(The paper was read in the 5th IASS Congress, Berkeley and published in Semiotic Around World 1995-96, Vienna ) 1. Semiotics as a Discipline or as a Working Field? 2. Divergence of Substantial Aspects vs. Homogeneity of Formal Aspects 3. General Semiotics and Semiotic Philosophy 5. Semiotics As The Semantic-Directed Endeavors 6. Semiotics as Intellectual Adventure in Interdisciplinary Transformations of the Academic World 7. The Current De-Philosophizing Tendency and Theoretical Epistemology of Social/Human Sciences 8. Reorganizing our Axiological World through Semiotic Approaches
1. Semiotics as a Discipline or as a Working Field?
1.1. Semiotics as an academic field is in remarkable contrast with semiotics taken as a scientific discipline. When A. Eischbach points out that “semiotics is in a state of crisis”, he must first presuppose the existence of a semiotic discipline. Otherwise it would be meaningless to say “the various theories do not compete with one another, but simply pass each other by”. (A. Eschbach & W. Koch, ed., 1987, 45-46) When Sebeok asked colleagues what semiotics was a few years ago, the various answers, despite their different points of view, also implicitly assumed that a definite academic area called semiotics indeed existed. (SEMIOTICA, v. 61-3/4,1986,369-388) Meanwhile, the attempt to unify the divergent directions of semiotic studies is concomitant with the effort to establish or strengthen the theoretical foundation of semiotics. Then we read Eschbach's warning that “...(semiotics) has criminally neglected to build up a critical general methodology or a sure theoretical foundation.” (ibid., 51) The intelligibility of the statement also depends on the existence of a potentially unified discipline or science. Otherwise, we cannot establish a theoretical foundation only for an academic mixture of heterogeneous topics, let alone the philosophical basis claimed by many modern theoretical semioticians.
1.2. First we should distinguish between semiotics as an actual working field and semiotics as a well-organized science or discipline. In light of the strong heterogeneity of current semiotic studies, how can we present any meaningful design for a “theoretical foundation of a discipline” (Eschbach), a “cultural logic” (Lotman), a “general semiotics” (Eco) or a semiotic philosophy (Pierce)? Of course, some general concepts like “sign”, “semiosis”, “communication” and others can become the effective common denominators used to universally re-describe a variety of cultural phenomena. First of all, the central concept “sign” seems to be the pivotal operator used for universal semiotic descriptions. Thus the current popularity of inquiries into the history of signs. Many recent anti-dogmatic critics emphasize the importance of contemporary research on sign history. It has been said that modern semiotics has a rich, continuous historical dimension and the modern conceptions of signs can be taken as a natural outcome of the historical development. However, despite using the same word, modern conceptions of sign are very divergent, from Saussure and Pierce to Husserl. If we cannot use the general word “logos” or “word” to unify different theoretical discourses containing the same central verbal units, why do we think we can do it with the word “sign”? Despite the rich heritages of the Greek and the Medieval sign histories, historical semiotics cannot be compared with its modern counterpart in respect to theoretical depth and systematic consistency. Modern semiotics is above all the product of modern sciences in general; it is more a consequence of modern science than an outcome of sign history. Indeed, if we ignore the importance of its contemporary scientific context, we will not know what to make of the history of signs. Therefore the “reconstructing work of semiotics” raised by some current historiography of sign could overestimates the historical contributions to the concept of sign. Generally speaking, the exaggeration of the importance of sign history is mainly due to a preconception of the presumed identity of semiotics as an implicit discipline or science, like logic and grammar. Even Eschbach, who criticizes the idea of semiotics as a “new organon of all sciences”, still assumes the existence of “a discipline”, despite his acknowledgment that it “never stood on a firm base”. (Eschbach 1987, 46)
1.3. The same can be said about hermeneutic studies. As I have said elsewhere, “the contemporary hermeneutic trends are the consequences of interaction between hermeneutic histories and modern humanities, without limiting ourselves to the bounds of intellectual history, we must take account of the total academic world of the modern humanities for the sake of understanding the theoretical problems of hermeneutics.”(Li, You-Zheng 1988, 116). One of the motives for focusing on studies of hermeneutic history is the intention to strengthen the identity of hermeneutics as an independent discipline. Even if there were systematic hermeneutical disciplines in the medieval and early modern intellectual history (theology, jurisprudence, philology and rhetoric), we can hardly say a semiotic counterpart existed or was formulated in a systematic way in ancient or modern history. Without modern linguistics as a typical scientific discipline, could we imagine the emergence of the contemporary semiotic movement?
