5th Newsletter of the Nordic Association for Semiotic Studies (Spring 2014) (original) (raw)
Related papers
In ''Why brains matter: an integrational perspective on The Symbolic Species '' Cowley (2002) [Language Sciences 24, 73-95] suggests that Deacon pictures brains as being able to process words qua tokens, which he identifies as the theory's Achilles' heel. He goes on to argue that Deacon's thesis on the co-evolution of language and mind would benefit from an integrational approach. This paper argues that Cowley's criticism relies on an invalid understanding of Deacon's use the concept of ''symbolic reference'', which he appropriates from Peirce's semiotic. Peirce's analysis as well as Deacon's appropriation will be examined in detail. Consequently it will be argued that an integrationist reading would add very little to Deacon's core thesis.
Copenhagian biosemiotics (e.g. Hoffmeyer, Emmeche, Stjernfelt, Brier) and Lundian cognitive semiotics (e.g. Sonesson and Zlatev) seem to share certain basic notions and attitudes. Both recognize hierarchial levels of meaning production processes and systems. Both understand meanings and signs as not reducible to strictly linguistic ones. Both consider at least higher animals and possibly other organisms too as capable of making distinctions meaningful for themselves. Both seem to have a critical attitude against behaviorism and nominalistic empiricism, instead, basic semiotic concepts are assumed to need a logical or phenomenological grounding. The most striking difference is perhaps the attitude towards the concept of sign and its applicability. Copenhagians wish to generalize the concept of sign and semiosis so that it could establish a connction between all kind of life processes and the common sense understanding of human sign use. Following Sebeok’s (and Deely’s) ideology of general semiotic, Copenhagians have assumed that Peirce’s highly abstract and complex logical semiotics together with his evolutionary metaphysics would be applicable in this task. The strategy of Lundians, in turn, has been to reserve the concept of sign to refer to the features and structures specific to human sign use and thus distinguishing it from the less complex meaning making that both humans and non-human life forms share. Zlatev (2009: 171) suggests that semiotics should rather be defined as the study of meaning making than the study of signs. This is underlined in Sonesson’s Husserlian-Piagetian analysis of “minimal properties” of sign (sign as a subjectively differentiated double asymmetry between the expression and content) together with the description of cognitively less demanding levels with meanings that are not signs (Sonesson 2012: 225-6). Both Sonesson (2008) and Zlatev (2009) have understandably criticized such widening of the scope of the concept of sign that has been common in biosemiotics. Such critique has not been absent in biosemiotic circles either – among some others, I have about 15 years demanded more specified use of semiotic terminology in biosemiotics (Vehkavaara 2002, 2003, 2006). The biosemiotic discourse has been too unspecified, vague, or metaphoric when applying the concept of sign and its assumed triadic structure. Especially the concept of the object of sign and the semiotic agent (mind or self) have not found satisfactory real correspondents in many cases. For instance, if a gene is a sign what would be its object and to whom it would be a sign? My provisional conclusion have so far been that Peirce’s logical concept of sign or semiosis cannot, after all, be consistently applied to the genes or even the processes like bacterial chemotaxis, without more or less dogmatically adopted metaphysical commitments. The genuine sign action presumes the possibility of such a self-control where some kind of consciousness is operative. This is also concluded by Peirce in the same paragraph, where he “heartily granted” that the acceptance of (false) hypothesis that consciousness is a mere epiphenomenon has nevertheless “done good service to science” (CP 5.493). As a solution I have suggested that biosemiotics should, in addition, look for some other, differently defined and derived (non-logical) concepts of sign for the cases where Peirce’s logical concept is not applicable. But such a suggestion does not solve the dispute whether the use of the term “sign” should be limited to contexts that Lundians demand. One way proceed is to look beyond the mere definitions to the perceptions or intuitions, from which the defined concept of sign is derived, how this derivation is executed, and what kind of ‘essential features’ it is supposed to preserve. Then we can see that biosemiotics and cognitive semiotics have somewhat different needs – biosemiotics certainly deals with cognitive processes of organisms (etc.) with internal meanings, but such meanings would remain epiphenomenal without an assumption that they are somehow also guiding the development and behavior of their carriers – i.e. biosemiotics must contain also a theory of action, a goal-directed or (self-)normative action. Thus, we get (at least) two starting point intuitions: 1. cognitive one, where sign mediated cognition is contrasted to direct perception (here Peircean logical sign may apply), and 2. the constructive or practical one, where composed sign is functioning as an anticipation, plan, or normative criterion of future action. The cognitive sign only represents its object and the goodness of the interpretation is dependent on the object. that functions as a normative criterion from which it conveys information to its interpreter. The constructive sign, instead, is used to create or realize its content and is thus non-representational in the sense that the reality of its content is dependent on the ‘interpretation’ of the sign (and not vice versa). So far I have found no better term as sign for such an internal element that guides the transformation of a semiotic system from a one state to some other, hopefully more satisfactory one.
Semiosis and Quasi-Minds: Charles Peirce’s Unfinished Semantic Theory
2023
The intensive development of artificial intelligence, as well as describing bio-molecular processes of transmission of genetic information, makes it actual to address the problem of a semiotic activity that is not based on human cognition or mind. In this capacity, we address Charles Peirce's chronologically last and mainly unpublished conception of semiosis. Semiosis is considered as an interpretation, but it does not imply any kind of interpreter external to a sign. A sign is considered a quasi-mind. Semiotic operations are performed by signs, more precisely, by quasi-minds welded into them: by a quasi-utterer and a quasi-interpreter. Semiosis is described as consistently carried out personalized interaction of structural components (quasi-minds) of the same process. A quasi-utterer is associated with an object, and a quasi-interpreter is associated with an interpreter. As a development of Peirce's sign conception, it may be the theory of semiopoiesis, understood as a semiotic manifestation of autopoietic processes.
Language and Semiotic Studies, 2023
Peirce's final statements on the sign were consigned in various ways over a hundred years ago as a form of logic, a branch of the science of enquiry based upon observation. This means inevitably that some parts of the theory will have been contested or considered superseded by more recent pronouncements on cognitive activity in general, both within and without the field of semiotics. Two such areas that have been host to innovative developments concern central preoccupations of the entire Peircean edifice: the basic unit of semiotics and its function, and ways of looking. First, following Thomas Sebeok's pioneering integration of semiotics and the biological theories of Jakob von Uexküll, biosemiotics, it is claimed, has espoused a Peircean approach to the definitions of sign and semiosis. Second, observation involves the relation between the observer and the object observed, and, as a theoretical consequence, the relation between an organism and its environment, von Uexküll's Umwelt. In view of the importance accorded Peircean semiotic theory in this more recent science, the paper compares and contrasts aspects of the later theory with the earlier, and concludes that there are significant theoretical differences between the two conceptions of the sign and its theoretical implications.
Why Peirce matters: the symbol in Deacon’s Symbolic Species
Language Sciences, 2007
In ''Why brains matter: an integrational perspective on The Symbolic Species'' Cowley (2002) [Language Sciences 24, 73-95] suggests that Deacon pictures brains as being able to process words qua tokens, which he identifies as the theory's Achilles' heel. He goes on to argue that Deacon's thesis on the co-evolution of language and mind would benefit from an integrational approach. This paper argues that Cowley's criticism relies on an invalid understanding of Deacon's use the concept of ''symbolic reference'', which he appropriates from Peirce's semiotic. Peirce's analysis as well as Deacon's appropriation will be examined in detail. Consequently it will be argued that an integrationist reading would add very little to Deacon's core thesis.