The 2018-2019 lecture was part of an examination (to be continued in 2019-2020) of the links between ontology and semiotics. The aim was to show how, in the face of the many impasses to which various " tournants " (linguistic, cognitive, etc.) have led us in the twentieth century, we can today take seriously the project of an ontology that is simultaneously semiotic and realist, emphasizing that a reflection on language, but much more generally on signs and the links they weave with the mind and the world, is not necessarily dependent on a nominalistic metaphysics. On the contrary, we can adopt a logical, epistemological and realistic perspective, as demonstrated at the beginning of the 20th century by Charles Sanders Peirce's systematic project : that of an authentic philosophical semiotics. To this end, this year's seminar will first look back at a number of questions and authors who, in antiquity (Plato, Aristotle), the Middle Ages (Abelard, Ockham, the Modists) and modern times (Berkeley), have also attempted this exercise, with varying degrees of success. Next year, the aim is to continue this historical journey, before examining the broad outlines of Peircian realist semiotics, and then showing how such a realist semiotic ontology [1] has served as inspiration in the twentieth century for a number of authors (Morris, Millikan, Dretske), while at the same time being close, in many respects, to certain currents of phenomenology (Bühler, Brentano, Marty, Stumpf). More generally, the aim is to explain why this kind of thinking can serve as a guide today in the face of the challenges we face, if we are to better understand - as philosophers have always endeavoured to do - the way in which the three vertices of the famous " triangle " - words, thought and the world - are articulated. .
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Lecture
Semiotics and ontology : historical landmarks and contemporary perspectives
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