Introduction
I am, as far as I know, a pioneer,
or rather
a backwoodsman, in the work of clearing
and
opening up what I call semiotic, that
is,
the doctrine of the essential nature
and
fundamental varieties of possible semiosis;
and I find the field too vast, the
labor
too great, for a firstcomer. 1 When
philosopher
Charles Sanders Peirce (1839-1914)
wrote
these words shortly after the turn
of the
century, the field of semiotics was
indeed
very like a frontier wilderness; as
Peirce
remarked to Lady Welby in 1908, "I
have
myself been entirely absorbed in the
very
same subject since 1863, without meeting,
before I made your acquaintance, a
single
mind to whom it did not seem very like
bosh.
"
(8.376)
In the years since then, and especially
since
the early 1960's, the field of semiotics
has undergone considerable development.
Thomas
A. Sebeok distinguishes three major
strands
in this course of development, which
he designates
the biological, the philosophical,
and the
linguistic traditions. The first tradition
is rooted in medical practice and diagnostic
methodology; Baltic biologist Jakob
von Uexküll
brought this approach to explicitly
semiotic
form in his study of animal behavior
and
perception between the two world wars.
The
second tradition leads from Plato and
Aristotle
through Augustine and the medieval
scholastics
via Leibniz, Locke, and others to thinkers
such as Peirce, "the real founder
and
first systematic investigator of modern
semiotic."
The third tradition in its overtly
semiotic
form leads from Ferdinand de Saussure
to
writers such as Louis Hjelmslev, Roman
Jakobson,
and Roland Barthes. Although there
has been
creative borrowing among these traditions,
Sebeok notes a continuing tension between
more linguistically oriented and more
philosophically
oriented semiotic approaches. 2
Among those who have dealt with questions
of signs and symbols from a philosophical
perspective, two whom it is especially
fruitful
to compare to Peirce are Ernst Cassirer
(1874-1946)
and Charles Morris (1901-79). Cassirer's
philosophy of symbolic forms and Morris'
general theory of signs both have interesting
points of convergence with Peirce's
semiotic,
while their divergences from Peirce's
approach
lie roughly in opposite directions.
Cassirer,
who draws heavily on Kant, develops
what
could be described as "a kind
of idealistic
'phenomenology of culture.'"3
On the
other hand, Morris, indebted to the
thought
of his mentor George H. Mead, puts
forth
a theory with a heavy empirical and
behavioral
thrust. 4 Peirce unites both these
emphases,
the empiricist and the idealist, as
opposite
extremes along a single graded continuum,
a move in keeping with Peirce's strategy
of "synechism," or the taking
up
of apparent philosophical dualisms
into a
more general "law of relationship."5
In this paper I will undertake a critical
comparison of Morris' general theory
of signs
and Cassirer's philosophy of symbolic
forms
with Peirce's semiotic. This comparison
will
then enable us to explore some striking
similarities
among the three thinkers' respective
accounts
of the semiotic structure of religious
experience.
The General Theory of Signs of Charles
Morris
Charles Morris was familiar with the
works
of Peirce, and admitted his indebtedness
to Peirce on certain semiotic issues,
although
according to Morris, George H. Mead
provided
him with his initial impetus toward
semiotics,
and Morris only later became acquainted
with
Peirce's writings. Nonetheless there
are
many points of resemblance between
Morris'
semiotic and Peirce's, the most obvious
of
which is that Morris' sign, like Peirce's,
is irreducibly triadic. 7
In the process of semiosis, according
to
Morris, something takes account of
something
else mediately, i. e. by means of a
third
something. Semiosis is accordingly
a mediated-taking-account-of.
The mediators are sign vehicles; the
takings-account-of
are interpretants; ... what is taken
account
of are designata. [Morris often refers
to
the designatum as the denotatum, and
to the
sign vehicle simply as the sign-- PB]8
Morris
differs from Peirce here in that Morris'
sign is not perfectly general, but
is restricted
to situations of "goal-seeking
behavior
in which signs exercise control."9
The
three elements of Morris' sign derive
from
Mead's division of human action into
three
phases: orientation, in which a stimulus
(Morris' sign-vehicle or sign) orients
a
person toward a goal; consummation,
in which
a sensory impulse (Morris' denotatum)
indicates
that the goal has been consummated
by the
impulse's partially or completely relieving
the "state of the organism (the
'need')"
induced by the stimulus; and manipulation,
in which the person attempts by some
course
of action (Morris' interpretant) to
move
from stimulus to consummation. 10
This is strikingly similar to Peirce's
account
of intentional or goal-directed semiosis
in 5.472ff., in which an "event,
A,
produces a second event, B, as a means
to
the production of a third event C."
Here, in Peircean terms, A is a sign
which
determines interpretant B, and B itself
then
determines a further interpretant C.
Morris'
denotatum is nothing other than this
further
interpretant; his sign and interpretant
are
the Peircean sign and interpretant
respectively.
According to T. L. Short's analysis
of Peirce's
account of intentionality, "because
the action, B, is elicited by the stimulus,
A, but is directed toward goal C, it
interprets
A as signifying an object, O, which,
if it
obtains, would make B a means for achieving
C... [Of course,] O need not obtain."11
The Peircean object has no precise
equivalent
in Morris' theory, though Morris does
recognize
as the significatum of the sign "those
conditions which are such that whatever
fulfills
them is a denotatum."12
There are other important points of
convergence
between Morris' sign and Peirce's.
Notable
among these are: the connection between
behavior
and inquiry; the role of the interpretant
in changing habits; the generality
of signs;
fallibilistic processes of feedback;
and
the conditional nature of the sign.
We will
deal with these in order.
Behavior and inquiry. We have just
seen important
similarities between Morris' and Peirce's
accounts of intentional activity. But
Peirce
affirmed even broader ties between
semiosis
and behavioral response in his "doubt-belief"
theory of inquiry.
According to Peirce, "man is a
bundle
of habits." (6.228) When these
habits
are stable enough and well enough established
that we act upon them in practice,
we call
them beliefs: "The feeling of
believing
is a more or less sure indication of
there
being established in our nature some
habit
which will determine our actions."
(5.371)
Doubt is the unsettling of this stability;
it is a state of dissatisfaction, an
itch
which calls to be scratched. Inquiry
is the
process of seeking to rest in a new
state
of belief by removing the dissatisfactory
stimulus; inquiry ends when, and only
when,
the community of investigation is no
longer
in a state of doubt (5.265-266)
For Peirce, this process of seeking
to rest
in a state of satisfaction is biologically
based, and so characterizes not only
scientific
inquiry, but also everyday human activity
and even animal behavior from the protozoa
on up (cf. "A Guess at the Riddle,"
1.496ff.). These views are similar
to those
of Morris, though in Peirce's case
they are
complicated by the presence of other
factors
consistent with but not reducible to
a behavioral
interpretation. 13
Interpretant and habit-change. For
Morris
an interpretant, though it acts itself
out
in some form of behavior, becomes meaningful
outside its original context by modifying
a person's disposition to respond,
that is,
by contributing to a change in habit.
Morris
calls a sign with such an interpretant
a
symbol: symbols, though more error-prone
than other signs, are relatively independent
of context, and their "time-binding"
capability is vital to the development
of
any very complex pattern of response.
Likewise,
the interpretant of the Peircean sign
need
not be actual, but can be (and in the
case
of the growth of a sign must involve)
a change
in habit, "a modification of a
person's
tendencies toward action." (5.476)14
Generality and particularity in signs.
Just
as Peirce distinguishes between sinsign
and
legisign (2.245-246), so Morris draws
a graded
distinction between a unisituational
sign,
one that "has signification in
only
one situation"; and a plurisituational
sign, one that belongs to a sign-family
or
"set of similar sign-vehicles
which
for a given interpreter have the same
significata."15
And similarly, Morris' graduated distinction
between singular signs whose "significatum
permits only one denotatum," and
more
or less general signs, parallels somewhat
Peirce's division of index and symbol:
a
Morrisian singular sign by its singularity
functions deictically and so is a Peircean
index, and a Morrisian general sign
is a
Peircean symbol, as the latter "cannot
indicate any particular thing; it denotes
a kind of thing." (2.301)16 But
the
converses do not hold, since Peirce's
division
is founded not only, like that of Morris,
on logical distinctions, but on Peirce's
universal categories, which include
but are
not limited to logical structures.
17
Feedback and fallibilism. Circular
processes
of feedback find a place in both systems.
But Peirce's distinction between immediate
and dynamical object, and the process
of
fallibilistic investigation which this
distinction
entails, reflects his interest in epistemology
in general and scientific method in
particular.
Morris' interest focuses more on behavioral
learning in general and in particular
on
communicative interaction.
