Abstract

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Title:: The Semiotic Self: An Exploration of the Cognitive Paradigm of “Rational Intuition”

Keywords:: semiotic self; rational intuition; concepts of “the known” and “the knowable”; cultural semiotics of Jingshen

Abstract:: The Chinese and Western semiotic communities differ in their understanding of “the semiotic self”. The former focuses on the self in intuition and the latter on the rational analysis of the self. This paper attempts to analyze the rational characteristics of intuitive perception by referring to the concept of “the known” and “the knowable” in traditional Chinese culture. It explores how to prolong the temporality of intuition through “actual practice”, with the aim of identifying how “the semiotic self” can step into the state of “your inner being guard, and keep it free”, with neither “upward reduction” nor “downward reduction”. It also aims to help human thought to progress from “understanding” to “Dao” and construct the cognitive paradigm of the cultural semiotics of Jingshen. By releasing symbolic meaning, it shows how symbols and their meanings can be returned to unconstrained academic ideals and pursuits, and also indicates how the reasonable self-first mode of existence for human beings can be achieved through the cultural semiotics of Jingshen.