CLARITATE PRIN GÂNDIRE CRITICĂ

Author(s): Radu Panait / Language(s): Romanian / Issue: Summer/2020

For the better part of the pandemic, through exercises in prudence and usefulness, I have stumbled upon the realisation that, more often than not, a wellraised question weighs more than an unhinged or lackluster answer. Thusly, my utmost intention is that of delivering a recourse to clarity, logical reasoning and socratic wisdom. Although a bare dilettante of wiseness and critical thinking in general, I find myself in an equally opportunistic and imperative environment. As a sophomore, my knowledge and impact are equally insufficient. However, human consciousness is such that, even in dire straits, it is capable of digging through the most strenuous of circumstances. My efforts have made the thread of the article take you through, and over, what I consider to be, the two most important barriers that stand in the way of a cohesive and efficient fightback, guided all the while, by the erudition of some of the brightest minds of humanity. From Antiquity to 20th century Modernity. I designated my efforts to specifically outline the threats I consider to be of infamous impact. Incompetence, delusions of grandeur, immorality and logical fallacies, to name a few. I inquired into the specificity of philosophical language and its shared similarities to journalism, as well as their crippling asymmetry. Moreover, I emphasize the necessity of realizing one’s intellectual limits and urge my peers to anticipate and become aware of our sporadic shortcomings. Lastly, I target the paradoxical idiosyncrasies of philosophical vocabulary and how, in its exigent intentions, it unwillingly envelopes its audience in sheer fluster.

Code biology: A bird’s-eye view

Author(s): Marcello Barbieri / Language(s): English / Issue: 20/2020

Biosemiotics is the synthesis of biology and semiotics and its founder, Thomas Sebeok, was a student and a strong supporter of Charles Peirce, which explains why biosemiotics has been, since the beginning, a field firmly based on Peircean semiotics and Peircean philosophy. In the history of biosemiotics, however, there has been a brief period – between 2004 and 2012 – when a serious attempt was made to build an ‘extended biosemiotics’, one that was not confined into the straitjacket of the Peircean approach. Eventually, however, that attempt was officially rejected by the majority of the biosemioticians, and the result was that in 2012 a small group of people broke away from biosemiotics and founded the new research field of code biology.

Comparing Axiomatic Theories of Truth

Author(s): Mateusz Łełyk / Language(s): English / Issue: 2/2019

Content and Meaning Constitutive Inferences

Author(s): MARIA GARCIA-ARNALDOS / Language(s): English / Issue: 1/2019

Cutting down the Porphyrian tree: Objective reality as created by the innerness of living beings

Author(s): Anton Markoš,Jana Švorcová / Language(s): English / Issue: 20/2020

The concept of hierarchy has been shown to be extremely useful in many areas of human knowledge, and parsing the world into higher and lower, more or less complex, developed, or intelligent units is a heuristic tool we commonly use in order to understand the world around us. A scala naturae extending from rocks to humans to angels to God, or nowadays from elementary particles to humans to galaxies, is integrated into the fabric of our worldview. The concept is especially useful in biology, where it features either in its static form in biological systematics (Linneaus), or in the historical, evolutionary dimension such as we find in the works of Darwin and Haeckel, but also in cladistics and other fields. Markoš and Das (2016) argue that the term “domain” would be more appropriate for classification of living beings because it does not assume a hierarchy. When considering communicational processes within biological systems, a heterarchical concept indeed seems more appropriate (Švorcová 2016; Bruni, Giorgi 2015).

