Animal language before Sebeok
Publication of the text of Umberto Eco’s talk given at a symposium held in honour of Thomas A. Sebeok (1920–2001) in San Marino in 2002.
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Publication of the text of Umberto Eco’s talk given at a symposium held in honour of Thomas A. Sebeok (1920–2001) in San Marino in 2002.
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This paper provides a short overview of anticipation as a field of enquiry that is closely related to semiotic biology. Anticipation can be seen as addressing both empirically and conceptually certain key features of (bio)semiotic processes, including their open-ended and non-deterministic structure, (self-)referential and relational features, contingency and constructiveness. Outlines are given of some main theoretical frameworks and sources informing current anticipation research. The parallel (and complementarity) between independently developed foundational traditions is highlighted, and seen as a relevant fi eld of future analysis.
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Sign—the basic idea of semiotics—has been explored by great many philosophers since antiquity; nevertheless, as of now we do not have its ultimate and systematic theory. Peirce proposed an original and philosophically (ontologically) grounded conception of the sign. Could there be a different ontologically based conception of the sign? Could there be developed a different and ontologically based semiotics? The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate that the fundamentals of semiotics can be developed starting from the ideas of Aristotle. The idea of sign might be grounded on Aristotle’s account of Being and cognition considered in terms of form and matter. Various signs can be treated in terms of form and matter. Pictures, letters are signs of form. A wedding-ring is a material sign-symbol. Many signs can be treated in terms of similarity to the objects they signify: photographs, pictures, sculptures, diagrams, graphical charts, land maps, etc. It is quite natural to treat signs in terms of form and matter. The paper shows how the sign can be defined in terms of form and matter. A concrete model of sign as similarity of form (homomorphism) to the signified object is described. The structurally treated Cartesian system of coordinates is involved for articulation of the modes of Being. Intentionality as directedness of consciousness of the sign perceiver toward the signified object is used in the account of sign.
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In this paper, I investigate Aristotle’s psychological conception of meaning. I will show that in Aristotle’s De interpretatione we can find a conception of meaning that enables a response to typical objections such psychological accounts are facing with. According to my interpretation, it is required that thoughts are significata of our terms rather than mental images. Mental images could occur as subjective features of a particular mind in particular portion of time, whereas thoughts as an isomorphic likeness of the universal and necessary aspect of extramental reality provide ground for intersubjectivity required for an adequate account of meaning. In my interpretation, however reference is not fixed via likening relation because a mental content of nonreferring terms is also provided via likening relation between thought and two or many extramental things.
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Vepra artistike nuk mund të identifikohet me një gjendje shpirtërore të krijuesit të saj dhe as me cilat do qoftë gjendje shpirtërore që i shkaktonte subjekti pranues – ashtu si donte ta shpjegonte këtë estetika psikologjiste
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The Polish exegesis of Mircea Eliade's work has grown after 1989 through monographs and studies devoted entirely to hermeneutics that the historian and phenomenologist of religions imposes on the sciences dealing with the study of sacredness, of religious phenomena and related symbolism. The book Man in the Symbol World. Philosophical Anthropology of Mircea Eliade by Artur Rega is among them.
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In the article, the author analyses the most important memorial-like works and sculptures of well-known Lithuanian people by the distinguished Lithuanian sculptor, Stasys Žirgulis. Also, the monumental and small sculptures, full of strong associative and symbolic themes loved by the artist, are discussed here. The plot peculiarities and their expressions in plastics are presented. The artist’s extraordinary knowledge of materials is emphasized as well. S. Žirgulis’s creative development is summarized by highlighting the diversity of the artist’s works that predisposed a significant parting of two stylistic tendencies in the sculptor’s oeuvre.
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Vision is one among the several important topics that Charles Goodwin has been studying. He radically de-psychologized vision by re-specifying it as what is publicly achieved in the unfolding distinct activity rather than what is privately lodged in the mind or the brain (Goodwin 1994).
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For my part in the celebration of Chuck Goodwin’s accomplishments, I return to the past to show the alignment of the 1987 essay to follow with the expansive ideas of context he and Alessandro Duranti put forth in their 1992 book, Rethinking Context. Reading their description of context as inseparable from language and as dynamic was both a starting point and a way forward for my message.