1.4 Broadly speaking, we should think about the relations between modern semiotics and ancient traditional philosophy as an all-inclusive scholarship before the emergence of modern sciences. If ancient thinking about signs and symbols stimulated the early scientific scholarship, since the outset of modern times it has been modern sciences which, in collaboration with modern philosophy, have prepared a scientific foundation for modern semiotics. In the course of modern intellectual history mathematics and natural sciences have achieved an effectively dynamic autonomy with no important role played by philosophy or the humanities. The same can be said about the relation between science and the study of signs. All logic-mathematic and empiric-scientific studies should be handled within that scientific world which has been strictly and effectively organized. Semiotics shouldn't be so naively ambitious as to intrude into the scientific world. That doesn't mean a devaluation of semiotics; on the contrary, a correct self-knowledge will allow semiotics more meaningfully to direct its attention in more relevant and more significant directions. Its traditional vocation lay in making the less scientific to the more scientific, helping prepare for an era of properly scientific studies. This task has been finished in the field of natural science. Now semiotics with the same purpose and objective, should turn its attention to other fields of social and human sciences .
2. Divergence of Substantial Aspects vs. Homogeneity of Formal Aspects
2.1. It is evident that semiotics as a working field consists of a great number of subjects originally arising from other disciplines and areas which have been academically and professionally established in modern times. Semiotics becomes therefore an intersection of two dimensions: the substantially disciplinary and the formally (linguistically and pragmatically) thematic. On the one hand, both general directions of signification and communication in semiotic studies show a general formalist tendency. On the other hand, semiotic studies are parasitic on a variety of existent academic branches. Semiotics is an inter-dimensional as well as an interdisciplinary contact of formalist procedures and substantial subjects. On the one hand, it is a contact between procedures and contents; on the other the same semiotic procedures bring the contents of different disciplines contact in each other. Unlike linguistics, semiotics is a general title of an academic mixture which has not yet formed and do not need to be formed a discipline. It's main part is a mere collection of various parallel form/content analyses, each of which is substantively tied to its originating discipline. Any collection of scientific themes can of course temporarily form a synthetic field, which can easily show a methodological unity. But a scientific unity can hardly be obtained within semiotics as a larger field, merely by dint of such relative operational coherence. Because of its complicated interdisciplinary background, any epistemological or methodological unity of the temporarily formed semiotic field can be hardly established in conjunction with its other multiply involved academic relations.
2.2. Any successful attempt to establish a theoretical foundation for semiotics depends on a definite identity of the working field. Hjelmslev's theoretical effort is intelligible because he limits his attention to the linguistic area only. The constitutional unity of the specially chosen area can justify his theoretical foundation for his glossematics. The semiotic works of Barthes and Metz are so successful because, limiting themselves to the specifically limited domains, they consciously seek for epistemological and methodological unification at the levels of both objects and methods, which are especially chosen for the purpose of obtaining a semantic and operational homogeneity. The significance of their strategy lies in keeping such a target of semantic and institutional unification within a pertinently limited area. Then they can attain the theoretical foundations for literature and film respectively, handled as scholarly totalities. In the absence of an academic totality consisting of semantic, referential, stylistic, inferential and institutional dimensions, they cannot meaningfully design theoretical foundations for their objects. There have indeed been some successful “theoretical foundations” in various local semiotics. But the efforts at theoretical foundations for general semiotics or general study of signs and symbols have seriously suffered from the heterogeneity of their substantial content and institutional backgrounds. For an example of this kind we can mention not only the earlier works of Cassirer and Morris, but also many current semioticians. The mere words like “sign”, “symbol” and “index”, because of their complex involvement in thousands of subjects through contextual usage, can hardly be effective unifying operators in organizing semiotic analyses. In other words, unification of scientific theories is not secured only on the basis of the presence of specific terminology in discourses.
2.3. Greimas, on a large scale, also attempts to provide a linguistics-centered semiotic foundation for the whole of the social sciences. It is this linguistics-centrism which forms such projects as the establishment of some theoretical foundations for semiotic fields. Greimas' linguistic immanentism successfully provides theoretical foundation only for a linguistically defined field or for the linguistically semantic dimension of various fields. But current semiotic activities as a whole are much more extensive and synthetic than those of the linguistics-centered semioticians. Most semiotic practitioners have to face the epistemological pressure caused by the interdisciplinary character of semiotic approaches. Without a conception of the scope and composition of semiotics, they can hardly aspire to set up a theoretical foundation for a not yet solidly established scientific structure.
