Richard L. Lanigan

An analysis of the logic function of Analogy as historically adapted by the disciplines of Philosophy and Rhetoric (Communicology, Linguistics, Semiotics). Most cultures assimilate analogy as a disposition for causal thinking [G. aitia] which becomes a habit for making judgments, e.g., deictic expressions of comparison, then contrast. The main illustration is Plato’s Analogy of the Line as used by philosophers (dialectic, mathematic as Ontology) and communicologists (rhetoric, poetic as Epistemology). The discussion covers Scholastic modifications (L. Capta, Data, Verba, Acta) and linguistic applications (Jakobson’s Metaphor/Simile/Metonymy/Synecdoche model). Summary diagrams and tables are given. Passing reference is made to Aristotle’s “Logic Square”, A. J. Greimas’ “Semiotic Square”, and Charles S. Peirce’s “Speculative Rhetoric” which he usually just calls Methodeutic. All these models instantiate Peirce’s (1903: 128) logic of Quateridentity, i.e., triadic quadrature (A : B :: b : a). In cognitive neuroscience the model is called “shared representation”. Both Roman Jakobson and Maurice Merleau-Ponty label the model as Chiasm.

Embodiment is a problematic at the center of philosophic and scientific inquiry where issues of ontology and methodology function in apposition to one another in the study of the human mind and body in a socio-cultural world. A comparison is made between Jakobson’s theory of human communication and the logics offered by Merleau-Ponty and Peirce for analyzing the conjunction of semiotics and phenomenology where the thematic is embodied human conscious experience. In the tradition of Merleau-Ponty and Peirce, the validity and reliability of the eidetic analysis is illustrated empirically using the example of vasospasm (impaired motor muscle function with attending sympathetic stimulation) in the medical research of Jurgen Ruesch. Contextual reference is made to the work of Bateson, Bourdieu, Eco, Erikson, Foucault, Kristeva, and Sapir.

The Human Science of Communicology culminates from several disciplinary developments, largely viewed as singular constitutions and foundational to differential attitudes about the nature and function of philosophy and science in apposition (triadic relation) to human embodiment. In more familiar terms, the idea of Culture stands in contrast to the idea of Science, because there is a measured distinction between what human beings express and what they perceive. In Modernity, we know this apposition (Human–Culture–Science) as the emergence of (1) the distinct cultural disciplines (expression of human embodiment) over against the (2) the distinct scientific disciplines (perception of physical nature). Ernst Cassirer explores this problematic in The Logic of the Cultural Sciences (1942) where he distinguishes Culture as the perception-of-expression and Science as the perception-of-objects. Cassirer’s thematic explication is to be found in The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms (1923–1996) where his semiotic phenomenology of human communication is articulated in detail such that Science is bracketed by Culture. In Cassirer’s terms of symbolic forms, we can distinguish the semiotic distinction among (1) the Perception of Expression (Culture) where (a) Myth (Langage) and (b) Knowledge (Parole) contrast with (2) the Perception of Objects (Science) in the form of (c) Speech (Langue) and (d) Art (Discours). Symbols are constitutive of social semiotics (sensuous expression) and the intersubjective phenomenology of human embodiment (intuitive expression) in the tradition of Immanuel Kant and Edmund Husserl.

Edmund Husserl gave his famous London Lectures (in German) in June 1922 where he says his purpose is to explain “transcendental sociological [intersubjective] phenomenology having reference to a manifest multiplicity of conscious subjects communicating with one another”. This effective definitionof semiotic phenomenology as Communicology was reported in English (1923) by Charles K. Ogden and I. A. Richards in the first book on the topic titled The Meaning of Meaning. This groundwork was in full development by 1939 with the first detailed use of Husserl’s phenomenology to explicate human communication, i.e., the publication of Wilbur Marshal Urban’s Language and Reality. My paper addresses Urban’s use of Husserl’s philosophy toboth explicate the phenomenological method and to explore the constitutive elements of human communication and culture. Urban makes use of the workon language and culture by his famous colleagues at Yale University (USA): Edward Sapir (the linguist), Benjamin Lee Whorf (Sapir’s graduate student),and Ernst Cassirer. My own teacher at the University of New Mexico (USA) was Hubert Griggs Alexander, a doctoral student under Urban and a classmateof Whorf. The interdisciplinary focus on Culture and Communicology by Professors Cassirer, Sapir, Urban, and their doctoral students, Alexander and Whorf are collectively known as the “Yale School of Communicology.” Typical empirical examples of theoretical points are provided in the footnotes.

The analysis takes up the conjunction of semiotics and cybernetics as a problem in theory construction in the human sciences. From a philosophical perspective, this is also the ontological problem of communicology: the disciplinary study of human communication. My analysis suggests current conceptions of “semiotics” and “cybernetics” are misunderstood because “information” is assumed as synonymous with “communication” and that the axioms of “mathematics” are identical to those of “logics”. The evidence contained in the misunderstandings is a conflation of reductionist ecology ideas about the “environment” differentiation of human beings [apperceptive organic life], animals [perceptive organic life], and machines [inorganic and constructed mechanisms]. The communicological view argues that a correct understanding of these issues requires a competence in logics and linguistics to determine the metatheory criteria for choosing evidence among humans, animals, and machines. The domain thematic is the phenomenological synergism of human embodiment as expression and perception. In this context, my criterion for evidence is the structure or form of a pure concept of reason that is given a priori in consciousness, the notion demonstrated by Immanuel Kant: A notion is a rule that you know before you experience it as a result.

