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Joseph Ransdell
Dept of Philosophy, Texas Tech University
Lubbock, Texas 79409, U.S.A.
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This paper was originally delivered at a conference of the International Association for Semiotic Studies (IASS) which was held in Barcelona and Perpignan in March/April 1989. It has subsequently been published in Signs of Humanity/L'homme et ses signes, vol. 1, eds. Michel Balat and Janice Deledalle-Rhodes, General Editor Gerard Deledalle (Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 1992) |
| Since there is no normal pagination on a web page, I assign in lieu of that paragraph numbers, included in brackets and placed flush right, just above the paragraph, for purposes of scholarly reference: they are not in the previously published version above. Apart from that the texts are substantially identical.
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[1]
In Peircean semiotic, the term "semiosis" refers primarily
to the action of a sign in producing an interpretant of itself;
but since the interpretant of a sign is itself a sign having the
same sort of productive power, one can speak of semiosis processes
as well. What I wish to do here is to convey some understanding
of the way such processes are at once teleological and
autonomous (self-governed).
[2]
Let us note to begin with that to regard semiosis--the
generation of the interpretant--as always due primarily to the
agency of the sign itself rather than to the agency of an
interpreter, human or otherwise, does not deny that human agency
has an important role in the occurrence of meaning phenomena, in
changes in meaning, in the creation of meaning, and so forth. It
does mean, though, that an interpreter's interpretation is to be
regarded as being primarily a perception or observation of the
meaning exhibited by the sign itself--for the limited purposes of
this paper we can equate the meaning of a sign with the
interpretants it generates--and that such control as we do have
over the powers of signs (thus over meaning phenomena in general)
lies in our skill at setting them in interaction with one another
in the compositional process in ways favorable to some desired
result. But we can predict such results only to a limited extent,
owing both to our typically incomplete understanding of what the
generative powers of a given sign actually are and to the
spontaneity of the signs themselves. Thus we control the order of
meaning in much the same way we control the material order, and
with varying degrees of success in the one sort of case just as in
the other.
[3]
It is implicit in this that we never bestow meaning on
signs by acts of sheer will or intention or "stipulative" fiat.
There is no creation of meaning ex nihilo . Meaning creation and
change is primarily a function of the dispositions and
spontaneities of the signs themselves; and although we may develop
our skills of artful production, the result of our efforts is
never due solely or primarily to what we do: man proposes, but
the sign disposes. We can indeed successfully stipulate meaning
("lay down" a rule of meaning, establish a meaning "by
convention"), if that only means that we can, for example, say
something like "Let X mean such-and-such!" and then make it come
about--sometimes--that X actually does acquire that meaning,
provided we are clear-headed enough to know what we are doing,
skillful enough to know how to do it, and resolute enough to
follow through on our original resolve. But there is no such
thing as a stipulation of meaning or an act of establishment of a
meaning convention or of a rule of meaning which has any
logical--as distinct from causal--force or effect.
[4]
How could there be? We might forget what we stipulated
immediately after stipulating it, particularly if we had a lot of
such stipulation to do at one time. Or we might forget that it
had been stipulated. Or we might fail to stick by our intentions
in spite of trying to. (I will not take the space here to explain
the further and generally well-recognized problems which arise in
connection with "ostensive definition" in particular.) And what
if we were to change our minds about the matter immediately
thereafter? Would the change of mind automatically cancel the
stipulation, or is another act of will--a volitional
de-stipulation--required to undo that which the stipulative
volition supposedly established? How long is a stipulation good
for? Do we have to go on willing it non-stop, as it were,
maintaining it in existence in the way Descartes thought God
maintained the ongoing existence of the world, by a new fiat at
every successive moment, or is such a fiat somehow good "until
further notice"?
[5]
Let us not pursue this absurdity further. We can of course
put a sound or inscription with no prior linguistic meaning into
an environment of sounds or inscriptions which already have
interpretant-generating powers in the attempt to imbue the former
with some such power of its own in virtue of its interaction with
those that already have such powers; but whether the attempt is
actually successful is a matter of contingent fact rather than of
our meaning-fixing intention per se .
[6]
It is implicit in regarding semiosis as the production of
the interpretant by the sign itself that signs are not regarded as
being governed by rules in the sense of "falling under" them.
The idea is rather that the disposition or power of the sign to
generate an interpretant is the rule, which thus does not stand
over and above the sign, as it were, but is rather an immanent
principle therein. This is the basis for characterizing semiosis
processes as autonomous or self-governing. To get clear on this
let us begin with the Peircean trichotomic distinction of
qualisign, sinsign, and legisign, bearing in mind that in drawing
this distinction we are not doing something analogous to sorting
out things into separate piles, like taking a batch of mixed fruit
and sorting it out into apples, oranges, and pears, but rather
noting three distinct but systematically coordinated and mutually
compatible ways in which something which is ex hypothesi a sign
can be further described in semiotical terms.
