•  1235
    Firefly Femmes Fatales: A Case Study in the Semiotics of Deception
    with Charbel N. El-Hani and João Queiroz
    Biosemiotics 3 (1): 33-55. 2010.
    Mimicry and deception are two important issues in studies about animal communication. The reliability of animal signs and the problem of the benefits of deceiving in sign exchanges are interesting topics in the evolution of communication. In this paper, we intend to contribute to an understanding of deception by studying the case of aggressive signal mimicry in fireflies, investigated by James Lloyd. Firefly femmes fatales are specialized in mimicking the mating signals of other species of firef…Read more
  •  333
    Mereology and semiotics
    Sign Systems Studies 28 73-97. 2000.
    This paper gives a fIrst overview over the role of mereology the theory of parts and wholes - in semiotics. The mereology of four major semioticians - Husserl, Jakobson, Hjelmslev, and Peirce is presented briefly and its role in the overall architecture of each of their theories is outlined - with Brentano tradition as reference. Finally, an evaluation of the strength and weaknesses of the four is undertaken, and some guidelines for further research is proposed.
  •  107
    Theses on Biosemiotics: Prolegomena to a Theoretical Biology
    with Kalevi Kull, Terrence Deacon, Claus Emmeche, and Jesper Hoffmeyer
    Biological Theory 4 (2): 167-173. 2009.
    Theses on the semiotic study of life as presented here provide a collectively formulated set of statements on what biology needs to be focused on in order to describe life as a process based on semiosis, or sign action. An aim of the biosemiotic approach is to explain how life evolves through all varieties of forms of communication and signification (including cellular adaptive behavior, animal communication, and human intellect) and to provide tools for grounding sign theories. We introduce the…Read more
  •  82
    It is a well-known fact that Ernst Cassirer was inspired by his colleague, the biologist Jakob von Uexkiill at the university of Hamburg. This paper claims this inspiration was double—affecting both Cassirer's philosophical anthropology and Cassirer's epistemology of biology, but in two rather different ways. Thus, the paper intends to shed light on a corner of the history of the development of German thought of the interwar period. It may also have an actual interest because both Cassirer and U…Read more
  •  73
    The ontology of espionage in reality and fiction
    Sign Systems Studies 31 (1): 133-161. 2003.
    A basic form of iconicity in literature is the correspondence between basic conceptual schemata in literary semantics on the one hand and in factual treatments on the other. The semantics of a subject like espionage is argued to be dependent on the ontology of the field in question, with reference to the English philosopher Barry Smith’s “fallibilistic apriorism”. This article outlines such an ontology, on the basis of A. J. Greimas’s semiotics and Carl Schmitt’s philosophy of state, claiming th…Read more
  •  73
    How Can the Study of the Humanities Inform the Study of Biosemiotics?
    with Donald Favareau, Kalevi Kull, Gerald Ostdiek, Timo Maran, Louise Westling, Paul Cobley, Myrdene Anderson, Morten Tønnessen, and Wendy Wheeler
    Biosemiotics 10 (1): 9-31. 2017.
    This essay – a collection of contributions from 10 scholars working in the field of biosemiotics and the humanities – considers nature in culture. It frames this by asking the question ‘Why does biosemiotics need the humanities?’. Each author writes from the background of their own disciplinary perspective in order to throw light upon their interdisciplinary engagement with biosemiotics. We start with Donald Favareau, whose originary disciplinary home is ethnomethodology and linguistics, and the…Read more
  •  65
    Dicisigns: Peirce’s semiotic doctrine of propositions
    Synthese 192 (4): 1019-1054. 2015.
    The paper gives a detailed reconstruction and discussion of Peirce’s doctrine of propositions, so-called Dicisigns, developed in the years around 1900. The special features different from the logical mainstream are highlighted: the functional definition not dependent upon conscious stances nor human language, the semiotic characterization extending propositions and quasi-propositions to cover prelinguistic and prehuman occurrences of signs, the relations of Dicisigns to the conception of facts, …Read more
  •  61
    Liberal Multiculturalism as Political Philosophy
    The Monist 95 (1): 49-71. 2012.
  •  47
    ​This book investigates the nature of aesthetic experience and aesthetic objects. Written by leading philosophers, psychologists, literary scholars and semioticians, the book addresses two intertwined issues. The first is related to the phenomenology of aesthetic experience: The understanding of how human beings respond to artworks, how we process linguistic or visual information, and what properties in artworks trigger aesthetic experiences. The examination of the properties of aesthetic experi…Read more
  •  45
    Based on the conception of life and semiosis as co-extensive an attempt is given to classify cognitive and communicative potentials of species according to the plasticity and articulatory sophistication they exhibit. A clear distinction is drawn between semiosis and perception, where perception is seen as a high-level activity, an integrated product of a multitude of semiotic interactions inside or between bodies. Previous attempts at finding progressive trends in evolution that might justify a …Read more
  •  40
    Diagrammatic reasoning: Abstraction, interaction, and insight
    with Kristian Tylén, Riccardo Fusaroli, Johanne Stege Bjørndahl, Joanna Raczaszek-Leonardi, and Svend Østergaard
    Pragmatics and Cognition 22 (2): 264-283. 2014.
