Abstract
Human beings are special in mastering, apart from signs, a number of semiotic resources embedded already in perception, which is not differentiated, but which may still be iconic, indexical, or symbolic. The sign is no doubt one of the missing links between human beings and other animals. An even earlier breaking point between (some) animals and human beings may be the ability to distinguish type and token, that is, to have access to a principle of relevance. Somewhere on the border between relevance and the sign is found the act of imitation. The Peircean sign, which is so much more (and less) than a sign, may be able to account for the emergence of imitation and its accomplishment in the sign function, in the restricted sense.
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Notes
- 1.
This is of course not the Peircean triad, but rather corresponds to the representamen, and to the immediate and dynamical objects, respectively (as well as to the corresponding interpretants).
- 2.
In relation to the standpoint of many other semioticians, I have to spell out here (as in many of my earlier publications, but perhaps most explictly in Sonesson, 2009), that I am not interested in finding out what Perice “really said”. To give an all to simple expression to a complicated issue, I will just say that I use Peirce as a source of inspiration, just as I do with many other writers on the theme.
- 3.
Seeing her now, I may of course be reminded of when I took that photograph, or when she made that dance, but this does not change the asymmetric structure of the sign, only my mental use of it.
- 4.
This does not preclude other relations between expression and content being symmetric. It is common to suppose a substitutive relationship, which is a symmetric relation, between expression and content, but this may be misleading, since expressions are rarely used for the same purpose and in the same context as their contents.
- 5.
A study of imitation of actions from static pictures, reported in Hribar, Call, and Sonesson (in press) would certainly seem to suggest that apes may be capable of imitating means as well as goals, at least in one sense of these terms. In his most recent book, however, Tomasello (2008) seems to downplay even more the capacity for imitation in apes.
- 6.
Or something: The mind is not necessarily a subject to Peirce, but he does admit that there is no way of explaining it, at least at present, than by reference to a subject.
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Sonesson, G. (2012). Semiosis Beyond Signs. On Two or Three Missing Links on the Way to Human Beings. In: Schilhab, T., Stjernfelt, F., Deacon, T. (eds) The Symbolic Species Evolved. Biosemiotics, vol 6. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-2336-8_5
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