Morris parallels Peirce's twofold division
of object with his own distinction
between
denotatum and significatum: "while
a
sign must signify, it may or may not
denote.
The buzzer can signify to the dog food
at
a given place without there being food
at
the place in question" (in which
case
the buzzer would have a significatum
but
no denotatum).18 And Morris observes
that
such signs, depending on the degree
of their
reliability, will tend to strengthen
or weaken
habits, and thus are integral to learning.
19 But Morris devotes special attention
to
the sort of feedback processes operative
in human language and communication.
The
behavior of an interpreter A may elicit
responses
from interpreter B which condition
later
actions by A, setting up a one-way
(or two-way)
feedback loop which Morris calls an
insignificant
(or significant) symbol.
20 Extended interaction between A and
B may
depend on expectations set up by such
feedback,
and if A and B share the same set of
expectations
and if the symbols they exchange are
subject
to a shared set of rules and combination
(that is, a syntax), then their system
of
symbols can be considered a language.
21
Although Peirce too deals with feedback
in
a linguistic context (cf. especially
"Man,
a Sign," 5.310-317), his approach
lends
itself more readily to application
in developmental
psychology. By contrast, Morris' approach,
as Morris himself realized, is especially
relevant to issues of individual and
social
pathology. 22
Conditionality. Morris' sign shares
with
Peirce's a conditional, "if-then"
structure. The sign comes into operation
only if appropriate conditions are
satisfied:
"... under certain additional
conditions
the response in question takes place.
These
additional conditions may be quite
complex,"
including internal states such as belief
and perceived need, as well as impinging
factors in the environment. 23 Peirce's
sign
also operates only under appropriate
conditions,
though semiotic conditionality for
Peirce,
due to the ontological status he attributed
to his signs, is a very complicated
and nuanced
state of affairs to which conditionality
in any formalized logical sense would
be
only a rough approximation. 24
Morris' dimensions of signification,
sign
use, and value. Morris' sign, as we
have
seen, parallels on the logical front
certain
aspects of Peirce's division of signs.
But
Peirce's three categories, on which
this
division is based, also have to then
a phenomenological
side; and to find the closest parallel
to
this in Morris, we must turn to Morris'
analysis
of signs according to dimensions of
signification,
sign use, and value. This analysis
arises
from the fact that Morrisian symbols
can
signify independently of temporal context;
therefore, as signs are built up out
of smaller
signs, responses originally appropriate
to
one of Mead's three stages (orientation,
manipulation, consummation) can occur
during
any of these three stages. Morris distinguishes
as a fourth class signs and behavior
appropriate
to the making of necessary formal or
logical
distinctions.
Dimensions of signification. Behavior
during
the orientation stage appropriate to
each
of the three stages of behavior gives
rise,
respectively, to designative, prescriptive,
and appraisive signs. Designative signs
help
gather relevant information regarding
"the
nature of the environment in which
the organism
operates." Prescriptive signs
guide
the actor's behavior according to "the
ways in which the organism must act
upon
the environment in order to satisfy
its need."
And appraisive signs enable the organism
to evaluate "the import or relevance
of this environment for the needs of
the
organism," hence whether consummation
has been achieved. In addition, formative
signs make logical distinctions in
the orientation
phase. These dimensions of signification
may be present together in the same
sign
to varying degrees. 25
Dimensions of sign use. Behavior appropriate
to Mead's three stages, when transposed
to
the manipulation phase, characterizes
what
Morris calls informative, incitive,
and valuative
signs. "An individual may use
signs
to inform himself or others... with
respect
to signs or non-semiosical events":
informative signs. "He may use
signs
to incite a particular response...
to call
out submission... to provoke cooperative
or disruptive behavior": incitive
signs.
"He may use signs to confer for
himself
or others a preferential status":
valuative
signs. "And he may use signs to
further
influence behavior already called out
by
signs," via logical distinctions:
systemic
signs. Again, these dimensions may
be co-present
in varying proportion. 26
Dimensions of value. Behavior from
Mead's
stages transposed to the consummation
phase
determines which objects will be most
valued
as the denotatum of a sign, as well
as how
the "actor can transfer his choice
of
an impulse-satisfying object from the
consummation
phase to the orientation phase."
Signs
in which dependence dominates incline
the
actor "to release and indulge
existing
desires in the presence of objects
appropriate
to the satisfaction of the desires."
Signs of dominance promote "tendencies
to manipulate and remake the world
in the
service of the satisfaction of existing
desires."
And signs of detachment underwrite
"tendencies
to self-control, to solitude, to meditation,
to detachment, to self-containment."27
Morris' three trichotomies are logically
somewhat similar to Peirce's categorial
division
of his sign (2.227ff).28 The phenomenological
connection is less obvious, until we
consider
that each of Morris' trichotomies exhibits
a division roughly correlate to that
of feeling,
action, and cognition; or the aesthetic,
the ethical, and the logical. The reader
of Peirce will immediately recognize
the
former as aspects of Firstness, Secondness,
and Thirdness, respectively; while
aesthetics,
ethics, and logic comprise Peirce's
categorial
division of the "normative sciences"
which govern goal-directed behavior
(2.196-201).
A final point of comparison between
Peirce
and Morris is Morris' classic division
of
semiotics into syntactics, semantics,
and
pragmatics: syntactics studies "the
formal relation of signs to one another,"
semantics "the relations of signs
to
the objects to which the signs are
applicable,"
and pragmatics "the relations
of signs
to interpreters." Morris himself
confessed
in later years his indebtedness here
to Peirce's
slightly different division of semiotics
into pure grammar, logic, and pure
rhetoric.
29
Ernst Cassirer's Philosophy of Symbolic
Forms
Cassirer, like Peirce, turned to the
study
of what he called "symbolic forms"
in an attempt to move past Kant's "turn
to the subject," although Cassirer's
break with Kant was far less radical
than
Peirce's. 30 Cassirer's thought differs
from
Kant's in that Cassirer replaces Kant's
synthetic
a prioris (space, time, number, etc.)
with
his symbolic forms, which are dynamic
and
relative to human culture rather than
static
and absolute. These symbolic forms
Cassirer
develops in considerable detail in
the areas
of language, myth, perception, and
scientific
knowledge in his three-volume Philosophy
of Symbolic Forms, and in varying detail
over a wide range of human culture
in such
other works as An Essay on Man.
Modern natural science, for Cassirer
as for
Peirce, casts in a clear light the
symbolic
character of human knowledge and experience.
Knowledge as symbolic can no longer
be seen
as static, or as related to its object
simply
by "vague... similarity of content"
(cf. Peirce's icon); rather, "the
rigid
concept of being seems to be thrown
into
flux," a flux on which the intellect
gradually imposes a structured relational
order "expressed [in] a highly
complex
logical relation... which the basic
concepts
of physical knowledge must satisfy"
(cf. Peirce's symbol).31 Although Cassirer
states that the relational unity of
a symbol
is that "which the phenomena must
produce
out of themselves" (cf. Peirce's
index),
this "fundamental relation"
is
purely relative to the purpose and
place
of the symbolic process within human
culture,
and thus its meaning is actively formed
by
"an original, formative power
of the
human spirit." Cassirer quotes
scientist
Heinrich Hertz: "'Actually we
do not
know and have no means of finding out
whether
our ideas of things accord with them
in any
other respect than in this one fundamental
relation.'"32
Here Cassirer follows Kant more closely
than
does Peirce, for whom the world is
intrinsically
intelligible. For Peirce, a hypothesis
is
projected in semiosis as the immediate
object
of the sign, but insofar as that hypothesis
would stand up to the long run of inquiry,
what the sign presents to the interpretant
in the immediate object is the dynamical
object, which to that degree determines
the
interpretant as a further sign of the
dynamical
object. 33
For Cassirer, a symbol is to a symbolic
form
as particular is to universal: 34 any
particular
is a symbol insofar as it is an instance
of, and points toward, a "symbolic
form"
or more general continuous relational
structure.
The entire web of aesthetic possibilities
of a school of art, the entire theoretical
structure of a science, the practice
and
beliefs of a religious tradition, the
entire
world of expression which a language
opens
up: any such general structure of totality,
taken as an organic, growing temporal
whole,
would be an example of Cassirer's symbolic
form.
The symbolic form is approximately
what Peirce
calls a legisign, and Cassirer's symbol
is
what Peirce calls a replica of a legisign,
"a peculiar kind of sinsign."
(2.246)
A Peircean legisign may be icon, index,
or
symbol, and as we have seen the symbolic
form incorporates, to one degree or
another,
dimensions functionally similar to
all three.
