Otherness and dialogue in the sign, precisely between the interpreted sign and the interpretant sign, constitute the structure of sign, including the sign that is the I: alterity and dialogue are constitutive characteristics of the I in the semiosic process of actualization as I. This is a continuous responsive process that implies the relation of otherness both internally and externally with respect to the process itself of actualization as I. In other words, the relation of otherness or alterity is a dialogic relation that already implies in itself a responsive and responsible interpretation with regard to the interior other (or others) of self, as much as the exterior other (or others). And it is important to underline that there is no interruption or natural barrier between the responsive and responsible behaviour of self, on the one hand, and the other selves beyond one’s own self, on the other (Petrilli 2013).
Following Peirce, from the perspective of human social semiotics (or anthroposociosemiotics), our gaze on sign behaviour must embrace the fields of ethics, aesthetics and ideology. Thus equipped the logico-cognitive boundaries of semiosic processes must be extended to contemplate problems of an axiological order. This approach implies focusing on the human capacity for evaluation, critique and responsibility in the direction of what we propose to call ‘semioethics’ (see Petrilli and Ponzio 2003, 2008, 2010), or what Victoria Welby designated with the term ‘significs’ (Welby 1983, 1985; Petrilli 2009). Welby and Peirce were in direct contact with each through an intense epistolary correspondence during the last decade of their lives during which they discussed and modelled their ideas together, in constant dialogue with each other (Hardwick 1977).
Welby privileged the term ‘significs’ for her theory of sign and meaning to underline the scope of her approach and its special focus on the problem of ‘significance’, that is, on meaning in its ethical dimension. Therefore Welby’s focus was on the relation between signs and values, theory of meaning and theory of values, axiology. In his own studies on signs, Charles Morris (1964) too focused on problems of significance beyond signification, therefore on problems of an axiological order. Welby’s term ‘significs’ indicates her insistent concern for such aspects as the value, pertinence, and signifying scope of signs, that is, their significance. This presupposes special attention for the human being’s involvement in the life of signs considered not only in abstractly theoretical terms but also in emotional and pragmatic terms.
3. From reason to reasonableness
Coherently with his pragmatism or ‘pragmaticism’ as he preferred in a subsequent phase of his research, Peirce developed his cognitive semiotics in close relation to the study of human social behaviour and human interests globally. From this perspective the problem of knowledge necessarily presupposes problems of an axiological order. Peirce introduced the concept of reasonableness which he described in terms of an open-ended dialectic-dialogic signifying process. He thematizes the development of thought processes through ongoing semiosic processes in becoming oriented by the logic of otherness, unbiased by prejudice: an unfinalizable sign process regulated by the principle of continuity or synechism.