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Science and Philosophy: In Dialogue?

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Positivism and Science

A difficult and complex question in philosophy today concerns the discussion regarding the intersection and “boundaries” of the harder empirical sciences and the distinct activity of philosophical enquiry.  Given the success of scientific discovery, one temptation in the early 20th century was to claim that disciplines such as biology, chemistry, physics, and the like were (or would eventually become) exhaustive for understanding the world and nature.  This position, known as “positivism”, claimed that genuine inquiry into the world of nature either had to be reducible to empirical testing and measuring or was known to be true tautologically.[1]  Anything that did not conform to these modes of inquiry, such as classical metaphysics and theology, were considered pseudo-scientific in their mode of enquiry.  

Standing in contrast to this reductive position, the French Thomist philosopher Jacques Maritain argues in his Degrees of Knowledge that a bifurcation can be made between sciences as affirmative, to which he ascribes the empirical “hard” sciences and studies, and the more deductive science of proper “explication” or knowledge of and from first principles:[2]

Briefly, we can say that science in general deals with the necessities immanent in natures, with the universal essences realized in individuals in the concrete and sensible world.  The distinction has been drawn between the explicatory or deductive sciences, which attain to these natures by discovery (constructively in mathematics, and from without to what is within in the case of philosophy), and the affirmative or inductive sciences, which only attain these natures as signs and substitutes, blindly so to say.  These latter have assuredly a certain explicative value, without which they would not be sciences, but which consists in indicating the necessities of things by way of sensible experiment, not by assigning their intelligible reasons.

Maritain’s distinction between the two sciences of the “explicatory” and the “affirmative” does not distinguish entities as they exist in the world, but rather between different ways of grasping entities in the world.  It is this distinction that forms the basis of Maritain’s own investigation and his defense against positivism: namely, the three degrees of abstraction (by which we attain the natures of physical objects, mathematical objects, and metaphysical objects).  Even so, if all Maritain has done here is provide room for a study of metaphysics or a natural philosophy based upon principles, there remains the question as to how the two modes of enquiry interact with one another—if at all.  Are the affirmative sciences corrective of the explicatory?  Do the explicatory sciences have their own interpretive autonomy in relation to what can be measured and analyzed empirically?

The Cenoscopic and Idioscopic

Another distinction made in philosophy, taken first from Jeremy Bentham, but developed by C. S. Peirce is the distinction between cenoscopic and idioscopic sciences. The cenoscopic sciences are characterized by their study of what is common among the many and divergent, and the idioscopic is characterized by the specializing or the breaking apart of inquiry:[3]

In cenoscopy, things escape the eye not by being hidden by virtue of their tininess or hugeness, or their extension over eons of time or involvement in hyper-complexities of culture, but simply by their commonness. Their very obviousness requires a conscious direction of our attention, like that needed to notice the ticking of a clock that your ears were hearing all the while you conversed with someone, but which remained unperceived because you were otherwise occupied…The “idioscopic,” by contrast, is a “look” that is idios – “singular, special(ized)” – and that began to be cultivated in earnest only in modern times. It has become the very glory of modern science, and has brought countless blessings and maledictions into our contemporary biosphere.

Whereas cenoscopy offers us a “grand theory of everything” and seeks to unite the divergent modes of enquiry, idioscopic enquiry by its nature seeks to break apart, to isolate, to experiment upon, and to measure.  Neither science is necessarily wrongheaded in what it seeks to inquire, but both are deficient with regards to understanding the world and how we relate to it:[4]

In summary, these four areas of human knowing – the astronomically big and the microscopically small, the biologically compounded and the culturally complex – invite idioscopic science to don its instruments, mount its experiments, measure and hypothesize about the objects in question, and finally to fashion technologies that will hopefully more deeply integrate humankind with its environment, solve problems and cure diseases.  Still, the great ideal at the heart of all knowledge, namely, the desire to unify data and bring synthesis to multiplicity, floats temptingly over these four areas as it does over the divisions within each of them.  Knowledge by definition tends toward unity.

What philosophy offers the idioscopic (here I’m grafting roughly onto Maritain’s affirmative as roughly equivalent) is a unified whole of the diversity in the hard sciences.  While idioscopic science by its nature compartmentalizes and divides the study of the world, rightfully so within its respective subject-matter, it is at a loss in attempting to find unity within the multitude.  By contrast, the cenoscopic, in providing its own accounts and studies of the world based upon shared commonness, oftentimes misses the mark in its enquiry—one could think of the Eleatic philosophers and their cenoscopic inquiry concluding the impossibility of change and mutation and the eternal permanence to being.