Czy posiadanie sprzecznych przekonań jest możliwe? Omówienie i krytyka argumentów za psychologiczną zasadą niesprzeczności

Author(s): Maciej Tarnowski / Language(s): Polish / Issue: 2/2019

Deconstruction of the Notion of Logos and Logocentric Language in Texts by Jacques Derrida

Author(s): Paulina Kłos / Language(s): English / Publication Year: 0

The construction of logos in Derrida’s writings is expressed and effaced at the same time. It is totally in agreement with the main assumption of Derrida’s philosophy, i.e. that the characteristic of human being does not confine itself only to the clarity of reasoning but is best explained in terms of the supplement. The classical metaphysical concepts like identity, presence, sameness (which all derive its origin from the Platonian logos) are by Derrida deconstructed with the help of this notion: “the indefinite process of supplementarity has always already infiltrated presence, always already inscribed there the space of repetition and the splitting of the self.” Supplement as the relation to its other is the condition of self-consciousness, but at the same time its constant transgression beyond this what is given is the reason for the dissolution of the stable identity. In the long run this process results in the complete expropriation of the subject, because “[a]uto-affection constitutes the same (auto) as it divides the same.” This consequence of Derridian inquiry is the reason why we cannot entirely give ourselves to the defiant project of deconstruction – we still need some stable, operational language based on logos so that the language expressions can be meaningful and not dissolve in disintegration. Consequently, encouraged by Derrida to follow the path of “dangerous supplement” in finding solely human components of culture, we can say “yes” to it, but only when treating it as a regulative idea for a more logocentric struggle. In my paper I would like to indicate how logos inaugurated the metaphysical tradition in philosophy, how logocentric oppositions culminated in the writings of Husserl, had their twilight in the thought of Nietzsche and were finally deconstructed by Derrida.

Diagonal Anti-Mechanist Arguments

Author(s): David Kashtan / Language(s): English / Issue: 1/2020

Gödel’s first incompleteness theorem is sometimes said to refute mechanism about the mind. §1 contains a discussion of mechanism. We look into its origins, motivations and commitments, both in general and with regard to the human mind, and ask about the place of modern computers and modern cognitive science within the general mechanistic paradigm. In §2 we give a sharp formulation of a mechanistic thesis about the mind in terms of the mathematical notion of computability. We present the argument from Gödel’s theorem against mechanism in terms of this formulation and raise two objections, one of which is known but is here given a more precise formulation, and the other is new and based on the discussion in §1.

Digital Age in Semiotics & Communication

Frequency: 1 issues / Country: Bulgaria

Digital Age in Semiotics & Communication, a journal from the Southeast European Center for Semiotic Studies at the New Bulgarian University and founded by Prof. Kristian Bankov, explores the new forms of knowledge, social and linguistic interaction, and cultural phenomena generated by the advent of the Internet.

The purpose of the journal is to provide a collaborative work field for scholars interested in researching new phenomena in the dynamic digital world. Our main purpose is to build a scientific bridge between the fields of semiotics, communications, social sciences and the problems of the digital era.

We believe that our collaborations can raise the level of understanding for modern digital phenomena, providing both a solid theoretical framework and profound applied research.

Discursive Practices as Sign Constructs of Communicative Consciousness

Author(s): Igor Korolyov / Language(s): English / Issue: 102/2020

The article offers the definition of discursive practice as a sign construct of the cognitive-semiotic, discursive-pragmatic and linguacultural levels, realised in the corresponding discursive situations, within which a semiotic configuration of elements of both one discursive practice and their combination occurs. In a cognitive-semiotic perspective, a discursive space is formed by the symbiosis of discursive practices as signs of a person’s communicative consciousness, i.e. a representative of a particular national-cultural community. In this aspect, the discourse is associated with the consciousness, knowledge and perceptions of the language personality, which are formed in the process of socialisation and become the basis of the cultural array, broadcast from generation to generation within a certain ethnic group. Thus, sign constructs of communicative consciousness are formed as concrete semiotic units embodied in discursive practices.

DISEMINAREA ȘTIRILOR ÎN PERIOADA PANDEMIEI COVID-19

Author(s): Delia-Cristina Balaban / Language(s): Romanian / Issue: Summer/2020

This article focuses on the phenomenon of the dissemination of the fake news and its implications during the first months of the COVID-19 pandemic in Romania. At the beginning, concepts such as news sharing and information dissemination are presented, reviewing the main predictors of this online behavior. Below are summarized some of the most relevant approaches to the phenomenon of false news and its implications from the perspective of communication sciences. Some examples of fake news that circulated between March and April 2020 in Romania and internationally come to illustrate how this phenomenon has turned into a real infodemia, with real and potential negative implications on society. This approach ends with a call for accountability at the institutional, international and national levels, but also at the individual level.

