Residence in the World



This essay brings Peirce's understanding of meaning to bear on Heidegger's critique of mind, thereby articulating being-in-the-world in terms of semiosis. Using ideas developed in 'The semiotic stance' (2005), it theorizes five interrelated semiotic processes--heeding a¤ordances, wielding instruments, undertaking actions, performing roles, and filling identities--that constitute the key modes of non-linguistic and/or non-representational meaning in which human-beings are always already holistically implicated. It doing so, it theorizes what is meant by purchases, functions, purposes, statuses, and values (as well as providing a semiotically sophisticated account of 'material culture'). And it generalizes Anscombe's idea of 'acting under a description' to comporting within an interpretation.



back