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Biosemiotics
Journal Prestige (SJR): 0.289  Citation Impact (citeScore): 1 Number of Followers: 1  Hybrid journal (It can contain Open Access articles)ISSN (Print) 1875-1350 - ISSN (Online) 1875-1342 Published by Springer-Verlag  [2469 journals]
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- Natural Code of Subjective Experience
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Abstract: The paper introduces mathematical encoding for subjective experience and meaning in natural cognition. The code is based on a quantum-theoretic qubit structure supplementing classical bit with circular dimension, functioning as a process-causal template for representation of contexts relative to the basis decision. The qubit state space is demarcated in categories of emotional experience of animals and humans. Features of the resulting spherical map align with major theoreties in cognitive and emotion science, modeling of natural language, and semiotics, suggesting several generalizations and improvements. The developed model bridges psychological, quantum-theoretic, and semiotic perspectives, allowing for an integrative account of subjectivity, agency, and meaning in living Nature. Graphical abstract
PubDate: 2022-05-18
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- Beauty: Synthesis of Intellect and Senses Commentary on the Biosemiotic
Fundamentals of Aesthetics: Beauty is the Perfect Semiotic Fitting by
Kalevi Kull-
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Abstract: Abstract In The Biosemiotic Fundamentals of Aesthetics: Beauty is the Perfect Semiotic Fitting Kull makes a foray into the concept of Beauty. His target article is a welcome contribution not only for providing a biosemiotic notion of beauty but also as a trigger for further enquiry into the matter. Additionally, Kull delivers a new concept: Semiotic Fitting, shining new light on the Umwelt theory. My commentary embraces the challenge Kull presents (that beauty is a semiotic problem). Offering an alternate view on beauty, as a matter, and product, of cognition, I suggest reflecting on the philosophy of Alexander von Baumgarten, who coined the term “aesthetics”, offers rich insight that could extend and enrich the definition of beauty Kull presents.
PubDate: 2022-05-17
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- Biosemiotic Aesthetics May Unify General Semiotics
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Abstract: Abstract Kalevi Kull’s target article importantly rejects the argument from biological aesthetics, that beauty is a product of natural selection. Instead, beauty is a reflection of the ongoing diversity of free semiotic choosing and fitting. From this view, biosemiotic aesthetics could become the semiotic branch par excellence, in its theorization of the origins of what has always been the central interest of general semiotics. The narrow argument about sexual selection is couched inside the broader ambition to establish a biological but nonreductive definition and scope for aesthetics itself. One of the most important services biosemiotics can provide to the larger community is to bestow upon it some really unifying general principles applicable to all branches of semiotics, and the theory of biosemiotic aesthetics promises to do just this. General semiotics may later adopt some of Kull’s present theorization and apply it to the textual concerns which Kull prefers to consign to other specialists.
PubDate: 2022-05-10
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- Beauty is not a Rare Thing
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PubDate: 2022-05-10
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- Semiotic Fitting, Co-option, and the Art of Life
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Abstract: Abstract The intricate appearances produced by various lineages of biota have long been viewed as calling for a rational explanation. Biologists are capable of interpreting still just a relatively small part of the overall range of organismal forms and patterns. In fact, we can explain only those for which we find a functional role. Kalevi Kull’s current initiative, which aims at establishing biosemiotic foundations of aesthetics and introduction of concepts such as semiotic fitting, may help us elucidate various hitherto largely neglected aspects of self-expressive domains of life. Given that organisms are active autonomous agents, I suggest that some cases of semiotic fitting may be facilitated by semiotic co-option, a process where a trait is newly interpreted as meaningful within the umwelt of a living being and further adopted for a particular role. Clarification of connections between semiotic co-option and semiotic fitting may aid our attempts to better understand the role of meaning-attributive processes via which the aesthetic faculties of animate things come into existence.
