November 8th to 11th, 2004

Gerson Tenório dos Santos
gersonts@uol.com.br
UNICASTELO - Brazil

ABDUCTION AND SYNECHISM: KEY STONES FOR A SEMIOTICS OF THE SACRED

ABSTRACT
Our aim in this work is to discuss the importance that the concepts of abduction and synechism have for a Semiose of the Sacred. As it is known, the theories that search to understand the sacred are done almost always starting from a phenomenalistic approach, being privileged anthropocentric aspects. Peirce´s concepts of abduction and synechism allow us a wider vision of the phenomenon, once we can conceive the need for the sacred as a transduction of the signs of the nature in the culture that makes possible a more immediate understanding of the structure of the world and an enlargement of our perceptual system (Umwelt). The Peirce´s concept of abduction was discussed inside the theory of the types of inferences or types of reasonings. According to the philosopher of the pragmatism, the abduction it is the only logical operation that introduces a new idea, unlike the induction and the deduction. The synechism, on its side, related to the Peirce´s Metaphysics - the science of the Real - and pleads the idea of there being a continuum between the mind of the Cosmos and the human one. In both concepts we can find the logical explanation that allows us to understand the phenomena that participate in the human culture - as it is the case of the sacred - starting not of a divorce between culture/nature, mind/body, human sciences/natural sciences, but of a continuity solution between the logic of the world and the logic of the human thought.

KEYWORDS: Abduction, Synechism, Sacred, Semiosis, Culture, Nature.

Center for Pragmatism Studies
Philosophy Graduate Program
Departament of Philosophy
Pontifical Catholic University of São Paulo - Brazil