Semiosis

The prevalent idea that semiosis is evolutionary is a driving point for biosemiotic research, starting from the Peircean premises of continuity and including a large number of views on how signs evolve. In this paper I wish to add a small pinch of skepticism to an otherwise productive point of view. Briefly, the question to be asked is: Is there any proper and fair connection between the logical abstraction of signs, genetic expressions interpreted as signs and the animal usage of signs? And how do we go about answering this? Instead of attempting a negative account of the possibility of an evolutionary view of biosemiosis, I will attempt to make an argument in favor of skepticism as a way to make a more fine-grained distinction across the areas where biosemiotic thinking seems to have some impact. The aim is then to find philosophical strategies to overcome this skepticism when possible, while also raising some awareness about the possible limits of current biosemiotics regarding the ideal evolutionary chain of signs. Ultimately, the idea is reexamining some core assumptions of the biosemiotic point of view at its most general, accounting for some possible ways in which theory may move forward. The potential incompatibility of theoretical standpoints between some of the different approaches that may be taken is, it will be argued, a desirable outcome for biosemiotic research. That is, the way we deal with the possible theories on the evolutionary continuity of signs will also affect our different research programs, and having a nuanced philosophical discussion on it can only contribute to the expansion and clarification of where different positions within biosemiotics currently stand.

В противоположность соссюровской семиологии, языковые знаки рассматриваются как объекты реального мира, изучение которых невозможно в отрыве от той среды, в которой они существуют. Прагматичность онтологии языковых знаков задает такие их характеристики, как легкодоступность, стабильность/легковоспроизводимость, мобильность, компактность. В естественных условиях функционирования человеческого организма такими характеристиками могут обладать лишь структуры, состоящие из членораздельных звуков. Следовательно, характер материальной субстанции, легшей в основу естественного языка, не случаен, хотя она и накладывает ограничения на разрешающие способности самой знаковой системы.

Phenomenological richness of various modality types in music creates a semantic (symbolic) tensions that can lead us to interpret dimensions of musical culture. These assumptions implicate different semantic fields of meaning in the sense of folk music, sacred music and various renaissance of modal thinking at the 20th and 21th centuries
(“new modality”). We can say that modality is an important element of musical narrativity, where the term topos is used to describe processes of semiosis.

Landmarks are developed with a specific name, form, thematic references and concept. Public discourses negotiate the references of each landmark. In the process, the landmark is represented in various media, including merchandise and other en-passant-media. Due to this, the same landmark signifies different meanings in different representations. These develop their own communicative contexts and reference frames, with all of them referring back to the landmark itself. The meanings construct and negotiate not only the symbolic value and reference frame of each landmark, but also influence related place-­-images and the role of individual topics or objects in culture(s). The canonisation of landmarks and their appropriation by different social groups that create different readings and uses of the same geographical spaces is discussed in this paper focussing on the example of The Angel of the North.

《電影符號學：從古典到數位時代（新版）》是電影理論工作者齊隆壬長期研究的成果，詳細耙梳並剖析符號學的發展源流與變革，以及著名學者的理論，如索緒爾、李維史陀、羅蘭巴特、皮爾斯等。接著帶出電影理論的關鍵人物──克利斯蒂安．梅茲，闡釋他如何把符號學，以及相關領域如語言學、結構主義、精神分析運用至電影分析，奠定電影符號學在電影理論界的重要地位。也因電影符號學涵蓋的範圍甚廣，而讓電影分析有了更多可能性。除了回顧西方符號學與電影符號學的理論與沿革，作者也把討論拉回台灣與中國大陸，介紹電影符號學在兩岸的發展脈絡與特點。

　　在理論層面之外，作者也引用許多影片分析的範例，清楚說明電影符號學是如何應用於電影研究之中。而近來電影科技日新月異，已進入數位電影時代，因此第九章即在討論電影由膠卷轉為數位影像的變革，除了提及古典電影如《波坦金戰艦》、《月球之旅》等必會出現的經典例子，更舉《阿凡達》、《全面啟動》、《雨果的冒險》為例，把電影符號學理論連結至最新的影片發展上。

　　電影符號學雖看似古典，在現今的數位環境中非但沒有過時，反而受到電影理論學者大量援用，依然能夠提供理論架構和基本論點。而本書由符號學的發展開始，一直到電影符號學與數位電影的連結，提供了全面且獨到深入的見解，堪稱是近期電影理論的重量級著作，研究電影者不可不看！

In building a constructivist view of language, the inherently experiential
nature of language should not be absolutized but seen rather as depending on the overlap between the first-order and the second-order consensual
domains as the sources of experience.

