Pragmatism and the Forms of Sense by Robert E Innis

Pragmatism and the Forms of Sense by Robert E Innis

Making sense of the world around us is a process involving both semiotic and material mediation--the use of signs and sign systems (preeminently language) and various kinds of tools (technics). As we use them, we experience them subjectively as extensions of our bodily selves and objectively as instruments for accessing the world with which we interact. Emphasizing this bipolar nature of language and technics, understood as intertwined forms of sense, Robert Innis studies the multiple ways in which they are rooted in and transform human perceptual structures in both their individual and social dimensions. The book foregrounds and is organized around the notion of semiotic embodiment. Language and technics are viewed as probes upon which we rely, in which we are embodied, and that themselves embody and structure our primary modes of encountering the world. While making an important substantive contribution to present debates about the biasing of perception by language and technics, Innis also seeks to provide a methodological model of how complementary analytical resources from American pragmatist and various European traditions can be deployed fruitfully in the pursuit of new insights into the phenomenon of meaning-making.

“This is a work of first-rate scholarship and deep-cutting philosophy, replete with important insights and fruitful suggestionsThe author brings into sharp focus, above all else, language and what he calls (following Ernst Cassirer) technics by drawing upon diverse traditions—principally the pragmatism of Peirce and Dewey, the phenomenology of Husserl, Heidegger, and Merleau-Ponty, the work of Cassirer and Langer in the philosophy of symbolism, and that of Bühler and others in linguistics. He shows how these and related phenomena (for example, perception, action, agency, and consciousness) are at once fully embodied and irreducibly symbolic. His explorations of linguistic and other forms of sense ought to be of interest to a wide audience.”

—Vincent Colapietro, Penn State University

Robert E. Innis is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Massachusetts at Lowell.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780271028392
ISBN 10	0271028394
Title	Pragmatism and the Forms of Sense
Author	Robert E Innis
Series	American And European Philosophy
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	Pennsylvania State University Press
Year published	2002-12-15
Number of pages	280
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.