Semiotics (1): Embarking on the Journey

Uncovering the hidden language of reality.

The quest for semiotics was not an easy one, for it required him to abandon the comfort of his old beliefs and the world view that had shaped him.

With a heavy pack on his shoulders, he set out into the wild, where everything was wrapped in a vague shroud of mystery. Yet, he sensed that there was a reason behind it all, a hidden logic.

He knew that this journey would be long and difficult, but he was driven by the promise of discovery and the desire to uncover the language of reality. He moved forward with a determination. The quiet stillness of his surroundings only served to heighten his awareness of the challenges ahead, but he was undaunted.

The Semiotic Mindset

It is a daunting task to introduce semiotics. The field is massive, and the ideas are deep and profound. How to begin?

We could do the usual stuff. I would say that semiotics is the study of signs, then present some definitions of signs, and the rest of this text would be filled with a bunch of weird terms used as instruments for the dissection of the sign.

However, I’m not going to do that. I think it is more important to understand the Semiotic Mindset.

You see, we are not talking about some neat little theory. We are speaking about adopting a world view, one that demands a complete shift in our understanding of ourselves and the very nature of reality. Taking this step requires courage.

Let us begin sketching this mindset by acknowledging how the world is full of signs. Symbols, beeping and blinking signals, written language, spoken language, body language, emojis, pop-ups, notifications, traffic signs, warning signs, advertising signs and the list goes on and on.

Everyone would agree with this observation, but we will go deeper and claim that signs are the very medium we experience. The waters we swim in.

Namely, signs are not mere practical indicators helping us to navigate in the world (seeing when the battery is low, knowing when to stop in traffic, hearing when a new message pops into our feed).

The Semiotic Mindset is about asserting that the action of signs, or what we call semiosis, forms the very structure of our reality.

The universe is semiosis, and as we all are part of the universe, semiosis forms the medium in which all of us are completely embedded. All the perceptions we perceive, the experiences we experience, the habits we embody, and the thoughts we think, are to be regarded as sign-action — semiosis.

Semiosis is the subject matter of semiotics

Semiotics is the discipline. Semiosis is what semiotics inquires. What are the implications of this? Well, if semiotics studies the logical structure of semiosis, and semiosis permeates everything, then semiotics also illuminates the logical structure of our mental processes.

With the help of semiotics, we gain the ability to understand our understanding, to reason about our reasoning, to gain knowledge of how we gain knowledge. In other words, we develop higher level of awareness.

I’m speaking about meta-cognition — the capacity to reflect on the very mental processes we use to process information. With this ability we can enhance our acquisition of knowledge, understanding and deliberate action.

This makes semiotics truly a powerful tool for thinking.

Consider painters who communicate and express meaning through the medium of color. Now, imagine an artist who possesses not only an innate aesthetic intuition but also a mastery of color theory.

Such an artist has a deep understanding of how humans perceive and interpret color. This insight into the very medium of communication, allows the intentional and deliberate control on in conveying the desired effect and meaning to their audience.

With this power, the artist can create art that is more sophisticated, nuanced, and impactful.

In the same way, through an understanding of semiosis, we gain the ability to observe, manipulate and utilize signs in order to achieve desired pragmatic outcomes.

However, there is a preliminary for this skill. We must adopt the extreme realist view, which asserts the metaphysical reality of signs. The structure of semiosis becomes the fundamental structure of reality. Without this, we would inevitably run into problems down the line.

By adopting the extreme realist view, semiosis extends beyond our human cognition permeating the entire universe. Therefore, mastering the semiotic tools not only helps us understand our own cognitive processes, but also provides a means of comprehending the very essence of reality.

If this is true, we have an extremely powerful tool to explain reality in general. We are talking about a massive paradigm shift on our hands.

The Journey Begins

Let’s cut to the chase. Semiotics, at its core, is logic.

However, it is a very developed and advanced logic, which makes it very different from our usual conception of logic, which is something like this:

Premise #1: All humans are mortal.
Premise #2: Socrates is human.
Conclusion: Socrates is mortal.

This kind of logical inference is called deduction, where the conclusion is necessarily deduced from the premises. Notice how no new information was created, as the conclusion was present already in the premises.

But logic is much more than deductions. It must be also capable of dealing with the growth of knowledge. In real everyday life we don’t simply deduce secure propositions from known premises. Rather, we form new knowledge, novel ideas, hypotheses, explanations etc. Purely deductive logic cannot account for learning, creativity or discovery.

