Mastering phenomenological semiotics with Husserl and Peirce

Both Peirce and Husserl suggested that a community of scholars were needed to bring to fruition the work that they had initiated, and both (initially) termed their approach phenomenology, defining it in almost identical terms. The fact that Peirce imposed more constraints on the free variation in imagination, which is one of the principal operations of phenomenology, serves to suggest that Peircean phenomenology may be concerned with a limited domain of experience. Taking on the task both thinkers imposed on their scions, we suggest that what the late Peirce calls mediation is identical to what the Brentano tradition terms intentionality, and that Peirce’s notion of categories may help in arriving at a deeper understanding of the field of consciousness, in relation to experienced reality. Since we are interested in making semiotics into an empirical, including experimental, science, we suggest that the “naturalization” of both phenomenologies is fundamental for the future of semiotics. This is why we also envisage the manner in which phenomenology may be translated into theories of evolution and child development.