Let me explore the tension between abstraction and involvement, starting with an example of harmless dualism. Someone owns a very old record player and has never heard of anything more refined than mono recordings, even though half his records are produced for stereo listening. He has to be taught the difference between mono and stereo, and only by being shown how a stereo system works will he be able to discover that his own collection consists of two significantly different types of records. In other words, only the proper use of a particular apparatus can bring out experiential distinctions. It is virtually meaningless to claim that they are present per se, without the availability of a certain corpus of knowledge and techniques. We can construct certain machines that enable us to subdivide one type of sound-event into two sub-types, depending on the information upon which the record-player operates. The content of such an acoustical event, consequently, is relative to the interests and devices of those trying to extract the information from a given source. Everyday life characteristically consists in such multi-layered situations. A wealth of data is ordinarily invested into the constitution of objects of our acquaintance but there is no ultimate test that could ascertain how many levels of analysis there are and no guarantees that newly found features will fit together nicely with the ones already known. Signs figure within this same experience. They cannot simply be picked out as self-sufficient elements of the world (if there are any) just like stereo records are not recognizable without a special differentiating device. Earlier on I described the semantical stance as imposition of a duality of views on given data. This is nicely mirrored in my propaedeutic simile, stereo sound splitting the flow of impulses from the original source and processing it through a second channel.
The lesson suggested by this example is as follows. A sign is something that can be seen as just another piece of nature and, with the help of certain conceptual devices, as embodiment of some particular transcendence of supposedly ,,natural'' interactions - namely lawlike causal processes or pragmatic communicative discourse. To see this more clearly, let us look again at the case of the record-player. A crucial distinction has to be observed here. Stereo can be opposed to mono but both stereo and mono are modes of reproduction of some previously given acoustical signal. The original sound underlying the record obviously is neither mono nor stereo. In reproducing it we use a given set of possibilities that implies and/or excludes others, all of them, however, remaining on this side of the representational divide. Stereo might invariably sound ,,better'' to the well-informed listener but this does not affect the point that there are distinct uses for either of both reproductive modes. (This is why more sophisticated audio-equipment usually includes a mono-button.) Both recording-techniques are, in a systematic sense, equi-distant from the original source. This does not entail, however, that their difference in reproductive quality cannot be put to use according to changing requirements. Now it seems to me that naturalistic and semantical descriptions of human behavior can also be regarded along those lines. Taken as descriptions both share the same methodological status, neither being an a priori more accurate rendering of a certain phenomenon than the other. Only by specifying the circumstances we set up a situation in which either mode of description is superior. Sound events are neither inherently mono nor stereo but there can be an overwhelming case for preferring stereo reproduction against mono. Employment of the dualism inherent in intentional ascription can likewise be the best strategy available to make sense of the data. Claiming that semantical features of the world must be derivable from causal or pragmatic ones can then be compared to saying that stereo sound derives from basically mono acoustical sources.
Let us discuss this less picturesquely in the setting of our considerations about fulfillment as resolution of the semantical dichotomy. The general point is that there is not one exclusive way to describe how signs actually function. Simply substituting the semantical scheme in favor of a non-dualistic one, the other one - or else remaining within the dichotomy, crossing from explicit to implicit intentionality, both are easy ways out. This leaves us with the task of specifying the particular way in which fulfillment as non-dichotomic state of affairs is affected by intentionality. As it turns out it can be posited on either side of the semantic tension. Talk about an unmediated fit between significatory elements can be taken either as naturalistic or as a very special semantical description. One pertinent way of expressing the distinction is to say that operational signs are often regarded as ,,first'' nature whereas their particularity only shows under the light of what has traditionally been called ,,second nature'', a combination of features of naturalistic interaction and fulfillment of meaning. Second nature is the quasi-causal set of historically acquired dispositions posited, among other reasons, to capture the law-like quality of sign-governed behavior. Social compliance with signs is not present in conceptualizations of nature pure and simple. Second nature seems supervenient on nature in the literal sense and thus is open to well-known reductionist complaints. Is it just an invention useful to lay claim to a specially invented, dubious territory of humanistic fancy?
Why should we employ representational categories when meaningful behavior seems to lack explicit intentional features most of the time? Its characteristics can, on the contrary, often be convincingly described within the mechanical paradigm. Why take the trouble of introducing second nature? The answer turns on the degree of complexity and interference of simultaneous, mutually exclusive, perspectives one is prepared to countenace. The concept serves to introduce an additional coherence into the constitution of hermeneutical phenomena, namely the historical dimension of communicating, failing to communicate, and reopening communication by means of signs. To explain how it is possible that something disclosed to us in an intentional mode and seen as fulfillment of - hence elimination of - this very mode is the same thing, we must be able to come up with a story connecting sentences in the intentional idiom with standard assertions from which reference to intentional states has been dropped. It calls for an elucidation using different approaches much more flexible than their contraposition suggests. Assimilating second to first nature, on the other hand, amounts to opting against the delicate conceptual balance that allows us to treat fulfillment of the semantical quest as something distinct from a pre-semantical ,,fullness'' of interactions. The question comes to whether semantics has its own distinctive foundation or whether it is forced to search for it within the confines of another paradigm. It follows that, if the former is conceded, the relation of first to second nature has to remain an open question. Attempts to address it have to include provisions not only for the stability but also for the possible disruption of the signifying process. Lack of the first requirement disqualifies something as adequate description, lack of the second falls short of characterizing signs at least if they are understood as figuring in two distinct sets of circumstances capable of being integrated into unproblematic procedures, and yet readable as contingent resolutions of previously open configurations.