Tartu: Tartu University Press, 2008
ISSN 1406-4278
ISBN-10 9949-11-306-7
ISBN-13978- 9949-11-306-4
Available in
Krisostomus.
Abstract
The peculiarities of the storing and mediating information can be characterized using the parameters of reflection capacity, its specifics and development (human and social psychology, and education theory), via the transmission and feedback mechanisms of information (informatics), using the terms for guiding, influencing and manipulating society (management theory, political science, advertising), in an historic-cultural manner, etc. In this monograph, the author examines the storing and mediating mechanisms of information as intellect-based, sign-creating algorithms - i.e. formal entities, which can be interpreted as universals.
In implementing the criteria of Porphyrios's eternally durable classification, it could be claimed that the author, together with Juri Lotman, treat universals in the spirit of conceptualism. In other words it means that a Person in this conception is an object to whom a collection of formal characteristics is attributed that is common to all single individuals, which expresses the understanding of any person whatsoever. A Person is identical to this collection.
And so this book concentrates on describing the universal characteristics of the intellect, as the apriority mechanism that stores, organizes and transmits information. Of these characteristics, five universal algorithms (communicative functions) of the intellect, which are textually realized as mythological, magical, religious, antithetic and metaphorical code-signals, are examined more closely.
The constructive components of the concept of code signal are (1) the phenomenological concept of the intellect; (2) the category of code-text; (3) the category of ritual, and (4) treating text as a signal. Observing intellect and text on the same level proceeds from Lotman's postulate according to which intellect, text and culture are 'vertically isomorphic' on the basis of four characteristics, which are the linguistic heterogeneity of all three, the existence of memory, the capacity for the self-reproduction of meanings, and the functioning of a selection block that regulates communication.
Mythological, magical, and other relevant code signals are speech phenomena, and therefore it is not magic, religion, etc that are analyzed in this book but magicality, religiosity, metaphoricality, etc as the base structures of semiosis and communication. They are base structures due to their prominent role in the reproductive processes of the intellect.
All five intellectual algorithms, as code signals, are a sign-creating system, where ritual and rituality are the ancient textual equivalents. All code signals, as becomes apparent, are explicitly exhibited in ritual, and form a system of communicative functions. It is most important here to note that it was delving into the structure of ritual in particular that permitted the author to answer the question: what guarantees the durability of code signals as the constructive elements of culture and (in a narrower sense), of representation and communication.
The author's conception was initially inspired by Juri Lotman?s three lectures, which have been published for the first time as an appendix to this book.
Keywords: cultural semiotics, Lotman, intellect, algorithms of intellect, semiotic universals, reproductive communication, code signal, magicality, mythologicality, religiousness, antitheticity, metaphoricality, rituality.
Contents
Foreword 11
Introduction 14
1. Universals in connection with the interpretation of magic in Juri Lotman's semiotics 18
1.1. Points of departure for the interpretation of universals 18
1.2. Two opposing interpretations 26
2. Specifics of mythological and magical semiosis 35
2.1. Basic terms 35
2.2. Mythological semiosis 45
2.3. Magical semiosis 48
2.3.1. The epistemological status of magic 48
2.3.2. Magical procedure 49
2.3.3. Agens as a mythological structure 51
2.3.4. Agens as a magical structure 53
2.3.4.1. Phenomenon of the magician 54
2.3.4.2. Problem of magical effect 54
3. Antithesis in culture and sign-creation 57
3.1. Determining of the viewpoint 57
3.2. Semiosis forms the culture type 61
3.2.1. The antithetic dominant of semiosis 63
3.2.1.1. Complementarity of the antithetic cultural space 67
3.2.1.2. Principle of symmetry 70
3.2.1.3. Symmetrical reduction 74
3.2.1.4. Mirror projection 77
3.2.1.5. Enantiomorphic symmetry 79
3.2.2. Autocommunication of culture: antithetic self-reflection 83
3.2.2.1. Antithesis as a secondary code of autocommunication 84
4. The uniqueness and universality of magic in culture 87
4.1. Viewpoint and tasks 87
4.2. Paradox of magic in culture 87
4.3. Magic outside 'folklore' (Selection of critical glances) 93
4.3.1. Characteristics of 'magical' behaviour in a child?s ontogeny 94
4.3.2. Magic as everyday spontaneous behavioural practice 95
4.3.3. Connecting magic with the characteristics of natural language 97
4.3.3.1. Defining magical function using terms from the act of linguistic communication 97
4.3.3.2. Magicality of verbal representation 101
4.3.3.3. Magicality of the substance of language 104
4.3.4. Cultural-semiotic interpretation of magic: Juri Lotman?s points of departure 108
4.3.4.1. Structure-typological point of view 100
4.3.4.2. Phenomenological viewpoint 117
4.3.4.2.1. Phenomenological correlates of Edmund Husserl 117
4.3.4.2.2. Universality and uniqueness of the reproductive communication of the intellect (using magicality as an example) 129
4.4. In conclusion on the analysis of magic in the 'Lectures' 136
5. Universal forms of the reproductivity of intellect 140
5.1. Terminological classification of reproductivity 140
5.2. Constitutive reproductivity 142
5.2.1. Phenomenon of vertical isomorphism 143
5.2.2. The phenomenological criticism of Aleksandr Pyatigorski's viewpoint 146
5.2.2.1. 'Ontologization' of the research method 148
5.2.2.2. 'Naturalizing' the object of analysis 154
5.2.2.3. Semiotics changing into 'almost philosophy' 159
5.3. The analytical and generative forms of the reproductivity of the intellect 161
5.3.1. The analyticality of reproductive behaviour 161
5.3.1.1. Ritual and ritualizing reproductivity 163
5.3.1.2. Reproductivity of ritual communication 170
5.3.2. The universal, generative functions of ritual 176
5.3.2.1. Ritual and code text 191
5.3.2.2. The concept and structure of code signal 197
5.3.2.3. Code text and code signal 208
Summary 213
Appendix: Juri Lotman. Semiotics of personality and society 219
References 239
Index 260