However although for Peirce every sign
is
an instance of Thirdness, Peirce's
three
categories are mutually irreducible
and so
icon, index, and symbol remain distinct
in
principle even when co-present in the
same
sign. By contrast, Cassirer's thought,
though
not a pure idealism, contains strong
idealizing
tendencies, 35 and thus there is a
progressive
tendency for the other dimensions of
the
symbolic form to be subsumed into the
generality
of the symbolic form. We will see this
process
more clearly when we examine the growth
of
symbolic forms.
Another major point of similarity between
Cassirer and Peirce is the role continuity
plays in their thought. Just as for
Peirce
the generality of the sign was an implication
of its continuity (6.172), a concept
Peirce
borrowed from calculus, so for Cassirer
too
the symbolic form is general as it
is a continuous
structure, on analogy with a continuous
mathematical
function of several variables:
Not only science, but language, myth,
art,
and religion as well, provide the building
stones from which the world of "reality"
is constructed for us... Like scientific
cognition, they are not simple structures
which we can insert into a given world,
we
must understand them as functions...
If we
designate the "elements"
as a,
b, c, d, etc., their combinations,
as we
have seen, form a precisely graduated
and
internally differentiated system of
diverse
function: F(a, b),(c, d), etc. 36 Cassirer
further remarks: "If we wished
to characterize
this process by a mathematical metaphor...
despite the fact that it goes beyond
the
sphere of the mathematical, we might...
choose
the term 'integration.'"37 An
even more
apt mathematical metaphor for the symbolic
form, I submit, would be that of a
manifold,
or curved n-dimensional surface in
some higher-dimensional
space. Under this metaphor, each particular
symbol would be a mathematical point
lying
on the manifold. 38
Using individual symbols as "bench
marks,"
one can "survey" the topography
of a symbolic form and thereby map
out its
structure in terms of how it deals
with space,
time, number, quality, and causality,
as
dynamic and not just static features.
39
The equivalent Peircean analysis of
the structure
of a legisign would use as "factors"
Peirce's three categories, which would
individually
and jointly cover the same "territory,"
albeit according to a different "coordinate
system"!
To be more precise, quality would come
under
Peircean Firstness; space, under Secondness,
except that certain structures of spatial
symmetry would necessitate the invocation
of Thirdness; time, under Thirdness
both
genuine and degenerate; causality,
under
Secondness (physical causality) and
Thirdness
(logical and physical causality); number
would come under the logical aspect
of Thirdness,
except for those peculiar aspects of
number
which, as Cassirer notes, in more primitive
thought possess a specific "tonality,"
more pronominal than numerical, "which
sets them apart from the uniform and
homogeneous
sequence of numbers," and which
Peirce
distributed "across" his
three
categories. 40
The common ingredient of structured
continuity
underlies three other points in which
Cassirer's
symbolic form resembles Peirce's sign:
its
conditionality and its relation to
meaning
and to representation. And it is related
to the growth of symbolic forms, a
point
which leads on to other similarities
between
Peirce and Cassirer.
Conditionality. This follows directly
from
Cassirer's "functional" idea
of
the symbolic form. If a symbolic form
be
compared to "the setting up of
a formula
which designates the universal quantitative
relations of magnitude but leaves the
particular
magnitudes unspecified," then
"before
it can be applied in a specific case,
the
unspecified magnitudes x, y, z must
be replaced
by specific magnitudes."41 For
Cassirer
these conditions form "so dense
a mesh
of modifiers" that they can scarcely
be disentangled from one another or
from
the "specific cases" in which
they
obtain; and in any event neither their
identity
nor their characteristics are given
in advance.
Thus for Cassirer as for Peirce, elaborating
the conditions under which a given
symbolic
form obtains, entails a "dense"
exploration of conditions for which
both
extensional "breadth" and
intensional
"depth" may be of arbitrarily
"messy"
structure. 42
Meaning: For Cassirer, meaning lies
in the
reciprocal relation between symbol
and symbolic
form. Each relatively particular symbol
has
meaning by its place in the relatively
more
general structure of the symbolic form.
Conversely,
"the ideal form is known only
by and
in the aggregate of the sensible signs
which
it uses for its expression."43
In particular,
the symbolic form binds symbols together
in a temporal unity as "representatives
of a totality," so that "the
flux
of contents is replaced by a self-contained
and enduring unity of form."44
This is comparable to Peirce's condition
that a sign is meaningful insofar as
its
interpretant is itself a sign capable
of
determining a further interpretant
within
the continuous flow of interpretation
(2.278),
so that the "meaning" of
a sign
is the totality of practical consequences
which might arise as future interpretants
of the sign (cf. 5.9), although due
to Peirce's
formulation of meaning in terms of
his pragmaticism,
conditionality is integral to meaning
for
Peirce in a way in which it is not
explicitly
so for Cassirer. 45
Representation. Cassirer sharply attacks
what he calls "naive copy theories"
of knowledge, 46 and states that it
is a
fundamental error to consider knowledge
as
simple "production" of an
object
apart from continual "reproduction."
"For the function of language
is not
merely to repeat definitions and distinctions
which are already present in the mind,
but
to formulate them and make them intelligible
as such."47 Thus integral to representational
knowledge is the placement of particulars
"in an extraordinarily rich and
finely
articulated complex of relations,"
in
which "one blow strikes a thousand
connected
chords which all vibrate more or less
forcefully
and clearly in the sign."48 In
other
words, representational knowledge can
be
distinguished but never separated from
meaning.
Although Peirce places much heavier
emphasis
on the object of knowledge in its own
right,
he would agree that knowledge (the
sign-object
relationship) is distinguishable but
inseparable
from meaning (the sign-interpretant
relationship)
as a sign is triadic, "irreducible
to
any complexus of dyads." (2.274)
The growth of symbolic forms. In a
"Partial
Synopsis of a Proposed Work in Logic,"
Peirce speculates:
... whether there be a life in Signs,
so
that-- the requisite vehicle being
present--
they will go through a certain order
of development,
and if so, whether this development
be merely
of such a nature that the same round
of changes
of form is described over and over
again
whatever be the matter of the thought
or
whether, in addition to such a repetitive
order, there be also a greater life-history
that every symbol furnished with a
vehicle
of life goes through, and what is the
nature
of it. (2.111) Though Peirce often
writes
in general terms of the "growth"
of signs, it is seldom that he does
so in
detail (but see his essay on "Evolutionary
Love," 6.287-317). However, although
Peirce could not have known it, his
remark
is an uncannily accurate description
of what
constitutes the great bulk of Cassirer's
writings on symbolic forms. Although
Cassirer
defended fiercely the autonomy of his
symbolic
forms one from another, still there
emerges
a general rhythm of growth in each
instance,
a veritable "life of signs"
in
which three ascending modes of symbolic
representation
can be discerned. It is noteworthy
that these
three stages roughly correspond to
the phenomenological
aspect of Peirce's three categories.
In the mode of the "expression
function,"
qualities focused to a single point
confront
us "in stark uniqueness and singleness,"49
as if with an emotion of numinous terror.
One thing presents itself spontaneously,
and it and nothing else is apprehended.
"Instead
of expansion... we have here an impulse
toward
concentration; instead of extensive
distribution,
intensive compression."50 Conceptually
unrelated number systems are applied
to men,
to horses, to canoes; thick, dense
emotional
and sensuous freight clings to a word
so
that it pertains only to a single instance
or a single activity, and bears about
it
an aura of mana and word-magic. 51
Compare Peircean phenomenological Firstness,
in which any "quality of feeling"
is considered purely as it is in itself,
regardless of any Second, spontaneous
and
sui generis (1.300-321). "The
poetic
mood approaches the state in which
[Firstness]
appears as it is present. Is poetry
so abstract
and colorless?" (5.44)
In the mode of the "intuition
function,"
these qualities are assembled, through
their
function in human culture, into the
objects
and activities of the everyday world
of space
and time. Thus arises awareness of
objects
as individual objects, of actions as
composed
of "little pieces" of discrete
event; spatial relationships; awareness
of
the "I-concept."
Compare Peirce's Secondness, the hard
here-and-now
facticity of physical objects, distinguishing
individual entities as individuals,
present
in spatial interaction and relation,
responsible
for the "hypothesis" of the
"ego"
which arises from encounter with error
(1.322-336).
Finally, in the mode of the "conceptual
function," these particular ideas
are
built up into ever more general ideas
and
laws, patterns and relationships, temporally
unfolding-- Cassirer's symbolic form
proper.
The resemblance to Peircean phenomenological
Thirdness is too obvious to require
elaboration
(cf. 1.337-353).
The growth of the symbolic form commences
with the occurrence of spontaneous
sense
impressions which are fixed in a rudimentary
symbolic form. As this growth proceeds,
individual
objects are identified, but only in
fragmentation
at first. As individual entities "accrete,"
so eventually do general concepts which,
as their generality grows into greater
and
greater unity, come in time to predominate
over individual and quality.