A Habit Formed

Famously in the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle quipped that among the commonly identified virtutes, many of them go unnamed.  A virtue famously for Aristotle is taken to be a mean between two vicious extremes, being informed by the goods sought after deficiently or in excess in both vices:[5]

So, virtue, is a purposive disposition, lying in a mean that is relative to us and determined by a rational principle, and by that which a prudent man would use to determine it.  It is a mean between two kinds of vices, one of excess and the other of deficiency; and also, for this reason, that whereas these vices fall short of or exceeding the right measure in both feelings and actions, virtue discovers the mean and chooses it.

The question I would like to ask is: what sort of “unnamed” virtue must a person be formed in today if both the cenoscopic and ideoscopic sciences are to be retained?  Is it healthy to siphon off one habit of cognizing the world in the absence of the other?  Are there points where both scientific inquiries intersect, or one ought to claim priority, and if so, is there a habit needed to secure this intersection?  If there can be found such a habit, what kind of vicious extremes could be seen to impede the exercise of such a virtuous inquiry?

Join the Conversation!

We’ll be discussing these and more conversations in our Philosophical Happy Hour this Wednesday (17 April 2024) and we’d love for you to join. Use the links below!

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[1] Creath 2022: “Logical Empiricism”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2023 Edition), Edward N. Zalta & Uri Nodelman (eds.).

[2] Maritain 1937: Distinguer pour unir ou Les degrés du savoir. Reference to the English translation by Bernard Wall, Degrees of Knowledge, 43

[3] Paine 2021: “On the Cenoscopic and Idioscopic and Why They Matter”, in Reality: a journal for philosophical discourse, online [PDF]: 5-6.

[4] Ibid, 12.

[5] c.335/34bc: Ἠθικὰ nικοάχεια in the English translation by J. Thomson, The Nicomachean Ethics, 42.

News and Announcements/Philosophical Happy Hour

The Ethics of New Terminology

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In a famous set of scenes in the 2004 classic movie Mean Girls one of the main protagonists, Gretchen Wieners, attempts to introduce a novel expression into the discourse with her friends, insisting upon ending every conversation with the exclamation, “That is so fetch!” After failing to have the terminology catch on for so long, the main antagonist, Regina George, finally exclaims to her to, “stop trying to make ‘fetch’ happen, it’s not going to happen.” While we cannot fault Ms. Wieners for her attempts to try and formulate her own catchy neologism, what she is arguably doing in this scene is engaging in an activity that many of us engage in without even reflecting on it, namely, stipulating some new word or verbiage into our discourse, in hopes that it might “catch on” so to speak in everyday conversation, whether that be among our peers and friends, our engagement with academic scholars and theorists, or even among our widespread use of social media and the internet. 

Which begs us to ask the question: what exactly is it that we do when we come up with new words and terms in our discourse? When we attempt to change the meaning of phrases and terminology, what does this entail in our social interactions with people? Furthermore, if it does have implications in our social interactions, does it mean that there is an ethic to how we stipulate new verbiage into everyday discourse?  

Language and Discourse 

To say that we have a responsibility in our employment of using terminology and language seems uncontroversial enough, as much of our social interaction presupposes a “correct” way in which we should speak and interact with one another verbally. Nobody ought to shout or formulate expletives to launch at peers in official academic conferences— though this may happen well enough— simply on account of what justice requires of us in our interaction with peers in such a social setting. So too with our interactions with family members, justice simply demands that we remain civil with one another in the verbiage we employ with familial ties etc. But in coining new terms and phrases, what ethical implications does this have for us? Charles Sanders Peirce muses that there are indeed such ethical concerns in the employment, principally in communicating effectively what the other is thinking, and if there is to be such a need for coining new verbiage and terminology, as the developments of science and philosophy seem to require, we must take care to effectively communicate what such neologisms mean in our writing, and to safeguard against equivocation and subterfuge. This does not mean that we should simply be content to develop a language which is rigid and unchanging in its verbiage, because, as Peirce would surmise, it is simply natural for languages to develop alongside the progresses of science and philosophy.  

For every symbol is a living thing, in a very strict sense that is no mere figure of speech. The body of the symbol changes slowly, but its meaning inevitably grows, incorporates new elements and throws off old ones. But the effort of all should be to keep the essence of every scientific term unchanged and exact; although absolute exactitude is not so much as conceivable…Science is continually gaining new conceptions; and every new scientific conception should receive a new word, or better, a new family of cognate words. The duty of supplying this word naturally falls upon the person who introduces the new conception; but it is a duty not to be undertaken without a thorough knowledge of the principles and a large acquaintance with the details and history of the special terminology in which it is to take place.

Peirce, C. S. (1998). “The Ethics of Terminology” in The Essential Peirce: Selected Philosophical Writings, vol.2, p.264

Given the natural fluidity of the signifiers employed in our speech, it seems only natural that neologisms and novel stipulations should arise in our discourse. But given such a need, is there any ethical component which accompanies the formulation of neologisms?

