scholarly journals The meaning of meaning in biology and cognitive science: A semiotic reconstruction

2006 ◽  
Vol 34 (1) ◽  
pp. 135-213
Author(s):  
Göran Sonesson
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Science ◽  
Broad Sense ◽  
General Sense ◽  
The Third ◽  
Evolution And Development ◽  
Present Essay ◽  
The World ◽  
Semiotic Resources ◽  
The One ◽  
Point Of Departure

The present essay aims at integrating different concepts of meaning developed in semiotics, biology, and cognitive science, in a way that permits the formulation of issues involving evolution and development. The concept of sign in semiotics, just like the notion of representation in cognitive science, have either been used too broadly, or outright rejected. My earlier work on the notions of iconicity and pictoriality has forced me to spell out the taken-forgranted meaning of the sign concept, both in the Saussurean and the Peircean tradition. My work with the evolution and development of semiotic resources such as language, gesture, and pictures has proved the need of having recourse to a more specified concept of sign. To define the sign, I take as point of departure the notion of semiotic function (by Piaget), and the notion of appresentation (by Husserl). In the first part of this essay, I compare cognitive science and semiotics, in particular as far as the parallel concepts of representation and sign are concerned. The second part is concerned with what is probably the most important attempt to integrate cognitive science and semiotics that has been presented so far, The Symbolic Species, by Terrence Deacon. I criticize Deacon’s use of notions such as iconicity, indexicality, and symbolicity. I choose to separate the sign concept from the notions of iconicity, indexicality, and symbolicity, which only in combination with the sign give rise to icons, indices, and symbols, but which, beyond that, have other, more elemental, uses in the world of perception. In the third part, I discuss some ideas about meaning in biosemiotics, which I show not to involve signs in the sense characterised earlier in the essay. Instead, they use meaning in the general sense of selection and organisation, which is a more elementary sense of meaning. Although I admit that there is a possible interpretation of Peirce, which could be taken to correspond to Uexküll’s idea of functional circle, and to meaning as function described by Emmeche and Hoffmeyer, I claim that this is a different sense of meaning than the one embodied in the sign concept. Finally, I suggest that more thresholds of meaning than proposed, for instance by Kull, are necessary to accommodate the differences between meaning (in the broad sense) and sign (as specified in the Piaget–Husserl tradition).

Marginality in the Mainstream, Lesbian Love in the Third Person

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emily Van Buskirk
Keyword(s):  
French Literature ◽  
Gender And Sexuality ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Third ◽  
The World ◽  
Third Person ◽  
Philosophical Texts ◽  
And Gender ◽  
The One ◽  
The Third Person

This chapter undertakes a treatment of the rhetoric of personal pronouns in Ginzburg's writings on love and sexuality, drawing on Michael Lucey's study of the first person in twentieth-century French literature about love. It brings together questions of genre and narrative, on the one hand, and gender and sexuality, on the other. The chapter is divided into two sections, treating writings from two different periods on two kinds of love Ginzburg thought typical of intellectuals: in “First Love,” it discusses the unrequited and tragic love depicted in Ginzburg's teenage diaries (1920–23); in “Second Love,” it analyzes the love that is realized but in the end equally tragic, depicted in drafts related to Home and the World (1930s). The chapter examines the models the author sought in literary, psychological, and philosophical texts (Weininger, Kraft-Ebbing, Blok, Shklovsky, Oleinikov, Hemingway, and Proust).

