Language as Eigenform: Semiotics in the search of a meaning

Abstract

The problem of how signs acquire their meaning is characteristic of both the philosophy of language of the analytic tradition (Quine, Frege, Peirce, Wittgeinstein) and the continental one (Saussure, Hjelmslev, Jacobson, Bloomfield). At present, most scholars are inclined either to point out the priority of objects over the system of signs, or the system over the objects. However, neither version suggests a satisfactory solution.. On the one hand, we believe that the language and the world are external to each other and are independent from each other; but on the other hand, we cannot construct a model of language independent from the world (what does language denote, in that case?) and the world independent from the language (how is a world possible if it is not referenced?). This situation poses a problem. The Eigenform model can help shed light on it and suggests coherent solution; this model the possibility of overcoming the ‘dilemma of preceding’ (whether the language precedes the world or the world precedes the language). Similarly to the dilemma of observation (observer) and the world (whether observation (observer) precedes the world or vice versa), the Eigenform model shows that neither the signifier nor the signified precede the other, but rather intercondition each other. Thus, language creates the world of objects but is shaped by the world in turn. Unlike a similar language model developed by L. Wittgenstein, Eigenform model stipulates the principle of the world-language generation in a complex system of involved and/or mutual interpretations. The interpreter generates a meaning in the world, and in this process the interpreter himself is being formed as an interpretation (in particular, self-interpretation).