Philosophy of Semiotics
Philosophical Aspects of Semiotics
Abstract: This article is based on my research in the field of semiotics, a field in which I have been involved for over 25 years. Throughout that time, I felt that my work was situated on the boundary between semiotics and philosophy. Recently, I concluded that all semiotic activity related to scientific research is part of epistemology, in that it deals with certain aspects of the acquisition of knowledge.
Semiotic activity is a significant part of all scientific research. Along with observation and experimentation, it is included to varying degrees in all stages of the scientific process. Scientists rely on signs throughout their research work, from the time they plan a project through the summarizing of their conclusions.
Every branch of science develops its own sign-system or systems. The development process is one of constant and continuous innovation, because the system of signs used by a science must grow and develop along with the science itself. My research has led me to conclude that sign-systems evolve in predictable patterns, gradually becoming more abstract by incorporating increasingly abstract symbols. If we can identify these patterns, we may be able to determine the stage of maturity of a given scientific theory at a particular time. The essays in this article are one of the first attempts to begin identifying and characterizing these patterns.
Keywords: ontological reality; epistemology; semiotic activity; signs and sign-systems; semiotic reality; conceptual grid
For over twenty years, I have been dealing with topics that belong to the field of semiotics, the science of signs. All of the semiotic issues I have discussed during this entire period are near the boundary between semiotics and philosophy. Some of the problems belong primarily to the field of semiotics, others to the field of philosophy, and some are mixtures of both fields. In this paper, I will focus on those issues that are essentially philosophical in nature. I have collected these topics into a single paper because I think that, together, they offer a fresh viewpoint for handling established philosophical problems and highlight new facets of these problems.
The boundaries of the field of philosophy are very broad, comprising many branches, including ethics, theology, political thought, and many other issues. The philosophic problems I deal with in this paper and in my work in semiotics in general, belong exclusively to the branch of philosophy called philosophy of science. By this I mean that my work concentrates on issues that have arisen from semiotics and are related to the development and dissemination of the sciences. Other subjects are entirely beyond the scope of my studies.
Within this range of issues, I will also limit my discussion to matters that I personally encountered during my exploration of semiotic studies,that is, the system of semiotics that I myself have developed and presented over the past decades. Nonetheless, I do not in any way aspire to writing a comprehensive treatise on the philosophy of science. My aim is to survey a number of points that seem to shed new light on the conventional wisdom in the realm of philosophy of science. Because of this, this paper contains discussions about a number of distinct issues that are not closely connected with one another. Each problem is dealt with as a separate issue in a short essay. All of these are topics of a semiotic nature that extend beyond the scope of pure semiotics into the philosophic domain, and in some way contradict its accepted views and its handling of them.
Issue 1
Semiotics, like many other sciences, grew out of philosophizing
What we recognize today as the sciences have their origins in ancient Greece, where they developed as an outgrowth of the Greeks’ special approach to what they called philosophy. Literally, the term “philosophy” means “love of wisdom”. For the ancient Greeks, this meant the desire to meditate on and discuss what they considered to be matters of substance, namely, issues that lie beyond the scope of everyday concerns. They left the business of practical life to slaves and other lower castes of the population; philosophizing and its implementation in politics and other spheres, that were deemed lofty enough for patricians, was the realm of the upper classes, and conversely, was also only open to them. Even among the upper classes, the very name “philosopher” could only be applied to the wisest of people. Thus, according to Plato, only philosophers had the right to choose proper words for a living language.
Because of this attitude towards philosophy, the ancient Greeks were constantly involved in lengthy conversations about whatever topic happened to come into their minds. These conversations were recorded in numerous texts, many of which are preserved to this very day. To us, many of them seem naïve and senseless, but they represent the very first efforts to understand and explain natural phenomena, and the sciences as we know them grew directly from these early reflections. Indeed, by using these philosophic methods, some of the brightest of the ancient Greeks arrived at far-reaching and surprisingly accurate guesses about the natural world. For example, they guessed that the Earth was round, that all material things are composed of tiny particles (atoms), and that all substances are mutable. (“One can never enter the same river.”)
The most prominent of the ancient thinkers formulated complete theories that remained influential for long periods of time and were applied for practical purposes. A classic example of such a theory is Ptolemy’s geocentric structure of the solar system. In addition, some particularly gifted thinkers worked out complete structures for certain sciences — structures that have been studied continuously from the time they were formulated to this day, such as Euclid’s geometry and Aristotle’s formal logic.
