John Deely

(? - 2017)

Can we refer to objects which do not exist? Searle says that we cannot. He postulates an ‘axiom of existence’ such that, if an object does not exist, we cannot refer to it. This ‘axiom of existence’ could be taken simply as a way of defining the notion of ‘reference’; we would not count a reference to a non-existent object as a ‘reference’ in the philosophical sense; or perhaps it might count as a reference but not as a ‘successful’ or ‘consummated’ reference, to use the terminology which Searle sometimes adopts. Whichever way we take Searle's doctrine I wish to argue that it is objectionable. The conceptual scheme he advocates obscures the truth. But I do not deny that there is a temptation to resort to it, and I hope to show that, where lawyers have yielded to the temptation, pernicious doctrines have resulted.

Thematic development of semiotics proves to be a transformative event for intellectual culture, manifesting itself to begin with in its reshaping of the usage ofmany philosophical terms in their refl ection of mainstream modern philosophy as its influence has sedimented down the level of ordinary language, i.e., today’s common speech. Central among these terms are subject and object as modern usage has established their sense, a sense which proves incompatible with the understanding of things that is emerging from the cenoscopic analysis of the being and action of signs. In particular also the term ‘relation’, surely among the most widely used and least analysed terms of philosophy today, proves upon semiotic analysis to require a whole new understanding of the subjectivity/objectivity and object/thing distinctions as they have come to be more or less “settled” in modern usage. This essay explores the implications for such usage consequent upon the postmodern development of semiotics as the “doctrine” or “cenoscopic science” of signs.

This book is not addressed to beginning students in philosophy so much as it is addressed to those who, though fairly well-versed in the philosophical tradition, find themselves frankly baffled and brought up short by the writ ings of Martin Heidegger, and who-while recognizing the novelty of the Heideggerean enterprise - may sometimes find themselves wondering if this "thinking of Being" is after all rich enough to deserve still further effort on their part. That at least was my own state of mind after a couple of years spent in studying Heidegger. Then one day, in preparing for a seminar, I suddenly saw, not indeed all of what Heidegger is about, but at least where he stands in terms of previous philosophers, and what is the ground of his thinking. After that, it became possible to assess certain strengths and weaknesses of his thought in terms of his own methodology vis-a-vis those earlier thinkers who, without having dreamed of anything quite like a Daseinsanalyse, had yet recognized in explicit terms the feature of experience on which the identi fication of Sein (and consequently the Daseinsanalyse) depends for its poss ibility.

As modernity began with a redefinition of the human being, so does postmodernity. But whereas the modern definition of the human being as res cogitans cut human animals off from both their very animality and the world of nature out of which they evolved and upon which they depend throughout life, the postmodern definition as semeiotic animal both overcomes the separation from nature and restores the animality essential to human being in this life. Semiotics, the doctrine of signs suggested by Augustine and theoretically justified by Poinsot, developed in our own day after Peirce, introduces postmodernity by overcoming the Kantian epistemological limits on the side of ens reale and showing the social constructions superordinate to ens reale as essential to animal life.

This paper examines the role of triadic relations, in which sign action consists, as occurring in physical nature prior to and independently of biological life. Peirce’s idea of “being in future” as sufficient for the notion of Interpretant opens the way to semiotic understanding of the universe’s physical evolution: when an Interpretant, as a physical situation, results indirectly from a direct dyadic interaction that changes the relation of the universe in the direction of being closer to being able to sustain life, that new situation must be regarded as a Thirdness in comparison with the presupposed Secondness.

Language is the species-specific human version of the animal system of communication. In contrast to non-human animals, language enables humans to invent a plurality of possible worlds; reflect upon signs; be responsible for our actions; gain conscious awareness of our inevitable mutual involvement in the network of life on this planet; and be responsibly involved in the destiny of the planet. The author looks at semiotics, the study of signs, symbols, and communication as developing sequentially rather than successively, more synchronically than diachronically. She discusses the contemporary phenomenon that people in today's society have witnessed and participated in, as part of the development of semiotics. Although there is a long history preceding semiotics, in a sense the field is, as a phenomenon, more "of our time" than of any time past. Its leading figures, whom Petrilli examines, belong to the twentieth and twenty-first century. Semiotics is associated with a capacity for listening. This capacity is also the condition for reconnecting to and recovering the ancient vocation of semiotics as that branch of medical science relating to the interpretation of signs or symptoms. The pragmatic aspect of global semiotics studies the impact of language or signs on those who use them, and looks for consequences in actual practice. In this respect, Petrilli theorizes that the task for semiotics in the era of globalization is nothing less than to take responsibility for life in its totality.

