Both necessity and

arbitrariness of the sign

Information

Vasil Penchev
Bulgarian Academy of Sciences:
Institute for the Study of Socities and knowledge:
Department of Logical Systems and Models
vasildinev@gmail.com

Le cours de linguistique gnrale 1916-2016

Arbtrariness of the sign ,
Suitzerland, Geneva, University of Geneva,
10-12 January 2017:
11 January, 14:40-15:10

Introduction

Suassures sign es a Janus with two faces:

There exists a fundamental problem about the relation of
information and the sign as it is defined in Saussure:
o Any sign is a unit, on the one hand
Any sign is an element from a system of designation, on the
other hand
o The sign is seen inside in the former case
The sign is seen outside in the latter case
o Saussures concept of sign means both,
but they could not be equated to each other

The contradiction explicated:

The creative contradiction to the sign penetrated his main
work
o He used the term sign in different and practically
disjunctive contexts referring correspondingly to a single sign
and to a certain system of signs, to which it belonged
Thus that implicite contradiction could be reconciled and
logically admissible remaining disjunctively divided between
both kinds of contexts, which should not mixed
o The tension between them generated
the plot and intrigue of his Course

Those two faces of his sign

unified as duality:
Therefore, his concept generates in turn the duality of
information in any sign
o Suasure did not use the concept of information or it under
other name, or analogical of it
However, the concept of information (by the way, utilized by
Peirce to unify both uses of sign) may be in turn defined of
that quality or quantity meant in both kinds of uses of sign
o One may conclude that the entire unite of the Course
defined right that unity of information as sign
It is the hidden name of the soul of the Course

Sausures sign inside

The sign meant internally or actually is both necessary and
isomorphic to a single bit of information
o Futhermore, its formal strcture coincides with
(and thus sign is isomorphic to) those of:
A bijective mapping (of an element of a set into an element of
another or the same set, particularly an identitet)
o The disjunctive choice between two equiprobable alternatives
Assigning false or true to any statement
o Freges Bedeutung of a statement
or a system of statements (text)

The sign inside as a bit of information:

Indeed, any sign is interpretable either as a signifier or the
signified just as in an empty cell of information can be recorded
either 0 or 1
o An example of that interpretation: any calculation representable
by processing binary information by a Turing machine (embodied
in any of our computers) can be interpreted as a process of
designation
That Turing macines ultimate result (if any) cam be then seen as
the sign of a certain thing
o One can say that calculation is processing signs inside
with the above sense linked to Saussure semiology

Further philosophical interpretations:

Seen in thus, i.e. inside, the sign is a totality, in which the link
between the signifier and signified is necessary
o The opposite statement is not less true or interesting:
Any totality e.g the universe or the being in a philosophical sense
can be interpreted as a single sign or bit information
o Than those signifier and significant of that sign or those disjunctive
alternatives of that bit of information mignt be thought as the
transcendent thing by itself and its transcendental representation
for us or as object and subject, good, and evil accordingly, etc.
Even language as the universal system of signs might be seen as
Wittgenstein as generalized Bedingungen der Mglichkeit

On the contrary, the sign outside

On the contrary, the sign considered outside, is uncertainly arbitrary
o That arbitrariness of sign is usually interpreted as its conventionality
in the sense that any given significant might be designated
equivalently by arbitrary many different signifiers such as words in
different languages
However that kind of the formal representation of the arbitrariness
of sign is not general enough though being intuitive
o The arbitrariness of sign in general should be understood as the
correspondence of many significants to many signifiers or as that of
an arbitrary and uncertain system of significants to an arbitrary and
uncertain system of signifiers

The sign outside as the potential of signifying

The sign outside is the potential for the sign meant actually only
as some set of signified (things) to assign (a-sign) any signifier
o Therefore, it is the process of competing the structure of the sign
as actual, seen inside according the term above
One may say that any signified can be designated by any signifier
or by any other signified meant as a signifier
o If that potential process of possible signifying is represented
anyway somehow actually, it would address infinity
The so-called potential infinity turns out to be transformed into
actual infinity transferring from the externality to the internality
of sign

The environment of sign

Then the sign needs the non-sign outside of it, in which only
it might find a corresponding signifier
o The sign includes its environment gradualy,
signifier by signifier
That process being able to complete only into actual infinity
transforms the sign into a kind of totality and its
environment into its internality
o Then the sign might be understood as a way of expessing
the externality of totality internaly right as the necessary
signifier of it already seen inside

Back from philosophy to linguistics

The choice of a signifier is often restricted to a finite set of
elements such as an alphabet or a vocabulary
o Anyway the finiteness of an alphabet seems to be different
form that of a vocabulary (or dictionary, or thesaurus are
synonyms)
Any alphabet is meant as finite in principle and furthermore,
its symbols are thought as the digits in a numeric system
(e.g. ten digits or 26 letters)
o Thus alphabet is rather a set of signifiers (letetrs) referring
to another system of signifiers (words) as signified

Vocabulary vs aplhabet
Vocabulary in comparison with alphabet might be defined as
a system of primary signifiers referring to signified
immediately
o Thus, the number of units in the vocabulary will increase
proportionally to the signified things
The number of units in an alphabet might be pactiacally
constant for the necessary number of letters would
increase much slower, namely logarithmically
o Thus. vocabulary means an increasing finite number (of
words), and alphabet a constant (and much smaller) finite
number (of letters)

The quantity of information

of a vocabulary unit
The quantity of information depends on the number of
elements of that vocabulary being arbitrary and more than
a bit in general
o It corresponds to the number of letters in a given alphabet,
necessary to designate unambiguously enough any unit in
that vocabulary
This implies that information in a single unit outside will
depend on the number of vocabulary units increasing
logarithmically

