Abstract
How did molecules become signs? First, according to Deacon, there had to be an interpreter, a physical process capable of making use of some property of a molecule that offered a “semiotic affordance.” He proposes the model of an “autogenic virus,” the most primitive conceivable recursively self-maintaining kind of molecular system that could broach the boundary between physico-chemical process and “interpretive competence.” In this comment I work up to the question of how Deacon introduces concepts such as “representation” and “record” into his account, to argue that the autogen can pass on its lineage without a genetic template.
References
Deacon, T. (1997). The Symbolic Species: The Co-Evolution of Language and the Brain. Norton.
Deacon, T. (2011). Incomplete Nature: How Mind Emerged from Matter. Norton.
Deacon, T. (2021). How molecules became signs. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12304-021-09453-9
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Staten, H. Dynamic Encoding in a Simple Autogenic System. Biosemiotics 14, 583–587 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12304-021-09465-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12304-021-09465-5