The inferential and equational models from ancient times to the postmodern
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Giovanni Manetti
Abstract
The basic idea that makes John Deely's Four ages of understanding an innovative one is that the notion of the sign is at the center of philosophical development from the start, and proves basic to a postmodern development of thought as well. A full awareness of this notion of sign can be traced way back to the beginning of the fifth century AD, in the works of Augustine, where the two different theories of signs present in the Greek period — the semantic theory of the linguistic sign (following an “equational” model) and the logical-epistemological theory of non-linguistic signs (following an “inferential” model) — are amalgamated. The aim of this paper is to show that Augustine makes a move that is both symmetrical with and a mirror image of what Saussure does: the latter unites the two theories and two classes of sign, setting up the linguistic sign as the guiding principle, while Augustine subsumes all types of sign within the class of non-linguistic signs. But it is the Augustine's move that opens, as Deely also says, a link with the postmodern era, proposing a semiotic model that is homogenous with that of Peirce.
© 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