2.4. From the angle of academic classification, semiotics should be separated from its close neighboring fields of “logic” and “linguistics”. The latter are mainly concerned with purely formal approaches which have limited scopes of objects and objectives. Semiotics, despite its close relations to the two formal disciplines, is directed to the parallel aspects of form and content: the heterogeneously composed world is its object, and formal procedures to semantically delimit and chart the world are its methods. Comparable objectives concerning the natural part of the world have been successfully achieved by natural sciences within their system; while that concerning the human and social part of the world has remained virtually neglected until now. Apparently logic and semiotics can be collectively responsible for formal aspects of both natural and social sciences. But a reasonable distinction should be made between logic and semiotics because of the assertive, inferential and verification functions of the former which are systematically employed in procedures of empirical sciences. Much of ancient thought about signs has lost the systematic applicability to modern semiotics because of the changed academic context. It is also because the original scientific direction of the thought of sings concerning assertive and inferential problems which had already been gradually absorbed into the later formed scientific disciplines. According to modern academic classification some ancient thought of signs can be included in primitive history of science. By contrast, those parts of sign thinking dealing with psychological descriptions, the categorical classification and theories of names dealt with by the medieval theologians, have remained in the center of semiotic studies owing to their purely semantic implications, which remain the central concerns in current social and human sciences.
Apel points out that Leibniz' revolutionary contribution to the founding of mathematic logic led to a logistic semiotics which replaces the earlier rhetoric humanist ideology and the Aristotelian鈥慡cholastic “substantial explanations of world in daily language”. (Apel 1976, v. 1, 155) But it is just here that we see an important disciplinary demarcation between the logical-mathematical/scientific and the semantic/intuitive/practical. The semiotic is directed towards the ambiguous rather than the explicit world, although unlike the ontological-deconstructive philosophy of language, it intends to transform the ambiguous to the explicit through precise semantic descriptions. Since the onset of modern times logic has turned its attention to inference and demonstration through operational precision. The divergence between the logical and the significative has been increasing rather than decreasing, while the extensive confusion of two processes in the pragmatist-behavioral trends has become widely influential.
Concerning the relation between problems of semiotic inference and those of semiotic signification the present author points out that it is true that the ancient thoughts of sign are mostly about causal connections between signs and signified. But when a causal connection of this kind is fixed and accepted, it becomes pragmatically a significative one, in that the causation is used as signification. Then we can not say the causal and the signifying processes are “united” now. For we should also make a distinction between the factual overlapping and the functional unification of the two processes. There are many ways to form signification; natural causation is also one of them. (refer to Li, You-Zheng 1993, 252-255)
On the other hand, studies of natural causation of signs contributed a lot to the formation of sciences. But here we should distinguish between the scientific and semiotic contributions. If logical semantics of various kinds are included in semantic studies in general, we can say that there are two kinds of history of signs: logic-directed and semantic-directed. The function of the former has been absorbed into natural sciences and mathematics. Generally speaking, we can even use the basic distinction between the scientific and the semiotic procedures in our intellectual world. The former can include the inferential (logic) as well as pragmatic(communicational) domains and the latter the semantic one in a broad sense. The distinction is concerned with an epistemological strategy which is connected not only with semiotic studies in particular, but also with social sciences in general.
3. General Semiotics and Semiotic Philosophy
3.1. Discourse about semiotics in terms of a philosophy is different from the provision of a philosophy for semiotics. Many contemporary philosophers, including Pierce, Cassier, Wittgenstein, Carnap, Searl, Davison, Husserl, Ricoeur, Gadamer, Habermas, Apel and others, discuss semiotics and language. A semiotic philosophy on the other hand would prepare a philosophical or theoretical foundation for semiotics as a discipline or a scientifically organized field. So-called general semiotics attempts to provide a theoretical foundation for a semiotic system. But until now, except in the field of linguistic semiotics, the efforts at general semiotics have been much less fruitful than the theoretical efforts at local semiotics, which can more relevantly focus on pertinent themes such as literature, film, music, painting, architecture and others, which have been traditionally not regarded as belonging to the field of sciences. The main difficulty of theoretical unification lies in heterogeneity of both objects and methods involved in the scopes of general semiotics.
