Podcasts about peircean

 If you've taken Linguistics 101, you know what language is. It's a system for conveying meaning through speech. We build words out of sounds, and then complex ideas out of those words. Remarkably, the relationship between the sounds and the meanings they convey is purely arbitrary. Human language consists, in other words, of abstract symbols. Now, of course, there are also sign languages, but these operate in the same way, just in a different medium. This, anyway, is the view of language that has dominated and defined linguistics for many decades. But some think it gets some pretty fundamental things pretty wrong. Some think we need a new picture of language altogether.  My guest today is Dr. Neil Cohn. Neil is Associate Professor at the Tilburg Center for Cognition and Communication, in the Netherlands; he is also the director of the Visual Language Lab at Tilburg. For about two decades, Neil has been studying the rich properties of graphic systems—especially comics—and has built an argument that some constitute full-blown languages. His latest book, co-authored with, Joost Schilperoord, is titled A Multimodal Language Faculty. It challenges that longstanding, deeply held view of what language is. Instead, the book argues that the human language capacity combines three different modalities—the vocal modality (as in speech), the bodily modality (as in gesture), and the graphic modality (as in comics and other visual narratives). And each of these modalities is naturally able to support full-blown languages. Here, Neil and I talk about the basic assumptions of modern linguistics and where those assumptions come from. We discuss the idea that there are three expressive modalities that come naturally to humans, with each modality optimized for certain kinds of meaning. We talk about Neil's career, not only as an academic, but as an illustrator. We discuss cross-cultural differences and similarities in comics, and how comics have changed over the last century. And, finally, we consider how Neil's framework challenges current theorizing about the evolution of language. Along the way, Neil and I touch on sign languages and homesign systems, visual style vs visual language, Peircean semiotics, animal tracks, cave art, emoji, upfixes, sand drawing, Manga, the refrain "I can't draw," and the idea that the graphic modality is the only one that's truly unique to our species.  After this episode we'll be taking a bit of a summer break, but we'll be posting some old favorites to tide you over. Alright friends, hope you enjoy this one. On to my conversation with Neil Cohn. Enjoy!   A transcript of this episode will be available soon.   Notes and links 3:30 – An earlier paper by Dr. Cohn on the well-worn refrain “I can't draw.” His more recent Twitter thread covering the topic.  9:00 – An overview of research on homesign systems. For a broader discussion of differences between gesture, homesign systems, and established sign languages, see here.  15:00 – A comic, ‘Chinese Room,' commissioned by the philosopher Dan Dennett and drawn by Dr. Cohn. 19:30 – The webpage of Dr. Cohn's graduate mentor, Ray Jackendoff. 25:00 – A brief overview paper by Dr. Cohn and Dr. Schilperoord on the need to “reimagine language.” 25:30 – The classic book, based on lecture notes, by Ferdinand de Saussure, ‘Course in General Linguistics.'  44:00 – For an overview of “bimodal bilingualism,” see here.  50:00 – A study by Dr. Cohn and colleagues on the processing of emoji substituted for words. 56:00 – A recent study by Dr. Cohn and colleagues on anaphora in visual narratives.  58:30 – For our previous audio essay on animal (and human) tracks, see here.  1:01:30 – For examples of scholarship on non-Western methods of visual storytelling, including Aboriginal Australian sand drawing, see Dr. Cohn's earlier edited volume here. For a deeper dive into sand drawing, see the monograph by Jenny Green here.  1:03:00 – Dr. Cohn also recently published a book on cross-cultural aspects of comics, The Patterns of Comics. The book is the fruit of his lab's TINTIN project.  1:11:00 – For a video of Aboriginal Australian sand drawing, see here. 1:13:00 – See Dr. Cohn's earlier book, Who Understands Comics? 1:15:00 – A study on “upfixes” by Dr. Cohn and a colleague. 1:22:00 – A popular article by Dr. Cohn on the linguistic status of emoji. 1:31:00 – For a deep dive into Peircean semiotics, see here. 1:36:00 – For my own general-audience treatment of “gesture first” theories of language evolution and the “modality transition” problem, see here. 1:37:00 – A paper by Dr. Jackendoff and Eva Wittenberg outlining their “complexity hierarchy.”  ­­­­1:50:00 – For the Getty museum exhibit associated with Dr. Cohn's lecture, see here.   Recommendations The Texture of the Lexicon, by Jenny Audring and Ray Jackendoff Battle in the Mind Fields, by John Goldsmith and Bernard Laks History and Philosophy of the Language Sciences podcast, hosted by James McElvenny   Many Minds is a project of the Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute, which is made possible by a generous grant from the Templeton World Charity Foundation to UCLA. It is hosted and produced by Kensy Cooperrider, with help from Assistant Producer Urte Laukaityte and with creative support from DISI Directors Erica Cartmill and Jacob Foster. Our artwork is by Ben Oldroyd. Our transcripts are created by Sarah Dopierala.  Subscribe to Many Minds on Apple, Stitcher, Spotify, Pocket Casts, Google Play, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can also now subscribe to the Many Minds newsletter here! We welcome your comments, questions, and suggestions. Feel free to email us at: manymindspodcast@gmail.com.  For updates about the show, visit our website or follow us on Twitter: @ManyMindsPod.

