DEEPLY MADE OF SIGNS The Semiotic Nature of Worldviews

INTRODUCTION
I have long sought to understand the working benefit of 'worldview philosophy' for artists. Ever since I wrote "there is perhaps no concept more important to artistry than that of worldviews" in a draft of an early art manifesto, I have questioned that assumption, to make sure it held up to scrutiny. I mean, if it is really relevant to artistry (or experimental artistry, at least), then I want to figure out how, and through what methodology that artists can implement in their own practice and study.

'Worldview philosophy' has good company. Kant, Hegel, Kierkegaard, Dilthey, Nietzche, Husserl, Jaspers, Heidegger, Marx, Engels, Freud, Jung and others, have all chimed in in small and large ways. Overall, the aspect of worldview philosophy most relevant to my concerns in this essay generally considers that humanity, through its history as a whole, has undergone large-scale cultural fulcrums of evolution where collective patterns of working belief systems, modes of communication, and overall background that determines the contours of meaning fundamentally change over time. Lump these three together and you get a 'worldview'. Development of this kind does not happen all at once in the world, but rather is determined culturally, through temporal trajectories that are indexed to the workings of particular cultures, in their time, place, particular contexts, even political and sociological variables.

Worldview philosophy says, essentially, that there have been a number of measurable periods between fulcrum points, each of which exhibited patterns and characterisics similiar enough to warrant a name of some sort. The argument within the field of worldview philosophy comes down to terminology, with one group using one set of terms and scales of measurement, vs other groups that use different sets and different scales. The simplest set is perhaps offered by Jean Gebser (though he is the least-famous of the thinkers already mentioned, which will likely change in the coming decades). His worldviews were, sequentially, archaic, magic, mythic, rational, and existential/integral. These span large amounts of time (hundreds as well as thousands of years). Each involve unique value systems, interface between human and the wider world, objects of human use, and dynamics at play in human belief. His work leaves that last worldview—existential/integral—somewhat vague, with specificity still to be worked out. We wrote at the edge of what we know about worldviews most emergent qualities.

Thus a further assumption held by some is that, today, a new worldview is emerging that some call 'integral'. The feeling is that this 'integral' worldview is the first such to realize that there have indeed been worldviews at play in the historical world, that there isn't one monolithic stance applicable to all situations or environments, that multiple worldviews exist in the world right now (and always), that one's worldview determines the meaning one develops and holds dear, and that the integral worldview allows other worldviews to have developmental validity, but that due to pluralism, a desire to transcend the limits of strict pluralism, a planet-centric moral imperative, as well as the capacity to make distinctions built upon a plethora of information in today's world (a reality never this overwhelming), the integral worldview holds preeminent place in the overall developmental spectrum. The integral worldview, if real, would be the most inclusive, most fully embodied, least partial of the worldviews yet to emerge. And it too will be transcended in the future by some deeper, wider worldview that looks upon integral as many now look upon pluralism—useful and right for its time and place, but in need of replacement given better, more moral and effective manners of looking at and processing the world. If history holds, then a worldview beyond integral is at least several hundred years away, though traces of it may exist now or in the near future.

THE ONLY PRACTICAL USE OF WORLDVIEW PHILOSOPHY
But here's the deal. For all practical intents and purposes, you can close your windows to all that wind. All of it can be noticed by not dwelt upon, felt but not drown within, save the simple assumption, which is shown valid from evidence, that however defined, drawn, or distinguished on a spectrum, you have a worldview, and that worldview is shared with other people. Plain and simple. Whether that group of others comprises your family, your friends, your neighborhood, your artist collective, your state or country, with your race, your sex, your gender, your level of maturity, your temperament, your belief system, your mythology, or whatever—just know that you have a worldview not fundamentally unique to you, at the core, but the details and dimensions of which are in fact unique to you. Your worldview has a distinct 'part-ness' of a larger whole. To simply acknowledge that you have a worldview, and that others have worldviews, is the only use of worldview philosophy that is directly helpful to art. Inquiring into the nature of your worldview can open a cleared interior space where new intuitions are sensed, but this ought be taken lightly, and artwork ought be made at every step possible along that journey. I assert this because, as I say below, while simply understanding that you possess a worldview seems, at the surface, of small consequence, in truth you can use that knowledge to make a deeper inquiry into "who am I?", and make artwork from the intuitions that emerge in that clearing.

