Synechism and the Omnipresence of Semiosis

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to discuss how Peirce´s notion of semiosis may give support to his synechistic ideas. According to these ideas, there is no separation or division but only differences of degree between nature and culture, between the organic and the inorganic, the psychical and the physical, the natural and the artificial. Peirce´s disturbing statement that “matter is effete mind, inveterate habits becoming physical laws” (CP 6.24) can only be properly understood in the light of his broad concept of mind and in the context of his theory of final causation. Final causation, on its turn, can only be properly understood in the light of semiosis.