Oxford Bibliography: Semiotics (Philosophy of Signs)

Jump to Content Jump to Main Navigation € Semiotics Marc Champagne Introduction Semiotics (sometimes spelled “semeiotic”) is the name first given by John Locke, and later reprised by Charles S. Peirce, for the “doctrine of signs,” or the study of how some things can stand for other things to still other things. This deliberate inquiry can be contrasted with “folk semiotic” accounts, which assume that there is some intrinsic feature about, say, the human voice or a painted board that makes them capable of signifying. Such a naive assumption does not withstand serious scrutiny. From a philosophical standpoint, what makes something a sign is an involvement in a specific sort of triadic relation. This relation is found in human/nonhuman and deliberate/nondeliberate signs alike. Semiosis, the action of signs, is what permits communication, but it is wider than communication. For example, if while in an adjacent room I smell that the turkey in the oven is ready, my pet dog can smell it too, and the turkey is not trying to “tell” us anything. But if the cook in the kitchen tells me it is ready, I receive that message, while my dog hears the sounds but is none the wiser (in contemporary semiotic parlance, my dog and I couple our Umwelten via indices, but the symbols at hand generate interpretants only in my anthroposemiosis). In spite of the fact that it has a long and distinguished history (especially during the medieval period), general inquiry into signs became an organized research program only in the mid-20th century. Today, in addition to philosophers, semiotics attracts a wide range of scholars, such as ethologists, cognitive scientists, linguists, art historians, logicians, media theorists, literary critics, computer programmers, biologists, sociologists, and so on. From a methodological standpoint, then, parochialism is not an option. The scholarly literature can nevertheless be fruitfully divided into theoretical and applied strands. Not surprisingly, most philosophers drawn to semiotic questions work in the former strand. Semiotics is not to be confused with “semiology,” a (now largely defunct) project that originated in the lectures of the linguist Ferdinand de Saussure and which was active in the 1960s, mainly in France. Semiotics, by contrast, is a vibrant tradition that continues to flourish worldwide. Although some persist in employing the term “semiotics” when discussing narrow studies that focus exclusively on cultural codes, such terminological misuse masks the fact that a study of signs is broader than a study of language. A sustained philosophy of signs, then, promises (as Locke initially surmised) to yield truly novel insights. General Overviews Semiotics ranges over a wide terrain, so it is not uncommon to find authors retreating to a particular subset of signs in order to obtain a facile sense of unity. However, by presenting a local part (say, cultural symbols) as if it were the whole, this strategy ultimately obscures the challenges a study of signs confronts, as well as the insights those challenges can spur. The works in this section all avoid this mistake, since they see signs as spanning culture and nature alike. Deely, et al. 1986 was the first to embrace this approach with confidence, and Cobley 2010 can be seen as the culmination of that concerted effort. Bouissac 1985 sees semiotics as a science and thus stresses the need for semioticians to make falsifiable claims. Deely 2009 shows remarkable historical breadth and philosophical depth, whereas Deely 2001 repackages the same ideas in a more compact format. Bouissac, Paul. “The Potential Role of Semiotics for the Advancement of Knowledge.” Semiotic Inquiry 5.4 (1985): 339–346. A reminder that Peirce and Saussure each saw the study of signs as a scientific endeavor, and a call not to let exegetic reconstruction of their foundational texts become the sole concern of semioticians. It is argued that semiotic inquiry can unify disparate sciences, a view also expressed in Anderson, et al. 1984 (cited under Nature). Cobley, Paul, ed. The Routledge Companion to Semiotics. London: Routledge, 2010. A 2001 edition combined semiotics and linguistics, but this version drops the training wheels, resulting in a stronger, more cohesive, work. Neatly divided into essays and dictionary entries, the book serves double-duty as a general overview and reference work, making it ideal if there are cost constraints. Deely, John N. “A Sign is What?” Sign Systems Studies 29.2 (2001): 705–743. Dialogue that seeks to show that cognition is in signs, and that since signs are relations capable of supporting false and veridical interpretations, distinguishing the two is a (fallible) accomplishment. Deely uses “subjective” and “objective” in an archaic sense that reverses their usual meaning. An online video of the play exists. Deely, John N. Basics of Semiotics. 5th ed. With an introduction by Kalevi Kull, Silvi Salupere, and Peeter Torop. Tartu Semiotics Library. Tartu, Estonia: Tartu University Press, 2009. Philosophical introductory book with a lot of material. A professor could turn to this fifth edition for an overview and prescribe the much shorter Deely 1990 (cited under Textbooks) for students. Deely, John N., Brooke Williams, and Felicia Ellen Kruse, eds. Frontiers in Semiotics. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1986. Landmark volume that resolved the tension between Peircean semiotics and Saussurean semiology by making the latter a part of the former. Some of the essays in the collection, like the one on sign action in plants, have since become classics. Reference Works Like any other inquiry, philosophy of signs has its own jargon. Since the use of technical terms is a response to tangible conceptual needs, it is in an ongoing process of revision. Nevertheless, with the passage of time, many terms have become widely accepted. Having been trained as a chemist, Peirce was particularly diligent in establishing his nomenclature, and many of his taxonomies (for example, symbol/index/icon) are now ubiquitous in the literature. It should be noted, however, that some Peircean terms (for example, type/token/tone) are still largely misunderstood, even in works that purport to be authoritative. The reference works in this section speak a common language, but present it in different ways. The three-volume Sebeok and Danesi 2010 is more costly and has longer entries, whereas Cobley 2010 is more accessible and quicker to consult. Deely 2001 has a voluminous topic/name index as well as a very thorough bibliography, and Nöth 1995 exhaustively documents research conducted up to that time. Cobley, Paul, ed. The Routledge Companion to Semiotics. London: Routledge, 2010. The first half of the book has specially commissioned essay chapters, and the second half is a dictionary-like gathering of key terms and major figures. Each entry ends with helpful suggestions of further readings, making this the ideal starting place for a newcomer. Deely, John N. Four Ages of Understanding. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2001. Covers the entire history of Western philosophy, tracking reflections on the sign as those reflections are born, grow, come to a halt, and grow again. The end matter, which takes up hundreds of pages, is a handy resource for scholars. Nöth, Winfried. Handbook of Semiotics. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995. Eclectic survey of many areas and theories. A source of other sources (perhaps a bit dated now). Not suited in a syllabus, but useful when constructing such a syllabus. Sebeok, Thomas A., and Marcel Danesi, eds. Encyclopedic Dictionary of Semiotics. 3 vols. 3d ed., revised and augmented. Berlin and New York: De Gruyter Mouton, 2010. There is much of value in the long entries, some of which could stand on their own as small articles. The third volume is a bibliography of all the works referred to in the other two volumes. Textbooks Because, at present, instruction in semiotics is rarely a mandatory university requirement, the motivations for composing works of a didactic nature are vastly different from those driving the usual textbook industry. Many instructors have written manuals out of sheer necessity. However, given that scholars who draw on semiotic theory have varied disciplinary affiliations, we witness a harmful tendency to present one’s select research interests as if they constituted the proper subject matter of semiotics. Danesi 1998 spends most of its time on culture, but it includes chapters that clearly show the student that, and why, the field is vaster. Deely 1990 and Krampen, et al. 1987 both make it a point to cover culture, nature, and mind. Clarke 1987 gives a historically well-informed introduction suited to analytic philosophers of language; while Savan 1987 shows in a rigorous but accessible way how Peirce’s systematic ideas can advance one’s understanding in a host of areas. Clarke, David S., Jr. Principles of Semiotic. London and New York: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1987. Introductory text whose recurring concern is what to include in (and exclude from) semiotic inquiry. While the resultant scope and terminology, borrowed from Morris, does not always reflect current consensus, the author presents worthwhile arguments for his views. Danesi, Marcel. Sign, Thought, and Culture: A Basic Course in Semiotics. Toronto: Canadian Scholars’ Press, 1998. As a reworked version of a 1994 attempt by the author that had a different title, this book exhibits its practical classroom pedigree with brief and accessible chapters, well-crafted follow-up activities, and questions for discussion. Deely, John N. Basics of Semiotics. 1st ed. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990. Book by a philosopher, for philosophers. The field of study delimited has a huge range (and so is currently the object of some controversy). The first edition is best, as Deely is here unusually succinct. Descriptions of semiosis as a process stand out as particularly instructive. Krampen, Martin, Klaus Oehler, Roland Posner, Thomas A. Sebeok, and Thure von Uexküll. Classics of Semiotics. New York: Plenum, 1987. Would seem like a reader, but is in fact a collection of chapters on truly major figures who have endeavored to develop a unified account of all signs. The presentation of the core ideas is reliable. Savan, David. An Introduction to C. S. Peirce’s Full System of Semeiotic. Toronto: Toronto Semiotic Circle, 1987. Arguably one of the best introduction to semiotics on the market. Although it is currently out of print, it is ideal for both undergraduate and graduate courses, especially if coupled with Peirce 1992 and Peirce 1998 (both cited under Peirce). Anthologies Given the vibrancy of the field, collections of central texts in semiotics can, with the passage of time, become more reflective of historical developments than theories actually being used in research. Danesi and Santeramo 1999 is a reworked version of an earlier collection by the same editors that has successfully adjusted to changing times. Peirce shows up in all anthologies, but the text usually chosen to capture his ideas in the entries in this section can be somewhat opaque, so unless one consults Peirce 1992 and Peirce 1998 (both cited under Peirce) directly, a newcomer might be better served by a stand-alone introductory article such as Parmentier 1987 (also cited under Peirce). The ideas of Saussure are also included in all anthologies, but they are more intuitive and fit comfortably in a chapter (which might account for their popularity among undergraduates). Although, content-wise, most anthologies on the market tend to show a bias toward cultural signs, Innis 1985 is notable for including an excerpt from Gregory Bateson, who has become increasingly influential in biosemiotics. Perron and Danesi 2003 includes brief but well-chosen excerpts from Augustine and Poinsot, and a more thorough historical coverage is provided in Clarke 1990. Clarke, David S., Jr., ed. Sources of Semiotic: Readings with Commentary from Antiquity to the Present. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1990. In many respects the most thorough anthology in this list. The classificatory subdivisions are helpful, as is the wide historical scope. Danesi, Marcel, and Donato Santeramo, eds. The Sign in Theory and Practice: An Introductory Reader in Semiotics. Toronto: Canadian Scholars’ Press, 1999. The sequence of texts seems to go from more established to less established, and one should be aware that many texts are actually commentaries, not primary sources themselves. Like Danesi 1998 (cited under Textbooks), contains follow-up activities and questions for discussions, all grouped at the end. Innis, Robert E., ed. Semiotics: An Introductory Anthology. