which, as he says, makes our world explicit by focusing on the 'spaces of reason', our 'commitments' and 'entitlements' which shape and explain the language we use, rather than the other way around. We function in a system of 'deontic scorekeeping' as we take on commitments (i.e. the world is round; cruelty is bad) which strengthen or weaken our beliefs and affect the language we use. It is a Neo Hegelian philosophy, which takes Wittgenstein's hunch that 'meaning is use' a step further.

James: Yes, Roman Jakobson also stressed the importance of zero signifiers. Language (grammar) has plenty, in music they are everywhere, in gesture... Which means there is structure underlying the semiotic manifestation with its zeros. The game is to study such structures.

Per, thanks for the reference to music and to gesture. I've attached a brief 2-page thought paper in response to Ohnuki-Tierney's two zero signifiers, in which I expand it to five. Your inference of an underlying semiotic structure, with zeros, raises a challenging question -- is there actually such a structure? Would it be singular or plural or some sort of complementarity structure, or is their no underlying structure, but as Einstein and Whitehead posited with respect to the Special Theory of Relativity, an "absolute interval" or, perhaps semiotically speaking an absolute interval in every communicative interaction? (I use this final phrase 'communicative interaction' with a nod to Habermas' 'communicative handeln' [ethics]. As I express this, it reminds me that in Vajrayana Buddhism, e.g., Dzogchen rigpa, teaching requires a 'mind' instruction, a 'space' instruction, and a 'pith or secret' instruction. The latter is always oral, is between teacher and learner, and involves 'direct pointing'. As such, could not this be characterized as wordless but not meaningless.

Pointing, the gesture, is speechless, and languages with determiners (articles) attached to nouns have paradigms like the French: le / un / zero + noun, meaning: reference / selection / genericity. Le père / un père / Dupont est père... Here, the determiners are accompanied by co-speech gestures, and with the zero determiner, the gesture stands alone. Just a simple example.

Per, thanks, I am learning. I have now looked up determiner, genericity, and X'-theory and complement in linguistics, for a start. First, I see that I use the term complementarity in a different context than complement in grammar theory. I have to ponder this more. Second, I suggest that the notion of zero-determiner as you use it in linguistics, appears, at least to me, somehow different than what in my short paper I label the absolute zero-signifier. Not sure how to express this yet.

It seems to resonate with your "pointing, the gesture, is speechless".

I think with respect to all this any linguistic theory must have some sort of check from neuroscience braining imaging studies of language. Very relevant to the question are imaging studies on the L and R Middle Temporal37 substrate "supramodal semiotic system", with the LHS functioning to link 'gesture meaning' (iconic symbol) to 'spoken meaning" (here they also use the term "iconicity") and this distinct from the RHS functioning for linking symbol ('modality independent, whether word, gesture, image, sound, object, conjunctions") "to meaning" (Xu, Gannon, et. al., 2009); "supramodal neural network for speech and gesture semantics, speech and accompanying iconic gestures (such as 'huge', 'high', 'round' (Straube, Green, Weis & Kircher, 2012); and as an aside on jazz improv, showing it activates both of the the L and R MT37 nodes among others (Donnay, Rankin, et al., 2014). Also as an aside expert Buddhist meditators on lovingkindness (metta) have incrased grey matter volumes in same neural nodes area (Leung, Chan, Yin, et al., 2013).

With respect to zero signifiers and Peircean semiotics, this open access paper directly addresses this.

Article Neo-semiotics: Introducing zeroness into Peircean semiotics ...

Natasa Lackovic does so, in her Inquiry Graphics method.

https://www.lancaster.ac.uk/educational-research/people/natasa-lackovic

In rhetoric, there are at least two sorts of framed silence that could be seen as zero utterance-signs, namely irony and laughter.

"He said nothing, just "Aha!". — "He said nothing, just laughed." Smiling can work as silent ironic laughter. The signified meaning is always a negation of something.

Peirce's is more objective and relational, Barthes' is more subjective and abstract. I don't think religiously sticking to one theory or another helps, myself, because if I was busy trying to fit concepts or observations or ideas into someone else's framework, I might miss something fundamentally important. The theories work for me to help me explain phenomena, not the other way round. That's just my perspective, though.

Good perspective!

Hi Amelia Lewis, Can I ask why you see Peirce as objective? He talks about a sign 'standing to somebody for something' (CP 2.228) - his Interpretant is that which is created in the mind of the interpreter. Is this dependency on the observer not subjective?

His model does seem to be used in the sciences, rather than the arts, which would suggest it is more objective. As a 'model' of subjectivity, it is by definition objective, is this your point?

I guess if you just see him as objective - then that's your interpretation :-)

Hi Martin, thanks for replying! I'm a zoologist- I tend to do what works for me when I study animal behaviour. I am not a philosopher, but my take on these theories is that Peirce is more objective than Barthes, not that he is necessarily 'objective' per se. I imagine it's because of his dependency on there being an object to interpret, so I find it less abstract than Barthes. Yes, it is my interpretation which fits the work I do. I think for me, I use other peoples' theories and models as a guide or descriptive framework, but I can't stick rigidly to any of them, simply because I can never think exactly like anyone else. I have tried, in my earlier years, and It didn't work. I can always take and use (in fact welcome) constructive criticism and input from others, though!

No, that's perfect, thanks! I''m a Software Engineer, and am interested the overlap between the process of creating software and interacting with computers. Not an expert in Peirce but his model, also, fits my work.