appealed to the Queen on being besieged by the wild sense, especially in the concluding cantos, of leaving Irish (see Vi4.1n). In reading this ‘darke conceit’, an iron world to enter a golden one. But do these no one could have failed to recognize these allusions. ways lead to an end that triumphantly concludes the The second point is that Spenser’s fiction, when 1596 poem, or to an impasse of the poet’s imaginat-compared to historical fact, is far too economical ive powers? For some readers, Book VI relates to the with the truth: for example, England’s intervention earlier books as Shakespeare’s final romances relate in the Netherlands under Leicester is, as A.B. Gough to his earlier plays, a crowning and fulfilment, ‘a 1921:289 concludes, ‘entirely misrepresented’. It summing up and conclusion for the entire poem and would seem that historical events are treated from for Spenser’s poetic career’ (N. Frye 1963:70; cf. a perspective that is ‘far from univocally celebratory Tonkin 1972:11). For others, Spenser’s exclamation or optimistic’, as Gregory 2000:366 argues, or in of wonder on cataloguing the names of the waters what Sidney calls their ‘universal consideration’, i.e. that attend the marriage of the Thames and the what is imminent in them, namely, their apocalyptic Medway, ‘O what an endlesse worke haue I in hand, import, as Borris 1991:11–61 argues. The third | To count the seas abundant progeny’ (IV xii point, which is properly disturbing to many readers 1.1–2), indicates that the poem, like such sixteenth-in our most slaughterous age, especially since the century romances as Amadis of Gaul, could now go matter is still part of our imaginative experience as on for ever, at least until it used up all possible virtues Healy 1992:104–09 testifies, is that Talus’s slaughter and the poet’s life. As Nohrnberg 1976:656 aptly of Irena’s subjects is rendered too brutally real in notes, ‘we find ourselves experiencing not the allegorizing, and apparently justifying, Grey’s atrocit-romance of faith or chastity, but the romance of ies in subduing Irish rebels (see V xii 26–27n). Here romance itself ’. For still others, there is a decline: Spenser is a product of his age, as was the Speaker ‘the darkening of Spenser’s spirit’ is a motif in many of the House of Commons in 1580 in reporting studies of the book, agreeing with Lewis 1936:353 the massacre of Spanish soldiers at Smerwick: ‘The that ‘the poem begins with its loftiest and most Italians pulled out by the ears at Smirwick in solemn book and thence, after a gradual descent, Ireland, and cut to pieces by the notable Service of a sinks away into its loosest and most idyllic’; and with noble Captain and Valiant Souldiers’ (D’Ewes Neuse 1968:331 that ‘the dominant sense of Book 1682:286). As this historical matter relates to Book V, VI is one of disillusionment, of the disparity between it displays the slaughter that necessarily attends the the poet’s ideals and the reality he envisions’; or that triumph of justice, illustrating the truth of the common the return to pastoral signals the failure of chivalry in adage, summum ius, summa iniuria, even as Guyon’s Book V to achieve reform (see DeNeef 1982b). destruction of the Bower shows the triumph of tem-Certainly canto x provides the strong sense of an perance. This is justice; or, at best, what justice has ending. As I have suggested, ‘it is as difficult not to become, and what its executive power displayed in see the poet intruding himself into the poem, as it is that rottweiler, Talus, has become, in our worse than not to see Shakespeare in the role of Prospero with ‘stonie’ age as the world moves towards its ‘last the breaking of the pipe, the dissolving of the vision, ruinous decay’ (proem 2.2, 6.9). In doing so, Book and our awareness (but surely the poet’s too) that his V confirms the claim by Thrasymachus in Plato’s work is being rounded out’ (1961a:202). Republic: justice is the name given by those in power Defined as ‘doing gentle deedes with franke to keep their power. It is the one virtue in the poem delight’ (vii 1.2), courtesy is an encompassing virtue that cannot be exercised by itself but within the book in a poem that sets out to ‘sing of Knights and Ladies must be over-ruled by equity, circumvented by mercy, gentle deeds’ (I proem 1.5). As such, its flowering and, in the succeeding book, countered by courtesy. would fully ‘fashion a gentleman or noble person in vertuous and gentle discipline’ (Letter to Raleigh 8). Courtesy: Book VI

2014 ◽  
pp. 36-36
Keyword(s):  
Strong Sense ◽  
Executive Power ◽  
House Of Commons ◽  
Historical Events ◽  
The Third ◽  
The World ◽  
Historical Fact ◽  
The Common ◽  
The One

scholarly journals Space of Experience, Horizon of Expectation. Spatiotemporal Metaphors, Philosophical Anthropology, and the Flesh

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 15-30
Author(s):  
Roger W. H. Savage
Keyword(s):  
Philosophical Anthropology ◽  
Third Space ◽  
Reciprocal Relation ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Past ◽  
The World ◽  
The One

Paul Ricœur’s recourse to the metahistorical categories, space of experience and horizon of expectation, invites an inquiry into geography’s role as the guarantor of history. The ontology of the flesh provides the first indication of how one’s body is implicated in the sense of one’s place in the world. In turn, narrative inscriptions of events on the landscape transform the physical topography of a place into an array of sites where memories of ancestral wisdom and historical traumas endure. By anchoring historians’ representations of the past in the places and locales in which events took place, geography constructs a third space analogous to the third time of history. The aporias engendered by the phenomenology of time, however, have no equivalent in the phenomenology of space. The dissymmetry between the dialectic that informs the discourse of space and the one that informs the discourse of time thus keeps in place the  reciprocal relation between geography and historiography.

scholarly journals Angola - an Oil Dependant Country in Sub-Saharan Africa

2016 ◽  
Vol 9 (35) ◽  
pp. 233-242
Author(s):  
Boris Baumgartner
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
World Economy ◽  
Sub Saharan Africa ◽  
African Countries ◽  
The Third ◽  
The World ◽  
Sub Saharan ◽  
The One ◽  
Rich Countries ◽  
Essential Problem

