Communicology, Cybernetics, and Chiasm: A Synergism of Logic, Linguistics, and Semiotics

Abstract

The analysis takes up the conjunction of semiotics and cybernetics as a problem in theory construction in the human sciences. From a philosophical perspective, this is also the ontological problem of communicology: the disciplinary study of human communication. My analysis suggests current conceptions of “semiotics” and “cybernetics” are misunderstood because “information” is assumed as synonymous with “communication” and that the axioms of “mathematics” are identical to those of “logics”. The evidence contained in the misunderstandings is a conflation of reductionist ecology ideas about the “environment” differentiation of (1) human beings [apperceptive organic life], (2) animals [perceptive organic life], and machines [inorganic and constructed mechanisms]. The communicological view argues that a correct understanding of these issues requires a competence in logics and linguistics to determine the metatheory criteria for choosing evidence among humans, animals, and machines. The domain thematic is the phenomenological synergism of human embodiment as expression and perception. In this context, my criterion for evidence is the structure or form of a pure concept of reason (choice making judgment) that is given a priori in consciousness, the notion demonstrated by Immanuel Kant: A notion is a rule that you know before you experience it as a result.

8.1 The Problematic: Choice of Context

Issues in philosophy and science are complex by their very definition. When we attempt to “introduce” such issues, the classical Greek method of problematic and thematic immediately recommends itself. What question do we ask, how do we answer? We seek to determine what is at issue for us and how we might approach an understanding of the issue as it applies to us. In short, it is things versus ideas. Our immediate issue is to understand “semio-cybernetics ” proposed by Søren Brier (2008, 2009; Thellefsen et al. 2011). Obviously, this neologism is a conjunction of semiotics and cybernetics that invokes the problematic of metatheory: How do we approach the theoretical ground of two pre-existing theories? As human beings, we look for criteria of judgment that allow us to specify what we perceive as experience, how we express the meaning of our conscious awareness, along with where and when they join together as evidence. What is perceived constitutes the world of Nature (things) and how we express our experience is the world of Culture (ideas). If we take these two problematics (things and ideas) as suggestive of commonalities for us (being human), we discover possible thematics. Our favorite human thematics are (1) thing-ideas. i.e., conceptions of science as “objectivity”, and, (2) idea-things, i.e., conceptions of culture as “subjectivity”. The easiest methodology for applied work is to choose one thematic and ignore the other one (where and when we do this emerges later on in Fig. 8.16). Here is our issue. Semio-Cybernetics is the suggestion that two thematic methodologies (as “ideas”) be combined to find “things”. Such combinations are the very process and function of human communication.

While I think this Semio-Cybernetic combination is quite possible and has, in fact, been accomplished already as the discipline of Communicology, I also believe current conceptions of both “semiotics” and “cybernetics” are misunderstood by casual readers, many of whom assume “information” is synonymous with “communication” and that the axioms of “mathematics” are identical to those of “logics”. Further, the evidence contained in the misunderstandings is a conflation of reductionist ecology ideas about the “environment” differentiation of (1) human beings [apperceptive organic life], (2) animals [perceptive organic life], and machines [inorganic and constructed mechanisms]. The communicological view argues that a correct understanding of these issues requires a background competence in logic and linguistics to determine the metatheory criteria for choosing evidence among humans, animals, and machines (Lanigan 1988b). Further, these metatheory criteria are the domain of the human science of Communicology (Lanigan 2007, 2008, 2012, 2013, 2019; Riebar 1989; Wilden 1972, 1987). The domain thematic is the phenomenological synergism of human embodiment as perception and expression (Dreyfus 1972/1992, 2001). In this context, my criterion for evidence will be the technical definition of notion demonstrated by Immanuel Kant.

A notion is Kant’s category for the structure or form of a pure concept of reason (choice making judgment) that is given a priori in consciousness (Lanigan 2018a). Let me say it clearly: A notion is a rule that you know before you experience it as a result. Contrary to modern views of scientism, a rule is not a cause and a result is not an effect. This to say, we cannot confuse conscious expression (Rule → Result) with experience perception (Cause → Effect). Edmund Husserl builds on Kant to established the founding logic of implication used by Roman Jakobson in this approach to human communication (Holenstein 1974/1976, pp. 25–47).

