DOCTORAL THESIS A Peircean Theory of Learning Olteanu, Alin Award date: 2015 General rights Copyright and moral rights for the publications made accessible in the public portal are retained by the authors and/or other copyright owners and it is a condition of accessing publications that users recognise and abide by the legal requirements associated with these rights. • Users may download and print one copy of any publication from the public portal for the purpose of private study or research. • You may not further distribute the material or use it for any profit-making activity or commercial gain • You may freely distribute the URL identifying the publication in the public portal ? Take down policy If you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact us providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim. Download date: 28. Sep. 2021 A Peircean Theory of Learning By Alin Olteanu BA, MA A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of PhD School of Education University of Roehampton 2014 1 Abstract I develop a theory of learning grounded in Charles Peirce’s semiotics. This endeavour comes in the context of the iconic (phenomenological) turn in semiotics, which resulted in a Peircean renaissance, and of the growing semiotic trend in education. Peirce’s semiotics offers insights into the phenomenon of learning and contains an implicit philosophy of education. The application of Peirce’s phenomenological categories to education reveals the semiosic character of education. Learning, education, and research constitute a triad, having the structure of a sign (phenomenon of signification). As such, they are correspondingly governed by Peirce’s three criteria of evolution: chance, necessity, and love. Therefore, Peirce’s theory of education can only be understood in the context of his theory of evolution. I develop three central arguments: (1) that according to Peirce’s taxonomy of signs, learning is the evolution of signification from the Icon sign type to the Argument sign type, (2) that learning is the Universe’s way of discovering itself through life forms, thus being both an evolutionary factor and an explanation for the emergence of life and (3) that learning can only be fulfilled in self-denying love for the other. Using Peirce’s taxonomy of signs I analyse the student/teacher relation, explaining how the passage from Icon to Argument proceeds and how learning is fulfilled in self-denying love. 2 Contents Acknowledgments / 4 Introduction / 5 Part I / 13 Chapter 1: Semiotics and Education / 14 Chapter 2: Charles S. Peirce’s list of categories and taxonomy of signs / 43 Chapter 3: Semiotics as Pragmatic Logic / 57 Chapter 4: Education in Peirce’s Divisions of Science / 75 Chatper 5: Suprasubjective Being and Suprasubjective Learning / 89 Part II / 254 Chapter 6: From Icon to Argument / 118 Chapter 7: Diagrammatic Reasoning and Learning / 137 Chapter 8: Agapic Learning / 148 Part III / 354 Chatper 9: The Peircean Theory of Learning and Phenomenology / 166 Chapter 10: Possible Objections / 185 Conclusions / 194 Bibliography / 196 3 Acknowledgments I am indebted, first of all, to my Director of Studies, Professor Andrew Stables, and to my co-supervisor, Professor Lorella Terzi, who offered their wholehearted academic and moral support. Their sincere interest in the accomplishing of my PhD was essential. I am also indebted to Professor Frederik Stjernfelt, Professor Costantino Marmo, Dr Derek Pigrum, Professor Winfried Nöth, and Dr Dumitru Bortun, whom I have consulted on various topics that are essential for this thesis. I would also like to express my gratitude for their support to Professor Solomon Marcus, Dr Vladimir Cvetkovic, Dr Carmen Cvetkovic, Dr Inna Semetsky, Dr Eetu Pikkarainen, Professor Torill Strand, Dr Sebastien Pesce, Professor Christiane Moro, Dr Andreas Andreopoulos, Dr Waldmir Araujo-Neto, and Professor Charles Lock. My family’s wholehearted support was essential. 4 Introduction This thesis consists in a theory of learning grounded in the semiotics of Charles S. Peirce. It develops a teleological semiotic view of education, thus approaching learning and education in terms of signification phenomena. On the grounds of Peirce’s pragmaticism and his semiotic terminology, the theory is a thoroughly philosophical expression of the critical common-sense opinion that only love is a purpose in itself. One of the central assumptions is that any growth can only be a going out of the self (an ecstasy). As such, the self has to focus on a non-self, on the other, in order to evolve. Therefore, to expand a self’s knowledge by learning is to go out of the self, towards the other, towards the knowledge of the other and her intention of sharing her knowledge. Teaching is characterized by the same movement: going out of the self, reaching for the other’s knowledge with the intention of giving, of offering, whatever the self has to offer (be it second degree equations, Kantian deontology, information about the weather, or chocolate). As such, learning, education, research and all other human endeavours