Semiotics, Symbolic Cognition, and Technology Key Writings Compiled and edited with commentary by Martin Irvine

Contents

1. Philosophical Traditions: Aristotle and Locke ...................................................2 2. Ferdinand De Saussure: Language as a Formal Sign System ..........................5 3. C.S. Peirce: On Signs, Symbols, Cognition, and Communication ..................12 4. Roman Jakobson, On Language Structures and Communication .................23 5. Foundations of Contemporary Linguistics: Chomsky ...................................25 6. Semiotics as a General Theory of Meaning and Symbolic Systems ...............29 7. Ogden & Richards, The Meaning of Meaning ................................................31 8. V. N. Volosinov, Signs in Society and Ideology..............................................33 9. Symbolic Cognition and Abstraction: Bateson, Whitehead ............................38 10. Evolutionary Cognitive Science: Deacon and the Symbolic Species ............39 11. Computation & the Physical Symbol System Hypothesis: Herbert Simon .40 12. Cognitive Artefacts: Michael Cole..................................................................43 13. Computation and Information as Symbolic Processes ..................................46 Bibliography of Sources and Major Reference Works.........................................52

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1. Philosophical Traditions: Aristotle and Locke On Interpretation is the second text in Aristotle's Organon (c.320 BCE), the corpus of texts in classical logic that became the foundation of philosophy. The terminology that Aristotle uses was developed in earlier philosophy, and was then extended in the Greek and Roman traditions of grammar and logic. The Latin (and then Arabic) translations of Aristotle's text were used in all European and Eastern schools from the 8th through the 18th centuries. I have supplied the original Greek terms and the Latin equivalents so that you can understand the sources of terms in linguistics and philosophy that we still use. The terms and concepts were also used in handbooks on grammar in the classical, medieval, and renaissance era (for Latin and Greek), and then were adopted for application to modern languages and modern philosophy of language and logic. Aristotle, From On Interpretation (Greek: Περὶ Ἑρμηνείας [Peri Hermeneias], Latin: De Interpretatione), c. 340 BCE. (My more literal adaptation of J. L. Ackrill’s translation.) 1. First we must define what a noun [onoma = “name word”, noun; Latin: nomen] is and what a verb [rhema; Latin: verbum] is, and then what a negation, an affirmation, a statement and a sentence [logos = meaningful statement; Latin: oratio] are. Now spoken sounds [phone; Latin: voces) are symbols [symbola; Latin: notae] of mental [psyche; Latin: anima] experiences, and written marks [graphomena] are symbols of spoken sounds. And just as letters [grammata; Latin: littera] are not the same for all men, neither are spoken sounds. But what these are in the first place signs [σημεὶα, semeia; Latin: notae] of -- experiences in the mind -- are the same for all; and what these mental experiences are likenesses of -- actual things -- are also the same. Note: the philosophical tradition on language as a sign system begins with defining words as speech sounds assumed to symbols of or for mental states--either perceptions or concepts. Symbolic forms -- spoken and written -- vary in languages, but the mental states are assumed to be intersubjective (“the same”) and shared by everyone with a mind who uses words.

2. A noun [onoma: “name word,” Latin: nomen] is a spoken sound significant by convention, without time [i.e., without verbal tense], none of whose parts is significant in separation… I say “by convention” because no noun is a name 2

naturally but only when it has become a symbol [symbolon]. Even inarticulate [agrammata; Latin: illitterata] noises (of animals, for instance) do indeed reveal something, yet none of them is a noun [name word]. 4. A sentence [logos; Latin: oratio] is a significant spoken sound [phone semantike; Latin: vox significativa] some part of which is significant in separation -- as an expression, not as an affirmation. I mean that “animal”, for instance, signifies something, but not that it is or is not (though it will be an affirmation or negation if something is added); the single syllables of “animal”, on the other hand, signify nothing. Every sentence (logos; oratio) is significant (semantikos; significativa) -- not as a tool but, as we said, by convention -- but not every sentence is a proposition [= statement-making sentence with a truth value], but only those in which there is truth or falsity. Not all sentences have truth or falsity: a prayer is a sentence but is neither true nor false. The present investigation deals with the propositional sentence; the others we can dismiss, since consideration of them belongs rather to the study of rhetoric or poetry. John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, 1690 Chapter XXI: Of the Division of the Sciences: Physica, Practica, Semeiotike 1. Science may be divided into three sorts. All that can fall within the compass of human understanding, being either, First, the nature of things, as they are in themselves, their relations, and their manner of operation [Physica]: or, Secondly, that which man himself ought to do, as a rational and voluntary agent, for the attainment of any end, especially happiness [Practica]: or, Thirdly, the ways and means whereby the knowledge of both the one and the other of these is attained and communicated [Semeiotike]; I think science may be divided properly into these three sorts…. 4. Semeiotike. [T]he third branch may be called Semeiotike, or the doctrine of signs; the most usual whereof being words, it is aptly enough termed also Logike, logic: the business whereof is to consider the nature of signs, the mind makes use of for the understanding of things, or conveying its knowledge to others. For, since the things the mind contemplates are none of them, besides itself, present to the understanding, it is necessary that something else, as a sign or representation of the thing it considers, should be present to it: and these are ideas. And because the scene of ideas that makes one man’s thoughts cannot be laid open to the immediate view of another, nor laid up anywhere but in the memory, a no 3

very sure repository: therefore to communicate our thoughts to one another, as well as record them for our own use, signs of our ideas are also necessary: those which men have found most convenient, and therefore generally make use of, are articulate sounds. The consideration, then, of ideas and words as the great instruments of knowledge, makes no despicable part of their contemplation who would take a view of human knowledge in the whole extent of it. And perhaps if they were distinctly weighed, and duly considered, they would afford us another sort of logic and critic, than what we have been hitherto acquainted with. 5. This is the first and most general division of the objects of our understanding. This seems to me the first and most general, as well as natural division of the objects of our understanding. For a man can employ his thoughts about nothing, but either, the contemplation of things themselves, for the discovery of truth; or about the things in his own power, which are his own actions, for the attainment of his own ends; or the signs the mind makes use of both in the one and the other, and the right ordering of them, for its clearer information. All which three, viz, things, as they are in themselves knowable; actions as they depend on us, in order to happiness; and the right use of signs in order to knowledge, being toto coelo different, they seemed to me to be the three great provinces of the intellectual world, wholly separate and distinct one from another.

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2. Ferdinand De Saussure: Language as a Formal Sign System De Saussure’s Course in General Linguistics was first published in French in 1916 from de Saussure’s lecture notes, and translated into English in 1959. This foundational text on structural linguistics has been very influential in the humanities since the 1960s through the adoption of Saussure’s model of the sign in French philosophy and theory (Barthes, Foucault). These early views on linguistic features and semantics, however, are simplistic and superseded by contemporary linguistic research and theory. Three key insights remain universally accepted in linguistics and most fields in semiotics, though usually redescribed in other terms: (1) the arbitrary (i.e., unmotivated) structural relation of sound and meaning in any natural language (the foundation of language as a symbolic system), (2) speech sounds, word forms, and meanings are elements in a system of inter-relations, within which, and only within which, they function as constituents of a language; and (3) the recognition of two dimensions of meaning -- the “context-free” sense (like dictionary meaning) and social-cultural value (meaning in contexts of use). Key terms in French are in italics. Ferdinand de Saussure, Course in General Linguistics. 1911-1916. English translation by Wade Baskin, 1959. Excerpts. Introduction Chapter 3: The Object of Linguistics 1. Definition of Language [Distinguishing Language, as a system of rules, from individual instances of Speech] But what is language [langue = the rule system]? It is not to be confused with human speech [langage: talking, speaking], of which it is only a definite part, though certainly an essential one. It is both a social product of the faculty of speech and a collection of necessary conventions that have been adopted by a social body to permit individuals to exercise that faculty. Taken as a whole, speech is manysided and heterogeneous; straddling several areas simultaneously-physical, physiological, and psychological-it belongs both to the individual and to society; we cannot put it into any category of human facts, for we cannot discover its unity. Language, on the contrary, is a self-contained whole and a principle of classification. As soon as we give language first place among the facts of speech, we introduce a natural order into a mass that lends itself to no other classification.

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2. Place of Language in the Facts of Speech In order to separate from the whole of speech (parole) the part that belongs to language [langue, the abstract rule system], we must examine the individual act from which the speaking-circuit can be reconstructed. The act requires the presence of at least two persons; that is the minimum number necessary to complete the circuit. Suppose that two people, A and B, are conversing with each other:

Suppose that the opening of the circuit is in A's brain, where mental facts (concepts) are associated with representations of the linguistic sounds (soundimages) that are used for their expression. A given concept unlocks a corresponding sound-image in the brain; this purely psychological phenomenon is followed in turn by a physiological process: the brain transmits an impulse corresponding to the image to the organs used in producing sounds. Then the sound waves travel from the mouth of A to the ear of B: a purely physical process. Next, the circuit continues in B, but the order is reversed: from the ear to the brain, the physiological transmission of the sound-image; in the brain, the psychological association of the image with the corresponding concept. If B then speaks, the new act will follow -- from his brain to A's -- exactly the same course as the first act and pass through the same successive phases, which I shall diagram as follows:

The preceding analysis does not purport to be complete. We might also single out the pure acoustical sensation, the identification of that sensation with the latent