3.2. When M. Douglas warns against the danger of the premature systematization and false formalization of some general semiotics (refer to SEMIOTICA, 1984,V.98-1/2,97), she just touches the same epistemological problems about theoretical foundations of semiotics. Her reasonable caution is due to her acknowledgment of the intricate composition of semiotics as a working field. A rash generalization for an arbitrarily chosen group of semiotic subjects cannot be taken as the proper foundation for a not yet well defined research field. Greimas and Eco present different conceptions of general semiotics. If the former is more homogeneously constituted and the latter is more eclectic in its constitution, that is mainly due to the degree of clarity of definitions of their respectively chosen scopes and methods of semiotic studies. Without understanding Eco's concept of “innate object of semiotics”, people can hardly grasp his conceptions of “meta-semiotics”, “general semiotics” or “a philosophy” for semiotics. There may be a great number of important theoretical topics in connection with semiotic studies; and there can be many alternative selections of topics within any theoretical framework. But how can we justify selecting one or two topics as the proper or innate scope of semiotics? Furthermore, the criteria for identifying semiotic topics are also connected with the total epistemological structure of human knowledge. Eco says “...a general semiotics is nothing else but a philosophy of language” (Eco 1984,4) and the related classical issues are “meaning, reference, truth, context, communicational acts (be they vocal or else), as well as many logical problems such as analytic vs. synthetic, necessity, implication, entailment, inference, hypothesis, and so on.” (ibid., 7). But these above mentioned semiotic issues come from these established disciplines like linguistics, logic and analytic philosophy of language. The so-called general semiotics is treated as if it were only a collection of theoretical issues arbitrarily taken from different disciplines. Or we take different theoretically interesting problems from various fields and put them together in a group for the convenience of argument. Such a compound of theoretical problems does not constitute a theoretical totality with innate coherence. The formed system of semiotic topics with a name of general semiotics may be based on one or several set of philosophical or scientific principles, expressing therefore some individual preference. For example, both substantial and methodological heterogeneity in Eco's general semiotics makes it an eclectic combination of analytic philosophy of language, structural linguistics, information theory and pragmatic behaviorism. There is no doubt that all of those topics are interesting for semiotic inquiry, but we cannot thereby justify the theoretical merit of the combination itself, nor does it assure that it will be generally accepted as a profitable theoretical framework for all semiotic projects. If most of his chosen subjects have been actually dealt with in other disciplines, the combination of them would hardly lead to a separately productive result merely by naming it the semiotic. As a result, his general semiotics is constructed through combination rather than through unification. The two basically different directions of sign thinking: the scientific (the Stoic/Lebniz/Pierce: communicational) and the semantic (the Augustine/Saussure/Hjelmslev: significative), unfortunately blur a necessary distinction between the two orientations of sign activities.
3.3. Concerning the relations of philosophy of language to semiotics in general, there is a methodological hindrance which misleads semiotic reflections. Just think how many different types of philosophy of language there are. Philosophical discussions of language can be organized from quite different perspectives: beside the analytic there are the pragmatic, phenomenological, existentially ontological and hermeneutic approaches. All of them are proper parts of those larger philosophies themselves. Then we will immediately mix the specifically semiotic discussions with the general philosophical ones, and therefore blur the focuses of semiotic analysis. The philosophical discussions around language cover a larger and more intricate area than the semiotic in our proper sense. The most heterogeneously different examples of philosophy of language are given by the Heideggerian and the Carnapian. The involved topics are connected with different subjects ranging from metaphysical-ontological to verification-logical. While strategically speaking, we should narrow rather than widen our domain of discourses in a working field so as to attain a higher commensuability of contents. By the way, not only philosophy of language, but also philosophy in general will unnecessarily weaken the particular efficiency of semiotic analysis. The proper semiotic instead should be modest enough to stick to the task of precise semantic descriptions.
3.4. When philosophy or philosophy of language is emphasized in semiotics, it manifests a concern with the unified theoretical foundation of semiotic studies of various kinds. Historically or academically, philosophy has been taken as the appropriate foundation for any scholarly approach. On the other hand, because there are so many different philosophical schools, theoretically there could be many philosophical foundations for semiotic theories. Thus we can currently have analytical philosophy with its various branches, but also phenomenology, pragmatism, hermeneutics and others. The dialogues between semiotics and philosophical schools are determined by the chosen arrangements of the involved elements contained in both. As a matter of fact, the so called philosophical foundation of semiotics can only be taken as an academic dialogue between a philosophy and the chosen semiotic topics. Such a scholarly connection doesn't mean to provide a “foundation” in a strict sense. It is a fact that almost every philosophical school contains some semiotic aspects, but a traditionally formed academic body organized according to certain principles is not especially directed to a semiotic world. Phenomenology or pragmatism, or Husserl or Pierce, cannot provide a complete theoretical foundation for semiotics which keeps its present productive flexibility in both contents and methods. Instead, semiotics searches for its own intelligent coherence of theoretical practices at the epistemological and methodological level rather than in some rigidly fixed systems presenting an illusion of orderliness.