PubDate: 2022-05-10
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- Grounding Biosemiotic Aesthetics: Extensions Back and Forward
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Abstract: Abstract Based on his previous elaborations on semiotic fitting, Kalevi Kull develops a relations-focused theory of beauty in the organic world. I will point to further strands of thought in the Western history of ideas that have introduced the convergence of the aesthetic and organic. The reflections of Immanuel Kant and the early romantics are foundational for these parallels, although not necessarily in concordance with the biocentric and biosemiotic stance of Kull. This comment also raises some questions related to the compatibility of some arguments with the authors who are mentioned as inspirational sources of the theory. In the end, additional authors are suggested as potential associates of biosemiotic aesthetics, authors who might help to broaden the scope of aesthetic phenomena covered by the theory.
PubDate: 2022-04-11
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- Neither Dogmas nor Barriers are absolute: reply to commentary by Koen B
Tanghe-
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Abstract: Abstract The Weismann Barrier and the Central Dogma do not protect the assumptions of The Modern Synthesis.
PubDate: 2022-04-11
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- Collateral Beauty, Adjacent Semiosis
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Abstract: Abstract Kalevi Kull’s biosemiotic aesthetics has apparent potential for ecosemiotics. This potentiality will be elaborated through the concepts of collateral beauty and adjacent semiosis. If diverse organisms aim towards better fitting, perfection, and beauty, than aesthetics arises in ecosystems occasionally yet recurrently. Perceiving such collateral beauty becomes an effective means to create new semiotic connections and associations, thereby contributing to the integrity and coherence of the semiotic system. Collateral beauty may help humans become better connected with the broader ecosemiosphere, or to perceive the meaning and the value of ecological systems.
PubDate: 2022-04-11
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- Simple Utterances but Complex Understanding' Meta-studying the Fuzzy
Mismatch between Animal Semantic Capacities in Varied Contexts-
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Abstract: Abstract This meta-study of animal semantics is anchored in two claims, seemingly creating a fuzzy mismatch, that animal utterances generally appear to be simple in structure and content variation and that animals’ communicative understanding seems disproportionally more advanced. A set of excerpted, new studies is chosen as basis to discuss whether the semantics of animal uttering and understanding can be fused into one. Studies are prioritised due to their relatively complex designs, giving priority to dynamics between syntax, semantics, pragmatics, and between utterers and receivers in context. A communicational framework based on utterance theory is applied as a lens for inspection of how these aspects relate to the assumed mismatch. Inspection and discussions of the studies bring several features to surface of which five are stressed in the following. Firstly, both syntactic structures and possible semantic content are seen as lean, although richer than earlier believed, and research continues to reveal new complexities in utterances. Secondly, there is a clear willingness to broaden the perception of animals’ semantic capacity to comprehend communication both by arguing theoretically and by generating empirical research in new contexts. Thirdly, the ambition to make sense of these tendencies is still often motivated by an evolutionary search for early building blocks for verbal language, with the pro et cons that such a position can have. Fourthly, the ‘allowed’ scientific frame for studying semantic capacity among animals is extended to new fields and contexts challenging the only-in-the-wild norm. Fifthly, the dilemma of integrating uttering and understanding as aspects of an after all functional communicational system, calls for new epistemological concepts to make sense of the claimed mismatch. Affordances, abduction, life-genre, and lifeworld are suggested.
PubDate: 2022-04-11
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- The Biosemiotic Fundamentals of Aesthetics: Beauty is the Perfect Semiotic
Fitting-
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Abstract: Abstract We propose a model which argues that aesthetics is based on biosemiotic processes and introduces the non-anthropomorphic aesthetics. In parallel with habit-taking, which is responsible for generating semiotic regularities, there is another process, the semiotic fitting, which is responsible for generating aesthetic relations. Habit by itself is not good or bad, it is good or bad because of semiotic fitting. Defining the beautiful as the perfect semiotic fitting corresponds to the common conceptualisation of the aesthetic as well as extends it over all umwelten. Perfection is not omnipotence, it only means the omnirelational semiotic fitting in the umwelt, or harmony with context. The process that presents something to be perceived as beautiful is of the same kind as the semiotic process that builds something to become beautiful. The argument is based on the observation that learning has a tendency towards perfection, until it is grounded (non-symbolically – based on imprinting, conditioning, or imitation). Semiosis is usually biased towards semiotic fitting, which stepwise leads towards perfection, and thus towards beauty. Such a general semiotic model implies that beauty is species-specific; that it is not limited to the sphere of emotions; that the reduction of the evolution of aesthetic features to sexual selection is false; and that humans should learn the aesthetics of other beings in order to avoid destroying valuable biocoenoses.