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sound- image, the muscular image of phonation, etc. I have included only the elements thought to be essential, but the drawing brings out at a glance the distinction between the physical (sound waves), physiological (phonation and audition), and psychological parts (word-images and concepts). Indeed, we should not fail to note that the word-image stands apart from the sound itself and that it is just as psychological as the concept which is associated with it. The circuit that I have outlined can be further divided into: a) an outer part that includes the vibrations of the sounds which travel from the mouth to the ear, and an inner part that includes everything else; b) a psychological and a nonpsychological part, the second including the physiological productions of the vocal organs as well as the physical facts that are outside the individual; c) an active and a passive part: everything that goes from the associative center of the speaker to the ear of the listener is active, and everything that goes from the ear of the listener to his associative center is passive; d) finally, everything that is active in the psychological part of the circuit is executive (c --+ s), and everything that is passive is receptive (s --* c). We should also add the associative and co-ordinating faculty that we find as soon as we leave isolated signs; this faculty plays the dominant role in the organization of language as a system (see pp. 122 ff.). But to understand clearly the role of the associative and coordinating faculty, we must leave the, individual act, which is only the embryo of speech, and approach the social fact. … How does the social crystallization of language come about? Which parts of the circuit are involved? For all parts probably do not participate equally in it. The nonpsychological part can be rejected from the outset. When we hear people speaking a language that we do not know, we perceive the sounds but remain outside the social fact because we do not understand them. Neither is the psychological part of the circuit wholly responsible: the executive side is missing, for execution is never-carried out by the collectivity. Execution is always individual, and the individual is always its master: I shall call the executive side speaking [parole]. Through the functioning of the receptive and co-ordinating faculties, impressions that are perceptibly the same for all are made on the minds of speakers. How can that social product be pictured in such a way that language will stand apart from everything else? If we could embrace the sum of wordimages stored in the minds of all individuals, we could identify the social bond 7

that constitutes language. It is a storehouse filled by the members of a given community through their active use of speaking, a grammatical system that has a potential existence in each brain, or, more specifically, in the brains of a group of individuals. For language is not complete in any speaker; it exists perfectly only within a collectivity. ... 3. Place of Language in Human Facts: Semiology We have just seen that language is a social institution; but several features set it apart from other political, legal, etc. institutions. We must call in a new type of facts in order to illuminate the special nature of language. Language is a system of signs that express ideas, and is therefore comparable to a system of writing, the alphabet of deaf-mutes, symbolic rites, polite formulas, military signals, etc. But it is the most important of all these systems. A science that studies the life of signs within society is conceivable; it would be a part of social psychology and consequently of general psychology; I shall call it semiology (from Greek semeion, “sign”). Semiology would show what constitutes signs, what laws govern them. Since the science does not yet exist, no one can say what it would be; but it has a right to existence, a place staked out in advance. Linguistics is only a part of the general science of semiology; the laws discovered by semiology will be applicable to linguistics, and the latter will circumscribe a well-defined area within the mass of anthropological facts… To determine the exact place of semiology is the task of the psychologist! The task of the linguist is to find out what makes language a special system within the mass of semiological data. This issue will be taken up again later; here I wish merely to call attention to one thing: if I have succeeded in assigning linguistics a place among the sciences, it is because I have related it to semiology. Why has semiology not yet been recognized as an independent science with its own object like all the other sciences? Linguists have been going around in circles : language, better than anything else, offers a basis for understanding the semiological problem; but language must, to put it correctly, be studied in itself; heretofore language has almost always been studied in connection with something else, from other viewpoints…. But to me the language problem is mainly semiological, and all developments derive their significance from that important fact. If we are to discover the true nature of language we must learn what it has in common with all other semiological systems.

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PART ONE General Principles: Chapter I NATURE OF THE LINGUISTIC SIGN 1. Sign, Signified, Signifier Some people regard language, when reduced to its elements, as a naming-process only-a list of words, each corresponding to the thing that it names. For example:

This conception is open to criticism at several points. It assumes that ready-made ideas exist before words (on this point, see below, p. 111); it does not tell us whether a name is vocal or psychological in nature (arbor, for instance, can be considered from either viewpoint) ; finally, it lets us assume that the linking of a name and a thing is a very simple operation-an assumption that is anything but true. But this rather naive approach can bring us near the truth by showing us that the linguistic unit We have seen in considering the speaking-circuit that both terms involved in the linguistic sign are psychological and are united in the brain by an associative bond. This point must be emphasized. The linguistic sign unites, not a thing and a name, but a concept and a sound-image. The latter is not the material sound, a purely physical thing, but the psychological imprint of the sound, the impression that it makes on our senses. The sound-image is sensory, and if I happen to call it "material," it is only in that sense, and by way of opposing it to the other term of the association, the concept, which is generally more abstract…. The linguistic sign is then a two-sided psychological entity that can be represented by the drawing:

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The two elements are intimately united, and each recalls the other. Whether we try to find the meaning of the Latin word arbor or the word that Latin uses to designate the concept "tree," it is clear that only the associations sanctioned by that language appears to us to conform to reality, and we disregard whatever others might be imagined. Our definition of the linguistic sign poses an important question of terminology. I call the combination of a concept and a soundimage a sign, but in current usage the term generally designates only a sound-image, a word, for example (arbor, etc.). One tends to forget that arbor is called a sign only because it carries the concept "tree," with the result that the idea of the sensory part implies the idea of the whole. Ambiguity would disappear if the three notions involved here were designated by three names, each suggesting and opposing the others. I propose to retain the word sign [signe] to designate the whole and to replace concept and sound-image respectively by signified [signifé] and signifier [signifiant]; the last two terms have the advantage of indicating the opposition that separates them from each other and from the whole of which they are parts. As regards sign, if I am satisfied with it, this is simply because I do not know of any know of any word to replace it… The linguistic sign, as defined, has two primordial characteristics. In enunciating them I am also positing the basic principles of any study of this type. 2. Principle I: The Arbitrary Nature of the Sign The bond between the signifier and the signified is arbitrary. Since I mean by sign the whole that results from the associating of the signifier with the signified, I can simply say: the linguistic sign is arbitrary… No one disputes the principle of the arbitrary nature of the sign, but it is often easier to discover a truth than to assign to it its proper place. Principle I dominates all the linguistics of language; its consequences are numberless. It is true that not all of them are equally obvious at first glance; only after many detours does one discover them, and with them the primordial importance of the principle…. Signs that are wholly arbitrary realize better than the others the ideal of the semiological process; that is why language, the most complex and universal of all systems of expression, is also the most characteristic; in this sense linguistics can become the master-pattern for all branches of semiology although language is only one particular semiological system.

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The word symbol has been used to designate the linguistic sign, or more specifically, what is here called the signifier. Principle I in particular weighs against the use of this term. One characteristic of the symbol is that it is never wholly arbitrary; it is not empty, for there is the rudiment of a natural bond between the signifier and the signified. The symbol of justice, a pair of scales, could not be replaced by just any other symbol, such as a chariot. The word arbitrary also calls for comment. The term should not imply that the choice of the signifier is left entirely to the speaker (we shall see below that the individual does not have the power to change a sign in any way once it has become established in the linguistic community); I mean that it is unmotivated, i.e. arbitrary in that it actually has no natural connection with the signified.

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3. C.S. Peirce: On Signs, Symbols, Cognition, and Communication Introduction to C. S. Peirce and Some Key Texts Charles Sanders Peirce (1839-1914) is without question the most important American philosopher of the mid-19th and early-20th century. The importance of his work is also very difficult to “access,” especially at first, because of his broad intellectual background and the innovative ways he used philosophical terms. He was a polymath (“knowing many knowledge domains,” the term used before “interdisciplinary:” a scientist, mathematician, cartographer, linguist, philosopher of language and signs) and the founder of the tradition in philosophy known as pragmatism (his life-long friend was William James, who took pragmatism in a different direction). He was an important contributor to the development of modern logic and philosophy of science. In advance of most scientists and philosophers in America, he both knew -- and commented on -- George Boole’s work on “the algebra of logic,” a binary value system for logic used today in all computing systems and electrical engineering, and Charles Babbage’s models for “reasoning machines” -- the “difference engine” and “analytical engine” -- both of which were predecessor and proof-of-concept machines leading to modern computers. Peirce had difficulty being accepted in the academic “mainstream” in his own day--never offered a permanent academic position--but he is continually being “rediscovered.” Peirce published many articles, dictionary entries, and papers in his own lifetime, and he also left a very large collection of unpublished works in his own manuscripts still being recovered by scholars. Getting his many papers and writings into modern editions has required large editing projects (the earlier multivolume Collected Papers [= CP], and a multi-volume chronological edition of Writing by the Peirce Edition Project, now underway), and many valuable writings still remain in unpublished manuscripts. We will study some of these unpublished writings for the insights they provide for our concerns today. The modern reception of Peirce began in the 1950s, when major philosophers and mathematicians like Bertrand Russell, A. N. Whitehead, W. V. O. Quine gave tribute to Peirce in his foundational breakthroughs in symbolic logic. Since the 1960s, some of Peirce’s writings on signs (semiotics) became part of the humanities and cultural studies literature after serious discussion of his work by Jacques Derrida, Umberto Eco, and many others, though the humanities tradition uses Peirce’s philosophy in a very general and underdeveloped way. Peirce’s work is now being reinterpreted in many contexts, including communications and media theory (generally), cognitive science, philosophy, information theory, computation, biological and physical systems, as well as inspiring new applications in linguistics and cultural theory. Peirce zeroed in on the question of meaning-making, reasoning, and knowledge as generative processes constitutively based on human sign systems and 12

all kinds and levels of symbolic representation and interpretation. He termed the dynamic (developing over time) process of expression, representation, and interpretation semiosis (sign process, symbolic productivity, growth in meaning). His starting point is thus very different from De Saussure’s. Though he did not know de Saussure’s work, he knew other philosophies that accepted binary and dyadic (two-part) structures. De Saussure did not explain how the relation between signifiers and signifieds is established mentally and collectively, other than by way of something vaguely behavioristic (stimulus-response). Peirce’s breakthrough was understanding that the meaning relation must be triadic: an interpretivecognitive act creates the relation, which he termed the Interpretant. Peirce discovered that the human social-cognitive use of signs and symbols in everything from language and mathematics to scientific instruments, images, and cultural expression provides a unifying base for understanding meaning, knowledge, learning, and what we call “progress” in developments in both sciences and arts. His lifetime project was working out a generalizable theory and descriptive model of meaning-making and logical reasoning as processes requiring and depending on signs and symbols as used in human cognition, communication, and knowledge building. Peirce’s breakthrough in being able generalize about the function of signs and symbols began with his early inquiries into how reasoning works in science and logic by representing chains of inferences and hypotheses symbolically (as in mathematics and symbolic logic, subjects on which he was an expert), but he did not think the human capacity for symbolic thought and expression was only what could be captured in mathematical formalization. He considered the function of signs and symbolic cognition the underlying structure (we might say “platform” today) for all human social life and culture--in language, literature, art, music, communication media, built artefacts, and everyday conversation. [The term] "sign" [includes] every picture, diagram, natural cry, pointing finger, wink, knot in one's handkerchief, memory, dream, fancy, concept, indication, token, symptom, letter, numeral, word, sentence, chapter, book, library, and in short whatever, be it in the physical universe, be it in the world of thought, that, whether embodying an idea of any kind (and permit us throughout to use this term to cover purposes and feelings), or being connected with some existing object, or referring to future events through a general rule, causes something else, its interpreting sign, to be determined to a corresponding relation to the same idea, existing thing, or law. (MS 774, 1904, EP 2.326). For Peirce, all forms of expression in signs used for meaning in human communities and the sequences of abstract reasoning marked by complex symbols in mathematics and science were all unified by, in, and with a core human social-

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cognitive process. Throughout his career, he struggled with ways to describe symbolic productivity as a dynamic activity based on the simultaneously perceptible, cognitive, dialogic, pragmatic, and intersubjective functions of symbols. He never completed a systematic account of his theories. Peirce’s terminology is often a barrier to appreciating what he was trying to figure out (he was always coining new terms, re-classifying levels of description, and attempting to align triadic symmetries of sign categories and relations). We won’t be concerned with following his terminology as doctrine, but as working hypotheses for finding precise ways of describing the symbolic activity common to all forms of human thought and expression. In most cases, Peirce’s terms and concepts are translatable into the normative terms used in contemporary linguistics, cognitive science, philosophy, computation and mathematics. But he also established some very important productive distinctions which we will preserve regardless of whether they translate into parallel or equivalent terms now in contemporary usage. In the context of the history of philosophy, Peirce was motivated by abandoning both the Cartesian and empiricist starting points of accounting for meanings as private, mentally interior “contents” or states of mind derived from (caused by) sense perceptions. For Peirce, as for us, it’s difficult to maintain a consistent terminology. He uses the term “sign” often to mean the perceptible signvehicle like sound units or visual forms, as well as the name for a general category of cognitive activity (depending on how he uses the term in the context of an argument). His definition and broad description of the key concept “symbol” as the general, abstractive, and rule-governed type of sign is the main concept we will focus on. His main discoveries, which may at first seem intuitively unclear, can be summarized: 1. Human thought is based on signs in symbol systems, each of which have a structure of material/perceptible and cognitive/logical relations that unfold dynamically in situated human-experienced moments of time. 2. Peirce’s triadic model is very different from De Saussure’s dyadic (two-part) and static model. For Peirce, a sign is an irreducible triadic (three-part) correlation of (1) material-perceptible forms with distinctive features (the Representamen, that which functions to represent) like visual marks, images, or patterns of sound, (2) learned associations with what the signs are about (an Object), i.e., the perceptible forms are not random things but are motivated by what they are used to be about (ideas, concepts, values, things and events in the world), and (3) the response formed as the correlation of structured sign-unit perceptions and what we take them to be about (the Interpretant, that which interprets).

