In this study I compare the work of two scholars who are important for contemporary research into the history of semiotics. The main goal of the study is to describe specific rhetorical/figurative forms and structures of persuasion between two epistemological positions that determine various possibilities in the historiography of semiotics. The main question is this: how do we understand two important metatheoretical forms of descriptions in the historiography of semiotics or the history of sign relations? The first perspective is semiology (...) and its corollary, “structuralism,” as presented in Michel Foucault’sThe Order of Things. This perspective prefers to consider history as a set of ruptures (i). The second position explores the possibility of the historical development of semiotic consciousness as presented in the works of John N. Deely (ii). The main aim of this study lies in the exploration of these two different epistemological bases – divergent bases for developing specific understandings of interconnections that hold between between semiotics, semiosis and historical processes. A goal of this paper is to demonstrate the limits and advantages of these two paradigmatic positions. The positions in question are “meta-theoretical” in the following senses such that: (i) the historical episteme is taken to be ana priorideterminant of all sign-operations in a given era and is also the semiologic grid through which Foucault approaches every mode of scientific knowledge (from “science” to “economy” and beyond); (ii) the quasi-Hegelian development of semiotic consciousness based on a conception of the sign considered as a triadic ontological relation. The latter is Deely’s guiding meta-principle, through which the history of semiotics can be articulated, examined and evaluated. (shrink)

In this rejoinder to the critical comments elicited by my essay “Existential Hypotheses,” I propose to deal first with the challenge coming from the avowedly different philosophical outlook of Professor Churchman. My other critics, Professors Frank, Hempel, Nagel and Ramsperger, on the whole, share my basic conception of the tasks of philosophy of science and epistemology, even if they dissent in one important respect or another from the special solution I suggested. But since I discern even in Professor Nagel's remarks (...) a pragmatist or instrumentalist strain akin to the major contentions of Professor Churchman, it will be well to begin with a defense and further clarification of my underlying point of view. Only after this restatement of my platform will I undertake to defend semantic realism against the specific criticisms advanced by the last four authors. (shrink)

The European Stability Mechanism is the rescue fund that may grant loans to struggling euro zone governments by issuing bonds, collectively by the euro zone members. The implementation of the ESM spawned a lot of legal challenges brought to higher judicial authority in Ireland, Austria, Estonia, Germany and Poland. In the fall of 2012 the ESM was subject to legal analysis in the Estonian National Court, the German Constitutional Court, and in the European Court of Justice. Delivering much anticipated rulings (...) in legal challenges to the legal provisions establishing the ESM, courts avoided upsetting the complex arrangements in question by producing legal decision of direct political import and letting EU bailout measures go forward. In looking over different critical responses, we have seen an argument raised by media and legal scholars, according to which courts’ capitulation before the power of financial markets in the EMS rulings represents “a sign of judicial crisis” that marks the weakness of modern European jurisprudence. In light of their importance, we undertake a preliminary semiotic analysis of the ESM rulings of the Estonian National Court, the German Constitutional Court, and in the European Court of Justice. Our analysis aims at discerning the crucial aspects of those rulings is performed on the basis of different semiotic methodologies combined with the refined ideas of the Scandinavian analytical school of the doctrinal study of law. In traditional legal studies there seems to be a taken for granted assumption that there is one analytical way to dissect judicial reasoning of the supreme courts. This paper argues that the manner of analyzing the constitutional reasoning needs to be congruent with the particular research methodology. (shrink)

Contrary to what the author dismisses as false claims of postmodernity, the work shows that what is truly postmodern in philosophy both goes beyond modernity and recovers philosophy's past in a renewed understanding of the human condition.

Kevelson remains an important figure in legal semiotics, a co-founder, along with Bernard Jackson, of the International Roundtable for the Semiotics of Law, and of course a valuable and seminal commentator on Peirce in the legal domain. This paper will examine her claim, that through his collaboration with and influence on Oliver Holmes, Peirce should be regarded as a foundational figure in a history of legal realism and modern jurisprudence, and that a legal semiotic can be identified in (...) and not only extrapolated from his seminal writings. This paper will contend that the relationship between Peirce and Holmes should be seen as perplexed and disputatious, rather than close and directly influential, as Kevelson argues. However, regardless of its limitations, Kevelson’s historical inquiry helps provide the ground for a contemporary and historical account of the full picture of a Peircean based legal semiotic and jurisprudence. (shrink)

