4 ms·

!!! That's a very unusual application of 'semiotics'. I would be very grateful to ANYONE who could produce a reference to a published paper or text describing

!!! That's a very unusual application of 'semiotics'. I would be very grateful to ANYONE who could produce a reference to a published paper or text describing both memetics and semiotics in culture.

hprotagonist 6y ago
Meme is just I Can Haz Sign. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meme https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meme Another critique comes from semiotic theorists such as Terrence Deacon[41] and Kalevi Kull.[42] This view regards the concept of "meme" as a primitivized concept of "sign".
- xtiansimon 6y ago
  > "I Can Haz Sign" ?? I don't know what that refers to. Regarding the references from Wikipedia--I apologize for my enthusiasm in a post about memetics, if I gave you the impression I was just shooting off in the forum. I should have worded it better. I'm sure the reference to Wikipedia was an honest gesture at being informative. "Kalevi Kull (born 12 August 1952, Tartu) is a biosemiotics professor at the University of Tartu, Estonia." (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kalevi_Kull https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kalevi_Kull) Yes. Tartu is the holdout for semiotics in academia. My guess is Professor Kull has to have an opinion about memetics teaching at Tartu. > "Terrence William Deacon ... is an American neuroanthropologist ... is currently Professor of Anthropology and member of the Cognitive Science Faculty at the University of California, Berkeley." (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrence_Deacon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrence_Deacon) Anthropologist would certainly have an opinion about memetics. Blackmore (2000) essentially spends her whole book making the case for memetics in this field. I was excited by the prospect someone in the _semiotic_ community would take memetics seriously (other than the subfield of bio-semiotics). Noth (1995) is not a recent publication, but it is a serious survey of semiotic theories. He devotes only 5 paragraphs of 575 pages to memes. (https://www.google.com/books/edition/Handbook_of_Semiotics/rHA4KQcPeNgC?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=north%2C%20winfried&pg=PA166 https://www.google.com/books/edition/Handbook_of_Semiotics/r...) (you only get to see the beginning in this link, but I have the book and there is only one more paragraphs on the next page). Quoting the rest of the paragraph from Wikipedia, "Another critique comes from semiotic theorists such as Terrence Deacon[41] and Kalevi Kull.[42] This view regards the concept of "meme" as a primitivized concept of "sign". The meme is thus described in memetics as a sign lacking a triadic nature. Semioticians can regard a meme as a "degenerate" sign, which includes only its ability of being copied. Accordingly, in the broadest sense, the objects of copying are memes, whereas the objects of translation and interpretation are signs.[clarification needed]" It's a radical notion, even for semiotics, there could be anything more primitive than the sign itself. And a sign lacking a triadic nature is incomplete critique, since semiotic community is divided between bipartite and tripartite sign theory. Nevertheless, intellectually I'm very curious about the possible connections. Semiotics is so terribly 'static', and suffers to make sense of change. While memetics is incessantly dynamic, but where's the beef? Alas, the search continues...
  - AstralStorm 6y ago
    The beef is that both fields struggle to be anything but descriptive. Both semiotic and memetic engineering are both a joke on par of "don't think of elephants", much less science. Phlogiston was descriptive too. Arguably useful. Completely wrong as it turned out by serious study. The key problem with meme as a concept is that unlike biology with virion the concept cannot even predict how successfully the thing will spread out to where. Similarly with signs and how will they impact communication. The real test of an idea is what predictions it makes not how well it describes things.
    - xtiansimon 6y ago
      > "...both fields struggle to be anything but descriptive ... The real test of an idea is what predictions it makes not how well it describes things." So you agree they are descriptive, and for you the test is the effectiveness of their predictions. In a scientific context these are both valid criticisms. Semiotics had it's brush with scientific rigor and suffered a similar blow as formalized mathematics suffered in the early 20th century. Of course mathematics survives not because its logically consistent, but because it's useful. Semiotics is also useful in many disciplines such as art, literature, design, communications, philosophy, where it provides a consistent language and framework to describe culture and language construction of meaning. Semiotics is sufficiently useful to generate new perspectives in short order (Greimas' Semiotic Square) is a neat trick. Memetics also has a number of neat tricks which are usefully descriptive of phenomena. Jokes aside, any work which is mostly descriptive suffers the same criticisms, and different descriptions of those disciplines also do justice, or work to discredit equally well. Not for nothing. I'm not trying to convince anyone of anything, but I do have more than a passing _blog_ fancy of these topics. I'm always looking for others who are equally interested, and maybe, like me still look for more better uses. (^_^) And I'm thinking there may be a few here on HN, because this post did get some upvotes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semiotic_square https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semiotic_square