8.2 The Problematic: Communication as Context

Communicology as a domain of research analysis and synthesis constitutes an account of what and how human beings create meaning (usually named reality [an idea of things]), and, function among other persons in a shared world (normally called actuality [an experience of things]). The universal model for this account of semiosis at all levels of conception is Roman Jakobson’s description of science and the place of communication as the transaction of behavior/experience and comportment/idea (Holenstein 1974/1976). Figure 8.1 presents a visual context for perceiving the organization of hierarchical complexity of Culture and Nature— a metatheory model of Communicology.

Fig. 8.1

Roman Jakobson communicology metatheory model

The human science model begins with Philosophy and Linguistics, the complex integration of culture and nature in the language medium of human speech (Bühler 1934/1982, 1958; Cobley 2010; Lanigan 2018b). The linguistic domain consists of two fundamental logic functions in human thinking: (1) distinctive features in sound production and perception wherein spatial differentiation creates historical temporality (embodiment) and (2) redundancy features similarly create the temporal differentiation of existential spatiality (apperception) (Durt et al. 2017; Fuchs 2018a, b). Distinctive Features function in metonymic order as series [e.g., A B C D] and Redundancy Features function in metaphoric order as blanks [e.g., , , , ]. So, two “Realities” combine as one “Actuality” [e.g., A, B, C, D,] (Lanigan 2015c). In short, verbal messages (unique to human beings) are a choice-of-context that grounds [code/context] any further context-of choice differentiation [message/contact] of the system in its complexity. Thus, the first circle in Fig. 8.1 is labeled Linguistics. In the second circle called Semiotics, Messages are contextualized by a controlling code that specifies the two conditions of any possible system (= Semiotics): (1) Things inside the system (series), and, (2) Things outside the system (blanks).

Thus, codes establish boundary conditions for specifying the system (space) and its function (time). When and where functions cross the boundary, we experience the “mirror effect” wherein the sign-system doubles itself (double-articulation; meta-physics). Such sign-systems become synergistically reversible, reflexive, and reflective and constitute the Anthropological level (Lanigan 1988a, 1992; see Fig. 8.3). A simple gestalt proof of this point is achieved by placing one mirror opposite another mirror (Bühler 1913, 1922). If you do the experiment, notice you are perceiving a series of mirrors (objects) that are separated from one another by a parallel series of blanks (space between objects). This rule is famously violated in René Magritte’s reproduction interdite (1937). Jakobson’s human science model records this anthropological exchange principle as the third circle in Fig. 8.1. The outer, fourth circle represents Biological communication systems that embody one, two, or three functions of the previous levels.

Simply put, human beings embody all four levels: 4-Biologic (Organism/Physical), 3-Anthropologic (Environment/ Physical), 2-Semiotic (Environment/Mental), and 1-Linguistic (Organism/Mental). In this context, animals embody levels 4, 3 and 2; whereas, machines “embody” only level 3 (Environment/ Physical). On this foundation, my analysis proceeds to deconstruct the reductionist models that have progressed from bio-semiotics [levels 4-Biologic and 2-Semiotic], to socio-cybernetics [levels 3-Anthropologic and 2-Semiotic], and, to semio-cybernetics [levels 4-Biologic, 3-Anthrprologic, and 2-Semiotic]. All of these approaches contain two negative reductions: (1) the elimination of level 1-Linguistic (Organism/Mental), and, (2) the elimination of the combinatory hierarchy Logic [level 2-Semiotic] inherent in human languages (and, their secondary modeling as artificial “languages” [computers], or tertiary modeling as artificial “intelligences”[robotics]).

Let us begin with a visual suggestion of how to discover the presence of such misleading reductionist thinking. In Fig. 8.2, we have an illustration of how bio-semiotics imagines (a proposed reality) the actual world of living people. Such a representational model is achieved by eliminating the core 1-Linguistic level of analysis. When you do not do the reduction, you are able to perceive an actuality model of all four level of analysis as in Fig. 8.3.

Fig. 8.2

Reductionist model of living systems (information theory)

Fig. 8.3

Linguistic model of living systems (communication theory)

At this juncture, we need to review just what is contained in the Jakobson model at level 1-Linguistic. Remember that this meta-system is itself a double articulated system so that the Human Science Model in Fig. 8.1, can be illustrated with Fig. 8.4. In parallel fashion, the linguistic hierarchy is the four levels suggested by Fig. 8.5.