Charles S. Peirce attempted to develop his semiotic theory of cognitive signs interpretation, which are originated in our basic perceptual operations that quasi-prove the truth of perceptual judgment representing reality. The essential problem was to explain how, by a cognitive interpretation of the sequence of perceptual signs, we can represent external physical reality and reflectively represent our cognitive mind’s operations of signs. With his phaneroscopy introspection, Peirce shows how, without going outside our cognitions, we can represent external reality. Hence (...) Peirce can avoid the Berkeleyian, Humean, and Kantian phenomenologies, as well as the modern analytic philosophy and hermeneutic phenomenology. Peirce showed that with the trio of semiotic interpretation – abductive logic of discovery of hypotheses, deductive logic of necessary inference, and inductive logic of evaluation – we can reach a complete proof of the true representation of reality. This semiotic logic of reasoning is the epistemic logic representing human confrontation in reality, with which we can achieve knowledge and conduct our behavior. However, Peirce did not complete his realistic revolution to eliminate previously accepted nominalistic and idealistic epistemologies of formal logic and pure mathematics. Here, I inquire why Peirce did not complete his historical realist epistemological revolution and following that inquiry I attempt to reconstruct it. (shrink)

It is argued, that theory sf signs, especially in the tradition of the great philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce (1839–1914) can inspire the study of central problems in the philosophy of biology. Three such problems are considered: (1) The nature of biology as a science, where a semiotically informed pluralistic approach to the theory of science is introduced. (2) The peculiarity of the general object of biology, where a realistic interpretation of sign- and information-concepts is required to see sign-processes as immanent (...) in nature. (3) The possibility of an artificial construction of life, hereby discussed as a conceptual problem in the present form of the artificial life project and its implied definition of life. (shrink)

This book investigates a number of central problems in the philosophy of Charles Peirce grouped around the realism of his semiotics: the issue of how sign systems are developed and used in the investigation of reality. Thus, it deals with the precise character of Peirce's realism; with Peirce's special notion of propositions as signs which, at the same time, denote and describe the same object. It deals with diagrams as signs which depict more or less abstract states-of-affairs, facilitating (...) reasoning about them; with assertions as public claims about the truth of propositions. It deals with iconicity in logic, the issue of self-control in reasoning, dependences between phenomena in their realist descriptions. A number of chapters deal with applied semiotics: with biosemiotic sign use among pre-human organisms: the multimedia combination of pictorial and linguistic information in human semiotic genres like cartoons, posters, poetry, monuments. All in all, the book makes a strong case for the actual relevance of Peirce's realist semiotics. (shrink)

This essay argues that the pervasive twentieth century understanding of meaning — a sign stands for an object — is incorrect. In its place, it offers the following definition, which is framed not in terms of a single relation, but in terms of a relation between two relations : a sign stands for its object on the one hand, and its interpretant on the other, in such a way as to make the interpretant stand in relation to the object corresponding (...) to it own relation to the object. Using this definition, it reanalyzes key concepts and foundational arguments from linguistics so far as they relate to anthropology and psychology. Such terms include: concept, intentional state, motivation, ground, iconicity, speech community, norm, performativity, joint-attention, embodiment, intersubjectivity, agency, role, functionalism, pragmatics, social construction, realism, and natural language. (shrink)

This book offers a new interpretation of the metaphysics of Charles Peirce, the founder of pragmatism and one of America's greatest philosophers. Robert Lane begins by examining Peirce's basic realism, his belief in a world that is independent of how anyone believes it to be. Lane argues that this realism is the basis for Peirce's account of truth, according to which a true belief is one that would be settled by investigation and that also represents the real world. (...) He then explores Peirce's application of his Pragmatic Maxim to clarify the idea of reality, his two forms of idealism, and his realism about generality and vagueness. This rich study will provide readers with a clear understanding of Peirce's thoughts on reality and truth and how they intersect, and of his views on the relation between the mind and the external world. (shrink)

In this essay, some theoretical semiotic issues concerning immersive technologies are presented and discussed. In particular, the somatic and corporeal dimensions of the construction of the user-visual hybrid, the problematic of point of view and realism, and the narrativity inscribed in immersive technologies will be discussed. The objective is twofold: tracing the semiotic perspective on the real/virtual relationship and questioning certain rhetoric of immersivity that underlies precise ideologies circulating in the contemporary imagery.

