Research Catalog

Title

What distinguishes human understanding? / John Deely.

Author

Deely, John N.

Publication

South Bend, Ind. : St. Augustine's Press, 2002.

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Holdings

Details

Description

xiv, 178 pages; 24 cm

Summary

• "In 1982, the author of this book issued a "promissory note" of just the sort that analytic philosophers of the twentieth century have led us to expect will come to nothing. This particular "note" occurred as a passing remark in the concluding chapter of his Introducing Semiotic (Indiana University Press) to the effect that it would be possible to establish the classical distinction between sense and intellect by means of the analysis of the role of relations in the action of signs.".
• "Provoked by the remark of a colleague that, could this promissory note be fulfilled, it would provide "the first essay worth reading on the subject since the days of Locke and Hume," Deely decided to break with the analytic tradition of leaving promissory notes unfulfilled and to develop the alleged possible proof in full.".
• "A colloquium convened by Professor Norma Tasca, in the Fall of 1995 in Porto, Portugal, provided Deely with the occasion. His lengthy essay for the occasion, ponderously titled "The Intersemiosis of Perception and Understanding," became the initial draft of this book.".
• "Especially in the circles of English-speaking philosophers, where a mere difference of degree between animal intelligence and human understanding has come to be largely taken for granted and philosophy has been reduced to a play of linguistic signs without regard for the dependency of those signs upon other signs whose play is far from linguistic, the work is bound to stimulate considerable debate."--BOOK JACKET.

Subjects

• Semiotics
• Philosophy of mind
• Comprehension

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references (p. 144-167) and index.

Contents

1. Requirements of the Discussion -- 2. Foundations in Nature for the Semiotic Point of View -- 3. The Semiosis of Sensation -- 4. From Sensation to Umwelt as Species-Specific Objective World -- 5. How Is the Distinctiveness of Semiosis in General Possible? -- 6. A Semiosis beyond Perception -- 7. The Dependency of Understanding on Perceptual Semiosis -- 8. Language and Understanding as a Single Semiosis Exapted -- 9. The Semiotic Animal -- App. Definition of Umwelt.

ISBN

1890318973 (alk. paper)

LCCN

00008721

OCLC

• ocm43706642
• SCSB-3936112

Owning Institutions

Columbia University Libraries