Fig. 8.4

Discourse model in communication theory

Fig. 8.5

Standard linguistic hierarchy for communicated language (speech)

Norbert Wiener (1948a, b) summarizes for us: “The chief value of language is not that it enriches communication, though it certainly does so, but that it puts communication into a form which is transferable without the physical presence of the objects it concerns. This leads to writing, in which it is no longer necessary to confront the participants in communication” (p. 219). Thus, it becomes obvious why it is popular to engage a reductionist approach to complex living systems by eliminating high order complexity (linguistic systems) in favor of non-complexity (organic/inorganic objects). Getting rid of “language” allows the researcher to avoid logic systems that require problematic explication plus thematic explanation; an example is Maturana and Varela (1972/1980). Where language is the foundational logic used, the logic hierarchy in Fig. 8.5 thus constitutes a functional “control” function (decision matrix) over all four levels of derivative semiotic systems as suggested in Fig. 8.6; an example of this new perspective is Maturana and Varela (1987). This language criterion approach to analysis now requires that we revise the complexity level of our thinking and move by means of abduction from the simplicity of Fig. 8.3 (a linear reality model) to the complexity of Fig. 8.7 (a curvilinear actuality model).

Fig. 8.6

Logical typing in human communication (compare Fig. 8.3)

Fig. 8.7

Communication model of living systems (semiotic phenomenology theory)

The logic used to create the Fig. 8.7 illustration is summarized in Figs. 8.8 and 8.9 as traditional forms of causality (matter, form, agency, purpose). Figures 8.10, 8.11, 8.12, and 8.13 suggest the founding/constitutive logic that human language displays as a model of human thought. The figures constitute a metatheory specification of Roman Jakobson’s communicology model in Fig. 8.1. The chiasm tropic logic in Fig. 8.11 is the rhetorical modality of Aristotle’s syllogism of four terms in three proposition (the contemporary understanding of triadic relations as in C. S. Peirce and quadratic relations as in A. J. Greimas; discussed at length in Lanigan 2015b). A good example of the chiasm logic method (language based semiotics) is Maturana and Varela (1987: 26, 210) where their theoretical premise is the phenomenological combination of two chiasms: (1) “All doing is knowing, and all knowing is doing” and (2) “Everything said is said by someone”. Note the precise tropic structure at work:

Fig. 8.8

Apposition logic in terms of classical Aristotelian causality

Fig. 8.9

Triadic semiotic relations illustrated as a semiotic square

Fig. 8.10

The logic hierarchy of code and message as a chiasm ratio

Fig. 8.11

Chiasm logic model (le même et l’autre)

Fig. 8.12

Encoding in human communication (communication theory)

Fig. 8.13

Decoding in human communication (information theory)

A: Doing-1	B: Knowing-1	b: Knowing-2	a: Doing-2
A: Everything	B: Said-1	b: Said-2	a: Someone

Figures 8.8 and 8.9 suggest the axioms that can be constituted by this phenomen-of-logic approach to research. “We operate in language when an observer sees that the objects of our linguistic distinctions are elements of our linguistic domain. Language is an ongoing process that only exists as languaging [sic speaking], not as isolated items of behavior.” Please note that this phenomenological perspective is a complete reversal of their 1972 phenomenalism wherein human communication was reduced to a closed system “autopoiesis machine” computer metaphor (Maturana and Varela 1974/1980: 78; my correction; see Nöth 2002, 2008; see Fig. 8.16).

Having positioned the hierarchy of combinatory, inclusion logic (Both/And) over the differential, exclusionary logic (Either/Or) [summarized in part 1 of Fig. 8.20], we are positioned to perceive the doubling of Jakobson’s communicology model (Fig. 8.1) as the combined interpersonal communication dynamic (Fig. 8.7) of expression (Fig. 8.12) and perception (Fig. 8.13). Figure 8.14 presents the dynamic curvilinear process in linear static terms, whereas Fig. 8.15 illustrates the chiasm logic form.

