Tutorial to Semiotics
PhiloSign
Prologue
Behind and beyond the merely material lies the world of signs. It is a world of life, meaning and participation.
Look around. What do you see? And please, I don’t want you to name things. Rather, what is it what you are looking at? You are perceiving matter, right? Everything around you is matter. Even you are composed of matter.
This is the way most of us understand the world. Of course in your everyday life you live “normally”, so to say, and perceive all kinds of things: chairs, cars, people, words, symbols and so on. But if you stop to think about the question just proposed, you would probably say that, in the last instance, you perceive matter.
I want to challenge that worldview. Instead of matter I encourage you to perceive signs. Everything that you see is a sign. Every single thing around you is a sign. Even your thoughts, actions and feelings about those signs are signs. You are a sign.
Of course signs have to be material in order to have an actual effect. But the materiality is not the interesting aspect.
Sign is a representation of some “thing” causing “something”.
The some “thing” is called the object, which the sign seeks to represent. The “something” is called the interpretant, which is the effect caused by the sign. This effect might be a feeling, action or a thought.
Think about the sound of a doorbell. The material sound itself is the sign. Behind that sound is some “thing”, that is, the fact that someone is at the door. This is the object of the sign. Beyond that sound is “something”, that is, your reaction to go and open the door. This is the interpretant or the effect of the sign.
So you are trying to see behind and beyond the merely material. Behind in order to inquire the object behind the sign. Beyond in order to see what kind of effect the sign would have. In other words, you look behind to understand what the sign is representing, and beyond to hear what the sign is conveying; what is its message?
Dog is barking and growling at you. That is a sign. Its representing a threat or a warning. Its effect, or message, is this: “Keep away from me. Go away”, which you do gladly.
But what about inanimate things like rocks? Are they signs too? Of course! Rock might signify a place of shelter for an animal. Moss sees a place to grow. It might be a signpost for a hiker. It could be the center of a religious ritual. Or maybe it tells an epic story to an inquiring geologist. You see how a simple rock has unlimited potential to tell us stories and cause various effects, simply by looking behind and beyond it.
There is a poetic beauty in signs. You see falling leaves drift by the window. This represents autumn, which is then the object of the sign. Understanding this makes you melancholic, which is the effect of the sign. The autumn leaves materially embody the qualities of red and gold, which functions as a sign for the objects of red lips, summer kisses and sunburned hands you used to hold. This all causes you to miss most of all your darling, which again is the effect of the sign. And all of this beautiful sign-action (semiosis) unfolds when the autumn leaves start to fall.
This last example is good at exemplifying how we are actually dealing with sign-action, that is semiosis, rather than with individual signs. Of course it is fun trying to spot and identify various individual signs, but in reality, the signs are always “dirty”. In reality sign is vague thing. It cannot be completely isolated or defined, as it always escapes and retains freedom in its action. It is more like a cloud of meaning, than a definite particle.
Nevertheless, semiosis still calls us to inquire into it. The semiotic world is trying to show you some “things” (objects) in order to convey “something” (interpretant). And as your whole experience is embedded in semiosis – and is semiosis – your attention is always fixed at various types of signs. Every single moment you are perceiving, experiencing and interpreting signs.
Suddenly the world opens up. The world around you isn’t just dead matter. On the contrary. It is literally speaking to you. It wants you to participate with it. It has immense depth and meaning. Everywhere you turn lies an unlimited potential for inquiry. At every single instant there is the possibility to dive into the endless growth of semiosis.
Semiotic Mindset
It is a daunting task to introduce semiotics. The field is massive, and the ideas are deep and profound. How to begin?
We could do the usual stuff. I would say that semiotics is the study of signs, then present some definitions of signs, and the rest of this text would be filled with a bunch of weird terms and neologisms used as the surgical instruments to dissect the sign.
However, I’m not going to do that. I think it is more important to understand the Semiotic Mindset.
You see, we are not talking about some neat little theory. We are speaking about adopting a world view, one that demands a complete shift in our understanding of ourselves and the very nature of reality. Taking this step requires courage.
Let us begin sketching this mindset by acknowledging how the world is full of signs. Symbols, beeping and blinking signals, written language, spoken language, body language, emojis, pop-ups, notifications, traffic signs, warning signs, advertising signs and the list goes on and on.
Everyone would agree with this observation, but we will go deeper and claim that signs are the very medium we experience. The waters we swim in.
Namely, signs are not mere practical indicators helping us to navigate in the world (seeing when the battery is low, knowing when to stop in traffic, hearing when a new message pops into our feed).
The Semiotic Mindset is about asserting that semiosis forms the very structure of our reality.
All the perceptions we perceive, the experiences we experience, the habits we embody, and the thoughts we think, are to be regarded as sign-action – semiosis.
This means that, with the help of semiotics, we gain the ability to understand our understanding, to reason about our reasoning, to gain knowledge of how we gain knowledge. In other words, we develop higher level of awareness.
