Re-Thinking the Place of Semiotics in Psychology... 119summarise this point by observing that semiotic phenomena involve an irreducible triadic
relation. Not only does meaning require each of the three terms, it cannot be an intrinsic
property or quality of any of them. Statements of a form which suggest either only two terms
(X is meaningful to P), or only one term (X is meaningful), are misleadingly incomplete.
Since relations are external to their relata, and since meaning is a relation, it follows that none
of the three terms in the meaning relation has inherent semantic properties.
And there is an important twist to the irreducibly triadic nature of signification. While the
signifier and the signified in any signifier-signified pair can be interchanged, and while a
person can also stand as either signifier or signified, there must always be a cognising
organism in the triad, and this organism must have perceptual/cognitive access (albeit not
necessarily conscious access) to both the signifier and the signified independently, in order to
perceive/cognise the relation between them.
In summary, semiotics-psychology integration allows psychology to negotiate a way
through the difficult terrain of meanings, arriving at a fundamental aspect of semiotic
phenomena, which forms the basis for unification. Every semiotic situation involves an
irreducible triadic relation, one term at least of which must be a cognising organism with
perceptual/cognitive access to the remaining two terms.^13 This is the starting point for the next
contribution.
Extricating the Legitimate Concerns of Representation in the Information
Sciences from Incoherent Epistemological Representationism
The second contribution of a realist semiotics-psychology integration is, ironically, to
expose the impossibility of the type of unification of semiotics and psychology that many
have been waiting and calling for. This is the unification of internalist (cognition as symbol-
processing) and externalist approaches to mind, representation and meaning. Since the former
rests on an incoherent conception of representation, whereas the latter does not, any attempt at
unification is both misguided and doomed to failure.
It will be recalled that two of the three major themes selected for the special issue of
Theory & Psychology were (1) symbol-processing explanations of human cognition, and (2)
the application of semiotics to electronic non-linguistic forms of communication. In the
information sciences dealing with the increasing demands of information-gathering and
information-presenting devices, these two themes are typically combined. According to Jorna
& van Heusden (1998), one of the contributions of semiotics is that it ―places the concept of
representation at the centre of discussions in management and information science‖ (p. 758,
emphasis in original).
Within the information sciences, the field of "knowledge representation" (KR) emerged
from a background in computer science and artificial intelligence (AI). The major question in
(^13) It might be suggested (e.g., Smythe & Chow, 1998; T. Pataki, personal communication) that the Peircean triadic
relation, while necessary for signification, is not sufficient. Smythe and Chow (1998) claim that it needs to be
expanded into the sextuple of speaker, sign, object, interpretant, audience and context. I think that these extra
elements simply contextualise the relational situation of signification: sometimes it occurs within an event of
communication, sometimes it will obtain only under certain social conditions, sometimes it may involve a
unique person-symbol-symbolised occasion, etc.). But none of these is necessary. Of course, some context is
necessary. But, since spatio-temporal context is the condition of occurrence of all situations, its necessity is
not distinctive of signification.