The View from Husserl’s Lectern Considerations on the Role of Phenomenology in Cognitive Semiotics

The aim of this paper is to consider in what way semiotics, cognitive science, and phenomenology, which stem from different traditions that have only rarely been known to intermingle, can enter harmoniously into a common research paradigm, phenomenological cognitive semiotics, to which each one of them has a specific contribution to make, In the first part of the paper, the relationship between (traditional) cognitive science and semiotics is elucidated from different points of view. The second part is concerned with methodology in general, and with the phenomenological method in particular, contrasting the conceptions of the latter propounded by Husserl and Peirce. I then go on to discuss some onto-epistemological consequences of opting for the phenomenological method. Finally, I argue that phenomenological cognitive semiotics might play a central part in the renewal of the Enlightenment project.