Abstract: This paper develops a unified account of our experience of signs, drawing on Husserl's Logical Investigations. It argues that semiotic experience is grounded in mereological experience. Specifically, to experience a as an indication (Anzeichen) of b, we must experience both as parts united within a whole, and to experience x as an expression (Ausdruck) of y, we must experience x as a part of y. Even our experience of signs that have a “surrogative function [stellvertretenden Funktion]” (e.g., numerals) the paper suggests, can be understood mereologically. Thus, Derrida's claim that semiotic experience, for Husserl, fundamentally involves substitution is shown to be incorrect, and a new direction for research into the genesis of semiotic consciousness, and the question of animal and machine language use, is suggested.

Keywords: signs, parts, wholes, indications, expressions, surrogates

Introduction

In their “Evolution of the Genus Homo” anthropologists Ian Tattersall and Jeffrey H. Schwartz claim it is “symbolic consciousness that makes our species,” Homo sapiens, “unique.” The closest they come to defining “symbolic consciousness” is the following.