GARY. C. MOORE:
As in *He is a cultured person* or *He is a person of high culture.* The bag lady, the homeless person, the tramp, the illiterate illegal immigrant are all people of  *culture*, and even more, according to Eco, *culture* is *culture*, it is what it is. It has a public history that is subject to scholarly study but evaluation is purely subjective and applicable only privately within one˘s personal context. That disposes of aesthetics and ethics.

***

Now, what has history become in modern life? There are four possible approaches -- [A] the history of science, more for some than for others, is becoming more and more important in assessing scientific research, opening up possible prejudices of view in selected fields; [B] history is becoming a detective story where once held sacred cows are being torn apart to find not so much the *real truth* but that there are many possibilities of what really happened with only a few even probable while marginal interpretations might retain a valid marginality with the possibility of re-evaluation; [C] the American approach that history is totally irrelevant since modern technology has completely changed the playing field of comparing past with present situations so that the past has no relevance versus the European view that the past determines how we *see* and understand [in depth] and use technology thereby actually limiting its playing field [both European and American in their own ways], and [D] the constant changing of the present not perceived as a trivial event that changes not only the understanding of the past but also the understanding of the present moment -- now already changed -- which is due not only from the splinting of scientific/scholarly study from one sure point of view into several feasible points of view but also the destruction of any point of view of a *knower*, a *perceiver* into several subjects depending on the processes they are performing and the constant changing of their immediate, personal situation, things that have always *been around* but never taken account of and taken seriously before.

***

Science is historical as all knowledge is historical as the subject, the person, the self is historical. Historical *debris* [Ecos word] is retained from one situation to another both horizontally and vertically, in historical series and contiguous present cases. But each science needs an unchanging still point, a constant unchanging standard to judge itself by. But this is not the real human situation of the scientist studying. Some sciences have a more stable standard, point of view, than others. Somewhere Eco says semiotics can learn a lot from immunology but immunology can learn little from semiotics. So obviously semiotics and immunology cannot be sciences of the same stature and stability however useful in practice they may be to each other.

***

Semiotics, just like linguistics and language, cannot be *pure* sciences even though there are numerous people who advocate making them *pure* detached sciences, separate from the human reality that actually uses them. This seems inherently and logically absurd. Does anyone disagree? Wittgenstein certainly agreed with Eco that language, any kind of communication, is a living process within a living being, and anything that separates the two creates a fantasy world.

***

I have run across an interesting possible glitch in Michael Ceasar. First, though his going through all the variations and refinements of terminology, I keep automatically reducing it to the simplest common denominators without having to name specifically all the different forms they can take. For one thing, no real discrimination is made between what is of overall importance -- where methodology throws out ontology, then methodology becomes the overall way of explaining things [but Ceasar makes the statement QUOTE*Eco takes the ontological problem seriously [after stating Eco has rejected ontology for methodology]. But his anti-idealism is constantly reaffirmed [does Ceasar know what *ontology* means?], and with it, his insistence on connecting semiotics with the real world and his preference for surface over depth*END QUOTE GCM: One can know surfaces immediately, but one can only know depth from the surface, again the problem of history] -- and what is of merely major importance and what might more fittingly be called an example.

***

I think Ceasar, in trying to deal with critics of Eco [or Ceasar?] who complain of semiological terminology babbling, page 108, and at the same time criticizing or interpreting Eco himself, is emotionally disturbed by the accusation. I think Ceasar takes Eco far too inflexibly, makes the terminology too seriously, gets too involved with the trees to see the forest. The methodology of semiotics for Eco himself is human life. He wants it to be as scientific as possible but he knows it belongs entirely to *cultural history*. It is, quite bluntly, something that passes and dies like a human being does. Eco *point of view* is deliberately shallow. What you see is what you get. You can delve into the depths, but that is a matter of *Let the buyer beware*, a most ancient Italian proverb. Ceasar even incoherently states a criticism by Teresa De Lauretis--

