Metapattern > interdisciplinary foundations > semiotics
The novelty that underlies Metapattern consists of combining both situation and context as recursive functions in an encompassing, interdisciplinary semiotic framework of enneadic dynamics. What results are, among others, new concepts of situation and context.
in: Metapattern: information modeling as enneadic dynamics
Every behavior is situational, making every text … contextual. You can substitute information for text. It follows that the means for contextualizing information is, yet again, information. Only such a generic principle leads to a straightforward formalism for context.
in: note 23.1
I'd like to emphasize that I am keeping situation formally distinct from context.
in: Notes on Metapattern and enneadic semiosis, part 2
[T]he semiotic ennead [holds] general, i.e. cross-cultural, or supra-situational, validity. Of course, it also explains the sign life of other animals and plants.
in: Notes on Metapattern and enneadic semiosis, part 2
Especially the idea of the meaning of meaning leads [Welby] to claim explicit recognition for the quality of expression. She coins the name significs for such a discipline.
in: Victoria Welby's significs meets the semiotic ennead
Peirce should be credited for an especially efficient set of assumptions dealing precisely with experience and behavior. He made the relationship itself explicit as a third term: sign. His key idea for semiotics is that concept (Peirce: interpretant) is no longer directly related to object. Sign mediates. A semiotic triad results and Peirce prescribes its irreducible nature, i.e. any reduction compromises the integrity of so-called semiosis.
It may be readily recognized that the semiotic triad doesn't yet accommodate perspective.
Holding on to Peirce’s transcendental approach, I turned his semiotic triad into a semiotic ennead, i.e. with nine rather than three irreducibly related elements. […] An axiomatic framework with nine rather than three elements allows for more variety to be explained from it. If you will, it is a more powerful tool.
in: On "nil" modality and Metapattern
The ennead retains Peirce’s essential assumption on transcendentalism. So, it also irreducibly links all its elements in semiosis. The original three elements reappear as dimensions, each dimension now constituted by three more detailed elements.
in: Semiotics of identity management
Peirce's concept of the triad integrates ontology, epistemology and
semiotics. The semiotic ennead only makes it a more powerful idea.
[…] Peirce’s original triad irreducibly links interpretant,
sign and object. His elements are [the ennead’s] dimensions, with
now three elements along each dimension: 1. motive, focus and concept
constitute interpretant, 2. context, signature and intext constitute
sign, and 3. situation, identity and behavior constitute object.
Between different dimensions, motive, context and situation
‘form’ a triad. So do focus, signature and identity. And
concept, intext and behavior. Elements along a dimension are relative,
i.e. as the focus shifts, motive and concept(s) change accordingly,
etc. with corresponding changes along the other dimensions.
in: Notes on Metapattern and enneadic semiosis, part 1
[Such] a foundation […] enables [us] to treat the concept of sign positively, i.e. approaching it as an object with the rigor appropriate for the increased scope of relevance. A semiotic ennead integrates as irreducible the modeling of reality, cognition and sign.
in: Mannoury's significs, or a philosophy of communal individualism
With the sign structure already fully equipped for variety in expression, it only remains to apply its equivalent to the categories of both reality and interpretation. The result is […] the semiotic ennead. It supports a far more detailed understanding of the dynamics of semiosis.
in: Victoria Welby's significs meets the semiotic ennead
When you look at the ennead's visual presentation, indeed, it seems just static. That's why I add emphasis on enneadic dynamics. […] Enneadic dynamics involves randomness, too.
in: Notes on Metapattern and enneadic semiosis, part 2
The ennead retains the triad's essential assumptions. It also irreducibly links all its elements as constituting semiosis. […] Between dimensions, correspondences rule.
The semiotic ennead safeguards against conceptual simplification.
in: Semiotics of identity management
[T]he semiotic ennead meets all consistent requirements Welby has drawn up for significs, and more.
in: Victoria Welby's significs meets the semiotic ennead
With semiosis attributed to participants, communication is modeled with corresponding enneads. Reduced to dyadic communication, a dia-enneadic model, or framework, results.