Fig. 8.14

The Jakobson process model of communication

Fig. 8.15

Chiasm communicology matrix model

8.3 Thematic: Cybernetic Communication Contextualizes Bio-Socio-Semiotic Information

The longstanding comparison of Culture and Nature was first posed in the West by the pre-socratic philosopher Parmenides and advocated by his “Successor” Proclus Lycaeus, who asks “One, how many?”. This metaphysical question, a particular lecture favorite of Charles Peirce and Gregory Bateson, creates a dialectic investigation procedure for how to do research which is named the triás method (triadic structure). The method investigates the relationship among three embodiment conditions: (1) the Unparticipated [amethekton] or what is experienced, (2) the Participated [metechomenon] or who is the experiencer, and (3) the Participating [metechon] or how the experiencing occurs (Lanigan 2017). We know this method primarily through the Scholastic Trivium as Logic, Grammar, and Rhetoric. Of course, Peirce scholars know this triadic structure well as Icon, Index, and Symbol. But remember the fourth element of the system, the embodied human being who thinks, speaks, and writes (Peirce’s Interpretant). Figure 8.16 illustrates the contemporary culture (phenomenology) versus nature (phenomenalism) comparison in methodological terms.

Fig. 8.16

Culture and nature methodology paradigms

Made explicit by Aristotle, the triás question is the metaphysical status of Objectivity as answered by the rhetoric argument of Universality (Substance, Whole) contested by the dialectic argument of Particularity (Attribute, Part) (McKeon 1998, p. 153). The argument is refined by Immanuel Kant (Lanigan 2018a) and then confronted in the modern technological era by Ernst Cassirer with the human science concern for the idea of technology. For Cassirer (Lanigan 2018b), the question of Science (Objectivity) is the phenomenological contest between (1) the Perception of Objects (Appearances) and (2) the Perception of Expressions (Signs).

What has been lost among many contemporary semioticians is the classical distinction between (1) sēmeion [fallible sign as perceived = “real” to consciousness as “appearance”] and (2) tekmérion [infallible sign as expressed = “actual” to consciousness “object”]. The more familiar version of this distinction comes via grammar and its literature legacy (Shapiro 1988). This is to say, all “fallible sign” examples are “intransitive verb sentences”, whereas all “infallible sign” examples are “transitive verb sentences”. The very important point is that all applied semiotics (bio-semiotics, socio-semiotics, semio-cybernetics) assumes the description of Nature is self-referential [infallible sign] when in fact the description is other-referential [fallible sign]. Culture, description by language, constitutes the other-referential.

Thus, for human beings the condition of Culture for analysis is quite simply Charles S. Peirce’s doctrines of fallibilism [contingency, knowledge is never absolute], tychism [chance, choice is never absolute], and synechism [continuity, the tendency to see Gestalt series] (Lanigan 2014). Culture as level 1-Linguistics precedes Nature as level 2-Semiotics. Figure 8.17 specifies the Culture to Nature hierarchy which then becomes the foundation for adductive logic. The result is a clear distinction between human open systems and machine closed systems. Furthermore in Fig. 8.18, we can see that the cybernetic abduction wherein choice is a control factor allows us to distinguish goal-intended comportment (open system; time function) from goal-directed behavior (closed system; space function). Our human ability to “sense” another person (apperception) and not confuse them (perception) with a robot (machine) is an everyday confirming experience (Dreyfus 1972/1992, 2001; Dreyfus and Dreyfus 1986; Lanigan 2018d). This fact is dramatically true when we think of our experience of speaking with another person versus our experience of a machine trying to communicate with us. We never confuse embodied speech (face-to-face; transaction) with its mechanical disembodied sound/ sight simulation (mobile phone; interaction). We should also note, as a matter of interest, that we humans never mistake perceived human action with either animal action or machine action during bodily movement.

Fig. 8.17

Cybernetic hypostatizations (second order) and abductions (third order)

Fig. 8.18

Communication control: teleology and teleonomy

Science cannot proceed on the basis of a “first and second order cybernetics” hypostatization and aporia where “language” is dismissed as not part of “observed description” [unparticipated]. The aporia, of course, is that even the biologist uses a human language and that available language structure gives the logical conception of description [participated] as embedded in a rhetorical expression of meaning [participating]. In short, definitive “subjective” judgment guides the “objective” description and account of “causality” [grammatical transitivity], long ago noted as a problematic for all of science by Otto Neurath (1944, p. 2). Even Norbert Wiener (1915, p. 570), echoing Peirce, famously says, “The life of every branch of mathematics lies in a habit.”

