On Semiotics

This week’s 15 Minute Insight (the 4th and final in the series), on semiotics as a discipline and as the normative science of truth.

But now, let us ask—since we’re talking about the study of the action of signs and this questions seems pretty important for that discussion—let us ask, what is a sign?  In other words, what is the essence of being a sign?  Well; when I say the word, what do you think of first?  Probably, you think of one of a few common things: a street sign, a store sign, maybe a gesture or some warning, or if you are, like many of my listeners, a Catholic, perhaps you think of the sacraments.  But each of these—with very a complex exception in consideration of the sacraments I’m… not really sure I am currently equipped to make—each of these supposed signs is first an object which secondarily functions as a sign; that is to say they are what we call “instrumental signs”, or objects that need to be understood in themselves first, at least in part, in order that we are able to grasp subsequently their further significations…