***QUOTE pg 106-7***

. . . . On behalf of Lacanian psychoanalysis as the problematic exclusion in Ecos semiotics of what only for the sake of convenience can be described as *the body*, since it is precisely the dichotomy between *body* and *non-body* implicit in Ecos approach that she denounces. She draws attention efficaciously to the capacity of semiotics as described by Eco to absorb all aspects of social behavior, while firmly drawing the line at that area where human physicality becomes culture, represents itself, becomes semiosis - the area defined by work of Freud. This may simply betoken betoken a cultural limitation on Ecos part -- his treatment of the body, the female body in particular, and, the body as female in the first two at least of his novels has occasioned reactions ranging from embarrassment to irritation.***END QUOTE


GARY. C. MOORE:
Ceasar does not further explain what he means. For Gods sake, *a cultural limitation on Ecos part*? Is he Italian bashing? Is he/she heterosexual bashing? * Is he/she male chauvenist pig bashing? He needs to make this clear. Where human physicality becomes culture* is when a scientist writes a book on human physiology. I think even Freud would be thoroughly confused by the introduction of his name. Certainly these people have not read Sartre or Merleau-Ponty has Eco has. The truly personal human body -- your body -- is not a matter of communication or culture. It is a matter of unique knowledge only partially communicable, and even that usually only to a doctor or such. Ecos approach to the female body, especially in THE NAME OF THE ROSE, is rather earthy and blunt. People may well be embarrassed, but that is their personal problem. The point is Ceasar seems personally shaken for a number of reasons. More below.

***

I do get an idea of how things work, but I have to constantly answer my own question of What is the point of this? Why is he saying this? I cannot see the forest because of the trees. Not everything mentioned by Eco is of equal importance. It boils down to -- in my incompetent opinion -- between signs [and this includes all signs in every aspect of human culture as a whole certainly including the nitty gritty as Jud desires below and so does Eco and so do I from the Mona Lisa to cartoon strips to stop signs -- Ecos revolutionary aspect is that, as a cultural historian and not an aesthetician, only how and why are considered, not good, bad, or beautiful -- which coming from an Italian, and this is very relevant, is extremely extreme] and semiosis, or better, interpretation, or better yet -- and not *value* laden -- simply *relation*. What is related, what is not [binary], and, mechanically, how. *Interpretation* implies there is a point or purpose to be found, and -- I think -- there is no PLACE for *point* or *purpose* in Ecos history, cultural or otherwise.

***

He wants the bare facts of the matter to rest somewhere at the bottom of his speculations. Jud complained about logicians and mathematical theorists in the last letter creating fantastic castles of symbols that seem to indicate demonstrable facts when in fact they do not. This was the bete noir of Wittgenstein. Remember his logical fundamentals in the TRACTATUS were always designed toward framing a space to present a picture of something. There must always be a real referent. And mathematical formulae should be able to perform work. He might use logical and mathematical formulae in his work but the word text usually showed the way through the thoughts performed. This is both macro and micro. Remember he said calculus was irrational? It was not a perfect mathematical structure like Euclids geometry was. A calculus could measure a circle only by assuming it was a series of very small straight lines joined together to create measurable points. Did it work? Not perfectly as Ideal geometry supposedly did -- but recall Hume˘s criticism of geometry. So as mathematics it was only an approximation.

***

So if you are a cultural historian trying to achieve a status of science for semiotics you can either [A] opt for a theoretical pure semiotics that has no relation to objects you can point at, or [B] simply say the science of semiotics is a constant work in progress because it has to exist in a living, constantly changing world whose purpose it is to explain how that world is changing. Also, at some point in time, you have to deal with the individual person who thinks all of this, the *subject* Eco says --

***QUOTE********Ceasar, pg. 107 [SEMIOTICS AND THE PHILOSOPHY OF LANGUAGE by Eco, pg. 45]****

As subjects, we are what the shape of the world produced by signs makes us become. We recognize ourselves only as semiosis in progress, signifying systems and communication processes. The map of semiosis, as defined at a given stage of historical development [with the debris carried over from previous semiosis], tells us who we are and what [or how] we think*************END ECO QUOTE**************

