FLOYD MERRELL - A SOURCE

I have come across another crazy – Floyd Merrell, Emeritus Professor at Purdue University. His page:

floyd merrell

Yeah, I know.  I flash no photo in front of you.  Who needs it?  Well, then, who is floyd merrell?  He’s a guy who once garnered the illusion that he knew who he was, until he began becoming aware that he’s always becoming somebody who is other than who he was becoming.  But that, of course, is no answer.  There’s no answer because there is no answer; there is no answer because there is no is.  So life goes on.  Perhaps you can get an idea about who floyd merrell was becoming à is becoming à will have been becoming in his excuse for a CV (CVs are excuses for one’s trying to pass oneself off for what one isn’t, are they not?).

Nevertheless, what apparently there is, is this strange image you have before.  If there’s any way I might be able to give you a hint regarding what it may be—though I have my doubts, given my hopeless and helpless fallibility—give FROM EMPTINESS TO POSSIBLE POSSIBILITY a click.

And there you have it.  But the problem is that there is no it, that is, no it except that which is, in the eternal present; but this present is not, for every time we try to get it in our mental grasp, it has slithered away, like a greased pig in the county fair.  Yet, our world, however elusive, is with us, whether we like it or not, and we can’t escape it.  So, if you might wish for some more concrete opinion from floyd merrell, say, on the topic of terrorism shortly after 9/11, try clicking:  A GUT REACTION.

       I have enjoyed your company, and wish you a pleasant day.

      floyd merrell

I think it worth a visit: http://web.ics.purdue.edu/~fmerrell/  and follow his clicks on From Emptiness to Possible Possibility and Gut Reaction, which is a take of the work of Richard Rorty.

Also the beginning of an essay on Semiotics:

Semiotics versus Semiology: or, How Can We Get a Handle on Semiosis?

by Floyd Merrell

The two terms, "semiotics" and "semiology," have often unfortunately been confused. Semiology is of the Saussurean, structuralist, poststructuralist, continental study of the sign. Semiotics follows the Peircean concept of the sign. While "representation" and "reference" are customarily used in Peirce scholarship, they are herein avoided, in keeping with contemporary postanalytic philosophy. The two terms are replaced by "interdependency," "interrelatedness," and "interaction," commensurate with current holistic views, and at the same time in the spirit of Peirce's philosophy. The Argand plane is called upon as a model of the signs. The plane is preceded by "0" or what Peirce called the "nothingness" that gives rise to all signs, and by Ø or the empty set. The plane is then engendered, by way of ± -1 and its synthesis into . This combination affords an image of Peirce's categories under a new light, as process, which is lacking in the "linguicentrically" laden Saussurean sign. This move focuses on the iconic and indexical facets, the Firstness and Secondness, of the semiosic process. The Peircean sign emphasizes meaning that is felt before it is explicitly acknowledged, sensed before it is articulated, tacitly experienced before it is conceptualized.
key words: semiotics, semiosis, semiology, interdependency, interrelatedness, interaction

Preliminaries
The problem with the title of this essay is that I need to define semiosis before I can get down to the task of writing about semiotics. That is a difficult task. Difficult, because semiosis is itself the process of signs becoming other signs. How can I say what semiosis is if I cannot step out of semiosis in order to say it as an object of my contemplation? This is like the physicist, a collection of subatomic particles, describing subatomic particles: subatomic particles must say what subatomic particles are. In this manner to know signs, that is to know semiosis, is tantamount to signs knowing themselves, for the sign knower is made up of signs, s/he is, her/himself, a sign. This is not, mind you, the "prison house of language." No. Semiosis is by no means simply a matter of language and language alone. Semiosis does not dwell within language, but rather, language is but a minuscule part of semiosis.

If semiosis is the process of signs becoming other signs, and if we as sign makers and takers are within this process, then we must try to understand how it is that we interact with signs and how they interact with us. The how of signifying activity bears on signs of the past (what they actually did and what was done to them), of the present (the possibility of semiosic activity in the here-now, which is always moving on to a there-then), and of the future (the potential for semiosic becoming). Past, present, and future: there can be no semiosis without time, for time is the very river within which semiosis flows, yet semiosis encompasses time as it flows along, slowly unfolding itself in the process. Since we are in time in the manner in which we are in semiosis, we cannot know semiosis by means of objective study and thought. We must feel and sense it. Once again we are caught up in the same problem. To feel and sense semiosis is like telling a fish it must feel and sense the water surrounding it. Our waterworld philosopher-friend responds: "Feel and sense it with respect to what? What do I have other than my water medium against which to gauge that medium?" We, like our baffled denizen of the deep, have nothing against which to measure our understanding of semiosis. We are inextricably included within semiosis. Nevertheless, to say something about semiosis from within it is at least a beginning. Upon saying a few words about semiosis, however, we are semioticians. We are saying something about signs. We are using signs to categorize and label the process of semiosis. Our saying, consequently, is false to itself. It is false to itself, since semiosis, as process, knows of no categories: it is just onstreaming, flowing, perpetually moving, process. To say what it is is to mutilate it, fracture it, cut it up, and as such it is no longer process. No. Semiosis is definitely not a "prison house of language."