Gary - here are my brief comments on Nadin's paper. It was a long paper, rambling and 'all over the place', in my view. Should have been half the length - and, I felt that he didn't 'get' the vital transformative process that is Peircean semiosis. He, just as you said, seems to fall back into Saussurian semiology based around language/representation.
1) Nadin says: 'the foundation of semiotics around the notion of the sign' p 1: But all science is founded on 'units-of-meaning' whether it be atoms or insects or societies. That's not a good definition of the Sign. And the discipline of semiosis need not become 'the backbone of modern science and humanities" since ALL analysis is focused on 'units-of-meaning'. But the real question is: how does the Sign function? 2) P. 2. "the more elaborate grounding in anticipation". Now, here, Nadin is right. The nature of the Representamen is its actions-of-anticipatory control. But, the theory of anticipation is not confined to Peircean semiotics - see the CASYS Conferences on hyperincursion and anticipation which include mathematics, economics, physics, biology etc - with none of them specifically referring to semiotics. The problem with this paper is that Nadin doesn't explore and examine HOW anticipation works and WHY it is vital in ALL aspects of reality - from the physico-chemical to the societal realms. 3) P. 2. "Semiotics empowered the human being to the detriment of the rest of reality". I disagree. ALL matter operates within the triadic frame - and as to whether man dominates or whether this is a detriment - is pure speculation. 4) P. 2. The reality of mediation; the interaction between the self and the other as mediated.is valid in ALL existence. The nature of mediation is that it contains a knowledge-base. Nadin doesn't explore this knowledge base. He is right in his rejection of the common notion that 'reality is the sign' - and Saussure etc can be found in this limited area. 5) Nadin, p.5,first focuses on interaction as the primary definition of the Sign [rather than the sign-unit] - and he is right to define semiosis as an action[ which I would call a network-of-interactions/relations. ] Then he moves on to semiotics defined as 'representations' of interaction. But then, he moves onto 'semiotic knowledge' p. 7, which somehow becomes a cultural construct and becomes a 'thing-in-itself'. So, he's right back to the sign-unit/thing. The vibrant transformative nature of the semiosic triad is never explored or analyzed. 6) He sees signs as "entities that stand for other entities' p 10, a very Saussurian definition, and one that ignores the action and transformation of matter-to-matter that is the basis of the Peircean semiosis. Then, he starts to explore the theory of anticipation and transformation.but remember, this was always the basis of Peircean semiosis. But he glosses over this.. 7) And, p 13 - he still misunderstands the sign format, and uses the linear triangle to represent it! This shows that he doesn't understand the sign-as-an-action. 8) I certainly agree with his rejection of the modern notion of semiotics - which has nothing to do with Peircean semiosis - and is primarily Saussurian representation of 'this- for-that'.and has become almost a psychological explanation, purely speculative, of art objects, films, cultural events, and so on. 9) He seems to focus on semiotics as enabling cognitive interaction p. 18-19, and does, finally, consider it as a process: 'Representation would have to be further defined as a process, uniting information (measurable) and meaning (result of interpretation). Here, we have, I feel, a constructive outline - but he's taken 19 PAGES to get to it, and still doesn't examine the Peircean triad as specifically doing just that. 10) As well, most analyses and research IS semiosic, in that it is moving from the data to the interpretation, via building up a knowledge base as mediation. But, it just isn't called 'semiosis'. And his mention of computational semiotics - with well-known names such as Gudwin, Queiroz, Albus, Perlovsky, Meystel, Rocha, Joslyn in this field doesn't explore their deliberate use of the semiosic transformation of Peirce. 11) But, even his conclusion does not examine semiosis as this transformative action, does not examine the role of anticipation within the action-of-mediation, .and still deals with semiotics-as-representation. Rather than a moulding transformation of matter-to-matter via mediative knowledge. So- my final conclusion is that it is a rambling and incoherent and incomplete outline... Edwina
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