Two distinct talks on a common theme: Peirce’s Semiotics and the Arts
Bellucci: “Legisigns and Their Variants”
In his celebrated Languages of Art (1968) Nelson Goodman said that any theory of art must do some preliminary work into the theory of symbols or notational systems. A crucial element in Goodman’s theory of notation is the distinction between a “character” and the “instance” of a character. This, as Goodman recognizes, is the distinction made by Charles S. Peirce between a “type” sign and a “token” sign. In this talk, I will reconstruct the steps by means of which Peirce arrived at his type/token distinction in the context of his classification of signs.

Stjernfelt: “Propositions and Artworks”
Much work has been done using aspects of Peirce’s semiotics in the analysis of artworks in literature, painting, film, etc., oftentimes using the icon-index-symbol distinction. Rarely, however, has the central role of propositions, or Dicisigns, in Peirce been acknowledged in the art context. Here, I shall address the role of propositions in artworks along two axes: 1) the role of Ingardian “quasi-propositions” in fictional artworks; 2) the deliberate modernist aesthetic strategy of weakening or blurring propositional structure of the artwork – which may coincidentally have contributed to the failing recognition of artistic propositions more generally.

Již den před tím, 14. 12., proběhne seminář na Fakultě humanitních studií UK).

Workshop Peirce’s Semiotics and the Arts