-
2044Images, diagrams, and metaphors: hypoicons in the context of Peirce's sixty-six-fold classification of signsSemiotica 2006 (162): 287-307. 2006.In his 1903 Syllabus, Charles S. Peirce makes a distinction between icons and iconic signs, or hypoicons, and briefly introduces a division of the latter into images, diagrams, and metaphors. Peirce scholars have tried to make better sense of those concepts by understanding iconic signs in the context of the ten classes of signs described in the same Syllabus. We will argue, however, that the three kinds of hypoicons can better be understood in the context of Peirce's sixty-six classes of signs.…Read more
-
1895Intersemiotic translation and transformational creativityPunctum 1 (2): 11-21. 2015.In this article we approach a case of intersemiotic translation as a paradigmatic example of Boden’s ‘transformational creativity’ category. To develop our argument, we consider Boden’s fundamental notion of ‘conceptual space’ as a regular pattern of semiotic action, or ‘habit’ (sensu Peirce). We exemplify with Gertrude Stein’s intersemiotic translation of Cézanne and Picasso’s proto-cubist and cubist paintings. The results of Stein’s IT transform the conceptual space of modern literature, const…Read more
-
1665C. S. Peirce and Intersemiotic TranslationIn Peter Pericles Trifonas (ed.), International Handbook of Semiotics, Springer. pp. 201-215. 2015.Intersemiotic translation (IT) was defined by Roman Jakobson (The Translation Studies Reader, Routledge, London, p. 114, 2000) as “transmutation of signs”—“an interpretation of verbal signs by means of signs of nonverbal sign systems.” Despite its theoretical relevance, and in spite of the frequency in which it is practiced, the phenomenon remains virtually unexplored in terms of conceptual modeling, especially from a semiotic perspective. Our approach is based on two premises: (i) IT is fundame…Read more
-
1575Symbols are not uniquely humanBiosystems 90 (1): 263-272. 2006.Modern semiotics is a branch of logics that formally defines symbol-based communication. In recent years, the semiotic classification of signs has been invoked to support the notion that symbols are uniquely human. Here we show that alarm-calls such as those used by African vervet monkeys (Cercopithecus aethiops), logically satisfy the semiotic definition of symbol. We also show that the acquisition of vocal symbols in vervet monkeys can be successfully simulated by a computer program based on m…Read more
-
1395Semiosis and intersemiotic translationSemiotica 2013 (196): 283-292. 2013.This paper explores Victoria Welby's fundamental assumption of meaning process (“semiosis” sensu Peirce) as translation, and some implications for the development of a general model of intersemiotic translation.
-
1353Firefly Femmes Fatales: A Case Study in the Semiotics of DeceptionBiosemiotics 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
-
889Visualizando SignosBlucher. 2017.Os signos e as classes dos signos estão entre os tópicos mais importantes do sistema filosófico de Charles S. Peirce. As 10, 28, e 66 classes de signos são classificações desenvolvidas especialmente a partir de 1903 e representam um grande refinamento da divisão fundamental de signos – ícone, índice, símbolo. Nossa abordagem aqui define uma estratégia de visualização das classificações dos signos, com especial atenção para as 10 e 66 classes de signos. O livro está dividido em duas partes: …Read more
-
794The Biosemiotic Approach in Biology : Theoretical Bases and Applied ModelsIn George Terzis & Robert Arp (eds.), Information and Living Systems -- Philosophical and Scientific Perspectives, Mit Press. pp. 91-130. 2011.Biosemiotics is a growing fi eld that investigates semiotic processes in the living realm in an attempt to combine the fi ndings of the biological sciences and semiotics. Semiotic processes are more or less what biologists have typically referred to as “ signals, ” “ codes, ”and “ information processing ”in biosystems, but these processes are here understood under the more general notion of semiosis, that is, the production, action, and interpretation of signs. Thus, biosemiotics can be seen as …Read more
-
777Semiosis as an Emergent ProcessTransactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 42 (1): 78-116. 2006.In this paper, we intend to discuss if and in what sense semiosis (meaning process, cf. C. S. Peirce) can be regarded as an "emergent" process in semiotic systems. It is not our problem here to answer when or how semiosis emerged in nature. As a prerequisite for the very formulation of these problems, we are rather interested in discussing the conditions which should be fulfilled for semiosis to be characterized as an emergent process. The first step in this work is to summarize a systematic ana…Read more
-
758Semiosis and pragmatism: toward a dynamic concept of meaningSign Systems Studies 34 (1): 37-66. 2006.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-bou…Read more
-