I’d like to draw special attention to the way how the semiotic ennead encompasses motive and identity in a single ‘system.’
in: Semiotics of identity management
An extension of the semiotic triad into an ennead argues for a relative status of goal, or motive. […]. In semiosis, an actor constructs a sign from a configuration of — again, the relative concepts of — motive, focus and concept. In short, he brings a perspective to his own observational behavior. The resulting sign is transformed in cycles of semiosis into another configuration of motive, focus and concept. That is, semiosis changes the actor’s perspective, resulting in one particular behavior or another.
in: Metapattern for converging knowledge management with artificial intelligence
The irreducible part motive plays in enneadic semiosis explains the nature of sign use, i.e. language: Every sign is a request for compliance.
in: Semiotics of identity management
My model for order in interpretation, including its dynamics, is the semiotic ennead. A particular focus 'controls' behavior.
in: Mannoury's significs, or a philosophy of communal individualism
The ennead is a powerful interdisciplinary device. It retains the original elements of Peirce's triad as dimensions. Along each dimension, concepts are now arranged to create formal structure in models. Correspondence between phenomena along the different dimensions can be established in detail. Applying […] Metapattern, from the sign-as-model it is possible to infer more rationally about both the configuration of interpretants and the configuration of reality (where the latter is of course inferred from the interpretive structure which the sign mediates).
in: Metapattern: information modeling as enneadic dynamics
What th[e] ennead accomplishes is that sign is not only related to
object and interpretant in, say, an absolute sense. [It] also captures
sign variation as related to objectified variety and interpretative
variety. Actually, I find it difficult to overstate the importance of
including variety through such a straightforward formalism.
An integrated treatment of variety from a single conceptual
perspective is of more practical value than ever. For example, the
Internet has demonstrated the feasibility of increased information
interconnection. So, more than ever information management requires
explicit measures for conceptual precision. The ennead offers
guidelines for ruling out ambiguity at any scale imaginable.
in: Notes on Metapattern and enneadic semiosis, part 1
What the ennead does, is also provide threesomes/triads as windows. Will flows into cognition through the boundary window of the threesome motive-situation-context. And it flows out again through the 'window' of the threesome of concept-behavior-intext. It essentially makes the ennead a model of a funnel, or conduct.
in: Notes on Metapattern and enneadic semiosis, part 2
When you look at the ennead, there are three dimensions corresponding to Peirce's original elements of his triad. Please note that the three elements […] along each dimension are not only irreducible (which, of course following Peirce's principle, goes for all nine elements) but also relative. For a particular, say, value of the complete ennead, along each dimension the 'middle' element provides a pivot, i.e. unambiguously connecting the elements on either 'side' of it. These pivotal elements are focus, signature, and identity, respectively.
in: note 23.5
Taking a hint from pragmatism, I supplied each of the triad’s elements with ground, thereby arriving at a hexad. This still leaves behavior missing, though. Just as pragmatically, what are the three dimensions of the hexad are each fitted with an additional element, yielding an ennead.
in: Open conceptual modeling with Metapattern
Corresponding to situationally differentiated behaviors of an object are contextually differentiated signs, allowing for motivationally differentiated concepts. Such is the gist of semiosis according to the metamodel (also read: framework) of the semiotic ennead.
in: Metapattern for complementarity modeling
Peirce already formally separated object, sign and interpretation in the semiotic triad. Considering his mention of “ground” he must have had at least a hunch of complementarity, but he also didn’t develop it. That stage has been reached by extending the triad, arriving at the semiotic ennead.
in: Metapattern for complementarity modeling
It may be objected that the correspondence theory of meaning is long dead and buried. Well, yes, but actually its background theory (also read: metatheory) was found lacking. With contextualism, the correspondence theory, radically enlarged, is back. And I’ll [also] call it interdependency theory.
in: Invitation to contextualism
Taking semiotics seriously in the Peircean sense means that there is no going around sign. It irreducibly mediates. As an extension of Peirce’s triad, the ennead more clearly implies structure. The structured sign mediates between fact and interpretant for which corresponding structures along their respective dimensions are assumed. Of course, expressing those structures requires sign, too. In other words, there is no immediate ‘access’ to either fact or interpretant. Even calling it a fact of life, requires doubt (talk about sign, which is where Descartes chose to draw a line). What Peirce accomplishes with his triad is to include sign in a system of irreducible elements, acknowledging that no independent, outside vantage point exists for describing — what he calls — object and/or interpretant on ground.
