Showing papers on "Semiosphere published in 2009"

Entropy, Function and Evolution: Naturalizing Peircian Semiosis

Abstract: In the biosemiotic literature there is a tension between the naturalistic reference to biological processes and the category of ‘meaning’ which is central in the concept of semiosis. A crucial term bridging the two dimensions is ‘information.’ I argue that the tension can be resolved if we reconsider the relation between information and entropy and downgrade the conceptual centrality of Shannon information in the standard approach to entropy and information. Entropy comes into full play if semiosis is seen as a physical process involving causal interactions between physical systems with functions. Functions emerge from evolutionary processes, as conceived in recent philosophical contributions to teleosemantics. In this context, causal interactions can be interpreted in a dual mode, namely as standard causation and as an observation. Thus, a function appears to be the interpretant in the Peircian triadic notion of the sign. Recognizing this duality, the Gibbs/Jaynes notion of entropy is added to the picture, which shares an essential conceptual feature with the notion of function: Both concepts are part of a physicalist ontology, but are observer relative at the same time. Thus, it is possible to give an account of semiosis within the entropy framework without limiting the notion of entropy to the Shannon measure, but taking full account of the thermodynamic definition. A central feature of this approach is the conceptual linkage between the evolution of functions and maximum entropy production. I show how we can conceive of the semiosphere as a fundamental physical phenomenon. Following an early contribution by Hayek, in conclusion I argue that the category of ‘meaning’ supervenes on nested functions in semiosis, and has a function itself, namely to enable functional self-reference, which otherwise mainfests functional break-down because of standard set-theoretic paradoxes.

A Note on M. Barbieri’s “Scientific Biosemiotics”

Abstract: Arecent article in this journal 1 caught my attention, and prompted me to voice reservations I initially had reservations about voicing. Upon quoting the fairly noncommittal definition of the sign as nothing more than a triadic relation — “A interprets B as representing C” 2 — Marcello Barbieri questions whether this (Peircean) model is still appropriate for the “extension of semiosis to the animal world and to the entire living world”. That statement, as it stands, is quite puzzling. What “extension” could he possibly be talking about, given the model’s wide applicability? If the definition contained some reference to strictly human use, professor Barbieri’s worry would make more sense. But it seems to me that something has gone amiss when one claims that the very thesis which warranted the study of non-human sign-use in the first place is not suited for the study of non-human sign-use. If ever there was a case of ladder discarding, this is it. Pondering this issue in greater depth eventually dispelled my puzzlement. When T. Sebeok wrote that “semiosis presupposes the axiomatic identity of the semiosphere with the biosphere”, the official narrative has been that he was carrying semiotics into bold new fields of application. Barbieri, however, 3 interprets Sebeok as rather limiting semiosis to a new enclosure. To be sure, this territory is far more expansive than the one Saussure originally envisioned. What matters is not the area allotted, but the fact that in either case the boundaries that were set reflect the comfort zone of a particular theorist, not the internal demands of an inquiry into signs proper. Barbieri,

Sedimentação, erosão, abalos e erupção de imagens: Reprodução e transformação de representações sociais 1

Abstract: Moscovici’s social representations theory and Lotman’s semiosphere. The paper classifies the production of meaning in journalistic reports as reproduction (the “sedimentation” of stereotypes), questioning (the “erosion” of presupposition) denial (“earthquakes” in the basis of the semiosphere) or creation (the “eruption” of new ideas) of social representations.