-
110Defining the Semiotic AnimalAmerican Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 79 (3): 461-481. 2005.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 Au…Read more
-
95Common Sources for the Semiotic of Charles Peirce and John PoinsotReview of Metaphysics 48 (3). 1995.THE PREVALENCE TODAY of "semiotics" as the preferred linguistic form for designating the study of signs in its various aspects already conceals a history, a story of the ways in which, layer by layer, the temporal achievement we call human understanding builds, through public discourse, ever new levels of common acceptance each of which presents itself as, if not self-evident, at least the common wisdom. Overcoming such present-mindedness is not the least of the tasks faced by the awakening of s…Read more
-
89How to go nowhere with language: Remarks on John O'Callaghan, thomist realism and the linguistic turnAmerican Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 82 (2): 337-359. 2008.Jacques Maritain tells us that, apart from St. Thomas himself, his “principal teacher” in Thomism was John Poinsot. Poinsot, like Maritain and Thomas, expressly teaches that the basis of “Thomist realism” lies in the distinction between sentire, which makes no use of concepts, and phantasiari and intelligere, which together depend essentially on concepts. O’Callaghan makes no discussion of this point, resting his notion of realism rather on the widespread quo/quod fallacy, that is, the misinterp…Read more
-
78Physiosemiosis in the semiotic spiralSign Systems Studies 29 (1): 27-47. 2001.A main question for semiotics today is how far does the paradigm for the action of signs, semiosis. extend. There is general agreement by now that semiosis extends at least as far as awareness or cognition occurs, which includes the entire domain of animal sign usage, or zoosemiosis. The open question today is whether semiotics is broader still, and on this question two positions have emerged. The comparatively conservative position would extend semiotics to the whole of living things. This exte…Read more
-
77Semiotics and Jakob von Uexküll’s concept of umweltSign Systems Studies 32 (1-2): 11-33. 2004.Semiotics, the body of knowledge developed by study of the action of signs, like every living discipline, depends upon a community of inquirers united through the recognition and adoption of basic principles which establish the ground-concepts and guide-concepts for their ongoing research. These principles, in turn, come to be recognized in the first place through the work of pioneers in the field, workers commonly unrecognized or not fully recognized in their own day, but whose work later becom…Read more
-
70A context for narrative universals: Or: Semiology as pars semioticaAmerican Journal of Semiotics 4 (3/4): 53-68. 1986.
-
65From Semiotics to SemioethicsSemiotics 36 (2): 242-261. 2004.How anything acts depends upon what it is, both as a kind of thing and as a distinct individual of that kind: “agere sequitur esse” — action follows being. This is as true of signs as it is of lions or centipedes: therefore, in order to determine the range or extent of semiosis we need above all to determine the kind of being at stake under the name “sign”. Since Poinsot, in a thesis that the work of Peirce centuries later confirmed, the proper being of signs as signs lies in a relation, a relat…Read more
-
63Analytic Philosophy and The Doctrine of SignsAmerican Journal of Semiotics 28 (3/4). 2012.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…Read more
-
61Locke's Proposal for Semiotic and the Scholastic Doctrine of SpeciesModern Schoolman 70 (3): 165-188. 1993.
-
59Semiotics, edusemiotics and the culture of educationEducational Philosophy and Theory 49 (3): 207-219. 2017.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 edus…Read more
-
56Semiotic entanglement: The concepts of environment, Umwelt, and Lebenswelt in semiotic perspectiveSemiotica 2014 (199): 7-42. 2014.
-
53Floyd Merrell named sixth Thomas A. Sebeok Fellow of the Semiotic Society of AmericaSign Systems Studies 33 (2): 477-480. 2005.
-
53From semiosis to semioethicsSign Systems Studies 36 (2): 437-489. 2008.How anything acts depends upon what it is, both as a kind of thing and as a distinct individual of that kind: “agere sequitur esse” — action follows being. This is as true of signs as it is of lions or centipedes: therefore, in order to determine the range or extent of semiosis we need above all to determine the kind of being at stake under the name “sign”. Since Poinsot, in a thesis that the work of Peirce centuries later confirmed, the proper being of signs as signs lies in a relation, a relat…Read more
-
52A sign is what? A dialogne between a semiotician and a would-be realistSign Systems Studies 29 (2): 705-743. 2001.
-
51Semiotics as a postmodem recovery of the cultural unconsciousSign Systems Studies 28 15-47. 2000.This essay explores the terminology of semiotics with an eye to the historical layers of human experience and understanding that have gone into making the doctrine of signs possible as a contemporary intellectual movement. Using an essentially Heideggerian view of language as a heuristic hypothesis, the name semiotics is examined in light of the realization that only with Augustine's Latin signum was the possibility of a general doctrine of signs introduced, and that first among the later Latins…Read more