First steps away from pure philosophic discourse
It is only natural that the sciences, when they first became separate from philosophizing, were rather amorphous and vaguely formulated. Each science began its existence as a hypothesis based on a few known facts and accompanied by some ideas about how the hypothesis could be expanded into more coherent forms and applications. The author of the hypothesis usually tried to classify the pertinent facts, but given the limitations of the available data, was usually limited to creating a taxonomy.
To understand what I mean by this, let me clarify that, in my view, there is a great difference between scientific taxonomy and classification. Taxonomy precedes classification and relies more on the logical composition of the categories under scrutiny than on their precise comparison and evaluation. By contrast, classification requires precise analysis, and, because of this, it develops little by little out of practical field work.
Ultimately, classification requires homogeneity among the objects or occurrences that are grouped together. It is only when signs of a similar character, representing facts with the same nature, appear, that true classification can take place. The general rule is this: If the signs in a group have a common character, this indicates that we have crossed the boundary from taxonomy to classification. Meticulously built categories (taxons), arranged in a logical order, pave the way to exact scientific comparisons based on well-defined criteria and findings (classifications).
Let us take, for example, the birth of contemporary biology. The foundations of modern biology were laid out by Charles Darwin in his famous work, On the Origin of Species. In this book, Darwin postulated that the biological development of living creatures depends on competition between species and on the resistant force of the species with the best qualities. Based on this idea, Darwin conjectured a hypothetical series of organisms that evolved one from the other in a sequence that led ultimately to homo sapiens.
As part of his theory, Darwin mentioned some taxons that exemplified the turning points in this evolutionary sequence. These taxons included creatures whose characteristics were not entirely defined, but whose existence in their proposed locations in the sequence derived logically from the general principles of the hypothesis. Since the theory was accepted as a paradigm of biological science, these points were used as orientation marks for all future findings. Further investigations in the field of biology sometimes led to their verification and at other times led to their partial or complete refutation. Gradually, Darwin’s taxonomy was transformed into a classification consisting of classes and subclasses that were supported by convincing biological arguments and physical evidence.
Another example of the distinction between taxonomy and classification can be seen in modern cartography. All cartographic models (maps, globes, computerized images, etc.) can be divided into four groups: geocentric models, models of the sky as observed from the Earth, models of celestial bodies other than the Earth, and navigational charts. This division is based on the position of the observer and the field of observation; in addition, a temporal parameter is sometimes added to the spatial ones.
This breakdown distinguishes between four kinds of cartography, each of which makes use of different sorts of signs and their syntactic bonds. But from a semiotic point of view, each of these groups exists in the taxonomic dimension, as each of them includes different kinds of models that use different kinds of signs. If we delve more deeply into the components of one of these groups, we can begin to classify them. For example, if we look at the details of the geocentric kind of mapping, we will be moving one step from taxonomy towards classification. An additional step closer to classification brings us to the various types of geocentric cartography: the cartography of physical space on the Earth, political mappings of the planet (states and their borders), thermal charts, etc. Within each of these latter categories we can, at last, find actual classification schemes, because each of these categories uses the same standard set of signs, and that set of signs is only used for mappings within the category. Indeed, when we identify the use of a standard set of signs within a particular scientific field, we can conclude that we have found the mature science of a particular category.
Semiotics developed in the same way
Just as the other scientific fields with which we are familiar developed out of philosophizing, so did the field of semiotics. The first time the real nature of signs was described was in the works of St. Augustine(354–430). While trying to substantiate his religious views, he wrote about different categories of signs. In his De Doctrina Christiana, he identified two types of signs, those we find ready-made in nature and those people invent in their minds, that is, products of human ingenuity. In the course of these purely theoretical expositions, he laid out the foundations of the future semiotics.
The next milestone in the development of semiotics was the theories of Charles Peirce, who, towards the end of the 19th century (!), gave his tripartite taxonomy of signs, dividing them into indices, icons,and symbols. This was a continuation of St. Augustine’s approach, and most scientists use this “classification” in their works even today. Still, it belongs in the realm of taxonomy, as each of the categories unite a variety of different signs and sign systems.