_Realism for the 21st Century_ is a collection of thirty essays from John Deely—a major figure in contemporary semiotics and an authority on scholastic realism and the works of Charles Sanders Peirce. The volume tracks Deely’s development as a pragmatic realist, featuring his early essays on our relation to the world after Darwinism; crucial articles on logic, semiotics, and objectivity; overviews of philosophy after modernity; and a new essay on “purely objective reality.”.

Realism for the 21st Century is a collection of thirty essays from John Deely—a major figure in contemporary semiotics and an authority on scholastic realism and the works of Charles Sanders Peirce. The volume tracks Deely's development as a pragmatic realist, featuring his early essays on our relation to the world after Darwinism; crucial articles on logic, semiotics, and objectivity; overviews of philosophy after modernity; and a new essay on “purely objective reality.”.

My intention in this paper is to contribute the debate on “realism” in order to raise a different sort of question: not whether ‘reality’ exists or does not exist, but rather what effects does the belief in this or that reality produce (as Peirce put it 150 years ago). I will turn to Eco’s later thought, and to his support for a form of ‘negative’ realism, and try to demonstrate how his appeal to Peirce’s distinction between Immediate and (...) Dynamical Object is affected by a common-sense interpretation of what ‘real’ amounts to. Peirce in fact distinguished between the “existence” of facts and their “reality.” The former implies a dynamic of blind force, a dynamical reaction. Yet, “reality consists in the future” (CP 8.284), in the public recognition of what it always will be, or we hope will be, in the long run (Peirce uses the word “mellonization”). In Eco’s work, though, the Being or the Real, seen as pure Something, is understood after the form of a Thing, above all External, which simply says many ‘No’s. Peirce’s pragmaticism leads us further on, concentrating on the concept of habit that is also detectable in Eco’s analysis. We could say that Peirce distinguishes brute existence hic et nunc from the persistence of habits. Acts and dispositions to act, and not facts (as opposed to interpretations) appear as real; and it is in this respect that I think we can find a promising line of research for better explaining Eco’s theory of realism. (shrink)

This paper unites Deely’s call for a better understanding of semiotics with Jaeger’s insight into the sophists and the cultural history of the Ancient Greeks. The two bodies of knowledge are brought together to try to better understand the importance of rhetorical processes to political forms such as democracy. Jaeger explains how cultural expression, particularly poetry, changed through the archaic and classical eras to deliver, or at least to be commensurate with contemporary politics and ideologies. He explains how Plato struggled (...) against certain poetry and prose manifestations in his ambition to create a ‘perfect man’ – a humanity which would think in a way which would enable the ideal Republic to flourish. Deely’s approach based on Poinsot and Peirce presents a theoretical framework by means of which we can think of the struggle to influence individual and communal conceptualisation as a struggle within semiotics. This is a struggle over the ways reality is signified by signs. Signs are physical and mental indications which, in the semiotic tradition, are taken to produce human subjectivity – human ‘being’. Deely’s extensive body of work is about how these signs are the building blocks of realist constructions of understanding. This paper is concerned with the deliberate use of oral and written signs in rhetorical activity which has been deliberately crafted to change subjectivity. We discuss: what thought and culture is in terms of semiotics and Jaeger’s depiction of Ancient Greece as an illustration of the conjunction between culture and subjectivity. These two fields are brought together in order to make the argument that rhetoric can be theorised as the deliberate harnessing of semiotic affects. The implication is that the same semiotic, subjectivity-changing potency holds for 21st century rhetoric. However fourth century BCE Athens is the best setting for a preliminary discussion of rhetoric as deliberate semiotic practice because this was when rhetoric was most clearly understood for what it is. By contrast a discussion concentrating on modern rhetoric: public relations; advertising; lobbying; and public affairs would open wider controversies requiring considerably more complex explanation. (shrink)