As we need to note, semiotics as pseudo-science doctrine (bio-semiotics, socio-semiotics) proceeds by just such an “objectivist” hypostatization and aporia: “Is the biosemiotic approach reductionist? The answers of course yes—if one narrowly defines the words signs or meaning in terms of human phenomena such as linguistic symbols” (Hoffmeyer 2005/2008, p. 6; see Velmezova and Crowley 2015). A clever escape from the aporia is to assert that the thematic for judgment should not be “language”, but “life”. As Nöth (2015) summarizes Thomas A. Sebeok’s biological (non-linguistic) approach to sign-systems:

Sebeok’s biosemiotics is not directed towards affirming the uniqueness of the human language faculty. In the debate between the essentialists and the evolutionists, in which we find biolinguistics generally taking the essentialist side, biosemioticians are usually found on the evolutionist side. The former argue that language is essentially “different from other forms of communication and that language separates humans from other species”, whereas the latter postulate continuity in the growth of sign processes and systems. Furthermore, whereas biolinguistic research begins with the origin of language, the biosemiotic research program begins with the origin of life.

For Sebeok, the semiotic threshold between the non-semiotic and semiotic world is the threshold between life and lifeless things. For him, that is a threshold between information and semiosis. In evolution before the origin of life we only find information (the ongoing increase in entropy), whereas semiosis begins with the origin of life (p. 159).

Most of my analysis so far has been devoted to unpacking this “threshold” as an extraordinary example of the logical fallacy of “causality”—“after this, therefore because of this” [post hoc ergo propter hoc]. This is to say, the reported analysis conflates and confuses (1) the problematic (where we seek to locate the present source of “context”, not absent “origin”, (2) the thematic (where we seek to locate the present criterion of “choice”, not the absent “not choice” of “information”. Given Sebeok’s post hoc thesis as described by Nöth, it is easy to understand why there is a proposal of a “semio-cybernetics”. This proposal models on Information Theory (Informatics = semiotic syntax, no semantics nor pragmatics) and simply assumes that (1) a closed system “originates” [life is born = environment makes organism; neg-entropy], that (2) a closed system consumes, exhausts “energy” [life is dead = organism makes environment; entropy]; see Fig. 8.2. This point is a continuing issue in the discussion of the Umwelt model as proposed by von Uexküll (1937/2001; see Brentari 2011; Wheeler 2006) because the “origin of life” he suggests ends up making a theological claim for causality, unlike Darwin whose experiential claim is for adaptive rules (Kozintsev 2018).

Given the long tradition of Bateson and Wiener where cybernetics is integrated with the human sciences, we make more progress if we adopt the approach of Communication Theory (Third Order Cybernetics) and join the dialogue with Søren Brier (2008, 2009; Thellefsen et al. 2011). This synergistic approach alternatively assumes that (1) human beings make systems [life is process = Context: organism is environment; neg-entropy], that (2) an open system creates “energy” [life is apperception = Choice: environment is organism; entropy]. Heidegger’s synoptic version is Sein-zum-Tode [being-toward-death]. His phenomenological model of semiotic choice of context [Dasein] is based on the Greek teleological concept of individual human existence [tóde ti] (Lanigan 2015d, 2016).

The challenge of our thematic comparison today centers on the Gestalt of synergism (phenomenology) and antagonism (positivism) of the Human and the Machine, that is, Communication Theory (where choice is contingency) and Information Theory (where choice is uncertainty). Of course, the “machine” is now a dead metaphor for the Nineteenth Century conception of “animal”. This is to say bluntly, humans make machines, but machines cannot make a human being. Figure 8.20 provides a summary of the current status of our understanding of Communicology as the linguistic modeled sign-system that explains human comportment as a higher order system than those systems created by humans, i.e., machines with artificial languages and functions (Lanigan 1997, 2007, 2008, 2013, 2019; Ruesch and Bateson 1951; Ruesch and Kees 1972; Ruesch 1972, 1975). Figures 8.19 and 8.20 summarizes the key features of Communicology, defined by the method of semiotic phenomenology, that constitute a “third order” cybernetic model of human communication systems (speech/language) and all thought systems that derive from them (logic/mathematic) in concrete forms (Ashby 1956; Bateson 1972, 1979, 1991, 2005; Dreyfus 1972/1992, 2001; Dreyfus and Dreyfus 1986; Heims 1993; Wiener 1915, 1948a, b, 1950, 1953).

