Two steps toward semiotic capacity: Out of the muddy concept of language
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Karen A. Haworth
Abstract
As John Deely has suggested in his Four ages of understanding, philosophia in practice is semiotic process, an engagement in the world through the action of signs. But this observation leads us to a point of contention with Deely's treatment of semiotic process itself and its connection with the more widely understood notions about language in our time. Specifically, there are major difficulties with the treacherous formal and popular nomenclature about the phenomenon of language and its philosophical connection to the “semiology” of Saussure and sign theory of C. S. Peirce. Our issue is with the formal use of the term “language” centrally and often in its technical sense as an analytical system — a way of “seeing or looking at the world” that is prior to and removed from the communicative sense of “language” — while at the same time also informally employing the term in its common and practical sense as a system for information exchanges. In fact, Deely's comprehensive annotated index helps resolve some of the issue. But taken in the context of Deely's broader argument, the problem with the definition and use of the term “language” somewhat stifles the attempt to revise appreciation of our arrival at the “time of the sign” as a species-specific capacity.
© 2010 Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG, Berlin/New York
Articles in the same Issue
- Why read Deely? Introduction to the Four ages special issue
- The integration of Thomistic intentionality theory and contemporary semiotics
- The history of philosophy as a semiotic process: A note on John Deely's momumental Four ages of understanding
- Suggestions of a Neoplatonic semiotics: Act and potency in Plotinus' metaphysics
- Two steps toward semiotic capacity: Out of the muddy concept of language
- Relations: The true substrate for evolution
- The church of pragmatism
- Is modernity really so bad? John Deely and Husserl's phenomenology
- Deely, Aquinas, and Poinsot: How the intentionality of inner sense transcends the limits of empiricism
- From sémiologie to postmodernism: A genealogy
- The inferential and equational models from ancient times to the postmodern
- Four Ages of underrating: Philosophy and zoösemiotic issues
- Cosmic semiosis: Contuiting the Divine
- Understanding the four ages of thought
Articles in the same Issue
- Why read Deely? Introduction to the Four ages special issue
- The integration of Thomistic intentionality theory and contemporary semiotics
- The history of philosophy as a semiotic process: A note on John Deely's momumental Four ages of understanding
- Suggestions of a Neoplatonic semiotics: Act and potency in Plotinus' metaphysics
- Two steps toward semiotic capacity: Out of the muddy concept of language
- Relations: The true substrate for evolution
- The church of pragmatism
- Is modernity really so bad? John Deely and Husserl's phenomenology
- Deely, Aquinas, and Poinsot: How the intentionality of inner sense transcends the limits of empiricism
- From sémiologie to postmodernism: A genealogy
- The inferential and equational models from ancient times to the postmodern
- Four Ages of underrating: Philosophy and zoösemiotic issues
- Cosmic semiosis: Contuiting the Divine
- Understanding the four ages of thought