PubDate: 2022-04-04
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- The Anthropic Principle for the Evolutionary Biology of Consciousness:
Beyond Anthropocentrism and Anthropomorphism-
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Abstract: Abstract The evolutionary origin(s) of consciousness has been a growing area of study in recent years. Nevertheless, there is intense debate on whether the existence of phenomenal consciousness without the cerebral cortex is possible. The corticocentrists have an empirical advantage because we are quasi-confident that we humans are conscious and have the well-developed cortex as the site of our consciousness. However, their prejudice can be an anthropic bias similar to the anthropocentric prejudice in pre-Darwinian natural history. In this paper, I propose three basic principles to provide a conceptual basis for evolutionary studies of consciousness: the non-solipsistic principle, the evolution principle, and the anthropic principle. These principles collectively help us to avoid solipsism, anthropocentrism, and anthropomorphism to some degree, although we cannot be completely free from them. Also, the landscape metaphor associated with the anthropic principle provides an image of how different forms of consciousness can be acquired.
PubDate: 2022-03-29
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- Autogen is a Kantian Whole in the Non-Entailed World
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Abstract: Abstract Deacon suggests the autogen as a minimal Kantian Whole where the parts exist for and by means of the whole. An Autogen is a “for whom” information is created. Semantics of information (icon, index, and symbol) comes first, syntax later. There are no entailing laws for the emergence and evolution of new meanings, which likely happened long before template replication and the genetic code. The evolution of life and meaning are based on physics but rise creatively above physics.
PubDate: 2022-03-21
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- A Cognitive-Semiotic Approach to Agency: Assessing Ideas from Cognitive
Science and Neuroscience-
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Abstract: Abstract Following the levels of intentionality and semiosis distinguished by the Semiotic Hierarchy (a layered model of semiosis/intentionality), and the distinction between original agency (without the use of artefacts) and enhanced agency (the prosthetic incorporation of artefacts), we propose a model of an agency hierarchy, consisting of six layers. Consistent with the phenomenological orientation of cognitive semiotics, a central claim is that agency and subjectivity are complementary aspects of intentionality. Hence, there is no agency without at least the minimal sense/feeling of agency. This perspective rules out all artefacts as genuine agents, as well as simple organisms, since it is highly unlikely that e.g. bacteria have any first-person perspective. Using this model, we review and assess recent proposals on the nature of agency from cognitive science, and neuroscience, and draw conclusions on how to incorporate aspects of them within a synthetic cognitive-semiotic framework.
PubDate: 2022-03-12
DOI: 10.1007/s12304-022-09473-z
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- Sign-free Biosemantics and Transcendental Phenomenology: a Better
Non-Metaphysical Approach to Close the Mind-body Gap-
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Abstract: Abstract Attempts to close the mind-body gap traditionally resort to a priori speculations. Motivated by dissatisfaction with such accounts, neurophenomenology constitutes one of the first attempts to close the mind-body gap non-metaphysically. Nonetheless, it faces significant challenges. Many of these challenges arise from its abandoning of transcendentality and its dim view of bioinformation. In this paper, I propose a superior non-metaphysical alternative: a combination of a reformed biosemiotics and transcendental phenomenology. My approach addresses the difficulties of neurophenomenology, while retaining the merit of mutual constraints. Biosemiotics pays respect to bioinformation while imposing the sign-meaning duality on primitive forms of life, which is a relic of anthropomorphism. To avoid this unjustified commitment, I argue for a sign-free biosemantics which replaces Peirce’s semiotics with Husserl’s theory of meaning and exchanges naturalism for transcendentalism. Meaning, according to the resulting account, is the “intended as such” (Vermeintes als solches). The irreality of meaning results from what I term the ‘higher visibility’ of intentionality. I argue that the mind-body gap can be locally closed in a non-metaphysical manner as the result of reflection upon empirical biological investigations. Sign-free biosemantics uncovers the meanings for the organism that are implicit in biological research, while transcendental phenomenology analyses the experiences that biologists undergo when associating the physical with the biological level, while at the same time also analysing the very framework within which they work. Meanwhile, biosemiotics frees phenomenology from its methodological limitations, and the two domains establish mutual constraints in a more radical form than neurophenomenology.
