Conceptual embodiment in visual semiotics

Abstract

In this paper, the basic concepts of Peircean semiotics are derived from visual experience by the process of conceptual embodiment. We begin with embodiment of the universal Categories of Being that are accessible to thought or the universal Categories of Thought, which Charles S. Peirce defined and termed Firstness, Secondness, and Thirdness. On this basis, we demonstrate conceptual embodiments of the Peircean typologies of dyadic relations, triadic relations and representations. The phenomenology of visual perception is modeled as a triadic typology of embodied mental processes which we term detection, localization and identification. Based upon the pioneering work of Lakoff and Johnson, we examine the role of visual embodiment in concept formation as inferred from linguistic expressions. We conclude that certain fundamental physical and relational concepts may be regarded as the embodied interpretants of visual signs.