Semiotics

Beyond Signification: The Co-Evolution of Subject and Semiosis 39

relating to other species the third aspect, the symbolic, is either absent or much less
developed. The nature of human learning consequently differs from that of other species
where the operation of the index is innately specified to a greater extent, so

... unlike the mechanical operations of fixed, predetermined tropisms that are genetically

hard-wired behavioral patterns belonging to animals and lower organisms, human drives are

determinative. That is, they are endowed with a degree of freedom manipulated by the agency

of the ego, an ego that operates on manifold levels of conscious and unconscious activity.

(Mills, 2004, p. 675)

But the degree of continuity that exists between the environment of the various animal
species and that of the human should not be denied either, since ―the human Umwelt is first of
all an animal Umwelt, a species-specific objective world, but it is based on a biologically
under-determined Innenwelt or modeling system‖ (Deely, 2004, p. 20). In the theoretical
perspective that is outlined below the icon, index and symbol are crucial in defining the
continuity and discontinuity between the animal and human worlds. It is the symbolic order
that fills out the space of biological under-determining mentioned by Deely. However, in
remaining within this familiar terminology we should not necessarily envisage a return to
Peirce or to Saussure, both of whom looked at signs rather atomistically and in a relatively
decontextualised manner.
̳Sign‘ in Peircean terminology sometimes appears to mean what Saussure calls a
̳signifier‘ rather than a sign,^2 but this is neither clear nor consistent in the Peircean literature.
Nor is it clear that what Peirce calls an ̳object‘ is a conceptual entity such as what Saussure
calls a ̳signified‘. It may be that, or it may be a perceptual object.^3 But such ambiguities
should not be accepted in a semiotic terminology today. It is mildly ironic also that Peirce‘s
notion of ̳interpretant‘ has been notoriously open to divergent interpretations, a fact that Eco
(1976, p. 71) regards as something of a strength because it is said to allow for ̳unlimited
semiosis‘. But the latter notion is precisely one that needs to be interrogated critically. Let us
concede nevertheless that Peirce raised the important question of interpretation via his
interpretants – and potentially therefore also the question of subjectivity in semiotics – and
move on from there.
While Peirce may have admitted subjectivity into his semiotics via the interpretant, the
chief problem with Saussure may be that his highly systemic approach set up in effect an
opposition between system and subject. Pêcheux (1983, p. 37) complained that for Saussure
the idea was ―something impossible except as completely subjective and individual‖ and
―hence the opposition between the creative subjectivity of parole and the systematic
objectivity of langue.‖ There is no doubt that it was the latter that interested Saussure most
and which therefore turned out to be decisive for structuralist linguistics and semiotics,
especially the semiotics of the Parisian school of Greimas and his associates (Greimas, 1989;
Greimas and Courtès, 1989; Greimas and Rastier, 1968).

(^2) In ̳What is a sign?‘ (§2) Peirce defines a sign as that which ―conveys to a mind an idea about a thing‖. See also
3 ̳On representations‘.^
See for example the discussion of objects in ̳Some consequences of four incapacities claimed for man‘. See also
Deely (2000, pp. 18-19) on the distinction between ̳thing‘ and ̳object‘. Object is clearly endowed with
significance when distinguished from thing in this way, but a further distinction is needed in order to arrive at
the signified of the symbolic order, as a conceptual entity. The term ̳object‘ will not do for all of these.