PubDate: 2022-01-28
DOI: 10.1007/s12304-021-09471-7
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- Dynamic Encoding in a Simple Autogenic System
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Abstract: Abstract How did molecules become signs' First, according to Deacon, there had to be an interpreter, a physical process capable of making use of some property of a molecule that offered a “semiotic affordance.” He proposes the model of an “autogenic virus,” the most primitive conceivable recursively self-maintaining kind of molecular system that could broach the boundary between physico-chemical process and “interpretive competence.” In this comment I work up to the question of how Deacon introduces concepts such as “representation” and “record” into his account, to argue that the autogen can pass on its lineage without a genetic template.
PubDate: 2022-01-21
DOI: 10.1007/s12304-021-09465-5
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- Semiotic and Physical Requirements on Emergent Autogenic System
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Abstract: Abstract In “How Molecules Became Signs”, Prof. Deacon outlines a plausible mechanism whereby biochemical systems could be understood to fulfill the conditions of being “alive” in the context of the two broad families of requirements, namely the energetics of metabolism and the informatics of coding. In so doing, he addresses head-on how to account for the origin and the action of coding in physical systems, and thereby the necessary and sufficient conditions for life. I review some of the relevant issues around the interlocking potential necessary and sufficient conditions whereby these two phenomena are included within systems of interpretation in organisms.
PubDate: 2022-01-14
DOI: 10.1007/s12304-021-09469-1
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- Symptomic Mimicry Between SARS-CoV-2 and the Common Cold Complex
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Abstract: Abstract The recent changes in COVID-19 symptoms suggest convergent evolution of respiratory diseases. This process is analogous to the emergence of animal mimetic complexes and complements previously identified types of mimicry. A novel pathogen might go unnoticed or insufficiently counteracted if it resembles a disease that the host already faced on multiple occasions, which creates a selective pressure towards a typical symptomic phonotype. In short, the reason why so many unrelated pathogens cause similar symptoms may correspond to the reasons that drove the evolution of the ‘warning’ wasp-like colouration in various insect species.
PubDate: 2022-01-10
DOI: 10.1007/s12304-021-09472-6
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- Lessons Learned: the 20th Gatherings in Biosemiotics
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Abstract: Abstract We review the organization and contents of the 20th Gatherings in Biosemiotics. As the organizers, we share our insights from organizing a community research project in the year where the Covid-19 pandemic halted international travel. We try to describe the challenges of putting together the yearly conference on Biosemiotics and the main content that was presented by the research community.
PubDate: 2021-12-01
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- The Evolvability of Evolutionary Theories: A Reply to Denis Noble
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Abstract: Abstract In this commentary on Denis Noble’s “The Illusions of the Modern Synthesis,” I discuss three illusions he argues exist within the Modern Synthesis. These illusions have the common theme of attempting to identify the correct way of understanding and describing biological systems. I agree with much of Noble’s claims, but offer the language of developmental systems theory as a friendly tool for moving the project forward.
PubDate: 2021-12-01
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- Semiosis at a Fundamental Level: Wisdom and Innovation
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Abstract: Abstract Through a simple model of autogenic interpreting system featuring molecular constraint-work dynamics, Deacon (2021) critically tackles the issue of the nature of information in living systems and proposes that interpretation of a molecule as information about something else is more important than molecular replication. Two aspects of the target article are highlighted in this commentary. First, Deacon’s illustrations nicely resonate with and instantiate the wisdom in the doctrine of yin-yang in Chinese philosophy. Second, his theorizing demonstrates a bold intellectual innovation with regard to Peircean semiotics. In short, the article exemplifies what highly relevant, and succinct, semiotic modeling looks like.
PubDate: 2021-11-06
DOI: 10.1007/s12304-021-09462-8
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