Ethics of Signification

Given that the social realm of human discourse is a smaller part in the larger whole of sign relations, we must then finally ask the question: if there is such a thing as a semiotic, does this bring forth a consideration of an accompanying “Semioethic”, i.e., an ethics concerned specifically with signifying in a way morally right? While many different animals, and even flora, employ and utilize signs in their species-specific discourse, it is only humans that are capable of reflecting upon and distinguishing the difference between the sign-vehicles employed, and the sign relation as such. 

But a new kind of animal is born, the semiotic animal, as the human animals become aware not only of the difference between objects and things, but more profoundly of the difference between sign-vehicles and signs in their proper being…I think the recognition that the boundaries of semiotic reality are never fixed and always shifting is the key realization for this new, this postmodern, humanism, wherein traditional objective “ethics” is transformed as “Semioethics” by the discovery that human knowledge in the whole of its extent— speculative no less than practical— depends upon the action of signs, an action that is presupposed to every “world of objects”, every Umwelt around the whole planet.

Deely, John. Basics of Semiotics, 8th ed., p.226-27

On account of this capability to not only stipulate novel signs into discourse, but to meaningfully reflect on what occurs ethically in the act of stipulating, it seems necessary to ask the question; both for speculative reasons as well as for pragmatic, what is it that we do when we stipulate novel signifiers, and what implications does it have morally and ethically?

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Join us to explore this essential question in the communication-saturated 21st century!

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Hervaeus Natalis and Logic

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Ho ho ho… Harvey is coming to town?

One of the many fascinating contributions semiotics makes to contemporary philosophical discourse is role it sees for signs and sign-relations in the domain of logic. In this interview on Dogs with Torches, we are joined by the Lyceum’s very own Dr. Matthew K. Minerd to discuss the scholastic development of logic in the 13th and 14th century, as well as the thought of Hervaeus Natalis on the domains of logic as the study and science of second intentions. 

Towards the end of the episode, we also discuss the reflections Natalis has for the domain of ens rationis in general, and the possible implications it has for the scope of metaphysical enquiry. We also touch briefly upon other philosophical issues such as: species-specific extrinsic denominations, moral being, rhetoric, zoösemiotics and phytosemiotics, and the being of intentionality.

In addition to the Interview, Dr. Minerd also graciously recommended further resources for those who would want to further investigate medieval developments on logic, as well as the development of the scholastic understanding of ens rationis in general.

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On Natural Law and Justice

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In his work Introduction to Moral Theology, Fr. Romanus Cessario O.P. remarked on certain misconceptions with respect to how the natural had grown in application and importance over time in the late 19th and early 20th centuries: arguing that the presentation of the natural law given in teaching manuals was anachronistic and unhelpful, and in extreme cases was at times influenced by Suarezian or casuist trends in moral theology.

The casuistry embedded in the Roman Catholic manual tradition greatly contributed to misinterpretations of natural law. Although Prummer follows Aquinas’ own material distinctions, this sort of presentation nonetheless reinforces the misconception that Catholic moral theology is given to consider every specific moral issue as if natural law alone supplied the ultimate determination. The manualist misconstrues of natural law also explain the tendency among some contemporary authors to think that natural law theory supplies the equivalent of a complete moral theory… Natural law is not the only resource needed for a complete theory of Christian morality. A realist moral theologian recognizes that natural law provides a starting point for discovering the concrete forms of moral goodness.[1]

Romanus Cessario, Introduction to Moral Theology

Natural Law and Justice

If a scholar of Aquinas were to look at what the Angelic Doctor wrote on the natural law in the Summa Theologiae, they would be surprised to find very little actually discussed by St. Thomas. Fewer than twenty questions in the Prima Secundæ are devoted to questions specifically concerning law and only one of them to the natural law. By contrast, what Aquinas had to say on the virtues, more specifically the virtue of justice, greatly eclipses what he wrote on law.  Questions 57-122 are all devoted to discussing the importance and concrete application of justice, and the entirety of the Secunda Secundæ discusses the virtues in general.

Aquinas, in discussing the natural law, outlines the precepts of the law in the Summa, arguing that the precepts of natural law are roughly equivalent to first principles in speculative sciences and demonstration. They provide us the starting point, as it were, for praxis and practical reasoning:

[T]he precepts of the natural law are to the practical reason, what the first principles of demonstrations are to the speculative reason; because both are self-evident principles… Since, however, good has the nature of an end, and evil, the nature of a contrary, hence it is that all those things to which man has a natural inclination, are naturally apprehended by reason as being good, and consequently as objects of pursuit, and their contraries as evil, and objects of avoidance. Wherefore according to the order of natural inclinations, is the order of the precepts of the natural law. Because in man there is first of all an inclination to good in accordance with the nature which he has in common with all substances: inasmuch as every substance seeks the preservation of its own being, according to its nature: and by reason of this inclination, whatever is a means of preserving human life, and of warding off its obstacles, belongs to the natural law. Secondly, there is in man an inclination to things that pertain to him more specially, according to that nature which he has in common with other animals: and in virtue of this inclination, those things are said to belong to the natural law, “which nature has taught to all animals” [Pandect. Just. I, tit. i], such as sexual intercourse, education of offspring and so forth. Thirdly, there is in man an inclination to good, according to the nature of his reason, which nature is proper to him: thus, man has a natural inclination to know the truth about God, and to live in society: and in this respect, whatever pertains to this inclination belongs to the natural law; for instance, to shun ignorance, to avoid offending those among whom one has to live, and other such things regarding the above inclination.[2]

