Biosemiotics

ISSN: 1875-1342

15 found

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  1.  3
    Minimal Properties of a Natural Semiotic System: Response to Commentaries on “How Molecules Became Signs”.Terrence W. Deacon - 2023 - Biosemiotics 16 (1):1-13.
    In the target article “How molecules became signs” I offer a molecular “thought experiment” that provides a paradigm for resolving the major incompatibilities between biosemiotic and natural science accounts of living processes. To resolve these apparent incompatibilities I outline a plausible empirically testable model system that exemplifies the emergence of chemical processes exhibiting semiotic causal properties from basic nonliving chemical processes. This model system is described as an autogenic virus because of its virus-like form, but its nonparasitic self-repair and reproductive (...)
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  2. A Methodology for the Study of Interspecific Cohabitation Issues in the City.Pauline Delahaye - 2023 - Biosemiotics 16 (1):143-152.
    The present article will introduce a proposition of semiotic methodology that can be used to diagnose cohabitation issues in cities between human inhabitants and non-human liminals. This methodology is built on a few sets of data that should be easy to obtain in any important city, and can therefore be utilised in a variety of situations. The different sets of data allow us to map the cohabitation semiosphere (following Hoffmeyer’s meaning of the term) of the situation along three axes: the (...)
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  3.  1
    The Landscape of Fear as a Safety Eco-Field: Experimental Evidence.Almo Farina & Philip James - 2023 - Biosemiotics 16 (1):61-84.
    In a development of the ecosemiotic vivo-scape concept, a ‘safety eco-field’ is proposed as a model of a species response to the safety of its environment. The safety eco-field is based on the ecosemiotic approach which considers environmental safety as a resource sought and chosen by individuals to counter predatory pressure. To test the relative safety of different locations within a landscape, 66 bird feeders (BF) were deployed in a regular 15 × 15 m grid in a rural area, surrounded (...)
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  4.  3
    Sensitive Souls and Biosemiotic Agency as Emergence.Yogi Hale Hendlin - 2023 - Biosemiotics 16 (1):15-20.
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  5.  6
    How Minimal Can Consciousness Be?Louis N. Irwin - 2023 - Biosemiotics 16 (1):21-26.
    This commentary on the argument by Jablonka & Ginsburg ( 2022 ) that unlimited associative learning (UAL) provides an evolutionary marker for the transition to consciousness raises the question, “Transition to what?” The proposal that a level of consciousness required for UAL would embody eight specific criteria is credible, but can a limited degree of sentience still exist in animals that lack some of the criteria? The article makes a compelling case that UAL could serve as a marker for the (...)
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  6.  3
    A Functional - Helix Conceptualization of the Emergent Properties of the Animal Kingdom: Chronoception as a Key Sensory Process.Amelia Lewis - 2023 - Biosemiotics 16 (1):125-142.
    Teleological theories are often dismissed in the study of animal behaviour, because of both the anthropomorphic element, and the paradox of retro-causation. Instead, emergent properties of animal systems, such as those which drive behaviour and decision making, are generally deemed to be non-purposeful. Nonetheless, organisms’ interactions with the environment, including sensory processing, have long been subject to biological study, and the resulting models include Jakob von Uexküll’s functional circle (part of his ‘Umwelt Theory’). The functional circle is modelled on an (...)
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  7. Time Transformation in the Sign System of the Conditioned Reflex.Konstantin S. Mochalov - 2023 - Biosemiotics 16 (1):85-104.
    How is time transformed when signs appear? In the sign system of the conditioned reflex, the sign (conditioned stimulus) reverses, changes the direction of time, and overcomes its unidirectionality and irreversibility. In a sense, there is a “return” to the past in the form of the future when the sign is introduced. The sign serves as a “Time machine” of sorts. The mechanism of time transformation is possible because a mirror is embedded inside the sign, the surface of which represents (...)
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  8.  4
    Some Reflections on the Evolution of Conscious Agents: The Relevance of body Plans.Alvaro Moreno - 2023 - Biosemiotics 16 (1):35-43.
