Interdisciplinary/De-Philosophizing Orientation In Semiotic Theory Today

(This outline was published in the Proceedings of the 5th IASS Congress, 1994 Berkeley, Mouton de Gruyter, Berlin 1997 ) 

1. The difficulty in establishing a general theory for semiotics lies in the fact that semiotics is a synthetically working field rather than a discipline. Theory is a system of principles and procedures applied into intelligent operation on an area of objects. Intuitively, object consists of natural things which contain several layers: the perceptual, the significative, the instrumental and the axiological. Each layer of the natural thing forms a different object for a human subject. Natural things are only the physical basis carrying those layers of objects. So, differently from empirical positivism, natural things are different from objects which are the direct target of the intelligent operation. Consequently, referent is separate from signified, while both referent and signified can be objects for different operations.

2. Regarding the nature of a theory of semiotics there are two aspects related to its

definition: the area of objects and the set of methods. Designs for a general theory of

semiotics are first hampered by heterogeneity of composition of the related objects

adopted by different semioticians. The heterogeneity is caused by divergence of

choices about objects, scientific positions, involved disciplines, objectives and social

institutions. A discipline is defined by a coherent system of objects, objectives,methods, positions and institutions. All of these parameters determine the homogeneity of an area of objects. Being not a discipline, the field of semiotic studies is highly heterogeneous and complicated hybrid. It is pointless to raise a question about how to form a general theory for a not yet well organized field.

 3. The usual way to unify semiotic discourses is to rely on some key operators such as sign semiosis, communication and others. Among them the term “sign” is most frequently used. But this common word is too broad to become a universal operator used in forming semiotic theories. The divergent senses of sign makes a history of sign unlikely to form a basis for a semiotic discipline. Because of its traditional conceptual divergence the single term sign can hardly be used to unify a historical description, let alone to make the latter a foundation of general semiotics. As we know clearly, most ancient discussions about sign and is like were about natural things and logical matter. The phenomena named with the sign can show several aspects  or objects which perform different functions such as the representative, inferential, communicative and axiological. Those functions can be reduced to two sections: the semantic and the logical; or precisely the significative and the inferential. As some natural thing called sign can be used as a signifying unit and can as well be used as causal unit. Namely, the same physical entity can be involved in two different  processes. For example, the same natural process of rainbow and rain can be understood as two processes: the causal and the significative. Or simply, after being established the inferential (logical) process can be used as the significative (semantic) one. Therefore the single natural thing is used for two functions. When talking about a sign in history we should make separate the two processes or pay attention to the functional planes rather than the natural phenomena themselves. And both functions share in different intellectual developments in history.

4. Both logical and semantic processes in sign history became the origin of natural science and when the latter is scientifically established the involved semiotic reflections will have been undertaken by the sciences as well. The traditional deliberations of sign play no longer a role here. This is a basic academic distinction concerning scientific labor division. On the other hand, the semantically-directed semiotic process have been constantly linked with cultural, social and humanist studies with an ever-increasing focus on semantic clarification of involved objects. For the logical part of humanist studies has been also more and more influenced by natural sciences. Following the academic development of modern times the special character of traditional semiotic thought has more and more converged in the direction of signification. Later on, modern structural linguistics finished the determinative shift along this line and a modern semiotic movement strongly propelled by linguistics has been solidly formed. Thus we also see a general division between the scientific studies along logic-empirical lines and the semiotic studies along significative lines. If natural sciences no longer need the latter, social and human science still require both and take the latter as the first task. Compared with object of natural sciences, those of social and human sciences are much more complicated. 

5. It is the semantically directed semiotic rather than the scientifically-directed studies which make descriptions of objects of social and human sciences more precise and clear. Semiotic theory is the collection of concepts and procedures employed in analysis and descriptions of objects at cultural and social phenomena which remain semantically and causally ambiguous and multi-stratified. But it cannot deal with other aspects of those studies. Beside the semantic dimension, cultural and social sciences also cover other scientific ones. Therefore semantically-directed semiotic theory is only part of the entire theoretical effort for those inexact sciences. Each local semiotic field is a combination of semiotic procedures and objects which are parasitic on other disciplines. There is no  semiotic discipline consisting of its own system of special objects, objectives, methods, positions and institutions. The semantically directed objects co-exist with other objects in various disciplines which have their own special determinative mechanism. Therefore each semiotic field is an academic dialogue or contact between the semiotic aspects and the other scientific ones. Thus semiotic objects are both interdisciplinary and synthetic, being related to multiple semantic and institutional backgrounds.

6. Methodologically speaking, semiotics is also interdisciplinary, covering various semantically directed procedures arising from other disciplines, such as philosophy,

sociology, literature and history. Meanwhile semiotic approaches with their special

objects and procedures also contact with objects and procedures belonging to other

scientific and philosophical disciplines. But here all semiotic and non-semiotic objects and procedures converge on the same natural things in a larger interdisciplinary context. In other words, existing in such a synthetic academic circumstance, semiotics tends to maintain both internal and external interdisciplinary dialogues. Strategically speaking, semiotic studies are only part of the total perspective of social and cultural sciences as a whole.

