Thinking Rich as Well as Simple: Boesch's Cultural Psychology in Semiotic Perspective

Abstract

Ernst Boesch's action theory for cultural psychology is a presented, articulating the dilemma of achieving an observationally adequate description of what happens in and between person and culture while keeping to the game of modern science in representing their reference field by a system of invariable scientific concepts. Boesch is shown to give primacy to what he can observe in the real world with his admirable sensibility. However, this inevitably forces him to dissolve the concepts appropriated from action theory and elaborated in conjunction with related systems of thought. The author pleads for an explicitly constructive methodology using facts derived from observing concrete evolutive systems in operation, such as persons in culture. He sketches essentials of semiotic ecology, a generative conceptuality of a wide scope and claimed to be fit to found a culture-inclusive psychology that can evade Boesch's dilemma.