[7]
The idea is that a sign has three modal aspects: (1) it has
a certain appearance; (2) it is something that actually occurs or
exists (in some universe of discourse, not necessarily the real
world), and (3) it has a power of generating interpretants. What
makes it a sign (logically) is the third of these. Now if,
because of some interest we have in something as a sign, we are
thereby especially interested in an appearance property of it,
we are, insofar, interested in it as a "qualisign," though it is
not this appearance property of it which makes it a sign.
Similarly, if, because of our interest in it as a sign, we are
thereby especially interested in some existential relationship in
which it stands, we are interested in it as a "sinsign," though,
again, it is not in virtue of that relationship that it is a sign.
If, however, we are not only interested in something as a sign,
but also particularly interested in what it is that makes it to be
or constitutes it as being a sign, then we are, insofar,
interested in it as a legisign; for we are thereby interested in
it as something having the power of generating an interpretant.
And this is to say that we are interested in it as being a rule,
meaning something which rules: a law determining the future
course of semiosis in virtue of its specific power of generating
interpretants of itself, affecting thereby the sequence of
subsequent interpretation.
[8]
Since there are three types of legisigns--iconic, indexical,
and symbolic--there are three corresponding dimensions, as it
were, of the self-governance implicit in a semiosis process as
such: three co-operative ways in which the course of semiosis is
determined--shaped, formed--in its overall contours; three basic
principles of interpretation which work from within the semiosis
process itself.
[9]
Take, for example, the present essay considered as a
putatively unitary whole. It is, purportedly, a single but highly
complex unit of meaning made up of many sub-signs and
sub-sub-signs, etc., such as, say, paragraphs, sentences, phrases,
words (though this is an unrealistically crude way of isolating
parts and sub-parts). On the one hand, considered as a unitary
whole, it has a correspondingly unitary object, namely, that to
which the title of the paper alludes: the semiosis process
considered especially in respect to its teleological and
autonomous character. (This, too, is a crude oversimplification.
There are a number of different objects of this paper, considered
as a sign: different things of which and different ways in which
it is a sign.) On the other hand, it has a number of (possible or
actual) unitary global interpretants as a sign of that object:
one of them, for example, is that which you--in the distributive
sense of "you"--come to understand about that object in virtue of
your experience of this sign, i.e. in virtue of reading this
paper. (To avoid complications here which would take us afield,
let us assume that these various interpretants--I mean yours and
his and hers and mine--are mutually compatible, as they could well
be.)
[10]
Now, insofar as any actual global interpretant achieves or
approximates to such a unity, its parts or sub-units (and
sub-sub-units, etc.) must all contribute in one way or another to
the formation of this resultant global interpretant, which means
that they must be co-ordinated throughout in such a way that the
sub-interpretants they generate, which are themselves signs, can
associate and enter into various combinations which generate
further interpretants of which the same is true, and so forth, in
such a way that the entire process will result finally in a
unitary global interpretant of the whole, or at least will tend
toward such a unitary and unifying interpretant. The legisigns
of the three types--iconic, indexical, and symbolic--are, then,
the three co-operative and co-ordinating factors in the process
which are responsible for that overall tendency insofar as the
agency of the tendency can be located in particular elements
within the process.
[11]
For this to be intelligible, though, one must not think of a
complex written sign, such as the present essay, as being
identical with the assemblage of signs on the pages of the book or
journal whose space it occupies: these signs are but ordered
points of entry, as it were, into a complex process whose elements
include entities referred to or produced by these signs as well as
these signs themselves. For the sub-signs (and sub-sub-signs,
etc.) which go to make it up will typically introduce sub-objects
having a variety of different relationships to the unitary object
of the sign as a whole. Some of them will perhaps be parts or
constituents of that global object; but a good many others will be
objects which themselves function as signs of one kind and another
relative either to the global object or to some other objects
which have sign-value relative to the global object. And so
forth. To the extent that the paper as a whole makes unitary
sense, the many sub-object references it contains all contribute
in one way or another, directly or indirectly, to its reference as
a whole to its global object.
[12]
The essential function of the indexical elements in the
process is that of referential identification of the object; the
essential function of the iconic elements is presentation of the
relevant properties of that object; and the essential function of
the symbolic factor is the correlation of the object indexed with
the properties iconically presented, for the icon as such does not
itself identify the object whose properties it iconizes
(presents). It should be understood, though, that the indices
proper which this or any such sign contains are themselves
sinsigns, and their indicative function is not necessarily due to
being replicas or instantiations of specifically indexical
legisigns. (As we will see below, the same is true of icons
proper.) For example, if a child simply says "ball" in the
immediate presence of a ball, that sinsign--the word "ball"
considered as something actually occurring--may index that ball
even though the legisign it replicates is symbolic rather than
indexical. If, on the other hand, the ball is indicated with the
use of a pointing finger or demonstrative pronoun the indexing
does indeed occur under the control of a specifically indexical
legisign. In a sign as complex as the present theoretical paper,
the indexical legisigns it contains--such general referential
devices as relative pronouns, for example--obviously play a major
role in controlling the referential elements in it in such a way
as to insure that the object of the paper as a whole is always
being referred to, directly or indirectly.