Wo von Verkörperung die Rede ist, gilt es Körper nicht nur als Stichwortgeber sondern auch als einen zentralen und systematischen Ausgangspunkt der Konzeptbildungen in die Theorie mitaufzunehmen. Mit MERLEAU-PONTY ist hierbei in der post-phänomenologischen Philosophie eine Perspektive eingeführt, in der Körperlichkeit als eine strategische Doppelfigur gedacht ist, die den Körper zum einen als lebendige, empirische Struktur und zum anderen als Kontext oder Milieu verschiedener (kognitiver, sozialer, sprachlicher etc.) Mechanismen und Zusammenhänge umfaßt.
In einer entsprechend angesetzten Lektüre weisen so scheinbar verschiedene Denker wie MERLEAU-PONTY, MCLUHAN und BENJAMIN eine interessante Familienähnlichkeit auf, deren gemeinsames, sozusagen »virtuelles«, Zentrum ein raffiniertes und komplexes Konzept des Körperlichen darstellt, welches den Körper auch nach einer analytisch Durchdringung nicht als wesentliche Integrationsgröße der Theoriebildung aus dem Blick verliert. MERLEAU-PONTYs Konzeption einer gleichsam individuellen wie anonymen, quasi-ontologischen Leiblichkeit steht hierbei in Resonanz mit Beschreibungen, die sich für die in diesem Zusammenhang wirksame Eigenwertigkeit verschiedener medialer Vermittlungszusammenhänge interessier(t)en.
Inauguriert wird in einer so gearteten Zusammenschau auch eine eigenständige Idee des Medialen, nach der Körper gleichsam natürliche wie kulturelle »Rahmen« für implizit wie explizit wirkender Effektivitäten bilden, welche jeweils zusätzliche Handlungs- und Erfahrungs- und Sinn-Strukturen einführen. Eine solche Sicht, die an nicht-semiotischen Struktur-Effekten und -Schemata im Sinne einer nicht-signifikativen Bedeutungsbildung festhält,verspricht nicht nur einen Theorie-Boden für die notwendige Bestimmung der Unterscheidungen (wie der Zusammenhänge) von Zeichen und Medium, Semiotizität und Medialität, sondern auch für die Auslotung von unterschiedlichen Formen (»Grammatiken«) von Medialität (MCLUHAN) und Signifikation (HAYLES).
In zwei Kontexten kann diese Unterscheidung in ihrer Relevanz exemplifiziert werden: 1) der an Inszenierung und Performativität interessierten Kulturtheorie (GUMBRECHT/FISCHER-LICHTE u.a.); 2) der an virtuellen Realitäten und Telepräsenz-Effekten interessierten Techniktheorie (BIOCCA, HAYLES u.a.).

Umberto Eco (1975; 1985) has invariantly maintained that specular images have no semiosic status, basically because they stand in front rather than instead of an object. In his Kant and the Platypus (1997), Eco returns offering reasons to exclude specular images from signs, and definitely classifies mirrors as visual prosthetic devices. In this paper I argue that Eco is partly right and partly wrong. He is right inasmuch as he claims that seeing an object in a mirror must count as a case of seeing that object rather than as a case of seeing a sign of that object (or, a sign standing for a propositional content about that object). The only reason why we should agree with Eco on this point, however, is that otherwise we would be forced to admit that also when we see the object in normal visual perception, with no mirror involved, what we really see is a sign. But then Eco is wrong because he does not acknowledge that, although mirror phenomena do have no semiosic status per se, they may acquire it by taking advantage of independent sign-functions – thus coming to be part of what I call parasiticly semiosic phenomena. Specifically, since an object that is visually perceived in a mirror may appear to have some spatial or topological properties that the real object does not possess, it is sufficient for the mirror phenomenon to exploit an independent sign-function whose expressions admit spatial or topological properties among their distinctive traits in order for it to become fully (though parasiticly) semiosic.

لقد كانت هوية الذات في رؤيا الشاعر مرقاتنا لاكتناه عالمه الشعري، بوصفه منتوجا يعكس صورتين متناظرين من حيث الشكل، ومتباينتين من حيث المضمون، تكمن الأولى في صورة زيف الواقع، في حين تُعنى الثانية بما فوق الواقع في أكوانه الممكنة، والصورتان ـ معًا ـ تدفعان الشاعر إلى التماس وسيلة تعبير مختلفة في نتاجه الكشفي، حين اتخذ من أصالته الإبداعية، وهويته الروحية ما ينم عن فطرته الصافية إنسانيةً، ومزيَّته الخالصة تورعًا، ورؤيته الإبداعية كشفًا، سواء بدافع رفع الشيء عما يواريه في أنساق الواقع، أم بدافع معرفة ما وراء الإدراك من خلال صفات ذات الحق وجودًا وشهودًا.

There is fundamentally more to Baul spirituality and scripture than merely the music and lyrics that one comes by, and conceivably nobody can ‘delve deep’ into the music form without having some basic understanding and concepts about its tottyo. This book
is an attempt to understand and explain the intricacies of the Baul scriptures. The esoteric couplets, sentences and arguments that usually have moral or historical over tone, the pointed reminders, the signature lines, and the over all thrust of arguments within a very short periphery of time, the alankar (embellishments), all mesh in and combine to create a completed aura of ethereal munificence. Baul music with exceptions follows different traditions and Guru’s in every district of Bangladesh, and sometimes each has its own unique Guru Shishya parampara (student/teachers discourses), leading on to birth of newer, progressive and more challenging schools of thoughts.

While Fakir Lalon Shah is the most celebrated of sages of Bangladesh, the schools of Baul thought encapsulates perhaps several hundred more sages and men of great wisdom, whose writings and philosophies continue to inspire and whose graves
more often than not, take on the shape of shrines, usually devoid of any religious or sectarian symbolism. Being an oral tradition Baul music ironically is also one of our near extinct heritages as most of the works have either disappeared or have been claimed by
unscrupulous people over time. Studies on authorship of many Baul songs (including those of Lalon) and their relevance to original scores and or manuscripts remains a very complicated process and is mired by many unfortunate controversies. To top it off, it is believed that while there were over 300 different types of Baul melodies or tunes; today we are left with scarcely 35. While researching the Bauliana album, I could identify only 20 authentic tunes.

The essays ‘Bauliana: Worshipping the Great God in Man’ in 2003 were written through a feeling of guilt and remorse. While I did receive praise for my work for the musical album of 1996, troubling me intently was a feeling of not been able to share the many
words of wisdom that were imparted to me by the Baul’s over the years to a wider audience, teachings I was sure would benefit a lot of later day enthusiasts. I had made scores of notes at the time, as also consigned most of the teachings to memory but there was always a deep apprehension, that unless my writings were passed on hand to
hand; all the hard work that went into it, will fail my original intention i.e. opening newer dimensions into reading on Baul music, lyrics, philosophy and way of life.