Abstract The Sub-Saharan Africa belongs to the most underdeveloped regions in the world economy. This region consists of forty nine countries but it’s world GDP share is only a small percentage. There are some very resource rich countries in this region. One of them is Angola. This former Portuguese colony has one of the largest inventories of oil among all African countries. Angola recorded one of the highest growth of GDP between 2004-2008 from all countries in the world economy and nowadays is the third biggest economy in Sub-Saharan Africa after Nigeria and South Africa. The essential problem of Angola is the one-way oriented economy on oil and general on natural resources. Angola will be forced to change their one-way oriented economy to be more diversified and competitive in the future.

scholarly journals Hyrdeliv og paradisdrøm. Om Grundtvigs syn på hyrder

1994 ◽  
Vol 45 (1) ◽  
pp. 122-141
Author(s):  
Inger Lise Mikkelsen
Keyword(s):  
Intimate Contact ◽  
Only Children ◽  
Creative Power ◽  
Frequent Use ◽  
The People ◽  
The World ◽  
The One ◽  
Jacob's Ladder ◽  
Point Of Departure ◽  
The Church

Pastoral Life and Paradise DreamBy Inger Lise MikkelsenIn »The World Chronicle«, 1814, Grundtvig writes that the people of poetry, the ancient Hebrews, were a race of shepherds. The shepherds are not tied to material things, but live a life in freedom. On the plains, tending his flock, the shepherd experiences everything that is alive and growing as images of God’s creative power. Thus, he intuitively perceives his position as a creature facing his Creator.With this basic view as a point of departure, Grundtvig rewrites the Biblical stories of the shepherds Abraham and Jacob, Moses and David. They are all in an immediate, intimate contact with God, but as they live at different times, God endows them with different abilities appropriate for their concrete historical situation. Abraham and Jacob are the shepherds of faith, Moses is the shepherd of fight and hope, and David is the shepherd of love. They are all models, not because they are heroes, but because they recognize their own fragility.In the church texts, the shepherds of Christmas night play a particularly important role. In the hymn .The Christmas Chimes are sounding now. (Det kimer nu til julefest) from 1817, it is a main thought that the singers must remember pastoral life and come along into the field to hear the angel’s message together with the shepherds. To people who have a sense of the miraculous as the shepherds do, the field at Bethlehem is the centre of interest. Today only children possess a genuine shepherd’s mind. The adult can learn from them. The essential thing is to learn how to regain the child’s mind.In connection with the child theme, as shown by Chr. Thodberg, Grundtvig develops, through the 1820s, his understanding of baptism as the occasion when the adult may re-enter the dreamland of his childhood. Here Grundtvig uses Jacob’s ladder as an image of the adult’s return to his hitherto forgottem baptism.Another theme that Grundtvig makes frequent use of is the dilapidated cottage of the shepherd, his hut. He uses it as an image of man’s heart, which to Grundtvig is God’s dwelling on earth. The hut and the ladder become recurring images in Grundtvig’s hymns.Frequently the two images supplement each other so that the shepherds and Bethlehem may now move into the church. It is no longer the field, but the heart that rings with the angels’ song. Here, in the shepherd’s hut, is raised Jacob’s ladder, which reminds the singer of the childhood life under God’s care.In Grundtvig’s eyes every Christian is therefore a shepherd like the patriarchs. But above all the one baptized is like the good shepherd himself, renewing the paradise life that God created man for.

Why Anthropology Doesn’t Matter Much to Law

2018 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 92-98
Author(s):  
Michael G. Peletz
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
New York ◽  
New York University ◽  
Law Schools ◽  
Job Market ◽  
Intellectual Engagement ◽  
The North ◽  
The World ◽  
The One ◽  
Point Of Departure

Jeremy Kingsley and Kari Telle’s provocation article raises several important issues. The thrust of their argument as I understand it is that anthropology does not matter much to the field of law in many parts of the world. They are quick to point out, however, that this is a relative point and that their comparative frame takes as its point of departure the much greater degree of intellectual engagement that obtains between schools of medicine and public health on the one hand and the field of anthropology on the other. I concur with their overall argument but will phrase it in slightly different terms: despite the robust collaborations that sometimes involve legal scholars and anthropologists (e.g. in legal clinics at New York University and elsewhere; see Merry, this issue), faculty in law schools are much less likely to embrace the work of anthropologists than are their colleagues who specialise in medicine and public health. In this brief comment, I offer tentative hypotheses as to why this situation exists in the North American context. I approach the relevant issues from a historical perspective, focusing on hierarchies of legitimacy and prestige, shifts in both academia and the job market for anthropologists, and the rise of neoliberal doctrines in academia and beyond.