Realism has a significant place in the history of film theory. The claim that film is essentially a realistic art form has been employed to justify the art-status of films as well as the distinctness of film as a form. André Bazin and others once used realist ontologies of film to try to establish realist teleologies and universal critical standards. I briefly sketch this history before considering the prospects for various versions of realism: Bazin’s, as well as Kendall (...) Walton’s and Gregory Currie’s less ambitious but more plausible accounts. I argue that these theories, though they are the best cases we have for realism, are not adequate ontologies of film. However, while prior realist philosophers and critics were wrong to think that realism can provide a critical standard for all films, realism is nonetheless a praiseworthy filmic achievement - one that the opponent of ontological realism should not dismiss. (shrink)

This paper explores the contribution by the contemporary legal realist Hanoch Dagan. Dagan’s brand of realism defines law on the basis of its institutions or social practices, not of its norms or rules. The paper first provides a critical overview of this realist theory of law: It is not synonymous with the predictive theory of law, with Leiter’s theory of judges, or Frank’s “breakfast theory”. By focusing on the role of judges and the methodology of legal reasoning, we discover (...) that the core difference between realism and positivism lies in the claim that law is affected by a strong form of indeterminacy, stemming from the plurality of legal sources, not from the open texture of legal language as expressed in rules; and we are also able to distinguish this form of realism from contemporary movements in legal theory, such as critical legal studies and law & economics. The normative dimension of realism is also addressed: This theory of law develops a specific concept of justice, on the ground of a cognitivist theory of value. (shrink)

The paper deals with the theory of gesture from the point of view of relational sociology. On the one hand, the thesis of the ‘complete gesture’ developed by Giovanni Maddalena is appreciated as a significant step forward from classical pragmatism. On the other hand, since theories based essentially on phenomenology and semiotics are at risk of nominalism and constructivism, if we want to understand the gesture from a critical realistic perspective, we need to complement the theory of gesture with a (...) relational social ontology. This means that the theory of the gesture as action (unit act) must be placed within an ontological and epistemological framework, in which Peirce’s triangle is related to the latent value of the real as indicated by the sign. A relational alternative to Peirce's semiotic triangle is presented here with the aim of connecting the sign of the gesture to the underlying reality. (shrink)

: This paper articulates a view of the relation between cognition and being in Peirce's thought, especially derived from his early papers of 1868–69. Based on the rejection of intuitions, I argue that Peirce realized an isomorphic relation between cognition and being that functions as a semiotic foundation. I consider several challenges to these notions in the literature, including doubts about pansemioticism, foundationalism, and realism. In the end, I suggest that the semiotic foundation be thought of as (...) a kind of transcendental, in several senses of that term. (shrink)

The most powerful assumption in French semiotic thought since Saussure has been the notion that a sign consists not of a name and the object it refers to, but of a sound-image and a concept, a signifier and a signified. Saussure, as amplified by Roland Barthes and others, has taught us to recognize an unbridgeable gap between words and things, signs and referents. The whole notion of "sign and referent" has been rejected by the French structuralists and their followers (...) as too materialistic and simple minded. Signs do not refer to things, they signify concepts, and concepts are aspects of thought, not aspects of reality. This elegant and persuasive formulation has certainly provided a useful critique of naive realism, vulgar materialism, and various other-isms which can be qualified with crippling adjectives. But it hasn't exactly caused the world to turn into a concept. Even semioticians eat and perform their other bodily functions just as if the world existed solidly around them. The fact that the word "Boulangerie" has no referent does not prevent them from receiving their daily bread under that sign. As Borges put it: "The world, alas, is real; I, alas, am Borges." Obviously, the whole question of the relationship between words and things cannot be debated without any assistance from nonverbal experience seems to me highly unlikely. In my view, if language really were a closed system, it would be subject, like any other closed system, to increase in entropy. In fact, it is new input into language from nonverbal experience that keeps language from decaying. Robert Scholes, professor of English and director of the program in semiotic studies at Brown University, is co-author of The Nature of Narrative and author of Structuralism in Literature. A Guggenheim fellow for 1977-78, he is currently working on "A Semiotics of Fiction." He has also contributed "Language, Narrative, and Anti-Narrative" to Critical Inquiry. (shrink)

The theoretical and methodological underpinnings of the cognitive paradigm have traditionally been discussed against the background of generative grammar, its immediate predecessor. A significantly less researched yet no less interesting relationship is the one between the cognitive and structuralist paradigm. This article focuses on the in part converging, in part diverging semiotic assumptions underlying European structural linguistics and Cognitive Grammar. A comparison of important concepts of both theories shows that, although Cognitive Grammar arrives at a more realistic understanding of (...) how language works in discourse, the theory fails to offer a coherent theory of the linguistic sign. (shrink)