Fig. 8.19

System summary for communication and information theories

Fig. 8.20

Communicology (semiotic phenomenology) as third order cybernetics

8.4 Thematic: Semiotic Phenomenology Contextualizes Cybernetic Communication

My analysis suggests that Semiotic Phenomenology (contingency Choice-of-Context) already constitutes what is frequently named “Third Order Cybernetics”. Here, logic and semiotic are normative systems of conscious human experience (regulative rules in logic systems; rules/results). By comparison, the domain of “First Order Cybernetics” (machine systems) and “Second Order Cybernetics” (bio-social systems) is a reductive (Context-of-Choice uncertainty) of physical instrumentality (constitutive rules in logic systems; causes/effects). Here, logic and semiotic are hypostatized systems of “artificial intelligence” and “biological determinism” where observed action is a mere analogy for the cognitive capacity (Peirce’s sense) for choosing.

In line with this analysis (Fig. 8.8), I further suggest that semiotic and logic are primarily synergistic (curvilinear conjunction), rather than antagonistic (linear disjunction). This is to say, the dynamic structure of human thinking is a synergism that begins with the usual triadic semiotic A > C > B which is the series apposition of A [Peircian Thirdness] to the binary pair C [Peircian Firstness] and B [Peircian Secondness]. These relations are illustrated in Figs. 8.11, 8.12 and 8.13 and discussed in Peircian rhetorical terms by Shapiro (1988).

When embodied in a living system Gestalt, the Semiotic Triad moves in time as well as space, producing a logic known as a Helix or binary analogue logic by conjunction. As such, the logic progresses in space, a Quadratic Logic A > C > C > B is produced as a disjunction (Hampden-Turner 1981: 148–151). In Roman Jakobson’s model of communication theory there is both eidetic and empirical evidence that the Triadic Semiotic (Fig. 8.11) produces part of the synergism as Distinctive Features, while the Quadratic Logic (Fig. 8.21) produces part of the synergism as Redundancy Features. With Jakobson, the binary analogue of contingency (change; metaphor) precedes the digital binary of uncertainty reduction (entropy; metonymy). Figure 8.22 provides a summary of the types of application that communicology theory and method has in contemporary systems domains.

Fig. 8.21

Summary of semiotic phenomenology logic

Fig. 8.22

Applied systems analysis in communicology

Jakobson’s communicology model emerges clearly and consistently from the tradition of French Philosophy and Human Science as the synergism of the Triadic and Quadratic models. It is historically known as rhetorical or tropic logic [Rhétorique générale], but is currently best recognized by Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s designation as Chiasm, usually symbolized as the ratio A: B: b: a, that is, a rhetorical model of the logic model call a syllogism: A > C > C > B. The key point here is that a double articulation at three levels [reflective, reflexive, reversible] is produced by the synergism such that apposition A (Code) generates a second apposition a (Meta-Code) in time and space that neither an animal nor a machine can produce (Lanigan 2018c). The simplest example of the human synergism is the use of nonce signs, which I have called blanks up to this point (following Husserl and Peirce). A blank or nonce-sign (Direct Perspective) is used to present (Meta-Perspective) the absence of an object (Meta-Meta-Perspective); we rhetorically short-hand the logic process of Description, Reduction, and Interpretation (Fig. 8.23) by saying “I have an idea”. Umberto Eco makes the same analysis by defining semiotics as the “capacity to lie”, which is to say to create a category blank to establish a relational series (Lanigan 1992, 2015b). Side comment example here, because reading [third level modeling] is so difficult with blanks, we invent fillers like commas, etc. to keep the harmony of the series. So, a “lie” is just shorthand for the conjunction of series and blanks that are an analogue logic [plus/minus; more/less = metaphor] that constrains a digital logic [zero/one; first/second = metonymy] (Nielson 2015; Pattee and Rączaszek-Leonardi 2012; Venancio 2017a, b). Finally, I should note that a fundamental part of Immanuel Kant’s, Edmund Husserl’s, and Charles S. Peirce’s phenomenology is grounded in the nature of logic series and blanks and their time/place [“dash”] in human apperception (Comay and Ruda 2018). As depicted in Fig. 8.24, these philosophers came to see the chiasm that “phenomenology is the logic of embodied phenomena”–what has been appropriately called the abduction of “self-reference and re-entry” that we experience in human communication (Kaufman 2001, p. 102).

Fig. 8.23

Semiotic domains of the human science of phenomenology

Fig. 8.24

The semiotic phenomenology of human choice and context as contingency