This article examines the production of the literary myth from the perspective of semiosis and perceptive semiosis according to Um-berto Eco. It shows that, though the referent is always modified by the occurrences and the different kinds of encounters with the myth, the literary myth finds its coherence thanks to invariants. The latter are not to be found in the narrative as it was long claimed. Rather, they are attached to the hero who, therefore, becomes the founder of a social and collective phenomenon. Consisting of a myth or of an ideology, which corresponds to the mentality of the context of reception, the invariants fascinate and mobilize the public to such an extent that they emancipate themselves from the literary text to move from one medium to another , allowing the hero to become a full-fledged convention. The question of invariants brings that of the strategy in the original text, which could generate a readership capable of identifying and transmitting them, hence maintaining the literary myth in the collective memory. Cet article examine la production du mythe littéraire dans l'op-tique de la sémiose et de la sémiose perceptive selon Umberto Eco. Il montre que, malgré un référent toujours modifié selon les avatars et les différentes prises de connaissance, le mythe littéraire connaît toute sa cohérence grâce à des constantes qui ne se situent pas au niveau narratif, comme il fut longtemps affirmé : elles se rattachent bien plutôt au héros qui devient ainsi fondateur d'un phénomène social et collectif. Consistant en un mythe ou en une idéologie correspondant à la constellation mentale du con-texte d'accueil, les invariants fascinent et fédèrent le public, à tel point qu'ils finissent par s'émanciper du texte littéraire pour se mouvoir d'un support à un autre, permettant au héros de devenir une convention à part entière. La question des invariants entraîne celle de la stratégie du texte originel qui pourrait générer un lec-torat capable de les repérer et de les retransmettre, entretenant le mythe littéraire dans la mémoire collective..

The main aim of this brief and purposely radical essay is to investigate further possibilities for empirical research in natural classification of semiosis (signs as wholes). Before introducing emon – a missing term in the taxonomy of signs – we make a distinction between the natural and artificial, and between the taxonomic and meronomic classifications of signs. Natural classifications or typologies are empirically based, while artificial classifications do not require empirical test. Meronomy describes the relational or functional structure of the whole (for instance triadic, circular, etc. composition of sign), while taxonomy categorizes individuals (individual signs). We argue that a natural taxonomy of signs can be based on the existence of different complexity of operations during semiosis, which implies different mechanisms of learning. We add into the taxonomy a particular type of signs – emonic signs, which are at work in imitation and social learning, while being more complex than indexes and less complex than symbols. Icons are related to imprinting, indexes to conditioning, emons to imitating, and symbols to conventions or naming. We also argue that the semiotic typologies could undergo large changes after the discovery of the proper mechanisms or workings of semiosis.

Sign Systems Studies 47(1/2), 2019, 88–104

The social, academic and intellectual construct given to the Baul  movement ofBengal for centuries have been attempts by the elite status quo to box-in the music, lifestyle and philosophy of Fakirs, Sadhus and Sages of our time, thereby limiting them to easily explainable parameters and expected norms, practices of spirituality.

Baul philosophy is however unique in that it challenges these constructs in the epochal tangents setting it apart from other ‘religions’ or beliefs. Our dominant heritage culture, especially those practised by the marginalised majority, the construed ‘subalterns’ has therefore traditionally been in conflict and at odds with the city centers The objective of this essay is to give readers a concise yet coherent understanding to the basis of the Baul creed, its history, philosophy, complex spirituality and lofty ideals. It also aims to present us an opportunity to appreciate why the teachings of Fakir Lalon Shah has become so pertinent in present day Bangladesh which is beset with sectarian strife of an unimaginable magnitude, and perhaps lessons we may inculcate to the way forward..

È estatico ogni discorso che, costruendosi nel linguaggio e col linguaggio, rappresenta nondimeno una fuoriuscita da esso, un bloccarsi della semiosi, un venir meno delle distinzioni che fondano il senso. Trattasi dunque di un’impostura? Dell’evocazione impossibile, fra le maglie dell’immanenza, di una dimensione trascendente nella quale e verso la quale la prima si sfaldi, perdendo la consistenza di strutture e opposizioni? Rispondere affermativamente sarebbe forse semplicistico, sarebbe considerare l’estasi come puro effetto ottico, come sorta di trompe-l’oeil mistico. In realtà, come ogni trompe-l’oeil, anche l’estasi rinvia a qualcosa di più della propria semplice rappresentazione. Essa rimanda ai pregiudizi inconfessati di un’ideologia semiotica, alla trama nascosta, al negativo segreto che regge tutta la concezione moderna del senso e del linguaggio. Il discorso mistico, che corre parallelo e invisibile, spesso represso, a volte perseguitato, lungo tutta la storia delle religioni, esprime allora questo dubbio: e se il senso non fosse distinzione, separatezza, dualità? Se l’immanenza articolatoria che lo viviseziona non fosse che illusoria? A questo punta ogni racconto dell’estasi: al sospetto che i fondamenti della modernità, anti-mistici per definizione, non siano altro che una delle possibilità dell’umano, e che una storia non detta, in filigrana, si dipani accanto e sotto al moderno come traccia sbiadita di un altro percorso, di un altro modo d’intendere e di dire.

