Newsgroups: bit.listserv.qualrs-l
Date:         Fri, 21 Aug 1992 21:05:00 CDT
              <QUALRS-L@UGA.BITNET>
From:         Gary Shank <P30GDS1@NIU.BITNET>
Subject:      long-winded answer to jean

Well, Jean, I think I found just the thing to help answer your
question about how unique semiotics really is.  My answer --
semiotics is so radically different from most approaches, that
it serves as the legitimate basis for the philosophical under-
pinnings of qualitative research.  This is a big order to defend,
but let me at least start the process.
You rightly point out that the current 'tug' in foundational ideas
in social science research is between "realism2' and 'idealism.'
Notice that I said realism2.  That is to distinguish what we call
realism from a much older idea of realism, which we will call
realism1.
'Realism1' is the idea that the world is intelligible *on its own
terms* and that we as human inquirers try to discern that intell-
igibility from the act of extending our ordinary and commonplace
understandings.  Another way to say that the world is intelligible
on its own terms is to say that at least some things in the world
are intrinsically significant, or that they mean something indep-
endently of some act of meaning-making.  The alternative to
'realism1' is nominalism.
Semiotics believes in realism1, not realism2.  To help understand
the difference between realism1 and nominalism, let me quote from
page 20 of Vince Colapietro's excellent book *Peirce's Approach
to the Self*
"For Peirce, at least some things are intrinscially significant.
These things or complexes possess the status of signhood not from
some external agency but because of their irreducibly triadic
form.  Nominalism, for Peirce, is the view that the fabric of
intelligibility we weave by our interpretations of experience is
simply spun out of our own minds....An implication of saying that
nothing is inherently a sign is that we initiate the process of
semiosis by taking up some stance toward a complex.  In contrast,
an implication of asserting that there are signs independent of
our interpretations is that, at least in some cases, we are not
the initiators of but the respondents to a world that is always
already meaningful to some degree."
About 500-600 years or so ago in the history of inquiry, nominalism
won out totally over realism1.  Ever since descartes and ultimately
Kant we tend to say that the intelligibility of the world is an act
of human creation, and that we make meaning in some sense.  Realism2
says that from basic data facts we build a picture of the world that
becomes less and less true as we get further from the 'basics'
(this is the realims underlying positivism) and idealism says that
intelligibility, since it starts in consciousness, resides there
completely, and that in order to understand the world, we have to
construct that understanding.
So, here is my answer to the typology problem.  All of the social
construciton models and most of the phenomology models are based
on idealism, and many of the 'scientific' models are based on
realism2.  Semiotics is practically alone in contemporary thought
by citing credence to realism1.  We believe that it is not
postivism that is the enemy, but nominalism.  But our models of
inquiry are so unselfconsciously nominalistic that it is hard for
us to conceive of other ways.
In summary, the simplification move is not to categorize.  That is
actually a nominal move.  Instead, it is to make a decision.  Do
things in the world mean things independently of the act of assign-
ing meanign to them?  If you say 'no,' then you are a nominalist,
and you have to then decide between realism2 and idealism.  If you
say 'yes' then welcome to the semiotic camp....
Gary Shank
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