Semiotics is the study of signs addressing their action, usage, communication and signification. Edusemiotics—educational semiotics—is a recently developed direction in educational theory that takes semiotics as its foundational philosophy and explores the philosophical specifics of semiotics in educational contexts. As a novel theoretical field of inquiry, it is complemented by research known under the banner ‘semiotics in education’, which is largely an applied enterprise. In this respect edusemiotics is a new conceptual framework for both theoretical and empirical studies. Edusemiotics has also been given the status of being a new branch of theoretical semiotics and it was launched as such at the 12th World Congress of the International Association for Semiotic Studies in September 2014 at the New Bulgarian University in Sofia. The article presents ‘semiosis’ as the action of signs across culture AND nature and posits ‘learning’ in terms of developing semiotic consciousness and semiotic competence. Semiosis is a process and as such it defies the Cartesian philosophy of substance-dualism that still informs the culture of education. The paper focuses specifically on university education permeated by disciplinary boundaries and the fragmentation of knowledge grounded in objective science inherited from modernity. Where is semiotics as the science of signs in the context of academic culture? The authors conclude by affirming the transdisciplinary character of semiotics and edusemiotics and specify the distinctive focal points of transdisciplinary knowledge afforded by edusemiotics.

Over the past twenty years, the annual meetings of the Semiotic Society of America have tracked the growth and development of modern sign theory in American scholarship. Since 1981, the published proceedings of SSA meetings have included representative semiotic work from a wide range of disciplines and every extant -system- of semiotic thought. The papers have especially represented some of the leading intellectual descendants of C.S. Peirce and Ferdinand de Saussure in the United States and Canada. On this ground, the series remains the primary record of North American contributions to sign perspectives, embracing world-wide philosophical, literary, and scientific bases for a 21st-century -doctrine of signs-. The proceedings project has consistently pursued excellent scholarship, representative diversity, and quality production. With publication of Semiotics 1996, general editor John Deely and the Semiotic Society continue the record of -representing- American semiotics. The SSA also plan to incorporate more voices from Mexico in an effort to achieve a comprehensive North American -semiotic- which is strongly linked to practical and theoretical developments across the world."

This book redraws the intellectual map and sets the agenda in philosophy for the next fifty or so years. By making the theory of signs the dominant theme in Four Ages of Understanding, John Deely has produced a history of philosophy that is innovative, original, and complete. The first full-scale demonstration of the centrality of the theory of signs to the history of philosophy, Four Ages of Understanding provides a new vantage point from which to review and reinterpret the development of intellectual culture at the threshold of "globalization". Deely examines the whole movement of past developments in the history of philosophy in relation to the emergence of contemporary semiotics as the defining moment of Postmodernism. Beginning traditionally with the Pre-Socratic thinkers of early Greece, Deely gives an account of the development of the notion of signs and of the general philosophical problems and themes which give that notion a context through four ages: Ancient philosophy, covering initial Greek thought; the Latin age, philosophy in European civilization from Augustine in the 4th century to Poinsot in the 17th; the Modern period, beginning with Descartes and Locke; and the Postmodern period, beginning with Charles Sanders Peirce and continuing to the present. Reading the complete history of philosophy in light of the theory of the sign allows Deely to address the work of thinkers never before included in a general history, and in particular to overcome the gap between Ockham and Descartes which has characterized the standard treatments heretofore. One of the essential features of the book is the way in which it shows how the theme of signs opens a perspective for seeing the Latin Age from its beginning with Augustine to the work of Poinsot as an indigenous development and organic unity under which all the standard themes of ontology and epistemology find a new resolution and place. A magisterial general history of philosophy, Deely's book provides both a strong background to semiotics and a theoretical unity between philosophy's history and its immediate future. With Four Ages of Understanding Deely sets a new agenda for philosophy as a discipline entering the 21st century.

Thomas A. Sebeok (†2001) considered Charles Peirce as “our lodestar” in the contemporary semiotic development, and what he called “the Dominican tradition” (the Thomistic works of Aquinas, Poinsot, and Maritain in particular) as ‘a vein of pure gold’ yet to be mined in the contemporary semiotic development. By contrast, many contemporary authors look to what is called “Analytic philosophy” (as if there were such a thing as “non-analytic philosophy”) for their interpretation both of Peirce and of Sebeok’s “Dominican tradition”. Tzvetan Todorov, however, has pointed out that semiotics as the doctrine of signs in fact compromises the very foundation upon which the ‘founding fathers’ of “Analytic philosophy” relied in their linguistic reduction of philosophical analysis. Using the works of two contemporary authors, one from the Peircean side (Thomas Short) and one claiming to represent Thomistic thought (John O’Callaghan), this review essay explores the distortive consequences for semiotics that result from adopting the standpoint of Analytic philosophy when treating matters of semiosis. Hence the sub-title “Semiotics or Semantics: What Difference Does It Make [for the doctrine of signs]?”