The paper analyzes the limitation of alternative concepts of knowledge, constructivism and realism. A necessity of their complementarity is grounded. The core of controversy between constructivism and realism is a belief about “the given”. The author follows R. Rorty who considers two meanings of a notion of “the given”: “making” and “finding”. The author shows that these different meanings of concept of “the given” are connected with different types of subject consciousness activity. Together with intentional ability of consciousness (...) he considers responsive ability. Both abilities were a subject of phenomenological analysis (E. Husserl, A. Reinach, B. Waldenfels). The author argues that there are certain connections between intentionality and interpretative function of knowledge, on the one hand, and between responsiveness and expressive function of consciousness, on the other hand. Developing the communicative concept of knowledge he shows the meaning of cognitive cycles «interpretation_expression» in the process of knowledge. -/- A consideration of cognitive process as a semiotic one allows to show that interpretation is provided by such kind of basic function of sign as indication, and expression is provided by the other function of sign as substitution, or presentation. The author shows that complementary of interpretation and expression is a consequence of two processes – finding a name and making a meaning. The conclusion about complementary of interpretation and expression leads to a belief about cognition cultures and their types. He shows a place of constructivism and realism in the context of typology of cognition cultures. (shrink)

Gregory Currie, arguing against recent psychoanalytic and semiotic film theory, has defended various realist theses about film. The strongest of these is that ‘weak illusionism’—the view that the motion of film images is an illusion—is false. That is, Currie believes film images really do move. In this paper I defend the common-sense position of weak illusionism, firstly by showing that Currie underestimates the power of some arguments for it, especially one based on the mechanics of projection, and secondly by (...) showing that film images exhibit neither garden-variety motion, nor a special response-dependent kind. (shrink)

ABSTRACT In this article, I focus on Charles Sanders Peirce's viability for contemporary art history and criticism. I argue that in order to make sense of Peirce's published remarks on photographs they should be read in light of specific nineteenth-century uses of photography in experimental science. I argue that Peirce's comments on photography are consistent with a realist theory of science. It is only when these remarks are contextualized within a broader scientific project that we may begin to mine Peirce (...) for his art historical value. (shrink)

This essay discusses the semiotic scaffolding of modern science, the roots of which lie in the Protestant Reformation and the latter’s repudiation of the “semiotics of nature” upon which medieval theology depended. Taking the fourteenth-century battles between realism and nominalism as the semiotic scaffolding of the Reformation which was subsequently built on nominalist principles, and the Reformation as what made possible the development of early modern science, this essay argues that nominalism, Protestantism, and early modern science were (...) all infected by the gnostic influences which had always accompanied Christianity from the start. Indicating that forms of creative discovery, in the arts, humanities and sciences, are closer to poetic forms than they are to the Baconian model which informed modern science, the essay goes on to link the latter gnostic-influenced metaphysics, motivated by a Reformation anxiety about sin and error, to the development of the modern “megamachine” as described by Lewis Mumford in The Myth of the Machine volumes 1 and 2. Finally the essay suggests that semiotically revivified life sciences might be capable of resolving some of the systemic and ecological problems which Mumford identifies. (shrink)

In this piece the author takes issue with Mario Bunge’s claims that conceptual and semiotic systems have "compositions, environments and structures, but no mechanisms." Structures, according to Bunge, can never be mechanisms in conceptual and semiotic systems. Contra this the author argues that in social systems, social structures (which are concept-dependent and reproduced and/or transformed, at least in part, semiotically), can be mechanisms in the sense that such structures are one of the processes in a concrete system that (...) makes itwhat it is. As such, not only may conceptual and semiotic systems have mechanisms, but they may also themselves be considered some of the mechanisms that make the social what it is. As such, they can be said to possess powers and liabilities that neither reside at lower levels nor are explainable in terms of the lower level. To hold out the prospect of social explanation by conceptual and/or semiotic mechanisms does not represent an attempt to decouple these systems from material factors. What it does mean is that conceptual and/or semiotic systems can, potentially at least, play a role in social explanation; and themselves be subject to explanation. Key Words: mechanisms • social • structures • cause • explanation • realism • emergence • reductionism. (shrink)