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Interpretants (meaning- responses in other signs or actions) are produced by cognitive agent(s) making the correlation of the first two components. Interpretants in Peirce’s terms are what we could call the overall “meaning” of an expression or representation (as a string or cluster of signs or symbols) exhibited by how we would express or represent that “meaning” in producing further signs (as in conversation where we are always reflecting back and commenting on other’s expressions). 3. Since Interpretants are precisely what is revealed in additional signs, providing a momentary representation of “getting” the sign-component correlations, meaning-making is a continual process of chaining and linking signs and symbols in patterns and networks through which we build different types and levels of meaning and knowledge. Meanings, learning, and knowledge are produced through symbolic-cognitive transformations (signs yielding interpretants expressible in further signs in unlimited and open-ended chains or networks). Symbols “grow” by forming higher orders of abstractions, associations of greater generality over multiple instances, and accruing cultural and social value over many contexts (for example, what “Shakespeare” or “the Mona Lisa” mean for us today is surrounded by a dense network of Interpretants). 4. Anything can function as a sign in a human use context (there can be no essential division of things into signs and non-signs), but something only becomes a sign when interpreted as such in a system of correlations understood by someone in a community sign-users acting intersubjectively as cognitive agents. 5. The meanings of signs and symbols (the outcomes of using any set of meaning tokens taken symbolically in a community) are not “things” or “contents” located in anyone’s head or media representation but are what results from the processes of interpretation initiated and instantiated by members of meaning communities. 6. We know what something means in a set of signs or symbols by the possible responses we get (both cognitively and in actions). The meaning of a sign is what it can be translated into. 7. The intersubjective and interindividual social bonds of sign users, which are installed by symbolic cognition in lived contexts, precede individual understanding and individual instances of expressed meaning. Hence, all meanings, including science and logic, are dialogic and context-dependent.

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Excerpts from the Writings of C. S. Peirce (To be followed by fuller annotated selection.) On the Nature and Function of Signs for Thought The essential function of a sign is to render inefficient relations efficient .... Knowledge in some way renders them efficient; and a sign is something by knowing which we know something more. (CP 8.332) That, since any thought, there must have been a [prior] thought, has its analogue in the fact that, since any past time, there must have been an infinite series of times. To say, therefore, that thought cannot happen in an instant, but requires a time, is but another way of saying that every thought must be interpreted in another, or that all thought is in signs. (CP 5.254) Thought ... is in itself essentially of the nature of a sign. But a sign is not a sign unless it translates itself into another sign in which it is more fully developed. Thought requires achievement for its own development, and without this development it is nothing. Thought must live and grow in incessant new and higher translations, or it proves itself not to be genuine thought. (CP 5.594) [T]he meaning of a sign is the sign it has to be translated into. (CP 4.132) The Triadic (Three-Part) Structure of Sign Relations A sign, or representamen [the material-perceptible component], is something which stands to somebody for something in some respect or capacity. It addresses somebody, that is, creates in the mind of that person an equivalent sign, or perhaps a more developed sign. That sign which it creates I call the Interpretant of the first sign. The sign stands for something, its Object [note: any object of thought, not simply an observable referent]. It stands for that object, not in all respects, but in reference to a sort of idea, which I have sometimes I called the ground of the representamen. “Idea” is here to be understood in a sort of Platonic sense, very familiar in everyday talk; I mean in that sense in which we say that one man catches another man's idea, in which we say that when a man recalls what he was thinking of at some previous time, he recalls the same idea, and in which when a man continues to think anything, say for a tenth of a second, in so far as the thought continues to agree with itself during that time, that is to have a like content, it is the same idea, and is not at each instant of the interval a new idea. 16

(CP 2.228) A Sign, or Representamen, is a First which stands in such a genuine triadic relation to a Second, called its Object [an Object of thought], as to be capable of determining a Third, called its Interpretant, to assume the same triadic relation to its Object in which it stands itself to the same Object. The triadic relation is genuine, that is its three members are bound together by it in a way that does not consist in any complexus of dyadic relations. That is the reason the Interpretant, or Third, cannot stand in a mere dyadic relation to the Object, but must stand in such a relation to it as the Representamen itself does. Nor can the triadic relation in which the Third stands be merely similar to that in which the First stands, for this would make the relation of the Third to the First a degenerate Secondness merely. The Third must indeed stand in such a relation, and thus must be capable of determining a Third of its own; but besides that, it must have a second triadic relation in which the Representamen, or rather the relation thereof to its Object, shall be its own (the Third's) Object, and must be capable of determining a Third to this relation. All this must equally be true of the Third's Thirds and so on endlessly; and this, and more, is involved in the familiar idea of a Sign; and as the term Representamen is here used, nothing more is implied. A Sign is a Representamen with a mental Interpretant. Possibly there may be Representamens that are not Signs. Thus, if a sunflower, in turning towards the sun, becomes by that very act fully capable, without further condition, of reproducing a sunflower which turns in precisely corresponding ways toward the sun, and of doing so with the same reproductive power, the sunflower would become a Representamen of the sun. But thought is the chief, if not the only, mode of representation. (CP 2.274) A sign stands for something to the idea which it produces, or modifies. Or, it is a vehicle conveying into the mind something from without. That for which it stands is called its object; that which it conveys, its meaning; and the idea to which it gives rise, its interpretant. The object of representation can be nothing but a representation of which the first representation is the interpretant. But an endless series of representations, each representing the one behind it, may be conceived to have an absolute object at its limit. The meaning of a representation can be nothing but a representation.... So there is an infinite regression here. Finally, the interpretant is nothing but another representation to which the torch of truth is handed along; and as representation, it has its interpretant again. Lo, another infinite series. (CP 1.339)

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Three Basic Classes of Sign Functions: Index, Icon, Symbol There are three kinds of signs. Firstly, there are likenesses, or icons; which serve to convey ideas of the things they represent simply by imitating them. Secondly, there are indications, or indices; which show something about things, on account of their being physically connected with them. Such is a guidepost, which points down the road to be taken, or a relative pronoun, which is placed just after the name of the thing intended to be denoted, or a vocative exclamation, as "Hi! there," which acts upon the nerves of the person addressed and forces his attention. Thirdly, there are symbols, or general signs, which have become associated with their meanings by usage. Such are most words, and phrases, and speeches, and books, and libraries. Let us consider the various uses of these three kinds of signs more closely. Likenesses. Photographs, especially instantaneous photographs, are very instructive, because we know that they are in certain respects exactly like the objects they represent. But this resemblance is due to the photographs having been produced under such circumstances that they were physically forced to correspond point by point to nature. In that aspect, then, they belong to the second class of signs, those by physical connection. … Another example of the use of a likeness is the design an artist draws of a statue, pictorial composition, architectural elevation, or piece of decoration, by the contemplation of which he can ascertain whether what he proposes will be beautiful and satisfactory. The question asked is thus answered almost with certainty because it relates to how the artist will himself be affected. The reasoning of mathematicians will be found to turn chiefly upon the use of likenesses, which are the very hinges of the gates of their science. The utility of likenesses to mathematicians consists in their suggesting, in a very precise way, new aspects of supposed states of things… In intercommunication, too, likenesses are quite indispensable. Imagine two men who know no common speech, thrown together remote from the rest of the race. They must communicate; but how are they to do so? By imitative sounds, by imitative gestures, and by pictures. These are three kinds of likenesses. It is true that they will also use other signs, finger-pointings, and the like. But, after all, the likenesses will be the only means of describing the qualities of the things and actions which they have in mind. Rudimentary language, when men first began to talk together, must have largely consisted either in directly imitative words, or in conventional names which they attached to pictures. Indications. But pictures alone,—pure likenesses,—can never convey the slightest information. Thus, figure 3 suggests a wheel. But it leaves the spectator 18

uncertain whether it is a copy of something actually existing or a mere play of fancy. The same thing is true of general language and of all symbols. No combination of words (excluding proper nouns, and in the absence of gestures or other indicative concomitants of speech) can ever convey the slightest information. This may sound paradoxical; but the following imaginary little dialogue will show how true it is: Let us examine some examples of indications. I see a man with a rolling gait. This is a probable indication that he is a sailor. I see a bowlegged man in corduroys, gaiters, and a jacket. These are probable indications that he is a jockey or something of the sort. A weathercock indicates the direction of the wind. A sundial or a clock indicates the time of day. Geometricians mark letters against the different parts of their diagrams and then use those letters to indicate those parts. … A rap on the door is an indication. Anything which focuses the attention is an indication. Anything which startles us is an indication, in so far as it marks the junction between two portions of experience. Symbols. The word symbol has so many meanings that it would be an injury to the language to add a new one. I do not think that the signification I attach to it, that of a conventional sign, or one depending upon habit (acquired or inborn), is so much a new meaning as a return to the original meaning… It is usually said that in the word symbol, the throwing together [from the etymology of sym+ballein in Greek] is to be understood in the sense of to conjecture; but were that the case, we ought to find that sometimes, at least, it meant a conjecture, a meaning for which literature may be searched in vain. But the Greeks used "throw together" (sumballein) very frequently to signify the making of a contract or convention. Now, we do find symbol (sumbolon) early and often used to mean a convention or contract. Aristotle calls a noun a "symbol," that is, a conventional sign. … Any ordinary word, as “give,” “bird,” “marriage,” is an example of a symbol. It is applicable to whatever may be found to realize the idea connected with the word; it does not, in itself, identify those things. It does not show us a bird, nor enact before our eyes a giving or a marriage, but supposes that we are able to imagine those things, and have associated the word with them…. A symbol, as we have seen, cannot indicate any particular thing; it denotes a kind of thing. Not only that, but it is itself a kind and not a single thing. You can write down the word "star"; but that does not make you the creator of the word, nor if you erase it have you destroyed the word. The word lives in the minds of those who use it. Even if they are all asleep, it exists in their memory. So we may admit, if there be reason to do so, that generals are mere words without at all saying, as Ockham supposed, that they are really individuals.