    Many types of everyday and specialized reasoning depend on diagrams: we use maps to find our way, we draw graphs and sketches to communicate concepts and prove geometrical theorems, and we manipulate diagrams to explore new creative solutions to problems. The active involvement and manipulation of representational artifacts for purposes of thinking and communicating is discussed in relation to C.S. Peirce’s notion of diagrammatical reasoning. We propose to extend Peirce’s original ideas and sket…Read more
  •  38
    Diagrams as Centerpiece of a Peircean Epistemology
    Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 36 (3). 2000.
  •  37
    Two different concepts of iconicity compete in Peirce's diagrammatical logic. One is articulated in his general reflections on the role of diagrams in thought, in what could be termed his diagrammatology — the other is articulated in his construction of Existential Graphs as an iconic system for representing logic. One is operational and defines iconicity in terms of which information may be derived from a given diagram or diagram system — the other has stronger demands on iconicity, adding to t…Read more
  •  36
    Secularism is a Fundamentalism! The Background to a Problematic Claim
    Telos: Critical Theory of the Contemporary 2009 (148): 39-53. 2009.
    The claim in the title of this article is now heard more and more frequently. It often comes from religious people who have themselves been targets of attack for fundamentalism, and they feel compelled to pay back this criticism in the same currency. Secularists, too, they claim, hold fast to a point of view, and this tenacity of belief is in itself deemed a fundamentalism, the religious person argues. The character of the point of view in question is of no importance; the very fact that it is h…Read more
  •  32
    The following two review papers have a common origin. Pietarinen’s book Signs of Logic and Stjernfelt’s book Diagrammatology were both published in the same Synthese Library Series being published by Springer. The two books also share the common topic of diagrammatic reasoning in Charles Peirce’s work. Beginning in a conference Applying Peirce held in Helsinki in conjunction with the World Congress of Semiotics in June 2007, two authors have commented upon these books under the headline of Synth…Read more
  •  25
    Scaffolding Development and the Human Condition
    with Paul Cobley
    Biosemiotics 8 (2): 291-304. 2015.
    This paper addresses the concept of semiotic scaffolding by considering it in light of questions arising from the contemporary challenge to the humanities. This challenge comes from a mixture of scientistic demands, opportunism on the part of Western governments in thrall to neo-liberalism, along with crass economic utilitarianism. In this paper we attempt to outline what a theory of semiotic scaffolding may offer to an understanding of the humanities’ contemporary role, as well as what the huma…Read more
  •  23
    Dimensions of Peircean diagrammaticality
    Semiotica 2019 (228): 301-331. 2019.
    Journal Name: Semiotica Issue: Ahead of print
  •  23
    Journal Name: Semiotica Issue: Ahead of print
  •  22
    Locale, Street, Square—a Naive Theory of the City
    Knowledge, Technology & Policy 21 (3): 105-113. 2008.
  •  19
    The seventh sign in Charles Peirce’s well-known 10-sign taxonomy of the 1903 Syllabus has received relatively little attention compared to many other types of sign that he described. It is the sign type of “Dicent Indexical Legisigns”, a result of the combinatory strategy of the 3x3 elementary sign aspects defined by the three basic sign trichotomies of Qualisign-Sinsign-Legisign, Icon-Index-Symbol and Rheme-Dicisign-Argument, a new strategy developed by Peirce in that famous text. It is well kn…Read more
  •  19
    Your Post has Been Removed: Tech Giants and Freedom of Speech
    with Anne Mette Lauritzen
    Springer Verlag. 2019.
    This open access monograph argues established democratic norms for freedom of expression should be implemented on the internet. Moderating policies of tech companies as Facebook, Twitter and Google have resulted in posts being removed on an industrial scale. While this moderation is often encouraged by governments - on the pretext that terrorism, bullying, pornography, “hate speech” and “fake news” will slowly disappear from the internet - it enables tech companies to censure our society. It is …Read more
  •  17
    Mereology and semiotics
    Sign Systems Studies 28 73-97. 2000.
    This paper gives a fIrst overview over the role of mereology the theory of parts and wholes - in semiotics. The mereology of four major semioticians - Husserl, Jakobson, Hjelmslev, and Peirce is presented briefly and its role in the overall architecture of each of their theories is outlined - with Brentano tradition as reference. Finally, an evaluation of the strength and weaknesses of the four is undertaken, and some guidelines for further research is proposed.
  •  17
    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 rea…Read more
  •  14
    Waterproof fire stations? Conceptual schemata and cognitive operations involved in compound constructions
    with Peer F. Bundgaard and Svend Ostergaard
    Semiotica 2006 (161): 363-393. 2006.