!!! That's a very unusual application of 'semiotics'. I would be very grateful to ANYONE who could produce a reference to a published paper or text describing both memetics and semiotics in culture.

hprotagonist 6y ago

Meme is just I Can Haz Sign. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meme https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meme Another critique comes from semiotic theorists such as Terrence Deacon[41] and Kalevi Kull.[42] This view regards the concept of "meme" as a primitivized concept of "sign".

xtiansimon 6y ago
> "I Can Haz Sign" ?? I don't know what that refers to. Regarding the references from Wikipedia--I apologize for my enthusiasm in a post about memetics, if I gave you the impression I was just shooting off in the forum. I should have worded it better. I'm sure the reference to Wikipedia was an honest gesture at being informative. "Kalevi Kull (born 12 August 1952, Tartu) is a biosemiotics professor at the University of Tartu, Estonia." (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kalevi_Kull https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kalevi_Kull) Yes. Tartu is the holdout for semiotics in academia. My guess is Professor Kull has to have an opinion about memetics teaching at Tartu. > "Terrence William Deacon ... is an American neuroanthropologist ... is currently Professor of Anthropology and member of the Cognitive Science Faculty at the University of California, Berkeley." (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrence_Deacon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrence_Deacon) Anthropologist would certainly have an opinion about memetics. Blackmore (2000) essentially spends her whole book making the case for memetics in this field. I was excited by the prospect someone in the _semiotic_ community would take memetics seriously (other than the subfield of bio-semiotics). Noth (1995) is not a recent publication, but it is a serious survey of semiotic theories. He devotes only 5 paragraphs of 575 pages to memes. (https://www.google.com/books/edition/Handbook_of_Semiotics/rHA4KQcPeNgC?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=north%2C%20winfried&pg=PA166 https://www.google.com/books/edition/Handbook_of_Semiotics/r...) (you only get to see the beginning in this link, but I have the book and there is only one more paragraphs on the next page). Quoting the rest of the paragraph from Wikipedia, "Another critique comes from semiotic theorists such as Terrence Deacon[41] and Kalevi Kull.[42] This view regards the concept of "meme" as a primitivized concept of "sign". The meme is thus described in memetics as a sign lacking a triadic nature. Semioticians can regard a meme as a "degenerate" sign, which includes only its ability of being copied. Accordingly, in the broadest sense, the objects of copying are memes, whereas the objects of translation and interpretation are signs.[clarification needed]" It's a radical notion, even for semiotics, there could be anything more primitive than the sign itself. And a sign lacking a triadic nature is incomplete critique, since semiotic community is divided between bipartite and tripartite sign theory. Nevertheless, intellectually I'm very curious about the possible connections. Semiotics is so terribly 'static', and suffers to make sense of change. While memetics is incessantly dynamic, but where's the beef? Alas, the search continues...
- AstralStorm 6y ago
  The beef is that both fields struggle to be anything but descriptive. Both semiotic and memetic engineering are both a joke on par of "don't think of elephants", much less science. Phlogiston was descriptive too. Arguably useful. Completely wrong as it turned out by serious study. The key problem with meme as a concept is that unlike biology with virion the concept cannot even predict how successfully the thing will spread out to where. Similarly with signs and how will they impact communication. The real test of an idea is what predictions it makes not how well it describes things.
  - xtiansimon 6y ago
    > "...both fields struggle to be anything but descriptive ... The real test of an idea is what predictions it makes not how well it describes things." So you agree they are descriptive, and for you the test is the effectiveness of their predictions. In a scientific context these are both valid criticisms. Semiotics had it's brush with scientific rigor and suffered a similar blow as formalized mathematics suffered in the early 20th century. Of course mathematics survives not because its logically consistent, but because it's useful. Semiotics is also useful in many disciplines such as art, literature, design, communications, philosophy, where it provides a consistent language and framework to describe culture and language construction of meaning. Semiotics is sufficiently useful to generate new perspectives in short order (Greimas' Semiotic Square) is a neat trick. Memetics also has a number of neat tricks which are usefully descriptive of phenomena. Jokes aside, any work which is mostly descriptive suffers the same criticisms, and different descriptions of those disciplines also do justice, or work to discredit equally well. Not for nothing. I'm not trying to convince anyone of anything, but I do have more than a passing _blog_ fancy of these topics. I'm always looking for others who are equally interested, and maybe, like me still look for more better uses. (^_^) And I'm thinking there may be a few here on HN, because this post did get some upvotes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semiotic_square https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semiotic_square