GCM: Ceasar then pops immediately in with --

***QUOTE IBID***********

This is not determinism; the key word remains *recognize*; we are what we know, even though what we know is not necessarily, ultimately, what we are.***END QUOTE**************

GARY. C. MOORE:
How noble. This sentence stands by itself yet, completely alone and unexplicated, indicates so many emotional absurdities it is hard to comprehend them all. Not determinism? We are told *who we are and what [or how] we think*, *we are what the shape of the world produced by signs makes us become*. *Recognize* is used -- as in the last chapter of SEMIOTICS AND THE PHILOSOPHY OF LANGUAGE, pp. 202-226 -- as a *mirror*. This gets more complex than I can deal with now. It is not a recognition of *what we are* -- *ultimately* is erased by *semiosis in progress* -- and there is no *necessity* of any Platonic Form of *what we are*. For what possible reason should we simply assume there is a necessary and ultimate form of *what we are*? Eco says we are a bunch of different things. Ignorance forces choice upon us to change one or another of situations, but that is neither free will nor *necessarily, ultimately, what we are*. Ceasar has completely misread Eco here and thrown his whole book into questionable reliability.
Eco's semiotics is about what you must do if you really want to understand what is real. Not *reality*, a grandiose word, just the *real* like lawnmowers and cars and stop lights and so on with language merely being one component in that vast system of signs and significations [relations] that makes up the real complexity of real daily life.

JUD EVANS:
But is not Eco's semiotic emphasis on the nitty-gritty of *How things work* [science] and the production of such objects just as much a part of human culture as any other aspect of human behaviour? I sometimes feel a great relief in getting away from ideas. Sometimes I NEED objects - just to feel the texture of a tree-trunk, or the slippery hardness of a plate when I do the washing-up. I like to lose myself in gardening and use my hands to shovel soil rather than use a trowel, or feel the heat and smell the oil of the engine coming through from under the bonnet of my car. The surety and [comparitive] predictability of a computer, as opposed to the lubriciousness of ideation often appears as a welcome break from pure cogitation - like re-filling the lungs with fresh air after being trapped in a small room with others whispering their opinions into your vulnerable ear.

GARY. C. MOORE:
But I have to do that just about every day at work. That is one reason I only have weekends and holidays to write.

BIRGIT ERIKSSON:
What unites many of Eco's theoretical writings is his interest in semiotics. He has contributed to the development of semiotics both as a general theory and as an analytical tool. According to himself one of his reasons for choosing semiotics was that it could grasp everything and make it possible for him to transgress some traditional boundaries: for instance, to analyse both high and popular culture, both literature and other discourses. What semiotics does is to regard all cultural expressions as messages in a communication process: as systems of signs that we use to describe the world and tell it to one another.

GARY. C. MOORE:
I have much more to say but have to get to it later. In reply to Richard, just briefly now, Eco does seem to have a place and create an intellectual mechanism for the concepts -- *systemic features of societies, groups, and cultures* -- but that is particularly difficult terrain for me to comprehend since, on the one hand, he [Eco] seems to deny the grounds for such concepts yet supports them on the other hand. However, you may find this landscape very strange. But I will get to it.

JUD EVANS:
It seems to me that the *traditional Boundaries* that Umberto Eco is referring to are grammatic-semantic boundaries [rules] Eco is using semiotics as a tool to refer to universals, multiplicities, *systemic features of societies, groups, and cultures* and numerosities without upsetting either his own nominalistic reservations or those of others - what do you guys think?

GARY. C. MOORE:
Good! *without upsetting either his own nominalistic reservations or those of others* -- Would the truest, most consistent nominalism be wordless? Or just filled with signs?

JUD EVANS:
No, that would be an unnecessarily attenuated version of nominalism. Two nominalists in conversation would speak naturally in a normal relaxed fashion, luxuriating in as many abstractions as they cared to employ. There would be a grounded mutual understanding that  when abstractions were used it did not include a claim of supernaturality or at an attempt at reification.