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Symbols grow. They come into being by development out of other signs, particularly from likenesses or from mixed signs partaking of the nature of likenesses and symbols. We think only in signs. These mental signs are of mixed nature; the symbol-parts of them are called concepts. If a man makes a new symbol, it is by thoughts involving concepts. So it is only out of symbols that a new symbol can grow. Omne symbolum de symbolo [Every symbol comes from a symbol]. A symbol, once in being, spreads among the peoples…. In all reasoning, we have to use a mixture of likenesses, indices, and symbols. We cannot dispense with any of them. The complex whole may be called a symbol; for its symbolic, living character is the prevailing one. Further Explanation of the Three Classes of Sign Functions An Icon is a sign which refers to the Object that it denotes merely by virtue of characters of its own, and which it possesses, just the same, whether any such Object actually exists or not. It is true that unless there really is such an Object, the Icon does not act as a sign; but this has nothing to do with its character as a sign. Anything whatever, be it quality, existent individual, or law, is an Icon of anything, in so far as it is like that thing and used as a sign of it. An Index is a sign which refers to the Object that it denotes by virtue of being really affected by that Object…. It does, therefore, involve a sort of Icon, although an Icon of a peculiar kind; and it is not the mere resemblance of its Object, even in these respects which makes it a sign, but it is the actual modification of it by the Object. A Symbol is a sign which refers to the Object that it denotes by virtue of a law [i.e., general rule], usually an association of general ideas, which operates to cause the Symbol to be interpreted as referring to that Object. It is thus itself a general type or law, that is, is a Legisign. As such it acts through a Replica. Not only is it general itself, but the Object to which it refers is of a general nature. Now that which is general has its being in the instances which it will determine. There must, therefore, be existent instances of what the Symbol denotes, although we must here understand by “existent,” existent in the possibly imaginary universe to which the Symbol refers. (CP 2.247, 248, 249) The Symbol A Symbol is a Representamen whose Representative character consists precisely in its being a rule that will determine its Interpretant. All words, sentences, books, and other conventional signs are Symbols. We speak of writing or pronouncing the word “man”; but it is only a replica, or embodiment of the word, that is pronounced or written. The word itself has no existence although it 20

has a real being, consisting in the fact that existents will conform to it. It is a general mode of succession of three sounds or representamens of sounds, which becomes a sign only in the fact that a habit, or acquired law, will cause replicas of it to be interpreted as meaning a man or men. The word and its meaning are both general rules; but the word alone of the two prescribes the qualities of its replicas in themselves. Otherwise the “word” and its “meaning” do not differ, unless some special sense be attached to “meaning.” A Symbol is a law, or regularity of the indefinite future. Its Interpretant must be of the same description; and so must be also the complete immediate Object, or meaning. But a law necessarily governs, or “is embodied in” individuals, and prescribes some of their qualities. Consequently, a constituent of a Symbol may be an Index, and a constituent may be an Icon. A man walking with a child points his arm up into the air and says, “There is a balloon.” The pointing arm is an essential part of the symbol without which the latter would convey no information. But if the child asks, “What is a balloon,” and the man replies, “It is something like a great big soap bubble,” he makes the image a part of the symbol. Thus, while the complete object of a symbol, that is to say, its meaning, is of the nature of a law, it must denote an individual, and must signify a character. A genuine symbol is a symbol that has a general meaning. (CP 2.293-294) On Semiosis: The Cognitive Generative Principle of Meaning Making It is important to understand what I mean by semiosis. All dynamical action, or action of brute force, physical or psychical, either takes place between two subjects (whether they react equally upon each other, or one is agent and the other patient, entirely or partially) or at any rate is a resultant of such actions between pairs. But by “semiosis” I mean, on the contrary, an action, or influence, which is, or involves, a coöperation of three subjects, such as a sign, its object, and its interpretant, this tri-relative influence not being in any way resolvable into actions between pairs. (On Pragmatism 1907, EP 2:411) No sign can function as such except so far as it is interpreted in another sign (for example, in a "thought," whatever that may be). Consequently it is absolutely essential to a sign that it should affect another sign. In using this causal word, 'affect,' I do not refer to invariable accompaniment or sequence, merely, or necessarily. What I mean is that when there is a sign there will be an interpretation in another sign. The essence of the relation is in the conditional futurity; but it is not essential that there should be absolutely no exception. If, for example, in the 'long run' (that is, in an endless series of experiences taken in their experiential 21

order) there WOULD BE as many cases of interpreted signs as of signs, I should say that this 'would be' constitutes a causal relation; … for that is all I mean by causation. (CP 8.225n10)

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4. Roman Jakobson, On Language Structures and Communication Jakobson is an influential structural linguist from the pre-Chomsky era. Some of the terms and concepts he introduced are now commonly used in communication studies and pragmatics in linguistics. In this excerpt from a paper he presented in 1959, he outlines a model for language modes, the concept of a shared code, and the important description of kinds of expressions or messages that are self-reflexive (meta-lingual, expressions about the act of language currently going on by speakers) or devoted to checking the channel or signal path currently being used. He regarded Peirce’s work highly, and appropriated some of Peirce’s terms for application in linguistics. Language must be investigated in all the variety of its functions. An outline of these functions demands a concise survey of the constitutive factors in any speech event, in any act of verbal communication. The ADDRESSER sends a MESSAGE to the ADDRESSEE. To be operative the message requires a CONTEXT referred to ("referent" in another, somewhat ambiguous nomenclature), seizable by the addressee, and either verbal or capable of being verbalized; a CODE fully, or at least partially, common to the addresser and addressee (or in other words, to the encoder and decoder of the message); and, finally, a CONTACT, a physical channel and psychological connection between the addresser and the addressee, enabling both of them to enter and stay in communication. The six different functions determined by these six factors may be schematized as follows:

… The verbal structure of a message depends primarily on the predominant function. But even though a set (Einstellung) toward the referent, an orientation toward the CONTEXT -- briefly the so-called REFERENTIAL, "denotative", "cognitive" function -- is the leading task of numerous messages, the accessory participation of the other functions in such messages must be taken into account by the observant linguist… There are messages primarily serving to establish, to prolong, or to discontinue communication, to check whether the channel works ("Hello, do you

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hear me?"), to attract the attention of the interlocutor or to confirm his continued attention ("Are you listening?") … and on the other end of the wire ("Um-hum!"). This set for CONTACT, or in B. Malinowski's terms PHATIC function, may be displayed by a profuse exchange of ritualized formulas, by entire dialogues with the mere purport of prolonging communication. ... Whenever the addresser and/or the addressee need to check up whether they use the same code, speech is focused upon the CODE and thus performs a METALINGUAL (or glossing) function. "I don't follow you -- what do you mean?" asks the addressee, … and the addresser in anticipation of such recapturing questions inquires: "Do you know what I mean?" Then, by replacing the questionable sign with another sign or a whole group of signs from the same or another linguistic code, the encoder of the message seeks to make it more accessible to the decoder. … Peirce's semiotic doctrine is the only sound basis for a strictly linguistic semantics. One can't help but agree with his view of meaning as translatability of a sign into a network of other signs and with his reiterated emphasis on the inherence of a "general meaning" in any "genuine symbol", as well as with the sequel of the quoted assertion: A symbol "cannot indicate any particular thing: it denotes a kind of thing. Not only that, but it is itself a kind and not a single thing"... [Expanding the semantic-symbolic range of “reference”:] Statements of existence or nonexistence in regard to such fictional entities gave rise to lengthy philosophical controversies, but from a linguistic point of view the verb of existence remains elliptic as far as it is not accompanied by a locative modifier: "unicorns do not exist in the fauna of the globe"; "unicorns exist in Greco-Roman and Chinese mythology", "in the tapestry tradition", "in poetry", "in our dreams", etc. Here we observe the linguistic relevance of the notion Universe of Discourse, introduced by A. De Morgan and applied by Peirce: "At one time it may be the physical universe, at another it may be the imaginary 'world' of some play or novel, at another a range of possibilities." Whether directly referred to or merely implied in an exchange of messages between interlocutors, this notion remains the relevant one for a linguistic approach to semantics.

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5. Foundations of Contemporary Linguistics: Chomsky Contemporary linguistics begins with Chomsky’s focus on the underlying abstract rules and internalized competencies that account for language as an unlimited productive meaning system acquired naturally by humans. His views have evolved over the years while continuing to be motivated by central questions and problems. In the late 1950s and through the 60s, he combined linguistic research with emerging work in computation and cognitive science for detailed formal analysis of the human language faculty, defined as a shared mental or cognitive capacity unique to humans. From the 1960s to today, there are many rival schools of thought in linguistics and cognitive science using extensions of Chomsky’s work or counter-hypotheses focused on alternative explanations. Whether following, adapting, or countering Chomsky’s approach, most linguists, philosophers, and cognitive scientists agree that the core questions and problems he poses need good answers and explanations, even if there is no agreement on what those are. Noam Chomsky, Aspects of the Theory of Syntax. 1965. From the Preface The idea that a language is based on a system of rules determining the interpretation of its infinitely many sentences is by no means novel. Well over a century ago it was expressed with reasonable clarity by Wilhelm von Humboldt in his famous but rarely studied introduction to general linguistics (Humboldt, 1836). His view that a language "makes infinite use of finite means" and that its grammar must describe the processes that make this possible is, furthermore, an outgrowth of a persistent concern within rationalistic philosophy of language and mind, with this "creative" aspect of language use. (p.v) From Chapter 1 Linguistic theory is concerned primarily with an ideal speaker-listener, in a completely homogeneous speech-community, who knows its language perfectly and is unaffected by such grammatically irrelevant conditions as memory limitations, distractions, shifts of attention and interest, and errors (random or characteristic) in applying his knowledge of the language in actual performance. This seems to me to have been the position of the founders of modem general linguistics, and no cogent reason for modifying it has been offered. … We thus make a fundamental distinction between competence (the speakerhearer's knowledge of his language) and performance (the actual use of language in

