The paper revisits an intriguing idea from Husserl and the tradition of Polish logical semiotics: when we use something as a sign, our attention tends to “pass through” the sign to what it signifies. Leon Koj developed this idea into a principle intended, among other things, to rule out semantic self-reference and thereby avoid semantic paradoxes.
I take a closer look at this proposal and argue that, fascinating as the idea is, it cannot quite do the job Koj wanted it to do. Instead, I suggest t…
Read moreThe paper revisits an intriguing idea from Husserl and the tradition of Polish logical semiotics: when we use something as a sign, our attention tends to “pass through” the sign to what it signifies. Leon Koj developed this idea into a principle intended, among other things, to rule out semantic self-reference and thereby avoid semantic paradoxes.
I take a closer look at this proposal and argue that, fascinating as the idea is, it cannot quite do the job Koj wanted it to do. Instead, I suggest that semiotic transparency is better understood in terms of the pragmatic and attentional features of how we actually use signs.
