Semiotics

2023-01-15 – I.W.

Peirce

Forster, Peirce and the Threat of Nominalism.

Hacking, The Taming of Chance.

Peirce, Peirce on Signs.

Stern, Hegelian Metaphysics.

anthropology

Kockelman, Agent, Person, Subject, Self.

Goffman, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life.

Brandom, Articulating Reasons.

Bakhtine et al., Speech Genres and Other Late Essays.

Colapietro, Pierce’s Approach to the Self.

Parmentier, Signs in Society.

Muniesa, “Market Technologies and the Pragmatics of Prices.”

Kockelman and Bernstein, “Semiotic Technologies, Temporal Reckoning, and the Portability of Meaning. Or.”

Kockelman, The Art of Interpretation in an Age of Computation.

Serres, Schehr, and Serres, The Parasite.

Jakobson, Waugh, and Monville-Burston, On Language.

Kockelman, The Anthropology of Intensity.

Singer, Man’s Glassy Essence.

Ball, “On Dicentization.”

Vasantkumar, “Towards a Commodity Theory of Token Money.”

Mertz, “Semiotic Anthropology.”

Nakassis, “A Linguistic Anthropology of Images.”

Seligman and Weller, How Things Count as the Same.

esthetics and qualia: (rheme) icon tone/token, rheme symbol (type)

Innis, Dimensions of Aesthetic Encounters.

Harkness, “The Pragmatics of Qualia in Practice.”

Ingebretson, “The Tuhao and the Bureaucrat.”

music

Cumming, The Sonic Self.

Watkins, Musical Vitalities.

diagrams: rheme icon type

Emmons, Drawing Imagining Building.

Rotman, Mathematics as Sign.

Stjernfelt, Diagrammatology.

Gangle, Diagrammatic Immanence.

Guattari, The Machinic Unconscious.

psychiatry

Schwartz, “Locating Trauma.”

Guattari, The Machinic Unconscious.

Parish, “Rhematization as Etiology in the Diagnosis of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder.”

biology and evolution

Hoffmeyer and Stjernfelt, “The Great Chain of Semiosis. Investigating the Steps in the Evolution of Semiotic Competence.”

Deacon, The Symbolic Species.

other

Deleuze, Cinema I.

Lazzarato, Signs and Machines.

Lucey, What Proust Heard.

religion

Yelle, Semiotics of Religion.

Janowitz, Acts of Interpretation.

D’Amato, “The Semiotics of Signlessness.”

Rambelli, A Buddhist Theory of Semiotics.

antagonists

tables

sign types

————————————+
|I |V |VIII |X |
|rheme |RHEME |RHEME |ARGUMENT |
|icon |ICON |SYMBOL |symbol |
|TONE |TYPE |TYPE |type |
————————————+
    |II |VI |IX |
    |rheme |RHEME |DICENT |
    |ICON |INDEX |SYMBOL |
    |TYPE |TYPE |type |
    —————————
          |III |VII |
          |RHEME |DICENT |
          |INDEX |INDEX |
          |TOKEN |TYPE |
          ——————+
              |IV |
              |DICENT |
              |index |
              |TOKEN |
              ———

different versions

05-10-08a 05-10-08b 05-10-13 06-05-31 06-08-31 08-12-28 R795 combined
S qualisign,sinsign,legisign " ";abstraction,existent,combinant type tone,token,type tinge,"," potisign,actisign,famisign idea,token,type tone,token,type S
O1 vague,singular,general indefinite,"," " " ",designation," descriptive,"ve,copulant ",","ve descriptive,designative,copulative O1
O2 icon,index,symbol !abstract,concrete,collection " " " "ve,"ve,"ve ",",complexive abstractive,concretive,collective O2
S-O2 !icon,index,symbol … " " " " icon,index,symbolic S-O2
I1 feeling,action,sign !vague,singular,general !interrogative,imperative,significative ",",ponitive !hypothetic,categorial,relative " ","c," hypothetic,categoric,relative I1
I2 sympathy,compulsion,reason !feeling,conduct,thought ~",fact,sign ?poetic,stimulant,impressive;feeling,action,habit ~sympathetic/congruentive,shocking/percussive,usual " sympathetic,percussive,usual feeling,action,habit I2
S-I2 !sympathy,compulsion,reason ~",",representation ",",rational !interrogative/suggestive,imperative,indicative suggestive,"," ejaculative,imperative,cognificative suggestive,imperative,indicative S-I2
I3 rheme,proposition,argument … … !strange,common,novel !gratific,actuous/studious,moral/temperative/self-control ",active,self-control ",practical,pragmatistic gratification,action,self-control I3
S-I3 !… rheme,proposition,argument suggestive,assertive," seme,pheme,delome " " rheme,dicent,argument S-I3
O2-S-I3 !… abduction,deduction,induction !monadic,dyadic,triadic !abducent,inducent,deducent;instinct,experience,form instinct,experience,form " abduction,induction,deduction O2-S-I3

ordering

  1. O2
    1. O1
      1. S
        1. S-O2 > S-I2. before I1 and I2? yes/either case: there is symbol+hypothetic+feeling but not relative icon (sounds correct). no/yes case: there is relative+icon but not symbol+hypothetic. no/no case: there is self-control+icon but not symbol+gratification.
        2. I1
          1. I2
            1. S-I2 > S-I3. before or after I3? i.e. does suggestive/imperative/indicative come before or after gratification/action/self-control? yes case: indicative+gratification exists but not suggestive+self-control no case: suggestive+self-control exists but not indicative+gratification
            2. I3
              1. S-I3
                1. S-O2-I3

notes per trichotomy

1st 2nd 3rd div of
abstractive concretive collective O2
descriptive designative copulative O1
tone token type S
icon index symbol S-O2
hypothetic categoric relative I1
feeling action habit I2
suggestive imperative indicative S-I2
gratification action self-control I3
rheme dicent argument S-I3
abduction induction deduction O2-S-I3

S

  1. tone

  2. token

  3. type

O1: immediate object

  • the immediate object is like retrieval instructions for the dynamic object
  • Guidetti, “On Peirce’s Immediate Object.”