Here is another simple assumption, easily demonstrated to be true. Humans make, manage, and interpret communicative signs. Whether through language, art, religion, history, science, folklore, the demands of civilization, sex, gesture, fashion, politics, or economics, humans in each case create sign (of varying complexity, coherance, clarity) and collectively cultivate symbolic laws (unique to each domain or context) that stand apart from the natural world, and are in fact independent of nature. To study how signs are made and managed in each domain is the study called semiotics. Semiotics, held broadly and practically, is far too important a field to be left to egg-head semioticians. This is important territory that goes to the heart of artistry, how aesthetic/artistic signs are made and operate in culture.

So let's dig into this more. The ability to operate semiotically appears native to every human, as far back as we can tell. Semiosis is built into the fabric of human beings. As David Naugle writes in Worldview: The History of a Concept (p. 292-296):

A defining trait of persons as persons who possess logos is the ability to use one thing to stand for another thing (aliquid stans pro aliquo), to section off one part of reality and employ it to refer to, mean, or stand for another part of reality. Most characteristically, human beings deploy sound in the form of speech to signify thoughts, feelings, and ideas as well as people, places, and things in the world. In turn they have developed a symbol system of letters, words, and written discourse to represent the same....

Fundamental communicative systems are in play with any human situation. This includes art, which (in each discipline) exhibits signs fashioned by artists that other people interpret, embody, and contemplate. Ponder this and consider how deep semiotics can penetrate into the fundamental workings of humans, and indeed into the heart of art-making. Again, Naugle:

Behold, then, the power of signs and symbols across the whole spectrum of reality and human existence. They permeate the physical universe; they are germane to all aspects of culture; they are essential to human thought, cognition, and communication; they are efficacious intruments of either truth or falsehood; they create symbolic worlds in which poeple live, move, and have their being. Indeed, a certain string of symbols possesses unique cultural power and determines the meaning of life. Those symbols I would designate a worldview. As an individuals's or culture's foundation and system of denotative signs, they are promulgated through countless communicative avenues and mysteriously find their way to the innermost regions of the heart. There they provide a foundation and interpretation of life. They inform the categories of consciousness. They are the putative object of faith and the basis for hope, however it may be concieved. They are embraces as true and offer a way of life. They are the essential source of individual and sociocultural security. They are personal and cultural structures that define human existence.

Thus one way to think of worldviews, the manner I now advocate, is that each are made of signs, these signs having individual and collective influences, and part of a larger sign-system particular to the needs and contours of a worldview, indeed form the background of all meaning deemed important (which is good definition of "worldview"). The signs and symbols laws penetrate right to the heart of that worldview, determine how it works, changes, and lives in the hearts of men and women. Or put simply, worldviews new and old are determined, practically speaking, by the signs in play. We know about a worldview, practically, by the signs that mark it. Which means that semiotics is the necessary and crucial bridge between worldviews and artwork, and that, crucially, the real question is not "what is my worldview?" but rather, "what are the signs I can use in my artwork that agree with my deepest intuitions?" For it is the latter question that is more fundamental due to the fact that the ingredients of what we call our "worldview" are the semiotic groupings/dynamics of that worldview. All of which follows from the general inquiry of "who am I?" which takes all of this into account and can function as a general operative inquiry at the heart of any kind of art-making.

THE PLAY OF AESTHETIC SIGNS
As I suggested in my essay Polysemy (PDF), semiotics is the overall dynamic that connects, however loosely, artist intuition (signifieds), the art's materials and sub-dynamics (signifiers), channel/frame of presentation of the whole artwork (syntax), and the audience's responses/reactions to the artwork (semantics).