On the other hand, there are two different conceptions of “foundation”: that for substantial hierarchy and that for operational principles, or, the foundation of system and that of methods. For an ill-organized field only the latter type, which is connected with a rationality of operational coherence, is intelligible. But a mere collection of related methods from various areas can hardly provide the foundation for a general semiotics which is only some artificially formed system of subjects. There is still a problem about why a collection of methods is taken as being a reasonable methodological foundation. An arbitrary collection, whether of theoretical substances or of concrete theoretical methods, can not be equivalent to a theoretical foundation for semiotics. At most, systems of general semiotics are only interesting collections of semiotic subjects which are still connected with substantial determinations in other disciplines. Methods borrowed from other disciplines are only temporary solution to significative analysis in a chosen field. Inclusion of those methods in semiotic practices depends on their further applicability. That the methods are useful does not imply that they can comprise a metaphysical system as the foundation of semiotic operations. Semiotics cannot be made a new dogmatic hierarchy of any kind.
3.5. Semiotics still works within and between the traditionally and institutionally established disciplines, seeking for its super/trans-disciplinary theoretical objectives and thus seeking to keep its intellectual flexibility, which has been unfavorably limited by our present academic institutionalization. On the other hand, philosophy as a traditional discipline has been too profoundly involved in traditional and current institutions. If some advocates for de-philosophizing thought still need to make much use of the traditional function of philosophy, we can understand how closely philosophy still has tried to maintain its guiding or controlling power over the humanities today. The stress on the fundamental role of philosophy is innately connected with a desire to maintain traditional academic institutions which are contrary to the current interdisciplinary tendency. Jacques Derrida, in his recent eccentric justification for philosophy, stresses a necessity to “maintain a unity of philosophical discipline against the seducing tropisms of human sciences” and thereby to strengthen “the critical force of philosophy and philosophical epistemology”. (Derrida 1990, 176) And he also warns against “a pseudo-scientific dispersion”. For Althusser as well as for Derrida, the unity and critical power of philosophical discipline is a pragmatic weapon against “the interdisciplinary myth” and “the eclectic hybrid” (Althusser 1974, 38, 46). Their stress on “the critically unifying function of philosophical discipline” only exhibits their reliance on the institutional tradition in the academic world. But they should have thought of another kind of academic unity: the semantically unifying function. The reorganizing tendency arising from current interdisciplinary activities has been caused by the rational requirements for semantic unification within the total discursive network of mankind. A semantic task is always prior to the philosophical ones.
3.6. The disorganizing and rearranging processes of the present academic world is concurrent with de-philosophizing and interdisciplinary tendencies. Semiotics is part of this general movement. Interdisciplinary activities have their own special theoretical requirements which must be in accordance with semiotic theories. Therefore the newly emerging interdisciplinary-directed epistemological and methodological theories of the current social and human sciences are institutionally disconnected from the traditional philosophical systems. Under such conditions semiotic studies do not require, indeed, should avoid, a theoretical unification led by the traditional philosophical institutions or systematization. In that connection, we can say a contrast is remarkably emerging between the philosophical and the theoretical strategies in social and human sciences today.
