Two steps toward semiotic capacity: Out of the muddy concept of language
As John Deely has suggested in his Four ages of understanding, philosophia in practice is semiotic process, an engagement in the through the action of signs. But this observation leads us to a point of contention with Deely's treatment of semiotic process itself and its connection with the more widely understood notions about in our time. Specifically, there are major difficulties with the treacherous formal and popular nomenclature about the phenomenon of and its philosophical connection to the semiology of Saussure and theory of C. S. Peirce. Our issue is with the formal use of the term language centrally and often in its technical sense as an analytical system — a way of seeing or looking at the world that is prior to and removed from the communicative sense of language — while at the same also informally employing the term in its common and practical sense as a system for information exchanges. In fact, Deely's comprehensive annotated index helps resolve some of the issue. But taken in the context of Deely's broader argument, the problem with the definition and use of the term language somewhat stifles the attempt to revise appreciation of our arrival at the time of the sign as a species-specific capacity.