in: Contextualism means selectivity
We now need to shift paradigm for information management, modified accordingly. [T]eleology must be included. It corresponds with how I have tried to capture the nature of language with a slogan: every sign is a request for compliance. Yes, a sign refers to concepts. But concepts are motivated. Or, rather, the exchange of a sign is motivated. The motive for exchanging a sign corresponds with a situation. And a sign consists largely of context for directing the appeal at motivation. The (dia-)enneadic model of exchange outlines such dynamics.
in: note 53.8
What the ennead especially helps to understand is abstaining from an either/or mode for grounding concepts. As every concept is grounded by (a) motive, enneadically speaking, that is, belief is inherently ethical, too. There simply are no disjunct knowledge classes. In my view of semiotics, every sign is a request for compliance. It reflects Peirce’s pragmatist orientation. Both rigor and relevance require his concept of ground to be differentiated, hence the move from his triadic model of semiosis to the semiotic ennead.
in: note 53.9
[N]othing can be realized from obeying absolutist assumptions to support members’ increasingly pluralist behaviors in a thereby increasingly pluralist society. Rather than blaming technology, […] I attempted a metatheoretical […] perspective. Some close reading of C.S. Peirce on semiosis led me to expand his triad […] by allocating his somewhat general concept of ground to each of his tree original elements. First, a hexad resulted with context figuring as the ground of/for sign, situation as the ground of/for object, and motive as the ground of/for concept. Next, to accommodate dynamics I added mediating elements. In such an ennead, Peirce’s original elements have become dimensions, as follows:
sign: context — signature — intext
(f)act: situation — object — behavior
interpretation: motive — focus — concept.
Of course, like the triad it originated from, the ennead with its nine elements is irreducible. At, say, cross angles, the ennead now includes three partial correspondences, reminiscent of Peirce’s original triad:
context — situation — motive
signature — object — focus
intext — behavior — concept.
Dynamics may be envisioned by two enneads in a dialogical arrangement, addressing both intra- and intersubjective behavior including cognition. […]
in: note 53.10
[F]irst of all I would like to suggest a more explicitly structured
dialogic framework. In dialogue, participants are engaged in sign
exchange. Please note that participants need not be limited to people.
Why do they (of course, also read: we) take the trouble?
In producing a sign, one participant behaves in order to constitute a
characteristic cause. With it, she (also read: he) aims at an effect to
be produced by her co-participant.
It is in the nature of a sign-as-cause that it aims at getting a
sing-producer’s motive fulfilled through having the
response-as-effect originate from a co-participant’s own motive.
What possibilities with limited expenditure of energy! The evolutionary
advantage should be obvious.
It follows that each participant is subject to semiosis (defined by
C.S. Peirce as the action of the sign). Actually, without semiosis
there is no subjectivity (and with semiosis there is no objectivity).
Extending the triadic model of Peirce, an ennead is required to include
motive and corresponding irreducible elements.
A sign, then, travels the distance between participants. It does not
transfer intact a motive, a concept, or whatever. All that we are used
to call meaning remains strictly subjective. In fact, it is impossible
to confirm even that what has been given as a sign on one side has been
taken as such, and identical, on the other side of the exchange. It is
always best to assume it didn’t. Sign exchange is reciprocal. As
one participant is producing signs as requests for compliance, so is
every other participant.
Every sign, without exception, carries a motive of its producer. With
it, she wants to elicit a response that she values. Confronted with a
sign, the co-participant from her own motive (also read: based on what
she herself values) may respond between choosing to comply or to
resist. When all participants are motivated to learn, a dialogue
develops. What can be critically learned are concepts of mutual
motives. […]
Now, why start a dialogue? Again, nobody can ever produce a sign
without her values being involved. Some values imply imparting …
values. It is about one participant getting other participants to
change their motives so they’ll behave as she sees fit. But,
then, is how she sees it, really fit for them? From dia-enneadic
principle, she cannot be sure, never. […] Does that make doing
nothing the only responsible course of … action?
Of course not. Why should she deny herself to act upon her own values?