Compare this to biology. Before the theory of evolution, biologists saw the animal kingdom as static. Then Darwin introduced the ideas of chance, growth and development. The animal species were not static, but constantly evolving and adapting to their changing environment.

Peirce was very impressed by the theory of evolution. And as Peirce was a synechist philosopher (believing that everything is fundamentally connected), the idea of evolution could not be limited to biology alone.

If there is growth and development in biology, there must also be growth and development in logic. Both sciences should share and incorporate these common characteristics.

Semiotics is the end result of this new form of logic. It includes deductions, but in addition it also encompasses inductions (generalizations), and most importantly abductions (formation of novel explanations). All new information and ideas are born through abductions. Let us compare these inferences:

Inductive reasoning produces beliefs based on a set of specific observations or examples. It is “reasoning from a sample to the whole sampled.”

Example: Every time I have eaten at that restaurant, the food has been delicious. Therefore, I believe that the food will be delicious if I eat there again.

Abductive reasoning involves making a guess based on the facts of the situation, and arriving at an explanation for that particular situation. But abduction is very uncertain knowledge as it “merely suggests that something may be.”

Example: You try to charge your mobile phone, but as you plug it to the charging cable, nothing happens. You infer that you charger is broken, but it may also be, that there is dirt in the port.

Interlude: Semiotics as Everyday Logic

Before we advance any further it is important to understand what we are talking about. By bringing up the concept of “logic” many of us have something very abstract in mind.

Maybe we think about truth tables, or some other mathematical exercises. Maybe we picture some college kids doing some party tricks involving logical reasoning. Or maybe we think about someone very logical, like Sherlock Holmes solving a crime.

All that is logic, yes, and it is included in semiotics, but… with semiotics we are mostly talking about the logic of everyday life. Is the coffee hot? Should I greet the neighbor? Which route should I take? Do I have enough money? Should I eat now or later? Is it raining?

We encounter a multitude of signs and engage in reasoning with and through them. Logic is much more than solving sudokus, it is about getting through the daily life.

That said let us continue our journey.

Embedded in the Medium of Communication

Now, abduction is very interesting and fundamental form of reasoning. It can be thought as the internalization of information from the environment.

Imagine you wake up one morning and find that the floor in your kitchen is wet. You make an abductive inference that the sink or faucet was left on, causing the water to overflow and spill onto the floor.

You were able to do this by interpreting signs (the water on the floor). You examined the kitchen and internalized information from it through signs — through semiosis.

In other words, by internalizing information about the environment, we are communicating with it through signs. We are communicating with reality. That is why Peirce sometimes defines signs as a “medium for the communication”.

This definition is wonderful, because it conveys the ideas of flow and continuity.

You see, when we think about signs, we often have a very static idea of them. When first learning about semiotics, we try to identify individual signs in our environment. We point at things and ask questions like “What kind of sign is that? What is its object?”

I’m not saying that this is wrong, but it easily leads our minds to see signs as discrete things, when in reality semiosis is a continuous flow of information.

Semiosis is analog. We don’t digitally compile and compute information from bits and pieces. The signs we encounter are not separated and discrete particles of matter. They are logical entities discerned and abstracted from the unindividuated qualitative continuum.

An example of this phenomena can be seen in music. When we listen to a piece of music, we don't hear separate discrete units of sound. Rather, we hear a continuous and fluid flow of sound. The musical elements (signs) are discerned and abstracted from this qualitative continuum of sound allowing us to recognize notes, melodies, harmonies, and rhythms. Real natural sound is analog, not digital.

It is thus more accurate to conceptualize our experience of semiosis as a feeling of being embedded in a continuous stream of analog information, comprised and mediated by innumerable fluctuating signs. We live fully immersed in this living and breathing flow of meaning.

Semiotics is the logical breakdown of this stream of information. It shows us how we perceive, process and embody that information.

But again, in order to truly understand semiotics, one must accept the metaphysical reality of signs. In the foot steps of Peirce, we should truly belief that “the entire universe is perfused with signs, if it is not composed exclusively of signs.”

By taking this extreme realist view, we must consider the significant implications it holds. Vinicius Romanini (2006, 205) has summarized these implications masterfully:

1. Reality is not restricted to the dimension of existents [2ndness], but includes possibilities (latent qualities) [1stness] and virtualities [3rdness] (in the form of active final causes).

2. The universe is of the nature of a mind. What we understand as matter is nothing but effete mind – mind that has lost its freeness by the constrictions of laws.

3. There are no merely mechanic relations in the universe. All relations involve some degree of indeterminism [1stness] and of intelligent purpose [3rdness].