Does Sherlock Holmes Exist?

Author(s): Richard Vallée / Language(s): English / Issue: 58/2020

Fictional names have specific, cognitively relevant features, putting them in a category apart from the category of ordinary names. I argue that we should focus on the name or name form itself and refrain from looking for an assignment procedure and an assigned referent. I also argue that we should reject the idea that sentences containing fictional names express singular propositions. These suggestions have important consequences for the intuition that ‘Sherlock Holmes exists’ is either true or false, and they put our intuitions concerning fictional names into perspective. If Millianism is the view that names only have a referent only as their semantic value, then my proposal on fictional names is not Millian in nature.

Drawing the Virus. The Representation of COVID-19 in Italian Comics

Author(s): Michele Sorice,Simone Antonucci / Language(s): English / Issue: 2/2021

Through the perspective of Cultural Semiotics, this article aims to show how Italian comic book creators have represented the tragic event of the coronavirus pandemic during the first lockdown (between March and May 2020) imposed by Giuseppe Conte’s government. By analyzing the works produced during this timeframe, we attempt to identify the main ways the pandemic was depicted. We will focus on the representation of time and space, the double status of the virus (as an agent and condition), and creators’ different textual strategies.

Dyskursy gier wideo

Author(s): / Language(s): Polish / Publication Year: 2019

Niniejsza książka ma formułować propozycję metodologicznego otwarcia groznawstwa,silnie akcentując rolę dyskursu i narracji już w dwóch tekstach otwierających:„Dyskursywne gry i dyskursy gier” Geralda Voorheesa oraz „Poza mitem i metaforą.Przypadek narracji w mediach cyfrowych” Marie-Laure Ryan. Podkreślenie roli narracjii dyskursu umożliwiło również umocowanie pozostałych rozdziałów książki w dwuwzajemnie się dopełniających paradygmatach: teorii i filozofii (w części zatytułowanej„Teorie”) oraz praktyce hermeneutycznej (w części zatytułowanej „Praktyki”), dostarczającychwspólnie narzędzi do krytycznej wiwisekcji uobecniających się w grachpostaw dyskursywnych oraz narracji o świecie, kulturze, religii, filozofii, teologii, ekonomii,płciowości, rasie czy polityce. (...) Problem dyskursów gier wideo oraz dyskursóww grach wideo ujawnia zatem nie tyle bałagan, co niesłychaną produktywność ujęćbadawczych, nieograniczonych sztywnymi normami pojęć, kategorii czy narzędzi teoretycznych,które równolegle odnajdują w grach wydarzenia, znaczenia, języki, komunikaty,idee, ideologie, hierarchie i struktury władzy oraz wykluczenia. Sploty problemowew grach jako formach komunikacji, tekstach czy obiektach kulturowych skłoniłynas do zastosowania formuły liczby mnogiej w określeniu „dyskursy gier wideo” –tak, by unaocznić zarówno potrzebę pluralizacji perspektyw badawczych, jak i odpowiadającejjej różnorodności uobecniających się w grach narracji o świecie, zarównotym nas otaczającym, jak i tym przez gry wytwarzanym.

Echo i udawanie w ironii komunikacyjnej

Author(s): Maciej Witek,Janina Mękarska / Language(s): Polish / Issue: 2/2019

Epistemo-Semantic Coherentism: An Attitudinal View of Meaning Based on Epistemic Pragmatism

Author(s): İskender Taşdelen / Language(s): English / Issue: 1/2019

Everything seems so settled here: The conceivability of post-Peircean biosemiotics

Author(s): Claudio Julio Rodríguez Higuera / Language(s): English / Issue: 3-4/2019