This article explores the applicability of a Peircean approach to the intersubjectivity of adult-child shared reading. Peirce's semiosis serves as an analytical device for ways in which intersubjectivity transcends social interaction. By scrutinising instances of signification, i.e., the production and interpretation of signs constitutive of meaning making in the reading of a dual-language picturebook, the analysis reveals that the word-image complementarity renders an unfolding of intersubjective nuances in collaborative learning and intervention. This provides impetus for furthering Vygotsky's sign mediation to embrace the notion of 'intersemiosis' as indexed to the interdependence of signifying codes in communication and representation, thus theorising how the signification of such codes elicits, invites, and empowers social interaction. Resonant with edusemiotics, increasingly a reference point in the philosophical foundation of learning and development, this article offers pedagogical implications for teachers.

It is often thought that consciousness has a qualitative dimension that cannot be tracked by science. Recently, however, some philosophers have argued that this worry stems not from an elusive feature of the mind, but from the special nature of the concepts used to describe conscious states. Marc Champagne draws on the neglected branch of philosophy of signs or semiotics to develop a new take on this strategy. 

The term “semiotics” was introduced by John Locke in the modern period – its etymology is ancient Greek, and its theoretical underpinnings are medieval. Charles Sanders Peirce made major advances in semiotics, so he can act as a pipeline for these forgotten ideas. Most philosophers know Peirce as the founder of American pragmatism, but few know that he also coined the term “qualia,” which is meant to capture the intrinsic feel of an experience. Since pragmatic verification and qualia are now seen as conflicting commitments, Champagne endeavors to understand how Peirce could (or thought he could) have it both ways. The key, he suggests, is to understand how humans can insert distinctions between features that are always bound.

Recent attempts to take qualities seriously have resulted in versions of panpsychism, but Champagne outlines a more plausible way to achieve this. So, while semiotics has until now been the least known branch of philosophy ending in –ics, his book shows how a better understanding of that branch can move one of the liveliest debates in philosophy forward.

Biosemiotics, if it is a paradigm for biology, should mean a different approach in all branches of biology. It cannot restrict itself to the re-interpretation of existing knowledge (like a philosophy of biology), or with the application of a new terminology. It is a way of thinking, experimenting, and describing for both theoretical and empirical biology. For Jakob von Uexküll, Umweltforschung was, first of all, an experimental science, the detailed physiological description and analysis of functional circles, the investigation of sensors and effectors of organisms together with the codes which connect them both inside and outside the organism. The semiotic approach has raised this problem and makes this work meaningful. However, the problem of what the semiotic approach should mean for experimental biology is not enough investigated in contemporary biosemiotics.
From the point of view of sociology of science, biosemiotics, according to the impact made by Jesper Hoffmeyer, seems to be a child of the cultural movement, related somehow to the values of methodological anarchism and love of symbiosis, holism and critics of neo-Darwinism. However, my belief is that it should be combined with the results of theoretical biology, with the understanding of complex systems, chaos, recursive mathematics, etc. When combining all these tools, biosemiotics may indeed build the bridges it has started to build.

The discipline of biosemiotics applies semiotic terms to nonhuman organisms, even to those that lack neural system and brain. It views semiosis as the core property of life, rather than an advanced type of activity which appears at later stages of evolution when organisms became sufficiently complex. The origin of life was associated with the emergence of most primitive hereditary signs capable of carrying functions to descentent primordial agents. Accordingly, biological evolution is rooted in semiosis – a process of active interpretation by hereditary signs (both, genetic and epigenetic) in the context of other signs that come from the parts of the body and the environment. The biosemiotic concept of agency-driven evolution is opposed to neo-Darwinism that views evolution as a passive change of gene frequency via natural selection, drift, and other processes. The latter gene-centered approach is usually combined with genetic determinism and assumption that innovations are based solely on mutations. In contrast we consider mutations as disturbances that are creatively interpreted by cell subagents based on their experience, encoded genetically and epigenetically. Thus, mutation are not primary causes of adaptation, but being interpreted by subagents, they indirectly facilitate robustness, adaptive plasticity, and genetic assimilation. This reasoning resembles components of Lamarck’s theory. The genome may change passively and randomly, but its interpretation is active and guided by the logic of agent functions and embryo development. Emergence of new functions is based on the reinterpretation of the genome, when old tools, resources, and control algorithms are adopted for novel purposes. The biosemiotic approach to evolution can explain challenging questions, such as (i) emergence of interpretation capacity in primordial systems at the origin of life, (ii) remarkable consistency of phenotypic traits in the absence of genetic determinism, (iii) capacity of lineages to generate new solutions of living problems in critical conditions, (iv) the origin and nature of species, and (v) capacity to integrate into higher-level semiotic systems, such as colonies or super-organisms.

We examine the possibility of shifting the concept of choice to the centre of the semiotic theory of learning.  Thus, we define sign process (meaning-making) through the concept of choice: semiosis is the process of making choices between simultaneously provided options. We define semiotic learning as leaving traces by choices, while these traces influence further choices. We term such traces of choices memory. Further modification of these traces (constraints) will be called habituation. Organic needs are homeostatic mechanisms coupled with choice-making. Needs and habits result in motivatedness. Semiosis as choice-making can be seen as a complementary description of the Peircean triadic model of semiosis; however, this can  fit also the models of meaning-making worked out in other shools of semiotics. We also provide a sketch for a joint typology of semiosis and learning.

