48 Tahir Wood
The less abstract words combine their relatively stable signifieds by means of syntactic
structures to create the ideational forms that serve as the meanings of clauses, sentences,
texts. Hyper-abstract words, by contrast, are actually dependent upon previously constructed
ideational forms of this kind to serve as their signifieds. This is the true frontier of ̳unlimited
semiosis‘. In this light, understanding itself appears as a limit, something which is always
being approximated rather than attained.
The price that human beings pay for their symbolic capacity becomes apparent the more
highly developed their culture has become, in other words the more hyper-abstract terms it
has been able to generate. If this were not so there would never be a serious hermeneutic
problem.^7 This is the fate of subjectivity as ̳unlimited semiosis‘; it was always there at the
aporetic heart of the symbolic order,^8 but its appearance as a problem becomes more apparent
as subjectivity reaches crisis points in its maturity. We should perhaps have faith enough to
think that we will meet the challenge represented by the threatening abyss of semantic
indeterminacy, but let us try also in a semiotic fashion to understand the path that has led us
to this.
From a logical point of view the problem with the notion of unlimited semiosis is that it
does not make clear whether it is a qualitative or quantitative infinity that is at issue. If it is
taken as a purely quantitative limitlessness, it is easy to see how this would exhaust the mind
and defy interpretation.^9 Such an infinite opposes itself absolutely to the finite (as its other).
But the truer infinite is that which admits the limit and coexists with it;^10 it is the infinite of
determination, of continual becoming, of the object that is always in the process of becoming
itself but never quite reaches this limit in any final way. ̳Unlimited semiosis‘ has this aporia
within it: As soon as it has become unlimited, meaning will break down; and as soon as
meaning has been restored, this means that it must have become limited again. Hence
applying a purely quantitative infinity here would mean a semiosis that is actually the
opposite of itself, sheer meaninglessness.
The recursive mechanism in language that gives birth to hyper-abstraction is found
according to Thom (1983, p. 176) in mathematical discovery: ―a direct extension of this
mechanism of symbolic creation ... the mathematician sometimes sees an expression, or a
relation, turning up again and again with an embarrassing insistence‖, so that he will
―introduce a new symbol to condense this expression into a single form and so continue the
work on a new basis.‖ In this passage, Thom shows how this recursion and advancement to
new levels of abstraction occurs in relation to mathematical semiosis. The principle of
abstraction here is that a proposition or set of propositions is represented by a new sign or
(^7) Cf. Benzon and Hays (1990, p. 298): ―cultures differ in their capacity to order and generate abstract concepts,‖ and
―there are abstract ideas that cannot occur in the thinking of an Eskimo, or even a literate Florentine, or, for
8 that matter, Darwin, Freud or Einstein.‖^
One thinks of a Socrates endlessly pondering over the meanings of abstract words such as justice, the good, and so
9 on.
Hegel (Shorter Logic, § 94): ―In the attempt to contemplate such an infinite, our thought, we are commonly
informed, must sink exhausted. It is true indeed that we must abandon the unending contemplation, not
10 however because the occupation is too sublime, but because it is too tedious.‖^
Hegel (Science of Logic, § 293): ―According to this, the unity of the finite and infinite is not an external bringing
together of them, nor an incongruous combination alien to their own nature in which there would be joined
together determinations inherently separate and opposed, each having a simple affirmative being independent
of the other and incompatible with it; but each is in its own self this unity, and this only as a sublating of its
own self in which neither would have the advantage over the other of having an in-itself and an affirmative
determinate being. As has already been shown, finitude is only as a transcending of itself; it therefore contains
infinity, the other of itself.‖