In this interview, we talk to Dan Everett about the life and work of the American pragmatist philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce and Everett’s application of Peirce’s ideas to create a Peircean linguistics. Download | Spotify | Apple Podcasts | Google…Read more ›

An important theoretical underpinning of biosemiotics is the semiotic philosophy of American scientist and semiotician Charles Sanders Peirce (1839-1914) and his observation that ‘the universe is perfused with signs’. Semiotic biology was born from a similar insight, that living systems – cells, organisms, and ecologies – are not mechanical but are scaffolded by semiosis. Semiotic systems characterise life throughout. Sign relations are responsible for the efficacy of biological systems as much as they are for abstract human conceptual systems. All obey the same triadic Peircean semiotic logic. As Norbert Wiener long ago implied about information in cybernetic systems, such informational, or in living things semiotic, relations require material bearers (codes and channels), but are, themselves, immaterial. All sign relations are manifested in von Uexküllian semiotic species umwelten, and while these (including the human) are thus necessarily incomplete models of reality (there being, as Thomas Nagel has noted, ‘no view from nowhere’), sign relations nonetheless form a semiotic bridge between mind and nature, subject and object, and intentional concept and reality. This is the case for every living organism: semiotic relations bridge the supposed gap between mind and body, culture and nature, and idealism and realism. Wendy Wheeler is Professor Emeritus of English Literature and Cultural Inquiry at London Metropolitan University. She is also a Visiting Professor at Goldsmiths and RMIT in Melbourne. In 2014, she gave the first annual University of Tartu Jakob von Uexküll Lecture to the European Association for the Study of Literature, Culture and the Environment in Estonia. She is the author of four books, two on biosemiotics, and many essays on the same topic in journals and edited collections. She is on the editorial boards of several journals – New Formations, Green Letters, Cybernetics and Human Knowing, and Biosemiotics – and is currently completing her fifth monograph The Flame and Its Shadow: Reflections on Nature and Culture from a Biosemiotic Perspective.

How should one understand Islamic law outside of its application? What happens when we think about religious jurisprudence theoretically? For medieval Muslim scholars this was the field where one could enumerate the meaning and purpose of Islamic law. But to the uninitiated these justifications for legal thinking are submerged in rote repetition of technical language and discourses. Luckily for us, Rumee Ahmed, professor in the Department of Classics, Near Eastern and Religious Studies at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, dives into the depths of various legal theory manuals to draw narrative understandings of shari'a to the surface. In Narratives of Islamic Legal Theory (Oxford University Press, 2012), Ahmed examines two formative contemporaneous jurists from the Hanafi school of law to determine the relationship between law and ethics through legal discourses. He focuses on the nature and meaning of the Qur'an, the role of the sunnah (the Prophetic example), and the use of considered opinion in structuring legal boundaries. Ultimately, he views their positions not merely as academic debates over the minutia of religious opinions and injunctions but as ritual observance, which formulates a world ‘as if' it were ideal. In our conversation we discuss abrogation, punishment, salvation, Abraham's sacrifice, hadith transmission, Peircean notions of abduction, religious law, stoning, adultery, the role of scholars, and contemporary calls for reform. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

