ABSTRACT
You are enveloped from birth in information and communication. Experience and actions are mediated by the ubiquitous, complex stand-for relation, x stands for y. A necessary prior insight—a Kantian a priori concept—introduces the human element of the relationship—let x stand for y. We have invented the term letness. Everything in this book must be read with letness as the working assumption. We are proposing that letness is a necessary pre-condition for all meaningful stand-for relations, and define semiosis as letness applied to experience. Letness is active, anarchic, and irreducible. The founders of the two major schools of semiotics, Charles Sanders Peirce and ‘Ferdinand de Saussure’ (quote marks because Saussure did not write the famous book published under his name), gave the world the constituents of semiotics: from Peirce, sign (comprising symbol, icon, and index), referent, and interpretant; and from ‘Saussure’, sign (comprising signifier and signified). All these constituents and the relationships between them are mental images or abstractions. But an essential component—the living community or individual that can create a stand-for relation (i.e. can employ letness)—is taken for granted, or implied, or forgotten, or even dispensed with. Our basic concept letness brings people back.
