Volume 15, Issue 2

The interpretation of civilization has always been controversial, and it is even difficult for academic circles to distinguish between civilization and culture. Researchers often use the method of scientific induction to generalize and define civilization from their respective angles. In fact, the concept of civilization is very complicated and difficult to explain from a single perspective. This article attempts to explore the multiple interpretations of civilization from the forward and reverse interaction of civilization development, different perspectives of civilization interpretation such as history, literature, and language, and the problem consciousness of civilization interpretation. From the perspective of history, civilization is formed by a series of specific historic events and social changes. From that of literature, civilization transcends specific historical events, is formed in the process of replacing old and new societies, and is of universal significance. Interpreted from the perspective of language signs, civilization is only an expression of human language signs, which are carriers of civilization, etc. As human society continues to develop, the interpretation of civilization continues to change. The meaning of civilization cannot be determined. We can only approach it through constant questioning and exploration. Because the understanding of civilization is multi-perspective, the interpretation of civilization is dynamic.

Charles Peirce insisted that representation is a genuine three-part relation, irreducible to a complex of two-part relations. Demonstrations that two-part relations (like stimulus and response) can be described as three-part are chaff in the wind. Ironically, Peirce’s well-known description in semiotic language of sunflowers makes that error. Until recently, there was scant reason to speak of “sign” – in its full Peircean sense – in biology, computation, or even for unconscious thought. Current developments in computation and animal behavior suggest that triadic relations could be inherent in some classes of their operations, but this article does not find that possibility demonstrated. Instead, the argument is advanced that we should recognize a distinct theory of data (cybernetics) as adequate to describe the role of information in primitive lifeforms. Thus, we adopt definitions that do not support the proposal associated with (though not originating with) Thomas Sebeok, that life and semiosis are coextensive.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has become a powerful new form of inquiry unto human cognition that has obvious implications for semiotic theories, practices, and modeling of mind, yet, as far as can be determined, it has hardly attracted the attention of semioticians in any meaningful analytical way. AI aims to model and thus penetrate mentality in all its forms (perception, cognition, emotion, etc.) and even to build artificial minds that will surpass human intelligence in the near future. This paper takes a look at AI through the lens of semiotic analysis, in the context of current philosophies such as posthumanism and transhumanism, which are based on the assumption that technology will improve the human condition and chart a path to the future progress of the human species. Semiotics must respond to the AI challenge, focusing on how abductive responses to the world generate meaning in the human sense, not in software or algorithms. The AI approach is instructive, but semiotics is much more relevant to the understanding of human cognition, because it studies signs as paths into the brain, not artificial models of that organ. The semiotic agenda can enrich AI by providing the relevant insight into human semiosis that may defy any attempt to model them.

The pragmatics envisaged by its founding father Charles Morris addresses issues of behavioral semiotics, of which multimodality and sign behavior are two building blocks. Decades of development in linguistic pragmatics has witnessed a continuous narrowing in scope. The narrowing reaps the benefit of sharp focus and in-depth research into some narrow topics. At the same time, it has resulted in some crucial areas, such as Umwelt, left barren. The paper first briefly reviews Morris’ envisaged pragmatics, which is argued to be essentially multimodal semiotic pragmatics in nature. Then it argues for embarking on Morris’ original program through reviewing researches, explicitly Morrisian or otherwise, that have already been converging toward this direction.

The phenomenon of emojis has had many implications for the future course of writing, literacy, communications, and the nature of representation itself. This paper looks at the implications of emoji use through the filter of Saussurean semiotics and through the lens of theories of visuality, which claim that visual writing is having radical effects on literacy and cognition. The historical background to the rise of visual writing is used as a backdrop to the semiotic analysis of the emoji phenomenon. The way we read and write messages today with visual elements such as emoji may indicate a radical shift away from a linear mode of processing information, as imprinted in alphabetic forms of writing, toward a more holistic and imaginative mode. However, because emoji usage and creativity depend on specific technologies, it remains to be seen if such writing can survive as technologies change. The main argument in this paper is that emojis are more part of parole than they are a separate langue , but they nonetheless reveal changes that the latter is undergoing in an age of digital multimodal communication.

Beyond extrinsic survival (e.g., finding food, avoiding dangers, etc.), intrinsic survival demands continual internal repair and reconstruction to offset the effects of unrelenting internal decay and depletion. The organism must constantly re-produce the conditions of its own existence. The individual’s survival is nevertheless subordinate to that of the species, which is achieved through biological reproduction in the ordinary sense (i.e., assemblage of a working copy of the organism itself, capable of surviving and reproducing in turn.). This article relates these two types of reproduction to others, such as the reproduction of a picture, of a melody, of a movement. I believe all of these reproductive forms are based on a fundamental one, which is the condition of possibility of all forms of replication. This fundamental kind of reproduction resides in the spontaneous reproduction of events under physical causation. On this basis, I advance an interpretation of semiosis as a type of second-order causation: at the level of biosemiotic transactions, semiosis alters habits which are embodied in constraints that in turn determine the extent and direction of physical changes.

This interview/dialogue addresses an important issue of how educational semiotics is grounded in the history of ideas. The discussions concern the shared history of semiotics and liberal education; the modern university and its medieval antecedents; semiotic consciousness, the traces of which are found in both Christianity and Islam (and the hermeneutics of Abrahamic and mystical religions, in general); intercultural translation; the relationship between learning (conceptualized edusemiotically) and biosemiotics, and how our social understandings of learning determine and shape our basic relationship to the world. Touching on the concepts of scaffolding and evolution, the chapter discusses adaptation in relation to learning, social semiotics and contemporary social reality, while imploring us to consider education in terms of its service to learning (and not the other way around). Campbell: This interview was originally published as a recorded podcast-interview in 2017, on philosophasters.org as part of the interview series Signs of Life. Thank you to Thomas Hoeller for recording and editing the sound and music, and Marion Benkaiouche for transcribing the interview. Thank you, Inna Semetsky, for summarizing the dialogue, included in part in the above abstract description. Please bear in mind that as this interview was conducted two years ago, the author´s current ideas on some of these topics may have changed.