How should one understand Islamic law outside of its application? What happens when we think about religious jurisprudence theoretically? For medieval Muslim scholars this was the field where one could enumerate the meaning and purpose of Islamic law. But to the uninitiated these justifications for legal thinking are submerged in rote repetition of technical language and discourses. Luckily for us, Rumee Ahmed, professor in the Department of Classics, Near Eastern and Religious Studies at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, dives into the depths of various legal theory manuals to draw narrative understandings of shari’a to the surface. In Narratives of Islamic Legal Theory (Oxford University Press, 2012), Ahmed examines two formative contemporaneous jurists from the Hanafi school of law to determine the relationship between law and ethics through legal discourses. He focuses on the nature and meaning of the Qur’an, the role of the sunnah (the Prophetic example), and the use of considered opinion in structuring legal boundaries. Ultimately, he views their positions not merely as academic debates over the minutia of religious opinions and injunctions but as ritual observance, which formulates a world ‘as if’ it were ideal. In our conversation we discuss abrogation, punishment, salvation, Abraham’s sacrifice, hadith transmission, Peircean notions of abduction, religious law, stoning, adultery, the role of scholars, and contemporary calls for reform. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

How should one understand Islamic law outside of its application? What happens when we think about religious jurisprudence theoretically? For medieval Muslim scholars this was the field where one could enumerate the meaning and purpose of Islamic law. But to the uninitiated these justifications for legal thinking are submerged in rote repetition of technical language and discourses. Luckily for us, Rumee Ahmed, professor in the Department of Classics, Near Eastern and Religious Studies at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, dives into the depths of various legal theory manuals to draw narrative understandings of shari’a to the surface. In Narratives of Islamic Legal Theory (Oxford University Press, 2012), Ahmed examines two formative contemporaneous jurists from the Hanafi school of law to determine the relationship between law and ethics through legal discourses. He focuses on the nature and meaning of the Qur’an, the role of the sunnah (the Prophetic example), and the use of considered opinion in structuring legal boundaries. Ultimately, he views their positions not merely as academic debates over the minutia of religious opinions and injunctions but as ritual observance, which formulates a world ‘as if’ it were ideal. In our conversation we discuss abrogation, punishment, salvation, Abraham’s sacrifice, hadith transmission, Peircean notions of abduction, religious law, stoning, adultery, the role of scholars, and contemporary calls for reform. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

How should one understand Islamic law outside of its application? What happens when we think about religious jurisprudence theoretically? For medieval Muslim scholars this was the field where one could enumerate the meaning and purpose of Islamic law. But to the uninitiated these justifications for legal thinking are submerged in rote repetition of technical language and discourses. Luckily for us, Rumee Ahmed, professor in the Department of Classics, Near Eastern and Religious Studies at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, dives into the depths of various legal theory manuals to draw narrative understandings of shari’a to the surface. In Narratives of Islamic Legal Theory (Oxford University Press, 2012), Ahmed examines two formative contemporaneous jurists from the Hanafi school of law to determine the relationship between law and ethics through legal discourses. He focuses on the nature and meaning of the Qur’an, the role of the sunnah (the Prophetic example), and the use of considered opinion in structuring legal boundaries. Ultimately, he views their positions not merely as academic debates over the minutia of religious opinions and injunctions but as ritual observance, which formulates a world ‘as if’ it were ideal. In our conversation we discuss abrogation, punishment, salvation, Abraham’s sacrifice, hadith transmission, Peircean notions of abduction, religious law, stoning, adultery, the role of scholars, and contemporary calls for reform. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

How should one understand Islamic law outside of its application? What happens when we think about religious jurisprudence theoretically? For medieval Muslim scholars this was the field where one could enumerate the meaning and purpose of Islamic law. But to the uninitiated these justifications for legal thinking are submerged in rote repetition of technical language and discourses. Luckily for us, Rumee Ahmed, professor in the Department of Classics, Near Eastern and Religious Studies at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, dives into the depths of various legal theory manuals to draw narrative understandings of shari’a to the surface. In Narratives of Islamic Legal Theory (Oxford University Press, 2012), Ahmed examines two formative contemporaneous jurists from the Hanafi school of law to determine the relationship between law and ethics through legal discourses. He focuses on the nature and meaning of the Qur’an, the role of the sunnah (the Prophetic example), and the use of considered opinion in structuring legal boundaries. Ultimately, he views their positions not merely as academic debates over the minutia of religious opinions and injunctions but as ritual observance, which formulates a world ‘as if’ it were ideal. In our conversation we discuss abrogation, punishment, salvation, Abraham’s sacrifice, hadith transmission, Peircean notions of abduction, religious law, stoning, adultery, the role of scholars, and contemporary calls for reform. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