In Summa Theologiae Ia-IIae qu. 94 art. 1

A problem one might face with Aquinas’ theory is that the natural law, or more specifically its precepts, do not determine their own application. A sentiment as universal as “striving towards living in a society and avoiding offense against those with whom one has to live” might be admirable, but it can hardly help determine for us the day-to-day demands of justice—especially living in an increasingly technocratic and hyper-communicative world. These principles may indeed be what ought to form the basis of our practical reasoning, but they are not principles which determine their own application. Aquinas is aware that this is the case, and in discussing justice as it pertains to the virtue of epieikeia (reasonable accommodation of circumstances in pursuit of equity), writes how justice is that with which laws are concerned, and principally deal.

When we were treating of laws, since human actions, with which laws are concerned, are composed of contingent singulars and are innumerable in their diversity, it was not possible to lay down rules of law that would apply to every single case. Legislators in framing laws attend to what commonly happens: although if the law be applied to certain cases, it will frustrate the equality of justice and be injurious to the common good, which the law has in view.[3]

In Summa Theologiae IIa-IIae qu. 120 art. 1

Relationality of Justice

Interestingly enough, Aquinas, in treating the virtue of justice, notes how it is more principally the virtue pertaining to the virtuous person as it especially stands in importance among the different virtues. Speaking of the subjective qualities of the soul, it simply is better on account of its residing in reason, but also because it is precisely through justice that we can be good towards other people, rather than being good in ourselves.

If we speak of legal justice, it is evident that it stands foremost among all the moral virtues, for as much as the common good transcends the individual good of one person. On this sense the Philosopher declares (Ethic. v, 1) that “the most excellent of the virtues would seem to be justice, and more glorious than either the evening or the morning star.” But, even if we speak of particular justice, it excels the other moral virtues for two reasons. The first reason may be taken from the subject, because justice is in the more excellent part of the soul, viz. the rational appetite or will, whereas the other moral virtues are in the sensitive appetite, whereunto appertain the passions which are the matter of the other moral virtues. The second reason is taken from the object, because the other virtues are commendable in respect of the sole good of the virtuous person himself, whereas justice is praiseworthy in respect of the virtuous person being well disposed towards another, so that justice is somewhat the good of another person, as stated in Ethic. v, 1. Hence the Philosopher says (Rhet. i, 9): “The greatest virtues must needs be those which are most profitable to other persons, because virtue is a faculty of doing good to others. For this reason, the greatest honors are accorded the brave and the just, since bravery is useful to others in warfare, and justice is useful to others both in warfare and in time of peace.”[4]

In Summa Theologiae IIa-IIae qu. 58 art. 12

Justice then seems to be just as important—if not even more so—than the precepts of the natural law, because it is only through justice that right relations between different members of a given society can obtain. Not only relations with family members, or friends, but lawgivers, employers, statesmen, and the like all require the application of justice.

Understanding Justice in our Contemporary Context

Putting aside justice as conventionally understood by Aquinas in his 13th century medieval context, what would he have to say with regards to the application of social media and communication-based technology that we have encountered and utilized in the 21st century? Is justice something that concerns us insofar as we employ social media? Do we have some sort of obligation towards justice in how we interact with each other socially online? My question then for us all for Wednesday is; what is the relationship between the natural law, or more specifically the precepts of the natural law and the virtue of justice, and what does it mean then to be justice today given the widespread use of social media and technology?

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[1] Cessario, R. (2001). Introduction to Moral Theology. : Catholic University of America Press. Pg. 104

[2] In Summa Theologiae Ia-IIae qu. 94 art. 1 Second and Revised Edition, 1920, Literally translated by Fathers of the English Dominican Province, Online Edition Copyright © 2017 by Kevin Knight https://www.newadvent.org/summa/2094.htm#article1

[3] In Summa Theologiae IIa-IIae qu. 120 art. 1 https://www.newadvent.org/summa/3120.htm

[4] In Summa Theologiae IIa-IIae qu. 58 art. 12  https://www.newadvent.org/summa/3058.htm#article12

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⚘ Lessons learned from John Deely | by Gary Shank

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July 30, 2022 / 2pm (EDT), 7pm (UTC+1h)

Gary Shank is a Professor of Educational Research at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, PA. He has been active in semiotics since 1979, when he attended his first Semiotic Society of America meeting at his alma mater, Indiana University. He has been active in semiotics and educational research since then. He was a founding member and Past-President of the Semiotics in Education SIG at the American Educational Research Association. He has published in Semiotica and the American Journal of Semiotics. He has been plenary speaker for the Biosemiotics Convening, where he talked about the Semiotics of PS 101. He has also published extensively in qualitative research, where he has authored or co-authored three related books. In this Educational Semiotics book series titled “Signs and Symbols in Education,” Dr. Shank is looking for visionary works on education and semiotics and how they can reinforce and build from each other.