    The aim of this commentary article is to discuss several problems in the distribution map for conscious organisms and suggest a different strategy to address their evolutionary development. I propose to complement the model of Unlimited Associative Learning (UAL) that Jablonka and Ginsburg present in their Target Article with the additional consideration of how body plans constrain the possibilities of evolution of the brain— in some cases blocking, in some others enabling its complexification and corporal integration. In my view, the (...)
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  9.  5
    Semiotically Mediated Human-Bee Communication in the Practice of Brazilian Meliponiculture.Heidi Campana Piva - 2023 - Biosemiotics 16 (1):105-124.
    Stingless bees are among the most dominant pollinators in the south tropics. As such, the rational beekeeping of stingless bee species, called meliponiculture, is an ancient and relevant activity, related to sustainable agricultural development, and which connects traditional knowledge to innovation and novelty. Given the relevance of this topic, this paper discusses the possibilities of a semiotically mediated communication between humans and Meliponini (stingless bees). Zoosemiotics, as the studies of animal views of the world, is the ideal modelling system for (...)
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  10.  7
    Questions for Jablonka and Ginsburg Drawn from Lamarck’s Life-Made World.Jessica Riskin - 2023 - Biosemiotics 16 (1):27-34.
    The Romantic- and Revolution-era French naturalist Jean-Baptiste Lamarck is an important precursor for Jablonka’s and Ginsburg’s theory of living beings as beings that learn. Lamarck defined living beings as beings that compose and create. Like Jablonka and Ginsburg’s learning theory, Lamarck’s composing and creating theory locates life in the capacity for a kind of purposeful striving. A consideration of his theory can suggest fundamental questions for Jablonka and Ginsburg regarding the relations among what they call “vivaciousness,” the state of living (...)
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  11.  2
    And the Flesh in Between: Towards a Health Semiotics.Devon Schiller - 2023 - Biosemiotics 16 (1):175-194.
    The call for a biosemiotic perspective within medical semiotics has been steadily increasing over the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. In _Food and Medicine: A Biosemiotic Perspective_, Yogi Hale Hendlin, Johnathan Hope, and the nine contributions in their edited volume boldly seek to bridge the segregation between nature and culture in the medical sciences as well as in the medical humanities. To a large extent, they achieve this aim by explicating the sign relations _in_ food and medicine, the sign (...)
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  12.  4
    Lyapunov Stability as a Metric for Meaning in Biological Systems.Richard L. Summers - 2023 - Biosemiotics 16 (1):153-166.
    The physical and relational structure of the biologic continuum (both internal and external to the organism) creates the information signature that is the basis for the origination of meaning in the living system. A meaning metric can be grounded in the significance of that information to the stability of the system during the process of adaptive reconciliation of divergences from the steady state condition. From this perspective, an information-theoretic formulation of the process for translating incident information into adaptive action is (...)
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  13.  3
    Correction to Natural Code of Subjective Experience.Ilya A. Surov - 2023 - Biosemiotics 16 (1):195-196.
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  14.  4
    A new Frontier for Organismal Biology.Jana Švorcová - 2023 - Biosemiotics 16 (1):167-173.
    Almost forty years after Adolf Portmann’s death, we welcome the publication of a collective monograph about the life and legacy of this unique zoologist and anthropologist. This work should be of interest to biologists who study the theoretical aspects of animal morphology or are interested in animal patterns, but also to philosophers of biology who investigate the aesthetic aspects of nature or the concept of organism. Intellectuals interested in these subjects – or non-mechanistic views of living beings in general – (...)
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  15.  6
    Closures as a Precondition of Life, Agency, and Semiosis.Jana Švorcová & Anton Markoš - 2023 - Biosemiotics 16 (1):45-59.
    The goal of this paper is to explain the evolution of life through the evolution of cellular and supra-cellular closures, two distinct ways of strict delimitation against the surroundings. Such closures are a necessary precondition of organisation, semiosis, and agency. We argue that in addition to the basic, first-order, cellular closures, which have been in existence without interruption since the dawn of life, there also exist second-order closures (cell communities), which are dynamic and often formed ad hoc. Moreover, a living (...)
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