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concrete situations). Only under the idealization set forth in the preceding paragraph is performance a direct reflection of competence…(p.4) Returning to the main theme, by a generative grammar I mean simply a system of rules that in some explicit and well-defined way assigns structural descriptions to sentences. Obviously, every speaker of a language has mastered and internalized a generative grammar that expresses his knowledge of his language. This is not to say that he is aware of the rules of the grammar or even that he can become aware of them, or that his statements about his intuitive knowledge of the language are necessarily accurate. Any interesting generative grammar will be dealing, for the most part, with mental processes that are far beyond the level of actual or even potential consciousness; furthermore, it is quite apparent that a speaker's reports and viewpoints about his behavior and his competence may be in error. Thus a generative grammar attempts to specify what the speaker actually knows, not what he may report about his knowledge. (p.8) Noam Chomsky, Language and Mind. 3rd edition, 2006 (1st edition, 1968). From Chapter 5, The Formal Nature of Language (On Generativity and Universal Grammar) Turning to the study of underlying competence, let us first take note of a few very obvious properties of the grammar of a human language. It is, first of all, quite clear that the set of paired phonetic and semantic representations generated by the grammar will be infinite. There is no human language in which it is possible, in fact or in principle, to specify a certain sentence as the longest sentence meaningful in this language. The grammar of any language contains devices that make it possible to form sentences of arbitrary complexity, each with its intrinsic semantic interpretation. It is important to realize that this is no mere logical nicety. The normal use of language relies in an essential way on this unboundedness, on the fact that language contains devices for generating sentences of arbitrary complexity. … [W]e are led to formulate a more restricted but quite significant immediate goal for the study of linguistic structure. Still taking a language to be a set of sentences, let us consider each abstract “sentence” to be a specific pairing of a phonetic representation with an abstract structure of some sort (let us call it a deep structure) that incorporates information relevant to semantic interpretation. We can then study the system of rules that determines this pairing, in a particular language, and the general characteristics of such rules. This enterprise will be significant to the extent that these underlying deep structures do actually provide a way to meet the empirical conditions on semantic interpretation. Semantic 26

theory, as it progresses, will then provide means for enriching deep structures and associating semantic interpretations with them. ... Summarizing these remarks, let us establish the following framework for the study of linguistic structure. The grammar of a language is a system of rules that determines a certain pairing of sound and meaning. It consists of a syntactic component, a semantic component, and a phonological component. The syntactic component defines a certain (infinite) class of abstract objects (D, S), where D is a deep structure and S a surface structure. The deep structure contains all information relevant to semantic interpretation; the surface structure, all information relevant to phonetic interpretation. [p. 111] Ray Jackendoff, “What Is the Human Language Faculty? (2011) ISSUES FOR LINGUISTIC THEORY. The human language faculty is a cognitive capacity shared by all normal humans but no other species on the planet. Addressing its character scientifically involves engaging (at least) three issues. The first two have been themes of generative grammar for fifty years; the third has become more prominent in the past two decades. (i) An account of speakers’ ability to create and understand an unlimited number of sentences of their language(s) (‘knowledge of a language’ or ‘competence’). (ii) An account of how speakers acquire knowledge of a language (acquisition). (iii) An account of how the human species acquired the ability to acquire the knowledge of a language (evolution). These three issues are obviously closely interwoven. Addressing acquisition requires a theory of the character of the linguistic knowledge that is acquired. Addressing the evolution of the language faculty requires a theory of the evolved acquisition mechanism in modern humans. … 1.1. KNOWLEDGE OF LANGUAGE. A speaker’s ability to use a language requires a systematic mapping between an unlimited number of thoughts or meanings and an unlimited number of sound sequences (or, in the case of signed languages, gesture sequences). Since this mapping must be stored in a finite brain, and since it must be learned in a finite amount of time, it must be encoded in finite terms: a set of stored units and/or complexes, plus a means to combine them in unlimited fashion. 27

Two speakers are mutually intelligible if their own personal mappings are close enough to enable them to achieve mutual understanding on the basis of exchanged signals… An account of the ability to use language must therefore answer this question: What units (or complexes of units) and what combinatorial principles are stored in speakers’ brains that enable them to map systematically between thoughts/meanings and sounds? The inventory of these units and combinatorial principles constitute speakers’ ‘knowledge of their language’. 1.2. ACQUISITION. The second part of an account of the language faculty is a theory of how speakers acquire their knowledge of language. Generative linguistics made a crucial contribution to the emergence of cognitive science in the 1960s and 1970s by raising the question of what cognitive resources are necessary in order to acquire and use language. Chomsky (1965, 1968, 1975, 1981) used to call these resources universal grammar or UG… [This hypothesis states that] some aspects of language acquisition require unlearned capacities specific to the linguistic modality, and these constitute the narrow language faculty or UG. Chomsky’s earlier work (e.g. 1965, 1975) argued for a very rich UG. Over the years UG has been pared down more and more (e.g. Chomsky 1995, 2000)... Of course, there are good reasons to want to minimize UG. At the very least, it is simply good science to posit as little as possible. But a more important reason is that any special mental capacity has to be encoded somehow on the genome, such that the genome builds a brain with special information-processing capability. At the moment we have very little idea how the genome leads to the construction and the functioning of the brain. And we also have no idea how special mental capacities (linguistic or otherwise) can be realized through details of brain wiring (Gallistel & King 2009, Gazzaniga 2010). But we do know that, in principle, the problem has to be solved, and a leaner UG gives us a better chance of succeeding. This is one important issue where linguistics makes contact with biology, taking the study of language beyond just the description of languages and language universals.

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6. Semiotics as a General Theory of Meaning and Symbolic Systems Definition of Semiotics as a Contemporary Field of Research and Theory From Semiotik/Semiotics: A Handbook on the Sign-Theoretic Foundations of Nature and Culture. Vol. 1. Posner, et al., eds. 1997. 1.1. The subject matter of semiotics Semiotics is the study of signs. It thus investigates the structure and function of all events which involve signs: the processing of information in machines, the metabolism in organisms, the stimulus-response processes in plants and animals, the activities of perception and orientation in higher creatures, the interactions of primates, communication between humans, the dealings between social institutions, and the delicate processes of interpretation which take place in the comprehension of the complex sign structures in legal matters, in literature, music, and art. Events which involve signs are called “sign processes” or “semioses”. They occur only in living nature and in the cultures of higher animals. Living nature consists in the totality of all organisms, i. e., the purposive systems whose ways of behavior and body forms are passed on from one generation to the next through the genetic code; a culture can be conceived as a group of organisms whose ways of behavior are tied to a particular tradition, i. e., acquired by learning and passed on to the next generation after creative modification. The two types of transmission (inheritance and tradition) are sign processes, and that which is transmitted (knowledge, attitudes, and skills in the production and use of artifacts) is, to a considerable extent, also based on signs. (p.1) Umberto Eco: On the Question of a General Semiotics or “Universal Grammar” of Sign Systems From Rocco Capozzi, ed. Reading Eco: An Anthology. 1997. There are many disciplines such as linguistics or iconography or musicology that are concerned with different semiotic systems, of which they represent the rules of functioning. We will call these disciplines grammars. In this sense Italian linguistics is a grammar, as is the study of gestural languages, or as it can be the study of different types of road signals. Any theory of signs that assumed to be a general or universal grammar would be a grammar in the above sense in so far as it takes into account only these rules that are allegedly at work in

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every sign-system, by articulating them into a super-system able to explain how the different sign-systems function as they do. (p. 1) From Umberto Eco, Semiotics and the Philosophy of Language. 1984. [O]ne must distinguish between specific semiotics and general semiotics...A specific semiotics is, or aims at being, the 'grammar' of a particular sign system, and proves to be successful insofar as it describes a given field of communicative phenomena as ruled by a system of signification. Thus there are 'grammars' of the American Sign Language, of traffic signals, of a playing-card 'matrix' for different games or of a particular game (for instance, poker). These systems can be studied from a syntactic, a semantic, or a pragmatic point of view. [4-5] ...The task and the nature of a general semiotics are different. To outline a project for a general semiotics, it is not sufficient to assert, as Saussure did, that language is a system comparable to writing, symbolic rites, deaf-mute alphabets military signals, and so on, and that one should conceive of a science able to study the life of signs within the framework of social and general psychology. In order to conceive of such a science, one must say in which sense these different systems are mutually comparable: if they are all systems in the same sense of the word system; if, by consequence, the mutual comparison of these systems can reveal common systematic laws able to explain from a unified point of view, their way of functioning. [6] Thus the basic problem of a general semiotics splits into three different questions: (a) Can one approach many, and apparently different, phenomena as if they were all phenomena of signification and/or of communication? (b) Is there a unified approach able to account for all these semiotic phenomena as if they were based on the same system of rules (the notion of system not being a mere analogical one)? (c) Is this approach a “scientific” one? [7]

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7. Ogden & Richards, The Meaning of Meaning C. K. Ogden, and I. A. Richards. The Meaning of Meaning. 8th ed. 1946. First edition, 1923. This work has been very influential, though now superseded. You will find these terms and approaches still commonly used. The approach is severely limited by the referential model of meaning based on common nouns and simple signs rather than strings and combinations. Words, as everyone now knows, “mean” nothing by themselves, although the belief that they did, as we shall see in the next chapter, was once equally universal. It is only when a thinker makes use of them that they stand for anything, or, in one sense, have * meaning.' They are instruments. But besides this referential use which for all reflective, intellectual use of language should be paramount, words have other functions which may be grouped together as emotive. These can best be examined when the framework of the problem of strict statement and intellectual communication has been set up. (9-10) [The coordinates of meaning] may be simply illustrated by a diagram, in which the three factors involved whenever any statement is made, or understood, are placed at the corners of the triangle, the relations which hold between them being represented by the sides. The point just made can be restated by saying that in this respect the base of the triangle is quite different in composition from either of the other sides. Between a thought and a symbol causal relations hold.