In fact, she cannot behave but on those values. But how can she be
taken seriously by people she would value as participants in
dialogue?
Does this make the answer stare us in the face? Are we, say, in
community when we value each other as participants? Is being valued as
such, with no other expectations attached, an invitation to join that
we cannot, and don’t want to, refuse? […]
For our communal growth, we people all over need to feel sufficiently
safe for us to learn and consider changing our motives (also read:
values).
in: note 53.39
Rather than three elements, a hexad has three dimensions, with two elements along each such dimension. For purposes of — explaining, facilitating — dynamics, next I fitted each dimension with an intermediary element, say, a hinge [changing] the names for some of the dimensions and elements […] along the way[. … D]ynamics [may be] indicated by additional arrow-headed lines between each pair of elements. […] Two enneads constitute dia-enneadic dynamics. [… Meaning] must be upheld completely separately by participants joining in dialogicality (also read: sign exchange) by their reciprocal attempts to have the facts they ‘give’ to be ‘taken’ as signs, and so on, and so on. Then, it is easy to recognise change as the rule.
in: note 53.40
With the ability for simulating behavior might come ideas about what another object, when seen as subject, could, should, et cetera, do for you. Next comes the task of communication. How does one subject try to get its message across to one or more other subjects? And what invariably is such sign exchange about? I find that language only makes evolutionary sense with every sign being a request for compliance[.]
in: Analytic philosophy for synthesis from early education on
More generally, sign is one of three cause types (as A. Schopenhauer
already observed). With any cause, an exchange is assumed for effect.
Characteristically, at least two parties are involved. Sign is no
exception. One party exhibits behavior intended to be taken up as a
sign by another party (or by her-/himself at the next stage of
so-called semiosis). For the sake of briefest exposition, let me here
assume different parties, A and B. Through signaling behavior, A aims
to cause a behavioral effect from B. Its particular cause(-and-effect)
type may be succinctly defined by the slogan: Every sign is a request
for compliance. […] As every (!) sign attempts mediation between
A’s goal and B’s compliance, please note, without
exception, it simply follows that law is inherently about compliance,
too. […] It is only after becoming aware of behavioral dynamics
that what traditionally counts as a sign, is recognized as an overly
simplified concept. How can it be explained that repetition of what
appears as one and the same sign often brings about quite different
behaviors? Is there really a single cause when several effects may be
observed? No such magic exists.
The answer is that a sign is always (!) articulated. It is configured
by a signature and a context. What is habitually taken as sign, is
‘only’ signature. And a signature is only recognizable as
such together with a context, vice versa.
in: note 56.4
From articulating sign, it is reasonable to return to a correspondence theory. I’ve developed its necessarily extended version by starting from the semiotic triad of C.S. Peirce. An ennead resulted, with Peirce’s three original elements now serving as dimensions, and three elements appearing along each dimension. The full correspondence reads: sign: context- signature — intext (f)act: situation — object — behavior interpretation: motive — focus — concept. Distinguishing between context and situation is ‘really’ crucial. It can now be posited that context informs about situation, requiring a corresponding factor in interpretation to differentiate concepts: motive.
in: note 56.4
Suppose B experiences a sign. It might seem that s/he notices a particular object. However, s/he can only do so as a figure against a (back)ground, that is, situation. With ongoing semiosis, the ability to recognize a sign in the first place, therefore, comes from B’s already ‘being’ somewhere in semiosis. The — further — course with its dynamics, i.e., from one motivated concept to another, and so on, is — necessarily — driven by influences which always carry B’s — changing — cognitive stamp in the first place.
in: note 56.4
Considering a sign in the enneadic sense, B ‘knows’ s/he has been sent a request for compliance. S/he will then include her/his assessment of the sender in the motivated concept s/he develops. How s/he sees her/his relationship(s) with the alleged sender is weighed for compliance. Of course, that is where expectations come in. The response from B may vary from complete compliance to all sorts of noncompliance. How B in (f)act behaves, may in turn be taken up as a sign, too. And when it is, A, or whoever, deals with it as yet another request for compliance. And so on …
in: note 56.4
From Schopenhauer’s radical concept of will I have derived a radical concept of language: every sign is a request for compliance. Taking Schopenhauer seriously in this respect has meant that Peirce’s concept of sign required elaboration. I have extended the well-known triad to an ennead. Semiosis, then, might be viewed as behavioural output of one cycle being taken as significant input for the next, and so on (in fact confirming, even integrating, Peirce’s pragmatic point he made elsewhere).
