Comments on Marc Champagne’s Lecture (2019) "Consciousness and the Philosophy of Signs"

By Razie Mah

Marc Champagne, teaching at Kwantlen Polytechnic University, publishes a book with a wonderful title: Consciousness and the Philosophy of Signs: How Peircean Semiotics Combines Phenomenal Qualia and Practical Effects (2018, Cham: Springer). One year later, he presents a lecture for the Toronto Semiotic Circle with a more humble subtitle: A New Precis.
The transcript of this lecture is published in The American Journal of Semiotics (volume 35(3-4), 2019, pages 443-462). The transcript is preceded by a book review by member of above Circle, Jamin Pelkey. Pelkey describes the book as a watershed. It is the start of a new river.
Of course, a new river is needed, as many become aware that the discipline of cognitive psychology no longer quenches our thirst for understanding. Is understanding even part of their vocabulary?
Champagne steps in, while at the same time, stepping away from analytic philosophy. He relies on the first postmodern, Charles Peirce, in order to construct an understanding of... um... understanding, or at least, what we intuitively understand to be our understanding.
Does this suggest that we are standing under the watershed?
These comments examine Champagne’s argument, in this new precis, using the tools of the category-based nested form and the triadic structure of judgment. It is a bit of a mix. Even Aristotle’s hylomorphism comes into play.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Razie Mah
• Release date: Dec 26, 2020
• ISBN: 9781942824732

Razie Mah

See website for bio.

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Comments on Marc Champagne’s Lecture (2019) Consciousness and the Philosophy of Signs

By Razie Mah

Published for Smashwords.com

2020

Notes on Text

This work comments on a lecture by Marc Champagne, presented to the Toronto Semiotic Circle in December of 2019, and published in The American Journal of Semiotics (volume 35(3-4), 2019, pages 443-462). This lecture is a companion piece to the 2018 book, Consciousness and the Philosophy of Signs: How Peircean Semiotics Combines Phenomenal Qualia and Practical Effects (Cham: Springer). Champagne has since published, in 2020, Myth, Meaning and Anti-Fragile Individualism: On the Ideas of Jordan Peterson (Exeter: Imprint Academics).

My goal is to comment on this work using the category-based nested form, the triadic structure of judgment, and other relational models within the tradition of Charles Peirce.

‘Words that belong together’ are denoted by single quotes or italics.

Prerequisites: A Primer on the Category-Based Nested Form, A Primer on Sensible and Social Construction, Comments on Jacques Maritain’s Book (1935) Natural Philosophy

Recommended: Comments on Marco Strango’s Essay (2019) Understanding Hylomorphic Dualism, Comments on John Deely’s Book (1994) New Beginnings,

Table of Contents

Taking Aim

Phenomena versus The Thing Itself

What is the Essence of Versus?

Silence

So, That Is What It Is Like