[13]
But like any similar such complex sign, this paper does not
merely refer indicatively to a certain object but purports also to
convey something about it. In Peirce's view the latter depends
upon its iconic components, which present some properties of it.
It may not be obvious what the iconic elements are supposed to be
in the case of the present paper, for example, because they do not
appear on the printed page. But this is why it is important to
bear in mind that what is on the printed page is only a part of
the total sign. This paper purports to describe certain formal
properties of semiosis and their formal relationships, and, in
Peirce's view, anything formal has a qualitative aspect to it.
Suppose, then, that I had introduced here a graphical notation for
representing the structure of a text regarded as a dynamical
semiosis process and had used such graphical forms throughout to
convey an understanding of these relationships. In that case,
some part, at least, of the iconic content of this paper would
have appeared on the pages of this paper in explicit qualitative
form. As it is, though, I have left it to the power of the
word-signs to generate the appropriate icons required "in the
imagination" of the reader.
[14]
Supposing, then, that this paper does indeed succeed in
conveying some coherent form of this kind (which is its overall
and focal aim), it will be in virtue of a constructive process
(within the more comprehensive semiosis process as a whole)
comparable in its complexity with the index-by-index establishment
of the global referential aspect of it discussed briefly above,
though differing in the manner in which it is done. However, just
as an index does not necessarily perform its function as such in
virtue of also being an indexical legisign, so also an icon
proper, which is as such a qualisign, does not always perform its
semiotical function as an icon in virtue of occurring in a sign
which is also a specifically iconic legisign. But whenever you do
have an iconic legisign, what you have is a sign whose power of
semiosis is the power of a schematic method of representation, a
generative rule for producing concrete sinsigns which exhibit
qualitatively the form of the icon proper, which may have many
qualitative variations. (Think, for example, of the many
qualitative variations of which, say, a triangular form is
capable.) Thus in the case of a sign like the present paper,
where the sort of iconic form which is under construction
throughout is something like a graphical representation of a
formal structure, the controlling function of iconic legisigns in
insuring the constancy and consistency of the complex but unitary
icon which is being constructed is obviously of major importance.
[15]
Since iconic signs as such have no power of identifying the
object whose properties they present with the object which is
otherwise being indexed, they actually convey something about the
latter only in virtue of their relationship to symbolic legisigns,
which correlate what is iconized with what is indexed. Any
actually occurring sign is as such a sinsign, and thus not a
symbol proper but an index, though it may replicate a symbol
proper (i.e. a symbolic legisign). Thus none of the marks on this
page, considered as things occurring on this page (i.e.
considered as sinsigns), are symbols proper, though many of them
are symbol replicas. (Others are replicas of indexical rather
than symbolic legisigns. If there were any graphical elements
occurring on these pages they would probably be replicas of iconic
legisigns.) But even though a symbol's power as such includes
that of generating a further symbol as an interpretant of itself,
and this is essential to the exercise of its control function, it
is its introduction of an iconic sign into the process which
constitutes its raison d'être, in the Peircean view. It is
impossible to explain in a brief space the formal "mechanics" of
the complex mode of operation of the symbol, and it will have to
suffice for our limited purposes here to say simply that the job
of the symbol is to effect a transition from an index to an icon
in such a way that the transition has the force of a logical
predication, i.e. such that the object indexed is ipso facto
identified as being the object whose properties are exhibited in
the icon, and that it does this in virtue of being an index in
its actual occurrence as a symbol replica while at the same time
having the power, as the replica of a symbolic legisign, of
generating an icon. To borrow a metaphor from Plato: the
symbolic principle immanent in semiosis is the principle of the
shuttle which weaves together the woof and the warp--the indexical
and iconic elements--of the fabric under construction in the
semiosis process.
[16]
But what about teleology? Well, there are somewhat more
than 3000 word-signs on the printed pages of this paper, and these
are only the entrance-way to the paper itself, which is by no
means constituted by these entities alone. It is impossible to
say exactly how many signs it actually consists of because there
is no exact number of them to be counted (the boundaries of
signs are only vaguely delimited); but there are, obviously, quite
a large number of elements that must be in coordination if this
paper as a whole is to have some reasonable degree of overall
unity. Now I have composed it with the intention that it should
add up to something more or less unitary in character, of course,
and one might be inclined to think that such unity as it actually
does have has somehow been imparted to it by this intention. But
just as in the case of the power of the individual sign, this is
true only in a causal not a logical sense: by the time you read
this my compositional intention no longer has anything to do with
the matter; it is up to the signs themselves to bring about such a
convergence in the sign-interpretant process, and if they cannot
do it there is no remedy except that of adding some more signs to
it in hopes that the further semiosis they contribute will bring
that end about. But if there is no such tendency to convergence
to that end then there is no unitary interpretant; and if there is
no unitary interpretant there is no unitary sign after all. Hence
if, conversely, the sign as a whole is unitary, i.e. really is
a sign, there is a real tendency to an end in the sign
itself--that is, in the semiosis process--which is what is meant
by saying that it is teleological. As we have seen, the type of
teleology involved is tendential rather than intentional in type.
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