Empowering Biosemiotics
Keywords:
Causal powers, Biosemiotics, Signification, Distributed language
Abstract
One way to understand the basic semiotic relation is that a sign-vehicle signifies an object to an interpretant. Biosemioticians sometimes talk about this relationship in terms of “codes”. When thinking about this relationship in the context of language, a natural move is to conceptualize semiotic relationships among speakers, meanings, and utterances as codes: speakers encode messages in sentences, which are then decoded by an interpreter. This view of communication is inconsistent with core tenets of a distributed approach to language, which holds that language is an embodied and encultured activity taking place across multiple timescales. I argue that a neo-Aristotelian metaphysics can be of help. A sign’s pointing to an object for an interpreter is a triadic relation, which can be described in terms of “abilities” or “powers”. On this view, talk about “codes” is eliminated in favor of talk about powers of agents and utterances.
References
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Vukov, Joseph, Lassiter, Charles (2020), «How to power encultured minds», in Synthese, 197, pp. 3507–3534.
Wheeler, Wendy (2006), The whole creature: Complexity, biosemiotics, and the evolution of culture, Lawrence and Wishart, London.
Barbieri, Marcello (2008), «The code model of semiosis: the first steps toward a scientific biosemiotics», in The American Journal of Semiotics, 24, n. 1/3, pp. 23-37.
Barbieri, Marcello (2010), «On the origin of language: A bridge between biolinguistics and biosemiotics», in Biosemiotics, 3, pp. 201–223.
Barbieri, Marcello (2010), «Codepoiesis: The deep logic of life», in Biosemiotics, 5, pp. 297–299.
Bateson, Gregory (1972), Steps to an ecology of mind, Ballantine, New York.
Bateson, Gregory (1979), Mind and nature: A necessary unity, Bantam, New York.
Beni, Majid Davood (2017), «The Code Model of Biosemiotics and the Fate of the Structuralist Theory of Mental Representation», in Biosemiotics, 10, pp. 99–107.
Cowley, Stephen J (2011), «Taking a language stance», in Ecological Psychology, 23, n. 3, pp. 185-209.
Cowley, Stephen J, Kuhle Anneliese (2020), «The rise of languaging», in Biosystems, 198, pp. 104-264.
Cuffari, Elena Clare (2012), «Gestural sense-making: hand gestures as intersubjective linguistic enactments», Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, n. 11, pp. 599–622.
de Saussure, Ferdinand (1916), A Course in General Linguistics, Eng. Trans. by R. Harris, Open Court Publishing, New York 2000.
Deacon, Terrence (1997), The symbolic species: The co-evolution of language and the brain, WW Norton & Company, New York.
Dennett, Daniel (1989), The Intentional Stance, MIT press, Cambridge.
Gahrn-Andersen, Rasmus (2019), «But language too is material!», in Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 18, pp. 169–183.
Gahrn-Andersen, Rasmus, et al. (2019), «Interactivity: Why, What and How?», in RASK–International journal of language and communication, 50, pp. 113-136.
Gallagher, Shaun (2005), How the Body Shapes the Mind, Oxford University Press, New York.
Harris, Roy (1987), The Language Machine, Duckworth, London.
Harvey, Matthew, Gahrn-Andersen, Rasmus, Steffensen, Sune Vork (2016), «Interactivity and enaction in human cognition», in Constructivist Foundations, 11, pp. 602–613.
Heil, John (2003), From an ontological point of view, Oxford University Press, Oxford.
Hoffmeyer, Jesper (1996), Signs of Meaning in the Universe, Indiana University Press, Indianapolis.
Husserl, Edmund (1948), Experience and Judgment, Eng. Trans. by J. Spencer Churchill and K. Ameriks, Northwestern University Press, Chicago 1973.
Järvilehto, Timo (1998), «The theory of the organism-environment system: I. Description of the theory», in Integrative Physiological and Behavioral Science, 33, pp. 321–334.
Järvilehto, Timo (2009), «The Theory of the Organism-Environment System as a Basis of Experimental Work in Psychology», in Ecological Psychology, 21, pp. 112-120.
