Torkild Thellefsen

Royal School of Library and Information Science · IVA

In the field of philosophy of technology, the concept of mediation is central to understanding how technology shapes human experience and behavior. Our aim in this paper is to contribute to the understanding of technological mediation, in particular how andwhy it is possible. Technologicalmediation occurs within a mediation space between the techno...

Peirce`s semiotics is eminently open because it is truly general. Library and Information Science (LIS) can benefit from the application of Peirce`s semiotics offering a (meta) analytical framework to define its central concepts and to compare, otherwise not comparable, concepts within diverse sub-fields of LIS. We endow the concept of information...

In his seminal article “Metaphor and Theory Change: What is `Metaphor ́ a metaphor for?” (1993, [1979]), Richard Boyd describes a certain class of metaphors within science, namely, the theory-constitutive metaphors (henceforth the TCMs); this class of metaphors, Boyd explains, plays an important role in the formulation and development of theories b...

Peirce’s category of Firstness is first and fundamental. Without Firstness, we can say, nothing can (later) be – no time, no space, no things, no processes, no growth, no regularities, and no thoughts – hence, nothing of which we can ever conceive. However, despite the fundamentality of Peirce’s category of Firstness, we still do not believe that i...

Charles Peirce provided a few, but interesting we believe, remarks about metaphor. Aristotle on the other hand developed a theory of metaphor that, to this day has been, and still is, influential (even though his theory, especially within recent years, also has been heavily criticized, e.g., by Lakoff, George & Mark Johnson. 1980. Metaphors we live...

Most of us are surrounded by and interact with technological artefacts daily. We do this to achieve practical ends, to be informed, to be entertained, and for numerous other purposes. Sometimes highly trained specialists in hospitals use sophisticated technological artefacts to examine us or to perform complicated surgery on our bodies. Technologic...

This article offers an interpretation of Peirce's pan-semeiotic view of the universe. According to Peirce, the entire universe is composed of signs or processes of signification (see for example CP 5.448 footnote). The consequence of this can be seen as twofold: processes of signification have a naturalistic foundation and the universe has an inher...

In this article, the authors re-visit, with Val Larsen, the use of Peircean icons and symbols in print advertising and thereby find (some) formal conditions concerning its images. Even though they are inspired by Val Larsen’s research program the authors are also critical of it. Hence, they set out to demonstrate how Val Larsen overlooks crucial pa...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to formulate an analytical framework for the information concept based on the semiotic theory. Design/methodology/approach The paper is motivated by the apparent controversy that still surrounds the information concept. Information, being a key concept within LIS, suffers from being anchored in various incomp...

Hitherto, there has been no book that attempted to sum up the breadth of Umberto Eco’s work and it importance for the study of semiotics, communication and cognition. There have been anthologies and overviews of Eco’s work within Eco Studies; sometimes, works in semiotics have used aspects of Eco’s work. Yet, thus far, there has been no overview of...

In this article, the authors re-visit, with Val Larsen, the use of Peircean icons and symbols in print advertising and thereby find (some) formal conditions concerning its images. Even though they are inspired by Val Larsen's research program the authors are also critical of it. Hence, they set out to demonstrate how Val Larsen overlooks crucial pa...

In this article, we try to contribute to the new discipline Forensic Semiotics – a discipline introduced by the Canadian polymath Marcel Danesi. We focus on clues as information and criminal investigative processes as inferential. These inferential (and Peircean) processes have a certain complexity consisting of the interrelation between the collat...

The American polyhistor Charles Sanders Peirce stated that association is the only active force in the mind; and since any meaning of a brand is created through countless associations among the brand users, branding seems to be a cognitive vis-a-vis semeiotic process. In literature on brands the concept of association is by no means new; however, i...

The field of Library and Information Science (LIS) suffers from a fragmented view on information. Within LIS there are three dominating perspectives, which operates with three different information concepts. The paper introduces a semeiotic inspired concept of information, which is able to replace the other information concepts in LIS offering a un...

Both Umberto Eco and Charles S. Peirce have been concerned with the notion of background knowledge. Eco refers to background knowledge as the encyclopedia; Peirce’s term of reference is collateral experience. The aim of this article is to investigate the degree to which these two concepts are comparable. We focus on one major metaphysical issue, vi...

Both Umberto Eco and Charles S. Peirce have been concerned with the notion of background knowledge. Eco refers to background knowledge as the encyclopedia; Peirce's term of reference is collateral experience. The aim of this article is to investigate the degree to which these two concepts are comparable. We focus on one major metaphysical issue, vi...