Semiotics (sometimes spelled “semeiotic”) is the name first given by John Locke, and later reprised by Charles S. Peirce, for the “doctrine of signs,” or the study of how some things can stand for other things to still other things. This deliberate inquiry can be contrasted with “folk semiotic” accounts, which assume that there is some intrinsic feature about, say, the human voice or a painted board that makes them capable of signifying. Such a naive assumption does not withstand serious scrutiny. From a philosophical standpoint, what makes something a sign is an involvement in a specific sort of triadic relation. This relation is found in human/nonhuman and deliberate/nondeliberate signs alike. Semiosis, the action of signs, is what permits communication, but it is wider than communication. For example, if while in an adjacent room I smell that the turkey in the oven is ready, my pet dog can smell it too, and the turkey is not trying to “tell” us anything. But if the cook in the kitchen tells me it is ready, I receive that message, while my dog hears the sounds but is none the wiser (in contemporary semiotic parlance, my dog and I couple our Umwelten via indices, but the symbols at hand generate interpretants only in my anthroposemiosis). In spite of the fact that it has a long and distinguished history (especially during the medieval period), general inquiry into signs became an organized research program only in the mid-20th century. Today, in addition to philosophers, semiotics attracts a wide range of scholars, such as ethologists, cognitive scientists, linguists, art historians, logicians, media theorists, literary critics, computer programmers, biologists, sociologists, and so on. From a methodological standpoint, then, parochialism is not an option. The scholarly literature can nevertheless be fruitfully divided into theoretical and applied strands. Not surprisingly, most philosophers drawn to semiotic questions work in the former strand. Semiotics is not to be confused with “semiology,” a (now largely defunct) project that originated in the lectures of the linguist Ferdinand de Saussure and which was active in the 1960s, mainly in France. Semiotics, by contrast, is a vibrant tradition that continues to flourish worldwide. Although some persist in employing the term “semiotics” when discussing narrow studies that focus exclusively on cultural codes, such terminological misuse masks the fact that a study of signs is broader than a study of language. A sustained philosophy of signs, then, promises (as Locke initially surmised) to yield truly novel insights.

Los recientes desarrollos de la Biosemiótica han puesto al centro de su programa de investigación un estadio anterior a la descripción de procesos semióticos de orden sociocultural al momento de preguntarse por la emergencia del significado a nivel biológico, pero al mismo tiempo han abierto todo un campo donde más que certezas apenas se comienzan a bosquejar las preguntas que habrá que responder: ¿qué cambia con la emergencia de los procesos de significación? ¿Qué implica que la significación “emerja”? ¿De dónde emerge el significado? ¿Qué relación existe entre la emergencia de sistemas semióticos y la producción de conocimiento? Las preguntas anteriores tienen un fuerte énfasis en lo que se refiere al nivel biológico, pero encierran dentro de sí supuestos básicos de los cuales se derivan preguntas de un orden más general, propiamente epistemológico y filosófico, pues si la semiosis puede ser descrita como un proceso “emergente” en los sistemas biológicos, entonces eso permite suponer que la propia semiosis emerge en todo sistema semiótico o que todo sistema semiótico depende de la emergencia de la semiosis sin importar su naturaleza fenomenológica. Es sobre estos temas que el capítulo del libro centra su atención.


Referencia

VIDALES, Carlos (2012). “Comunicación, semiosis y conocimiento. una mirada semiótica y comunicativa a la construcción de conocimiento” en RIZO, Marta. Filosofía y Comunicación. Diálogos, encuentros y posibilidades. Monterrey: CAEIP, pp. 123-142.

Literary scholar, cultural theorist and semiotician Juri Lotman (1922–1993) established the Tartu (and Tartu-Moscow) school of semiotics in the 1960s. Besides his pioneering work in semiotics of culture, he also developed a theory of general semiotics. We attempt to extract some principles from Juri Lotman’s formulations that characterise the core aspects of semiosis, applicable both in semiotics of culture and in biosemiotics. These include: (1) the principle of code plurality; (2) the principle of incompatibility, or non-translatability; (3) the principle of autocommunication, or translation; (4) the principle of semiosphere; (5) the principle of semiotic inheritance; (6) the principle of non-gradual evolution; (7) the principle of boundaries; and (8) the principle of modelling.

This series of essays offers a critique of Information Studies, taken as a discipline largely concerned with informational objects and their representations on the one hand and the control of these same by means of other informational objects and their representations on the other. Specifically, the critique put forward here attends to the ways that the common practices of Information Studies may reinforce representationalist ideologies that are historically problematic and that are likely to continue to be so into the future if allowed to persist. Such ideologies are bound up with histories of oppression, colonialism, and cognitive injustice in ways that seem likely to be undesirable to most practitioners upon consideration. The critique offered seeks to point out this conjunction of aesthetic and ethical issues in our practical epistemological constructs, opening out largely untried avenues of exploration with regard to our axiological habits—axiology being defined here as the inquiry that includes ethics, aesthetics, and epistemology—and the architectonic structures of meaning and understanding that we deploy with ever increasing density in (and occasionally as) the world.

In the related field of semiotics, an assumption, bordering on a principle, obtains that meaning has structure and that that structure is intelligible. The work of semiotic theorists has shown that this is not likely to be exclusively a logocentric prejudice. The works of Gilles Deleuze and his sometimes partner Felix Guattari, along with those of C.S. Peirce and Justus Buchler, each postulate in their own way that meaning and its structure are continuous with the world, and, going further, that the structures of meaning that exist in the world have no intrinsic limit to their complexity in a general sense other than the availability of resources to build that complexity. This is not equivalent to saying that the forms of such complexity are unlimited in the sense that they could take all possible forms, though the number of possible form-states may be infinite in principle when the availability of resources is bracketed off as a concern. That indicates to us the likelihood that no single ideology gives us a complete picture of all possible semiotic modalities and that, with sufficient resources, multiple modalities may coexist and interact in a single system, event, or order. All of this places semiosis in a thermodynamic milieu between complex systems theory and computation theory, even while suggesting analogies to ecophenomenology and ecosystems thinking as an interpretation of Peircean "infinite semiosis."