My own division of signs and sign-systems, which I have been publicizing for more than 20 years, also belongs to the taxonomic level of analysis, and is meant to be an elaboration on Peirce’s taxonomy. The first two levels of my taxonomy of signs and sign-systems correspond to his first two categories, indices and icons; the last four flesh out his last category, symbols.
Nonetheless, my system differs from Peirce’s in that it is an ordered list – a hierarchy from less abstract to more abstract signs. This hierarchy is based on two interrelated sequences: the order in which the human mind comes to understand signs and their systems as it develops cognitively (ontogenesis), and the gradual process by which human thinking has matured over time and become more abstract (the phylogenesis of the development of the human race). To briefly clarify what I mean, let me give you a short overview of my system. (The scheme is described in greater detail under Issue 3 below.)
My taxonomy consists of six categories of signs and sign-systems, arranged in a continuum from the least abstract to the most abstract.
The first type of sign-system to appear in the history of homo sapiens was the natural sign-system. This type of sign-system is based on natural signs– naturally-occurring objects and phenomena from which we can draw conclusions about a complete picture that is partially concealed from us. Examples of natural signs are a column of smoke that tells us where a fire is, and foot prints that tell us about an animal that has already passed by.
In human history, as well as in the individual human mind, natural sign-systems were followed by iconic sign-systems. These sign-systems are based on images, which are much more abstract signs than natural ones, since they are not parts of the whole in existing natural systems, but are invented by humans.
Natural and iconic sign-systems were followed by language sign-systems, which are composed of linguistic signs. These were followed by notational sign-systems, which use hieroglyphs as their basic signs, and, finally, formalized or mathematical sign-systems, which are based on symbols. (This latter type of sign-system is divided into two sub-categories: sign-systems whose symbols have a fixed meaning and sign-systems whose symbols have variable meanings that are assigned ad hoc.)
Obviously, my system of semiotics is far more elaborate than its predecessors. Nonetheless, although it is much closer to being a classification, it still remains in the realm of taxonomies. One more step is required in order to arrive at a true classification model consisting of ontological objects represented by homogeneous signs. It would be enough to take the taxon of notational signs (hieroglyphs) and descend to its various subsections, such as the systems of writing (with letters as basic signs), musical notations (with notes as basic signs), technical drawing (with blueprints as basic signs), and we are already in the realm of genuine classification. Within each of these subsections are subdivisions that are fully part of the realm of classifications; this is what is being done all the time by scientists in the course of their research.
Conclusion
Most sciences, including semiotics, were born out of philosophizing about the things and phenomena people encounter in their ordinary and not so ordinary lives. Little by little, the topics discussed became separate sciences with their distinct subjects, special methods of research, and specific signs for notations. But it is important to note that philosophy did not disappear from the scene completely. It remains outside of the branches of science and provides a way to observe and critique each branch. In addition, it can be used within a particular branch of science to discuss its most general propositions.
Besides, by the characters of the signs used in the science we can judge about this science level of development.
Issue 2
Semiotic shaping is one of the three characteristicsof a fledgling science
In the conclusion to the previous section, I enumerated the three indicators of a separate branch of science: distinct subject-matter, specific methods of investigating this subject-matter, and special semiotic shaping. Usually, only the first two are mentioned; I think it is important to include the third one, the semiotic attribute, in the discussion. The semiotic shaping of any distinct scientific field consists, in my opinion, of two facets. The first, which is relevant to all scientific fields, is the construction of a conceptual grid for the science. The second, which is only relevant to those scientific fields that are called exact sciences,is the creation of a special symbolic notation. Let us treat each facet separately.
On the conceptual grid of a science
In my semiotic treatment of linguistics, I have shown that each natural language includes words (its basic signs) in three categories: proper names, notions, and concepts. Every language began with proper names; that is, when our ancestors first saw something, they gave it a name, so that they would be able use the name even in the absence of the real object. These were the initial units of our languages, the ones that are the least abstract in their meanings, because each word has its own single referent.
People soon understood that they could not name each object, its components and qualities, its transformations and links, with separate words. They began using notions, which are also words, but have multiple referents. Notions made it possible to denote many objects of the same class and of various related classes with a single unit. It was the invention of notions that brought language into existence, but the act of denotation became very difficult and was often very blurred. Nowadays, notions comprise the bulk of any linguistic vocabulary, and they are obviously more abstract words than proper names are.