What is the relation between emotion, information, and knowledge? The aim of the paper is to focus on the meaning creation process, which involves emotion, information, and knowledge. The paper shows how the meaning creation process is an intricate relation between information and knowledge, how information is the catalyst for knowledge, and how kn...

According to the philosopher and scientist Charles Peirce (1839–1914) phenomenology is fundamental to all scientific inquiry and association is the only force that existswithin the intellect. However, Peirce only gave his reader a hint about the relationship between phenomenology and association. In this articlewewill try to follow that hint and po...

This paper is a theoretical analysis of the cognitive free-fall metaphor, used within the cognitive view, as a model for explaining the communication process between a generator and a receiver of a message. Its aim is to demonstrate that the idea of a cognitive free fall taking place within this communication process leads to apparent theoretical p...

For the last 3-4 years Martin Thellefsen, Bent Sørensen and Torkild Thellefsen have investigated into the foundation of information within Library & Information Science (LIS), and found, not surprisingly, that though information is at the core of the research field, little consensus is seen about how to define or delimit a general notion of the con...

Library and information science (LIS), and in particular its subfield Knowledge Organization (KO), has always had a particular interest in the development of better systems for information retrieval through documents, while at the same time maintaining a particular focus on users’ information behavior. The very raison d’être and uniqueness of LIS l...

Purpose – The purpose of the paper is to examine and compare Nicholas Belkin's information concept and his concept of communication with the authors' semeiotic inspired communication model – the Dynacom. Design/methodology/approach – The authors compare the two communication models by comparing the requirements given by Belkin and the conditions o...

The aim of this paper is to present a pragmatic inspired branding method called a value profile, within the theory of cognitive branding. The method is theoretical anchored in Charles S. Peirce's pragmatic theory and can be used to identify the core values of brands and also identify the possible consequences of how these values influence people to...

How does a brand become meaningful, and how does certain lifestyle values become integrated into a brand so that the brand appears like a trustworthy statement? The paper investigates the ongoing negotiation processes between brand maker and brand users as a key to understand how brands become meaningful. The result of the negotiation processes is...

We present our semeiotic-inspired concept of information as 1 of 3 important elements in meaning creation, the 2 other concepts being emotion and cognition. We have the inner world (emotion); we have the outer world (information); and cognition mediates between the two. We analyze the 3 elements in relation to communication and discuss the semeioti...

The organization of information and the process of seeking information are fundamental activities, and thus fields of stud)', related to library and information science (LIS). Both endeavors are pragmatic in the sense that the ideas of information seeking behavior and the process of organizing information relates to some ideas of how users tend to...

In this article we suggest a possible relation between C. S. Peirce's (1839-1914) concept of metaphor and abduction. To our knowledge Peirce never did analyze nor even mention , the two concepts in the same context. But we understand the hypoiconic metaphor as rooted in the abductive mode of inference; the hypoiconic metaphor is part of an intricat...

There exist two kinds of fundamental signs and significance-effects. A normative fundamental sign and a sub-cognitive fundamental sign; a normative significance-effect and a sub-cognitive significance-effect, also called quasi-empathy. The normative fundamental sign and significance-effect appear within the scientific knowledge domain, where there...

From First to Third via Cybersemiotics is a festschrift made to honour the great scholarly work of Professor Søren Brier. The festschrift contains articles written by international scholars within academic fields such as: semiotics, library and information science, 2. order cybernetics, ethics in science, metaphysics. All these different yet relate...

Any great new theoretical framework has an epistemological and an ontological aspect to its philosophy as well as an axiological one, and one needs to understand all three aspects in order to grasp the deep aspiration and idea of the theoretical framework. Presently, there is a widespread effort to understand C. S. Peirce's (1837-1914) pragmaticist...

The paper presents the concept significance-effect outlined in a Peircean inspired communication model, named DynaCom. The significance effect is a communicational effect; the formal conditions for the release of the significanceeffect are the following: (1) Communication has to take place within a universe of discourse; (2) Utterer and interpreter...

How are we able to construct truly realistic representations of knowledge organizations (KOs)? The paper introduces and defines the knowledge profile as a method to investigate the epistemological basis of any KO to outline the consequences this basis has upon its research object. The knowledge profile is inspired by C. S. Peirce’s doctrine of prag...

The seven short comments presented here investigate branding from a pragmatic semeiotic point of view. Comment 1 touches upon the brand in an extreme scholastic realistic point of view. Comment 2 focuses on how the brand becomes represented through its replica. Comment 3 investigates if a threshold of attraction exists, a level beyond which someone...

