The Primacy of Semiosis: An Ontology of Relations

199 Pages·2006·9.687 MB·English

by  Paul Bains

THE PRIMACY OF SEMIOSIS:
AN ONTOLOGY OF RELATIONS
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PAUL BAINS
The Primacy of Semiosis
An Ontology of Relations
UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO PRESS
Toronto Buffalo London
www.utppublishing.com
University of Toronto Press Incorporated 2006
Toronto Buffalo London
Printed in Canada
ISBN 10: 0-8020-9003-6
ISBN 13: 978-0-8020-9003-4
Printed on acid-free paper
Toronto Studies in Semiotics and Communication
Editors: Marcel Danesi, Umberto Eco, Paul Perron, Peter Schulz
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Bains, Paul
The primacy of semiosis : an ontology of relations / Paul Bains.
(Toronto studies in semiotics and communication)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 13: 978-0-8020-9003-4
ISBN 10: 0-8020-9003-6
1. Semiotics. 2. Ontology. I. Title. II. Series.
P99.B23 2006 121'.68 C2006-900496-X
University of Toronto Press acknowledges the financial assistance to its
publishing program of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario
Arts Council.
University of Toronto Press acknowledges the financial support for its
publishing activities of the Government of Canada through the Book
Publishing Industry Development Program (BPIDP).
This book is dedicated to
Lina, Dani, and Manu
for being there.
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Contents
PrefacGi HVFxH
Abbreviations xi
Introduction: The Drama of Relation and Its Characters 3
1 An Even Briefer History of Relations 15
Terminology 18
Discussion in and after the Latin West 19
2 Deleuze and External (or Ontological) Relations 25
The Circle of the Proposition 30
The Complex Theme of the Proposition 32
3 Poinsot and Deely on Relations and Signs 39
Objective Being 42
The Doctrine of 'Species' 45
Ideas 46
Formal Signs 49
Scotist and Thomist Accounts 51
Objective Being as Umwelt 57
4 Umwelten 59
Jakob von Uexkiill and Umwelten 59
The Tick as an Interpreter - the Functional Cycle 62
Deleuze and Guattari's Appropriation 64
Contemporary Value and Semiotic Use 66
viii Contents
Species-Specific Objective Worlds 74
Heideggerean Umwelten 78
The Transformation of Umwelt into Lebenswelt 83
5 Autopoiesis and Languaging 85
Background and Context 85
Cognitive Systems 92
Living Systems 95
Languaging 103
Conclusion 133
Notes 145
Bibliography 167
Index 177
Preface
The Primacy of Semiosis is concerned with the ontology of relations and
semiosis (the action of signs). The book focuses on the claim that rela-
tions are 'external' to their terms and seeks to give an ontological
account of this purported externality of relations. The argument is that
an understanding of the ontology of relations allows for a compelling
account of the action of signs, that is, how things come to stand for
something other than themselves.
In this book, I develop the creative proposition, first made by John
Poinsot (aka John of St Thomas) in 1632, that ontologically, signs are
relations (whose whole being is in 'being-toward' - esse ad). Further-
more, relations are univocal in their being as relations. This univocity of
being is antecedent to the division between ens rationis and ens reale.
Thus the ontology of relations presented here is neither mind-depen-
dent nor mind-independent insofar as the rationale of the relation is
concerned.
Three principal theorists are invoked in this account: Gilles Deleuze,
John Poinsot, and John Deely argue that there is a compatibility and
mutual enrichment between Deleuze's account of relations and the rela-
tively unknown semiotic of the late-Latin scholastic John Poinsot (as
translated and interpreted by the contemporary post-Peircian semioti-
cian,John Deely).
To further illuminate this material and the relevance of an ontology
of relations for cognition and theories of language, I give an account of
the ethologist Jakob von Uexkull's Umwelt sign theory and of the biolo-
gist Humberto Maturana's autopoietic theory of 'languaging.'
In engaging with this subject matter, the book presents a semiotic that
subverts the opposition between realism and idealism. In other words, it