Implicit in this dynamic are temporary states of consciousness (of whatever cause), the levels of development in all human intelligences (however grouped, modeled, and ordered), types of personality and gender dispositions, dimensions of subjective, intersubjective, objective, and interobjective, and sub-personality psychosexual drama of whatever matrix or weave.

Those aspects are implicit in the dynamic of semiotics (held in the broad platform I describe in the essay). And these aspects are also, for practical purposes, able to be simply assumed to be present in some capacity in every artist and art lover. In other words, only the most technical of philosophers and philosophies need pay any attention to these particulars. Artists need not know the ins and outs of what contemporary philosophers and even researchers posit as the working model of human consciousness. By all means explore that area if one is motivated to, but artwork that is directly based upon philosophy risks too strong of link with that philosophy, and also risks being a stillborn object, dead on arrival, due to the retroactive assumptions the artist is forced to hold.

Artists need only be able to witness phenemena arise in their awareness, and, if they like or are so moved, to make and manage signs of the aesthetic variety that define these signs as artwork, signs which accord with the phenemona thus witnessed, as much as possible. To the extent that study of an academic/philosophical bent is needed for artists, it is essentially that of art semiotics—the study of how aesthetic signs are made and managed, in the contemporary world as well as throughout history, around the world. For this becomes a study of how past artists used aesthetic signs to convey their worldview. This is tactile, particular, and founded upon connoisseurship.

The importance of the witness capacity (developed through both passive and active behavior) for artistry is akin to the puppeteer who works the strings of a marionette. Patient attention is required for the puppeteer to even recognize the possibilities of the puppet, how the arms, legs, head, and body can be manipulated. These are the most nuanced of physical/kinesthetic maneuvers. Once the marionette has witnessed the possibility of movement, that capacity for movement is forever available to him or her. You don't unlearn what you witness; you merely temporarily forget or misplace that awareness, if you lose it at all. With witness comes the ability to wave the hand.

WITNESS, THEN INTUITIVELY PRESERVE IN FORM
All of which is how aesthetic signs work. Once the artist (of whatever discipline) realizes his or her capacity to foster even the beginnings of an objective sign, or collection of signs (recognizable to the artist and the audience), then that capacity endures. Witness begets communication, which begets the exchange of meaning through the artwork object, resonant with audiences. The mystery of where artwork comes from is forever wedded to the capacity of artists to witness the interior and exterior world.

Thus the stage is set for artists to give intuitive utterance to a wider, deeper, more inclusive worldview. An integral worldview can be animated. It is a matter of semiotics. And where rubber meets road, it is a matter of signs. We indeed get our artist voices from being an engaged member of our culture, through the collective machinations that alchemically yield individuality, and individual artist voices. This means every artistic thought is a kind of sign, every artistic action/gesture is a kind of sign, every marking, scratch, note, color, maneuver, and play of materials is a sign. Some signs are more fundamental and significant than others, but all signs can potentially give fair hearing to the deep threads of human existance, if the signs are properly pitched.

Everything objectively contained in the artwork object ought be present for a reason of some kind if our artwork is going to be able to speak in a voice that penetrates the din of our everyday conventions and normal routines. An artist's voice, and their artwork, works when it is as if it has a language all its own. If an artists wants to be on the map, then the artist must develop the signs, as the potter works clay, to show the audience the directions home.

If life itself is a dynamic of leaving and returning to home, over and over again in new ways, and in different kinds of "home" then it is the artist's job to make and manage the signs that tell all the ways to go from here to there and back to here, on those levels. There are many paths, roads, and directions in today's world. Thus our art needs to answer that in order to make any kind of sense, and in order to resonate. It takes development on the part of the artist to witness what is present in the world, internally and externally. It takes study of how artists of the past and other cultures have fashioned artwork for that time, place, and worldview. And it takes signs in the artwork born of the realities of today, and the realities eternal to the human condition. Basically, it takes well-chosen, well-earned, vibrant signs. Many, many signs.

MD
Chicago, Illinois
November 2005

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