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1985. Good selection of influential texts, each prefaced with a helpful introduction and directions for further readings. Like Clarke 1990 in tone, but narrower in historical scope. Perron, Paul, and Marcel Danesi, eds. Classic Readings in Semiotics: For Introductory Courses. Ottawa, ON: Legas, 2003. Anthology prefaced with a ten-page mini textbook of sorts. The commentaries and texts (which, unlike Danesi and Santeramo 1999, are all primary sources) are grouped separately, the commentaries coming first. Histories At the first congress of the International Association for Semiotic Studies in 1974, participants devoted themselves to thinking about (1) the right of the discipline to exist, (2) its history, and (3) the possibility of providing the discipline with a unified methodology and a unified objective (from the Proceedings). Scholars quickly came to realize that Saussure was only partly right to assert that a study of signs was fully entitled to exist but did not yet exist. Early investigations into the long history of semiotics were led by Italian scholars, whose work appears in Eco and Marmo 1989, Manetti 1993, and Manetti 1996. One fruit of those labors was the discovery of a clear demarcation: beyond obvious differences in language, thinkers in Antiquity did not view natural and cultural signs as species of a common genus, whereas medieval thinkers did. Tzvetan Todorov, who came to this conclusion independently from Italian scholars, identifies Augustine as the turning point (Todorov 1982). Since the Augustinian assumption of commonality is also central to the Peircean tradition, medieval semiotics has received increasing attention. A breakthrough was achieved when John Deely translated (and later promoted) the difficult writings of John Poinsot, who has since become a canonical philosopher of signs (meriting his own subheading in this bibliography). The importance of Poinsot is described in Deely 2001. Peirce did not know of Poinsot, but he was familiar with medieval semiotics, and that familiarity is cataloged in Boler 1963 and Beuchot and Deely 1995. Beuchot, Mauricio, and John N. Deely. “Common Sources for the Semiotic of Charles Peirce and John Poinsot.” The Review of Metaphysics 48.3 (1995): 539–566. No evidence exists that Peirce ever read Poinsot, but it is shown that Peirce knew and engaged with the same texts Poinsot did. Can be read either as a preview of or an appendix to Deely 2001. Boler, John F. Charles Peirce and Scholastic Realism: A Study of Peirce’s Relation to John Duns Scotus. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1963. Having grown out of a doctoral dissertation, the cross-examination is detailed (almost to a fault). Authoritative, but not recommended for the newcomer to either Peirce or medieval philosophy. Deely, John N. Four Ages of Understanding. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2001. Ambitious rereading of the entire history of Western philosophy. The partition proposed is reminiscent of Kant’s narrative about rationalism versus empiricism, in that it is doctored to culminate in a stronger position. Seeks to rescue the term “postmodern” and establish it solely as what comes “after Modernism.” Eco, Umberto, and Costantino Marmo, eds. On the Medieval Theory of Signs. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 1989. Similar in format to Manetti 1996. All essays are in English, but Latin quotations are not translated. The opening essay on animal language, reprinted (slightly modified) in Deely, et al. 1986 (cited under General Overviews), takes Augustine to have ventured the first overarching account of the sign, an attribution corroborated (albeit less optimistically) in Todorov 1982. Manetti, Giovanni. Theories of the Sign in Classical Antiquity. Translated from the Italian by Christine Richardson. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993. A comprehensive study of what the various schools of ancient Greece and Rome had to say on the sign. The scholarship on display is exemplary. Manetti, Giovanni, ed. Knowledge through Signs: Ancient Semiotic Theories and Practices. Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 1996. Collection of essays, some in English, some in Italian, each dealing with a distinct school of thought or theme. The English-language essays are particularly helpful for contrasting Stoic and Epicurean theories of the sign. Todorov, Tzvetan. Theories of the Symbol. Translated from the French by Catherine Porter. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1982. Originally published in 1977 (Oxford: Blackwell), and reprinted in 1995. Although intended as a history of rhetoric with an eye to building “semiological” applications of use in literary criticism, it is mainly remembered for its opening chapter on the birth of Western semiotic, which is now anthologized in Danesi and Santeramo 1999 (cited under Anthologies) and lends support to the historical claims of Deely 2001. Areas of Application Synthesis is prized in philosophy of signs: ideally, thinkers studying one area should remain aware that the conclusions they draw are somehow connected with those drawn in other areas. The goal of this approach is a nonreductive unification of the natural and social sciences. Major figures like Poinsot, Peirce, Morris, and Sebeok have all conducted their work with that aim in mind. For the purposes of organizing a bibliography, we can nevertheless divide writings on the sign according to the topic dealt with. The attention each area has received is uneven. Although culture and language have received much attention, the comparative neglect of natural signs has been redressed in the last decade. Finally, challenges related to consciousness and embodied cognition have led an increasing number of philosophers to approach the mind from a semiotic perspective. NATURE Some of the earliest inquiries into signs were prompted by a desire to understand medical symptoms, where something that is seen indicates something that is not seen (at least not obviously so). This ability to link sign-vehicles to their objects was generally regarded as unique to humans. However, in the second half of the 20th century, Thomas Sebeok was led by his study of the “Clever Hans” phenomenon to call that assumption into question. Sebeok’s conviction that a rigorous semiotic theory ought not to exclude animals is laid out in Anderson, et al. 1984. Sebeok 1991 makes use of the concept of Umwelt originated in Uexküll 1926 to show how nature and culture might interlock. By the close of the 20th century, that account had given birth to a vibrant research program, the trajectory of which is recounted in Favareau 2010. The biological understanding of semiosis found in Hoffmeyer 1996, Hoffmeyer 2008, and El-Hani, et al. 2006 fits well in the Peircean tradition, but Barbieri 2006 argues for a codebased approach reminiscent of semiology. Some of Barbieri’s assumptions are critiqued in Champagne 2009. Anderson, Myrdene, John N. Deely, Martin Krampen, Joseph Ransdell, Thomas Albert Sebeok, and Thure von Uexküll. “A Semiotic Perspective on the Sciences: Steps toward a New Paradigm.” Semiotica 52.1–2 (1984): 7–47. Influential vision of what semiotics could and should be, enunciated when the discipline was going through an identity crisis. If one keeps in mind Saussurean paradigm as the foil, the novelty of unifying culture and nature becomes more apparent. The promotion of then-neglected figures like Uexküll and Poinsot proved lasting. Barbieri, Marcello. “Life and Semiosis: The Real Nature of Information and Meaning.” Semiotica 158.1–4 (2006): 233–254. Scientifically well-informed paper which argues that since some strands of organic matter are constructed by other strands storing a coded sequence, the exchange constitutes a sign-relation. Contains a recap of how the disciplined study of such questions came about, which can be expanded by reading Favareau 2010. Champagne, Marc. “A Note on M. Barbieri’s ‘Scientific Biosemiotics.’” American Journal of Semiotics 25.1–2 (2009): 155–161. Short piece that takes Barbieri 2006 to task for misconstruing the notion of interpretation as it is used in semiotics. Barbieri’s (even briefer) response can be found immediately after. El-Hani, Charbel Niño, João Queiroz, and Claus Emmeche. “A Semiotic Analysis of the Genetic Information System.” Semiotica 160.1–4 (2006): 1–68. Looks at gene transcription and protein synthesis and argues that locutions such as “carrying” a nonmaterial commodity like information cannot be written off as an instrumentalist shorthand for purely mechanistic processes. Challenging the idea of a linear DNA-to-RNA-to-protein transmission, the authors draw on Peirce’s account of sign-action to show how the cell is what makes use of DNA. Won the journal’s award for its year. Favareau, Donald, ed. Essential Readings in Biosemiotics: Anthology and Commentary. Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Springer, 2010. Gathers essays that trace how the joining of biology and semiotics came about. The programmatic optimism of the various authors is palpable. A 75-page bibliography of primary and secondary sources is offered at the end, using the volume contributors as division headings. Ideal for a survey of the major schools and players in the field. Hoffmeyer, Jesper. Signs of Meaning in the Universe. Translated from the Danish by Barbara J. Haveland. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1996. A new classic of biosemiotics, written in engaging prose. Issues promissory notes that are considerable but nevertheless attractive to those interested in nonreductive physicalism. The examples are often at a cellular level, but greater environmentalist and humanist themes are implied. Hoffmeyer, Jesper. Biosemiotics: An Examination into the Signs of Life and the Life of Signs. Translated from the Danish by Jesper Hoffmeyer and Donald F. Favareau. Scranton, PA: University of Scranton Press, 2008. Expands on the themes and ideas of Hoffmeyer 1996 in greater detail, using updated research and scholarship. The tone is less programmatic: mistakenly or not, the author sees himself as making good on his earlier promissory notes. Hoffmeyer is starting to attract a secondary literature. Sebeok, Thomas A. “In What Sense Is Language a ‘Primary Modeling System?’” In On Semiotic Modeling. Edited by Myrdene Anderson and Floyd Merrell, 327–339. Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter, 1991. Criticism of the Soviet school of semiotics emanating from Lotman 2001 (cited under Culture). Diplomatically drawing on Lotman’s compatriot Uexküll, Sebeok argues that nonverbal modeling enjoys phylogenetic and ontogenetic priority, an idea later developed in Sebeok and Danesi 2000 (cited under Reference Works). This reversal proved crucial to the assimilation of “semiology” defended in Deely, et al. 1986 (cited under General Overviews). Uexküll, Jakob von. Theoretical Biology. Translated from the German by Doris L. MacKinnon. New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1926. Considered by many to be the foundational text of biosemiotics. Uexküll wants to study animals’ species-specific experiential worlds, and develops conceptual tools to do so. Deely 2009 (cited under General Overviews) argues that Uexküll’s ideas are more useful when divorced from their Kantian suppositions. CULTURE It is probably safe to say that, to date, more work has been conducted on the semiotics of cultural and linguistic practices than on any other area. Barthes 1977, which first appeared in 1964, represents one of the first attempts to consolidate the conceptual apparatus of semiology, and for a time it was the only textbook-like resource for social scientists interested in that approach. Holdcroft 1991 focuses on the ideas of Saussure, whereas Danesi 2008 uses a more diverse set of notions drawn from figures of the major semiotic tradition, like Peirce and Sebeok. Eco 1986 was perhaps the work of semiotics most discussed by analytic philosophers since the writings of Morris. The arguments laid out in Eco 1990 are noteworthy as a prescient philosophical rejection of the anything-goes attitude decried by the Sokal hoax. The objective approach to literary criticism defended by Scholes 1982 implicitly makes the same point. Lotman 2001 is a cultural semiotician whose central concept of “semiosphere” is widely used, although in light of Sebeok 2000, that concept is now augmented with a biological dimension absent in Lotman’s original formulation. Barthes, Roland. Elements of Semiology. Translated from the French by Annette Lavers and Colin Smith. New York: Hill and Wang, 1977. Summary of key notions of structuralism, published at the height of that paradigm in 1964. Takes as its starting point the Saussurean ideas presented in Holdcroft 1991. The various distinctions retain their heuristic value when studying culture. Danesi, Marcel. Of Cigarettes, High Heels, and other Interesting Things: An Introduction to Semiotics. 2d ed. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008. Breaks down mundane social acts and popular cultural artifacts in a way that makes explicit the many implicit meanings they convey. The intended readership is undergraduate students, but advanced academics can turn to the bibliography for the relevant background theory. Eco, Umberto. Semiotics and the Philosophy of Language. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1986. Tries to find what is common to intended meanings (like words), inference from evidence (like symptoms), and iconic representations (like pictures). The first three chapters are linked and more general in scope, whereas the remaining can be read on their own. Eco, Umberto. The Limits of Interpretation. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990. Eco, trained in medieval philosophy, achieved his early fame by arguing that the interpretation of texts is always open-ended. Here he qualifies that statement, and shows why epistemological relativism would be excessive. A persuasive argument that spurred semioticians to distance themselves from fashionable “post-structuralist” views. Holdcroft, David. Saussure: Signs, System, and Arbitrariness. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1991. Excellent presentation of Saussurean ideas that gives them a polish lacking in the original lecture notes of the Swiss linguist. Nicely complements (or complemented by) Barthes 1977. Lotman, Yuri M. Universe of the Mind: A Semiotic Theory of Culture. Translated from the Russian by Ann Shukman, with an introduction by Umberto Eco. London and New York: I. B. Tauris, 2001. A classic of Russian textual semiotics, originally published in 1966. Looks at culture the way an ecologist would, and discerns basic principles from that vantage. The first three chapters, dealing with the “semiosphere,” are the most philosophically relevant. Scholes, Robert E. Semiotics and Interpretation. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1982. Clear and sober reflection that will appeal to philosophers not used to literary criticism. Presupposes some familiarity with dominant accounts (like Roman Jakobson’s). Champions a humanities-style education based on understanding texts first and showing interpretive license later, a call comparable to Eco 1990. Sebeok, Thomas A. “Semiotics as Bridge between Humanities and Sciences.” In Semiotics as a Bridge between the Humanities and the Sciences. Edited by Paul Perron, Leonard G. Sbrocchi, Paul Colilli, and Marcel Danesi, 76–100. Ottawa, ON: Legas, 2000. Mature statement of the vision articulated in Anderson, et al. 1984 (cited under Nature). Outlines conditions that would have to be met in order to end the divide between social and natural sciences. Culture becomes a consequence of human organisms possessing the symbolic modeling systems described in Sebeok and Danesi 2000 (cited under Reference Works). MIND Locke ended his 1690 Essay by conjecturing that semiotic inquiry, if consistently pursued, might offer an account different from what had until then been the philosophical norm. Confirming that surmise, Peirce argued in his earliest string of papers that acknowledging the semiotic character of thought challenges the (Cartesian) idea of an infallible intuition of mental states and instead entails the (Jamesian) view that thinking is a fallible process unfolding in time. As Delaney 1979 explains, Peirce started from public manifestations of sign action and then used those observations to draw conclusions about human cognition. Skagestad 1999 stresses the role of artifacts in this approach, Deacon 1997 gives an account of how external symbols may have given humans a distinctive evolutionary advantage, and Stjernfelt 2013 argues that introspection is insufficient to ground a semiotic account. Colapietro 1989 tries to reconcile such views with the idea of subjectivity, and Champagne 2009 uses semiotics to locate the proper place of “qualia” in philosophy of mind. Drawing on his previous work, Eco 2000 discusses how mental representations of environmental inputs are constructed while still being responsive to similarities that are mind-independent. Kilpinen 2008 argues that if we take mind to be connected by self-replicating “memes” instead of interpreted signs, we disconnect language and culture from the biological realm. Champagne, Marc. “Explaining the Qualitative Dimension of Consciousness: Prescission Instead of Reification.” Dialogue: Canadian Philosophical Review 48.1 (2009): 145–183. Looks at current debates about phenomenal consciousness from a semiotic perspective. Argues that difficulties engendered by qualia stem from using the incomplete type/token distinction instead of the complete type/token/tone distinction. Colapietro, Vincent M. Peirce’s Approach to the Self: A Semiotic Perspective on Human Subjectivity. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1989. Authoritative source of what Peirce had to say about the self. The second chapter sets up a contrast with Eco, who was influential for evicting the subject from semiotic theory. Uses the notion of habit to show how, from a stream of semiosis, inhibition of drives can lead to a pliable self-concept. Can be read alongside Skagestad 1999. Deacon, Terrence W. The Symbolic Species: The Co-evolution of Language and the Brain. New York and London: W. W. Norton, 1997. An ambitious and well-regarded account of the emergence of mind told in a way that fits well with Peircean semiotics. It is argued that the logical priority involved in the icon/index/symbol tripartition played out on an evolutionary time-line as well. Delaney, Cornelius F. “Peirce’s Account of Mental Activity.” Synthese 41.1 (1979): 25–36. Likens Peirce’s view to externalist accounts of mind. Like Stjernfelt 2013, develops a critique of introspection and mental privacy. Eco, Umberto. Kant and the Platypus: Essays on Language and Cognition. Translated from the Italian by Alastair McEwen. New York: Harcourt, Brace, 2000. An innovative account of how humans construct kinds. Attempts to incorporate the leeway and constraints outlined in Eco 1990 (cited under Culture). The scope is multidisciplinary, more so than in the standard cognitive science literature. Noted for its retraction of the author’s earlier skepticism regarding iconicity. Kilpinen, Erkki. “Memes versus Signs: On the Use of Meaning Concepts about Nature and Culture.” Semiotica 171.1–4 (2008): 215–237. Argues that, since “memes” have no bearing on anything beyond themselves, “memetics” actually backfires from its biological intent by divorcing culture from nature. Philosophy of signs in the Peircean tradition is seen as lacking this flaw. Skagestad, Peter. “Peirce’s Inkstand as an External Embodiment of Mind.” Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 35.3 (1999): 551– 561. Shows how Peircean semiotics anticipated the “extended cognition” view recently put forth by Andy Clark and David Chalmers. Peirce was not averse to glossing pencils as mind-like and minds as pencil-like, so the next issue becomes how originality enters into computational manipulation of symbols. Stjernfelt, Frederik. “The Generality of Signs: The Actual Relevance of Anti-Psychologism.” Semiotica 194.1–4 (2013): 77–109. Tries to show that, if psychologism were true, then in virtue of each agent having distinct and unrepeatable mental states, sign use would be impossible. The reasoning (by modus tollens) is that since sign use is possible, psychologism is false. Major Figures There was a time when one could be forgiven for claiming that no work in semiotics had been done, but that time has now passed. The figures shortlisted here have all used the notion of sign to generate systematic accounts of nature, culture, and mind. Some thinkers (Umberto Eco, for instance), have made important contributions in one or two of these areas of application (in Eco’s case, culture and mind), but they have not been included here because their theories shed little or no light on the remainder. Taken together, Poinsot, Peirce, Morris, and Sebeok constitute what has been called the “major” tradition of semiotics. That tradition is major in three ways. First, it has a long history. Second, it has a broad scope. Third, it now makes up the majority of the literature on the subject. With the exception of Sebeok, who was trained as a linguist, all the figures in this section were philosophers. So far as we know, Peirce never read Poinsot. But Morris did read Peirce, and Sebeok read Poinsot, Peirce, and Morris. The trajectory of semiotics is by no means complete, but the various accomplishments of these figures act as a store of resources to which contemporary philosophers of signs cautious of reinventing the semiotic wheel can (and ought to) turn to for guidance. POINSOT John Poinsot (b. 1589–d. 1644), also known by his religious name, John of St. Thomas, was a late-medieval philosopher who set out to write a comprehensive textbook on Aristotelian logic, and in so doing engaged in a meticulous discussion of signs. His most important semiotic writings are assembled in Poinsot 2013. Poinsot endeavored to agree with the work of Thomas Aquinas, but whenever he ventured into technical issues that Aquinas never addressed, he showed considerable originality. Furton 1995 and Rasmussen 1994 look at Poinsot’s contributions principally from a Thomistic vantage, whereas Deely 2008 and Deely 2009 insert Poinsot in the semiotic tradition. As Deely 2009 explains, Augustine had originally defined the sign as “something which is itself sensed and which indicates to the mind something beyond the sign itself,” and since this definition was widely disseminated in Europe (via Lombard’s Sentences), most debates took it as their starting point. By the time we reach Poinsot, the first clause of the Augustinian formula spawned a controversy. The question was whether signs that capitalize on a qualitative similitude with their object indeed need to be sensed before the mind passes over to the object, or whether such signs are transparent. The concern was not idealism, but rather the implications of either view for sacraments. In showing how “instrumental signs” (what we would today call indices) and “formal signs” (icons) involve a common triadic relation that is mind-independent, Poinsot anticipated many of the ideas later developed by Peirce, and Beuchot and Deely 1995 explore this kinship. Bains 2006 looks at the metaphysical repercussions of countenancing such sign relations. Bains, Paul. The Primacy of Semiosis: An Ontology of Relations. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2006. Ambitious study mixing various Continental and historical sources in order to argue that the relations proper to signs ought to be regarded as a key metaphysical ingredient. The third chapter, dealing explicitly with Poinsot, provides a plain introduction to the issues. Beuchot, Mauricio, and John N. Deely. “Common Sources for the Semiotic of Charles Peirce and John Poinsot.” The Review of Metaphysics 48.3 (1995): 539–566. No evidence exists that Peirce ever read Poinsot, but it is shown that Peirce knew and engaged with the same texts Poinsot did. Can be read either as a preview of or an appendix to Deely 2001 (cited under Reference Works and Histories). Deely, John N. Descartes and Poinsot: The Crossroad of Signs and Ideas. Scranton, PA: University of Scranton Press, 2008. Written by the foremost Poinsot interpreter. The Cartesian scholarship leaves something to be desired, but the originality of the juxtaposition with Descartes’s Latin contemporary pardons the lacuna. Deely, John N. Augustine and Poinsot: The Protosemiotic Development. Scranton, PA: University of Scranton Press, 2009. Study of the bookends of a thousand years of medieval semiotics, from fledgling beginnings to mature sophistication. The discussion of Augustine’s definitions of the sign adds scholarly nuances missing in Deely 2001 (cited under Reference Works and Histories). The author engages fruitfully with the gloss on Augustine given in Todorov 1982 (cited under Histories). Furton, Edward J. A Medieval Semiotic: Reference and Representation in John of St. Thomas’ Theory of Signs. New York and Bern, Switzerland: Peter Lang, 1995. The only major monograph on Poinsot’s semiotic written by someone other than John Deely. The different perspective is refreshing. Although there is no attempt to connect Poinsot to the greater body of semiotic literature, this is a must for anyone serious about Poinsot’s ideas. Poinsot, John. Tractatus de Signis: The Semiotic of John Poinsot. 2d ed. Translated by John N. Deely with Ralph Austin Powell. South Bend, IN: St. Augustine’s Press, 2013. Deely’s first translation of Poinsot’s 1632 work appeared in 1985. As befits something written as a logic textbook, one could spend an entire career meandering through the ideas of this complex work. The editorial interventions and translations are not as neutral as one would hope for, but the original Latin is given on each page. Rasmussen, Douglas B. “The Significance for Cognitive Realism of the Thought of John Poinsot.” American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 68.3 (1994): 409–424. Draws on Poinsot to argue that while concepts are, by definition, products of the mind, their relational nature (which directs them to something other than themselves) is mind-independent. Although the text engages with analytic figures like Putnam, it presupposes prior familiarity and/or sympathy with Thomistic philosophy. PEIRCE Charles Sanders Peirce (b. 1839–d. 1914) is a major figure of philosophy tout court, but his prominence in philosophy of signs is unrivaled. Indeed, it can be argued that no one has done more to put the inquiry into signs on a secure footing than Peirce. His corpus is so vast that it has delayed the reception of his ideas. The complete chronological edition of his Writings is projected to fill thirty volumes. Luckily, a reliable collection of his most important papers can be found in Peirce 1992 and Peirce 1998. The discussions of semiotics in those two volumes can be very technical, so the newcomer might benefit from accessible primers like Parmentier 1987 and Short 1981. In terms of both size and depth, Savan 1987 takes those introductions a step further by showing how to apply Peircean semiotics to various cultural, mental, and natural phenomena. The many distinctions and taxonomies presented in Liszka 1996 will appeal to logicians and philosophers of science. Fisch 1986 is one of the earliest attempts to situate Peirce in the canon, and many of Fisch’s essays (like the one on Peirce’s relation to Hegel) still stand as major contributions. Deledalle 2000 carries the comparative study to thinkers on the sign whom Peirce could not have met (notably Saussure, Morris, and Wittgenstein). Deledalle, Gérard. Charles S. Peirce’s Philosophy of Signs: Essays in Comparative Semiotics. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2000. A matching of Peirce with an assortment of diverse figures ranging from the obvious (like Morris) to the less so (like M. McLuhan). Since the prose lacks finish, this is more a source of insightful leads than an exhaustive treatment. Fisch, Max H. Peirce, Semeiotic, and Pragmatism: Essays by Max H. Fisch. Edited by Kenneth Laine Ketner and Christian J. W. Kloesel. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1986. Collection of essays whose main moral is that Peirce is worth studying. Although this is now widely accepted, the book is still a source of valuable insights. Shows how Peirce moved from a narrower concern with logic to a truly general theory of signs. Liszka, James J. A General Introduction to the Semeiotic of Charles Sanders Peirce. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1996. Presents Peirce’s semiotic in a systematic fashion by extracting from his vast corpus a finished product that leaves out the messy process. Matters of exegesis are confined to endnotes. Classifications of inferences and sciences are dominant. Parmentier, Richard J. “Peirce Divested for Non-Initiates.” Semiotic Inquiry 7.1 (1987): 19–39. Clear summary of what Peirce said about signs and why that matters. The no-nonsense prose was crafted to meet the needs of undergraduate classrooms. The “non-initiates” are presumably Saussurean semiologists, but since few outside references are made, Parmentier’s presentation has aged well. Peirce, Charles S. The Essential Peirce: Selected Philosophical Writings. Vol. 1. Edited by Nathan Houser and Christian J. W. Kloesel. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1992. Covers the major contributions of Peirce written between 1867 and 1893. Helpful introductory paragraphs situate the texts in the development of Peirce’s ideas. Along with the complementary Peirce 1998, anybody seriously interested in philosophy of signs needs to study this book. Peirce, Charles S. The Essential Peirce: Selected Philosophical Writings. Vol. 2. Edited by the Peirce Edition Project. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1998. Covers the major contributions of Peirce written between 1893 and 1913, one year before his death. Helpful introductory paragraphs situate the texts in the development of Peirce’s ideas. Along with the complementary Peirce 1992, anybody seriously interested in philosophy of signs needs to study this book. Savan, David. An Introduction to C. S. Peirce’s Full System of Semeiotic. Toronto: Toronto Semiotic Circle, 1987. One of the best introductions to Peircean semiotics. Despite being out of print, it is ideal for undergraduate courses and suitable for graduate courses, especially if coupled with Peirce 1992 and Peirce 1998. Short, Thomas L. “Semeiosis and Intentionality.” Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 17.3 (1981): 197–223. Short’s aim has been to reconcile Peirce’s ideas with mainstream analytic discourse, and while his more recent interpretations have been questionable, this piece does an admirable job of showing in what respects the Peircean construal of sign does and does not conform to the more static and anthropocentric notion of intentionality. MORRIS The work of Charles William Morris (b. 1901–d. 1979) constitutes what is perhaps the most systematic attempt to develop a purely behaviorist account of signs. Morris defines a sign as a stimulus influencing a disposition to respond to something that is not at that time a stimulus to behavior. In so doing, Morris linked the fate of his ideas to that of behaviorism. Morris’s contemporaries praised him for trying to be rigorous, yet they almost universally judged his work to be a failure. Dewey 1946, Bentley 1947, and Black 1947 are representative of this negative reception. Morris responded to some of his critics in “Signs about Signs about Signs,” reprinted in Morris 1971. Given the demise of behaviorism, Morris is now remembered mainly for introducing the ubiquitous distinction between semantics, syntactics, and pragmatics, as well as for trying to start a dialogue between American pragmatism and European logical empiricism (Morris collaborated closely with Carnap). Morris was the first to explicitly teach semiotics at the University of Chicago in the late 1930s. However, his semiotic is rarely used, although a textbook by David Clarke (Clarke 1987, cited under Textbooks) draws heavily on Morris. Charitable presentations can be found in Fiordo 1977, Rossi-Landi 1992, and Petrilli 2001. In hindsight, what may have undermined Morris most was his attempt to combine the ahistorical mindset of the analytical school while engaging in large-scale theorizing. It would seem that one cannot have both: either one approaches semiotic questions from scratch, in which case one limits oneself to piecemeal analysis (like Russell); or one widens one’s scope, in which case one enlists the help of past philosophers (like Peirce). Sebeok, who was a student of Morris, took the later course, and his recollections of Morris can be found in Sebeok 1991. Bentley, Arthur F. “The New ‘Semiotic.’” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 8.1 (1947): 107–132. Continuing the criticism made in Dewey 1946, this article takes apart Morris’s behaviorist theory of signs, charging it with terminological confusion. Although on the surface the tone appears polite, the critique is bitter and sometimes seems like overkill. Black, Max. “The Limitations of a Behavioristic Semiotic.” The Philosophical Review 56.3 (1947): 258–272. Argues that sign-related behavior cannot be accounted for by notions like stimulus and response. Black thinks Morris moves too quickly from simple animal conduct to human language use, a criticism comparable to Sebeok’s later incredulity toward claims about animal language. Dewey, John. “Peirce’s Theory of Linguistic Signs, Thought, and Meaning.” Journal of Philosophy 43.4 (1946): 85–95. A major pragmatist arguing that Morris misunderstood pragmatism’s founder. The target is Morris’s Foundations article, reprinted in Morris 1971. Dewey charges Morris with supplanting the Peircean notion of an interpretant with a personal interpreter; and advancing a tripartition that sunders a subject matter Peirce sought to treat in a unified way. Fiordo, Richard A. Charles Morris and the Criticism of Discourse. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1977. Study of Morris’s full philosophical system, including his theory of existence, method, and value. The third chapter on the theory of signs is the largest and most relevant. Morris, Charles W. Writings on the General Theory of Signs. The Hague: Mouton, 1971. Authoritative collection of Morris’s works, the classic account of behaviorist semiotics. Of interest to those who would like to “naturalize” the study of signs. Opens with the important 1938 Foundations of the Theory of Signs, which introduced the semantic/syntactic/pragmatic distinction into mainstream philosophical discourse. Petrilli, Susan. “In the Sign of Charles Morris.” Semiotic Inquiry 21.1–3 (2001): 163–187. Excellent summary of Morris’s core ideas. By emphasizing the importance that biology had in shaping Morris’s work, the author tries to play up a tacit agreement with the views later defended by Sebeok. Rossi-Landi, Ferruccio. Between Signs and Non-Signs. Edited with an introduction by Susan Petrilli. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 1992. A Marxist contribution to semiotic theory. Rossi-Landi wrote his dissertation on Morris, and influenced the views of the semiotician and ethicist Susan Petrilli. The second and third chapters deal directly with Morris’s ideas. Sebeok, Thomas A. Semiotics in the United States. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991. Partly autobiographical recollections by Morris’s most illustrious pupil. Sebeok wrote directly about Morris elsewhere, but in addition to being more readily available, this book records the slow but resolute development of semiotics in America as an institutionalized pursuit. SEBEOK Thomas Albert Sebeok (b. 1920–d. 2001) was pivotal in undoing the view (still prevalent in some circles) that a study of signs concerns only the human world of culture. Just as Morris introduced the distinction between semantics, syntactics, and pragmatics, so Sebeok introduced the distinction between anthroposemiosis, zoosemiosis, endosemiosis, and biosemiosis (the latter term subsuming all the former). Sebeok construed semiotic inquiry as a communal endeavor, and much of his impact occurred behind the scenes in an editorial or organizational capacity. Unlike Poinsot, Peirce, and Morris, Sebeok was praised within his lifetime. The posthumous Cobley, et al. 2011 is typical of the collections assembled to honor his efforts. As Maran 2010 puts it, Sebeok was influenced by three “Charleses”: Darwin, Peirce, and Morris. In mixing those influences (and others), Sebeok had a systematic vision; yet he had an unsystematic approach to writing and, as he explains in the eponymous essay of his last book, Global Semiotics, he took this to be the right methodology. His most structured monograph is Sebeok and Danesi 2000, and even this can seem eclectic by usual standards. Those unfamiliar with Sebeok’s work might therefore begin by consulting Petrilli and Ponzio 2001, and then peruse Sebeok’s many essays, most of which can be read on their own. Cobley, Paul, John N. Deely, Kalevi Kull, and Susan Petrilli, eds. Semiotics Continues to Astonish: Thomas A. Sebeok and the Doctrine of Signs. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton, 2011. Collection of essays by current semioticians, who each comment on one aspect of Sebeok’s influence. The paper by Kalevi Kull lists eleven ways in which Sebeok contributed to merging biology and semiotics. Maran, Timo. “Why Was Thomas A. Sebeok Not a Cognitive Ethologist? From ‘Animal Mind’ to ‘Semiotic Self.’” Biosemiotics 3.3 (2010): 315–329. Tracks how Sebeok, seeing a continuity in sign use between humans and nonhuman animals, but a discontinuity in language use, progressively distanced himself from the cognitive ethological studies of researchers like Donald Griffin. Maran suggests that philosophical disagreement over the boundaries of personal minds was a root cause of the split. Petrilli, Susan, and Augusto Ponzio. Thomas Sebeok and the Signs of Life. Cambridge, UK: Icon, 2001. Despite (or perhaps in virtue of) its brevity, this is arguably the best introduction to Sebeok’s work on the market. Written just before Sebeok’s death, at a time when he was assembling the final vision laid out in Sebeok and Danesi 2000. Sebeok, Thomas A. The Sign and its Masters. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1979. The essays of the first part touch on particular problems, while those of the second part attempt to rescue neglected figures who, despite advancing pioneering reflections on the sign, nevertheless predated or were unaware of semiotics as an organized inquiry. The chapter on Uexküll stands out as being particularly influential. Sebeok, Thomas A. The Play of Musement. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1981. Tries to show that knowledge involves creativity and that interpretation is a pleasurable activity in its own right. In order to illustrate the first claim, Sebeok argues that, contrary to what is said in the novels, Sherlock Holmes does not employ deduction but abduction. Sebeok, Thomas A. I Think I Am a Verb: More Contributions to the Doctrine of Signs. New York: Plenum, 1986. Continues Sebeok’s first book, Contributions to the Doctrine of Signs (1976), by favoring a (Peircean) interpretation-based approach over a (Saussurean) code-based approach. Contains the manifesto of Anderson, et al. 1984 (cited under Nature), as well as a paper which argues that, if we consider nonverbal signs, animals can lie. Sebeok, Thomas A. A Sign Is Just a Sign. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991. Collection that gives pride of place to biology in the explanation of semiotic phenomena. Warns against regarding any sign relation as being exclusively iconic, indexical, or symbolic; and kicks conventional signs upstairs, as it were, by making them an outgrowth of innate modeling systems that capitalize on resemblance and contiguity. Sebeok, Thomas A., and Marcel Danesi. The Forms of Meaning: Modeling Systems Theory and Semiotic Analysis. Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter, 2000. Attempts to show how organisms represent or “model” their worldly environment in successive stages. The hope is that, since those stages map onto Peirce’s icon/index/symbol tripartition, reductionism of cultural models to natural ones becomes impossible. Prior familiarity with the program outlined in Sebeok 1991 is recommended. LAST MODIFIED: 02/25/2014 DOI: 10.1093/OBO/9780195396577-0179 BACK TO TOP Access is brought to you by Oxford University Press Master Gratis Access Copyright © 2014. All rights reserved. Powered by TCPDF (www.tcpdf.org) 