The coding function of semiotic-systems in literature is explored as an example of Umberto Eco’s real and fictional protocols in the play of discourse formation (lector in fabula). The intricate phenomenological levels of intersemiotic translation (apposition, opposition, chiasm, zeugma) are illustrated by analyzing a rhetorical passage (semiotic object) from Charles Dickens’ novel Bleak House. The passage on the logic of series (“lists”) allows us to explore fact/fiction, real/imaginary, normal/abnormal, sane/insane, neurotic/psychotic choices as discourse voice protocols (active, middle, passive) for the axiological interpretation (ethic, moral, aesthetic, politic, and rhetoric) of meaning formation (tropes) and signification function (figures). Models of discourse are drawn from Benveniste, Foucault, Greimas, Lévi-Strauss, and Wilden.

The analysis explores the main arguments of Noam Chomsky’s short book,Media Controlthat also reprints the monograph “The Journalist from Mars: How the ‘War on Terror’ Should Be Reported.” The problematic is Aristotelian rhetoric and Enlightenment rationality (justice) in civic discourse (Lógos) as compared to the thematic of dialogic reasonableness (Eulógos). Chomsky’s assumption of, and critique of, “old rhetoric” [Aristotle’srhētorikḗ] is followed by a discussion of Chiam Perelman’s “new rhetoric” [presocraticpoiētikḗ/epideiktikos / gērys] and his “incarnate adherence” (givingvoiceto) concept of the Universal Audience as a function of Epideictic argumentation. This is also a critique of Stephen Toulman’s neo-Aristotelian model of rhetorical “warrant” and its connection to Charles S. Peirce’s normative semiotic of the “argument cycle.” Heidegger’s and Lakoff’s concept of discourse framing is associated with Michel Foucault’s rhetoric concept of an ethic of social discourse for the common good (parrhesia) in the age of Umberto Eco’s hyperreality media that displays Baudrillard’s simulacra, such as Donald Trump.

The article consists of a brief biographical account of Immanuel Kant’s life and career, followed by a discussion of his basic philosophy, and a brief discussion of his pivotal point in the history of Rhetoric and Communicology. A major figure in the European Enlightenment period of Philosophy, his Collected Writings were first published in 1900 constituting 29 volumes. He wrote three major works that are foundational to the development of Western philosophy and the human sciences. Often just referred to as the “Three Critiques” informally, the First, the Second, and the Third. These are respectively: The Critique of Pure Reason focused on issues in logic, The Critique of Practical Reason relating ethical guidelines, and The Critique of Judgment exploring issues of aesthetics. He is most famous for his philosophy of transcendental idealism. This version of idealism argues that in logic statements are analytic or synthetic. He further argues that statements are a priori or a posteriori. Models of rhetoric, phenomenological methodology, and the contemporary Perspectives Model of interpersonal communicology are included as the Kantian legacy in the US. Notes provide a guide to edition and philological issues in the Kantian corpus, especially for the hermeneutics of Vorstellung versus Darstellung.

The paper is a paradigmatic presentation of what the new science of communicology represents: the semiotic and phenomenological study of humandiscourse and the critical study of discourse and practice both, an interaction of communication, mass communications, popular culture, public relations, advertising, marketing, linguistics, discourse analysis, political economy, institutional analysis, organization of urban and rural spaces, ergonomics, body culture, clinical practice, health care, constructions of disease, health, and rehabilitation, human factors, signage, and so forth. Communicology is the human science research result in which validity and reliability are logic constructs based in the necessary and sufficient conditions of discovered systems (codes), whether eidetic (based in consciousness) or empirical (based in experience).

Merleau-Ponty's phenomenological method of description, Reduction and intentionality is interpreted as a schema for rhetorical criticism. The existential nature of "man speaking" becomes the object of criticism, As opposed to traditional concerns with rhetorical "effects" or auditor reactions. Merleau-Ponty's separation of authentic or existential speech (speaking) and sedimented speech (the spoken word) allows the critic to distinguish social-Cultural values from individual volitions in a given communication "gestalt". The dialectic of a body-Subject in communication with others can be examined as the essential manifestation of being or "presence-At-The-World" which is a fundamental denial of the cartesian dualism

This work presents the first systemic account of the author's innovative theory of semiotic phenomenology and its place in the philosophy of communication and language. The creative and compelling project presented here spans more than fifteen years of systematic eidetic and empirical research into questions of human communication. Using the thematics of Merleau-Ponty's existential phenomenology, the author explores the concepts and practices of the human sciences that are grounded in communication theory, information theory, language, logic, linguistics, and semiotics. The hermeneutic discussion ranges over contemporary theories that include Roman Jakobson's phenomenological structuralism, the semiotics of Umberto Eco, Charles Pierce, and Alfred Schutz, the theory of speech acts offered by Jurgen Habermas and John Searle, and Michel Foucault's phenomenological rhetoric of discourse. In general, this highly developed study offers the reader a fresh account of the problematic issues in the philosophy of communication. It is a work that any scholar in communication, philosophy, linguistics, or social theory would welcome for its scope and sustained research.