(Selektywne) zwierciadło bazy danych. O dwóch wymiarach baz danych w kontekście Archiwum Badań nad Życiem Codziennym

2015 ◽  
Vol 59 (3) ◽  
pp. 85-111
Author(s):  
Przemysław Nosal
Keyword(s):  
Human Action ◽  
The Other ◽  
Specific Context ◽  
Objective Information ◽  
The Third ◽  
The World ◽  
Cultural Content ◽  
The One

The aim of this article is to show the socio-cultural ambivalence of databases. On the one hand, they are perceived as impersonal technological representations providing their users with objective information. On the other, they are the result of intentional human action, were created in a specific context, and serve the realization of some purpose defined by their creators. The metaphor that arises from this duality is that of a mirror—reflecting the image of the world, but at the same time deforming it in various manners. The author presents the three main aspects of databases’ ambivalence. The first is the question of selecting the material for the database: the material’s ostensible objectivity and the subjective nature of the choice. The second is the question of the exhibition of cultural content within the framework of the database: the tension between an ideologically neutral presentation of the world and the strategy of exhibition. The third subject raised is the use of databases: full access for users, a framework imposed by the creators, or somewhere in between.

The Prologue as a Paschal Hymn

2019 ◽  
pp. 245-270
Author(s):  
John Behr
Keyword(s):  
Jesus Christ ◽  
Gospel Of John ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
The Third ◽  
John The Baptist ◽  
The World ◽  
In Christ ◽  
New Interpretation ◽  
The One

On the basis of the analysis of the Gospel of John given so far, and in particular the celebration of Pascha that began with him, this chapter offers a radically new interpretation of the Prologue to the Gospel of John. Rather than a pre-existing hymn to the Word adopted and modified by the Evangelist, or a Prologue to the Gospel written by the Evangelist himself, explaining how the Word became flesh as the prelude to the narrative that follows, it is argued that the Prologue is best understood as a Paschal hymn in three parts. The first verse celebrates the one who is in first place, the crucified and exalted Jesus Christ, on his way to God, and as himself God. Verses 1:2—5 speak not of creation and the presence of the Word in creation before his sojourn on earth, but of how everything that occurs throughout the Gospel happens at his will, specifically the life that comes to be in him, a light which enlightens human beings, that is, those who receive and follow him. The third part, verses 1:6—18, are a chiastically structured celebration of what has come to be in Christ, where 1:14, ‘the Word became flesh and dwelt in us’ refers to the Eucharist, the flesh that he now offers to those who receive him and so become his body, following on from baptism in verses 1:12–13; the chiastic center of this section is 1:10–11, his rejection by the world but reception by his own, and the beginning and end of this section is the witness provided by John the Baptist.

What J.T. Fraser Gave the World

KronoScope ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 25-34
Author(s):  
Frederick Turner
Keyword(s):  
Related Problem ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Experience Of Time ◽  
The World ◽  
Nature Of Time ◽  
The Many ◽  
The One ◽  
Fourth Theme ◽  
The Way

Abstract This summary of the fundamental insights of J.T. Fraser dwells on four main themes. The first is the way that Fraser disposes of the ancient struggle between monism and dualism, with its related problem of ontology versus epistemology. His tree-like vision of the evolution of the many out of the one is both ordered and open-ended. The second is his critique of philosophy’s (and science’s) tendency to reify simple, defined, pure, and exclusive abstractions. Subjectivity, intentionality, consciousness, freedom, mind, cause, and the experience of time are shown by him to be composite, present in different degrees and kinds in different organisms and different times, constructed and complex. The third theme is Fraser’s decisive refutation of the metaphor of time as a line, as in clocks, calendars, and the t-axis in science. We must explore other geometries. The fourth theme is Fraser’s rehabilitations of the arts, including literature, as potentially legitimate ways of understanding the world and exploring the nature of time.

scholarly journals Interactivity - Hypertextuality - Transversality. A media-philosophical analysis of the Internet

2017 ◽  
Vol 13 (24) ◽  
pp. 81
Author(s):  
Mike Sandbothe
Keyword(s):  
World Wide Web ◽  
Graphical User Interface ◽  
World Wide ◽  
Philosophical Tradition ◽  
The Internet ◽  
Philosophical Concept ◽  
The Third ◽  
The World ◽  
German Philosopher ◽  
The One

My considerations are organized into three parts. In the first part I expand upon the influence of the Internet on our experience of space and time as well as our concept of personal identity. This takes place, on the one hand, in the example of text-based Internet services (IRC, MUDs, MOOs), and through the World Wide Web’s (WWW) graphical user-interface on the other. Interactivity, the constitution characteristic for the Internet, stands at the centre of this. In the second part I will show how the World Wide Web in particular sets in motion those semiotic demarcations customary until now. To this end I recapitulate, first of all, the way in which image, language and writing have been set in rela-tion to one another in the philosophical tradition. The multimedia hypertext-uality which characterizes the World Wide Web is then revealed against this background. In the third, and final, part I interpret the World Wide Web’s hypertextual structure as a mediative form of realization of a contemporary type of reason. This takes place on the basis of the philosophical concept of tranversality developed by the German philosopher Wolfgang Welsch.

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