Jump to Content Jump to Main Navigation € Semiotics Marc Champagne Introduction Semiotics (sometimes spelled “semeiotic”) is the name first given by John Locke, and later reprised by Charles S. Peirce, for the “doctrine of signs,” or the study of how some things can stand for other things to still other things. This deliberate inquiry can be contrasted with “folk semiotic” accounts, which assume that there is some intrinsic feature about, say, the human voice or a painted board that makes them capable of signifying. Such a naive assumption does not withstand serious scrutiny. From a philosophical standpoint, what makes something a sign is an involvement in a specific sort of triadic relation. This relation is found in human/nonhuman and deliberate/nondeliberate signs alike. Semiosis, the action of signs, is what permits communication, but it is wider than communication. For example, if while in an adjacent room I smell that the turkey in the oven is ready, my pet dog can smell it too, and the turkey is not trying to “tell” us anything. But if the cook in the kitchen tells me it is ready, I receive that message, while my dog hears the sounds but is none the wiser (in contemporary semiotic parlance, my dog and I couple our Umwelten via indices, but the symbols at hand generate interpretants only in my anthroposemiosis). In spite of the fact that it has a long and distinguished history (especially during the medieval period), general inquiry into signs became an organized research program only in the mid-20th century. Today, in addition to philosophers, semiotics attracts a wide range of scholars, such as ethologists, cognitive scientists, linguists, art historians, logicians, media theorists, literary critics, computer programmers, biologists, sociologists, and so on. From a methodological standpoint, then, parochialism is not an option. The scholarly literature can nevertheless be fruitfully divided into theoretical and applied strands. Not surprisingly, most philosophers drawn to semiotic questions work in the former strand. Semiotics is not to be confused with “semiology,” a (now largely defunct) project that originated in the lectures of the linguist Ferdinand de Saussure and which was active in the 1960s, mainly in France. Semiotics, by contrast, is a vibrant tradition that continues to flourish worldwide. Although some persist in employing the term “semiotics” when discussing narrow studies that focus exclusively on cultural codes, such terminological misuse masks the fact that a study of signs is broader than a study of language. A sustained philosophy of signs, then, promises (as Locke initially surmised) to yield truly novel insights. General Overviews Semiotics ranges over a wide terrain, so it is not uncommon to find authors retreating to a particular subset of signs in order to obtain a facile sense of unity. However, by presenting a local part (say, cultural symbols) as if it were the whole, this strategy ultimately obscures the challenges a study of signs confronts, as well as the insights those challenges can spur. The works in this section all avoid this mistake, since they see signs as spanning culture and nature alike. Deely, et al. 1986 was the first to embrace this approach with confidence, and Cobley 2010 can be seen as the culmination of that concerted effort. Bouissac 1985 sees semiotics as a science and thus stresses the need for semioticians to make falsifiable claims. Deely 2009 shows remarkable historical breadth and philosophical depth, whereas Deely 2001 repackages the same ideas in a more compact format. Bouissac, Paul. “The Potential Role of Semiotics for the Advancement of Knowledge.” Semiotic Inquiry 5.4 (1985): 339–346. A reminder that Peirce and Saussure each saw the study of signs as a scientific endeavor, and a call not to let exegetic reconstruction of their foundational texts become the sole concern of semioticians. It is argued that semiotic inquiry can unify disparate sciences, a view also expressed in Anderson, et al. 1984 (cited under Nature). Cobley, Paul, ed. The Routledge Companion to Semiotics. London: Routledge, 2010. A 2001 edition combined semiotics and linguistics, but this version drops the training wheels, resulting in a stronger, more cohesive, work. Neatly divided into essays and dictionary entries, the book serves double-duty as a general overview and reference work, making it ideal if there are cost constraints. Deely, John N. “A Sign is What?” Sign Systems Studies 29.2 (2001): 705–743. Dialogue that seeks to show that cognition is in signs, and that since signs are relations capable of supporting false and veridical interpretations, distinguishing the two is a (fallible) accomplishment. Deely uses “subjective” and “objective” in an archaic sense that reverses their usual meaning. An online video of the play exists. Deely, John N. Basics of Semiotics. 5th ed. With an introduction by Kalevi Kull, Silvi Salupere, and Peeter Torop. Tartu Semiotics Library. Tartu, Estonia: Tartu University Press, 2009. Philosophical introductory book with a lot of material. A professor could turn to this fifth edition for an overview and prescribe the much shorter Deely 1990 (cited under Textbooks) for students. Deely, John N., Brooke Williams, and Felicia Ellen Kruse, eds. Frontiers in Semiotics. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1986. Landmark volume that resolved the tension between Peircean semiotics and Saussurean semiology by making the latter a part of the former. Some of the essays in the collection, like the one on sign action in plants, have since become classics. Reference Works Like any other inquiry, philosophy of signs has its own jargon. Since the use of technical terms is a response to tangible conceptual needs, it is in an ongoing process of revision. Nevertheless, with the passage of time, many terms have become widely accepted. Having been trained as a chemist, Peirce was particularly diligent in establishing his nomenclature, and many of his taxonomies (for example, symbol/index/icon) are now ubiquitous in the literature. It should be noted, however, that some Peircean terms (for example, type/token/tone) are still largely misunderstood, even in works that purport to be authoritative. The reference works in this section speak a common language, but present it in different ways. The three-volume Sebeok and Danesi 2010 is more costly and has longer entries, whereas Cobley 2010 is more accessible and quicker to consult. Deely 2001 has a voluminous topic/name index as well as a very thorough bibliography, and Nöth 1995 exhaustively documents research conducted up to that time. Cobley, Paul, ed. The Routledge Companion to Semiotics. London: Routledge, 2010. The first half of the book has specially commissioned essay chapters, and the second half is a dictionary-like gathering of key terms and major figures. Each entry ends with helpful suggestions of further readings, making this the ideal starting place for a newcomer. Deely, John N. Four Ages of Understanding. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2001. Covers the entire history of Western philosophy, tracking reflections on the sign as those reflections are born, grow, come to a halt, and grow again. The end matter, which takes up hundreds of pages, is a handy resource for scholars. Nöth, Winfried. Handbook of Semiotics. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995. Eclectic survey of many areas and theories. A source of other sources (perhaps a bit dated now). Not suited in a syllabus, but useful when constructing such a syllabus. Sebeok, Thomas A., and Marcel Danesi, eds. Encyclopedic Dictionary of Semiotics. 3 vols. 3d ed., revised and augmented. Berlin and New York: De Gruyter Mouton, 2010. There is much of value in the long entries, some of which could stand on their own as small articles. The third volume is a bibliography of all the works referred to in the other two volumes. Textbooks Because, at present, instruction in semiotics is rarely a mandatory university requirement, the motivations for composing works of a didactic nature are vastly different from those driving the usual textbook industry. Many instructors have written manuals out of sheer necessity. However, given that scholars who draw on semiotic theory have varied disciplinary affiliations, we witness a harmful tendency to present one’s select research interests as if they constituted the proper subject matter of semiotics. Danesi 1998 spends most of its time on culture, but it includes chapters that clearly show the student that, and why, the field is vaster. Deely 1990 and Krampen, et al. 1987 both make it a point to cover culture, nature, and mind. Clarke 1987 gives a historically well-informed introduction suited to analytic philosophers of language; while Savan 1987 shows in a rigorous but accessible way how Peirce’s systematic ideas can advance one’s understanding in a host of areas. Clarke, David S., Jr. Principles of Semiotic. London and New York: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1987. Introductory text whose recurring concern is what to include in (and exclude from) semiotic inquiry. While the resultant scope and terminology, borrowed from Morris, does not always reflect current consensus, the author presents worthwhile arguments for his views. Danesi, Marcel. Sign, Thought, and Culture: A Basic Course in Semiotics. Toronto: Canadian Scholars’ Press, 1998. As a reworked version of a 1994 attempt by the author that had a different title, this book exhibits its practical classroom pedigree with brief and accessible chapters, well-crafted follow-up activities, and questions for discussion. Deely, John N. Basics of Semiotics. 1st ed. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990. Book by a philosopher, for philosophers. The field of study delimited has a huge range (and so is currently the object of some controversy). The first edition is best, as Deely is here unusually succinct. Descriptions of semiosis as a process stand out as particularly instructive. Krampen, Martin, Klaus Oehler, Roland Posner, Thomas A. Sebeok, and Thure von Uexküll. Classics of Semiotics. New York: Plenum, 1987. Would seem like a reader, but is in fact a collection of chapters on truly major figures who have endeavored to develop a unified account of all signs. The presentation of the core ideas is reliable. Savan, David. An Introduction to C. S. Peirce’s Full System of Semeiotic. Toronto: Toronto Semiotic Circle, 1987. Arguably one of the best introduction to semiotics on the market. Although it is currently out of print, it is ideal for both undergraduate and graduate courses, especially if coupled with Peirce 1992 and Peirce 1998 (both cited under Peirce). Anthologies Given the vibrancy of the field, collections of central texts in semiotics can, with the passage of time, become more reflective of historical developments than theories actually being used in research. Danesi and Santeramo 1999 is a reworked version of an earlier collection by the same editors that has successfully adjusted to changing times. Peirce shows up in all anthologies, but the text usually chosen to capture his ideas in the entries in this section can be somewhat opaque, so unless one consults Peirce 1992 and Peirce 1998 (both cited under Peirce) directly, a newcomer might be better served by a stand-alone introductory article such as Parmentier 1987 (also cited under Peirce). The ideas of Saussure are also included in all anthologies, but they are more intuitive and fit comfortably in a chapter (which might account for their popularity among undergraduates). Although, content-wise, most anthologies on the market tend to show a bias toward cultural signs, Innis 1985 is notable for including an excerpt from Gregory Bateson, who has become increasingly influential in biosemiotics. Perron and Danesi 2003 includes brief but well-chosen excerpts from Augustine and Poinsot, and a more thorough historical coverage is provided in Clarke 1990. Clarke, David S., Jr., ed. Sources of Semiotic: Readings with Commentary from Antiquity to the Present. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1990. In many respects the most thorough anthology in this list. The classificatory subdivisions are helpful, as is the wide historical scope. Danesi, Marcel, and Donato Santeramo, eds. The Sign in Theory and Practice: An Introductory Reader in Semiotics. Toronto: Canadian Scholars’ Press, 1999. The sequence of texts seems to go from more established to less established, and one should be aware that many texts are actually commentaries, not primary sources themselves. Like Danesi 1998 (cited under Textbooks), contains follow-up activities and questions for discussions, all grouped at the end. Innis, Robert E., ed. Semiotics: An Introductory Anthology. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1985. Good selection of influential texts, each prefaced with a helpful introduction and directions for further readings. Like Clarke 1990 in tone, but narrower in historical scope. Perron, Paul, and Marcel Danesi, eds. Classic Readings in Semiotics: For Introductory Courses. Ottawa, ON: Legas, 2003. Anthology prefaced with a ten-page mini textbook of sorts. The commentaries and texts (which, unlike Danesi and Santeramo 1999, are all primary sources) are grouped separately, the commentaries coming first. Histories At the first congress of the International Association for Semiotic Studies in 1974, participants devoted themselves to thinking about (1) the right of the discipline to exist, (2) its history, and (3) the possibility of providing the discipline with a unified methodology and a unified objective (from the Proceedings). Scholars quickly came to realize that Saussure was only partly right to assert that a study of signs was fully entitled to exist but did not yet exist. Early investigations into the long history of semiotics were led by Italian scholars, whose work appears in Eco and Marmo 1989, Manetti 1993, and Manetti 1996. One fruit of those labors was the discovery of a clear demarcation: beyond obvious differences in language, thinkers in Antiquity did not view natural and cultural signs as species of a common genus, whereas medieval thinkers did. Tzvetan Todorov, who came to this conclusion independently from Italian scholars, identifies Augustine as the turning point (Todorov 1982). Since the Augustinian assumption of commonality is also central to the Peircean tradition, medieval semiotics has received increasing attention. A breakthrough was achieved when John Deely translated (and later promoted) the difficult writings of John Poinsot, who has since become a canonical philosopher of signs (meriting his own subheading in this bibliography). The importance of Poinsot is described in Deely 2001. Peirce did not know of Poinsot, but he was familiar with medieval semiotics, and that familiarity is cataloged in Boler 1963 and Beuchot and Deely 1995. Beuchot, Mauricio, and John N. Deely. “Common Sources for the Semiotic of Charles Peirce and John Poinsot.” The Review of Metaphysics 48.3 (1995): 539–566. No evidence exists that Peirce ever read Poinsot, but it is shown that Peirce knew and engaged with the same texts Poinsot did. Can be read either as a preview of or an appendix to Deely 2001. Boler, John F. Charles Peirce and Scholastic Realism: A Study of Peirce’s Relation to John Duns Scotus. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1963. Having grown out of a doctoral dissertation, the cross-examination is detailed (almost to a fault). Authoritative, but not recommended for the newcomer to either Peirce or medieval philosophy. Deely, John N. Four Ages of Understanding. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2001. Ambitious rereading of the entire history of Western philosophy. The partition proposed is reminiscent of Kant’s narrative about rationalism versus empiricism, in that it is doctored to culminate in a stronger position. Seeks to rescue the term “postmodern” and establish it solely as what comes “after Modernism.” Eco, Umberto, and Costantino Marmo, eds. On the Medieval Theory of Signs. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 1989. Similar in format to Manetti 1996. All essays are in English, but Latin quotations are not translated. The opening essay on animal language, reprinted (slightly modified) in Deely, et al. 1986 (cited under General Overviews), takes Augustine to have ventured the first overarching account of the sign, an attribution corroborated (albeit less optimistically) in Todorov 1982. Manetti, Giovanni. Theories of the Sign in Classical Antiquity. Translated from the Italian by Christine Richardson. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993. A comprehensive study of what the various schools of ancient Greece and Rome had to say on the sign. The scholarship on display is exemplary. Manetti, Giovanni, ed. Knowledge through Signs: Ancient Semiotic Theories and Practices. Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 1996. Collection of essays, some in English, some in Italian, each dealing with a distinct school of thought or theme. The English-language essays are particularly helpful for contrasting Stoic and Epicurean theories of the sign. Todorov, Tzvetan. Theories of the Symbol. Translated from the French by Catherine Porter. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1982. Originally published in 1977 (Oxford: Blackwell), and reprinted in 1995. Although intended as a history of rhetoric with an eye to building “semiological” applications of use in literary criticism, it is mainly remembered for its opening chapter on the birth of Western semiotic, which is now anthologized in Danesi and Santeramo 1999 (cited under Anthologies) and lends support to the historical claims of Deely 2001. Areas of Application Synthesis is prized in philosophy of signs: ideally, thinkers studying one area should remain aware that the conclusions they draw are somehow connected with those drawn in other areas. The goal of this approach is a nonreductive unification of the natural and social sciences. Major figures like Poinsot, Peirce, Morris, and Sebeok have all conducted their work with that aim in mind. For the purposes of organizing a bibliography, we can nevertheless divide writings on the sign according to the topic dealt with. The attention each area has received is uneven. Although culture and language have received much attention, the comparative neglect of natural signs has been redressed in the last decade. Finally, challenges related to consciousness and embodied cognition have led an increasing number of philosophers to approach the mind from a semiotic perspective. NATURE Some of the earliest inquiries into signs were prompted by a desire to understand medical symptoms, where something that is seen indicates something that is not seen (at least not obviously so). This ability to link sign-vehicles to their objects was generally regarded as unique to humans. However, in the second half of the 20th century, Thomas Sebeok was led by his study of the “Clever Hans” phenomenon to call that assumption into question. Sebeok’s conviction that a rigorous semiotic theory ought not to exclude animals is laid out in Anderson, et al. 1984. Sebeok 1991 makes use of the concept of Umwelt originated in Uexküll 1926 to show how nature and culture might interlock. By the close of the 20th century, that account had given birth to a vibrant research program, the trajectory of which is recounted in Favareau 2010. The biological understanding of semiosis found in Hoffmeyer 1996, Hoffmeyer 2008, and El-Hani, et al. 2006 fits well in the Peircean tradition, but Barbieri 2006 argues for a codebased approach reminiscent of semiology. Some of Barbieri’s assumptions are critiqued in Champagne 2009. Anderson, Myrdene, John N. Deely, Martin Krampen, Joseph Ransdell, Thomas Albert Sebeok, and Thure von Uexküll. “A Semiotic Perspective on the Sciences: Steps toward a New Paradigm.” Semiotica 52.1–2 (1984): 7–47. Influential vision of what semiotics could and should be, enunciated when the discipline was going through an identity crisis. If one keeps in mind Saussurean paradigm as the foil, the novelty of unifying culture and nature becomes more apparent. The promotion of then-neglected figures like Uexküll and Poinsot proved lasting. Barbieri, Marcello. “Life and Semiosis: The Real Nature of Information and Meaning.” Semiotica 158.1–4 (2006): 233–254. Scientifically well-informed paper which argues that since some strands of organic matter are constructed by other strands storing a coded sequence, the exchange constitutes a sign-relation. Contains a recap of how the disciplined study of such questions came about, which can be expanded by reading Favareau 2010. Champagne, Marc. “A Note on M. Barbieri’s ‘Scientific Biosemiotics.’” American Journal of Semiotics 25.1–2 (2009): 155–161. Short piece that takes Barbieri 2006 to task for misconstruing the notion of interpretation as it is used in semiotics. Barbieri’s (even briefer) response can be found immediately after. El-Hani, Charbel Niño, João Queiroz, and Claus Emmeche. “A Semiotic Analysis of the Genetic Information System.” Semiotica 160.1–4 (2006): 1–68. Looks at gene transcription and protein synthesis and argues that locutions such as “carrying” a nonmaterial commodity like information cannot be written off as an instrumentalist shorthand for purely mechanistic processes. Challenging the idea of a linear DNA-to-RNA-to-protein transmission, the authors draw on Peirce’s account of sign-action to show how the cell is what makes use of DNA. Won the journal’s award for its year. Favareau, Donald, ed. Essential Readings in Biosemiotics: Anthology and Commentary. Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Springer, 2010. Gathers essays that trace how the joining of biology and semiotics came about. The programmatic optimism of the various authors is palpable. A 75-page bibliography of primary and secondary sources is offered at the end, using the volume contributors as division headings. Ideal for a survey of the major schools and players in the field. Hoffmeyer, Jesper. Signs of Meaning in the Universe. Translated from the Danish by Barbara J. Haveland. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1996. A new classic of biosemiotics, written in engaging prose. Issues promissory notes that are considerable but nevertheless attractive to those interested in nonreductive physicalism. The examples are often at a cellular level, but greater environmentalist and humanist themes are implied. Hoffmeyer, Jesper. Biosemiotics: An Examination into the Signs of Life and the Life of Signs. Translated from the Danish by Jesper Hoffmeyer and Donald F. Favareau. Scranton, PA: University of Scranton Press, 2008. Expands on the themes and ideas of Hoffmeyer 1996 in greater detail, using updated research and scholarship. The tone is less programmatic: mistakenly or not, the author sees himself as making good on his earlier promissory notes. Hoffmeyer is starting to attract a secondary literature. Sebeok, Thomas A. “In What Sense Is Language a ‘Primary Modeling System?’” In On Semiotic Modeling. Edited by Myrdene Anderson and Floyd Merrell, 327–339. Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter, 1991. Criticism of the Soviet school of semiotics emanating from Lotman 2001 (cited under Culture). Diplomatically drawing on Lotman’s compatriot Uexküll, Sebeok argues that nonverbal modeling enjoys phylogenetic and ontogenetic priority, an idea later developed in Sebeok and Danesi 2000 (cited under Reference Works). This reversal proved crucial to the assimilation of “semiology” defended in Deely, et al. 1986 (cited under General Overviews). Uexküll, Jakob von. Theoretical Biology. Translated from the German by Doris L. MacKinnon. New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1926. Considered by many to be the foundational text of biosemiotics. Uexküll wants to study animals’ species-specific experiential worlds, and develops conceptual tools to do so. Deely 2009 (cited under General Overviews) argues that Uexküll’s ideas are more useful when divorced from their Kantian suppositions. CULTURE It is probably safe to say that, to date, more work has been conducted on the semiotics of cultural and linguistic practices than on any other area. Barthes 1977, which first appeared in 1964, represents one of the first attempts to consolidate the conceptual apparatus of semiology, and for a time it was the only textbook-like resource for social scientists interested in that approach. Holdcroft 1991 focuses on the ideas of Saussure, whereas Danesi 2008 uses a more diverse set of notions drawn from figures of the major semiotic tradition, like Peirce and Sebeok. Eco 1986 was perhaps the work of semiotics most discussed by analytic philosophers since the writings of Morris. The arguments laid out in Eco 1990 are noteworthy as a prescient philosophical rejection of the anything-goes attitude decried by the Sokal hoax. The objective approach to literary criticism defended by Scholes 1982 implicitly makes the same point. Lotman 2001 is a cultural semiotician whose central concept of “semiosphere” is widely used, although in light of Sebeok 2000, that concept is now augmented with a biological dimension absent in Lotman’s original formulation. Barthes, Roland. Elements of Semiology. Translated from the French by Annette Lavers and Colin Smith. New York: Hill and Wang, 1977. Summary of key notions of structuralism, published at the height of that paradigm in 1964. Takes as its starting point the Saussurean ideas presented in Holdcroft 1991. The various distinctions retain their heuristic value when studying culture. Danesi, Marcel. Of Cigarettes, High Heels, and other Interesting Things: An Introduction to Semiotics. 2d ed. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008. Breaks down mundane social acts and popular cultural artifacts in a way that makes explicit the many implicit meanings they convey. The intended readership is undergraduate students, but advanced academics can turn to the bibliography for the relevant background theory. Eco, Umberto. Semiotics and the Philosophy of Language. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1986. Tries to find what is common to intended meanings (like words), inference from evidence (like symptoms), and iconic representations (like pictures). The first three chapters are linked and more general in scope, whereas the remaining can be read on their own. Eco, Umberto. The Limits of Interpretation. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990. Eco, trained in medieval philosophy, achieved his early fame by arguing that the interpretation of texts is always open-ended. Here he qualifies that statement, and shows why epistemological relativism would be excessive. A persuasive argument that spurred semioticians to distance themselves from fashionable “post-structuralist” views. Holdcroft, David. Saussure: Signs, System, and Arbitrariness. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1991. Excellent presentation of Saussurean ideas that gives them a polish lacking in the original lecture notes of the Swiss linguist. Nicely complements (or complemented by) Barthes 1977. Lotman, Yuri M. Universe of the Mind: A Semiotic Theory of Culture. Translated from the Russian by Ann Shukman, with an introduction by Umberto Eco. London and New York: I. B. Tauris, 2001. A classic of Russian textual semiotics, originally published in 1966. Looks at culture the way an ecologist would, and discerns basic principles from that vantage. The first three chapters, dealing with the “semiosphere,” are the most philosophically relevant. Scholes, Robert E. Semiotics and Interpretation. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1982. Clear and sober reflection that will appeal to philosophers not used to literary criticism. Presupposes some familiarity with dominant accounts (like Roman Jakobson’s). Champions a humanities-style education based on understanding texts first and showing interpretive license later, a call comparable to Eco 1990. Sebeok, Thomas A. “Semiotics as Bridge between Humanities and Sciences.” In Semiotics as a Bridge between the Humanities and the Sciences. Edited by Paul Perron, Leonard G. Sbrocchi, Paul Colilli, and Marcel Danesi, 76–100. Ottawa, ON: Legas, 2000. Mature statement of the vision articulated in Anderson, et al. 1984 (cited under Nature). Outlines conditions that would have to be met in order to end the divide between social and natural sciences. Culture becomes a consequence of human organisms possessing the symbolic modeling systems described in Sebeok and Danesi 2000 (cited under Reference Works). MIND Locke ended his 1690 Essay by conjecturing that semiotic inquiry, if consistently pursued, might offer an account different from what had until then been the philosophical norm. Confirming that surmise, Peirce argued in his earliest string of papers that acknowledging the semiotic character of thought challenges the (Cartesian) idea of an infallible intuition of mental states and instead entails the (Jamesian) view that thinking is a fallible process unfolding in time. As Delaney 1979 explains, Peirce started from public manifestations of sign action and then used those observations to draw conclusions about human cognition. Skagestad 1999 stresses the role of artifacts in this approach, Deacon 1997 gives an account of how external symbols may have given humans a distinctive evolutionary advantage, and Stjernfelt 2013 argues that introspection is insufficient to ground a semiotic account. Colapietro 1989 tries to reconcile such views with the idea of subjectivity, and Champagne 2009 uses semiotics to locate the proper place of “qualia” in philosophy of mind. Drawing on his previous work, Eco 2000 discusses how mental representations of environmental inputs are constructed while still being responsive to similarities that are mind-independent. Kilpinen 2008 argues that if we take mind to be connected by self-replicating “memes” instead of interpreted signs, we disconnect language and culture from the biological realm. Champagne, Marc. “Explaining the Qualitative Dimension of Consciousness: Prescission Instead of Reification.” Dialogue: Canadian Philosophical Review 48.1 (2009): 145–183. Looks at current debates about phenomenal consciousness from a semiotic perspective. Argues that difficulties engendered by qualia stem from using the incomplete type/token distinction instead of the complete type/token/tone distinction. Colapietro, Vincent M. Peirce’s Approach to the Self: A Semiotic Perspective on Human Subjectivity. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1989. Authoritative source of what Peirce had to say about the self. The second chapter sets up a contrast with Eco, who was influential for evicting the subject from semiotic theory. Uses the notion of habit to show how, from a stream of semiosis, inhibition of drives can lead to a pliable self-concept. Can be read alongside Skagestad 1999. Deacon, Terrence W. The Symbolic Species: The Co-evolution of Language and the Brain. New York and London: W. W. Norton, 1997. An ambitious and well-regarded account of the emergence of mind told in a way that fits well with Peircean semiotics. It is argued that the logical priority involved in the icon/index/symbol tripartition played out on an evolutionary time-line as well. Delaney, Cornelius F. “Peirce’s Account of Mental Activity.” Synthese 41.1 (1979): 25–36. Likens Peirce’s view to externalist accounts of mind. Like Stjernfelt 2013, develops a critique of introspection and mental privacy. Eco, Umberto. Kant and the Platypus: Essays on Language and Cognition. Translated from the Italian by Alastair McEwen. New York: Harcourt, Brace, 2000. An innovative account of how humans construct kinds. Attempts to incorporate the leeway and constraints outlined in Eco 1990 (cited under Culture). The scope is multidisciplinary, more so than in the standard cognitive science literature. Noted for its retraction of the author’s earlier skepticism regarding iconicity. Kilpinen, Erkki. “Memes versus Signs: On the Use of Meaning Concepts about Nature and Culture.” Semiotica 171.1–4 (2008): 215–237. Argues that, since “memes” have no bearing on anything beyond themselves, “memetics” actually backfires from its biological intent by divorcing culture from nature. Philosophy of signs in the Peircean tradition is seen as lacking this flaw. Skagestad, Peter. “Peirce’s Inkstand as an External Embodiment of Mind.” Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 35.3 (1999): 551– 561. Shows how Peircean semiotics anticipated the “extended cognition” view recently put forth by Andy Clark and David Chalmers. Peirce was not averse to glossing pencils as mind-like and minds as pencil-like, so the next issue becomes how originality enters into computational manipulation of symbols. Stjernfelt, Frederik. “The Generality of Signs: The Actual Relevance of Anti-Psychologism.” Semiotica 194.1–4 (2013): 77–109. Tries to show that, if psychologism were true, then in virtue of each agent having distinct and unrepeatable mental states, sign use would be impossible. The reasoning (by modus tollens) is that since sign use is possible, psychologism is false. Major Figures There was a time when one could be forgiven for claiming that no work in semiotics had been done, but that time has now passed. The figures shortlisted here have all used the notion of sign to generate systematic accounts of nature, culture, and mind. Some thinkers (Umberto Eco, for instance), have made important contributions in one or two of these areas of application (in Eco’s case, culture and mind), but they have not been included here because their theories shed little or no light on the remainder. Taken together, Poinsot, Peirce, Morris, and Sebeok constitute what has been called the “major” tradition of semiotics. That tradition is major in three ways. First, it has a long history. Second, it has a broad scope. Third, it now makes up the majority of the literature on the subject. With the exception of Sebeok, who was trained as a linguist, all the figures in this section were philosophers. So far as we know, Peirce never read Poinsot. But Morris did read Peirce, and Sebeok read Poinsot, Peirce, and Morris. The trajectory of semiotics is by no means complete, but the various accomplishments of these figures act as a store of resources to which contemporary philosophers of signs cautious of reinventing the semiotic wheel can (and ought to) turn to for guidance. POINSOT John Poinsot (b. 1589–d. 1644), also known by his religious name, John of St. Thomas, was a late-medieval philosopher who set out to write a comprehensive textbook on Aristotelian logic, and in so doing engaged in a meticulous discussion of signs. His most important semiotic writings are assembled in Poinsot 2013. Poinsot endeavored to agree with the work of Thomas Aquinas, but whenever he ventured into technical issues that Aquinas never addressed, he showed considerable originality. Furton 1995 and Rasmussen 1994 look at Poinsot’s contributions principally from a Thomistic vantage, whereas Deely 2008 and Deely 2009 insert Poinsot in the semiotic tradition. As Deely 2009 explains, Augustine had originally defined the sign as “something which is itself sensed and which indicates to the mind something beyond the sign itself,” and since this definition was widely disseminated in Europe (via Lombard’s Sentences), most debates took it as their starting point. By the time we reach Poinsot, the first clause of the Augustinian formula spawned a controversy. The question was whether signs that capitalize on a qualitative similitude with their object indeed need to be sensed before the mind passes over to the object, or whether such signs are transparent. The concern was not idealism, but rather the implications of either view for sacraments. In showing how “instrumental signs” (what we would today call indices) and “formal signs” (icons) involve a common triadic relation that is mind-independent, Poinsot anticipated many of the ideas later developed by Peirce, and Beuchot and Deely 1995 explore this kinship. Bains 2006 looks at the metaphysical repercussions of countenancing such sign relations. Bains, Paul. The Primacy of Semiosis: An Ontology of Relations. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2006. Ambitious study mixing various Continental and historical sources in order to argue that the relations proper to signs ought to be regarded as a key metaphysical ingredient. The third chapter, dealing explicitly with Poinsot, provides a plain introduction to the issues. Beuchot, Mauricio, and John N. Deely. “Common Sources for the Semiotic of Charles Peirce and John Poinsot.” The Review of Metaphysics 48.3 (1995): 539–566. No evidence exists that Peirce ever read Poinsot, but it is shown that Peirce knew and engaged with the same texts Poinsot did. Can be read either as a preview of or an appendix to Deely 2001 (cited under Reference Works and Histories). Deely, John N. Descartes and Poinsot: The Crossroad of Signs and Ideas. Scranton, PA: University of Scranton Press, 2008. Written by the foremost Poinsot interpreter. The Cartesian scholarship leaves something to be desired, but the originality of the juxtaposition with Descartes’s Latin contemporary pardons the lacuna. Deely, John N. Augustine and Poinsot: The Protosemiotic Development. Scranton, PA: University of Scranton Press, 2009. Study of the bookends of a thousand years of medieval semiotics, from fledgling beginnings to mature sophistication. The discussion of Augustine’s definitions of the sign adds scholarly nuances missing in Deely 2001 (cited under Reference Works and Histories). The author engages fruitfully with the gloss on Augustine given in Todorov 1982 (cited under Histories). Furton, Edward J. A Medieval Semiotic: Reference and Representation in John of St. Thomas’ Theory of Signs. New York and Bern, Switzerland: Peter Lang, 1995. The only major monograph on Poinsot’s semiotic written by someone other than John Deely. The different perspective is refreshing. Although there is no attempt to connect Poinsot to the greater body of semiotic literature, this is a must for anyone serious about Poinsot’s ideas. Poinsot, John. Tractatus de Signis: The Semiotic of John Poinsot. 2d ed. Translated by John N. Deely with Ralph Austin Powell. South Bend, IN: St. Augustine’s Press, 2013. Deely’s first translation of Poinsot’s 1632 work appeared in 1985. As befits something written as a logic textbook, one could spend an entire career meandering through the ideas of this complex work. The editorial interventions and translations are not as neutral as one would hope for, but the original Latin is given on each page. Rasmussen, Douglas B. “The Significance for Cognitive Realism of the Thought of John Poinsot.” American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 68.3 (1994): 409–424. Draws on Poinsot to argue that while concepts are, by definition, products of the mind, their relational nature (which directs them to something other than themselves) is mind-independent. Although the text engages with analytic figures like Putnam, it presupposes prior familiarity and/or sympathy with Thomistic philosophy. PEIRCE Charles Sanders Peirce (b. 1839–d. 1914) is a major figure of philosophy tout court, but his prominence in philosophy of signs is unrivaled. Indeed, it can be argued that no one has done more to put the inquiry into signs on a secure footing than Peirce. His corpus is so vast that it has delayed the reception of his ideas. The complete chronological edition of his Writings is projected to fill thirty volumes. Luckily, a reliable collection of his most important papers can be found in Peirce 1992 and Peirce 1998. The discussions of semiotics in those two volumes can be very technical, so the newcomer might benefit from accessible primers like Parmentier 1987 and Short 1981. In terms of both size and depth, Savan 1987 takes those introductions a step further by showing how to apply Peircean semiotics to various cultural, mental, and natural phenomena. The many distinctions and taxonomies presented in Liszka 1996 will appeal to logicians and philosophers of science. Fisch 1986 is one of the earliest attempts to situate Peirce in the canon, and many of Fisch’s essays (like the one on Peirce’s relation to Hegel) still stand as major contributions. Deledalle 2000 carries the comparative study to thinkers on the sign whom Peirce could not have met (notably Saussure, Morris, and Wittgenstein). Deledalle, Gérard. Charles S. Peirce’s Philosophy of Signs: Essays in Comparative Semiotics. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2000. A matching of Peirce with an assortment of diverse figures ranging from the obvious (like Morris) to the less so (like M. McLuhan). Since the prose lacks finish, this is more a source of insightful leads than an exhaustive treatment. Fisch, Max H. Peirce, Semeiotic, and Pragmatism: Essays by Max H. Fisch. Edited by Kenneth Laine Ketner and Christian J. W. Kloesel. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1986. Collection of essays whose main moral is that Peirce is worth studying. Although this is now widely accepted, the book is still a source of valuable insights. Shows how Peirce moved from a narrower concern with logic to a truly general theory of signs. Liszka, James J. A General Introduction to the Semeiotic of Charles Sanders Peirce. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1996. Presents Peirce’s semiotic in a systematic fashion by extracting from his vast corpus a finished product that leaves out the messy process. Matters of exegesis are confined to endnotes. Classifications of inferences and sciences are dominant. Parmentier, Richard J. “Peirce Divested for Non-Initiates.” Semiotic Inquiry 7.1 (1987): 19–39. Clear summary of what Peirce said about signs and why that matters. The no-nonsense prose was crafted to meet the needs of undergraduate classrooms. The “non-initiates” are presumably Saussurean semiologists, but since few outside references are made, Parmentier’s presentation has aged well. Peirce, Charles S. The Essential Peirce: Selected Philosophical Writings. Vol. 1. Edited by Nathan Houser and Christian J. W. Kloesel. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1992. Covers the major contributions of Peirce written between 1867 and 1893. Helpful introductory paragraphs situate the texts in the development of Peirce’s ideas. Along with the complementary Peirce 1998, anybody seriously interested in philosophy of signs needs to study this book. Peirce, Charles S. The Essential Peirce: Selected Philosophical Writings. Vol. 2. Edited by the Peirce Edition Project. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1998. Covers the major contributions of Peirce written between 1893 and 1913, one year before his death. Helpful introductory paragraphs situate the texts in the development of Peirce’s ideas. Along with the complementary Peirce 1992, anybody seriously interested in philosophy of signs needs to study this book. Savan, David. An Introduction to C. S. Peirce’s Full System of Semeiotic. Toronto: Toronto Semiotic Circle, 1987. One of the best introductions to Peircean semiotics. Despite being out of print, it is ideal for undergraduate courses and suitable for graduate courses, especially if coupled with Peirce 1992 and Peirce 1998. Short, Thomas L. “Semeiosis and Intentionality.” Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 17.3 (1981): 197–223. Short’s aim has been to reconcile Peirce’s ideas with mainstream analytic discourse, and while his more recent interpretations have been questionable, this piece does an admirable job of showing in what respects the Peircean construal of sign does and does not conform to the more static and anthropocentric notion of intentionality. MORRIS The work of Charles William Morris (b. 1901–d. 1979) constitutes what is perhaps the most systematic attempt to develop a purely behaviorist account of signs. Morris defines a sign as a stimulus influencing a disposition to respond to something that is not at that time a stimulus to behavior. In so doing, Morris linked the fate of his ideas to that of behaviorism. Morris’s contemporaries praised him for trying to be rigorous, yet they almost universally judged his work to be a failure. Dewey 1946, Bentley 1947, and Black 1947 are representative of this negative reception. Morris responded to some of his critics in “Signs about Signs about Signs,” reprinted in Morris 1971. Given the demise of behaviorism, Morris is now remembered mainly for introducing the ubiquitous distinction between semantics, syntactics, and pragmatics, as well as for trying to start a dialogue between American pragmatism and European logical empiricism (Morris collaborated closely with Carnap). Morris was the first to explicitly teach semiotics at the University of Chicago in the late 1930s. However, his semiotic is rarely used, although a textbook by David Clarke (Clarke 1987, cited under Textbooks) draws heavily on Morris. Charitable presentations can be found in Fiordo 1977, Rossi-Landi 1992, and Petrilli 2001. In hindsight, what may have undermined Morris most was his attempt to combine the ahistorical mindset of the analytical school while engaging in large-scale theorizing. It would seem that one cannot have both: either one approaches semiotic questions from scratch, in which case one limits oneself to piecemeal analysis (like Russell); or one widens one’s scope, in which case one enlists the help of past philosophers (like Peirce). Sebeok, who was a student of Morris, took the later course, and his recollections of Morris can be found in Sebeok 1991. Bentley, Arthur F. “The New ‘Semiotic.’” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 8.1 (1947): 107–132. Continuing the criticism made in Dewey 1946, this article takes apart Morris’s behaviorist theory of signs, charging it with terminological confusion. Although on the surface the tone appears polite, the critique is bitter and sometimes seems like overkill. Black, Max. “The Limitations of a Behavioristic Semiotic.” The Philosophical Review 56.3 (1947): 258–272. Argues that sign-related behavior cannot be accounted for by notions like stimulus and response. Black thinks Morris moves too quickly from simple animal conduct to human language use, a criticism comparable to Sebeok’s later incredulity toward claims about animal language. Dewey, John. “Peirce’s Theory of Linguistic Signs, Thought, and Meaning.” Journal of Philosophy 43.4 (1946): 85–95. A major pragmatist arguing that Morris misunderstood pragmatism’s founder. The target is Morris’s Foundations article, reprinted in Morris 1971. Dewey charges Morris with supplanting the Peircean notion of an interpretant with a personal interpreter; and advancing a tripartition that sunders a subject matter Peirce sought to treat in a unified way. Fiordo, Richard A. Charles Morris and the Criticism of Discourse. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1977. Study of Morris’s full philosophical system, including his theory of existence, method, and value. The third chapter on the theory of signs is the largest and most relevant. Morris, Charles W. Writings on the General Theory of Signs. The Hague: Mouton, 1971. Authoritative collection of Morris’s works, the classic account of behaviorist semiotics. Of interest to those who would like to “naturalize” the study of signs. Opens with the important 1938 Foundations of the Theory of Signs, which introduced the semantic/syntactic/pragmatic distinction into mainstream philosophical discourse. Petrilli, Susan. “In the Sign of Charles Morris.” Semiotic Inquiry 21.1–3 (2001): 163–187. Excellent summary of Morris’s core ideas. By emphasizing the importance that biology had in shaping Morris’s work, the author tries to play up a tacit agreement with the views later defended by Sebeok. Rossi-Landi, Ferruccio. Between Signs and Non-Signs. Edited with an introduction by Susan Petrilli. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 1992. A Marxist contribution to semiotic theory. Rossi-Landi wrote his dissertation on Morris, and influenced the views of the semiotician and ethicist Susan Petrilli. The second and third chapters deal directly with Morris’s ideas. Sebeok, Thomas A. Semiotics in the United States. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991. Partly autobiographical recollections by Morris’s most illustrious pupil. Sebeok wrote directly about Morris elsewhere, but in addition to being more readily available, this book records the slow but resolute development of semiotics in America as an institutionalized pursuit. SEBEOK Thomas Albert Sebeok (b. 1920–d. 2001) was pivotal in undoing the view (still prevalent in some circles) that a study of signs concerns only the human world of culture. Just as Morris introduced the distinction between semantics, syntactics, and pragmatics, so Sebeok introduced the distinction between anthroposemiosis, zoosemiosis, endosemiosis, and biosemiosis (the latter term subsuming all the former). Sebeok construed semiotic inquiry as a communal endeavor, and much of his impact occurred behind the scenes in an editorial or organizational capacity. Unlike Poinsot, Peirce, and Morris, Sebeok was praised within his lifetime. The posthumous Cobley, et al. 2011 is typical of the collections assembled to honor his efforts. As Maran 2010 puts it, Sebeok was influenced by three “Charleses”: Darwin, Peirce, and Morris. In mixing those influences (and others), Sebeok had a systematic vision; yet he had an unsystematic approach to writing and, as he explains in the eponymous essay of his last book, Global Semiotics, he took this to be the right methodology. His most structured monograph is Sebeok and Danesi 2000, and even this can seem eclectic by usual standards. Those unfamiliar with Sebeok’s work might therefore begin by consulting Petrilli and Ponzio 2001, and then peruse Sebeok’s many essays, most of which can be read on their own. Cobley, Paul, John N. Deely, Kalevi Kull, and Susan Petrilli, eds. Semiotics Continues to Astonish: Thomas A. Sebeok and the Doctrine of Signs. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton, 2011. Collection of essays by current semioticians, who each comment on one aspect of Sebeok’s influence. The paper by Kalevi Kull lists eleven ways in which Sebeok contributed to merging biology and semiotics. Maran, Timo. “Why Was Thomas A. Sebeok Not a Cognitive Ethologist? From ‘Animal Mind’ to ‘Semiotic Self.’” Biosemiotics 3.3 (2010): 315–329. Tracks how Sebeok, seeing a continuity in sign use between humans and nonhuman animals, but a discontinuity in language use, progressively distanced himself from the cognitive ethological studies of researchers like Donald Griffin. Maran suggests that philosophical disagreement over the boundaries of personal minds was a root cause of the split. Petrilli, Susan, and Augusto Ponzio. Thomas Sebeok and the Signs of Life. Cambridge, UK: Icon, 2001. Despite (or perhaps in virtue of) its brevity, this is arguably the best introduction to Sebeok’s work on the market. Written just before Sebeok’s death, at a time when he was assembling the final vision laid out in Sebeok and Danesi 2000. Sebeok, Thomas A. The Sign and its Masters. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1979. The essays of the first part touch on particular problems, while those of the second part attempt to rescue neglected figures who, despite advancing pioneering reflections on the sign, nevertheless predated or were unaware of semiotics as an organized inquiry. The chapter on Uexküll stands out as being particularly influential. Sebeok, Thomas A. The Play of Musement. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1981. Tries to show that knowledge involves creativity and that interpretation is a pleasurable activity in its own right. In order to illustrate the first claim, Sebeok argues that, contrary to what is said in the novels, Sherlock Holmes does not employ deduction but abduction. Sebeok, Thomas A. I Think I Am a Verb: More Contributions to the Doctrine of Signs. New York: Plenum, 1986. Continues Sebeok’s first book, Contributions to the Doctrine of Signs (1976), by favoring a (Peircean) interpretation-based approach over a (Saussurean) code-based approach. Contains the manifesto of Anderson, et al. 1984 (cited under Nature), as well as a paper which argues that, if we consider nonverbal signs, animals can lie. Sebeok, Thomas A. A Sign Is Just a Sign. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991. Collection that gives pride of place to biology in the explanation of semiotic phenomena. Warns against regarding any sign relation as being exclusively iconic, indexical, or symbolic; and kicks conventional signs upstairs, as it were, by making them an outgrowth of innate modeling systems that capitalize on resemblance and contiguity. Sebeok, Thomas A., and Marcel Danesi. The Forms of Meaning: Modeling Systems Theory and Semiotic Analysis. Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter, 2000. Attempts to show how organisms represent or “model” their worldly environment in successive stages. The hope is that, since those stages map onto Peirce’s icon/index/symbol tripartition, reductionism of cultural models to natural ones becomes impossible. Prior familiarity with the program outlined in Sebeok 1991 is recommended. LAST MODIFIED: 02/25/2014 DOI: 10.1093/OBO/9780195396577-0179 BACK TO TOP Access is brought to you by Oxford University Press Master Gratis Access Copyright © 2014. All rights reserved. Powered by TCPDF (www.tcpdf.org)