691Habit in Semiosis: Two Different Perspectives Based on Hierarchical Multi-level System Modeling and Niche Construction TheoryIn West D. Anderson M. & West Donna (eds.), Consensus on Peirce’s Concept of Habit, Springer. pp. 109-119. 2016.Habit in semiosis can be modeled both as a macro-level in a hierarchical multi-level system where it functions as boundary conditions for emergence of semiosis, and as a cognitive niche produced by an ecologically-inherited environment of cognitive artifacts. According to the first perspective, semiosis is modeled in terms of a multilayered system, with micro functional entities at the lower-level and with higher-level processes being mereologically composed of these lower-level entities. Accord…Read more
-
645Multilevel poetry translation as a problem-solving taskCognitive Semiotics 9 (2): 139-147. 2016.Poems are treated by translators as hierarchical multilevel systems. Here we propose the notion of “multilevel poetry translation” to characterize such cases of poetry translation in terms of selection and rebuilding of a multilevel system of constraints across languages. Different levels of a poem correspond to different sets of components that asymmetrically constrain each other (e. g., grammar, lexicon, syntactic construction, prosody, rhythm, typography, etc.). This perspective allows a poem…Read more
-
601A semiotic analysis of the genetic informationSemiotica - Journal of the International Association for Semiotic Studies / Revue de l'Association Internationale de Sémiotique 1 (4): 1-68. 2006.Terms loaded with informational connotations are often employed to refer to genes and their dynamics. Indeed, genes are usually perceived by biologists as basically ‘the carriers of hereditary information.’ Nevertheless, a number of researchers consider such talk as inadequate and ‘just metaphorical,’ thus expressing a skepticism about the use of the term ‘information’ and its derivatives in biology as a natural science. First, because the meaning of that term in biology is not as precise as it …Read more
-
52410cubes and 3N3: Using interactive diagrams to investigate Charles Peirces classifications of signsSemiotica 2004 (151): 41-63. 2004.This article presents some results of a research on computational strategies for the visualization of sign classification structures and sign processes. The focus of this research is the various classifications of signs described by Peirce. Two models are presented. One of them concerns specifically the 10-fold classification as described in the 1903 Syllabus (MS 540, EP 2: 289–299), while the other deals with the deep structure of Peirce’s various trichotomic classifications. The first is 10cub…Read more
-
446Iconic semiosis and representational efficiency in the London Underground DiagramCognitive Semiotics 7 177-190. 2014.The icon is the type of sign connected to efficient representational features, and its manipulation reveals more information about its object. The London Underground Diagram (LUD) is an iconic artifact and a well-known example of representational efficiency, having been copied by urban transportation systems worldwide. This paper investigates the efficiency of the LUD in the light of different conceptions of iconicity. We stress that a specialized representation is an icon of the formal structur…Read more
-
301Downward Determination in Semiotic Multi-level SystemsCybernetics and Human Knowing -- A Journal of Second Order Cybernetics, Autopoiesis & Semiotics 1 (2): 123-136. 2012.Peirce's pragmatic notion of semiosis can be described in terms of a multi-level system of constraints involving chance, efficient, formal and final causation. According to the model proposed here, law-like regularities, which work as boundary conditions or organizational principles, have a downward effect on the spatiotemporal distribution of lower-level semiotic items. We treat this downward determinative influence as a propensity relation: if some lower-level entities a,b,c,-n are under the i…Read more
-
277Emergent Sign-ActionEuropean Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy 11 (2). 2019.We explore Peirce’s pragmatic conception of sign action, as a distributed and emergent view of cognition and exemplify with the emergence of classical ballet. In our approach, semiosis is a temporally distributed process in which a regular tendency towards certain future outcomes emerges out of a history of sign actions. Semiosis self-organizes in time, in a process that continuously entails the production of more signs. Emergence is a ubiquitous condition in this process: the translation of sig…Read more
-
181Semiosis as an emergent processTransactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 42 (1): 78-116. 2006.: In this paper, we intend to discuss if and in what sense semiosis (meaning process, cf. C. S. Peirce) can be regarded as an "emergent" process in semiotic systems. It is not our problem here to answer when or how semiosis emerged in nature. As a prerequisite for the very formulation of these problems, we are rather interested in discussing the conditions which should be fulfilled for semiosis to be characterized as an emergent process. The first step in this work is to summarize a systematic a…Read more
