Frances to Michael and Cheerskep... 1. The sign theory of Eco is a dyadic lingual system derived from and aligned with francoeuropean semiology, even though his theory is called semiotics, which is confusingly wrong in my opinion. His theory and system furthermore is mainly about the ratio of sign production in the mind, whereby signs are either easy to make or hard to make. The approach to signs called semiology is however useful in addressing the human signs of linguistic languages within social settings. If something is to be held as a sign, for semiology it must first be reduced to and translated into language. It is basically akin to nominalism and its limits.
2. There are numerous sign typologies that have been posited by theorists in the last few centuries. Their structure is usually either dyadic or triadic, but most are triadic and are clearly derived from that of Peirce in the pragmatist camp. The one thing about the triadic sign system of Peirce is that it is categorically consistent throughout, despite its jargon and complexity. Peirce spent many years trying to work out a realist philosophy and a theory of signs, which stands to this day as the best success of a bad lot. His brand of idealist realism roughly called pragmatism is now better than any other philosophy currently available, and is recognized as such throughout scholarly academia. His realism neatly corrects the flaws of theories like idealism and materialism and subjectivism. Many of his ideas are still being applied by technicians and scientists today who even seek out patents for inventions made possible by his pragmatism. 3. The psychical mentalist states that nothing exists objectively as a sign. If something is felt or known as a sign, it is arbitrarily deemed so and then only by a normal human being, because the sign resides subjectively in the mind as a vision or notion or lingual nomination. This is also the case for any meaning a sign may be deliberately assigned or conferred with. What the mentalist fails to realize is that in the mind there is a sign structure, even if signs are wrongly deemed to be wholly mental. For a sign to work in the normal mind of a human being there must be a lawful theoretical structure embedded in the mind that allows a sign to be made. In regard to the signs of language for example that theory is a science called linguistics. The grammatical structure of linguistics is holistic and transformational and regulatory as well as determinate and definite and linear and established. Furthermore, the originating stuff of signs and visions or notions or nominations that are in the mind comes from phenomena previously sensed objectively and stored in the mind ready to be used, therefore that original stuff of mental signs and acts does not come from the internal mind itself epiphenomenally, because the brain and the mind cannot generate the stuff on its own solely alone without getting it externally from sensed phenomena. The subjective stuff of signs in the mind like images and ideas and thoughts and discourses is after all the objective stuff of senses in the world. Cheerskep wrote... Michael writes: "Eco says that a sign is always an element on the expression plane that is conventionally correlated to one (or more) elements on the content plane. More exactly, he says, we should refer to a sign-function in which two functives (content and expression) are mutually correlated. He then elaborates about codes and how the sign-function operates. "Peirce wrote extensively about signs, and his system was indeed complex. He refers to representamen, ground, and object, and describes three kinds of triadic configurations of them.... "You want to take it from here?" Crikey, no, don't take it from there -- because that sounds very much like you're saying, Okay, that much is clear, but what comes next? Eco, the life-long semiotician, is not a hell of a lot clearer than Frances. And, of course, Peirce's style is a kind of Maginot line, studded with neologisms and other concrete verbal obstacles denying students any access to alleged enlightenment -- or access to evidence of fundamental errors. The most frequent of those other obstacles to comprehension is the taking of an old, familiar, relatively simple word, and disfiguring it out of recognition with a new stipulative (and usually very complicated) definition. So each time a reader encountered the old familiar word there ensued a screeching of brakes, a backing up, and a slow turn to the left to proceed carefully down a narrow alley to a newly built labyrinth of "meaning". It was all very exasperating. Peirce, in his final years, looked back on his writings and cursed his own style as counter-productive, perhaps the chief reason his teachings did not dominate philosophy the way he'd expected. He was only half right in this. His philosophy failed to triumph because, after brilliant beginnings, his thinking had gone wrong. He was a self-destructively reifier, jamming an attic so full of chimerical entities, categories, sub-categories, qualities, etc, its floor finally gave way, and the lot crushed everything below right down into the basement.