  1. descriptive

    • vague; object is subset selected from universe of discourse by means of its qualities
    • ex: "—is red"

  2. designative

    • universe of discourse is singular object
    • "like a Demonstrative pronoun, or a pointing finger, brutely direct[s] the mental eyeballs of the interpreter to the object in question, which in this case cannot be given by independent reasoning"

  3. copulative

    • general; object encompasses members of universe of discourse
    • copulatives "neither describe nor denote their Objects, but merely express universally the logical sequence of these latter upon something otherwise referred to"

O2

  1. abstractive

  2. concretive

  3. collective

S-O2

  1. icon

  2. index

  3. symbol

I1

  • to Hypotheticals correspond affirmations and denials of real conditioning; to Categoricals, affirmations and denials of inherence; to Relatives, affirmations and denials of existential relations.

  1. hypothetic

    • a proposition not expressing any identification

  2. categoric

    • the parts of a Categorical…are connected by an identification of a common element or correlate

  3. relative

    • expresses more identifications than one
      • ex: “Every mother loves her child,” “Every human adult falls in love with somebody of the opposite sex.”

I2

  1. feeling

  2. action

  3. habit

S-I2

  1. suggestive

  2. imperative

  3. indicative

I3

  1. gratification

  2. argument

  3. self-control

S-I3

  1. rheme

  2. dicent

  3. argument

O2-S-I3

  1. instinct

  2. experience

  3. form

some thoughts

  • how much does Peirce's idea of sequential determination make sense?
    • a third can determine something of any category because it contains the other categories. if we really wanted to say that e.g. a qualisign was indexical, we| would just need to say that the sign was a token with a strong qualitative component instead.
  • both the "immediate object" and S-O2 trichotomies| seem intermediate between sign and object. are |they really

Jakobson/Kockelman

context/object (referential)
message/sign (poetic)
speaker/signer (emotive) addressee/interpreter (conative)
contact/channel S-I (phatic)
code S-O (metalingual)

duplex categories

M/M reported speech S/S signer-addressed signer X→Y→Z
M/C meta-language S/Ch channel-directed signer X→(Y→Z)
C//C proper names Ch//Ch self-channelling channels X→(X→)
C//M shifters Ch//S source-dependent channels X→X

S/S, S/Ch ≈ Serres' parasite

pitfalls

  1. there are those who are interested in arguing the nature of signs and not examining their concrete usage—boring!
  2. there are many who wrongly restrict the applicability of the theory of signs (to language, to humans, to animals, etc.)—they should go back to Peirce and purify themselves of nominalism
  3. there are those who are familiar with only a limited portion of Peirce and so stretch a few terms (icon, index, symbol) too widely—they should go back to Peirce
  4. there are those who apply the theory to subjects opposed to what Peirce was primarily interested in, viz. the process of scientific inquiry that aims toward truth, not in everyday culture—i've not yet seen this mistake prove fatal

bibliography

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Ball, Christopher. “On Dicentization.” Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 24, no. 2 (2014): 151–73. https://doi.org/10.1111/jola.12046.
Brandom, Robert. Articulating Reasons: An Introduction to Inferentialism. 3. print. Cambridge, Mass. London: Harvard University Press, 2003.
Colapietro, Vincent Michael. Pierce’s Approach to the Self: A Semiotic Perspective on Human Subjectivity. SUNY Series in Philosophy. Albany, NY: State university of New York press, 1989.
Cumming, Naomi. The Sonic Self: Musical Subjectivity and Signification. Advances in Semiotics. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2000.
D’Amato, Mario. “The Semiotics of Signlessness: A Buddhist Doctrine of Signs” 2003, no. 147 (November 18, 2003): 185–207. https://doi.org/10.1515/semi.2003.090.
Deacon, Terrence W. The Symbolic Species: The Co-Evolution of Language and the Brain. 1st ed. Erscheinungsort nicht ermittelbar: W. W. Norton & Company, Incorporated, 1998.
Deleuze, Gilles. Cinema I: The Movement-Image. Bloomsbury Revelations Ser. London: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC, 2013.
Emmons, Paul. Drawing Imagining Building: Embodiment in Architectural Design Practices. New York: Routledge, 2019.
Forster, Paul. Peirce and the Threat of Nominalism. Cambridge: Cambridge University press, 2011.
Gangle, Rocco. Diagrammatic Immanence: Category Theory and Philosophy. Edinburgh University Press, 2015.
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Guattari, Félix. The Machinic Unconscious. Semiotext(e), 2010.
Guidetti, Giacomo. “On Peirce’s Immediate Object.” Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 57, no. 3 (2021): 299–318. https://www.jstor.org/stable/48679889.
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———. The Anthropology of Intensity: Language, Culture, and Environment. New Departures in Anthropology. Cambridge ; New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2022.
———. The Art of Interpretation in an Age of Computation. Oxford University Press, 2017.
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