Semiosis, Marginal Signs and Trickster : A Dagger of the Mind

As signifying creatures, we fear the false creation 'signifying nothing' because, like Macbeth, we think of them as daggers of the mind that raise questions about the reality of our signs, about signs as tools of creation and power, about the dark terrors (and lighter joys) that exist in human desire, and about the signs and the mind. This text argues that signs are, at base, generative things creating as much as they refer. Front Matter....Pages i-xviii Introduction: the Terrific Sign....Pages 1-10 Front Matter....Pages 11-11 The Nature of Signs and the Naturalness of Objects....Pages 13-33 Numerous Signs and Natural Objects....Pages 34-54 The Myth of Polarity: A Perennial Problem of Semiotics....Pages 55-73 Front Matter....Pages 75-75 Triadic Integration of Polarities....Pages 77-87 Peirce, Pragmatics and Pyramids....Pages 88-113 Peirce’s Demon Abduction: How to Charm the Truth out of a Quark....Pages 114-126 Front Matter....Pages 127-128 Semiotic Approaches to Higher States of Consciousness....Pages 129-154 A Semiotic of Dreams: Pragmatic Forks in the Royal Road....Pages 155-175 Semiosis as Trickster: The Laughter of Signs....Pages 176-206 Back Matter....Pages 207-232