(Ogden and Richards, Meaning-Reference triangle)

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When we speak, the symbolism we employ is caused partly by the reference we are making and partly by social and psychological factors—the purpose for which we are making the reference, the proposed effect of our symbols on other persons, and our own attitude. When we hear what is said, the symbols both cause us to perform an act of reference and to assume an attitude which will, according to circumstances, be more or less similar to the act and the attitude of the speaker. Between the Thought and the Referent there is also a relation ; more or less direct (as when we think about or attend to a coloured surface we see), or indirect (as when we 'think of or 'refer to' Napoleon), in which case there may be a very long chain of sign-situations intervening between the act and its referent: word -historian -- contemporary record -- eye-witness -- referent (Napoleon). Between the symbol and the referent there is no relevant relation other than the indirect one, which consists in its being used by someone to stand for a referent. Symbol and Referent, that is to say, are not connected directly (and when, for grammatical reasons, we imply such a relation, it will merely be an imputed as opposed to a real, relation) but only indirectly round the two sides of the triangle. [pp. 10-12]

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8. V. N. Volosinov, Signs in Society and Ideology This selection is from Volosinov’s Marxism and the Philosophy of Language, written in Russia in the 1920s. While attempting to integrate linguistic study in an overall Marxist philosophy, Volosinov uses theory and concepts from other European linguists and philosopher, especially Wilhelm von Humboldt and De Saussure. He explicitly critiques De Saussure’s abstract and synchronic approach, and places sign uses in society in a more historical and collectively ideological framework. His important insights into the social dimensions of sign values (ideologies) and the function of semiotic competence (understanding meanings within networks of pre-established and already socially-known signs) are now widely accepted principles in semiotics and sociolinguistics. Like his colleagues, Mikhail Bakhtin, Volosinov sees linguistic and other symbolic systems as based on fundamental dialogic processes that generate many levels of meanings. Many aspects of his theory also intersect with questions that C. S. Peirce investigated 30 years earlier in the US. Any ideological product is not only itself a part of a reality (natural or social), just as is any physical body, any instrument of production, or any product for consumption, it also, in contradistinction to these other phenomena, reflects and refracts another reality outside itself. Everything ideological possesses meaning: it represents, depicts, or stands for something lying outside itself. In other words, it is a sign. Without signs, there is no ideology. A physical body equals itself, so to speak; it does not signify anything but wholly coincides with its particular, given nature. In this case there is no question of ideology. However, any physical body may be perceived as an image; for instance, the image of natural inertia and necessity embodied in that particular thing. Any such artistic-symbolic image to which a particular physical object gives rise is already an ideological product. The physical object is converted into a sign. Without ceasing to be a part of material reality, such an object, to some degree, reflects and refracts another reality. The same is true of any instrument of production. A tool by itself is devoid of any special meaning; it commands only some designated function-to serve this or that purpose in production. The tool serves that purpose as the particular, given thing that it is, without reflecting or standing for anything else…. Any consumer good can likewise be made an ideological sign. For instance, bread and wine become religious symbols in the Christian sacrament of communion. But the consumer good, as such, is not at all a sign. Consumer goods, just as tools, may be combined with ideological signs, but the distinct conceptual dividing line between them is not erased by the combination….

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Thus, side by side with the natural phenomena, with the equipment of technology, and with articles for consumption, there exists a special world -- the world of signs. Signs also are particular, material things; and, as we have seen, any item of nature, technology, or consumption can become a sign, acquiring in the process a meaning that goes beyond its given particularity. A sign does not simply exist as a part of a reality -- it reflects and refracts another reality. Therefore, it may distort that reality or be true to it, or may perceive it from a special point of view, and so forth. Every sign is subject to the criteria of ideological evaluation (i.e., whether it is true, false, correct, fair, good, etc.). The domain of ideology coincides with the domain of signs. They equate with one another. Wherever a sign is present, ideology is present, too. Everything ideological possesses semiotic value. Within the domain of signs -- i.e., within the ideological sphere -- profound differences exist: it is, after all, the domain o f the artistic image, the religious symbol, the scientific formula, and the judicial ruling, etc. Each field of ideological creativity has its own kind of orientation toward reality and each refracts reality in its own way. Each field commands its own special function within the unity of social life. But it is their semiotic character that places all ideological phenomena under the same general definition. Every ideological sign is not only a reflection, a shadow, of reality, but is also itself a material segment of that very reality. Every phenomenon functioning as an ideological sign has some kind of material embodiment, whether is sound, physical mass, colour, movements of the body, or the like. In this sense, the reality of the sign is fully objective and lends itself to a unitary, monistic, objective method of study. A sign is a phenomenon of the external world. Both the sign itself and all the effects it produces (all those actions, reactions, and new signs it elicits in the surrounding social milieu) occur in outer experience. This is a point of extreme importance. Yet, elementary and self-evident as it may seem, the study of ideologies has still not drawn all the conclusions that follow from it. The idealistic philosophy of culture and psychologistic cultural studies locate ideology in the consciousness. Ideology, they assert, is a fact of consciousness; the external body of the sign is merely a coating, merely a technical means for the realization of the inner effect, which is understanding. Idealism and psychologism alike overlook the fact that understanding itself can come about only with some kind of semiotic material (e.g., inner speech), that bears upon sign, that consciousness itself can arise and become a viable fact only in the material embodiment of signs. The understanding of a sign is, after all, an act of reference between the sign apprehended and other, already known signs; in other 34

words, understanding is a response to a sign with signs. And this chains of ideological creativity and understanding, moving from sign to sign and then to a new sign, is perfectly consistent and continuous: from one link of a semiotic nature (hence, also of a material nature) we proceed uninterruptedly to another link of exactly the same nature. And nowhere is there a break in the chain, nowhere does the chain plunge into inner being, nonmaterial in nature and unembodied in signs. This ideological chain stretches from individual consciousness to individual consciousness, connecting them together. Signs emerge, after all, only in the process of interaction between one individual consciousness and another. Consciousness becomes consciousness only once it has been filled with ideological (semiotic) content, consequently, only in the process of social interaction…. However, the ideological, as such, cannot possibly be explained in terms of either these superhuman or subhuman, animalian roots. Its real place in existence is in the special, social material of signs created by man. Its specificity consists precisely in its being located between organised individuals, in its being the medium of their communication. Signs can arise only on interindividual territory. It is territory that cannot be called “natural” in the direct sense of the word: signs do not arise between any two members of the species Home sapiens. It is essential that the two individuals be organized socially, that they compose a group (a social unit); only then can the medium of signs take shape between them. The individual consciousness not only cannot be used to explain anything, but, on the contrary, is itself in need of explanation from the vantage point of the social, ideological medium. The individual consciousness is a social-ideological fact. Not until this point is recognized with due provision for all the consequences that follow from it will be possible to construct either an objective philosophy or an objective study of ideologies….. With our preliminary argument disengaging ideological phenomena and their regulatedness from individual consciousness, we tie them in all the more firmly with conditions and forms of social communication. The reality of the sign is wholly a matter determined by that communication. After all, the existence of the sign is nothing but the materialization of that communication. Such is the nature of all ideological signs. But nowhere does this semiotic quality and the continuous, comprehensive role of social communication as conditioning factor appear so clearly and fully expressed as in language. The word is the ideological phenomenon par excellence. The entire reality of the word is wholly absorbed in its function of being a sign. A word contains nothing that is indifferent to this function, nothing that would not have been engendered by it. A word is the purest and most sensitive 35

medium of social intercourse…. But that is by no means all. The word is not only the purest, most indicatory sign but is, in addition, a neutral sign. Every other kind of semiotic material is specialized for some particular field of ideological creativity. Each field possesses its own ideological material and formulates signs and symbols specific to itself and not applicable in other fields. In these instances, a sign is created by some specific ideological function and remains inseparable from it. A word, in contrast, is neutral with respect to any kind of ideological function. It can carry out ideological functions of any kind – scientific, aesthetic, ethical, religious. Moreover, there is that immense area of ideological communication that cannot be pinned down to any one ideological sphere: the area of communication in human life, human behaviour…. One other property belongs to the word that is of the highest order of importance and is what makes the word the primary medium of the individual consciousness. Although the reality of the word, as is true of any sign, resides between individuals, a word, at the same time, is produced by the individual organism’s own means without having to recourse to any equipment or any other kind extracorporeal material. This has determined the role of the word as the semiotic material of inner life -- of consciousness (inner speech). Indeed, the consciousness could have developed only by having at its disposal material that was pliable and expressible by bodily means. And the word was exactly that kind of material. The word is available as the sign for, so to speak, inner employment: it can function as a sign in a state short of outward expression. For this reason, the problem of individual consciousness as the inner word (as an inner sign in general) becomes one of the most vital problems in the philosophy of language. It is clear, from the very start, that this problem cannot be properly approached by resorting to the usual concept of word and language as worked out in nonsociological linguistics and philosophy of language. What is needed is a profound and acute analysis of the word as a social sign before its function as the medium of consciousness can be understood. …. The understanding of any sign, whether inner or outer occurs inextricably tied in with the situation in which the sign is implemented. This situation, even in the case of introspection, exists as an aggregate of facts from external experience, the latter commentating upon and illuminating a particular inner sign. It is always a social situation. Orientation in one's own soul (introspection) is in actuality inseparable from orientation in the particular social situation in which the experience occurs. Thus, any deepening of introspection can come about only in unremitting conjunction with a deepened understanding of the social orientation. 36

Complete disregard of social orientation leads to a complete extinguishment of experience, just as also happens when its semiotic nature is disregarded. As we shall see in greater detail later on, the sign and its social situation are inextricably fused together the sign cannot be separated from the social situation without relinquishing its nature as sign. The problem of the inner sign is one of the most crucial problems of philosophy of language. Inner sign is, after all, preeminently the word, or inner speech…. Closer analysis would show that the units of which inner speech is constituted are certain whole entities somewhat resembling a passage of monologic speech or whole utterances. But most of all, they resemble the alternating lines of a dialogue. There was good reason why thinkers in ancient times should have conceived of inner speech as inner dialogue. These whole entities of inner speech are not resolvable into grammatical elements (or are resolvable only with considerable qualifications) and have in force between them, just as in the case of the alternating lines of dialogue, not grammatical connections but connections of a different kind. These units of inner speech, these total impressions of utterances, are joined with one another and alternate with one another not according to the laws of grammar or logic but according to the laws of evaluative (emotive) correspondence, dialogical deployment, etc., in close dependence on the historical conditions of the social situation and the whole pragmatic run of life. Only by ascertaining the forms of whole utterances and, especially, the forms of dialogic speech, can light be shed on the forms of inner speech as well and on the peculiar logic of their concatenation in the stream of inner speech.