There are many differing ways to be a realist about language. This paper seeks to classify some of these and to examine the implications of each for the study of language. The principle of classification it adopts is that we may distinguish between realisms on the basis of what exactly it is that they take to be real. Examining in turn realisms that ascribe reality to the external world in general, to causal mechanisms, to innate capacities, to linguistic signs, to (...) social structures, to language systems, and to linguistic groups, the paper summarises the case for a particular critical realist ontology of language. In the process, it engages briefly with the work of Saussure, Chomsky, Halliday, and more recent explicitly realist thinkers such as Bhaskar, Pateman, Archer, Sealey and Carter. One implication is that language itself is not a phenomenon that separates us from a causally structured world, but rather a part of that world, a part with an identifiable causal structure of its own that is similar to that of other normative phenomena. (shrink)

Reviews a collection of John Deely's articles. Deely is interested in the relationship between semiotics on the one hand, and the realism of Thomas Aquinas and John Poinsot on the other.

This book offers an innovative approach to the analysis of the current crisis in the South China Sea. Moving beyond the spirit of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), the mechanisms of which are limited to physical geography, it demonstrates how epistemological insights from the field of critical realist philosophy can reveal the importance of cultural and structural conditioning processes in social interactions, processes which shape the conditions for the emergence of crisis points along a spectrum (...) of conflict and cooperation. The potential for conflict resolution and the emergence of new regions in Pacific Asia much depends on the nature of such interactions at many levels (political-economic, semiotic and cultural) based on perceptions of what constitutes the "common" versus a Sinicised version of "Lebensraum". (shrink)

In this article I try to show that the most deep level ontology can have rich meaning for our understanding of such practical and everyday phenomena as education and interaction. With this deep level ontology I mean the problem of universals. Starting from famous traditional stances of realism and nominalism, which both are for the modern theories of growth and Bildung, I continue to the third and more recently developed ontological theory, trope theory according to which the properties (qualities, (...) relations etc.) are real (unlike in nominalism) but not universal (like in realisms). Then I will take a closer look at the trope theory of CB Martin. According to it every causal event is an interaction event between simple or complex beings in which their existing dispositions may produce manifesting properties. This point of view is radically anti dualistic because that basic level causal interaction has in the simplified forms all the elements of semiotic, meaningful of mental activity of such complex beings likes humans and animals. Ome of the main general conclusions of the article is that all causal affections contain a kind of “interpretation” from the side of affected object. (shrink)

What do we quantify when we attempt to quantify semiotic systems and theories? How sound are potential quantifications in terms of interpretive values within some varieties of semiotic theory? We will make a distinction between formalization and quantification in order to understand what to quantify, how to quantify it and why quantification may be a desirable outcome for semiotic theory. The implications of this stance may be relevant and philosophically interesting in light of the naturalized project of (...) biosemiotics. In this paper we will try to understand some ideas behind the rationale of formalizing and quantifying semiotic phenomena and discuss whether this possibility can or should map to functionalized descriptions of semiosis and the sign. (shrink)

For about the last three decades, postmodernists have exposed the weaknesses of modernist formalism. Western modernist formalism effectively locates art’s meaning in its formal qualities. Clive Bell’s twentieth-century significant form aesthetic theory, Clement Greenberg and abstract art, and art educators’ preoccupation with design elements and principles typify this modernist tendency.1 In contrast, postmodernists generally insist that sociocultural context supplies art’s meaning. Within contemporary art education, postmodernist theory relies strongly on semiotics, neopragmatism, and social constructivist theories of culture; these tend to (...) reduce form to being an arbitrary vehicle for content supplied by cultural.. (shrink)

Examining relativistic quantum field theory we claim that its description of subnuclear phenomena can be understood most adequately from a semiotic point of view. The paper starts off with a concise and non-technical outline of the firmly based aspects of relativistic quantum field theories. The particular methods, by which these different aspects have to be accessed, can be described as distinct facets of quantum field theory. They differ with respect to the relation between quantum fields and associated particles, and, (...) as we shall argue, should be interpreted as complementary (semiotic) codes. Viewing physical theories as symbolic constructions already came to the fore in the middle of the nineteenth century with the emancipation of the classical theory of the electromagnetic field from mechanics; most notably, as we will point out, with the work of Helmholtz, Hertz, Poincaré, and later on Weyl. Since the epistemological questions posed there are heightened with regard to quantum field theory, we considerably widen their approach and relate it to recent discussions in the philosophy of science, like structural realism and quasi-autonomous domains. (shrink)