-
124On Peirce’s Pragmatic Notion of Semiosis—A Contribution for the Design of Meaning MachinesMinds and Machines 19 (1): 129-143. 2009.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) commun…Read more
-
111We present here a digital scenario to simulate the emergence of self-organized symbol-based communication among artificial creatures inhabiting a virtual world of predatory events. In order to design the environment and creatures, we seek theoretical and empirical constraints from C.S.Peirce Semiotics and an ethological case study of communication among animals. Our results show that the creatures, assuming the role of sign users and learners, behave collectively as a complex system, where self-…Read more
-
100Towards the emergence of meaning processes in computers from Peircean semioticsMind and Society 6 (2): 173-187. 2007.In this work, we propose a computational approach to the triadic model of Peircean semiosis (meaning processes). We investigate theoretical constraints about the feasibility of simulated semiosis. These constraints, which are basic requirements for the simulation of semiosis, refer to the synthesis of irreducible triadic relations (Sign–Object–Interpretant). We examine the internal organization of the triad S–O–I, that is, the relative position of its elements and how they relate to each other. …Read more
-
86Towards a multi-level approach to the emergence of meaning processes in living systemsActa Biotheoretica 54 (3): 179-206. 2006.Any description of the emergence and evolution of different types of meaning processes (semiosis, sensu C.S.Peirce) in living systems must be supported by a theoretical framework which makes it possible to understand the nature and dynamics of such processes. Here we propose that the emergence of semiosis of different kinds can be understood as resulting from fundamental interactions in a triadically-organized hierarchical process. To grasp these interactions, we develop a model grounded on Stan…Read more
-
81Peirce's classifications of signs: from 'On the Logic of Science' to 'Syllabus of Certain Topics of Logic'Trans/Form/Ação 30 (2): 179-195. 2007.Peirce's classifications of signs started to be developed in 1865 and it extends up to 1909. I will present on the period that begins in 1865, and that has two moments of intense production - "On a New List of Categories"and "On the Algebra of Logic: a contribution to the philosophy of notation". It is an introductory approach whose intention is to make the reader be familiar with the Peircean complex classifications of signs.
-
77Os diagramas de C. S. Peirce para as dez classes de signosTrans/Form/Ação 36 (3): 155-172. 2013.Uma seção da Gramática Especulativa de C.S.Peirce – Dez classes de signos – recebeu, a partir de 1903, um importante tratamento diagramático. Neste artigo, são apresentados e discutidos dois diagramas desenvolvidos por Peirce para as dez classes, incluindo esboços desses modelos.
-
46Dicent Symbols in Non-Human Semiotic ProcessesBiosemiotics 5 (3): 319-329. 2012.Against the view that symbol-based semiosis is a human cognitive uniqueness, we have argued that non-human primates such as African vervet monkeys possess symbolic competence, as formally defined by Charles S. Peirce. Here I develop this argument by showing that the equivocal role ascribed to symbols by “folk semiotics” stems from an incomplete application of the Peircean logical framework for the classification of signs, which describes three kinds of symbols: rheme, dicent and argument. In an …Read more
-
44A Digital Companion to C.S. PeirceThe Commens Working Papers: Preprints, Research Reports and Scientific Communications. 2014.The Commens Papers (http://www.commens.org/papers) publishes preprints, reports, and communications that deal with the philosophy, scientific contributions, and life of C. S. Peirce. The Commens Papers are primarily meant for scholarly products that lack other means of publication, but which the author wishes to bring to the attention of the research community. The papers must meet editorial approval, but they are not fully peer reviewed. The Commens Papers accepts a broad variety of intellectua…Read more
-
44On Peirce's diagrammatic models for ten classes of signsSemiotica 2014 (202). 2014.The classifications of signs are among the most important topics of Peirce's theory of signs. The 10 classes of signs were developed from 1903 and represent an important refinement of the fundamental division of signs into icons, indexes, and symbols. In this paper we present two diagrammatic models for 10 classes, proposed by Peirce, and an interpretation of the reasoning behind their development, based on the analysis of preparatory versions of these models.
-
Universidade Federal de Juiz de ForaAssociate Professor
Brazil
Areas of Specialization
Aesthetics |
Philosophy of Biology |
Semiotics |