How should one understand Islamic law outside of its application? What happens when we think about religious jurisprudence theoretically? For medieval Muslim scholars this was the field where one could enumerate the meaning and purpose of Islamic law. But to the uninitiated these justifications for legal thinking are submerged in rote repetition of technical language and discourses. Luckily for us, Rumee Ahmed, professor in the Department of Classics, Near Eastern and Religious Studies at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, dives into the depths of various legal theory manuals to draw narrative understandings of shari’a to the surface. In Narratives of Islamic Legal Theory (Oxford University Press, 2012), Ahmed examines two formative contemporaneous jurists from the Hanafi school of law to determine the relationship between law and ethics through legal discourses. He focuses on the nature and meaning of the Qur’an, the role of the sunnah (the Prophetic example), and the use of considered opinion in structuring legal boundaries. Ultimately, he views their positions not merely as academic debates over the minutia of religious opinions and injunctions but as ritual observance, which formulates a world ‘as if’ it were ideal. In our conversation we discuss abrogation, punishment, salvation, Abraham’s sacrifice, hadith transmission, Peircean notions of abduction, religious law, stoning, adultery, the role of scholars, and contemporary calls for reform. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

How should one understand Islamic law outside of its application? What happens when we think about religious jurisprudence theoretically? For medieval Muslim scholars this was the field where one could enumerate the meaning and purpose of Islamic law. But to the uninitiated these justifications for legal thinking are submerged in rote repetition of technical language and discourses. Luckily for us, Rumee Ahmed, professor in the Department of Classics, Near Eastern and Religious Studies at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, dives into the depths of various legal theory manuals to draw narrative understandings of shari'a to the surface. In Narratives of Islamic Legal Theory (Oxford University Press, 2012), Ahmed examines two formative contemporaneous jurists from the Hanafi school of law to determine the relationship between law and ethics through legal discourses. He focuses on the nature and meaning of the Qur'an, the role of the sunnah (the Prophetic example), and the use of considered opinion in structuring legal boundaries. Ultimately, he views their positions not merely as academic debates over the minutia of religious opinions and injunctions but as ritual observance, which formulates a world ‘as if' it were ideal. In our conversation we discuss abrogation, punishment, salvation, Abraham's sacrifice, hadith transmission, Peircean notions of abduction, religious law, stoning, adultery, the role of scholars, and contemporary calls for reform.