I’m referring to meta-cognition – the ability to reflect on the mental processes we use to understand and process information. With this ability we can enhance our acquisition of knowledge, understanding and deliberate action. This makes semiotics truly a powerful tool for thinking.
Consider a musician who communicates and expresses meaning through the medium of sound. Now, imagine an artist who possesses not only musicality but also a mastery of sound theory.
Such a musician has a deep understanding of how humans perceive and interpret sonic elements like resonance, timbre, frequency, and amplitude. This insight into the medium of sound itself allows for intentional and deliberate control in conveying the desired emotions and meaning to their audience.
In the same way, through an understanding of semiosis, we gain the ability to observe, manipulate and utilize signs in order to achieve desired pragmatic outcomes.
However, there is a preliminary for this skill. We must adopt the extreme realist view, which means to accept the metaphysical reality of signs. By adopting this view, semiosis extends beyond our human cognition permeating the entire universe. Therefore, mastering the semiotic tools not only helps us understand our own cognitive processes, but also provides a means of comprehending the very essence of reality.
If this is true, we have an extremely powerful tool to explain reality in general. We are talking about a massive paradigm shift on our hands.
What is Semiotics?
Semiosis is the subject matter of Semiotics
Let’s cut the chase, semiotics, at its core, is logic. Semiotics is the discipline. Semiosis is what semiotics inquires. Now, if semiotics studies the logical structure of semiosis, and semiosis permeates everything, then semiotics also illuminates the logical structure of reality.
However, it is a very developed and advanced logic, which makes it very different from our usual conception of logic, which is something like this:
- Premise: All humans are mortal.
- Premise: Socrates is human.
- Conclusion: Therefore, Socrates is mortal.
This kind of logical inference is called deduction, where the conclusion is necessarily deduced from the premises. Notice how no new information was created, as the conclusion was present already in the premises.
But logic is much more than deductions. It must be also capable of dealing with the growth of knowledge. In real everyday life we don’t simply deduce secure propositions from known premises. Rather, we form new knowledge, novel ideas, hypotheses, explanations etc. Purely deductive logic cannot account for learning, creativity or discovery.
Compare this to biology. Before the theory of evolution, biologists saw the animal kingdom as static. However, after Darwin introduced the ideas of change, growth and development, the animal species were no longer static, but constantly evolving and adapting to their changing environment.
Peirce was very impressed by the theory of evolution. And as Peirce was a synechist philosopher (believing that everything is fundamentally connected), the idea of evolution could not be limited to biology alone.
If there is growth and development in biology, there must also be growth and development in logic. Both sciences should share and incorporate these common characteristics.
Semiotics is this new form of logic. It includes deductions, but in addition also inductions (generalizations), and most importantly abductions (formation of novel explanations), which are responsible for all new information and ideas. Let us take a look on these inferences:
- Inductive reasoning produces beliefs based on a set
of specific observations or examples. It is reasoning from a sample to
the whole sampled.
- Every time I have eaten at that restaurant, the food has been delicious. Therefore, I believe that the food will be delicious if I eat there again.
- Abductive reasoning involves making a guess based
on the facts of the situation, and arriving at an explanation. Abduction
is very uncertain knowledge as it merely suggests that something may be.
- You try to charge your mobile phone, but as you plug it to the charging cable, nothing happens. You infer that you charger is broken, but it may also be, that there is dirt in the port.
Interlude: Semiotics as Everyday Logic
Before we advance any further it is important to understand what we are talking about. By bringing up the concept of “logic” many of us have something very abstract in mind.
Maybe we think about truth tables, or some other mathematical exercises. Maybe we picture some college kids doing some party tricks involving logical reasoning. Or maybe we think about someone very logical, like Sherlock Holmes solving a crime.
All that is logic, yes, and it is included in semiotics, but… with semiotics we are mostly talking about the logic of everyday life. Is the coffee hot? Should I greet the neighbor? Which route should I take? Do I have enough money? Should I eat now or later? Is it raining?
We encounter a multitude of signs and engage in reasoning with and through them. Logic is much more than solving sudokus, it is about getting through the daily life.
That said let us continue our journey.
Medium of Communication
Now, abduction is very interesting and fundamental form of reasoning. It can be thought as the internalization of information from the environment.
Imagine you wake up one morning and find that the floor in your kitchen is wet. You make an abductive inference that the faucet was left on, causing the water to overflow and spill onto the floor.
You were able to do this by interpreting signs (the water on the floor). You examined the kitchen and internalized information from it through signs – through semiosis.
In other words, by internalizing information about the environment, we are communicating with it through signs. We are communicating with reality. That is why Peirce sometimes defines signs as a “medium for the communication”.
This definition is wonderful, because it conveys the ideas of flow and continuity.
You see, when we think about signs, we often have a very static idea of them. When first learning about semiotics, we try to identify individual signs in our environment. We point at things and ask questions like “What kind of sign is that? What is its object?”