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This project revolves around the complex concept of hyperreality and a quote from George Carlin best fits as the description “The reason they call it the American Dream is because you have to be asleep to believe it.” In other words, what it is called ‘reality,’ it is in fact ‘a dream’ in which some are still trapped, but that doesn’t mean the masses will not wake up sooner or later. Thus, the present article pinpoints the most important aspects of hyperreality, a summary of its origins and usage throughout time and, lastly, an explanation for the most common themes that convey terms – simulation and simulacrum and conveys one possible explanation of the complexity of American Dream Theory. In order to fully grasp the functions of this conceptualization, I will review some of the most relevant critical opinions formulated by famous literary scholars. What seems to be in common between the movies “eXistenZ” and “The Truman Show” is that all represent a simulated reality; the ones who view it may or may not be trapped in the boundaries of hyperreality.
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The concept of auto-communication has a relatively short history. The most common semiotic idea of auto-communication created in 1973 belongs to Juri Lotman. According to Lotman, auto-communication is the communication of a subject (culture or living being) with it/him/herself. Auto-communication has mnemonic and meaning generation functions. The concept under study is gradually analyzed and developed in the context of the semiotics of the artistic text. Auto-communication that has a meaning generation function is considered, firstly, as a mode of text processing; secondly, as an amplifying factor for the general possibility of a text to be interpreted and turned into the basis for the creation of new texts, hence, to survive in the culture.
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Józef Mackiewicz’s representations of nature frequently include birds, which play a variety of artistic roles. Fitas discusses the most memorable instances of this key motif by exploring Mackiewicz’s journalistic and novelistic works, in particular his novella Faux- -pas ciotki Pafci [Auntie Pafcia’s Faux-pas]. Birds appear as a clear pars pro toto of nature, and they point to the tension between the natural and the human in the real twentiethcentury world, dominated as it is by politics and ideology. Although this article is based on a traditional structural methodology, Fitas concludes by suggesting ways in which it could offer a point of departure for future studies based on modern methodologies (e.g. ecocriticism, the natural and the human in Walter Benjamin or Giorgo Agamben).
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Enciklopédikus természetű művek bírálatánál mindegy, hogy hol kezdjük, az értelmezés úgyis kikerülhetetlenül körbe-körbe jár, hosszú kűröket kell lejteni, mielőtt értelmes véleményt fogalmazhatna meg az ember. Aki kedvét leli ebben, az már feltehetőleg Ecot is élvezte, s remélem, nem unja az alábbi eszmefuttatásokat sem. Kezdem tehát azzal, amivel Umberto Eco, az utóbbi évtizedek esztétikai-szemiotikái irányzatainak divatos sztárja bámulatba ejtette a világot, és megbotránkoztatta tudós kollégáit, vagyis A rózsa nevével, amelyben irodalom- és kultúrelméleti szakértelmét először kamatoztatta. A második regény, A Foucault-inga e bírálat tulajdonképpeni tárgya is jobban értelmezhető, ha megvizsgáltuk az első sikerét.
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This article analyzes the representation of noblemen in the nineteenth century Lithuanian art. While this time is not the flowering of this social class, the visual language on this theme is the most impressive. Questions discussed are: what was the evolution of portraits of noblemen, what were the visual signs of noblemen’s identity, what peculiarities of noblemen’s lifestyle are shown in genre painting, how much does genre painting represent the reality of the nineteenth century and provide scenes that show the values of the mentality of noblemen? Another one important line of the research is to reveal the historical discourse of the noblemen’s situation in the nineteenth century and to show its interplay with visual artistic language. The research has shown that in the thematic level of the pictures, the political inactivity and stagnation of noblemen is revealed. This inactivity has historical causality. In the most of the scenes, the various forms of their leisure is represented, while a politically active life, especially their activities in sejmiki, is performed only in a historical past. Visually, another historical reality is given expression: the mental transformation of noblemen from their exceptional inborn rights to an emphasis of the importance of education and intelligence in this sense. These signs are noticeable in portraits with exceptional marks, such as kontusz suit and coat of arms, to the intimate portraits with only individual features of the person and not with any reference to social class. Also, this change is artistically visible in portraits depicting noblemen at leisure with a book in their hands.
