Semiosphere

About: Semiosphere is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 219 publications have been published within this topic receiving 2698 citations.

Beyond self and other: On the neurosemiotic emergence of intersubjectivity

Abstract: The explosive growth over the last two decades of neuroscience, cognitive science, and “consciousness studies” as generally conceived, remains as yet unaccompanied by a corresponding development in the establishment of an explicitly semiotic understanding of how the relations of sign exchange at the neuronal level function in the larger network of psychologically accessible sign exchange. This article attempts a preliminary foray into the establishment of just such a neurosemiotic. It takes, as its test case and as its point of departure, recent discoveries from the neurobiological research on viuso-motor transformations and on the widespread cortical phenomena of selectively tuned, single-neuron response to argue for a vision of “intersubjectivity” whereby the ens rationis arising as a function of the neuronal semiosphere may be abstracted, constructed, and shared mutually across agents.

Semiotizing the sphere: organicist theory in Lotman, Bakhtin, and Vernadsky

Abstract: L'A. analyse le concept de semiosphere dans la theorie semiotique de Lotman. Les sources de la metaphore reposent sur des principes de la biologie cellulaire, de la chimie organique et de la science du cerveau. Pour l'Ecole de Tartu, c'est aussi un modele dialogique par analogie avec les fonctions assymetriques du cerveau humain. Le concept derive de celui de logosphere de M. Bakhtine, lui meme inspire par la notion de biosphere de Vladimir Vernadsky. L'A. compare ensuite cette theorie organiciste au structuralisme

Enkinaesthesia, biosemiotics and the ethiosphere

Abstract: The dynamic plenisentient interrelation of agent and world is specified in kinaesthetic terms. Kinaes-thetic activity, with its temporal-spatial-energic qualities, is always affectively-laden, and through the formation of intercorporeal resonances, the activity necessitates enkinaesthetic entwining with those agents with whom, and those objects with which, we are in relations of perpetual community. I will argue that the capacity for enkinaesthetic dialogue is an a priori nomological condition for agency and the generation of a felt anticipatory dynamics both within and between agents. Enkinaesthesia emphasizes not just the neuromuscular dynamics of the agent, that is, the givenness and ownership of its experience but also the entwined, blended and situated co-affective feeling of the presence of the other (agential and non-agential alike) and, where appropriate, the enkinaesthetically anticipated arc of the other’s action or movement, including, again where appropriate, the other’s intentionality. The ‘other’ can be sensing and experiencing agents and it is their affective intentional reciprocity, their folding, enfolding and unfolding, which co-constitutes the conscious relation and the experientially recursive temporal dynamics that lead to the formation and maintenance of integral enkinaesthetic structures and melodies. Such deeply felt enkinaesthetic melodies emphasise the dia- logical nature of the feeling of being as the feeling of being-with or being-among, and demonstrate the paucity of individuating notions that treat agents as singular. Enkinaesthesia, as the openness to and reception of myriad subtle multi-drectional cues in dialogical relations, provides grounds for saying, following Heidegger, that it is this which constitutes the pri- mordial mood of care for human relationships and the deep roots of morality. If this is the case, then we might think of it as composing an ‘ethiosphere’ consistent with the semiosphere and the biosphere as presented by Hoffmeyer [1995 and 2008].

Thomas A. Sebeok and biology: Building biosemiotics.

Abstract: The paper attempts to review the impact of Thomas A. Sebeok (1920–2001) on biosemiotics, or semiotic biology, including both his work as a theoretician in the field and his activity in organising, publishing, and communicating. The major points of his work in the field of biosemiotics concern the establishing of zoosemiotics, interpretation and development of Jakob v. Uexkull’s and Heini Hediger’s ideas, typological and comparative study of semiotic phenomena in living organisms, evolution of semiosis, the coincidence of semiosphere and biosphere, research on the history of biosemiotics.