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9. Symbolic Cognition and Abstraction: Bateson, Whitehead Gregory Bateson, Steps to an Ecology of Mind: Collected Essays in Anthropology, Psychiatry, Evolution, and Epistemology. 1972. No organism can afford to be conscious of matters with which it could deal at unconscious levels. Broadly, we can afford to sink those sorts of knowledge which continue to be true regardless of changes in the environment, but we must maintain in an accessible place all those controls of behavior which must be modified for every instance. The economics of the system, in fact, pushes organisms toward sinking into the unconscious those generalities of relationship which remain permanently true and toward keeping within the conscious the pragmatic of particular instances. [p.143]

Alfred North Whitehead, An Introduction to Mathematics. 1st ed. 1911. [On numerical notation] The interesting point to notice [about the system of mathematical symbols] … [is] the enormous importance of a good notation. By relieving the brain of all unnecessary work, a good notation sets it free to concentrate on more advanced problems, and in effect increases the mental power of the race. Before the introduction of the Arabic notation, multiplication was difficult, and the division even of integers called into play the highest mathematical faculties. (p. 59) ...by the aid of symbolism, we can make transitions in reasoning almost mechanically by the eye, which otherwise would call into play the higher faculties of the brain... Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking about them. (p. 62)

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10. Evolutionary Cognitive Science: Deacon and the Symbolic Species Terrence W. Deacon, The Symbolic Species: The Co-Evolution of Language and the Brain. 1997. Though we share the same earth with millions of kinds of living creatures, we also live in a world that no other species has access to. We inhabit a world full of abstractions, impossibilities, and paradoxes. We alone brood about what didn’t happen, and spend a large part of each day musing about the way things could have been if events had transpired differently. And we alone ponder what it will be like not to be. In what other species could individuals ever be troubled by the fact that they do not recall the way things were before they were born and will not know what will occur after they die? We tell stories about our real experiences and invent stories about imagined ones and we even make use of these stories to organize our lives. In a real sense, we live our lives in this shared virtual world. And slowly, over the millennia, we have come to realize that no other species on earth seems able to follow us into this miraculous place. … My answer, which will be argued in detail in the following chapters, has everything to do with language and the absence of it in other species. This is because language is not merely a mode of communication, it is also the outward expression of an unusual mode of thought--symbolic representation. Without symbolization the entire virtual world that I have described is out of reach: inconceivable. My extravagant claim to know what other species cannot know rests on evidence that symbolic thought does not come innately built in, but develops by internalizing the symbolic process that underlies language. So species that have not acquired the ability to communicate symbolically cannot have acquired the ability to think this way either. The doorway into this virtual world was opened to us by the evolution of language, our most elaborated mode of symbolic communication. [p.22]

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11. Computation & the Physical Symbol System Hypothesis: Herbert Simon Herbert A. Simon, The Sciences of the Artificial. 3rd ed. 1996. Herbert Simon is a justly famous computer scientist and one of the founders of artificial intelligence theory. The following are excerpts from two his important arguments: computers as complex human symbolic artifacts, and computation as a “physical symbol process.” We will need to investigate how he is using these terms and what he is trying to explain. The “symbol processing” hypothesis is closely related to various arguments for the “computational theory of mind,” which we will also need to investigate for its assumptions and commitments. Whether Simon’s arguments seem convincing or supportable, the questions and topics requiring explanation are central to understanding human symbolic cognition and implementations in computation.

The Artifact As "Interface" An artifact [something humanly constructed by design] can be thought of as a meeting point--an "interface" in today's terms--between an "inner" environment, the substance and organization of the artifact itself, and an ''outer" environment, the surroundings in which it operates. If the inner environment is appropriate to the outer environment, or vice versa, the artifact will serve its intended purpose. Thus, if the clock is immune to buffeting, it will serve as a ship's chronometer…. Notice that this way of viewing artifacts applies equally well to many things that are not man-made: to all things in fact that can be regarded as adapted to some situation; and in particular it applies to the living systems that have evolved through the forces of organic evolution. [p.6] The Computer As Artifact No artifact devised by man is so convenient for this kind of functional description [of artifacts] as a digital computer. It is truly protean, for almost the only ones of its properties that are detectable in its behavior (when it is operating properly!) are the organizational properties. The speed with which it performs it basic operations may allow us to infer a little about its physical components and their natural laws…. A computer is an organization of elementary functional components in which, to a high approximation, only the function performed by those components is relevant to the behavior of the whole system. [pp.17-18] Computers As Empirical Objects: Symbol Processing [Computers] can be decomposed into an active processor (Babbage's "Mill") and a memory (Babbage's "Store") in combination with input and output

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devices. … They are all capable of storing symbols (program) that can be interpreted by a program-control component and executed. Almost all have exceedingly limited capacity for simultaneous, parallel activity they are basically one-thing-at- a-time systems. Symbols generally have to be moved from the larger memory components into the central processor before they can be acted upon. The systems are capable of only simple basic actions: recoding symbols, storing symbols, copying symbols, moving symbols, erasing symbols, and comparing symbols. Since there are now many such devices in the world, and since the properties that describe them also appear to be shared by the human central nervous system, nothing prevents us from developing a natural history of them. [p.19] Symbol Systems: Rational Artifacts The computer is a member of an important family of artifacts called symbol systems, or more explicitly, physical symbol systems. Another important member of the family (some of us think, anthropomorphically, it is the most important) is the human mind and brain. It is with this family of artifacts, and particularly the human version of it, that we will be primarily concerned in this book. Symbol systems are almost the quintessential artifacts, for adaptivity to an environment is their whole raison d'être. They are goal-seeking, information-processing systems, usually enlisted in the service of the larger systems in which they are incorporated. Basic Capabilities of Symbol Systems A physical symbol system holds a set of entities, called symbols. These are physical patterns (e.g., chalk marks on a blackboard) that can occur as components of symbol structures (sometimes called "expressions"). As I have already pointed out in the case of computers, a symbol system also possesses a number of simple processes that operate upon symbol structures, processes that create, modify, copy, and destroy symbols. A physical symbol system is a machine that, as it moves through time, produces an evolving collection of symbol structures. Symbol structures can, and commonly do, serve as internal representations (e.g., "mental images") of the environments to which the symbol system is seeking to adapt. They allow it to model that environment with greater or less veridicality and in greater or less detail, and consequently to reason about it. Of course, for this capability to be of any use to the symbol system, it must have windows on the world and hands, too. It must have means for acquiring information from the external environment that can be encoded into internal symbols, as well as means for producing symbols that initiate action upon the environment. Thus it must use

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symbols to designate objects and relations and actions in the world external to the system. Symbols may also designate processes that the symbol system can interpret and execute. Hence the programs that govern the behavior of a symbol system can be stored, along with other symbol structures, in the system's own memory, and executed when activated. Symbol systems are called "physical" to remind the reader that they exist as real-world devices, fabricated of glass and metal (computers) or flesh and blood (brains). In the past we have been more accustomed to thinking of the symbol systems of mathematics and logic as abstract and disembodied, leaving out of account the paper and pencil and human minds that were required actually to bring them to life. Computers have transported symbol systems from the platonic heaven of ideas to the empirical world of actual processes carried out by machines or brains, or by the two of them working together. [pp.21-23]

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12. Cognitive Artefacts: Michael Cole Michael Cole, Cultural Psychology: A Once and Future Discipline. 1996. On Cognitive Artifacts Cole’s work is positioned at the intersection of anthropology and cognitive psychology, and has had a strong influence on the cognitive psychology approaches in Human Computer Interaction (HCI) design theory (cf. Donald Norman and Edwin Hutchins). His work usefully intersects with other important research on extended and distributed cognition and symbolic artefacts, and with Bruno Latour’s Actor-Network theory for distributed agency and technical mediation. This is a very clear summary of guiding research principles for this interdisciplinary approach. [From the Foreword to the book by Sheldon H. White] Artifacts are the fundamental constituents of culture. The growth of the human mind, in ontogeny and in human history, must properly be understood as a coevolution of human activities and artifacts. The words we speak, the social institutions in which we participate, the man-made physical objects we use, all serve as both tools and symbols. They exist in the world around us; they organize our attention and action in that world and, in the aggregate, they create "alternative worlds." In the formation of a human culture across historical time, cultural mediation produces a mode of developmental change in which the activities of prior generations are cumulated in the present as the specifically human part of the environment. The social world influences the individual not only through the agency of flesh-and-blood people who converse, communicate, model, or persuade, but through the social practices and objects unseen people have built up in the world around that individual. There are the prescribed forms of social interaction: routines, schemas, scripts, games, rituals, cultural forms. There are the manufactured objects that silently impregnate the furniture of the world with human intelligence: words, maps, television sets, subway stations. [p. xiv] 1. Mediation through artifacts. The initial premise of the cultural-historical school is that human psychological processes emerged simultaneously with a new form of behavior in which humans modified material objects as a means of regulating their interactions with the world and one another. (It was common at the time to refer to such mediational devices as tools, but I prefer to use the generic concept involved, artifact, for reasons that will become clear.) [p. 108] 43

… Culture, according to this perspective, can be understood as the entire pool of artifacts accumulated by the social group in the course of its historical experience. In the aggregate, the accumulated artifacts of a group-culture is then seen as the species-specific medium of human development. It is “history in the present.” The capacity to develop within that medium and to arrange for its reproduction in succeeding generations is the distinctive characteristic of our species… [p. 110] This view also asserts the primal unity of the material and the symbolic in human cognition. This starting point is important because it provides a way of dealing with the longstanding debate in anthropology and allied disciplines: Should culture be located external to the individual, as the products of prior human activity, or should it be located internally, as a pool of knowledge and beliefs? Both views have a long history in anthropology (D'Andrade, 1995; Harkness, 1992). However, over the past twenty years or so, coincident with the cognitive revolution in psychology and the advent of Chomskian linguistics, the study of culture as patterns of behavior and material products appears to have given way to the tradition that considers culture to be composed entirely of learned symbols and shared systems of meaning… [p.118] We can summarize the view of culture given here in the following terms: l. Artifacts are the fundamental constituents of culture. 2. Artifacts are simultaneously ideal and material. They coordinate human beings with the world and one another in a way that combines the properties of tools and symbols. 3. Artifacts do not exist in isolation as elements of culture. Rather, they can be conceived of in terms of a heterarchy of levels that include cultural models and specially constructed “alternative worlds.” 4. There are close affinities between the conception of artifacts developed here and the notions of cultural models, scripts, and the like. Exploitation of these affinities requires conceiving of schemas and scripts as having a double reality in the process of mediation. 5. Artifacts and systems of artifacts exist as such only in relation to "something else" variously referred to as a situation, context, activity, and so on. 6. Mediated activity has multidirectional consequences; it simultaneously modifies the subject in relation to others and the subject/other nexus in relation to the situation as a whole, as well as the medium in which self and other interact.

