On Progress, Tradition, and Continuity
A philosophical reflection on the tensions between progress and tradition and their resolution through continuity All too often, the notions of progress and tradition alike are swallowed into the ideologies that make of them principles both absolute and opposed to one another. Put otherwise, when progressivism and traditionalism come to prevail, we often lose not […]
Semiotics: Thought and Contributions of John Deely [Winter 2025]
Description To understand and affect this maturation into postmodernity, we will turn our attention in this seminar to the major contributions to semiotics given by Deely: the proto-semiotic history, an expanded doctrine of causality, the retrieved and clarified notion of relation, the concept of physiosemiosis, the continuity of culture and nature, the notion of purely objective reality, and the real interdisciplinarity which semiotics fosters. This is […]
The Depth and Extension of Semiotics [an excerpt]
The following is an excerpt from the lectures for the Semiotics: Thought and Contributions of John Deely seminar offered at the Lyceum Institute. This seminar will be offered again in January (Q1) of 2025. Sign up for our Newsletter to be notified of when to register! Few truths elude our awareness, let alone our full […]
The Relationship between Logic and Rhetoric
Oftentimes, a student beginning in logic believes that this study will enable him or her to win arguments, convincing interlocutor and audience alike. But even after a great deal of study and many attempts, expectations and reality remain far apart. Others, particularly in this “post-truth” world where facts seem to account for little but favorable […]
The World as Sign: The Semiotic Metaphysics of St. Bonaventure
Our friends from the Deely Project at Saint Vincent College announce that Fr. Christopher Cullen, SJ (Fordham University) will present the 2024 annual John Deely Lecture on April 20 at 7pm, ET, entitled: “The World as Sign: The Semiotic Metaphysics of St. Bonaventure”. Members of the public are free to attend the lecture or watch […]
Language, Non-Existent Objects, and Semiotics
In the 19th and 20th centuries, a fever for scientific explanation of all phenomena gripped many an intellectual. Language, however, has proved resistant to the methods of modern science. Too many aspects of our experience prove irreducible to the empiriometric approach successful in disciplines such as chemistry or biology. This resistance vexes the reductionist’s mind. […]
The Ethics of New Terminology
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, […]
On Modernity, Ultramodernity, and Postmodernity
If you and I are to have a conversation—that is, a kind of living-together through discourse or the concrete articulations of language—we must, indeed, do so in the same “place”. Put otherwise, we cannot have a conversation unless the objects signified by our words are the same. I do not mean that each and every […]
On the Meanings of “Object”, “Objective”, and “Objectivity”
The word “language” often suffers a confusion in use because of a partial equivocation in signification. Sometimes, we use it to signify the species-specifically human capacity to express semantic depth pertaining to a being known as independent of our cognitive activity; in other words, we use the word “language” to indicate our ability for signifying […]
Podcast – How Does One Know?
I recently joined John Johnson and Larissa Bianco over at the Albertus Magnus Institute to talk about all things (or, at least, a lot of things) related to knowledge and the specifically human difference in how that knowledge unfolds in our experience. Be sure to check out the AMI website, especially the two summer courses […]