Marita Soto holds a PhD in Social Sciences, UBA – University of Buenos Aires. At the UNA – Argentinian National University of the Arts, she was dean of the campus of the Transdepartmental Area of Arts Criticism. Under her administration, a Bachelor’s Degree in Arts Curatorship and one in the Art of Writing were launched, along with the postgraduate Specialization in the Production of Critical Texts and Media Dissemination of the Arts (distance learning) and the Master’s Degree in the History of Modern and Contemporary Art, all of which designed from a well-defined semiotic perspective. She fostered the development of the UNA Institutional Archive and reinforced its publishing activities.

Professor and researcher at different Argentinian universities (such as UBA, IDAES, UNSAM, UNLP, UNA), where she has trained teachers, researchers and younger semioticians, Soto has been in charge of specifically semiotic subjects such as Semiotics of Contemporary Genres and Semiotics of the Arts.

She is both a partner and the director of Punctum, a studio specialized in research applied to the fields of consumption, aesthetics and gender issues.

In 2001-2002 she was the head of the crisis laboratory (Moiguer & Associates) where the research activities revolved around the problems of audience segmentation to observe new habits and mores in periods of crisis.

Among her books, Telenovela/telenovelas (coord.), El volver de las imágenes (with Oscar Steimberg and Oscar Traversa), La puesta en escena de todos los días and Habitar y narrar (2016) bring together the results of her research.

Soto was awarded the prize for the best paper presented at the Esomar Conference, São Paulo 2002, which was published in Excellence in International Research, 2003 (with Fernando Moiguer, Jorge Karol and José Luis Petris).

She was a member of the Organizing Committee of the 14th World Congress of Semiotics in Buenos Aires.

She has been trained and has worked together with Oscar Traversa, Oscar Steimberg and Eliseo Verón.

2022 International Open Seminar on Semiotics (IO2S) | Website

This collaborative international open scientific initiative and celebration is jointly organized by the Institute for Philosophical Studies of the Faculty of Arts and Humanities of the University of Coimbra, the Lyceum Institute, the Deely Project, Saint Vincent College, the Iranian Society for Phenomenology at the Iranian Political Science Association, the International Association for Semiotics of Space and Time, the Institute for Scientific Information on Social Sciences of the Russian Academy of Sciences, the Semiotic Society of America, the American Maritain Association, the International Association for Semiotic Studies, the International Society for Biosemiotic Studies and the Mansarda Acesa with the support of the FCT – Foundation for Science and Technology, I.P., of the Ministry of Science, Technology and Higher Education of the Government of Portugal under the UID/FIL/00010/2020 project.

IO2S

Peirce on proper names | by Francesco Bellucci

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This event is part of the activities of the 2022 International Open Seminar on Semiotics: a Tribute to John Deely on the Fifth Anniversary of His Passing, cooperatively organized by the Institute for Philosophical Studies of the Faculty of Arts and Humanities of the University of Coimbra, the Lyceum Institute, the Deely Project, Saint Vincent College, the Iranian Society for Phenomenology at the Iranian Political Science Association, the International Association for Semiotics of Space and Time, the Institute for Scientific Information on Social Sciences of the Russian Academy of Sciences, the Semiotic Society of America, the American Maritain Association, the International Association for Semiotic Studies, the International Society for Biosemiotic Studies, the International Center for Semiotics and Intercultural Dialogue, Moscow State Academic University for the Humanities and the Mansarda Acesa with the support of the FCT – Foundation for Science and Technology, I.P., of the Ministry of Science, Technology and Higher Education of the Government of Portugal under the UID/FIL/00010/2020 project.

Francesco Bellucci holds a PhD in Semiotics (Università di Siena, 2012) and is currently Associate Professor at the Department of the Arts of the University of Bologna in Italy. He has worked at the Tallinn University of Technology, Estonia (2013–2017) and was visiting researcher at the Peirce Edition Project, IUPUI, Indianapolis (2016). His research interests focus on Peirce’s logic, the theory and the history of semiotics, the philosophy of language, and the philosophy of notation. He is the author of Peirce’s Speculative Grammar (Routledge, 2017).