The contradiction explicated

by the quantity of information
Information of
any one and the same sign
Information = constant = 1 bit
Sign
Signified

Signifier

A sign inside

Information logarithmically
increasing potentially
infinite
An inceasing system
of signs
Sign
A sign outside

The problem

The impossible equation

for the information of any one single sign
Information in a sign is not unambiguous:
o It turns out to be:
Both constant and increasing
o Both one bit and an arbitrary number of bits
converging to infinity
Neverthless those two should be able to be equated to each
other as far as:
o The sign is one and the same, and
It is the only carier of its information

The information of sign:

a property or a relation
Information is necessarily a single bit inside, but quite
uncertain outside (depending on the utilized alphabet or
vocabulary or even on all texts written by that alphabet or
vocabulary)
o It is both property and relation both inside and outside
It reflects quantitatively the transformation of a property
into a relation in both cases
o However, the resulatative relation consists of two members
inside and of arbitrariliy many members outside

Saussures implicit creative

intuition penetrating
his Course

The unity of sign

The concept of sign needs and therefore generates a space
between the necessity and unity of the sign and its
arbitrariness and uncertainness among the elements of
alphabet or vocabulary depending furthermore on all their
uses (all words or texts recorded by means of them)
o The entire Course can be consider as the craul of that space
of sign designating it again and again outside
The tension of that contradiction generates its plot
o Nevrtheelss, the two contexts of uses of sign are always
separated conserving its scientific consistency

The sign wandering in signifying

The sign being always and moving in that space can be only
partial, motivated by the unrealizable aspiration to complete
ultimately the infinite process of signifying
Saussures sign needed to explore the entire spase of his
Course in order to be able to return at last back in itself, in its
simple essence of a single bit of information: the signified
and signifier
Its message can be seen as that hidden identity and suffering
of the sign designating all

Saussures ontology
Even much more: Saussures semiology is an implicit ontology
as the being of all is what appears in that infinite process of
signifying
o The suffering to signify generates the world
Saussure sign creates the ontology of Course just as any real
language or the language at all creates the world as an
ontology of signifying
o The hypothetic endpoint of that infinite process is just
the sign inside as a single and simple disjunctive opposition of
the signified and signifier just as in a bit of information:
subject and object, good and evil, etc.

The resolving of the above

problem in quantum mechanics
and information in relation to
semiology

What quantum mechanics means

Quantum mechanics had to resolve the problem of how to
describe uniformly both quantum leaps and smooth motion,
namely by the Schrdinger equation
o The structure of its problem is isomorphic to the suffering of
Saussures ontology to signify all by the single and universal
scheme of sign. Here is how:
The motion of quantum leap corresponds to the jump from the
signified to the signifier in any sign inside
o The smooth motion of classical physics corresponds to a
trajectory of signifying from the same signified to the same
signifier via all the rest
And quantum mechanics claims to equate both by the
Schrdinger equation. What implies is

The new viewpoint of quantum information

It was reformulated thoroughly in terms of quantum
information in the end of the 20th century
o Its units are quantum bits just the units of classical
information are the usual bits
A quantum bit is defined as the normed superposition of two
orthogonal subspaces of the separable complex Hilbert
space
o Then any wave function being an element of that space is
representable as a series of qubits for any two successive
axes of it (ein, ei(n+1)) are those orthogonal spaces

Quantum information and infinity

Though involved differently in quantum mechanics, quantum
information can be equated unambiguously to the
generalization of information to infinite sets and series
o Then a qubit can be interpreted as the generalization of the
choice between equally probable alternatives to an infinite set
of alternatives
The problem of both quantum mechanics and Saussure
semiology seems after that as follows:
o Under which conditions can a bit of information be equal to a
qubit of quantum information?
The answer of quantum mechanics is right the Schrdinger
equation

The Schrdinger equation

The Schrdinger equation itself can be also exhaustedly
interpreted in terms of quantum information
o The essense of that is:
2
1 = 2

o This in turn implies that there exist some:

as well as its reverse mapping

The link between quantum mechanics and

Saussures semiology
That latter interpretation links it to Saussures tension of the
sign generating an implicit ontology as semiology
o Indeed, the ontological problem of Sausures semiology was
how to express the sign inside (a bit of information) by the
sign outside (a qubit of information)
The Schrdinger equation represents the general condition,
under which any possible solution exists and thus, that those
solution exist
o Thus furthermore, the generating tension of Sausures Course
between the sign both inside and outside is implied to be
also both consistent and solvable

The interpretation of the Schrdinger equation as

the solving of Sausures implicite problem
Then the Schrdinger equation can be seen as a solution of the
problem above about the relation of information and
Saussures sign:
o Both arbitrary sign outside and corresponding quantum
information are equated to both necessary sign inside and
corresponding information
The unification of smooth and discrete motion in quantum
mechanics implies the unification of Saussures semiology and
that physical theory of motion rather than only the unification
of the sign both inside and outside in the former

Conclusions:
There is a fundamental contradiction or rather tension in Sausured
Course: between the necessity of the sign within itself and its
arbitrariness within a system of signs
o That tension penetrates the entire Course and generates its plot
It can be expressed by the quantity of information generalized to
quantum information by quantum mechanics
o Then the problem is how a bit to be expressed by a qubit or vice
versa
The structure of the main problem of quantum mechanics is
isomorphic
o Thus its solution, namely the set of solutions of the Schrdinger
equation, implies the solution of the above contradiction or tension

Thank you for your kind attention!

Je vous remercie de votre aimable attention!
Je vous remercie de votre aimable attention!
Je vous remercie de votre aimable attention!
Je vous remercie de votre aimable attention!
Je vous remercie de votre aimable attention!
Je vous remercie de votre aimable attention!
Je vous remercie de votre aimable attention!
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