The Semiotic Self (Wiley, 1994)

The Semiotic Self (Wiley, 1994)

In this book, Norbert Wiley offers a new interpretation of the nature of the self in society. Current theories of the self tend to either assimilate the self to a community or larger collective, or reduce the self to body. In distinct opposition to these theories, Wiley makes the case for an autonomous self, a human being who is a repository of rights, a free and equal agent in a democracy consisting of other selves.

Drawing on a fresh synthesis of the writings of Charles Sanders Peirce, George Herbert Mead, and others, Wiley argues that the self can be seen as an internal conversation, or a "trialogue" in which the present self ("I") talks to the future self ("you") about the past self ("me"). A distinctive feature of Wiley's view is that there is a mutually supportive relation between the self and democracy, and he traces this view through American history. In finding a way to decenter the self without eliminating it, Wiley supplies an alternative to current theories of postmodernism, a much-needed closure to classical pragmatism, and a new direction to neo-pragmatism.

"the internal conversation... the workplace of the self."

vii By "semiotic" I am referring to the theory of meaning held by the American pragmatists. Semiotics in general is the theory of signs, both linguistic and extra-linguistic.

p.13 Neither Mead nor especially Peirce ever completed their theories of the self.

p.13 Peirce's great semiotic insight was in seeing that thought is not in the dyadic form of representation-object, but in the triadic form of sign-object-interpretant.

p.14 Colapietro's suggestion synthesizes three triads: present-past-future, I-me-you, and sign-object-interpretant.
The self on this view is a constant process of self-interpretation, as the present self interprets the past self to the future self. In dialogical terms, the I and the you interpret the me in order to give direction to the you. Semiotically the I-present functions as a sign, the me-past as the object and the you-future as the interpretant. As the self moves down the time-line its semiotic process is constantly transformed, with a past interpretant becoming a present sign and then a future object. The content, i.e. the specific topic of the internal conversation, may be anything, including the stories and narratives with which people interpret themselves, but its semiotic form or structure is one which integrates the three triads mentioned above.

p.20 [Peirce] Consider what effects, that might conceivably have practical bearings, we conceive the object of our conception to have. Then, our conception of these effects is the whole of our conception of the object (5.402)... I only desire to point out how impossible it is that we should have an idea in our minds which relates to anything but conceived sensible effects of things. Our idea of anything is our idea of its sensible effects; and if we fancy that we have any other we deceive ourselves, and mistake a mere sensation accompanying the thought for a part of the thought itself (5.401).

p.20-21 when the pragmatists shifted from retrospective to prospective, they also changed the basis of meaning from sensation to action. Even in Peirce's pragmatic maxim the notion of "practical bearings" sounds more like action than sensation. Peirce himself suggested that the maxim is "scarcely more than a corollary" of Alexander Bain's definition of belief as "that upon which a man is prepared to act" (5.12).

p.34-35 "Semiotic power" is my name for the energies that underlie and empower signs... These attributes of meaning - generality, truth, goodness, and beauty - all have what I am calling semiotic power... The function is to be the entering wedge into a system of meaning. In addition it is the semiotic resource underlying any concrete meaningful element... all semiotic acts are dependent on the taproot of semiotic power.

p.35 The structure of the self as an I-you-me system, i.e. as a three-point reflexive self-awareness, is the basic source of semiotic power... The reason we can think about concrete objects, such as the toaster, is that we can think about ourselves. The reflexive structure of the self originates and generates semiotic power in somewhat the same way as the heart pumps blood. All semiotic energy... is a more specific form of the energy that flows through the life of the self.

p.40 This chapter... will show, not how the self is constituted, but how it works. It functions as a semiotic process, and this process is the internal conversation. This term includes not only "thought" but any and all the modes of interior meaning.

p.40 The membership lists of 1992 (Peirce society, 230 members; Mead society, 344 members) revealed not a single person who was in both societies. Another purpose of this book, then, is to try to stimulate some dialogue between the Peirce and Mead scholars.

