The modern antecedents of semiotics (1) : George Berkeley's realist nominalism

Abstract

We have seen how, in medieval history, thinking about signs did not always follow a nominalistic framework, and that many authors had already glimpsed a possible alliance between semiotics and realism. Turning to the modern period, we have begun to show how, here again, even if reflection on signs has often gone hand in hand with nominalism (Locke, Hobbes, Condillac), many approaches have tended to take a realist perspective. This was not lost on Peirce, who considered Berkeley in particular (but also, as we shall see next year, Thomas Reid) to be one of his inspirers. We have therefore presented the numerous texts in which Berkeley emphasizes the fruitfulness of an analysis of signs, which he places within a vast horizon, largely dependent on an original conception of ideas and perception [16]. The construction of the perceived object is more a matter of semiotic activity than reasoning. We need to distinguish between the geometric (mechanistic model) and the perceptual, and emphasize the heterogeneity of the sensible by developing a multifactorial visual and tactile semiotics. Semiotics, because the links between visual and tangible signs are conceived by reference to the linguistic sign and in parallel to the relationship between words and thoughts, but also because of the type of mediation between the various senses, foremost among which are touch and vision, which are ordered according to a complex symbolization relationship that is more a matter of convention than of the arbitrariness of the sign (Saussure) : because it is habit, or even experience, that enables us, once the sign has been given, to get to the thing signified.

Finally, in this semiotic, touch and the body play a major role, as does the imagination, which enables us to move on to symbolization and schematism [17]. This visual semiotics teaches us that the classical relationship of causality, " vulgar ", must be replaced by the " only real relationship, of strict philosophical truth " of sign to signified thing. We have analyzed how Berkeley moves from tactile and visual semiotics to language or grammar, and then to the " universal language of nature ", the language that God speaks to us. By turning the sensory universe into a grammar that reveals a visible unity of plan and purpose, Berkeley succeeds in blending nature and universality. This brief description of Berkeley's semiotics enables us to understand Peirce's praise and criticism of him : the praise concerns 1) the decisive status that the sign takes on in the way we conceive the relationship between thought and reality : the reproach of idealism is unfounded; what we think about cannot be of a different nature from thought itself. Ideas are signs of other ideas; they are signs of signs. 2) an excellent analysis of the very conditions of meaning. 3) the correct conception of the mental : unlike Locke or Hobbes, Berkeley does not speak of mental discourse. Discursivity only appears with language, which enables ideas to be inscribed in a set of relations, the fruit of a shared convention, whose stability is guaranteed by usage rooted in a community of experience. 4) his taking seriously of a certain irreducible vagueness of signs. 5) his description of signs as habits of action. The reservations are essentially aimed at Berkeley's nominalism, which for this very reason moves from what might have been a triadic conception of meaning to a dyadic one, where we go directly from the idea-sign to the idea-signified, which alone, in the end, counts. The diagnosis is correct: Berkeley's philosophy, particularly in its apologetic aspect, does indeed follow this path; the sign ultimately has meaning only because it expresses more than it signifies, can be read (without being interpreted) in the terms of the language (of the " grammar " says Siris) of Nature, and finally in the language of the Author of Nature. For those who see the triadicity of the sign-relation and the non-closed, non-circular nature of the relation as two essential characteristics of all semiotics, this is a redhibitory factor.

Next year, we'll continue our investigation, looking back at some of the milestones of modern history, then presenting in greater detail the achievements of Peircian ontological and realist semiotics, before showing why it has served as an inspiration for many recent authors and, last but not least, can provide a model capable of responding to the impasses to which the various turning points of the ^20th century have led us.

References

[16] Berlioz, D., Berkeley. Un nominalisme réaliste, Paris, Vrin, 2000 and Berlioz, D. (dir.), Berkeley, langage de la perception et l'art de voir, Paris, PUF, 2003.

[17] Berlioz, D., 2000 and Brykman, G. " L'hétérogénéité des idées sensibles et le "langage de la Nature", chez Locke et Berkeley ", in Berkeley, langage de la perception et l'art de voir, Berlioz (dir.), 2003.