A Semiotic Model of Learning

Abstract

My ambition with this paper is to throw some light on Charles S. Peirce’s (1839 – 1914) semiotic model of learning. Peirce developed this model in his later writings, where he integrated his phenomenology, pragmatism and semiotics while renewing all three. I start by introducing an analogy on pedagogy used by Peirce in one of his 1903 lectures on phenomenology. Next, I sketch out Peirce’s perspective on the ways in which we learn from experience. In the last section, I map out Peirce’s semiotic model, while indicating some prospects and limitations of a Peircean outlook on the paradoxi-cal attributions of knowledge and learning.