4.1. We know clearly from historical studies of signs that semiotic topics and primitive sciences had close relations, for example in ancient physics, medicine and medieval psychology. But the modern scientific and technological progress has basically changed these interactional relations. Sciences and technology have gained operational autonomy without needing further intellectual support from traditional scholarship, be it philosophy or semiotics. Unlike the natural sciences, social and human sciences, as a combination of traditional and scientific scholarship, present a different perspective where semiotics occupies a more and more important role. The traditional thoughts of signs within philosophical history had indeed promoted scientific growth through increasing semantic clarity in scientific thinking. But when scientific concepts are defined within the later regularly established scientific systems, they can function satisfactorily within the systems without tracing back to their philosophical or semiotic origins, which are in fact only part of their formation. It is true that semiotic approaches have helped increase semantic clarity or precision in fields full of conceptual ambiguity. But when the task of semantic clarification is finished, the semiotic approach becomes redundant. Then come the empirically and positively scientific procedures. This is true with both natural and social sciences. In my opinion there should be a basic demarcation between the semiotic and positively scientific procedures and strategies. The semiotic is a “pre-scientific” or a semantically preparative procedure for the later, genuinely scientific, treatments in a field. (refer to Li, You-Zheng 1993, 77) In the interaction between semiotics, natural sciences and social sciences today, it seems to be the case that semiotics needs natural sciences and is needed by social sciences, while such scientific tasks as positive judgments and logical inferences provided by normal scientific procedures do not need to be included into the field of semiotics. In other words there should be a division of labor between the semiotic and the scientific, as we pointed out. 4.2. In light of the foregoing we can infer that no scientific system can become a scientific foundation for semiotics, either, because of their different character and tasks. Mathematics and physics cannot become models of theoretical foundations for the social sciences as the Vienna Circle demonstrated, cybernetics and information theory cannot become theoretical foundations for cultural sciences, either. Both physics and cybernetics can be effectively appealed to from some theoretical points of view, but they cannot provide a theoretical basis for construction of the cultural sciences as a whole. For the same reason we can say that the cultural models of the Tartu school was also limited by the mechanistic methodology based on modern communication theories, which were ideologically acceptable during the communist period. The phenomenon of the Tartu school was a combination of the intellectual creation and the academic limitation. The communication aspects are only one dimension of the whole picture of semiotics as cultural scholarship. Therefore so called cultural logic developing along the communicational lines only presents a one dimensional picture of our rich historical and cultural world. 4.3. There is a semiotics of various disciplines of social and human sciences as well as of various sub-disciplines in culture and the arts. The term “semiotics” here refers to the semiotic aspects of those disciplines, such as the significative and communicational aspects in general and various local topics in particular. The established principles appropriate for a particular discipline in the academic world cannot be simplistically turned into the principles of a general semiotics as well. Briefly, semiotics or semiotic studies as a working field requires neither philosophical nor scientific foundations, if by that is understood a set of dogmatic principles for constructing a semiotic system. Semiotics today should not and cannot be reduced to a dogmatic system of signs, semiosis, discourses or communication, whether in terms of philosophy or of science, to hamper its free and fruitful progress.
5. Semiotics As The Semantic-Directed Endeavors
5.1. It seems that semiotics plays the same role as logic and grammar or linguistics. If so, why does it not appear as a new universally accepted discipline called semiotics, along side logic and grammar? The formalist impulse leads people to turn semiotics into an expanded formal discipline like AI and catastrophe theory in order to gain more general or universal formulations of the semiotic aspects of whole fields of human knowledge. As a matter of fact, there is a tendency to describe important scientific achievements obtained in other disciplines as semiotic achievements. For example we tend to use the name semiotic to refer to different subjects arising from other disciplines such as mathematics and logic. The habit of arbitrarily calling semiotic subjects from other disciplines represents our epistemological confusion about the proper and relevant scope of semiotic studies. 5.2. Here we are faced with general problems of disciplinary demarcation of different academic fields. Whether in traditional logic and grammar or in other modern formal disciplines, there is always an epistemological task of making a basic distinction between the relevant and the irrelevant in our semiotic analyses. Therefore above all we should be clear about the pertinent criteria for such distinctions. Here I attempt to emphasize a general direction of semiotic approaches along a universal significative line which is the parallel coordination between the expressing side and the expressed. The general orientation of significative semiotics represented successively by Saussure, Hjelmslev and Greimas provides a basic heuristic model which is of course limited to the linguistic. But it has the merit of minimalism or neutrality in its epistemological commitment. As a basic mechanism to produce semantic clarity it limits its ambition to the semantic aspects of our academic world, leaving other related aspects for other sciences. As a result, there is a cooperative rather than competitive relation between semiotics and the related sciences. It is evident that this linguistics-centered semiotics cannot become a comprehensive theoretical foundation for other positive sciences either, of the sort Greimas envisioned. (Greimas 1976,9) It is evident that the linguistic model used at early stages of research can be very useful in constructing a universal program of attaining intelligible coherence of semantic descriptions of heterogeneous domains. In fact, it can help make precise and clarify our objects before proceeding to scientific treatments. This is the great task of semiotics today in human history: to help design a more intelligible topography of our semantically heterogeneous world. 6. Semiotics as Intellectual Adventure in Interdisciplinary Transformations of the Academic World
6.1. As a universal semantic endeavor semiotics shows its involvements in both objects and approaches. On one hand it is involved in all fields which are characterized by a semantic ambiguity, if the latter cannot be solved within the regular disciplines. On the other it is involved in various semantic planes ranging from linguistic, stylistic, axiological, and institutional to pragmatic. Semiotics is the title of various technical procedures for all kinds of semantic clarifications. Those procedures arise in various disciplines as the established principles of producing intellectual products. They can be employed naturally and separately (like those operating within various disciplines) or consciously and synthetically (like those gathered in one artificial group called semiotics). In any case semiotic approaches or procedures work in combination with other empirically positive as well as metaphysical activities. As regards human knowledge as a whole, whether linguistic or pragmatic, the semantic approach is only a constitutive of the total required strategic system.