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This article analyzes the representation of noblemen in the nineteenth century Lithuanian art. While this time is not the flowering of this social class, the visual language on this theme is the most impressive. Questions discussed are: what was the evolution of portraits of noblemen, what were the visual signs of noblemen’s identity, what peculiarities of noblemen’s lifestyle are shown in genre painting, how much does genre painting represent the reality of the nineteenth century and provide scenes that show the values of the mentality of noblemen? Another one important line of the research is to reveal the historical discourse of the noblemen’s situation in the nineteenth century and to show its interplay with visual artistic language. The research has shown that in the thematic level of the pictures, the political inactivity and stagnation of noblemen is revealed. This inactivity has historical causality. In the most of the scenes, the various forms of their leisure is represented, while a politically active life, especially their activities in sejmiki, is performed only in a historical past. Visually, another historical reality is given expression: the mental transformation of noblemen from their exceptional inborn rights to an emphasis of the importance of education and intelligence in this sense. These signs are noticeable in portraits with exceptional marks, such as kontusz suit and coat of arms, to the intimate portraits with only individual features of the person and not with any reference to social class. Also, this change is artistically visible in portraits depicting noblemen at leisure with a book in their hands.
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The father figure in Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse makes himself seem strong and authoritative although in reality he needs the others’ support and help. Mr Ramsay, who heavily depends on the ideas of certainty and stability in every respect, does not accept women’s independence. However, Mr Ramsay is constantly belittled by Mrs Ramsay, Lily, and the narrator. Mr Ramsay’s authority is ridiculed and mocked. In this regard, the novel becomes suitable for an analysis in terms of Mikhail Bakhtin’s concept of “decrowning” that widely takes place in the discussion on “carnival,” one of Bakhtin’s main focuses in his works. The act of decrowning in Bakhtin’s works is a physical act of dethronement of a symbolic king during the carnival. Decrowning suggests a constant change of everything. In this way, Mr Ramsay’s decrowning suggests Woolf’s desire to see the change in women’s condition. This study analyses Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse as a platform on which the main father figure is often ignored as an authoritative male figure. And this emasculation of Mr Ramsay is likened to the act of decrowning, which is one of the acts that take place during carnivals in Bakhtin’s works.
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Dreams have always been a psychological phenomenon in human life. Dreams are human expressions that reflect the inner world through its own particular symbol and explanation. In addition, dreams have explicitly given direction to individuals from time to time in daily life or indirectly have had an effect on people. In this study, we have evaluated the effects dreams have on the inner world and the reflection it has on the outer world for people according to the views of psychoanalysts.
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Aristotle's theory of five senses attracted the attention of many thinkers in the field of fine arts, literature and philosophy, as well as medical sciences in Europe. The art of painting often interpreted senses as instruments to gather information about earthly realities and to understand the divine world through concrete realities. Within this approach, the representations of the five senses in the art of painting were generally referred to holy books. This study, which aims to acquire more understanding about eating and taste, examines the representations of five senses and especially the sense of taste in the art of painting. While doing this, the researcher advances religion, history, mythology and iconography and reveals the symbolic meanings hidden behind the surface. One of the findings of the study reveal that the sense of taste is a primitive sense that humans have in common with animals, and that the misuse of this sense will lead to lust and sin. Another finding is that the act of eating and leading into temptation is usually represented by female figures in the painting
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This study seeks to discover hidden links between Saussure’s Third Course of Lectures on General Linguistics, Hegel’s Introductory Lectures on Aesthetics / Philosophy of Mind and Alexander von Humboldt’s Cosmos. To begin with, the notion of play is employed to examine the interplay between our emotion, imagination and cognition, and to examine how such a composite of faculties serves to unify conceptualizations of communicationmodelling systems, philosophical hermeneutics and moral psychology in our times. At discovering a certain future-oriented and symbiotic scheme of time implied in these theories, the inquiry moves on to engage with certain perspectives on the evolution of our verbal and nonverbal capacities.
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Reviewing the theory of the first chapter via some practical examples reveals considerable information about the process of translation and the emergent types of “translation”. The notion of “amusement” suggests that the present objects or events can be turned into pleasant artifacts to everyone’s entertainment. The entertainment of “sacred” rituals aff ords the readers or spectators the factual but at the same time the intensely sensuous dream of the blissful illusion created by the objects d’arts in the audience. The public world, driven by the spectacle of fine arts, excites the admiration, wonder, and enchantment of the ritual festivity. The human and social interest of “amusement” comes from (and is filled with) the sentiment and speculation of Peirce’s primary idea of “musement”. Musement is the private conversation with one’s self, an auto-meditation described proverbially in Peirce’s “aesthetic contemplation, or that of distant castle-building (whether in Spain or within one’s own moral training)” (CP: 6.458). Both extremes of amusement and musement in arts intermingle the public imagery with the musing reveries of the actual person. The dialogue involves the three components of the sign, embodied in the spectator or listener, giving the beliefs or opinions about the qualities of the artwork.
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