Signification and the Problem of Truth

Abstract

The great hopes of scientists in various fields, from computer science and mathematics to literature and art criticism, from analytical philosophy to post-structuralism, in the last third of the 20th and first quarter of the 21st centuries are assigned to semiotics, or the general theory of signs, which studies signification and its laws. Signification, or designation (denotation, signalizing, symbolization) is the widest-common procedure in scientific creativity and culture in general. The scope of the semiotic approach and the abstractness of the categories of semiotics are such that they allow for speaking at least of the theoretical-cognitive, if not ontological, universality of its approaches and the general methodological validity of its tools. One is capable of thinking only on the basis of the semiotic mediation of reality; moreover, the essence of consciousness itself as a whole is reflective, and representative. The recognition of the great informative capacity and value of the basic semiotic concepts, as well as the extreme breadth of the subject of semiotics due to the actual or potential symbolic nature of human science and culture, the instrumental nature of signs and symbols which science, ethics, religion, and art are full of, allows us to hope that semiotics will play, in the near future, the role of a universal manifestor and communicator.

Keywords

• sign
• meaning
• semiotics
• communication
• image
• reflexion
• cognition
• truth