This process closely resembles that
in Peirce's
scattered remarks on the "life
of signs":
Symbols grow. They come into being
by development
out of other signs, particularly from
icons,
or from mixed signs partaking of the
nature
of icons and symbols... A symbol, once
in
being, spreads among the peoples. In
use
and in experience, its meaning grows.
Such
words as force, law, wealth, marriage,
bear
for us very different meanings from
those
they bore to our barbarous ancestors.
The
symbol may, with Emerson's sphynx,
say to
man, Of thine eye I am eyebeam. (2.302,
emphasis
added)52
Morris, Peirce, and Cassirer on the
Semiotics
of Religious Experience
As we have seen, there are striking
similarities
of thought among Morris, Peirce, and
Cassirer.
As an illustration of how these similarities
work themselves out in a particular
context,
we turn now to the semiotic analysis
each
of them makes of religious experience.
Morris on Mysticism and "Maitreyism"
Morris deals with the semiotics of
religious
experience in two places: in a book
entitled
Paths of Life: Preface to a World Religion
(1942; reissued 1972)53 and in an article
called "Mysticism and Its Language"
(1957). Integral to his view is the
concept
of disparate, even contradictory, signs
brought
together and dynamically balanced in
a larger
semiotic structure.
Morris begins his article with the
claim
of Zen Buddhist scholar Daisetz Teitaro
Suzuki
that mystical experience transcends
the law
of identity, "A is A": not
merely
mystical language, but the experience
itself,
is constituted in contradiction and
paradox.
If logic is thus inadequate to experience,
argues Suzuki, then it is time for
"a
new system of thinking to fit the experience,
and not conversely." This, claims
Morris,
semiotics can furnish: "we shall
attempt
to view [mystical experience] as a
complex
sign process amenable to analysis in
terms
of a theory of signs."54
Morris defines as a post-language sign
"a
sign which is not a language sign,
but which
requires the operation of language
to gain
its signification. An example is the
reader's
perception of a star... [which] results
from
the fact that one has heard about or
read
about the astronomical theories developed
in Western culture." Such a post-language
sign may over a period of time be "built
up" through its habitual use in
the
same context as certain events, sounds,
or
gestures, whose rational and pre-rational
connotations come to be associated
with the
sign:
When built up these signs tend to arouse
the interpretants of a whole host of
designative,
appraisive, and prescriptive linguistic
utterances
which have occurred in their presence.
Talking
is necessary for their development
but not
for their subsequent operation. When
talking
ceases the post-language signs reverberate
the meaning which language conferred
upon
them in their formation. 55 There is
no semiotic
or neurological reason, argues Morris,
"why
the interpretants of contradictory
signs
cannot be aroused simultaneously, though
the corresponding reactions could not
be
simultaneously performed." The
result
would be, or could be built up into,
semiotic
structures incorporating post-language
sign
analogues of statements of the form
"A
and not-A": "In this way
one can
be symbolically both here and not here...
can be both the fish that swims and
the gull
that dives." But the attempt to
translate
such experience back into spoken language
is "felt to be both partial and
inadequate:
And rightly so, since the complex network
of symbolic processes which [one] is
attempting
to translate included contradictions.
Positions
in space and time were symbolized,
but no
single positions; selves were symbolized,
but also non-selves; minute things,
but also
vast things; good things, but also
terrible
things. So the whole of the experience
is
not characterizable in positive noncontradictory
terms. 56 Morris connects this hypothetical
semiotic process with experiences of
transformation
and renewal beyond a mystical context:
"The
post-language perception of a star
brings
forward no new sensory datum but only
a higher-level
process of symbolization... This experience
is liberating. Einstein has testified
to
this, and has even spoken of it as
'the sower
of all true art and science.'"57
Morris sees such a process, freely
flowing
and spontaneous with the different
dimensions
of discourse in dynamic balance, as
integral
to the healthy functioning of society,
including
the healthy functioning of religious
discourse.
58 In his book Paths of Life, Morris
applies
this perspective to a typological study
of
personality types as expressed in religious
"paths of life," analyzing
religious
traditions according to the relative
priority
they assign to Morris' three semiotic
dimensions
of value, "dionysian" dependence,
"promethean" dominance, and
"buddhist"
detachment. Six possible relative rankings
of these values yield six religious
types,
most of which cut across the boundaries
of
any given religious tradition. Morris
examines
each of the six types ("Buddhist,"
"Dionysian," "Promethean,"
"Apollonian," "Christian,"
and "Mohammedan") at length,
characterizing
them respectively as the ways of detachment
from desire, abandonment to instinct,
ceaseless
making and shaping, rational moderation,
sympathetic love, and violent subjugation.
59
In line with his concern for dynamic
balance,
Morris tries to envision a "seventh
way," the "Maitreyan"
way
of balanced synthesis and integration,
of
"detached-attachment." Morris
essays
a utopian sketch of a hypothetical
"world
religion of Maitreyism":
Western society may furnish a favorable
soil
for the initiation of the Maitreyan
epoch...
Deep is his love for mankind and sacred
he
holds its future-- but the vision of
the
votary of Maitreya is not bounded by
mankind
nor is his dwelling place in the future.
The salvation he seeks is a quality
to be
imparted to life while living. It is
a quality
of life akin to good sportsmanship--
the
deepest concrete expression which the
West
has given to the attitude of detached-attachment...
At home everywhere, needing no home
anywhere;
mixed with all and hovering over all;
aware
of the dawns which follow midnights,
and
the midnights which gather the harvest
sown
in the dawns and ripened in the days--
such
are the sources of his solemnity, his
agony,
his peace, his vision, his abandonment,
his
activity, and his joy. 60
Peirce on Community, Musement, and
the Neglected
Argument
Several elements of Charles Peirce's
thinking
shed light on an account of the semiotic
structure of religious experience.
These
elements include the communal nature
of semiosis,
the role of pre-rational levels of
semiosis
in matters of "practical concern,,"
the growth of symbols, and Peirce's
account
of meditative "musement"
in his
"A Neglected Argument for the
Reality
of God."
The key concept behind Peirce's triadic
sign
is that of structured relationship,
and because
of the complete generality of Peirce's
sign,
his semiotic purports to yield an ontology,
an ontology of coinherent relationship.
Thus
fundamental to Peirce's anthropology
is the
Peircean community of interpretation,
an
embodied community within a real and
inherently
intelligible physical world. In such
a world,
the sign mediates the object to the
interpretant
onto-relationally, "just as a
rainbow
is at once a manifestation both of
the sun
and of the rain." (5.283)
Thus the human being, as an embodied
sign,
is constituted as a person within and
only
within "a COMMUNITY." (5.311,
Peirce's
capitalization) Consciousness, knowledge,
and experience are logically subsequent
to,
and are constituted by, ontological
relationship:
they arise as a function of the give
and
take of relationship with the community
and
with the world, an interaction in which
communal
semiotic structures are also reciprocally
built up: "Thus my language is
the sum
total of myself... The individual man...
so far as he is anything apart from
his fellows,
and from what he and they are to be,
is only
a negation." (5.314, 317)61
Peirce's friend and colleague Josiah
Royce
developed some possible religious implications
of such an outlook most fully in his
The
Problem of Christianity. But Peirce
himself
(especially in his later years) often
wrote,
from his perspective as a convert to
the
Episcopal Church, of communities of
faith
in a similar vein: "Religion can
not
reside in its totality in a single
individual.
Like every species of reality, it is
essentially
a social, a public affair. It is the
idea
of a whole church, welding all its
members
together in one organic, systemic perception
of the Glory of the Highest."
(6.429)
And this "systemic perception"
was for Peirce not only-- not even
chiefly--
a matter of rational reflection, but
"a
living belief--- a thing to be lived
rather
than said or thought." (6.439)
In terms
of Peirce's categories, it encompasses
not
only Thirdness, but also pre-rational
Secondness
and Firstness.
Because of this, here as in all "vitally
important" matters of "practical
concern," Peirce stressed the
importance
of relying on "instinct,"
that
is, on the pre-rational semiotic structures
built up in one by one's community
and by
experience in the world:
Here we are in this workaday world,
little
creatures, mere cells in a social organism
itself a poor and little thing enough,
and
we must look to see what little and
definite
task out circumstances have set before
our
little strength to do. The performance
of
that task will require us to draw upon
all
our powers, reason included. And in
the doing
of it we should depend not upon that
department
of the soul which is most superficial
and
fallible-- I mean our reason-- but
upon that
department that is deep and sure--
which
is instinct. Instinct is capable of
development
and growth... [and] the soul's deeper
parts
can only be reached through its surface.
