Comments on Paul Cobley's Essay (2018) "Human Understanding: A Key Triad"

By Razie Mah

After Thomas Sebeok dies, John Deely assumes the mantle as the premier semiotician in America. After a few short years, John Deely dies. Now, there is no independent thinker to don the robe. In this lacunae, we remember.
Paul Cobley offers a wonderful contribution. His article first appears online in June 2018 for The American Journal of Semiotics, the flagship publication of the Semiotic Society of America. He engages with one of Deely's many formulations of triadic relations. In contrast to Peirce's sign-vehicle, sign-object and sign-interpretant, Deely speaks of a scholastic triad: thing, object and sign.
The "sign" virtually (in virtue, not in simulation) brings an "object" into relation with the potential of a "thing".
Clearly, Deely's "sign" is not quite the same as Peirce's sign.
The category-based nested form affords a way to re-articulate Cobley's argument.
In Comments on Deely's Book (1994) New Beginnings, the category-based nested form is used to demonstrate the relational structure of the specificative and exemplar extrinsic formal causalities of signs. The scholastics come up with something very close to Peirce's definition of sign. Deely knows this.
So, Deely's triad must complement or play, in a post-modern fashion, on Peirce's definition of sign and the scholastic analysis of sign causality.
Paul Cobley's essay offers an opportunity to explore this curiosity.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Razie Mah
• Release date: Aug 5, 2018
• ISBN: 9781942824527

Razie Mah

See website for bio.

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Comments on Paul Cobley's Essay (2018) "Human Understanding: The Key Triad"

By Razie Mah

Published for Smashwords.com

2018

Notes on Text

Paul Cobley, of Middlesex University, writes a brief essay on one of John Deely's contributions to postmodern thought. The article appears in the American Journal of Semiotics (2018).

Cobley examines Deely's triad of sign, object and thing. Its facets refract sign relations, the duality of object and subject, the history of human understanding, affordances and ideology. These topics may seem disparate, at first. But, as the essay proceeds, the realness of each element of Deely's triad comes to the fore.

The goal of these comments is to re-articulate Cobley's discussion through the lens of the category-based nested form.

Prerequisites include A Primer on the Category-Based Nested Form, A Primer on Sensible and Social Construction, plus Comments on John Deely's Book (1994) New Beginnings.

Words in italics or 'single quotes' go together.

Table of Contents

Introduction

Sign Relation and Subjectivities

Codes and Interpretations

What Would the Germans Say?

The Shifting Boundary between Ens Reale and Ens