On the Instrumentality and Semiotic Agency of Signs, Tools, and Intelligent Machines

摘要

In instrumental theories of the sign, from antiquity {Cratylus) and the Middle Ages (Scholasticism) to 20th century semiotics, signs have been defined as tools of thought and communicative action. C. S. Peirce's semiotics is based on the anti-instrumental premise that signs, in the process of semiosis, are not instruments but semiotic agents acting with a semiotic autonomy of their own. Although instruments are signs, signs are not mere instruments. The "user" of a sign cannot act with it as an instrument because the sign has an autonomy of its own, which the instrument has not. The relevance of this radical theory of semiotic agency to the semiotics of computers and robots is examined in the current contexts of language philosophy, cognitive linguistics, R. Millikan's teleosemiotics, computer semiotics, and evolutionary robotics.