(6.647-648) This is just as true, Peirce
argues, in matters of religion:
If, walking in a garden on a dark night,
you were suddenly to hear the voice
of your
sister crying out to you to rescue
her from
a villain, would you stop to reason
out the
metaphysical question of whether it
were
possible for one mind to cause material
waves
of sound and for another mind to perceive
them? If you did, the problem might
probably
occupy the remainder of your days.
In the
same way, if a man undergoes any religious
experience... [complete ellipsis] for
him
to halt till he has adjusted a philosophical
difficulty would seem to be an analogous
sort of thing, whether you call it
stupid
or whether you call it disgusting.
(6.655)
Thus, Peirce often distinguishes sharply
between God as such, and the "Absolute,"
or God as accessible to rational investigation:
"The Absolute is strictly speaking
only
God, in a Pickwickian sense, that is,
in
a sense that has no effect." (8.277)
Moreover, "as between an old-fashioned
God and a modern patent Absolute...
[the
former] is more likely to be about
the truth."62
With all this in mind, we are ready
to proceed
to Peirce's "Neglected Argument
for
the Reality of God" (1908). Here
Peirce
distinguishes "Argumentations"
formulated on rational principles from
an
"Argument," which is "any
process of thought reasonably tending
to
produce a definite belief." (6.456)
Only the latter is broad enough to
encompass
all three "Universes of Experience"
which we meet with as everywhere co-present
in the world: the Universe of "Ideas"
as pure Firsts, that of "Brute
Actuality"
or Secondness, and that of "Signs"
or Thirdness. (6.455)
Peirce commends, as a path of encounter
with
these Three Universes, "a certain
agreeable
occupation of mind... In fact, it is
Pure
Play." Peirce names this form
of pure
play "musement": "The
particular
occupation I mean... may take either
the
form of aesthetic contemplation, or
that
of distant castle-building... or that
of
considering some wonder in one of the
Universes,
or some connection between two of the
three,
with speculation concerning its cause."
(6.458)
Musement "begins passively enough
with
drinking in the impression of some
nook in
one of the three Universes. But impression
soon passes into attentive observation,
observation
into musing, musing into a lively give
and
take..." (6.459) Since "different
people have such wonderfully different
ways
of thinking," Peirce hesitates
to lay
out boundaries for musement, but he
illustrates
"musings" over "the
diverse
and delicate beauties of flowers...
the forms
of trees, the compositions of sunsets,
the
nature of pleasure and pain."
(6.462)
One might turn to the fact that "every
small part of space, however remote,
is bounded
by just such neighbouring parts as
every
other"; to "the constitution
of
the hydrogen atom"; even to "aggregates
of unformulated but partly experienced
phenomena."
(6.463-464)
In the midst of this musement, abduction
will lead eventually, then again and
again,
to "the hypothesis of God."
"The
more [one] ponders it, the more it
will find
response in every part of his mind,
for its
beauty, for its supplying an ideal
of life,
and for its thoroughly satisfactory
explanation
of his whole threefold environment."
(6.465-567) Though Peirce concedes
that he
"cannot tell how every man will
think,"
still Peirce believes that, the more
one
considers this hypothesis, "the
more
he will be enwrapt with Love of this
idea."
(6.501)
This first stage of abductive musement,
since
it is rooted in communally formed pre-rational
semiosis, is accessible to anyone (6.483),
and Peirce argues that it is a genuine
(albeit
pre-rational and very vague) "direct
experience" of God (6.492-493).
But
abduction "does not afford security.
The hypothesis must be tested."
(6.470)
Thus Peirce sketches, as a mere "table
of contents," a brief but very
dense
outline of how such a hypothesis might
be
tested by deductively working up a
thick
description of it and its implications,
and
then inductively "ascertaining
how far
those consequents accord with Experience,
and of judging accordingly whether
the hypothesis
is sensibly correct, or requires some
inessential
modification, or must be entirely rejected."
(6.468-473)
As Vincent Potter has observed, it
is certainly
noteworthy that Peirce's brief "table
of contents" here is nothing more
or
less than "a rapid and terse outline
of that philosophical view called 'pragmaticism'
which he had elaborated over the preceding
half-century... nothing but a marshaling
of the conclusions he had reached concerning
the nature of reasoning."63 The
very
creative process that Peirce sometimes
referred
to as "the growth of signs"
was
itself, for Peirce, the ongoing "pragmatic"
test of the "hypothesis of God."
Peirce meant more than first meets
the eye
when he wrote to William James in 1905
that
his belief in God was "good sound
solid
strong pragmatism." (8.262)
Cassirer on Religion as a Symbolic
Form
Because the same rhythm runs so markedly
through all Cassirer's thought on symbolic
forms, our treatment of Cassirer on
religious
experience can be relatively brief.
"Myth and primitive religion are
by
no means entirely incoherent, they
are not
bereft of sense or reason. But their
coherence
depends much more upon unity of feeling
than
upon logical rules."64 This feeling,
in the sensuous phase, is an "immediate
qualitativeness" which strikes
a person
as fear and awe in the face of the
numinous,
the mysterium tremendum et fascinosum,
and
to which the human response is the
structured
play of ritual. 65 It is not irrational,
but pre-rational. In a world filled
with
a sensation of mana as if with an electric
charge, perception of the numinous
in a site
or event gives rise to confession of
what
Usener called "momentary gods":
"water found by a thirsty person,
a
termite mound that hides and saves
someone,
any new object that inspires a man
with sudden
terror... [it is] as though by virtue
of
[the highest degree of condensation
that]
the objective form of the god were
created
so that it veritably burst forth from
the
experience."66
In the intuitive phase, these qualities
are
assembled, through their function in
human
culture, into "functional gods,"
so that every concrete sphere has its
patron
god: "the first breaking of fallow
soil,
the second plowing, the acts of sowing,
of
weeding, the cutting of the grain and
likewise
the harvesting; and none of these undertakings
can be successful unless its appropriate
god has been invoked." Each such
god
inherits a multitude of names from
the sensuous
stage. 67
Finally, in the conceptual phase, we
arrive
at a concept of God which is universal
and
personal. "Primitive mythology
is attacked
and overcome by a new force, a purely
ethical
force."68 Holiness as the numinous
is
generalized, and subsumed, into holiness
as the righteous: "Here too we
find
the conception of the 'sympathy of
the Whole,'
but it is now understood and interpreted
in a new ethical sense."69 Generality
issues in fuller and fuller unity until
this
unity is expressible only in two of
the "most
difficult and... fundamental, linguistically
grounded concepts-- the concept of
'Being,'
and the concept of the 'Ego.'"70
This
tendency, writes Cassirer, in its final
form
"excludes all other forms:
When God, revealing himself to Moses,
is
asked what name Moses should bear to
the
Israelites, in case they want to know
what
god has sent him to them, the answer
is:
"I am that I am. Thus thou shalt
say
to them: I am has sent me unto you."
It is only by this transformation of
objective
existence into subjective being that
the
Deity is really elevated to the "absolute"
realm, to a state that cannot be expressed
through any analogy with things or
names
of things. 71 Thus the conceptual function
of the symbolic form of religion terminates,
for Cassirer, at that level at which
"all
separate, concrete and individual divine
names have been resolved into the one
name
of Being; the Divine excludes from
itself
all particular attributes, it cannot
be described
through anything else, but can be predicated
only of itself."72
Conclusion: A Synthesis of Morris,
Peirce,
and Cassirer on the Semiotics of Religious
Experience
In their semiotic analyses of religious
experience,
Morris, Peirce, and Cassirer display
considerable
variety in tone and emphasis. They
display
at least one substantive difference
as well:
Morris works out of a tacit philosophy
of
history of the type Peirce dubbed "elliptical,"
whereas Peirce and Cassirer assume
what Peirce
called a "hyperbolic" philosophy
of history. 73 However, there is a
substantial
common pattern which runs through the
accounts
of all three. We are now in a position
to
attempt to synthesize this pattern
in a brief
sketch, which will be framed in chiefly
Peircean
terms.
The first moment in the semiotic flow
of
religious experience is on the level
of Firstness:
Firsts present themselves, spontaneous,
fresh,
semiotically quite vague, in a process
much
like pure play. As Firsts they are
heavily
freighted with new-minted sensuous
qualities
of feeling. These may but need not
run in
the channels of a sense of the numinous;
in any event, each First puts itself
forth
on its own pre-rational terms, fresh
as "what
the world was to Adam on the day he
first
opened his eyes to it." (1.357)
First joins with First in an extremely
rudimentary
and vague pattern of Thirdness. 74
Since
the law of contradiction applies to
Firstness
and Thirdness only to the degree that
they
are precise (cf. 4.612-613, 5.448,
6.496),
this vague structure may conjoin Firsts
in
pre-rational configurations which would
seem
incongruous or even contradictory from
a
logical perspective. But here the process
is yet at a pre-rational level. Firsts
accrete
with Firsts in vague iconic/symbolic
networks
of association. And at some more or
less
indeterminate point, abduction joins
these
networks with individual particulars,
whether
supplied out of one's religious tradition
or whether abductively suggested in
the course
of the play itself.