p.41-42 For Mead, "Thinking is simply the reasoning of the individual, the carrying-on of a conversation between what I have termed the 'I' and the 'me' " (1934, p.335)... "I talk to my self, and I remember what I said and perhaps the emotional content that went with it. The 'I' of this moment is present in the 'me' of the next moment. There again I cannot turn around quick enough to catch myself. I become a 'me' in so far as remember what I said" (1934,p.174). And "It is what you were a second ago that is the 'I' of the 'me' " (p.174).

p.42 For Peirce, "All thinking is dialogic in form. Your self of one instant appeals to your deeper self for his assent" (6.338). "Thinking always proceeds in the form of a dialogue - a dialogue between different phases of the ego" (4.6). "Meditation is dialogue. 'I says to myself, says I' is a vernacular account of it; and the most minute and tireless study of logic only fortifies this conception" (Colapietro, 1989, p. xiv).

p.47 For Mead the me is committed to and merged with the generalized other, the internalized norms of the community or society.

p.49 when Peirce said "all thought is addressed to a second person or to one's future self as to a second person" he used "you" in two senses: as the future self and as some other person.

p.59 My position is that the internal conversation is "structured like" rather than being identical with language.

p.60 Mead's conversation of non-symbolic gestures (1934, p.63) would seem to apply internally as well as interpersonally... Another feature of the content of the conversation is that it varies according to the language of the person in question.

p.68 the reflective self is "an inner copy of social interaction" (Luhmann, 1986, p. 314).

p.69 I think Wittgenstein simply missed the significance of the internal conversation, either despite, or perhaps because of, his intense preoccupation with his own internal conversation. [JLJ - it takes a pragmatic to even notice the internal conversation as a 'thing' - in essence it is the most basic tool available to a human when deciding how to maneuver in a complex world. It is the hatcher of schemes that propels us forward into the world.]

p.70 The whole internal conversation is a constant checking process

p.72-73 I think it is quite possible that the internal conversation can be understood only by the person within whom it is happening. Much of it may be linguistic or otherwise available to linguistic interpretation. But a significant amount is coded in symbols, so nested within the unique qualities of the person, that no others could ever understand them. I argued that the internal conversation, then, is partly public or publicable, and partly private, i.e. it is a "semi-private" language.

p.73 I think the whole point of the internal conversation, as, say, a "survival" mechanism, is that it is faster, more subtle, and considerably more precise than words.

p.81 [Mead, 1934, p.80] The logical structure of meaning, as we have seen, is to be found in the threefold relationship of gesture to adjustive response and to the resultant of the given social act. Response on the part of the second organism to the gesture of the first is the interpretation - and brings out the meaning - of that gesture, as indicating the resultant of the social act which it initiates, and in which both organisms are thus involved.

p.123 The internal conversation is primarily between the I and the you, although indirectly and reflexively it is also between the I and the me. There can also be various "visitors," as discussed in chapter 3.

p.217-218 for humans time is not just a line or continuum, nor even an experimental or "felt" flow. It is these things to be sure, but in addition it is a reflexive circuit of meaning (Giddens, 1991, pp. 1-9). It is a "history" in the sense of a narrative or story. The present constantly projects and re-projects the meaning of the past onto the future. (Jacobs, 1984, pp. 30-44). Time is an inherently meaning-generating process. Or, to put it another way, it is a semiotic flow within which one segment (the present) shapes another (the future) in response to a third (the past).

p.220 the internal conversation... the workplace of the self.

p.221-222 Mead defined the self, in effect, as reflexivity. "The self has the characteristic that it is an object to itself, and that characteristic distinguishes it from other objects and from the body" (1934, p. 135). [JLJ - nitpick: this quote appears on page 136 in my source] This was Mead's key concept, both for intra- and interpersonal communication.

p.222 Mead appears to have read little or nothing of Peirce, and perhaps this is why he lacked Peirce's "interpretation" as a formal concept.