Semiotic Conductist – Wikipedia, free encyclopedia

Morris contributions [ To edit ]

Charles William Morris, a disciple of Charles Sanders Peirce and the American pragmatic school, did a job very in the line of his predecessors renewing the postulates of his school, both in the definition of semiotics and in the concepts he encompasses.

Semiotics as a metacience [ To edit ]

Morris considered that semiotics had a double relationship with science, so it was another science and an instrument to study the rest of science; A metacience, therefore. He considered that only through the study of the system of signs on which a science is based can be systematized, purified and simplified, to free man from all the imperfections that use language.

TRIAL CONCEPTION OF THE SIGN [ To edit ]

Starting from his two most mentioned works; Signs, Language and Behavior (1962) and Fundamentals of Signs Theory (1985) We could affirm that this author vertebra a behavioral semiotics project. Based on its contributions, semiosis would be a process produced by three related elements: “Sygnic vehicle” , what acts as a sign (a word, a drawing, etc); “Designated” , what the sign refers; and “Interpreting” , the effect it produces in a specific interpreter; The effect being a psychological-cognitive process that could result in a change in attitude or behavior. After all the rupture that supposes with structural semiotics, both the figure of the final interpreters of the process and that of the objects of the real world, denotatum (that is alluded to and really exists; a sign can refer to a designatum the Denotatum of which it does not exist, such as Unicorn), are outside the semiosis process.

SEMIOSIS DIMENSIONS [ To edit ]

Morris defines three dimensions within the behavioral conception of semiiosis: l A pragmatic dimension , that relationship of the signs with their interpreters through their interprets; l to semantic dimension , that is, the relationship of signs with objects; and The syntactic dimension , the relationship of signs with themselves as a system.

Study semiiosis as behavior [ To edit ]

Behavioral definition of the sign [ To edit ]

Morris, therefore, recognizes an unavoidable parallelism between behavioral theories and semiotic processes that is illustrated by example of Pavlov’s dog (which begins to salivate when he hears the auditory stimulus that announces the food) to build a behavioral definition of the sign: “If something (a) governs the behavior towards a objective in a similar (but not identical) objective to how anything else (b) would govern behavior towards the same objective in a situation in which it was observed, then it is a sign”

Parts of the behavioral sign [ To edit ]

The scientist differentiates three parts of the behavioral sign: The preparatory sign , the one that is not revealed as a complete sign with all its significance, but as a first intellection of the signing process that “prepares” the interpreter to suggest his response; l available to answer , which occurs when the significance of the sygnical vehicle is revealed in all its entirety and an attempt to action can be given; and The response series , the achievement of actions to which it drags an already understood sign, a final sign that closes the sygnical process.

(Morris refers to Peircian interpreters as immediate, dynamic and final, respectively)

Other concepts [ To edit ]

Among other terms that Morris introduces in his behavioral theory of the sign, the family of behavior stands out, which defines as a set of signs that trigger similar behavior; It emphasizes the concepts of unisituational and interpersonal sign with those of plurisituational and personal sign (typical of schizophrenics). There are also vague signs, which lead to a dubitative response, unequivocal signs, universal signs and synonym signs.

See also [ To edit ]

References [ To edit ]

• Morris, C. (1962). Signs, language and behavior.
• Morris, C. (1985). Theory of signs fundaments.