This is the entrance to the second
moment
in the process. It is exemplified by
the
emergence of Peirce's "hypothesis
of
God" or Cassirer's "functional
gods." Secondness steps in: one
sign
in each symbolic network of associations
now has an indexical (as well as iconic
and
symbolic) dimension, and all the thick,
sensuous
qualities of feeling bound up in the
network
are now available for predicative attribution
to the object of this indexical sign.
But
this sign, and all its nuanced connotations,
are still quite vague. It is a relatively
degenerate index: it is not yet very
clear
to what it may refer. And the introduction
of Secondness leaves us still on a
pre-rational
level. The first moment of pure play
is prolonged
while this second moment of indexicality
elaborates itself. Richer and richer
the
symbolic networks are built up and
deductively
worked out in increasingly dense descriptions
of the object of a degenerate index
still
vague and pre-rational. This phase
encompasses
both the "lively give and take"
of Peirce's musement, and his stage
of deductive
followup on the hypothesis of God.
75
The third moment in the process arrives
when
the patterns in religious experience
begin
to exhibit a marked unity of feeling,
action,
and relational structure. Thirdness
has already
been present, and necessary to provide
the
structure with any coherence at all,
but
it has been a low-grade Thirdness.
Now Thirdness
becomes more and more prominent as
networks
of association are more and more melded
together
in continuity, and interwoven in the
outworking
of an ever thicker and thicker descriptive
structure like "a cable whose
fibers
may be ever so slender, provided they
are
sufficiently numerous and intimately
connected."
(5.265)
This moment of Thirdness is rational--
the
moreso the more unified it becomes--
but
it continues to presuppose the two
pre-rational
moments prolonged within it, as sensuous
and even numinous Firsts continue to
feed
into it and to be deductively elaborated.
Thus, although the object to which
religious
experience in its second moment indexically
refers is capable of somewhat more
precise
and unified determination, this reference
remains highly vague and incapable
of reduction
to precise, purely rational statement.
76
But it is quite amenable to rational
interpretation,
and taken thus as a sign, it is a source
both rich and inexhaustible of infinite
sequences
of interpretants. 77 For roughly put,
the
indexical dimension is capable of indefinite
development and ever fuller determination,
but only as the iconic and symbolic
dimensions
ever outpace it in even richer and
more rapid
growth. Vagueness, in this third moment,
points through reason toward ineffability.
78
This third moment bridges both the
stage
in Peirce's musement in which one is
"enwrapt
with Love" at the hypothesis of
God
(6.501), and the inductive stage in
which
this hypothesis is pragmatically tested
and
adjusted (6.470) in the conduct of
the entire
course of life (6.473). Thus, as for
Morris,
Peirce, and Cassirer, religious experience
issues in ethical response.
I think this is a fair synthesis (and
further
interpretation!) of the common strands
running
through these thinkers' semiotic descriptions
of religious experience. One point
stands
out clearly, and I think it merits
further
investigation. It is striking how closely
the formal structure of each of these
accounts
parallels that attributed by many writers
to metaphor. I have tried especially
to accent
this parallel in my synthesis. Some
such
parallels have been noted before but
they
have not, to my knowledge, been developed
from a Peircean semiotic perspective.
79
Of course, especially from such a Peircean
viewpoint, further observations could
be
developed. Our account ought to be
situated
in its larger semiotic context. For
example,
we could detail much further the role
that
a person's community of faith plays,
through
its traditions and liturgy, in informing
that person's religious experience
and shaping
the semiotic channels in which that
experience
will tend to flow. We could draw reciprocal
connections by inquiring into some
formal
similarities between our account, especially
on the level of musement, and liturgy
itself,
especially considered as ritual play.
80
And from a Peircean viewpoint, the
term "experience"
itself may be something of a misnomer!
For
in Peirce's thought it is the movement
of
structured relationships which is fundamental,
and "experience" as such
arises
only as a function of semiotic relationship.
All these, however, are questions for
another
time. For the time being, we shall
content
ourselves with having scouted out and
perhaps
even cleared a bit more of what Peirce
called
the semiotic "backwoods";
and,
at the end of a long spell of hard
work in
semiotics, close with one further remark
of Peirce's on his mode of "pure
play":
There is no kind of reasoning that
I should
wish to discourage in Musement; and
I should
lament to find anybody confining it
to a
method of such moderate fertility as
logical
analysis... So, continuing the counsels
that
had been asked of me, I should say,
"Enter
your skiff of Musement, push off into
the
lake of thought, and leave the breath
of
heaven to swell your sail. With your
eyes
open, awake to what is about or within
you,
and open conversation with yourself;
for
such is all meditation." It is,
however,
not a conversation in words alone,
but is
illustrated, like a lecture, with diagrams
and experiments. (6.461)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Bibliography
Cassirer, Ernst. An Essay on Man. New
Haven:
Yale University Press, 1944.
________. Language and Myth. Translated
by
Susanne Langer. New York: Dover Publications,
Inc., 1953.
________. The Philosophy of Symbolic
Forms.
Translated by Ralph Manheim, introduction
by Charles W. Hendel. Three volumes.
New
Haven: Yale University Press,
1955.
Hartshorne, Charles, and Weiss, Paul,
editors
(volumes 1-6); Burks, Arthur W., editor
(volumes
7-8). Collected Papers of Charles Sanders
Peirce. Eight volumes. Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 1931-36, 1957-58.
Morris, Charles W. Writings on the
General
Theory of Signs. Volume 16 in "Approaches
to Semiotics," Thomas A. Sebeok,
editor.
The Hague: Mouton, 1971.
Potter, Vincent. "'Vaguely Like
a Man':
The Theism of Charles S. Peirce."
In
God Knowable and Unknowable. Robert
J. Roth,
editor. New York: Fordham University
Press,
1973.
Smith, John E. "Religion and Theology
in Peirce." In Studies in the
Philosophy
of Charles Sanders Peirce (First Series).
Philip Wiener and Fredric Young, editors.
Cambridge: Harvard University Press,
1952,
pp. 251-67.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Footnotes
1Charles Sanders Peirce, "A Survey
of
Pragmaticism" (ca. 1906), in Charles
Hartshorne and Paul Weiss, eds., Collected
Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce (Cambridge:
Harvard University Press, 1934), 5.488.
As
is customary, citations from the Collected
Papers will indicate volume and paragraph
number: 5.488, for example, signifies
volume
5, paragraph 488.
2For a summary of Sebeok's own approach,
which attempts to balance this "semiotic
tripod," see Eugen Baer, "Thomas
A. Sebeok's Doctrine of Signs,"
in Classics
of Semiotics, ed. Martin Krampen et
al. (New
York and London: Plenum Press, 1987),
pp.
181-210. See also Sebeok's remarks
on the
history of semiotics in Contributions
to
the Doctrine of Signs, vol. 5 of "Studies
in Semiotics" (Bloomington: Indiana
University Press, 1976), especially
"'Semiotics'
and Its Congeners," pp. 47-58,
and "The
Semiotic Web: A Chronicle of Prejudices,"
pp. 149-88.
A good account of some of the historical
antecedents of modern semiotics can
be found
in Ernst Cassirer, The Philosophy of
Symbolic
Forms, trans. Ralph Manheim, 3 vols.
(New
Haven: Yale University Press, 1955),
1:117-76.
3Charles W. Hendel, in the introduction
to
The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, 1:63.
4Cf. Roland Posner, "Charles Morris
and the Behavioral Foundations of Semiotics,"
Classics in Semiotics, pp. 23-58.
5Peirce: "Synechism is that tendency
of philosophical thought which insists
upon
the idea of continuity as of prime
importance
in philosophy and, in particular, upon
the
necessity of hypotheses involving true
continuity...
The general motive is to avoid the
hypothesis
that this or that is inexplicable...
[For]
to suppose a thing inexplicable is
not only
to fail to explain it, and so to make
an
unjustifiable hypothesis, but much
worse,
it is to set up a barrier across the
road
of science, and to forbid all attempt
to
understand the phenomenon... So the
synechist
will not believe that some things are
conscious
and some unconscious, unless by consciousness
be meant a certain grade of feeling.
He will
rather ask what are the circumstances
which
raise this grade; nor will he consider
that
a chemical formula for protoplasm would
be
a sufficient answer." (6.169-173)
6For reasons of economy of space, I
will
assume the reader's familiarity with
Peirce's
semiotic. For a brief summary thereof,
see
my paper from last semester, "Why
Triadic?
Challenges to the Structure of Peirce's
Semiotic."