Vincent Colapietro is Liberal Arts Research Professor Emeritus at the Pennsylvania State University. He is presently at the Center for the Humanities (University of Rhode Island). One of his main areas of research is pragmatism, with emphasis on Peirce. Though devoted to developing a semiotic perspective rooted in Peirce’s seminal work, Colapietro draws upon a number of other authors and perspectives (including Bakhtin, Jakobson, and Bourdieu as well as such movements as phenomenology, hermeneutics, and deconstruction). He is the author of Peirce’s Approach to the Self (1989), A Glossary of Semiotics (1993), Fateful Shapes of Human Freedom (2003), and Acción, sociabilidad y drama: Un retrato pragmatista del animal humano (2020) as well as numerous essays. He has written on a wide range of topics, from music (especially jazz) and cinema to psychoanalysis and deconstruction, from art and literature to ontology and phenomenology. He has served as President of the Charles S. Peirce Society, the Metaphysical Society of America, and the Semiotic Society of America.

2022 International Open Seminar on Semiotics (IO2S) | Website

This collaborative international open scientific initiative and celebration is jointly organized by the Institute for Philosophical Studies of the Faculty of Arts and Humanities of the University of Coimbra, the Lyceum Institute, the Deely Project, Saint Vincent College, the Iranian Society for Phenomenology at the Iranian Political Science Association, the International Association for Semiotics of Space and Time, the Institute for Scientific Information on Social Sciences of the Russian Academy of Sciences, the Semiotic Society of America, the American Maritain Association, the International Association for Semiotic Studies, the International Society for Biosemiotic Studies and the Mansarda Acesa with the support of the FCT – Foundation for Science and Technology, I.P., of the Ministry of Science, Technology and Higher Education of the Government of Portugal under the UID/FIL/00010/2020 project.

IO2S

⚘ John Deely’s Contributions to Biosemiotics | by Donald Favareau, Paul Cobley, and Kalevi Kull

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This event is part of the activities of the 2022 International Open Seminar on Semiotics: a Tribute to John Deely on the Fifth Anniversary of His Passing, cooperatively organized by the Institute for Philosophical Studies of the Faculty of Arts and Humanities of the University of Coimbra, the Lyceum Institute, the Deely Project, Saint Vincent College, the Iranian Society for Phenomenology at the Iranian Political Science Association, the International Association for Semiotics of Space and Time, the Institute for Scientific Information on Social Sciences of the Russian Academy of Sciences, the Semiotic Society of America, the American Maritain Association, the International Association for Semiotic Studies, the International Society for Biosemiotic Studies, the International Center for Semiotics and Intercultural Dialogue, Moscow State Academic University for the Humanities and the Mansarda Acesa with the support of the FCT – Foundation for Science and Technology, I.P., of the Ministry of Science, Technology and Higher Education of the Government of Portugal under the UID/FIL/00010/2020 project.

Donald Favareau is an Associate Professor in the University Scholars Programme (USP) at the National University of Singapore (NUS). He received his degrees in Philosophy and Applied Linguistics, with a particular interests in Philosophy of Mind and the Neurobiology of Language, from the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA).

He became involved with the interdisciplinary research project of Biosemiotics in 2001 and has been an active researcher and organiser of the field ever since. (…) He also has served as Vice-President of the International Society for Biosemiotic Studies since its founding in 2005.

Besides collating and authoring the Essential Readings in Biosemiotics: Anthology and Commentary (2010) and co-editing with Paul Cobley and Kalevi Kull A More Developed Sign: Interpreting the Work of Jesper Hoffmeyer (2012), Favareau has been publishing in leading scholarly journals like SEED, Semiotica, Journal of Progress in Biophysics and Molecular Biology, and Biosemiotics.

Paul Cobley is Professor in Language and Media and Deputy Dean (Research and Knowledge Exchange) in the Faculty of Arts and Creative Industries at Middlesex University. (…) He is co-series editor (with Kalevi Kull) of Semiotics, Communication and Cognition (de Gruyter Mouton), co-editor (with Peter J. Schulz) of the multi-volume Handbooks of Communication Sciences (de Gruyter), co-edits the journal Social Semiotics, and is associate editor of Cybernetics and Human Knowing. Among his edited volumes are The Routledge Companion to Semiotics (2009), Theories and Models of Communication (2013, with Peter Schulz), Semiotics and Its Masters Vol. 1 (2017, with Kristian Bankov), Realism for the 21st Century: A John Deely Reader (2009) and The Communication Theory Reader (1996). He is the 9th Thomas A. Sebeok Fellow of the Semiotic Society of America, President of the International Association for Semiotic Studies (elected in 2014) and is secretary (since 2012) of the International Society for Biosemiotic Studies.

Kalevi Kull is Professor of Biosemiotics in the University of Tartu, Estonia. His research focuses on intersections of biology and semiotics. He studied biology and worked in theoretical biology and field ecology, while in last decades in semiotics. His mission is to foster an ecological culture. His work includes: Jakob von Uexküll: A Paradigm for Biology and Semiotics (2001), Towards a Semiotic Biology: Life is the action of Signs (2011), as well as On Theoretical Biology: Life Science between Mathematics and Semiotics (2019, in Estonian).

