Philosophy of Being and Knowledge

Semiotics (Theory of Signs)

The Modern Era

In the Modern Era, thinkers devoted considerable attention to semiotics. They were all well-acquainted with the work of the Coimbra Jesuits, as most philosophers and scholars of the time had studied in Jesuit colleges, where the contributions of the Coimbra scholars were extensively covered. One of the central themes of Modern philosophy was knowledge. In their quest to analyze knowledge, philosophers of this period examined everything related to it, including language and signs. Consequently, interest in semiotics grew within epistemological research during this era. The ideas that entered the treasury of semiotic studies can be found among almost every prominent philosopher of the time.

• Francis Bacon distinguished between words and signs of things, i.e., anything that signifies an object not through language. Signs of things are divided into two groups: those that signify based on their similarity to the object, and those that signify based on human agreement to interpret the sign in a particular way. Humans chose words as the primary means of communication because they are the most convenient medium for this purpose. However, Bacon emphasized that other sign systems could also be highly useful. This perspective drew the attention of scholars to alternative sign systems. Today, science operates with numerous types of signs beyond spoken language.
• Thomas Hobbes believed that humans acquire knowledge only through experience. Upon receiving sensory data, people signify them with signs. All human knowledge consists of signs, making the manipulation of signs a defining trait of humanity for Hobbes. Anything can become a sign of something else, with signs and the signified object being interchangeable: clouds signify rain, but rain also signifies clouds. Signs are always material. Hobbes classified signs into several types: signals (sounds and actions of animals that provoke a response in other beings), marks (signs created by humans for personal memory or recall), natural signs (signs formed by nature, e.g., clouds as signs of rain), arbitrary signs (languages and other human-created sign systems), and signs of signs (universals, general concepts).
• John Locke, a key proponent of empiricism, argued that knowledge comes solely from experience. From experience, people acquire ideas, which are their understanding of things. To operate with ideas, they need to signify them somehow. This necessity led to the use of signs. Among all possible signs, humans selected words as the most convenient. Locke believed that the meaning of words does not derive from the objects they signify but did not claim that words are merely invented. Every word was first spoken by someone who chose it because, in their imagination, it was somehow connected to the idea it signified. This connection need not be objective; it might simply have seemed to the person that a particular sound accurately represented the idea. Over time, words evolved and drifted from their original meanings. Studying sign systems became an essential element of epistemological theory, and thus Locke argued for the necessity of semiotics as a separate science of signs.
• Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz believed that the human mind has no other way to process information than by working with signs. The imperfections of sign systems lead to misunderstandings. To eradicate these, Leibniz advocated for the precise formalization of language, an idea that proved useful for digital technologies in the 20th century. Leibniz disagreed with Locke’s view that words are unrelated to the things they signify. He thought that people chose sounds connected to objects for signification. Over time, words transformed and deviated from their original meanings. Leibniz inspired the development of etymology, the search for true meanings.
• Immanuel Kant posited that knowledge results from the interplay between experience and reason. Experience provides the information, but reason processes it. Signs are the means by which reason processes information.
• Wilhelm von Humboldt, a notable linguist who founded the philosophy of language, meticulously studied every detail of language. In his philosophical system, the issue of signs played a crucial role. Humboldt’s distinctive view was that language, the primary sign system in human life, is not generated by the concepts it signifies. Instead, language shapes thought. In Humboldt's philosophy, the sign system is represented as an organism that forms a worldview. Words are connected not to the things themselves but to the concepts in which things are thought. A concept is what is signified by a word in language, and the word plays a defining role in shaping the concept.