7But in defending himself against John
Dewey's
claim that he, Morris, had misinterpreted
Peirce's semiotic (John Dewey, "Peirce's
Theory of Linguistic Signs, Thought,
and
Meaning, Journal of Philosophy 43(1946):85-96),
Morris states: "I should like
to make
clear that the position developed in
Signs,
Language, and Behavior did not start
from
Peirce. George H. Mead first stimulated
me
to think about signs behaviorally...
Only
later did I work earnestly at Peirce,
Ogden
and Richards, Russell, and Carnap,
and still
later at Tolman and Hull. All of these
persons
influences in various ways the formulation
of Signs, Language, and Behavior. Nevertheless,
in historical perspective, it seems
to me
that that position of Signs, Language,
and
Behavior, though its orientation was
not
derived from Peirce, is in effect 'an
attempt
to carry out resolutely' his approach
to
semiotic." Morris, "Signs
About
Signs About Signs," in Writings
on the
General Theory of Signs, vol. 16 in
"Approaches
to Semiotics," ed. Thomas A. Sebeok
(The Hague: Mouton, 1971), pp. 444-45.
See also Morris' critical discussion
of "Charles
Peirce on Signs," Writings, pp.
337-40.
8Morris, p. 19. Compare one of Peirce's
best
known definitions of the sign: "A
Sign
or Representamen, is a First which
stands
in such a genuine triadic relation
to a Second,
called its Object, as to be capable
of determining
a Third, called its Interpretant, to
assume
the same triadic relation to its Object
in
which it stands itself to the same
Object."
As Morris remarks, p. 338, Peirce's
definition
is "much wider" than his
own.
9Morris, p. 85.
10Morris, pp. 82-88.
11T. L. Short, "Semiosis and Intentionality,"
Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce
Society,
17:197-223; here p. 208.
12Morris, p. 94. Cf. Peirce's concept
of
ground:"The sign stands for something,
its object. It stands for that object,
not
in all respects, but in reference to
a sort
of idea, which I have sometimes called
the
ground of the representamen."
(2.228;
cf. 1.551)
13See Peirce's monograph on "Evolutionary
Love," 6.287-317, in which, in
addition
to the deterministic dimension of anancasm
in individual and cultural development,
Peirce
argues for the presence in all biological
development of a tychastic dimension
of sheer
random spontaneity, and an agapastic
dimension
of teleological orientation to God.
These
dimensions of tychasm, anancasm, and
agapasm
parallel Peirce's three universal categories
of Firstness, Secondness, and Thirdness.
14Morris' discussion, pp. 99-103, in
fact
cites this passage from Peirce.
It is interesting that Peirce, like
Morris,
views complex symbols as indispensable
but
less reliable: he remarks often how
much
less likely animals are than human
beings
to go wrong in their responses, and
how much
more reliable for "vital practical
affairs"
pre-rational, pre-reflective responses
are
than complex rational thought (cf.
6.648ff).
15Reference?
16Morris, pp. 97-98.
17Thus, for Peirce, "Anything
which
startles us is an index, in so far
as it
marks the junction between two portions
of
experience," (2.285); and relative
pronouns,
prepositions, and noun cases are usually
indexical signs (2.289-290). And a
symbol
may under certain circumstances represent
an individual object: "A Symbol
is a
law, or regularity of the indefinite
future...
and so must be also the complete immediate
Object, or meaning. But a law necessarily
governs, or 'is embodied in individuals...
[Thus] there are two ways in which
a Symbol
may have a real Existential Thing as
its
real Object. First, the thing may conform
to it, whether accidentally or by virtue
of the Symbol having the virtue of
a growing
habit, and secondly, by the Symbol
having
an Index as a part of itself."
(2.293
and fn.)
18Morris, p. 94. Morris' claim that
the buzzer
may have no denotatum calls to mind
the current
controversy among Peirce scholars over
whether
a sign which represents its object
erroneously
can be said to have any dynamical object
at all, or only an immediate object.
For
the latter view, see Douglas Greenlee,
Peirce's
Concept of Sign (The Hague: Mouton,
1976);
for a rejoinder in defense of the former
view, Vincent Colapietro, Peirce's
Approach
to the Self: A Semiotic Perspective
on Human
Subjectivity
(Albany: State University of New York
Press,
1989), pp. 15-20. Among the issues
at stake
here are whether Peirce's notion of
representation
is adequate, whether Peirce's semiotic
is
fully general, and how necessary it
is for
a full account of semiosis to take
into account
not only the object of a sign, but
its context
as well.
19Morris, 198f. Morris distinguishes
reliability--
the degree to which "members of
the
sign-family to which [a sign] belongs
denote"
(p. 98)-- from adequacy-- "the
degree
to which a sign achieves the purpose
for
which it is used." (p. 173) Because
of this, Morris is often more aware
than
Peirce of ways investigative progress
can
go awry: for example, "Certain
beliefs
may have become of central importance
in
the organization of a personality,
and prove
highly resistant to change even when
the
signs expressing a belief are shown
to be
highly unreliable." (p. 199)
20Morris, pp. 119-22, on "Mead's
Concept
of the Significant Symbol."
21Morris, pp. 110-19. Note that this
language
need not be verbal: "we can...
differentiate
between auditory, visual, tactual languages,
depending on the sign-vehicles which
occur."
(p. 116)
22See Colapietro, ch. 3, "The
Relevance
of Peirce's Semiotics to Psychology."
See also Morris, pp. 279-84, "The
Pathology
of Signs" and "Signs and
Personality
Disturbances," and pp. 290-92,
"The
Social Pathology of Signs."
23Morris, p. 86; cf. p. 37.
24Note, for instance, Peirce's consistent
refusal to equate the mere "validity"
of formally valid logic with the "truth"
value Peirce reserved for logic with
noncounterfactual
pragmatic import (cf. 3.441ff). For
further
complications in Peirce's view of conditionals,
see fn. 42.
25Morris, pp. 142, 163, 165-67.
26Morris, p. 175.
27Charles W. Morris, Paths of Life:
Preface
to a World Religion (Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, 1970; orig. edn.,
1942),
pp. 24-25. Cf. Posner, Classics in
Semiotics,
pp. 43ff. This trichotomy, which Morris
did
not develop in his earlier writings
as fully
as the other two trichotomies, appears
to
possess no purely formal fourth element:
as Morris notes in Signification and
Significance
(1970), he attempted in his later work
"to
do away with the formative dimension
of signification."
(Cf. Writings, p. 414)
28This formal similarity becomes even
more
apparent when we consider that, within
the
context of the sign, Peirce's sign,
object,
and interpretant can be considered
as a First,
a Second, and a Third respectively.
However,
Morris has nothing equivalent to Peirce's
degenerate categories to restrict his
division
to only ten classes like Peirce's.
29See Morris, p. 21; Peirce, 2.229.
30Hendel, in Symbolic Forms, 1:1.
31Symbolic Forms, 1:73-77.
32Symbolic Forms, 1:75-78.
33See Peirce's letters to Lady Welby
and
to William James in vol. 8 of the Collected
Papers. [also 8.16]
34Symbolic Forms, 1:86.
35Hendel, in Symbolic Forms, 1:63.
36Symbolic Forms, 1:91, 103.
37Symbolic Forms, 1:104.
38I do not know whether anyone has
remarked
on it before, but seen from this angle
Cassirer's
symbolic form bears a striking resemblance
to Oswald Spengler's notion of the
"new
number-idea" of "numbers
as pure
relation... the function itself as
unit,"
which was to Spengler the notion of
number
characteristic of our present "Faustian"
Western civilization: "... so
we may
say that our world-picture is an actualizing
of an infinite space in which things
visible
appear very nearly as realities of
a lower
order, limited in the presence of the
illimitable.
The symbol of the West is an idea of
which
no other Culture gives even a hint,
the idea
of Function." Oswald Spengler,
The Decline
of the West, trans. Charles Francis
Atkinson,
2 vols. (New York: Alfred A. Knopf,
1926-28),
1:74-78.
39Symbolic Forms, 1:94-97.
40This peculiar characteristic of numbers,
which Cassirer deals with in "The
Linguistic
Development of the Concept of Number"
(cf. esp. 1:244), is remarked upon
by Peirce
in almost identical terms: "the
highest
and last lesson which the numbers whisper
in our ear is that of the supremacy
of the
forms of relation for which their tawdry
outside is the mere shell of the casket."
(4.681)
Or: "This is one of the matters
concerning
which a man can only learn from his
own reflections,
but I believe that if my suggestions
are
followed out, the reader will grant
that
one, two, three are more than mere
count-words
like 'eeny, meeny, miny, mo,' but carry
vast,
though vague ideas." (1.362)
41Symbolic Forms, 1:94-97.