7. Owing to both constitutional and functional heterogeneity, semiotics can hardly have a theoretical foundation, let alone a philosophical one. Because of the divergence concerning domains, objectives and methods semiotics cannot have a homogeneously theoretical framework and system. And semiotic methodology along the semantic line can only be groups of procedures collected from different disciplines. Therefore general semiotics is only an arbitrary collection of interesting theoretical subjects formed in different fields. Owing to its interdiscipl1nary nature, general semiotics cannot form an independent substantial system which is able to justify a theoretical foundation like those properly shaped in local semiotics. 

8.There are several aspects of impossibility of a semiotic philosophy as a philosophical foundation for semiotics; even a philosophy of language cannot become the theoretical foundation for a semiotic field. The conception of a philosophy of semiotics is due to a traditional idea of philosophy taken as the logical foundation of all learning. The modern scientific development and recent de-philosophizing tendency in the humanities have already shaken the old system of knowledge. The conception of so-called semiotic philosophy is made impossible by two tendencies: the lack of a semiotic discipline and the lack of a philosophy-centered humanities. The contemporary de-philosophizing process has been concurrent with the interdisciplinary process in social and human sciences. When metaphysical and ontological parts in philosophy cannot provide theoretical foundation for human knowledge, People have attempted to obtain a more suitable and more effective theoretical framework as the scientific foundation for scholarship in the new academic situations. Precisely, they are epistemological and. methodological systems organized in the interdisciplinary situations. And the so-called general theory of semiotics is naturally a part of the new theoretical systems shaped along the interdisciplinary direction. Their constituent parts can cover the linguistic, logic-semantic, language-philosophical, non-verbal semantic, pragmatic and axiologic-semantic. All such fields are about significative constructions, including the pragmatically and behavioral semantic aspects. But they should not cover the positively scientific and logically inferential parts. For the latter two can be much better handled in academically related disciplines. Why does semiotics try to irrelevantly intrude into other’s fields?

9. The necessity of general distinction between the semiotic and the scientific process makes us also be careful about those pseudo-scientific process contained in the phenomena of social, cultural and humanist sciences: namely the empirically causal, logically inferential and socially communicative. These processes are used by the disciplines of both natural and social sciences, possessing their own regularities along the scientific line. Existing in the same empirical compounds, they are “ontologically” and functionally separate from the semiotic-semantic processes. For handling those pseudo-scientific processes other scientific aspects in scientific disciplines will be involved. That is why some typical semiotic subjects like the semiotic-inferential, logically structural and communicative studies should be considered more in combination with the sciences than within semiotics. General distinctions among significative, communicative, inferential and pragmatic rocesses

are due to a consideration about operational efficiencies in the related scientific practices. This is one of the reasons why we are skeptical about adopting a scientific or pseudo-scientific foundation for semiotic studies. For example, the conception of 

cultural logic merely based on a communicative and systematic theory could suffer 

from its scientific one-sidedness because of its focus on empirical regularities of cultural life which still requires many other positive inquiries. Generally speaking,

cultural, social and historical studies in connection with semiotics should be combined with many other approaches beside the semiotic ones. Thus it is undesirable to set a semiotic foundation for such a synthetically composed project.

10. ln light of the above, we should continue emphasizing a traditional division between natural and social (or cultural or human) sciences because of the heterogeneity of objects and methods of both fields. Blurring the distinction will  end to the neglect of the characteristics of social phenomena and their related sciences and thence to the simplification of social and cultural analyses. Social sciences must learn from natural sciences in positive dimensions but also keep an independent perspective as to their own social constitutions, which are more and more attentive to the primary work of semantic descriptions prior to all other subsequent procedures. Consequently, it is strategically desirable to arrange emiotics within the world of social and human sciences, so as to enrich the total fruits of our intellectual efforts. On the other hand, the necessity of methodological divisions leads us to pay more attention to the neighboring fields; the intellectual challenge is of course accordingly enhanced.

11. Semiotics is specialized in analyzing semantic-related objects with the significative, axiological, ideological and pragmatic layers. The meaning of an object here is a semantic compound which is of multi-dimensional. By contrast, the meaning of an object in natural sciences is one-dimensional. Compared with all other approaches to meaning, to say the analytic; phenomenological, hermeneutic and pragmatic in philosophy, history, literature, arts, theology and sociology, semiotics is more effective in doing axiologic-semantic analysis, which remains the serious challenge to human knowledge and yet the most crucial to human welfare and justice. And a related important field for semiotic approaches is the western-eastern comparative studies implicative of more axiological and ideological divergence. Semiotics must and will play a determinative role in modernizing strategy in the field of comparative studies.

*  This paper was delivered at the Vth Congress of IASS, Berkeley July 1994, being included into the Proceedings, Mouton de Gruyter, Berlin,1997