What is reductionism? -- Who is reading the book of life? -- Genetics : from grammar to meaning making -- A point for thought : why are organisms irreducible? -- A point for thought : does the genetic system include a meta-language? -- Immunology : from soldiers to housewives -- A point for thought : immune specificity and Brancusi's kiss -- A point for thought : reflections on the immune self -- Meaning making in language and biology -- A point (...) for thought : meaning : bridging the gap between physics and semantics -- The rest is silence -- The polysemy of the sign : a quantum lesson -- Recursive-hierarchy : a lesson from the tardigrade -- Context and memory : a lesson from funes the memorious -- Transgradience : a lesson from Bakhtin -- The poetry of living. (shrink)

The relational structure of RNA, DNA, and protein bears an interesting similarity to the determination problem in category theory. In this paper, we present this deep-structure similarity and use it as a springboard for discussing some abstract properties of coding in various systems. These abstract properties, in turn, may shed light on the evolution of the DNA world from a semiotic perspective. According to the perspective adopted in this paper, living systems are not information processing systems but “meaning-making” systems. Therefore, (...) what flows in the genetic system is not “information” but “value.” We define meaning, meaning-making, and value and then use these terms to explain the abstract dynamics of coding, which can illuminate many forms of sign-mediated activities in biosystems. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Semiotica Jahrgang: 2015 Heft: 205 Seiten: 1-16.

Living systems are characterized by unique properties that make them resistant to the ``information-processingperspective'' of traditional cognitive science.This paper details those unique properties andoffers a new theoretical framework forunderstanding the behavior of living systems.This framework leans heavily on ideas fromgeneral systems theory (specifically Bateson'sinteractionist perspective), semiotics, andMerleau-Ponty's phenomenology. The benefits ofusing this framework are illustrated withexamples from two different domains: immunologyand verbal interaction.

The paradigmatic bases, which sustain traditional western psychological interpretative efforts, need not be just a footnote to Plato. In this paper we introduce the Talmudic interpretative perspective, which we use to point at some weaknesses we identify in contemporary research imaginings. While the empiricist approach may be traced to Plato and the interpretative and the critical approaches may be traced to Heraclitus, we argue that the Talmudic approach is a differentiated and unique perspective that, because of its non-epistemic nature, its (...) dialogical character, and its recognition of two intermingled levels of interpretation, can make an important contribution to new ways of thinking about understanding and meaning in research. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Semiotica Jahrgang: 2014 Heft: 202 Seiten: 555-569.

[Przekład] Ja immunologiczne jest naszym zreifikowanym opisem procesów, dzięki którym układ odpornościowy utrzymuje wyodrębnioną tożsamość organizmu i siebie samego. Jest to proces interpretacyjny, i żeby badać go w sposób naukowo konstruktywny, powinniśmy połączyć długoletnią hermeneutyczną tradycję pytania o naturę interpretacji ze współczesnym rozumieniem układu odpornościowego, pojawiającymi się technologiami badawczymi oraz zaawansowanymi narzędziami obliczeniowymi analizującymi dane sensoryczne.

Mentalization describes the process through which we understand the mental states of oneself and others. In this paper, I present a computational semiotic model of mentalization and illustrate it through a worked-out example. The model draws on classical semiotic ideas, such as abductive inference and hypostatic abstraction, but pours them into new ideas and tools from natural language processing, machine learning, and neural networks, to form a novel model of language-mediated-mentalization.

Journal Name: Semiotica - Journal of the International Association for Semiotic Studies / Revue de l'Association Internationale de Sémiotique Volume: 2013 Issue: 195 Pages: 119-126.

Name der Zeitschrift: Semiotica Jahrgang: 2017 Heft: 218 Seiten: 65-79.

The immune self is our reified way to describe the processes through which the immune system maintains the differentiated identity of the organism and itself. This is an interpretative process, and to study it in a scientifically constructive way we should merge a long hermeneutical tradition asking questions about the nature of interpretation, together with modern understanding of the immune system, emerging sensing technologies and advanced computational tools for analyzing the sensors' data.

The idea that a sign has meaning only in context invites serious inquiry into the meaning of meaning, context, and meaning-in-context. In this paper, and following Bateson’s ecological approach to the mind, I suggest that meaning is a form of coordination between interacting agents, and that this form of coordination is orchestrated through context markers, the variability of the sign, and symmetric transformation of the agents. This suggestion is examined by using signaling processes across various animal species and by drawing (...) specific attention to current conceptions of context and mind. (shrink)

Multicellular organisms are ensembles of quasi-two-dimensional structures (sheets) of various kinds. Why should the development of all organisms be mediated by a quasi-two-dimensional structure? Why does such development avoid a direct confrontation with the third dimension? In this paper, we accept the challenge of addressing this question from the perspective of computational geometry and suggest that the construction of three-dimensional organisms may be explained by the constraints imposed on a bottom-up construction process.

A review of The Semantic Sphere 1: Computation, Cognition and Information Economy, by Pierre Lévy. ISTE Ltd. and John Wiley and Sons Inc., 2011; 381 pages.