Empiricism within the limits of postmodernism alone: On the emergence of the logically real within the multi-perspectival field
AbstractThis essay offers a semiotic account of the Logically Real as an emergent category of multi-perspectival experience. Such an approach is supported by phenomenological, developmental, and cognitive discourses, which conceptualize the emergence of object permanence through sensorimotor interactions. Within this frame, I argue that humanities needs a form of native empiricism – by which I mean a discourse of the real, articulated through monosemic practices that symbolize the literal – as a component of the revitalization being wrought by the digital humanities. I adopt Sartre’s concept of the analagon complemented with a notion of codon to explicate what I call the sign dominance of the image, which is explored in relation to the experience of the sign as an act of imagination. Forms of practiced monosemy concatenated around the experienced permanence of objects is offered as a viable humanist discursive strategy toward revivifying empirical methodologies.