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7. Cultural mediation implies a mode of developmental change in which the activities of prior generations are cumulated in the present as the specifically human part of the environment. This form of development, in turn, implies the special importance of the social world in human development, since only other human beings can create the special conditions needed for that development to occur. [pp.144-45]

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13. Computation and Information as Symbolic Processes The following descriptions of computing and information processing as symbolic and information processes will also allow us to work recursively back through the history of concepts, models, methods, and approaches that can support this view more fully. As we study the important connections among all human symbol systems and symbolic cognition, we will map out rich and detailed concepts that support the key observations here. How are communications and information systems symbolically encoded in physical and material structures (in both computational and analog media), and how is meaning generated in communities that use symbol systems now given digital and computational representations? Doug Engelbart’s research and theory in the early 1960s was years ahead of what anyone was thinking about for how computers could become a way to extend human thought and symbolic interaction. (He and his team invented the graphical interface, the mouse, hypertext, and collaboratively shared networked documents.) Although his research was funded to address the needs of professionals and scientists, it’s clear he saw “augmenting human intellect” as a possibility for everyone given access to computers designed for this purpose. The excerpts here provide a glimpse into the concepts that motivated our contemporary designs for computer interfaces and interaction with all representable symbolic forms. Much of what he envisioned (and hoped for) is still not implemented. Douglas Engelbart, From First Memos on “The Current Picture of Program Development for ‘Augmenting Human Intelligence’,” June and July, 1961. Taking a fundamental approach to the problem of making a human more effective at his professional problem-solving tasks by capitalizing upon the joint capabilities of the man and automatic symbol-handling equipment. Consider a human approaching a complex problem--our interest is in increasing the effectiveness with which he can do such as (1) gain comprehension of the problem situation, (2) isolate the significant factors involved in the desired solution, (3) conceive good solution, (4) reasonably predict the consequences of the solution, and (5) repeat the process on problems subsequently associated with his doing what is needed to get the solution implemented. Our approach is to assure that we are studying a complex system (what we call an Individual Symbol Manipulating System) that has four principal functional components: the human, his language (i.e., the way he divides his universe into concepts and the symbols he attaches to

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them), his artifacts (the man-made devices he uses), and his methodology (his methods, procedures, algorithms, heuristics, etc.). We assume that introduction into this system of such as a digital computer as a real-time working artifact will be very fruitful (and our approach is oriented thereby), but we feel that all four of these components must be considered in a co-ordinated fashion in order to realize really significant improvements in the performance of this system. We are developing a program in which we can simulate hypothesized artifacts for real-time human usage, and experiment with various innovations in the symbol-manipulating system whose capability we are trying to improve. We are aiming first at augmenting humans in practical but limited intellectual tasks, and later we will proceed to more general capabilities as we learn more about the system and its possibilities. This [augmenting human intelligence project] is essentially a program to develop new methodology for people to use in attacking complex problems. The methodology is used by a human, in conjunction with associated artifacts and language, within what we call an Individual Symbol Manipulation System (i.e. ISM System is composed of a human and the "augmentation means" that he has been trained to use and we break the latter down into Language, Artifacts, and Methodology). Therefore, we essentially have a system development program, in which we intend to develop innovations in Language, Artifacts and Methodology such that the human's effectiveness in working on complex problems is much improved. We expect the innovations in the Artifacts (especially computers and displays) of this ISM System to make practical some radical and extremely effective innovations in the Language and Methodology aspects. The question now is, how to organize and launch a program (Program A) that can do a good job of fostering these innovations and getting them adopted by people who have to solve problems. Douglas Engelbart, From Augmenting Human Intellect: A Conceptual Framework, 1962. By "augmenting human intellect" we mean increasing the capability of a man to approach a complex problem situation, to gain comprehension to suit his particular needs, and to derive solutions to problems. Increased capability in this respect is taken to mean a mixture of the following: more-rapid comprehension, better comprehension, the possibility of gaining a useful degree of comprehension in a situation that previously was too complex, speedier solutions, better solutions,

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and the possibility of finding solutions to problems that before seemed insoluble…. The objective of this study is to develop a conceptual framework within which could grow a coordinated research and development program whose goals would be the following: (1) to find the factors that limit the effectiveness of the individual's basic information-handling capabilities in meeting the various needs of society for problem solving in its most general sense; and (2) to develop new techniques, procedures, and systems that will better match these basic capabilities to the needs' problems, and progress of society. We have placed the following specifications on this framework… [T]he computer has many other capabilities [beyond mathematical calculation] for manipulating and displaying information that can be of significant benefit to the human in nonmathematical processes of planning, organizing, studying, etc. Every person who does his thinking with symbolized concepts (whether in the form of the English language, pictographs, formal logic, or mathematics) should be able to benefit significantly…. Our culture has evolved means for us to organize the little things we can do with our basic capabilities so that we can derive comprehension from truly complex situations, and accomplish the processes of deriving and implementing problem solutions. The ways in which human capabilities are thus extended are here called augmentation means, and we define four basic classes of them: 1. Artifacts—physical objects designed to provide for human comfort, for the manipulation of things or materials, and for the manipulation of symbols. 2. Language—the way in which the individual parcels out the picture of his world into the concepts that his mind uses to model that world, and the symbols that he attaches to those concepts and uses in consciously manipulating the concepts ("thinking"). 3. Methodology – the methods, procedures, strategies, etc., with which an individual organizes his goal-centered (problem-solving) activity. 4. Training -- the conditioning needed by the human being to bring his skills in using Means 1, 2, and 3 to the point where they are operationally effective.

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The system we want to improve can thus be visualized as a trained human being together with his artifacts, language, and methodology. The explicit new system we contemplate will involve as artifacts computers, and computer controlled information storage, information handling, and information display devices. The aspects of the conceptual framework that are discussed here are primarily those relating to the human being's ability to make significant use of such equipment in an integrated system. Michael S. Mahoney, Excerpt from “The Histories of Computing(s).” Interdisciplinary Science Reviews 30, no. 2 (June 2005). [Computer] Design is not primarily about computing as commonly understood, that is, about computers and programming. It is about modelling the world in the computer, about computational modelling, about translating a portion of the world into terms a computer can ‘understand’. (128) [R]ecall what computers do. They take sequences, or strings, of symbols and transform them into other strings. The symbols and the strings may have several levels of structure, from bits to bytes to groups of bytes to groups of groups of bytes, and one may think of the transformations as acting on particular levels. But in the end, computation is about rewriting strings of symbols. The transformations themselves are strictly syntactical, or structural. They may have a semantics in the sense that certain symbols or sequences of symbols are transformed in certain ways, but even that semantics is syntactically defined. Any meaning the symbols may have is acquired and expressed at the interface between a computation and the world in which it is embedded. The symbols and their combinations express representations of the world, which have meaning to us, not to the computer. It is a matter of representations in and representations out. What characterises the representations is that they are operative. We can manipulate them, and they in turn can trigger actions in the world. What we can make computers do depends on how we can represent in the symbols of computation portions of the world of interest to us and how we can translate the resulting transformed representation into desired actions…. We do not interact with computers by reading programs; we interact with programs running on computers. The primary source for the historian of software is the dynamic process, and, where it is still available, it requires special techniques of analysis. Programs and processes are artefacts, and we must learn to read them as such. (129)

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Peter J. Denning, “Ubiquity Symposium ‘What Is Computation?’” Ubiquity 2010, no. November (November 2010). Let us consider an alternative [to the Turing model of computing] based on a model of information process that may be useful when the computations appear to be strings or streams, such as in DNA translation, genetic algorithms, and analog computing. A representation is a pattern of symbols that stands for something. The association between a representation and what it stands for can be recorded as a link in a table or database or as a memory in people’s brains. There are two important aspects of representations: syntax and stuff. Syntax is the rules for constructing patterns; it allows us to distinguish patterns that stand for something from patterns that do not. Stuff is measurable physical states of the world that hold representations, usually in media or signals. Put these two together and we can build machines that can detect when a valid pattern is present…. The computational model of representation‐transformation refocuses the definition of computation from computers to information processes. This model shows that representations are more fundamental than computers because representations appear in many situations where no computer is present. This is actually a fundamental shift. It relinquishes the early idea that “computer science is the study of phenomena surrounding computers” and emphasizes “computer science is the study of information processes.” Computers are a means to implement some information processes. But not all information processes are implemented by computers—for example, DNA translation, quantum information, optimal methods for continuous systems. Getting computers out of the central focus may seem hard but is natural. Dijkstra once said, “Computer science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes.” Peter J. Denning, “Forward” to Paolo Rocchi, Logic of Analog and Digital Machines, 2013. Preface. The founders of the computing field frequently said that the new field was devoted to the study of information processes. However, faced with the difficulty of defining information, and with the skepticism that computing deals with fundamental issues, many in the field retreated to the term “data processing.” They used “data” to refer to the symbol-sequences that controlled the machine and defined its input and output, and they left “information” to be the assignment of meaning to data. With this distinction, information was pushed outside the

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machine, and the machine only had to deal with the precise rules of symbol manipulation. The same distinction was a hallmark of Claude Shannon‘s information theory, which by design did not address the “semantics” of data and signals. But this distinction always left many people feeling unsatisfied. If information is the assignment of meaning, does it not then become subjective? There can be no guarantee that one person will assign the same meaning as another. How can we have scientific reproducibility when the fundamental phenomenon is a matter of individual assessment? Rocchi’s conclusion is that information consists of (1) a sign, which is a physical manifestation or inscription, (2) a relationship, which is the association between the sign and what it stands for, and (3) an observer, who learns the relationship from community and holds on to it. This package incorporates all the previous notions of information. The observer as a member of a social community gives uniformity of interpretation and continuity over time. … [T]his notion applies to [both] analog and digital representations in processing, interpreting, storing, retrieving, and transmitting information. Subrata Dasgupta, From It Began with Babbage: The Genesis of Computer Science. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2014. Etymologically … computation’s domain would seem to be the realm of numbers. However, as we will see, we have come a long way from this association. We will see that the domain of computation actually comprises symbols—by which I mean things that represent other things (for example, a string of alphabetic characters— a word—that represent some object in the world, or a graphical road sign that represents a warning to motorists). The act of computation is, then, symbol processing: the manipulation and transformation of symbols. Numbers are just one kind of symbol; calculating is just one kind of symbol processing. And so, the focus of automatic computation, Babbage’s original dream, is whether or how this human mental activity of symbol processing can be performed by (outsourced to) machines with minimal human intervention. Computer science as the science of automatic computation is also the science of automatic symbol processing. (12)

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Bibliography of Sources and Major Reference Works Aristotle. Aristotle’s Categories and De Interpretatione. Translated by J. L. Ackrill. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1963. Bateson, Gregory. Steps to an Ecology of Mind: Collected Essays in Anthropology, Psychiatry, Evolution, and Epistemology. New York, NY: Ballantine Books, 1972. Multiple reprint editions. Capozzi, Rocco, ed. Reading Eco: An Anthology. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997. Cassirer, Ernst. An Essay on Man: An Introduction to a Philosophy of Human Culture. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1944. Chomsky, Noam. Aspects of the Theory of Syntax. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1965. -------. Language and Mind. 3rd edition. (1st edition, 1968). Cambridge University Press, 2006. Cole, Michael. “On Cognitive Artifacts,” From Cultural Psychology: A Once and Future Discipline. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996. Dasgupta, Subrata. It Began with Babbage: The Genesis of Computer Science. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2014. Deacon, Terrence W. The Symbolic Species: The Co-Evolution of Language and the Brain. New York, NY: W. W. Norton & Company, 1997. Denning, Peter J., “Forward.” In Paolo Rocchi, Logic of Analog and Digital Machines, ix–xi. Hauppauge, NY: Nova Science Publishers, 2013. Eco, Umberto. A Theory of Semiotics. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1976. --------. Semiotics and the Philosophy of Language. Bloomington, IN: Indiana Univ. Press, 1984. Engelbart, Douglas. “Memo: The Current Picture of Program Development for ‘Augmenting Human Intellects’ (6/28/61).” SRI, June 28, 1961. MouseSite Archive: Engelbart Papers. http://web.stanford.edu/dept/SUL/library/extra4/sloan/mousesite/EngelbartPape rs/B5_F16_AugmMem1.html.

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