Abstraction as a limit to semiosis
Abstract
In highly evolved culture, discourse is made up of complexes of implicit
and explicit inter-textual relations, which form the meanings for new signifiers.
Meanings for common abstract nouns are derived from the modeling of
typical situations in everyday narratives. However at a further level of abstraction,
models of discourses, which themselves contain abstract concepts, provide
meanings for what are called “hyper-abstract” nominals. Here a certain limit is
reached, and it is argued that this diachronic, onomasiological process provides
a constraint on the notion of “unlimited semiosis.” This constraint has both natural
and ethical aspects.