While semiotics, as an architectonic discipline, traces continuities with the Kantian paradigm, the Deleuzean approach represents a turn in philosophy both in expressive style and ways of doing philosophy, such that both a reinvestigation of semiotic structures and the production of new rhetorical modes are suggested in light of it—though Deleuze is a threshold for such matters, not a container. Making use of Friedrich Nietzsche, Martin Heidegger, Niklas Luhmann, Luciano Floridi, and François Laruelle (as well as Patrick Wilson, Marcia Bates, and Jonathan Furner) to construct an ordinal semiotic compatible with various structural realisms, the arguments here commit to a pataphysical and hermetic swerve that aligns with the "Dark Deleuzean" aesthetics of Nick Land and Reza Negarestani, exploring the metaphor of darkness itself by way of the immanence theories of Timothy Morton and Eugene Thacker. The argument pattern described can be seen as an affirmation of possibly novel values of global, transspecies cognitive justice and "cognitive veganism" at least partially consistent with the ethical concerns and images of thought of such thinkers as Richard Kahn and Stephen David Ross.

Due to the emphasis on continuity with the world, the above motivates us to take seriously various posthumanistic rhetorics' priorities: cybernetics, informatics, thermodynamics, complex and autopoietic systems, codality, cognitive and neuro-diversity, enhanced and artificial intelligence, postvitalist ecology, and perhaps even Singularity. Because of that same continuity, each of these should be necessarily thought in relation to planetarity and global history. Through that thought we can understand semiotic processes and ecologies as bound up with what Land has called a "terraprocess." Information Studies, as a discipline emerging into full fruition within the context of a posthumanistic moment, situated in turn within the Anthropocene Era, should understand and engage with this terraprocess as the architectonic syntax for a more fundamental informatic and metainformatic axiology.

The problem of reading, in language teaching, is a big challenge. Today's globalized world scenario requires individuals to refine their habilities and knowledge for a greater experience of the possibilities offered by society. This monograph is intended to contribute for the critical reader-students formation. Based on the research of Joseph Campbell on the theme of "Mother Goddess", recurring on various mythological traditions, the study of metaphors, or even analogies present in mythical texts analyzed by Campbell, approaches from Philosophy, Anthropology and History. Of great cultural value, the object of the present study is also a provocative invitation to reflection, especially by raising the issue of relations between man and nature - the Goddess body. The theme was developed in textual interpretation classes with students of 2nd year of high school and was well received. Interesting and promising results was obtained, given the great interest aroused in the students.

Keywords: mother goddess_metaphor_textual interpretation.

The American philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce (b. 1839–d. 1914) has had a profound, expansive, and sometimes unrecognized impact on anthropological research and theory. Part of Peirce’s impact has been mediated through the work of philosophers influenced by Peirce’s theory of signs, and who were themselves subsequently taken into anthropological theory. But the impact of Peirce’s semiotic on anthropologists who have interpreted Peirce directly has also been transformative, in particular, in developing a surprisingly transdisciplinary theory of meaning in anthropology. This article documents the role of Peirce’s theory of signs in facilitating a semiotic approach in sociocultural and linguistic anthropology and in providing a framework to critically expand research on visual and material culture, archaeology, trans-species environmental relations, life-systems, and the evolution of language and culture. The transformative impact of Peirce’s semiotic can be understood against the history of the dominant structuralist semiotic theory that guided much 20th- century anthropology that developed from the work of Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure. Saussure called for a science of signs (termed “semiology”) that placed at its center an analysis of the arbitrary linguistic sign (constituted by an ideal binary binding concept and sound-image) and which has value as part of a system of oppositions (langue), held commonly in the minds of speakers as members of a society. A parallel model of language was incorporated into American anthropology by Franz Boas, who argued that language is a conventional system of classification for a society, and the dominant focus became the study of such systems of classification in domains such as botany, zoology, kinship, color, and so on. The structuralist concept of language as a conventional system also became a dominant model of culture in French and British anthropology, in particular through the integration of Claude Lévi-Strauss’s binary analysis of mythic and mental structures, and which was coordinated with the Durkheimian concept of language/culture as a public representation of a society’s values to itself. In contrast, Peircean semiosis does not take the idealist and arbitrary linguistic symbol as the privileged basis of semiotic analysis. Peirce’s semiotic provides a framework for understanding actions relating signs and their material qualities to their interpretations by agents (human and nonhuman) in the habit of making meaning in social-ecological contexts. Peircean semiosis focuses attention on dynamic interpretive processes and their consequences, and on the form, diversity, function, and positionality of signs in chains of actions playing out in time and space to practical, meaningful, productive, or consequential ends.

The aim of this study is to demonstrate the mutual relationship between the classes of signs, mechanisms of learning, and types of umwelten. This framework is necessary in order to describe tlre animal ways of meaning-making in the context of various forms of semiosis. We state that semiosis only occurs in the internal present. An account of the linkage of vegetatirre, animal, social, and cultural umwelten with corresponding classes of signs and mechanisms of learning (imprinting , conditioning, imitating, conventioning) is provided. we also formulate two rules of semiotic development that characterise the ontogeny of the umwelt.

The roots of semiotic thinking go back to the first civilizations of the Fertile Crescent and Ancient Greece. The recent history of concepts such as sign, sign-action and sign systems, is dominated by two traditions: the semiology of Ferdinand de Saussure and the semeiotics of Charles Sanders Peirce. In this article we are going to examine Saussure’s dyadic model of the linguistic sign, Yuri Lotman’s ideas on primary and secondary modeling systems and his concept of semiosphere, as well as Peirce’s triadic sing doctrine. Finally, we are going to examine Peirce’s understanding of the process of sign-action or semiosis. I argue that through that concept we are able to transcend the boundaries of physics, linguistics and culture.