are justified by and have solely this rationale: to fulfil the principle of love. The main argument of this theory is that learning, as well generally as in educational contexts, is only possible as a manifestation of love. This is supported on the ground that learning can only occur freely, being a phenomenon of discovery of similarities, and love is characterized by freedom. Following a Peircean argumentation, I explain that the learning-education-research continuity is an embodiment of signification that reflects its underpinning principles of cosmological and biological evolution. I develop this theory in the context of the following epistemic trends of the late 20th and early 21st centuries: (1) the general reinvigoration of semiotics within philosophy and the proposal of semiotics as postmodern, non-dualist philosophy (Deely 2001), underpinned by (2) the recent “Peirce renaissance” in semiotics (Stjernfelt 2007), (3) the reception of semiotics in education and the coining of the edusemiotics branch of theoretical semiotics (Stables 2005, 2012, Semetsky ed. 2010, Stables and Semetsky 2015), and (4) the iconic (or phenomenological) turn of semiotics (Stjernfelt 2007, Stjernfelt in eds. Bundgaard and Stjernfelt 2009), which advantages (5) the retake of Jakob von Uexküll’s Theoretical Biology (1926), on account of the co-extensiveness of life and signification phenomena and the further development of biosemiotics (eds. Sebeok, Umiker-Sebeok 1992, eds. Emmeche, Kull 2011, Hoffmeyer 2009, Kull 2003, 2005). I approach learning and education as phenomena of a semiotic Universe. As developed by Peirce, semiotics is a relational logic with rich hermeneutic resources. Semiotics is not a binary logic, which would accept only two absolute values of truth. Value of truth is attributed to signs, the main semiotic concept, which are relational entities. As such, Peircean semiotics denies the possibility of expressing truth in its totality by a sign or a set of signs. Instead, signs tend to the truth. Their tendency to the truth is described by their mode of signification. Therefore, the 5 present approach to education is neither psychological, nor sociological. It does not explain educational issues in terms of cognitive capacities, social and cultural background, or power relations. Education and learning are approached as meaning phenomena, in all their complexity. As such, this Peircean Theory of Learning claims to bring a holistic perspective to education, as it is claimed that semiotics could (Gough and Stables, 2012). Peirce is one of the two major logicians of his time to develop a thorough anti-psychologistic logic. The other one is Edmund Husserl. Both Peirce and Husserl develop phenomenological philosophies which go against noumenal ontology. The main difference between the two consists in Peirce’s focus on triadic relations. Identifying the sign with the genuine triadic relation, Peirce developed a cosmology wherein the Universe is accounted for as populated by phenomena of signification. The core observation of Peirce’s cosmology, not always evident in his texts, is that substitution, and therefore causality, is triadic, and not dyadic. Peirce’s semiotics and Husserl’s phenomenology bring logic into the domain of life. They do so not by subduing logic to cognition, but on the contrary: cognition, as well as life in general, occurs within real possibilities that have an inner logical coherence. Peirce’s semiotics led to a semiotic life science, underpinned by metaphysics and underpinning in its turn social and cultural phenomena. These domains are not separated ontologically and the borders between them can only be observed vaguely, because they are vague. Peirce presented semiosis, the cooperation of signs (CP 5.484), as an adequate explanation for the emergence of life, at least according to the metaphysical and scientific understanding of the age (CP 6.322). Therefore, logic is alive; it is embodied in life forms which best express it by re-cognizing the logical (meaningful) structures of the Universe. We re-cognize the Universe by observing it through the application of the Universe’s own cyclical and continuous method of abduction, deduction, and induction. Through our re-cognition the Universe discovers itself. As such, Peirce developed a cosmology of meaning, to which Frederik Stjernfelt refers as physiology of arguments (2007). In the mature stage of his semiotics, in the 1890s, Peirce was led by his investigations on signification to develop a theory of cosmological evolution based on three principles: chance, necessity, and love. Following Peirce, these three principles are active in the Universe. The emergence of semiosis, practiced by life forms, is the embodied manifestation of these principles. While chance can be observed in the real existence of the necessary requirements sustaining life, these two (chance and necessary conditions) cannot fully account for the emergence and or sustainment of life. Peirce’s argument is that signification is fulfilled by love, a principle that transcends chance and necessity.