Jaworski, William (2016), Structure and the metaphysics of mind: How hylomorphism solves the mind-body problem, Oxford University Press, Oxford.
Kravchenko, Alexander V. (2011), «How Humberto Maturana’s biology of cognition can revive the language sciences», in Constructivist Foundations, 6, n. 3, pp. 352-362.
Kravchenko Alexander V. (2020), «A critique of Barbieri’s code biology», in Constructivist Foundations, 15, n. 2, pp. 122–134.
Lassiter, Charles (2016), «Aristotle and distributed language: capacity, matter, structure, and languaging», in Language Sciences, 53, pp. 8-20.
Lassiter, Charles (2019), «Language and simplexity: A powers view» in Language Sciences, 71, pp. 27-37.
Lassiter, Charles, Vukov, Joseph (2021), «In search of an ontology for 4E theories: from new mechanism to causal powers realism», in Synthese (https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-021-03225-1).
Linell, Per (2015), «Dialogism and the Distributed Language Approach: a rejoinder to Steffensen», in Language Sciences, 50, pp. 120-126.
Lotman, Yuri (1990), Universe of the Mind: A Semiotic Theory of Culture, I.B. Taurus & Co., Ltd, London.
Lorenzo, Guillermo, Emilio, Rubiera (2019), «On Iconic-Discursive Representations: Do they Bring us Closer to a Humean Representational Mind?», in Biosemiotics, 12, pp. 423–439.
Nagel, Ernest, Newman James R. (2001), Gödel’s Proof, ed. by Douglas R. Hofstadter, New York University Press, New York.
Ott, Walter (2004), Locke's Philosophy of Language, Cambridge University Press, New York.
Quine, Willard V. (1948), «On what there is», in The Review of Metaphysics, pp. 21-38.
Rysiew, Patrick (2021), «Naturalism in Epistemology», in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. by Edward N. Zalta, Fall 2021 Edition, URL =
Sebeok, Thomas (1979), The sign and its masters, University of Texas Press, Austin.
Sebeok, Thomas (1986), «Towards a natural history of language», in Semiotica, 65, pp. 343-358.
Short, Thomas L. (1996), «Interpreting Peirce's interpretant: A response to Lalor, Liszka, and Meyers», in Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society, 32, n. 4, pp. 488-541.
Steffensen, Sune Vork (2015), «Distributed Language and Dialogism: notes on non-locality, sense-making and interactivity», in Language Sciences, 50, pp. 105-119.
Trasmundi, Sarah Bro, Steffensen, Sune Vork (2016), «Meaning emergence in the ecology of dialogical systems», in Psychology of Language and Communication, 20, n. 2, pp. 154-181.
Trasmundi, Sarah Bro, Cowley, Stephen J. (2020), «Reading: how readers beget imagining», in Frontiers in Psychology, 11, pp. 23-35. DOI=10.3389/fpsyg.2020.531682
Van Baaren, Rick B., et al. (2004), «Mimicry and prosocial behavior», in Psychological Science, 15, n. 1, pp. 71-74.
Vetter, Barbara (2018), «Perceiving Potentiality: A Metaphysics for Affordances», in Topoi, 39, pp. 1177–1191.
von Uexküll, Jakob (1934), A Foray into the Worlds of Animals and Humans, Translated by Joseph D. O’Neill, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis 2010.
Vukov, Joseph, Lassiter, Charles (2020), «How to power encultured minds», in Synthese, 197, pp. 3507–3534.
Wheeler, Wendy (2006), The whole creature: Complexity, biosemiotics, and the evolution of culture, Lawrence and Wishart, London.
Published
2022-01-23
How to Cite
Lassiter, C. (2022) “ Empowering Biosemiotics”, Rivista Italiana di Filosofia del Linguaggio, 15(2). doi: 10.4396/2021202.
Section
Articles
Copyright (c) 2021 Charles Lassiter
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Works published in RIFL are released under Creative Commons Licence:Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