Anton Markoš is a theoretical biologist and associate professor at the Department of Philosophy and History of Science of the Faculty of Science, Charles University in Prague. In his writings, he focuses on cell and evolutionary biology and biosemiotics from the hermeneutical, historical and philosophical point of view. Among his many scientific and popular books and articles are Epigenetic Processes and the Evolution of Life (w/ Jana Švorcová; CRC Press 2019), Readers of the Book of Life (Oxford University Press 2002), or Life as its own Designer: Darwin´s Origin and Western Thought (w/ Filip Grygar, László Hajnal, Karel Kleisner, Zdenek Kratochvíl, Zdenek Neubauer; Springer 2009).

2022 International Open Seminar on Semiotics (IO2S) | Website

This collaborative international open scientific initiative and celebration is jointly organized by the Institute for Philosophical Studies of the Faculty of Arts and Humanities of the University of Coimbra, the Lyceum Institute, the Deely Project, Saint Vincent College, the Iranian Society for Phenomenology at the Iranian Political Science Association, the International Association for Semiotics of Space and Time, the Institute for Scientific Information on Social Sciences of the Russian Academy of Sciences, the Semiotic Society of America, the American Maritain Association, the International Association for Semiotic Studies, the International Society for Biosemiotic Studies and the Mansarda Acesa with the support of the FCT – Foundation for Science and Technology, I.P., of the Ministry of Science, Technology and Higher Education of the Government of Portugal under the UID/FIL/00010/2020 project.

IO2S

Intuition in Peirce and Maritain | by Donna E. West

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Donna West (PhD, Cornell University) is Professor of Linguistics at the State University of New York, Cortland. For nearly forty years she has presented and published internationally (70 plus articles/chapters) on Peirce’s semiotic. She currently serves on the Board of the International Association for Cognitive Semiotics, as well as on several editorial boards. Her 2013 book, Deictic Imaginings: Semiosis at Work and at Play, investigates the ontogeny of indexical signs. Her 2016 edited volume on Peirce’s concept of habit offers a fresh, global perspective (scholars from twelve nations). She is likewise editing the “Mathematics and Cognition” section for the Handbook on Cognitive Mathematics (2021)—her own contribution explores the formidable role of chunking in abductive rationality. Following the 2021 publication of two guest-edited journal issues on Peirce and consciousness (Cognitive Semiotics, Semiotica), her forthcoming book presents retrospective narratives as the scaffold toward Peirce’s retroductive logic.

Michael L. Raposa joined the Department of Religion Studies at Lehigh University in 1985. He has served as chair of the department on four separate occasions. From 2006-2008, he also served as associate dean for undergraduate programs in the College of Arts and Sciences. Previously, Raposa taught for four years at Sacred Heart University in Fairfield, Connecticut. Raposa was born in Westport, Massachusetts and received his undergraduate education at Yale University. After a year of graduate study at the University of Toronto, he returned to Yale and completed his master’s degree at the Divinity School there. In 1979, he entered the doctoral program in Religious Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, where he earned the PhD in 1987. Raposa’s primary research and teaching interests fall within the areas of modern western religious thought and the philosophy of religion. His first book, published in 1989, explored the religious dimension of Charles S. Peirce’s philosophy. In 1999, he published a book on the religious significance of boredom, its importance as both a threat and a stimulus to the spiritual life. Several years later, in 2003, Raposa published a volume devoted to the relationship between meditation and the martial arts, both the meditative aspect of certain martial exercises and the martial character of certain classical forms of spirituality. Most recently, in 2020, he published a book entitled Theosemiotic: Religion, Reading, and the Gift of Meaning, an application of Peirce’s semiotic theory to certain issues in philosophical theology. Raposa regularly teaches courses in the philosophy of religion, contemporary theology, Roman Catholic studies, American religious history, and the relationship between religion, science and technology. Raposa’s wife, Mary Ellen (retired in 2021) was a counselor in Lehigh’s Career Services center for many years; they raised three children, Daniel, Elizabeth, and Rosemary at their home in Northeast Bethlehem, about four miles from the university. (…)

2022 International Open Seminar on Semiotics (IO2S) | Website

This collaborative international open scientific initiative and celebration is jointly organized by the Institute for Philosophical Studies of the Faculty of Arts and Humanities of the University of Coimbra, the Lyceum Institute, the Deely Project, Saint Vincent College, the Iranian Society for Phenomenology at the Iranian Political Science Association, the International Association for Semiotics of Space and Time, the Institute for Scientific Information on Social Sciences of the Russian Academy of Sciences, the Semiotic Society of America, the American Maritain Association, the International Association for Semiotic Studies, the International Society for Biosemiotic Studies and the Mansarda Acesa with the support of the FCT – Foundation for Science and Technology, I.P., of the Ministry of Science, Technology and Higher Education of the Government of Portugal under the UID/FIL/00010/2020 project.