4. Our ability to guess the laws of nature is due to the filiation of our mind to the universal mind.

5. The universal laws are habits of the universal mind, as well as the beliefs are habits of the human mind.

6. There is an evolutionary principle, a sort of super order, coordinating the evolution of the universe, and which we are also part of. This evolving principle Peirce called “evolutionary love” — agapism.

7. Chance exists objectively in nature, being responsible for the creativity and for the growth of information in the universe, but also in our minds.

8. The substratum of reality is continuous, which allies all the things in lower or higher degree. These allied minds are called commens or co-mind. Communication is based on this principle.

9. Knowledge is always fallible but also naturally inclined to the truth because reality forces us to correct our hypothesis and shape our ideas to the forms of the universe.

10. Another name for communication is semiosis, or action of signs, which organizes the chaos and allows the creation of complexity and the emergence of life.

Peirce’s Struggle with Semiotics

I hope you’ve gained some valuable insights on semiotics. I’m sure many aspects still remain very vague, but don’t worry. We will revisit these concepts multiple times throughout this series. Finally, let me briefly outline the development of semiotics and how this series will proceed.

The best known part of Peirce’s semiotics is certainly the three famous signs of icon, index and symbol. But this is just the very surface of his semiotic.

In fact, he was never able to complete his semiotics. His final phase is marked by multiple, even contradictory, attempts to reveal the finer structure of the sign and semiosis.

First, he extended the classification from three to ten signs by introducing the three correlates (or aspects) of signs in 1903. Maybe some of you are familiar with Peirce's diagram of the ten signs.

But this is not the finished system. Subsequently the number of aspects of the sign increased first from three to six and later to ten, as Peirce sought to finish the complete semiotic that would produce all the 66 signs of reality.

However, Peirce’s great quest was left unfinished. This has forestalled semiotics and especially its applications. Nathan Houser writes how:

A sound and detailed extension of Peirce's analysis of signs to his full set of ten divisions and sixty-six classes is perhaps the most pressing problem for Peircean semioticians. (quoted from Romanini 2006, 6)

In 2006 Vinicius Romanini took on the mission to finish the semiotics in his doctoral thesis Minute Semeiotic Speculations on the Grammar of Signs and Communication based on the work of C. S. Peirce.

However, instead of ten, Romanini presents eleven aspects, which produce the complete Periodic Table of the 66 Classes of Signs. Romanini discovered also the diagram Solenoid of Semiosis that shows the minute structure of semiosis

The Solenoid of Semiosis

In my opinion, the significance of this work cannot be overestimated. Romanini has made significant contributions to the study of semiotics, and his work has helped to clarify, and in my opinion settle, many of the fundamental concepts of the field. Romanini handed us the completed logical structure of semiosis. Our task is now to develop that logic further, and above all, apply it.

The System of 15 Signs

Unfortunately, applications of this logic have remained relatively scarce. There are many reasons for this:

Firstly, semioticians have the bad habit of using very obscure language. This makes it difficult for non-specialists to understand the concepts and theories involved.

Secondly, the complete logic of the 66 signs is too minute. It is hard to apply fully, as many phenomena simply don't need such a detailed analysis. Not at least in the initial phases of inquiry.

Therefore, I propose a simplified version of the Romanini's complete logic of 66 signs. Instead of Peirce’s three correlates that produce the ten genuine signs or Romanini’s 11 aspects that produce the 66 signs, I will be formulating a new classification of 15 signs based on the four periods and four phases of semiosis.

The System of 15 Signs avoids the major pitfalls of semiotics. It doesn’t require learning tons of weird concepts in order to be understood. This makes it more straightforward and accessible. Furthermore, it isn’t as minute as the complete logic, which in turn makes it easier to apply.

However, we're not jumping straight into the 15 signs just yet. Rather we begin with the fundamental core concepts and build slowly on top of those, one step at a time, until we reach the system of 15 signs.

Throughout this journey, we will acquire many useful tools for thinking and analyzing semiosis. In fact, the first tool will be introduced in the very next post. So don't miss out! Make sure to subscribe to PhiloSign to stay informed and engaged as we explore the fascinating world of semiotics.

I want to end with the inspiring words of Vinicius Romanini:

If we achieve a complete rational description of all classes of signs, we will be able to solve many problems, probably all problems of logic, but also develop a full theory of communication, that will be also a theory of reality. I think this is a big purpose, a big goal, that is worth pursuing.

Thank you for taking the time to read this text. If you found it insightful, please consider sharing it with others.

Sincerely,
Markus