Classroom research in the past has mostly been based on the study of the language used by the teacher and students. With the availability of video recording technologies, it is now possible to collect multimodal classroom data, such as the teachers’ use of gestures, positioning, and classroom space to enact specific pedagogy. The challenge for the researchers is how to annotate and analyse such multimodal data. This paper proposes an approach for the annotation and analysis of the teachers’ use of gestures in the classroom for meaning-making. Situated within Systemic Functional Theory, the Systemic Functional Multimodal Discourse Analysis approach to the formal and functional classification of teachers’ use of gestures in the classroom is introduced. The approach builds on present research and theoretical conceptions on gestures and extends the classifications with examples from a selection of instances from an authentic classroom corpus. The aim is to develop the theoretical apparatus for the annotation and analysis of the teachers’ use of gestures in the classroom.

The paper develops the concept of 'semiotic threshold zone' and a classification of major levels of semiotic systems, looking at this as both a theoretical and an empirical problem. The concept of semiotic threshold zone both specifies and generalizes the notion of 'semiotic threshold' and is necessary in order to describe and understand the events that enable a system in its evolution to cross the threshold between the levels, and also at the same time to maintain it. The existence of systems based on different types of semiosis leads to secondary and tertiary semiotic threshold zones, in addition to the lower (primary) one that distinguishes semiosic and non-semiosic systems. We argue for the secondary threshold zones being the indexical and symbolic ones, which correspondingly separate the vegetative and animal semiosis (at the indexical threshold zone), and animal and cultural semiosis (at the symbolic threshold zone). We also argue that indexical semiosis is responsible for spatial representations (perception of space), whereas symbolic semiosis is necessary for temporal representations (perception of time) to take place. This implies that the vegetative umwelten are both non-spatial and non-temporal, the animal umwelten being spatial but non-temporal, and the cultural umwelten (Lebenswelten) being both spatial and temporal. Within these types of semiosis, the tertiary threshold zones could be discovered.

A detailed review of the work of Thomas A. Sebeok (1920-2001) in the field of biosemiotics. This includes Sebeok’s relationships to biology and his work on building biosemiotics, or semiotic biology, including both his work as a theoretician in the field and his activity in organising, publishing, and communicating. It reviews Sebeok’s (a) establishing of zoosemiotics, (b) interpretation and development of Jakob von Uexküll’s and Heini Hediger’s ideas, (c) typological, comparative, and evolutionary study of semiosis and semiotic phenomena in living organisms, (d) idea that life is semiosis, and that semiosphere coincides with biosphere, (e) research on the history of biosemiotics, and (f) his organizational work in establishing biosemiotics.

Abstract:
The evolutionary emergence of biological processes in organisms with inner, qualitative aspects has not been explained in any sufficient way by neurobiology, nor by the traditional neo-Darwinian paradigm — natural selection would appear to work just as well on insentient zombies (with the right behavioral input-output relations) as on real sentient
animals. In consciousness studies one talks about the ‘hard problem’ of qualia. In this paper I sketch a set of principles about sign action, causality and emergent evolution. On
the basis of these principles, I characterize a concept of cause that would allow for a naturalistic explanation of the origin of consciousness. The suggested account of
causation also turns the ‘hard problem’ of qualia into the easier problem of relating experimental biology to experiential biology.

This article builds on C. S. Peirce’s suggestive blueprint for an inclusive outlook that grants reality to his three categories. Moving away from the usual focus on (contentious) cosmological forces, I use a modal principle to partition various ontological layers: regular sign-action (like coded language) subsumes actual sign-action (like here-and-now events) which in turn subsumes possible sign-action (like qualities related to whatever would be similar to them). Once we realize that the triadic sign’s components are each answerable to this asymmetric subsumption, we obtain the means to track at which level of complexity semiosis finds itself, in a given case. Since the bulk of such a “trinitarian” metaphysics would be devoted to countenancing un-interpreted phenomena, I argue that current misgivings about sign-based ontologies are largely misplaced.

Inleiding 2
Drie betekenissen van het begrip cultuur 3
Een analyse van Barthes’ Mythologies 4
a) De moderne Mythe 4
i. Semiologische beschrijving van mythe 4
ii. Van semiologische naar ideologische beschrijving 9
b) Illustrerende mythes in en buiten Mythologies 12
Cultuurbegrip volgens Roland Barthes 13
Kritiek op Barthes’ Mythologies 16
De massacultuur en mediacultuur: 16
De mythologie als ontmaskering van de mythe mislukt? 17
Conclusie 18
Geraadpleegde literatuur 18

RESUMEN En este artículo se hace un estudio de las letanías del Carnaval de Barranquilla, como formas de representar la realidad social del medio local, regional, nacional e internacional, destacando su poder popular y protagonismo durante los cuatro días de festividades, mientras se van mostrando los aspectos relevantes que caracterizan la cultura costeña. La producción de letanías es presentada como una semiosis en las cual existen interrelaciones con otros espacios semióticos vinculantes. Lo que permite probar que "lo social" es más que el escenario o contexto de la elaboración y expresión del pensamiento de los hacedores de letanías, pues se constituye en su condición material y simbólica para construir un discurso carnavalesco que aborda los grandes temas de la actualidad con una lógica plagada de burlas, sátiras, irónicas, mofas y picaresca vinculadas con el goce del canto, la narración y la denuncia. 2 Doctora en Educación por la Universidad Santo Tomás, Magíster en Lingüística por el Instituto Caro y Cuervo y Licenciada en Lenguas Modernas por la Universidad del Atlántico. Actualmente es profesora titular de la Universidad Distrital Francisco José de Caldas en los programas de Doctorado Interinstitucional en Educación-Énfasis ELT Education-, la Licenciatura en Lenguas Extranjeras con Énfasis en Inglés y la Maestría en Lingüística Aplicada a la Enseñanza del Inglés. Directora del grupo de investigación Intertexto. How to cite this paper: Soto-Molina, Jairo Eduardo; Pilar Méndez-Rivera (2020). Percepción de la calidad del servicio: una mirada desde la perspectiva del sector de la salud.