6.2. We are faced with other very important semantic-related field: comparative studies of various types. Comparative studies can be employed between any coordinate fields: for example between Western and non-Western (especially those between Western and the Chinese), the modern and the ancient, the scientific and the literary, the theoretical and the practical, the conscious and the unconscious, the religious and the atheistic, and between various axiological systems. For any comparative studies, we first need to establish semantic common denominators as a basic working framework; otherwise intellectual dialogues between the two heterogeneous fields cannot be reasonably established. For comparative studies between the western traditional cultures and the oriental ones, semiotic approaches have become necessary tools. Without this basic semantic preparation, the two sides compared can hardly join in meaningful and fruitful dialogues.
7. The Current De-Philosophizing Tendency and Theoretical Epistemology of Social/Human Sciences
7.1. The above discussions attempt to clarify the identity of semiotics. We repeat that a collection of semiotic procedures and results cannot obtain its theoretical foundation from any philosophical background. In fact there cannot be a philosophical framework for constructing semiotic theory for two reasons. In addition to the above discussed reason about the uncertain identity of semiotic studies, there is another reason which relates to the nature of philosophy itself. Following the increasing expansion of the current humanities via the inter/multi-disciplinary methodologies, a conception of theoretical foundations different from the philosophical one has been emerging, for example in the fields of philosophy of history and aesthetics. Solid fields of historical theory and theories of art have arisen which are not connected with the philosophical ones. The humanities need a more productive and more flexible conception of theoretical foundations now, and the semantic dimension occupies a central position. Semiotic theory as epistemological and methodological approach naturally shares in forming the new theoretical frameworks for reorganizing human sciences, while where philosophy is only one among many branches and has been losing or decreasing its earlier controlling power. It is not appropriate to prepare one more philosophical foundation for social and human sciences, even if a eclectic one, when the whole structure of the academic world has undergone such serious changes.
7.2. In light of the foregoing we can conclude that the problems concerning the theoretical framework for general and local semiotics must be more connected with the changes in the epistemology of the social and human sciences to accommodate their new interdisciplinary, academically readjusted direction, than with the established philosophical system with which they are associated. In other words, since the semiotic approaches must be more and more employed in various branches of the human sciences, the theoretical problems of the human sciences must also become closer to those of semiotics. We can even say that the problems of theoretical framework of semiotic studies are constituent parts of those of social and human sciences as a whole. As an actively creative force in the interdisciplinary development of social and human sciences, semiotics cannot separate its own endeavors from those sciences.
7.3. In the more difficult and more important field of Western-Eastern comparative studies, semiotics can play an irreplaceable role in epistemological and methodological inquiries. Particularly in this delicately formed field, any established philosophical system cannot be used as a theoretical foundation or basis because it would bring with it its own traditionally and historically determined pre-structures. Because the semantic, argumentative and institutional organizations of the two cultural and academic worlds are essentially different, a more neutral framework of scientific descriptions and theoretical analysis is required. Compared with other methodologies, semiotics can be organized and employed more neutrally, taking “neutrality” to mean “the scientifically acceptable”.
7.4. Present-day semiotic studies as a whole indeed need to reorganize their internal and external relations on the basis of a more consistent theoretical framework and to readjust their positions, criteria, directions, objects, objectives, methods and interdisciplinary relationship in a more systematic and logically coherent way. Semiotics as a field of semiotic studies is only a temporary working place or academic “market” for synthetic operations on semiotic aspects selected from various particular disciplines. As an interdisciplinary endeavor, semiotics needs to self-consciously participate in interdisciplinary activities, strengthening its dialogues with epistemological and methodological works contained within philosophy, such as the hermeneutic, phenomenological, analytic and pragmatist schools, when the latter are not taken as dogmatic systems.