Theory change is a slow, tortuous process. Problems associated with how we communicate ideas and how these ideas are received by our peers become catalysts for change in how we ourselves perceive and sanction what the discipline is capable of doing. Some parts of semiotics, and particularly biosemiotics, have come under critical scrutiny because of their heavy commitment to Peircean philosophy, but at the same time, the contributions of Peircean philosophy are almost impossible to discount. The ripples of this situation are quite visible in the emergence of code biology as a post-semiotic research programme. Yet there is a general balance between those who do not put that much stock in Peircean concepts and those who cannot conceive semiotics without these. This paper will ask whether a biosemiotics after Peirce is possible at all in the sense of acknowledging Peirce’s contributions to the field while also taking to heart the criticisms raised by those skeptical of the implications of Peircean semiotics. While the answer is most likely positive, it depends on what background our concept of meaning relies on and how it may bleed into the other areas of semiotics that biosemiotics may claim a stake on. Being able to discuss potential theoretical distinctions across semiotics while also allowing communication between the areas caught in this differentiation will be crucial for the health of the discipline as the gap between theories becomes more profound.

Fictional Sentences and the Pragmatic Defence of Direct Reference Theories

Author(s): Tomasz A. Puczyłowski / Language(s): English / Issue: 2/2019

Folklor Halay Değildir! Peki ya Halay? Ana Çizgileriyle Halayın Kültürel Serüveni

Author(s): Ahmet Keskin / Language(s): Turkish / Issue: 104/2020

Dance, which is described as the aesthetic movements performed by the human body in time and space, is considered to be one of the oldest forms of action and art in the history of civilization. In this respect, it is observed that dance, which is one of the most archaic subjects of human and social sciences, and the music that often accompanies it, has gained a very wide and special place in cultural production and consumption activities depending on the various functions it has undertaken in human life throughout the history of humanity and civilization. From this perspective, traditional dances also correspond to cultural indicators and forms of communication that reflect the beliefs, values, lifestyle, sociocultural and psychological characteristics of the community in which they are created, performed and passed down between generations. In this respect, traditional dances are one of the subjects that fall within the scope of folklore, which is an interdisciplinary discipline of cultural research and analysis. The relations between folklore and traditional dances have been so strong from the past to the present that the term “folklore”, which is the name of a scientific discipline, has been used extensively in naming traditional folk dances -in a wrong and narrow way-. Based on this attention, in the study, the adventure of halay, which emerged as a common form among traditional dances, from the past to the present in the context of the history of culture and belief is discussed in general terms. Accordingly, the relations of halay with early Turkish beliefs and lifestyles, its main features as a cultural sign system and communication form, and similar issues were examined with a holistic and interdisciplinary approach.

FOLKLORİK TEMSİLİN SİMGESEL DÖNÜŞÜMÜ

Author(s): Kafiye Özlem Alp / Language(s): Turkish / Issue: 30/2020

Folklore establishing considerable part of the culture is a representation field of a people from past to today by its functional and symbolic sides. Transforming socio cultural and socio-economic conditions with modernity brought fast transformation of folkloric culture as well. Linguistics works developing together with modernity took culture in general and folkloric culture particularly to the agenda to be handled as a language system approach. Although these approaches contain differences, they supply a static structure as code. Whereas, folkloric culture can be recognized as layered living organism of past, present and future. Especially representation and foundation of symbolic and functional sides of folkloric culture forms basic axis of these discussions. In folkloric culture, representation can be considered basically in two steps. The first one of them is the side of folkloric culture coming from the past, existing within itself, living today, conserving and saving. The other one is the side of folkloric representation belonging to the past but tried to be reconstructed in present. This second representation case turned upside down the folkloric representation by considering it as a semiotic system which was functionally and symbolically integrated within itself. Symbolic field of folkloric representation is isolated from its content. This abstraction points to the position of upset tool of culture industry by getting forms and symbols to the front. Therefore, approaching methods to folkloric culture studies post 1960 have been investigated by its symbolic, functional and semantic dimensions in this study. Further, how folkloric culture had been realized, worked and dragged to transformation has been discussed in theoretical dimension.