Empedocles: European Journal for the Philosophy of Communication - Volume 15, Issue 1-2, 2024

Internet memes – images and GIFs – have become part of internet pop culture and are here to stay. Memes’ success as an online communication phenomenon is due, to some extent, to the fact that memes are self-explanatory. Indeed, messages conveyed in memes, however complex, are instantaneously grasped. The themes that memes cover can be casual or serious, but the humour and wit they radiate diffuse the tension of most sombre topics. However, it is unclear what makes a particular meme popular or, as they say, viral. Notably, when using the word viral to refer to a meme, internet users inadvertently uphold the take on memes as gene-like units of information that evolve as quasi-biological entities. In this article, the authors intend to move away from this approach and investigate memes from a semiotic and logical perspective. To do that, the authors deploy Peircean terminology that helps position memes in the sphere of signs and analyse meme structure using both ‘icon–index–symbol’ and ‘token-type’ classifications, as well as ‘the habit of inference’ concept. This analysis allows them to describe the mechanics of meme transformation and define the boundaries that memes do not cross.

As a social activity, the sciences are only possible through communication among scientists themselves and between scientists and society. The article analyses natural, biological, social and ideological prerequisites of scientific communication (SC) as an ensemble of interrelated acts of scientific information exchange. A taxonomy of professional networks as a medium for SC is proposed. The need for a permanent struggle for the preservation and development of the values of both a free society and science is emphasized.

Accelerationism offers a theoretical stance towards capitalism that takes shape in various rhetorical guises. In general, these writings attempt to push through the boundaries imposed by capital while speeding off into unknown possible futures. While some articulations of this philosophy rely on traditional scholarly argumentation, others proceed along more obscure paths to envision a post-capitalist (and usually post-human) future. In this article, I focus on the latter approach by examining how some accelerationist works embrace occult poetics and subsequently align with what Brad Baumgartner identifies as a communicative praxis of Weird Mysticism. In contrast to more pragmatic approaches, Weird Mysticism provides a worthwhile rhetorical perspective for contemplating accelerationist works that embrace a nihilistic inclination to imagine a world without us.

The nature, location and functioning of the human mind remain contentious topics among philosophers, psychologists, linguists and AI researchers. Noam Chomsky, a pivotal figure in the cognitive revolution, offers a comprehensive framework for understanding the mind’s structure, processes and interactions with cognitive modules. This paper explores Chomsky’s perspective on the mind’s capacities, distinguishing them from abilities and other faculties, and examines how innate and experiential knowledge shape mental functions. It delves into key theories related to the mind, including its relationship with language, linguistic mentalism, modularity, Cartesian philosophy, the mind–body problem, philosophical grammar and cognitive processes like reasoning and perception. The paper addresses three central questions: First, does Chomsky differentiate the mind from the brain, consciousness and thought, viewing it as an abstract system reliant on yet distinct from the brain’s physical structure? Second, is the mind a standalone entity or primarily a linguistic construct, given Chomsky’s emphasis on language as a core cognitive module within a broader modular framework? Third, how does Chomsky reconcile rationalist and empiricist views, forging a neo-rationalist/neo-empiricist synthesis that integrates innate mental structures with sensory experience? By analyzing these dimensions, the paper highlights Chomsky’s contributions to cognitive science, emphasizing his view of the mind as a biologically grounded, modular system that shapes human cognition through innate capacities and environmental interactions, offering insights for interdisciplinary studies in philosophy, linguistics and psychology.

This article presents neo-liberal notions of knowledge and market and explains why this is important for the functioning of digital platforms. Neo-liberals are concerned with everyday knowledge of the common people, their mental states and feelings, not intellectual knowledge. The satisfaction of consumers and prediction of their future preferences is the basis for creating Big Data. Neo-liberals utilize it, fully cognisant of its status as a failed post-truth mechanism for interpreting everyday knowledge. The market functions through individual use and mutual adjustment of limited personal knowledge, of customers as well as producers. It is not free but cybernetically ordered market. Hayek defines market as a communication system that is digesting dispersed information. Millions of minds are doing data generation and processing. That way, neo-liberals see all digital platforms, including Wikipedia, as markets. Classical encyclopaedias are centrally controlled and expert driven, while neo-liberal markets create knowledge through crowds’ ‘voluntary exchange’ and ‘spontaneous cooperation’. The fundamental difference is that encyclopaedias were an Enlightenment project, while Wikipedia is producing recycled intellectual and layman’s knowledge without any political or revolutionary engagement.

Despite their clear relationship, the classical rhetorical concept of stasis (or status) and the more contemporary notion of ‘framing’ have rarely been considered together, a situation that is made all the more surprising considering that the latter term can be argued as originating from a rhetorical context, namely, Kenneth Burke’s ‘acceptance frames’. This article seeks to examine the similarities between stasis theory and the various ways in which the trope of framing has come to be instantiated in argumentation in the social sciences, the humanities and select therapeutic modalities. While it is Goffman’s Frame Analysis that is usually provided as the origin point for the adoption of the concept of framing into common intellectual parlance, Goffman himself credited Gregory Bateson’s formulation of ‘psychological frames’ as his source. Consequently, I will argue that it is the therapeutic-oriented work of Bateson (and its later development by Watzlawick) that represents the potential bridge between the current demotic understanding of framing, the introductory conceptualization of Burke and the classical stasis tradition. The uncovering and exploration of the relationships between the traditions of stasis, Goffman’s frame analysis, Burke’s acceptance frames and the Batesonian approach to therapeutic reframing will allow us to re-position stasis at the heart of modern rhetorical theory and, furthermore, advance a therapeutic understanding of rhetoric that both reconnects it to its deepest past while also preparing it for its future place in an increasingly disordered (even [dis]eased) environment of public address and interpersonal communication.

The aim of this article is to explore Aristotle’s view on the relationship between human language and human ultra-sociality. I claim that although Aristotle considers the sociality of several animal species to be natural (physei), he regards human sociality as greater in degree (mallon) because it is achieved and sustained only through cooperation mediated by language. Attaining this heightened form of sociality requires a communicative tool that goes beyond the mere pursuit of pleasure and avoidance of pain. It demands a conventional medium that enables us to detach from our immediate perceptions and imaginings (aisthēseis, phantasiai) and to enter the domain of constructing social relations grounded in justice. I argue that we accomplish this through the normativity inherent in human language.