8. Reorganizing our Axiological World through Semiotic Approaches
8.1. Almost every important contemporary semiotician recognizes that semiotics is an effective and relevant tool to carry out the ideological analysis which is connected with axiological, utilitarian and institutional factors in our culture and society. Ideological studies are directly related to human welfare and justice which have never been secured in our modern civilization. Of the many difficulties in overcoming ideological divergence, semantic and axiological confusion are crucially relevant. In this respect semiotic analysis can make a great contribution. It is in this sense that semiotics is extremely significant for our practical life as well. As a means clarifying semantic confusion semiotics is a suitable weapon against an intellectually disorderly world, especially those undemocratic areas arising in the transitional period from the traditional to the modern. In a sense, the disorderly states of both the Western and Eastern intellectual worlds today have been caused by the weak condition of our social and human sciences, which can still not produce results comparable to the success of natural and technological sciences. Contemporary semiotics and the contemporary development of the social and human sciences belong to the same intellectual trend. It is especially in the sophisticated fields of axiology and ideology the problem of a pertinent semiotic strategy becomes more and more important. Here the significative direction of semiotic studies is more relevant than the logic-communicative one. Either logical positivism or pragmatist-behaviorism tends to methodologically neglect the elusive objects of our axiological and mental domains. 8.2. Science it is currently less determined by professionally competitive motives, semiotics would better pay more attention to its essential problems, rather than vainly trying to build up a new discipline in the existent academic world, whether through reconstructing an independent history of signs or by dint of laying a philosophical foundation for it. On the other hand, semiotics shouldn't be taken as mere intellectual acrobatics; it can be very useful and beneficial for mankind. If the situation is still not so clear in the developed countries, where intellectual forces has become less and less influential on social realities under the conditions of ever-increasing institutionalization, it will be more evident in less well organized societies, which have been widely dominated by conceptual systems directly descended from their own historical traditions. Dialectically speaking, semiotics is one of the most effective methodologies to deal with semantic and ideological demystification, and can be especially helpful in promoting social progress in the developing world. Semiotics should be the tool for strengthening rather than weakening human rationality. For the sake of attaining this objective, semiotics, instead of vainly seeking for an independent identity, should work as a member of the total academic community in collaboration with other members. Either a semiotic imperialism or a semiotic exclusivism is equally undesirable.
8.3. Each theoretical approach consists of questions, fields, disciplines and schools. And each of its constituent parts has been historically fashioned. The total theoretical world consists of a great number of such competitive theoretical approaches. The interactions of those different theoretical approaches must occur at each level of their constituent parts as well as at the crosspoints of different levels. The interactional picture of our academic community becomes more complex when we consider the involved dimensions of the conceptually axiological, academically institutional and socially powerful aspects. (refer to Li, 1993,90) Our world of meaning as embodied in our academics has traditionally been full of ambiguity and confusion. Facing such an intellectual situation, we need to make our axiological world clearer and clearer, by adopting more enlightened outlook and by means of more effective methods. This is the task, more scientific than philosophical, before us today. Before the task of axiological and ideological clarification, there is first a task of all-comprehensive semantic clarification. Semiotics is the tool with which to approach these two related tasks. Our theoretical practices should remain constantly aware of glance to the necessary epistemological dichotomies in our rationally operational orientation: the inferential/the semantic; the scientific/the semiotic; the natural scientific/the socio-human scientific; and the philosophical/the interdisciplinary. Rather than any rigidly formed system of dogmatic judgments, what is theoretically required by semiotic practices is an ever improved operational foundations, rationally organized within the interdisciplinary epistemological and methodological framework of our times.
Apel, K.O. (1976): Transformation der Philosophie, B. 1, Suhrkamp. Althusser, L. (1974): Philosophie et Philosophie Spontanee des Savants, Maspero. Derrida, J. (1990): Du Droit à Philosophie, Galilee. Eco, U. (1984): Semiotics and Philosophy of Language, Indiana University Press. Eschbach, A. & Koch, W.A. (ed) (1987): A Plea for Cultural Semiotics, Brockmeyer Bochum. Greimas, A. (1976): Semiotique et Sciences Socieles, Seuil. Li, You-Zheng (1988): “Hermeneutics and Chinese Studies of Hermeneutics” (in Chinese), Chinese Culture Quarterly, Hong Kong. ——(1993): Introduction to Theoretical Semiotics (in Chinese), The Chinese Social Sciences Publishing House, Beijing, 1993
* This article was prepared for the Vth Congress of IASS, Berkely, July 1994 and first published in Semiotics around the World, IASS Annual 1995/1996, Kopitu, Vienna, 1996. The English of the article is corrected by Mary Rorty (Edit:admin) |
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