Barbieri M (2002) Has Biosemiotics come of age? (Semiotica)

2003

(Presentation given at IcON 2015, Kaunas, Lithuania. The written version was originally intended for the Proceedings, but nothing came out of it and so here it is.) This presentation will deal with the idea that the different varieties of semiotics have essentially a general proposal of unity within the context of the so-called general semiotics, but that this core of ideas has not developed into a set of actual propositions arguing for the unity of semiotics as a whole. This remarkable disunity resembles the problems first found in the major and well-documented opposition between semiology and semiotics, but the nuances of its articulation may well be overcome through the effort of providing a biosemiotic account of semiotic phenomena. Yet, a general biosemiotic paradigm requires "tweaking" some more commonplace assumptions on how sign-systems work, creating a series of new problems, such as the possibility of referring to the same signification mechanisms throughout wildly dissimilar types of organisms. Bridging the gap inside the different branches of semiotics can prove to be a daunting task, but it is one that can be undertaken with the objective of a more cohesive discipline. Is cohesion, however, a value worth pursuing in semiotics? While a negative answer can be satisfactorily given, this presentation will argue for the positive approach.

2002

Biosemiotics and Semiotics have similarities and differences. Both deal with signal and meaning. One difference is that Biosemiotics covers a domain (life) that is less complex that the one addressed by Semiotics (human). We believe that this difference can be used to have Biosemiotics bringing added value to Semiotics. This belief is based on the fact that a theory of meaning is easier to build up for living elements than for humans, and that the results obtained for life can make available some tools for a higher level of complexity. Semiotic has been encountering some difficulties to deliver a scientific theory of meaning that can be efficient at the level of human mind. The obstacles come from our ignorance on the nature of human. As it is true that we do not understand the nature of human mind on a scientific basis. On the other hand, the nature and properties of life are better understood. And we can propose a modelization for a generation of meaningful information in the fiel...

2002

2002

The present essay aims at integrating different concepts of meaning developed in semiotics, biology, and cognitive science, in a way that permits the formulation of issues involving evolution and development. The concept of sign in semiotics, just like the notion of representation in cognitive science, have either been used too broadly, or outright rejected. My earlier work on the notions of iconicity and pictoriality has forced me to spell out the taken-forgranted meaning of the sign concept, both in the Saussurean and the Peircean tradition. My work with the evolution and development of semiotic resources such as language, gesture, and pictures has proved the need of having recourse to a more specified concept of sign. To define the sign, I take as point of departure the notion of semiotic function (by Piaget), and the notion of appresentation (by Husserl). In the first part of this essay, I compare cognitive science and semiotics, in particular as far as the parallel concepts of representation and sign are concerned. The second part is concerned with what is probably the most important attempt to integrate cognitive science and semiotics that has been presented so far, The Symbolic Species, by Terrence Deacon.

Animals are treated in philosophy dominantly as opposed to humans, without revealing their independent semiotic richness. This is a direct consequence of the common way of defining the uniqueness of humans. We analyze the concept of 'semiotic animal' , proposed by John Deely as a definition of human specificity, according to which humans are semiotic (capable of understanding signs as signs), unlike other species, who are semiosic (capable of sign use). We compare and contrast this distinction to the more standard ways of drawing the distinction between humans and animals.

The collection of essays dedicated to the 60th birthday of Kalevi Kull, Professor of Biosemiotics at the University of Tartu, comprises twenty innovative articles in biosemiotics and nearby fields. Contributions have grown out of authors’ unpublished research materials, unconventional approaches or sketches of articles. The list of authors includes internationally renowned biosemioticians, Kalevi Kull’s co-thinkers and students. Among topics shared by many articles are attention to the borders of biosemiotics while pointing to the connectedness of the subject matter of biosemiotics and the human cultural sphere, emphasis on the dialogic nature of academic theories as well as human lives, and focus on the identity of biosemiotics and its ethical implications. The collection includes a bibliography of Kalevi Kull’s academic writings in English.

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In the late 1960's Abraham Maslow remarked that communication studies were being carried out "too exclusively at the sociological level and not enough at the biological level" (1966: 1 36). He may have been surprised to learn that a movement seeking to correct this imbalance was already underway. The movement's visionary, Hungarian American linguist Thomas Albert Sebeok (1920-2001 ), was a man whose contributions to ethology, linguistics, anthropology, and modelling systems theory came to be typified in two terms - 'semiotics' and 'biosemiotics' - the latter a development of the former. Semiotics is the mode of inquiry Sebeok championed; Biosemiotics is the field of inquiry he established. The volume under review is written as a Gedenkschrift to him on the 1Oth anniversary of his death, its title borrowed from a passage by Sebeok which offers the following assessment: "Despite its venerable pedigree, semiotics, as practiced today, continues to astonish. Behind its every revelation an abeyant illusion lurks; but behind every mirage, confounding reality lies dormant. The dynamic of semiotics is immense in scope, seemingly all-encompassing" (1986: x).