IO2S/News and Announcements

Minimum as a Sign in Contemporary Architecture | by Dragana Vasilski

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Event by Lyceum Institute, Mansarda Acesa and IEF Instituto de Estudos Filosóficos

Public  · Anyone on or off Facebook

Outgrow excess… and you will develop a semiotic sensitivity to what is strictly necessary.

⚘ Minimum as a Sign in Contemporary Architecture by Dragana Vasilski

June 25, 2022 / 6pm (CEST), 5pm (UTC+1h)

Lecturer: Dragana Vasilski

Chair: Yulia Nikitenko

This event is part of the activities of the 2022 International Open Seminar on Semiotics: a Tribute to John Deely on the Fifth Anniversary of His Passing, cooperatively organized by the Institute for Philosophical Studies of the Faculty of Arts and Humanities of the University of Coimbra, the Lyceum Institute, the Deely Project, Saint Vincent College, the Iranian Society for Phenomenology at the Iranian Political Science Association, the International Association for Semiotics of Space and Time, the Institute for Scientific Information on Social Sciences of the Russian Academy of Sciences, the Semiotic Society of America, the American Maritain Association, the International Association for Semiotic Studies, the International Society for Biosemiotic Studies, the International Center for Semiotics and Intercultural Dialogue, Moscow State Academic University for the Humanities and the Mansarda Acesa with the support of the FCT – Foundation for Science and Technology, I.P., of the Ministry of Science, Technology and Higher Education of the Government of Portugal under the UID/FIL/00010/2020 project.

Dragana Vasilski is Full-time Professor and Dean of the Faculty of Architecture and Urban Planning of the University Union Nikola Tesla in Belgrade, Serbia. Her work includes writings and research, architectural design, and teaching the application of new methodologies and the pursuit of investigations within an interdisciplinary approach. Current fields of interest: interdisciplinary intersections between architecture and philosophy, architectural theory and history, arts and sciences, architectural design process, design studies, culture studies, humanistic and natural sciences. Her scientific competence and success are reflected in more than one hundred scientific papers. The peculiar field of her interest, within topics related to contemporary architecture, is Minimalism in architecture, as in architecture that changes people’s lives. She uses semiotics as a research method to define, understand, and explain this contemporary aesthetic theme in architecture. Since 2018 she is a member of the Executive Board of the IASSp+T – International Association for Semiotics of Space and Time, where she holds the position of Secretary General. Original artistic achievements should also be mentioned.

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The singularity of relation and the threads of communication | by Paul Bains

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This event is part of the activities of the 2022 International Open Seminar on Semiotics: a Tribute to John Deely on the Fifth Anniversary of His Passing, cooperatively organized by the Institute for Philosophical Studies of the Faculty of Arts and Humanities of the University of Coimbra, the Lyceum Institute, the Deely Project, Saint Vincent College, the Iranian Society for Phenomenology at the Iranian Political Science Association, the International Association for Semiotics of Space and Time, the Institute for Scientific Information on Social Sciences of the Russian Academy of Sciences, the Semiotic Society of America, the American Maritain Association, the International Association for Semiotic Studies, the International Society for Biosemiotic Studies, the International Center for Semiotics and Intercultural Dialogue, Moscow State Academic University for the Humanities and the Mansarda Acesa with the support of the FCT – Foundation for Science and Technology, I.P., of the Ministry of Science, Technology and Higher Education of the Government of Portugal under the UID/FIL/00010/2020 project.

Paul Bains is an independent researcher. He is a published author and translator (French to English) who has translated works by Felix Guattari (Chaosmosis: An Ethico-Aesthetic Paradigm) and Isabelle Stengers (Power and Invention: Situating Science). His Ph.D. thesis was published as ‘The primacy of semiosis: an ontology of relations’ (University of Toronto Press, 2006).

2022 International Open Seminar on Semiotics (IO2S) | Website

This collaborative international open scientific initiative and celebration is jointly organized by the Institute for Philosophical Studies of the Faculty of Arts and Humanities of the University of Coimbra, the Lyceum Institute, the Deely Project, Saint Vincent College, the Iranian Society for Phenomenology at the Iranian Political Science Association, the International Association for Semiotics of Space and Time, the Institute for Scientific Information on Social Sciences of the Russian Academy of Sciences, the Semiotic Society of America, the American Maritain Association, the International Association for Semiotic Studies, the International Society for Biosemiotic Studies and the Mansarda Acesa with the support of the FCT – Foundation for Science and Technology, I.P., of the Ministry of Science, Technology and Higher Education of the Government of Portugal under the UID/FIL/00010/2020 project.