Sign, inference and belief:

semiotic notes for contemporary dilemmas

Abstract

This paper explores some aspects of Peirce’s semiotic theory in order to shed light on phenomena of contemporary culture such as fake news and disinformation. As a distinctive feature of Peircean semiotics, the paper focuses on Peirce’s concepts of inference, thought, and sign. The study of signs reveals itself as a fundamental part of the study of the form of valid reasoning, since even fallacies (invalid reasoning) follow the general form of inference. In this theoretical perspective, it will be important to distinguish the validity of reasoning and the inclination to accept a thesis, that is, it will be important to distinguish between a logical approach that judges the types of passages from premises to conclusions and a psychological approach about the impressions of truth that characterize an impulse to accept a belief. Understanding semiotics as logic, from a Peircean perspective, also means reconciling the theory of the sign with a theory of investigation. This, in turn, calls for answers to the question of reality and facts, on the one hand, and that of representations and discourses, on the other. To explore these aspects of Peirce’s theory and relate them to the contemporary culture of narrative disputes, fake news and disinformation, the present text will be anchored not only in texts by Peirce himself, and his commentators, but also in publications interested in this topic, such as Santaella, Ibri, Gomes and Boens. Nöth and Botelho, and Baggioto differentiate more clearly between facts and representations, “alternative facts” and alternative interpretations of facts, social construction of news and autonomy of the real in relation to them, in addition to concepts such as belief, otherness, experience, error, lie, and truth.