Charles Sanders Peirce was the founder of the philosophical tradition known as pragmatism. He is also the proponent of a distinctive variety of pragmatism that has at its core a logical rule that has come to be known as “the pragmatic maxim.” According to this maxim, the meaning of a concept or a proposition is ultimately to be defined in terms of the “sensible” and “practical” effects it would produce in the course of experimental action. That is, of course, a crude articulation. But, according to Peirce, the view of meaning that the maxim articulates has vast philosophical implications. Peirce’s pragmatism is at once anti-skeptical, fallibilist, verificationist, inferentialist, and realist. Indeed, that looks like a motley crowd of philosophical commitments. How might they be made to hang together? In his new book, The Pragmatic Maxim: Essays on Peirce and Pragmatism (Oxford University Press, 2012), Christopher Hookway explores the complexities of Peirce’s philosophy. With chapters devoted to topics ranging from Peirce’s fallibilism, his philosophy of language, his views on mathematics, his rejection of psychologism, and his theory of abduction, Hookway presents Peircean pragmatism as a formidable and strikingly contemporary philosophy. Hookway’s book will be of great interest to anyone interested in pragmatism and the history of 20th-century philosophy, but it also has much to offer to those working on current debates in fields like epistemology, philosophy of language, and logic. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Charles Sanders Peirce was the founder of the philosophical tradition known as pragmatism. He is also the proponent of a distinctive variety of pragmatism that has at its core a logical rule that has come to be known as “the pragmatic maxim.” According to this maxim, the meaning of a concept or a proposition is ultimately to be defined in terms of the “sensible” and “practical” effects it would produce in the course of experimental action. That is, of course, a crude articulation. But, according to Peirce, the view of meaning that the maxim articulates has vast philosophical implications. Peirce’s pragmatism is at once anti-skeptical, fallibilist, verificationist, inferentialist, and realist. Indeed, that looks like a motley crowd of philosophical commitments. How might they be made to hang together? In his new book, The Pragmatic Maxim: Essays on Peirce and Pragmatism (Oxford University Press, 2012), Christopher Hookway explores the complexities of Peirce’s philosophy. With chapters devoted to topics ranging from Peirce’s fallibilism, his philosophy of language, his views on mathematics, his rejection of psychologism, and his theory of abduction, Hookway presents Peircean pragmatism as a formidable and strikingly contemporary philosophy. Hookway’s book will be of great interest to anyone interested in pragmatism and the history of 20th-century philosophy, but it also has much to offer to those working on current debates in fields like epistemology, philosophy of language, and logic. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Charles Sanders Peirce was the founder of the philosophical tradition known as pragmatism. He is also the proponent of a distinctive variety of pragmatism that has at its core a logical rule that has come to be known as “the pragmatic maxim.” According to this maxim, the meaning of a concept or a proposition is ultimately to be defined in terms of the “sensible” and “practical” effects it would produce in the course of experimental action. That is, of course, a crude articulation. But, according to Peirce, the view of meaning that the maxim articulates has vast philosophical implications. Peirce’s pragmatism is at once anti-skeptical, fallibilist, verificationist, inferentialist, and realist. Indeed, that looks like a motley crowd of philosophical commitments. How might they be made to hang together? In his new book, The Pragmatic Maxim: Essays on Peirce and Pragmatism (Oxford University Press, 2012), Christopher Hookway explores the complexities of Peirce’s philosophy. With chapters devoted to topics ranging from Peirce’s fallibilism, his philosophy of language, his views on mathematics, his rejection of psychologism, and his theory of abduction, Hookway presents Peircean pragmatism as a formidable and strikingly contemporary philosophy. Hookway’s book will be of great interest to anyone interested in pragmatism and the history of 20th-century philosophy, but it also has much to offer to those working on current debates in fields like epistemology, philosophy of language, and logic. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Charles Sanders Peirce was the founder of the philosophical tradition known as pragmatism. He is also the proponent of a distinctive variety of pragmatism that has at its core a logical rule that has come to be known as “the pragmatic maxim.” According to this maxim, the meaning of a concept or a proposition is ultimately to be defined in terms of the “sensible” and “practical” effects it would produce in the course of experimental action. That is, of course, a crude articulation. But, according to Peirce, the view of meaning that the maxim articulates has vast philosophical implications. Peirce’s pragmatism is at once anti-skeptical, fallibilist, verificationist, inferentialist, and realist. Indeed, that looks like a motley crowd of philosophical commitments. How might they be made to hang together? In his new book, The Pragmatic Maxim: Essays on Peirce and Pragmatism (Oxford University Press, 2012), Christopher Hookway explores the complexities of Peirce’s philosophy. With chapters devoted to topics ranging from Peirce’s fallibilism, his philosophy of language, his views on mathematics, his rejection of psychologism, and his theory of abduction, Hookway presents Peircean pragmatism as a formidable and strikingly contemporary philosophy. Hookway’s book will be of great interest to anyone interested in pragmatism and the history of 20th-century philosophy, but it also has much to offer to those working on current debates in fields like epistemology, philosophy of language, and logic. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Charles Sanders Peirce was the founder of the philosophical tradition known as pragmatism. He is also the proponent of a distinctive variety of pragmatism that has at its core a logical rule that has come to be known as “the pragmatic maxim.” According to this maxim, the meaning of a concept or a proposition is ultimately to be defined in terms of the “sensible” and “practical” effects it would produce in the course of experimental action. That is, of course, a crude articulation. But, according to Peirce, the view of meaning that the maxim articulates has vast philosophical implications. Peirce's pragmatism is at once anti-skeptical, fallibilist, verificationist, inferentialist, and realist. Indeed, that looks like a motley crowd of philosophical commitments. How might they be made to hang together? In his new book, The Pragmatic Maxim: Essays on Peirce and Pragmatism (Oxford University Press, 2012), Christopher Hookway explores the complexities of Peirce's philosophy. With chapters devoted to topics ranging from Peirce's fallibilism, his philosophy of language, his views on mathematics, his rejection of psychologism, and his theory of abduction, Hookway presents Peircean pragmatism as a formidable and strikingly contemporary philosophy. Hookway's book will be of great interest to anyone interested in pragmatism and the history of 20th-century philosophy, but it also has much to offer to those working on current debates in fields like epistemology, philosophy of language, and logic.