in: note 56.7
When you care to take a look at — the model of — the semiotic ennead, I’m sure you appreciate how interdependent its elements are. Their so-called irreducibility is the relevant principle form Peirce I have maintained, and continue to emphasize.
in: note 56.7
[When] I first considered positioning ground relative to one of Peirce’s — other — three elements in semiosis[, n]o choice seemed satisfactory. A breakthrough occurred when I refrained from attempting to ground a single element. Instead, I allocated to each of Peirce’s three — other — elements a then particular ground, that is, effectively differentiating what so far had looked to readers as Peirce’s general side-remark (subsequently to be structurally neglected). Anyway, what resulted from a sort of reflexive, thereby differentiating, application of the triad on ground is a hexad. The elements of the triad have become hexadic dimensions, with two elements along its now three dimensions. Aiming at more fully explaining dynamics of semiosis, I extended the hexadic (six-part) model to an enneadic (nine-part) model. A few years later, I modified some of the labels for the elements of the ennead.
in: note 56.8
Looking at the enneadic model, you’ll see that one of its elements — along the dimension of interpretant — is motive (originally labelled: background interpretant). From this perspective, sign production is always intentional. My slogan: every sign is a request for compliance. Only such a radical assumption allows for a most general semiotics. Other functions of signs that have traditionally been considered are at most subordinate to using signs as means for coordinating behavior (resulting from reciprocate compliance, please note, both intra- and intersubjectively). In fact, social semiotics is a pleonasm (and so are social-psychological semiotics, cognitive semiotics, et cetera, for that matter). Therefore, presenting basics of semiotics, in my opinion there is a pressing need for an encompassing framework. Starting from the ennead, any semiotic theory developed earlier — as far as I know — can be demonstrated to entail some subset[. …] A student mastering the encompassing framework will have gained overview, and can accordingly analyze shortcomings according to more limited perspectives.
in: note 56.9
What is required is radically contextualizing all (!) of semiotics (which is what I believe to have provided, in a formal sense with the ennead, necessary and sufficient axioms for).
in: note 56.11
Peirce neglects to formally operationalize his very own — mention of the — concept of ground. Peirce does point at the key, but fails to properly apply it and proceed productively. […] I am arguing for a, say, reset of semiotics. [S]uch reset should be taken up precisely at the point marked by Peirce’s largely undeveloped insight into basic relativity through semiosis.
in: note 56.11
Peirce not just saw three elements involved in semiosis. He identified a fourth, i.e., ground. As I see it, he then failed to properly operationalize ground, though. Getting about it methodically […], I have extended the Peircean triad to an ennead as a framework for semiotics consisting of nine irreducibly related elements.
in: note 56.14
[F]rom a (dia-)enneadic framework […], semiotics can be — far — more widely applied productively[.]
in: note 56.14
Of course, enneadic dynamics also relies on the assumption of states, in time sort of cycling from one enneadic dimension/moment to the next, and so on. Then, what happens in between? We might say that algorithms take care of state changes. But, then, what ‘comes to mind’ as an algorithm? What I object to is comparison with, up to expression as, a digitally programmable function. When it should at all be compared with how a computer ‘works,’ my idea is that it is not as a digital but rather as an analog computer.
in: note 56.24
On naming elements of the semiotic ennead I would like to add that terms such as background interpretant and foreground interpretant suggest a — cognitively — reactive subject. However, a subject is an active participant, including directing observation. That is, an interpretant is a determinant, too. That is how I came to substitute the term motive for background interpretant (and leaving the enneadic structure unchanged). For motive you may also read desire, intent, will (Schopenhauer), et cetera. And in the context of cognition, yes, perspective, too.
in: note 56.27
I cannot resist offering you some principled remarks regarding semiotics as a theory for open-ended practice. My contention is that the […] semiotic ennead may serve as the frame of reference for a genuinely general semiotics.
in: note 80.1