This is afterword to Felice Cimatti's book on Giorgio Prodi, which provides a discussion on the primary forms of semiosis. Relationship pf Prodi to Thomas Sebeok and Umberto Eco is described. Complete bibliography of Prodi's English-language publications on biosemiotics is added.

Un vento di protesta sta scuotendo il mondo intero. È un vento che soffia da lontano, ma in questi ultimi tempi si è fatto impetuoso. Le elezioni presidenziali in Iran nel 2009, i moti di rivolta in Tunisia, Egitto, Siria, per tutto il Medio Oriente; l’occupazione simbolica di Wall Street; il “15 de M” spagnolo, con la Plaza de Sol gremita di dimostranti; i sollevamenti contro il TAV Torino-Lione in Italia, le lotte degli operai e quelle dei disoccupati; il sommovimento politico contro governi vecchi e inefficienti. Pare che a un certo punto della storia il mondo si sia acceso, e continui a pulsare con luce intermittente sin da allora: fuochi di protesta divampano, si diffondono, divorano regimi, governi, leggi; alcuni si propagano da una parte all’altra del globo attraverso la nuova scintilla di Internet, altri si sopiscono ed estinguono.
Lo studioso può, come ogni altro, entusiasmarsi di fronte a tanta energia umana, a tanto desiderio di rinnovamento, allo spettacolo del motore della storia che sembra come per incanto prendere abbrivio e non arrestarsi più; lo studioso può appassionarsi a tutto questo e forse deve. Però lo studioso deve, innanzitutto, capire e aiutare a capire. Perché la protesta si scatena in certe circostanze e non in altre? Cosa muove gli individui, i gruppi, i popoli a sognare uno stato di cose differente, ad accorgersi dell’inadeguatezza delle proprie esistenze, a produrre linguaggio e azione per cambiarne i connotati? Che cosa fa scattare in alcuni la molla della protesta, e cosa spinge invece gli altri a tacere, a sopportare, ad accettare? E poi come si costruiscono i modi della protesta, secondo quali leggi, quali regolarità, quali innovazioni?
Comprendere i modi attraverso cui individui e gruppi attualmente costruiscono i testi della protesta e come tali testi si volgano in testimonianza sociale più o meno efficace pare un compito imprescindibile per una semiotica che si voglia sempre più al centro della società contemporanea e delle pressanti richieste di conoscenza che da essa promanano.

The chapter includes:
1. A review of Uexküll-studies: paving a way to the post-Darwinian, semiotic biology.
2. Formulation of the problem of the primary mechanism of meaning-making.
3. Uexküll's accounts on functional circle and umwelt.
4. Whether Uexküll's model is on cycle or circle.
5. Funktionskreis and some of its further developments: Regelkreis, Gestaltkreis, Situationskreis, Lebenskreis.
6. Circle in the cycle: Meaning-making and subjectivity begin with the phenomenal present.
7. Uexküll in relation to contemporary biosemiotics.

Keywords:
Peirce;semeiosis;semiotics;phenomenology;pragmatism;learning;philosophy of education

Abstract
The later works of Charles Sanders Peirce (1839–1913) offer an extended metaphor of mind and a rich conception of the dynamics of knowledge and learning. After a ‘rhetorical turn’ Peirce develops his early ‘semiotics’ into a more general theory of sign and sign use, while integrating his pragmatism, phenomenology, and semiotics. Therefore, in this article I bring Peirce's notion of semiosis—the sign's action—to the forefront. In doing so, I hope to disclose how Peirce's rhetorical turn not only opens up towards a richer conception of the dynamics of knowledge and learning, but also invites a shift of perspective from the psychological processes of learning to the semeiotic processes that characterizes the very dynamics of knowledge production.

В статье анализируются основные проблемы в исследовании феномена порнографии. Автор статьи обращает внимание на недостаточную изученность вопроса и считает, что это явление является своего рода публичным секретом, о котором известно всем, но оглашение которого нарушает границы принятого в социуме. Однако в данном случае отказ социальных наук от исследования типов и жанров порнопродукции ведет лишь к усилению границ публичного секрета и укреплению царящей в его границах безнаказанности. В статье дается анализ контекстов наготы и сексуальных отношений в искусстве и коммуникации, который, как оказывается, не всегда вписывается в рамки эротического и порнографического. Автор также выражает сомнение относительно действенности этимологического метода и указывает на необходимость подробного изучения типов и жанров порнографии.
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The article contains the analysis of difficulties in researching pornography. The author emphasizes the fact that the phenomenon of porn lacks appropriate research and description and reckons that pornography is like a public secret known to everybody. However, if made public, it violates the boundaries of the accepted in society. In this case, the refusal of social sciences to study the types and genres of porn production leads only to the strengthening of the boundaries of public secret and to solidifying impunity within them. The article analyses the varieties of contexts of nudity and sex images in art and communication, which, as it turns out, does not always fit into the framework of the erotic and pornographic. The author questions the efficiency of the etymological method and underlines the necessity of describing porn types and genres.