Frances to William and others...
Pragmatism in support of semiotics attempts to account for all the different ways that objects can be signs and the main kinds of signs that stand for other objects. Not all pragmatist effort of course goes in that direction, but semiotics is nonetheless pivotal to pragmatism. The information a sign bears is deemed by semiotics to be the initial determination of the main kind a sign might be in any particular act of semiosis or a sign situation. Some information is hence required for an object to exist as a sign. The evocation a sign endures in regard to its communication or location or function goes to the force a sign might occasion. No evocation is required however for an object to exist as a sign. All signers are held inclined to engage objects as signs by way of traits and habits and bents, whether they want it or not. Indeed, all signers are themselves objects that exist as signs of objects. Their compulsion therefore is to lean in this direction by disposition. The signs they engage are not merely the products of creation or invention. Any object as a sign is reportedly in a relation with the subject as a signer, which tends to segregate the sign, but also tends to integrate the object with the signer. It is however the signed object of sense that is held to be sensed, and not the sense of the signed object. In other words, the signer is brought into a relation with the sign and the object in their ground that the signer senses. Any sign is the result of an object, and not the result of any sense of the sign. Even the mechanisms of matter like the particles of atoms are objects and signs and signers, and all that such stuff can do is feel this situation and act according to their inclined habits. It is the referred object that determines the very being of a sign. It is however the ground in which a sign and its object lay together, in being formal or causal or conventional, that determines the main kind a sign will be, as an icon or index or symbol. What is felt to be found by signers is that this triadic structure of signs is necessarily derived from the continuing categories of all phenomena, which phenomena are consistently observed by signers to essentially be in existence. The signs engaged by signers are not rigidly fixed or finally stable or removed from signers. The referred objects of signifying signs can be transformed or translated in a multiple of plural signs. The signs that stand for degenerative logics and mathematics in mind will however be rigorously close to the pure positive states of logics and mathematics. Even these signs however are fluid and fallible, because mind continues to evolve in its ability to realize logical and mathematical truths. Only a phenomenal and categorical theory of signs is sufficient to broadly account for all the signs and signers that might exist. There are theories of signs that aspire to be global, but which inevitably fail as general theories, but are nonetheless useful as special theories to account for particular signs in particular or peculiar situations. The sign theories of semiology and structuralism and linguistics and nominalism for example would fall into this range. Only the sign theory of realist pragmatism has been found by experts to account globally for all signs and signers and situations. It is tentative, but it remains the best we have for now. ------ There are areas of pragmatist sign theory that are troublesome to me, and that might be ripe for revision by sign theorists. Pragmatism holds that semiotics is a theoretical science of signs mainly in the service of exact logics, but that linguistics is only a practical science of signs in the service of verbal languages. The philosophy of language is furthermore held to be different from the science of linguistics. The segregation and isolation of linguistic signs from semiotics and logics seems however unnecessary and wrong. The further separation of varied sign theories from each other also seems unproductive and outdated. The study of signs traditionally entailed the theories of diverse scholars like Peirce and Saussure and Morris and Quine and Harris and Sebeok, but their theories all have features that might in fact be complimentary and even combinatory. It seems to me that mind must have language signs at least as collateral paradigms for signers to engage signs in science and logic and math. It is difficult for me to imagine a thinker who is not competent in language to initially engage in logic with nonlingual signs alone. It is also unlikely that logic alone can account for the initial desire that scientific thinkers would have to find the truth of signs, so that a degree of subjective psychologism therefore would be warranted in objective logic. My take on a revisionist sign theory might be called semiology, but in the broader angloamerican manner, and this umbrella science of semiology would then entail the subordinate sciences of semiotics first and linguistics last. It is also envisioned that linguistics might widen its scope to include not only verbal languages but also vital languages and visual languages. This revised semiology of signs would be preparatory to the methodology of sign systems. The systems of methodic signs would subsequently fall under the normative sciences of aesthetics and ethics and logics. This approach separates semiotics from logics, but seems appropriate. ------ William wrote... You previously wrote that Pragmatism, in an effort to account for all the different ways a sign functions, seems to add fixed categories of signs instead if simply seeing a sign as organic, its function being a product of creative contextualization. This is where Roy Harris' Integrationist linguistics is most useful. It's basic notion is that the sign is created by language/communication and not that language/communication is facilitated or validated by fixed signs. Harris calls that pre-fixed sign concept "segregationist" to denote the assumption that signs are permanently stable and segregated from the fluidity of language and communication. He reverses the usual order and says that the sign is a result of of it is perceived. Why have all those different types of signs, tokens, replicas, tones, and the like when an organic concept of sign is sufficient. I'd be very interested in Frances' take of Roy Harris' Integrationist linguistics. He takes pains to discuss is theory in its contrast to both Peirce and Saussure.
