Floyd Merrell

Philosophers and social scientists of diverse orientations have suggested that the pragmatics of semiosis is germane to a dynamic account of meaning as process. Semiosis, the central focus of C. S. Peirce’s pragmatic philosophy, may hold a key to perennial problems regarding meaning. Indeed, Peirce’s thought should be deemed seminal when placed within the cognitive sciences, especially with respect to his concept of the sign. According to Peirce’s pragmatic model, semiosis is a triadic, time-bound, context-sensitive, interpreter-dependent, materially extended dynamic process. Semiosis involves inter-relatedness and inter-action between signs, their objects, acts and events in the world, and the semiotic agents who are in the process of making and taking them.

How to model meaning processes (semiosis) in artificial semiotic systems? Once all computer simulation becomes tantamount to theoretical simulation, involving epistemological metaphors of world versions, the selection and choice of models will dramatically compromise the nature of all work involving simulation. According to the pragmatic Peircean based approach, semiosis is an interpreter-dependent process that cannot be dissociated from the notion of a situated (and actively distributed) communicational agent. Our approach centers on the consideration of relevant properties and aspects of Peirce’s pragmatic concept of semiotics. Upon developing this approach, we have no pretensions of our being able to present an exhaustive analysis of the differences between Peirce and other theoretical positions. Nevertheless, our contribution will serve to demonstrate how theorists contribute toward revealing certain fundamental ‘semiotic constraints’ that will be of interest and importance.

Philosophers and social scientists of diverse orientations have suggested that the pragmatics of semiosis is germane to a dynamic account of meaning as process. Semiosis, the central focus of C. S. Peirce's pragmatic philosophy, may hold a key to perennial problems regarding meaning. Indeed, Peirce's thought should be deemed seminal when placed within the cognitive sciences, especially with respect to his concept of the sign. According to Peirce's pragmatic model, semiosis is a triadic, time-bound, context-sensitive, interpreter-dependent, materially extended dynamic process. Semiosis involves inter-relatedness and inter-action between signs, their objects, acts and events in the world, and the semiotic agents who are in the process of making and taking them.

Structuralism, Robert Scholes tells us, embodies “a ‘scientific’ view of the world as both real in itself and intelligible to man.” In order to achieve objectivity and descriptive adequacy in the human sciences, structuralists have generally adopted the linguistic model of Ferdinand de Saussure via Prague school structural linguistics. The common assumption has it that structural linguistics, given its method of abstracting language into an autonomous object for empirical analysis, now constitutes itself as a true science, worthy of emulation by other disciplines in the social sciences and in the humanities. However, there has been sparse inquiry into the validity of the general “scientific” foundations upon which the structuralist methodology rests. In response to this critical deficiency the present commentary will aim: (1) to subject the underlying presuppositions of structuralism to close scrutiny in the light of past and present scientific paradigms, and (2) to suggest, as a consequence of the first objective, that structuralism is based on premises which are not consistent with current scientific and epistemological lines of reasoning.

The volume draws from Charles S. Peirce's pragmatic philosophy, contemporary arts and sciences, and Buddhist philosophy in developing the concepts of interconnectedness, self-organization, and co-participation of the knowing subject with respect to contradictory, complementary coalescence. Contradictions can be complementarily, although vaguely and ambiguously, resolved by mediation through coalescent processes, which place Peirce's notion of semiosis in a contemporary, interdisciplinary context. This series focuses on the state of contemporary semiotics and its current applications. Each volume in the series places its topic within a general understanding of today's semiotics, an interdisciplinary field which investigates the application of sign theory not only to culture, but also to nature. The books are accessibly written and communicate with an academic readership that is not overspecialized.