42See Peirce on the extension and intension
("breadth" and "depth"
of logical terms, 2.391-394. Peirce
also
questioned the inverse proportionality
of
extension and intension (2.400-406),
and
emphasized that the increase of information
coming with any increase in breadth
or depth
"may be certain or doubtful."
(2.420)
43Symbolic Forms, 1:86.
44Symbolic Forms, 1:89-90.
45Cf. Thomas Goudge, The Thought of
C. S.
Peirce (New York: Dover Publications,
Inc.,
1969), pp. 153-54, on Peirce's formulation
of pragmaticism: "An alternative
way
of putting the same thing is to say
that
every theoretical judgment... needs
to be
translated into a practical maxim expressed
in a conditional sentence having its
apodasis
in the imperative mood. Only if this
translation
can be effected does the original statement
possess any meaning... It is also clear
why
[Peirce thus] regards all propositions
as
having at bottom a conditional form."
46Symbolic Forms, 1:105.
47Symbolic Forms, 1:107.
48Symbolic Forms, 1:108-09.
49Ernst Cassirer, Language and Myth,
trans.
Susanne Langer (New York: Dover Publications,
Inc., 1953), PAGE REF?
50Language and Myth, p. 33.
51Symbolic Forms, 1:233; Language and
Myth,
pp. 44ff., 63ff. See also, for example,
Cassirer's
contention that yellow as "yellow"
and red as "red" preceded
either
yellow or red as "color"
(1:282),
or his treatment of the highly irregular
grammatical form of suppletives such
as the
Latin fero, tuli, latus (1:2990-91).
52Another fertile source for comparison
to
Cassirer with regard to the origin
and growth
of signs would be Peirce's semiotically
influenced
cosmology (cf. 1.406-416; 6.33;
6.189-221; 6.490, etc). Although, as
far
as I know, Peirce's cosmological remarks
have never been interpreted in this
way,
when so read they provide an even more
obvious
and detailed parallel to Cassirer's
account
of the growth of symbolic forms.
53For a more general and technical
sociological
treatment of the notions Morris applies
here
to religious experience, see his Varieties
of Human Value (Chicago: University
of Chicago
Press, 1956).
54Morris, "Mysticism and Its Language,"
in Writings, pp. 456-57.
55Morris, pp. 458-59, emphasis added.
56Morris, pp. 458-61.
57Morris, pp. 462-63.
58Cf. Morris, pp. 269-300 ("Individual
and Social Import of Signs").
59Paths of Life, p. 30f.
60Paths of Life, pp. 174, 178-79. As
Morris
explains, "Maitreya" was
the name
given in Buddhism of "the predicted
Enlightened One." Of his utopian
vision
Morris remarks (p.
166): "There is a genuine sense
in which
this religion continues the religious
quest
where early Buddhism left off"--
though
it would counsel not "the negation
of
all desires" but the balancing
of all
human potentialities.
61But for an account of the positive
but
limited role which Peirce does accord
the
individual within this schema, see
Colapietro,
ch. 5, "Inwardness and Autonomy."
62Peirce never cites Pascal in this
connection.
But the similarity is evident between
Peirce's
view here, and Pascal's famous "Dieu
d'Abraham, d'Isaac, et de Jacob, non
des
philosophes."
63Vincent Potter, "'Vaguely Like
a Man':
The Theism of Charles S. Peirce,"
in
God Knowable and Unknowable, ed. Robert
J.
Roth (New York: Fordham University
Press,
1973), p. 242.
64Ernst Cassirer, An Essay on Man (New
Haven:
Yale University Press, 1944).
65An Essay on Man, pp. 79, 85-87.
66Language and Myth, pp. 33-34.
67Language and Myth, pp. 20-21. Examples
would be the gods of ancient Greek
religion,
and, on a somewhat more rudimentary
level,
those of ancient Roman religion. Cf.
An Essay
on Man, pp. 96-99.
68An Essay on Man, p. 99.
69An Essay on Man, p. 102.
70Language and Myth, p. 74.
71Language and Myth, p. 77.
72Language and Myth, p. 76.
73Peirce: "One of the questions
philosophy
has to consider is whether the development
of the universe is like the increase
of an
angle, so that it proceeds forever
without
tending toward anything unattained...
or
whether the universe sprang from a
chaos
in the infinitely distant past to tend
toward
something different in the infinitely
distant
future, or whether the universe sprang
from
nothing in the past to go on indefinitely
toward a point in the infinitely distant
future which, were it attained, would
be
the mere nothing from which it set
out."
(6.27)
These are the views which Peirce elsewhere
(6.582) names "elliptic,"
"hyperbolic,"
and "parabolic," respectively,
on analogy with the relationship between
these conic sections and the ideal
line at
infinity. The "hyperbolic"
and
"parabolic" views resemble
what
have sometimes been referred to as
"linear"
and "circular" ideas of history,
respectively.
74It is important to note that, although
in the "hierarchy" of Peirce's
categories the progression is from
Firstness
to Secondness to Thirdness, yet Peirce
states
(6.33; cf.
2.302) that the order of their temporal
development
is from Firstness through Thirdness
to Secondness.
However, when Peirce's cosmology prescinds
from questions of temporality, the
order
is again Firstness-Secondness-Thirdness!
(cf. 1.416, 6.189-221)
Are we to chalk this up as simply another
of Peirce's inconsistencies or obscurities?
Logically, Thirdness cannot be present
without
Secondness, yet each sequence when
carefully
considered on its own terms seems correct.
The only coherent solution I see is
to take
the order of temporal development as
the
order of progression in which the categories
predominate phenomenologically in the
first
two moments and especially for sign-object
referentiality, and the order prescinded
from temporality as the order of progression
in which the categories predominate
phenomenologically
"in the large" across all
three
moments together and hence especially
for
sign-interpretant meaningfulness, both
in
a situation where all three categories
are
logically already all co-present.
To work this problem out in detail
would
take us far beyond the scope of this
paper,
and would involve the fine points of
the
relation between the icon-index-symbol
and
term-proposition-argument trichotomies
in
Peirce's division of signs. It would
address
the question of why and how, in religious
experience, one often seems to "know"
far more than one can put in words.
Cf. 2.278ff.
75The "give and take" is
clearly
a matter of Secondness; deduction,
though
its result is a First, involves an
act of
judgment in which Secondness predominates.
This, according to Peirce, is why deduction
is precise, unlike induction and abduction
(see sections on inference in vol.
2 of the
Collected Papers).
76Cf. Peirce's repeated emphasis upon
the
vagueness of language about God, as
in "Answers
to Questions Concerning My Belief in
God,"
6.4994-521. Potter's article, pp.
247ff., works out in detail the grounding
of this emphasis in the "hard-core"
logical side of Peirce's semiotic.
77Compare this to Peirce, 2.763: "What
is the chief end of man? Answer: To
actualize
ideas of the immortal, ceaselessly
prolific
kind. To that end it is needful to
get beliefs
that the believer will take satisfaction
in acting upon, not mere rules set
down upon
paper..."
A Presbyterian eye recognizes this
immediately
as Peirce's pragmatist paraphrase of
the
first question in the Westminster Shorter
Catechism: "Q. What is the chief
end
of man? A. To glorify God and to enjoy
Him
forever..."
78As the reader may gather, I intend
my semiotic
account at this point to correlate
with those
various philosophical and theological
accounts
according to which God is seen as somehow
beyond reason and yet at the same time
both
ground and telos of reason.
79Cassirer however was quite aware
of these
connections. See the closing section
of Language
and Myth, entitled "The Power
of Metaphor."
For Peircean semiotic accounts of metaphor,
see 2.222, 2.277, 2.290fn.; Douglas
Anderson,
"Peirce on Metaphor," TCSPS
20:453-468;
Carl Hausman, "Metaphorical Reference
and Peirce's Dynamical Object,"
TCSPS
23:381-410; Anderson, Creativity and
the
Philosophy of C. S. Peirce (Dordrecht:
Martinus
Nijhoff Publishers, 1987); and Michael
Cabot
Haley, The Semeiosis of Poetic Metaphor,
Peirce Studies No. 4, Kenneth Laine
Ketner,
gen. ed. (Bloomington and Indianapolis:
Indiana
University Press,
1988).
For a philosophical account of metaphor
in
many ways parallel to these, see Janet
Martin
Soskice, Metaphor and Religious Language
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985).
80See, for example, Johan Huizinga,
Homo
Ludens: A Study of the Play Element
in Culture
(Boston: The Beacon Press, 1955). It
is interesting
that the trichotomy Huizinga draws
in his
preface-- homo ludens, homo faber,
and homo
sapiens-- can be seen from a Peircean
viewpoint
as a division correlate to Peirce's
three
categories.
|
Evans Experientialism 