It is only when in conversation with folk who do not understand or oppose nominalism that they constantly nit-pick and make remarks like: Jud, if you claim to be a nominalist, why did you use the word *Love?*  Your doctrine is that *Love* does not exist - only loving lovers?

It is that sort of attitude which prompts the boring circumlocution and ambage and periphrasis that one is forced to construct in order to assuage their suspicions that you don't know what you are talking about.

GARY. C. MOORE:
I think Wittgenstein tried to deal with this at the beginning of PHILOSOPHICAL INVESTIGATIONS. Though one must have *relations* that must be accounted for, and, as relations, they are necessarily invisible, one can refer directly to a picture to indicate what you mean. *The broom is to the left of the chair*. You can even draw a picture with arrows pointing out the relations but you still cannot see *left*. So there are invisible *things* that are positional but not fully abstract, and certainly not Ideas convertible into theologies that establish a secure point of universal interpretation. Eco says, in regard to the symbolic meaning of abstraction per se --

*** QUOTE, from SEMIOTICS AND THE PHILOSOPHY OF LANGUAGE, pg. 163***************

In any case, behind every strategy of the symbolic mode, be it religious or aesthetic, there is a legitimating theology, even though it is the atheistic theology of unlimited semiosis or of hermeneutics as deconstruction. A positive way to approach every instance of the symbolic mode would be to ask: which theology legitimates it?***END QUOTE***************

***


JUD Evans:
For me the *leftness* of the broom in relation to the chair indicates the spatial position of the ideatating artist who drew the sign at the time. .  Therefore *leftness* does not exist, for if the artist had moved to a drawing position BEHIND the chair, the broom would be indicated as being positioned on the right of the chair. The broom of course exists neither on the right or the left of the chair.  What exists is the artist, the chair and the broom.  The relative position of the broom in relation to the chair and the artist changes as the spatially relativising artist changes his position, but the concept of *spatial relativity* is a *merely* a neurological activity of the artist's brain, his existential modality and that does not exist in the world either.
What exists is the neurologically active, spatially coordinating artist. What say you Gary?


GARY. C. MOORE:
SEMIOTICS AND THE PHILOSOPHY OF LANGUAGE is really the only *serious* book by Eco I even know a little about, very little [*Are you shitting me? All this blather and that˘s all you˘ve read?* I have not even *read* that!]. But in this book Eco has an unmistakable sense of humor present almost everywhere which, so far, Micael Ceasar has missed completely. Why?

***

JUD EVANS:
As I see it to use a sign in a cultural way is to employ a universal reificationally in a differently coded form, rather like they do in mathematics or logic where significations are used to communicate mathematical or logical propositions or statements?

GARY. C. MOORE:
Eco, I think, would agree. But, as I mentioned above, there are a number of people who want to create a pure *perfect* language untarnished by any reference to a real, living world. And I hope I conveyed one of the disturbed ways of thinking associated with that way of thinking in Ceasar and De Lauretis.

***

JUD EVANS:
The British hospital sign [Blue square with large white capital H] bespeaks of a large organisational system with hundred of subsystems for example. To the cognescenti that simple H compresses a whole ideational complexity into a single symbol - but the neurological understanding of that complexity is ALREADY EXTANT as a feature of the brain of the observer of the sign. The meaning of the H has different connotations for every, doctor, nurse, medical orderly, radiographer, cleaner, maintanance manpatient and visitor involved.

*** Heidegger, being a cruder and coarser type of fellow brought up surrounded by an ungrammatical, boorish southern peasantry, is not so subtle, and just bulldozes and bullies his way through the reification- barrier with vulgar neologisms effected by the onto-grammatical three cup and a ball trick, but Eco manages it with gentlemanly panache using ideographs/grams (rather like the Chinese do.) That it not to say that his piercing intelligence does not shine through like an welder with an oxyacetylene light of whimsicality which can blind you if you stare at the flame of brilliance for too long.
***

GARY. C. MOORE:
Is there any humor in KANT AND THE PLATYPUS? It would seem odd, considering the title, if there were not.

Ciaou, Gary