According to C. S. Peirce evolution is a manifestation of the progressive reason-- a growth in the concrete reasonableness; this Peirce used synonymously with Summum Bonum, the highest good. Evolution is not a value neutral process; rather it is an aesthetic-moral process. The true scientist is marked by the living telos of reason. He is attracted...

The aim of the article is to present and discuss the concept of semeiotic constructivism, which is a pragmaticistic inspired method. Semeiotic constructivism has nothing to do with social constructivism but is a method that can construct meaning of concepts by implanting a telos in the concept or a certain quality in the artifact, in order to devel...

The article investigates emotions from a semeiotic perspective. The American philosopher Charles S. Peirce (1839-1914) defined the emotion as a legisign, which is a lawsign (cf. Savan 1981). Since the emotion is a general sign, it can be valorized; it can be identified, communicated, and re-experienced. Based on this semeiotic-inspired definition,...

C. S. Peirce had no theory of metaphor and provided only few remarks concerning the trope. Yet, some of these remarks seem to suggest that Peirce saw metaphor as fundamental to consciousness and thought. In this article we sketch a possible connection between metaphor and cognition; we understand Peircean metaphor as rooted in abduction; it is part...

The aim of this article is to investigate the emotional effects commercials cause on the interpreting mind in the so-called moment of exposure (MoE). Furthermore, we investigate what happens in the aftermath of the MoE, the after rationalisation process, which we name the Significance-effect (SiE), this is the process where the emotional level caus...

This paper investigates how the pragmatic semiotics of C. S. Peirce can be used as a way of analyzing brands as signs, containing emotional elements that can establish brand communities and branding as the process of establishing brand communities. During the branding process the values, which we call the supra symbolic layer of the brand and the s...

The article investigates the question of how we ascribe meaning to artefacts (understood in its broadest sense, also including brands). The short answer is that meaning is ascribed to brands and artefact through an ongoing negotiating process between an utterer and an interpreter. This means that semeiosis is communication in its broadest sense. Th...

The significance-effect is the right effect of meaning caused upon an interpreting mind. The right effect is understood as the right interpretation of an intended meaning caused by a sign communicated by an utterer. In the article, which is inspired by Charles S. Peirce's doctrine of signs, his semeiotics and his theory of communication, we account...

The aim of the article is to further define the significance-effect in relation to the American philosopher Charles S. Peirce concept of interpretants. An interpretant is an effect of meaning that occurs whenever a mind becomes exposed to a sign. However, the significance-effect only occurs when the interpreter truly understands the information com...

We investigate how C. S. Peirce's theory of metaphor can provide us with an insight into concept formation. It is interesting that Peirce does not write much about the metaphor; still his suggestion that the basic mechanism of metaphor is that of parallelism is very interesting. This seems to suggest that metaphor is important to Peirce however, no...

According to Charles S. Peirce we have to take responsibility for our scientific concepts. Having introduced the scientific world to a concept we have to revise it whenever further investigation alters the meaning of the concept. This article revises the definition of the fundamental sign, a concept developed by me and thus my responsibility. I de...

The present paper presents a philosophical approach to knowledge organization, proposing the pragmatic doctrine of C.S. Peirce as basic analytical framework for knowledge domains. The theoretical framework discussed is related to the qualitative branch of knowledge organization theory i.e. within scope of Hjørland's domain analytical view (Hjørland...

The article aims to make a knowledge profile of C. S. Peirces (19391914) concept of esthetics. Peirce placed esthetics in the normative sciences alongside ethics and logic. By placing esthetics within the normative sciences in his classification of the sciences from 1902, Peirce also defined esthetics as a theoretical science, as a science of disco...

This article is structured so that it offers the reader some of the basic concepts from C. S. Peirce’s pragmatic semiotics and G. Lakoff’s cognitive semantics in order to provide linguistic tools to describe and elucidate the complexity of indexing, and hopefully to clarify and improve the foundation of indexing. The article is also a further devel...

The aim of the article is to clarify the occupational therapy (OT) concept occupation. In order to do this we apply the knowledge profile, which is a method developed to make realistic representations of knowledge organisations. However, before we can make any representations of OT's knowledge organisation, we must identify the basic qualities of O...

According to Peirce, an idea consists of three elements: an intrinsic feeling, an energy whereby it can affect other ideas and a tendency to bring along other ideas. Based on this definition and the idea that symbols grow through use and experience, and further that knowledge seems to be organized around a fundamental sign, which is unique for the...

The very essence of Peircean semiotics is the process through which an object is rep- resented by a sign and creates another sign. This means that Peircean semiotics bas i- cally constitutes a theory of representation. This implies that the object and the sign cannot be the same and hence sign displacements occur in the cognitive processes. When di...