The thesis of the paper is that semiotic processes are intrinsic to computation and computational systems. An explanation of computation that does not take this semiotic dimension into account is incomplete. Semiosis is essential to computation and therefore requires a rigorous definition. To prove this thesis, the author analyzes two concepts of computation: the Turing machine and the mechanistic conception of physical computation. The paper is organized in two parts. The first part (Sects. 2 and 3) develops a (...) re-interpretation of the Turing machine starting from Peirce’s semiotics. The author shows how this reinterpretation allows overcoming the dualism between a purist and a realist version of the Turing machine. The second part of the paper (Sect. 4) shows how a mechanistic explanation of physical computation such as the one developed by Piccinini is incomplete without considering semiotic relations. The paper intends to be a contribution to the philosophical debate on computation. (shrink)

1. Orienting to Reality Brian Kemple’s The Intersection of Semiotics and Phenomenology is an intellectual tour-de-force. Actually, the title is a misnomer… insofar as Kemple’s monograph intersects three, and not two, traditions: phenomenology, semiotics, and Thomism (i.e. philosophy in the tradition of Thomas Aquinas). Kemple’s Thomism can be presented to a layperson as a position of “realism,” as opposed to “nominalism.” Thomism, that is, implies a commitment to the intelligibility of realit...

This essay develops a theory of representation that confirms realism – an objective dependent on establishing that reality is autonomous of representation. I argue that the autonomy of reality is not incompatible with epistemic access and that an adequate account of representation is capable of satisfying both criteria. Pursuit of this argument brings the work of C. S. Peirce and Roy Bhaskar together. Peirce’s doctrine of semiotics is essentially a realist theory of representation and is thus relevant to the (...) project of critical realism. However, critical realism is also required to finesse Peirce’s intricate over-theorising. Although a complete treatment remains absent from Bhaskar’s writings, his philosophy, I discovered, incorporates an implicit theory of representation. Peirce can be employed to extract this theory and amplify it. The only way the problem of representation can be addressed adequately is to locate it in a realist framework. This, however, is contingent on re-conceiving representation as a process rather than an object. Such a ‘perspectival switch’ reconfirms the intentional structure of representation but also suggests that it be considered in teleological terms as an activity oriented to a trans-representational object. Representation finally emerges as a form of inquiry with the aim to make being accessible in its autonomy. (shrink)

Even though sign-systems are a crucial part of society, critical realism, as developed by Roy Bhaskar, does not yet have an adequate theory of signs and semiosis. The few suggestions that Bhaskar offers can be advanced through the semiotics of C.S. Peirce. In doing so, however, it becomes necessary to reconsider Bhaskar's ontological domains of the real, the actual, and the subjective, and expand the last domain into one of semiosis. This new understanding of ontological domains, incorporating Peirceian semiotics, (...) provides the basis for rethinking the ontology of society: the customary dyad structures/agents becomes the triad structures/agents/discourses, each of which possesses material, sociological, and meaningful aspects. (shrink)

In Film and Phenomenology, Allan Casebier develops a theory of representation first indicated in the writings of the father of phenomenology, Edmund Husserl, and then applies it to the case of cinematic representation. This work provides one of the clearest expositions of Husserl's highly influential but often obscure thought. It also demonstrates the power of phenomenology to illuminate the experience of the art form unique to the twentieth-century cinema. Film and Phenomenology is intended as an antidote to all hitherto existing (...) theories about the nature of cinematic representation, whether issuing from classic sources such as the film theory of Andre Bazin or the post-structuralist synthesis of Lacanian psychoanalysis, Barthesian textual analysis and Metzean cine-semiotics. Casebier shows how a phenomenological account of representation will further the aims of any film theory. Developing a viable feminist film theory, legitimizing the documentary, answering the challenge of Derridean deconstruction, properly theorizing narrativity, Film and Phenomenology argues that theory of film must be Realist both with respect to epistemology and ontological issues. In this way, this work runs contrary to the whole course of contemporary film theory which has been deeply anti-Realist. (shrink)