Year
2007
Abstract
There is a strong theoretical relationship between pragmatist philosophies (Peirce, Dewey, Mead) and semiotics (the study of signs and meanings), particularly through the key role of the concept of mediation – mediation of action, mediation of thought. For Peirce, thought is sign-based. Situations can only be thought by linking objects with couples of signs, rather than with a unique symbolic designation: thinking is not labelling. Meaning emerges from the encounter of the object and the two related signs (representamen and interpretant). Peirce’s position is a radical semiotism: thought is only the handling of signs, it has no logical anteriority to the handling of signs. It would then be erroneous to assert that « thought produces signs and their handling ». Thought is a cascade from sign to sign about a given object. It reaches action as a particular form of sign, or more precisely the change of action habits. To understand how original and useful the concept of mediation is, it is necessary to discard some wrong theoretical interpretations: the psychologist view ? mediation is not a psychological concept but an epistemic concept, the logicist view ? mediation is not a logical operator but an action, the structuralist view ? mediation is not an element in an abstract structure but a situated act, the dialectic view ?mediation is not an element in the historic succession of phases but a characteristic of any production of meaning. This concept is likely to provide organization researchers with an effective tool to overcome dualisms, e.g.:-overcome the thought / action dualism through the concept of inquiry, -overcome the individual / collective dualism through the concept of dialogism, -overcome the positivism / constructivim dualism of research epistemics through semiotic interpretativism.
LORINO, P. (2007). L’intuition peircienne de la médiation aux sources du pragmatisme, ou : il faut ruser avec le monde… Libellio, pp. 34-41.