I’m not saying that this is wrong, but it easily leads our minds to see signs as discrete things, when in reality semiosis is a continuous flow of information. Semiosis is analog.
We don’t digitally compile and compute information from bits and pieces. The signs we encounter are not separated and discrete particles of matter. They are logical entities discerned and abstracted from the unindividuated qualitative continuum.
An example of this phenomena can be seen in music. When we listen to a piece of music, we don’t hear separate discrete units of sound. Rather, we hear a continuous and fluid flow of sound. The musical elements (signs) are discerned and abstracted from this qualitative continuum of sound allowing us to recognize notes, melodies, harmonies, and rhythms. Real natural sound is analog, not digital.
It is thus more accurate to conceptualize our experience of semiosis as a feeling of being embedded in a continuous stream of analog information, comprised and mediated by innumerable fluctuating signs. We live fully immersed in this living and breathing flow of meaning.
Semiotics is the logical breakdown of this stream of information. It shows us how we perceive, process and embody that information.
But again, in order to truly understand semiotics, one must accept the metaphysical reality of signs. In the foot steps of Peirce, we should truly belief that: “the entire universe is perfused with signs, if it is not composed exclusively of signs.”
Peirce’s Struggle with Semiotics
I hope you’ve gained some valuable insights on semiotics. I’m sure many aspects still remain very vague, but don’t worry. We will revisit these concepts multiple times throughout the tutorials. Finally, let me briefly outline the development of semiotics and how the tutorials will proceed.
The best known part of Peirce’s semiotics is certainly the three famous signs of icon, index and symbol. But this is just the very surface of his semiotic.
In fact, he was never able to complete his semiotics. His final phase is marked by multiple, even contradictory, attempts to reveal the finer structure of the sign and semiosis.
First, he extended the classification from three to ten signs by introducing the three correlates (or aspects) of signs in 1903, from which I have tutorial here. Maybe some of you are familiar with Peirce’s diagram of the ten signs.
But this is not the finished system. Subsequently the number of aspects of the sign increased first from three to six and later to ten, as Peirce sought to finish the complete semiotic that would produce all the 66 signs of reality.
However, Peirce’s great quest was left unfinished. This has forestalled semiotics and especially its applications. Nathan Houser writes how:
A sound and detailed extension of Peirce’s analysis of signs to his full set of ten divisions and sixty-six classes is perhaps the most pressing problem for Peircean semioticians. Romanini 2006, 6
In 2006 Vinicius Romanini took on the task to finish the semiotics in his doctoral thesis Minute Semeiotic Speculations on the Grammar of Signs and Communication based on the work of C. S. Peirce.
However, instead of ten, Romanini presents eleven aspects, which produce the complete Periodic Table of the 66 Classes of Signs. Romanini discovered also the diagram of Solenoid of Semiosis that shows the minute structure of the sign.
In my opinion, the significance of this work cannot be overestimated. Romanini has made, and continues to make, significant contributions to the study of semiotics, and his work has helped to clarify, and in my opinion settle, many of the fundamental concepts in the field.
Now that Romanini we has discovered the logical structure of semiosis, we have the great opportunity to develop that logic further, and above all, apply it.
Unfortunately, applications of this logic have remained relatively scarce. There are many reasons for this:
Firstly, semioticians have the bad habit of using very obscure language. This makes it difficult for non-specialists to understand the concepts and theories involved.
Secondly, the complete logic of the 66 signs is too minute. It is hard to apply fully, as many phenomena simply don’t need such a detailed analysis. Not at least in the initial phases of inquiry.
Therefore, I seek to discover simplified versions of the Romanini’s complete logic of 66 signs. This way one can avoid the major pitfalls of semiotics making it more accessible and applicable.
For these reasons the tutorials are divided into two series:
Semiotic Mindset
Semiotic Mindset is designed to introduce you to the semiotic way of thinking in a straightforward and approachable manner. Instead of diving into complex semiotic terminology and abstract concepts that might initially seem daunting, this series focuses on making the principles of semiotics accessible and practical.
The series emphasizes practical tools and methods for analyzing and classifying different phenomena, helping you apply semiotic principles to real-world scenarios. This approach makes it easier for you to grasp the underlying concepts and see how they can be used in everyday situations, from media and communication to personal experiences.
Semiotic Logic
Semiotic Logic takes a more traditional approach by diving straight into semiotic vocabulary and concepts. This series provides a detailed exploration of the structure of sign and semiosis. By using specialized terminology from the outset, Semiotic Logic offers a more nuanced and comprehensive understanding of how signs function and how they are classified. This series is ideal for those who are comfortable with or eager to delve into the classic semiotic route.
Feel free to choose the series that aligns with your learning preferences, or explore both to gain a well-rounded understanding of semiotics.
I want to end with the inspiring words of Vinicius Romanini:
“If we achieve a complete rational description of all classes of signs, we will be able to solve many problems, probably all problems of logic, but also develop a full theory of communication, that will be also a theory of reality. I think this is a big purpose, a big goal, that is worth pursuing.”