DOCSLIB.ORG

Introduction to Biosemiotics Introduction to Biosemiotics

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Introduction to Biosemiotics Introduction to Biosemiotics Introduction to Biosemiotics Introduction to Biosemiotics The New Biological Synthesis Edited by Marcello Barbieri University of Ferrara, Italy Library of Congress Control Number: 2008922939 ISBN 978-1-4020-4813-5 (HB) ISBN 978-1-4020-8344-0 (PB) ISBN 978-1-4020-4814-2 (e-book) Published by Springer, P.O. Box 17, 3300 AA Dordrecht, The Netherlands. www.springer.com Printed on acid-free paper All Rights Reserved © 2008 Springer Science+Business Media B.V. No part of this work may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, microfilming, recording or otherwise, without written permission from the Publisher, with the exception of any material supplied specifically for the purpose of being entered and executed on a computer system, for exclusive use by the purchaser of the work. To Thomas Sebeok (1920–2001) and to his vision of a synthesis between Biology and Semiotics TABLE OF CONTENTS Editorial ix Marcello Barbieri Part 1 – Historical Background 1. The Evolutionary History of Biosemiotics 1 Donald Favareau 2. Semiosis in Evolution 69 Tuomo Jämsä 3. Has Biosemiotics Come of Age? and Postscript 101 Marcello Barbieri Part 2 – Theoretical Issues 4. The Necessity of Biosemiotics: Matter-Symbol Complementarity 115 H. H. Pattee 5. What is the Scope of Biosemiotics? Information in Living Systems 133 Stanley N. Salthe 6. Semiotic Scaffolding of Living Systems 149 Jesper Hoffmeyer 7. Biosemiotics and Biophysics – The Fundamental Approaches to the Study of Life 167 Kalevi Kull 8. Is the Cell a Semiotic System? 179 Marcello Barbieri 9. Computing Codes versus Interpreting Life 209 Stefan Artmann vii viii Table of Contents 10. Towards a Darwinian Biosemiotics. Life as Mutual Understanding 235 Anton Markoš, Filip Grygar, Karel Kleisner, and Zdenekˇ Neubauer 11. From the Logic of Science to the Logic of the Living. The Relevance of Charles Peirce to Biosemiotics 257 Tommi Vehkavaara 12. Towards a Standard Terminology for (Bio)semiotics 283 Marcel Danesi 13. Information Theory and Error-Correcting Codes in Genetics and Biological Evolution 299 Gérard Battail Part 3 – Biosemiotic Research 14. RNA as Code Makers: A Biosemiotic View of RNAi and Cell Immunity 347 Marcella Faria 15. Cellular Semiotics and Signal Transduction 365 Luis Emilio Bruni 16. Inner Representations and Signs in Animals 409 Stephen Philip Pain 17. A Biosemiotic Approach to Epigenetics: Constructivist Aspects of Oocyte-to-Embryo Transition 457 Johannes Huber and Ingolf Schmid-Tannwald 18. Language and Interspecific Communication Experiments: A Case to Re-open? 473 Dario Martinelli Author Index 519 Subject Index 525 EDITORIAL MARCELLO BARBIERI THE CHALLENGE OF BIOSEMIOTICS Semiotics, literally, is the study of signs and initially it was thought to be concerned only with the products of culture. Mental phenomena, however, exist also in animals, and cultural semiotics can be regarded as a special case of biological semiotics,or biosemiotics, a science that started by studying semiotic phenomena in animals and then was gradually extended to other living creatures. Eventually, the discovery of the genetic code suggested that the cell itself has a semiotic structure, and the goal of biosemiotics became the idea that all living creatures are semiotic systems. But what is a semiotic system? According to cultural semiotics, there are two answers to this question. One is the model proposed by Ferdinand de Saussure, who defined a semiotic system as a duality of “signifier and signified” or “sign and meaning”. The other is the model of Charles Peirce, who pointed out that interpretation is an essential component of semiosis and defined a semiotic system as a triad of “sign, object and interpretant”. In 1974 Marcel Florkin argued that “signifier and signified” are equiv- alent to “genotype and phenotype” and proposed for biosemiotics the dualistic model of Saussure. He underlined however that “in linguistics the sign is arbitrary with reference to the relation between its two faces. In molecular biosemiotics, on the other hand, signifier and signified are in a necessary relation imposed by the natural relations of material realities”. According to Florkin, in other words, in molecular biosemiotics there is no arbitrary relationship between signifier and signified, and he explicitly declared that “A bioseme carries no Bedeutung or Sinn (no meaning). Its signifier is an aspect of molecular configuration and its signified is an aspect of biological activity”. In the 1960s and 70s Thomas Sebeok started a lifelong campaign in favor of the idea that language has biological roots, but rather than following Saussure he adopted the triadic scheme of Peirce first in zoosemiotics, in 1963, and then in the more general field of biosemiotics (Sebeok, 1963, 1972, 1986). According to Sebeok, any semiosis is necessarily a triadic relationship, and interpretation is its sine qua non condition. He insisted that “there can be no semiosis without interpretability” and that interpretation is “a necessary and sufficient condition for something to be a semiosis” (Sebeok, 2001). The Peirce-Sebeok model of semiosis has become extremely popular and it has been adopted by most biosemioticians, in ix x Barbieri particular by the Copenhagen-Tartu school (Claus Emmeche, Jesper Hoffmeyer and Kalevi Kull) and (in a hermeneutic version) by the Prague school (Anton Markoš). A third model of semiosis, however, does exist and was suggested in the 1980s by the theory that the cell is a triad of genotype, phenotype and ribotype, where the ribotype is the ribonucleoprotein system of the cell and represents its “codemaker”, i.e. the seat of the genetic code (Barbieri 1981, 1985, 2003). This amounts to saying that the cell contains a “codemaker” but not an “interpreter”, because the rules of the genetic code do not depend on interpretation. They are virtually the same in all living systems and in all circumstances, and that has been true for almost the entire history of life on Earth. In this framework, the simplest semiotic system is a triad made of “sign, meaning and code” and the origin of semiosis (the semiotic threshold) does not coincide with the origin of interpretation (the hermeneutic threshold). Another approach to biosemiotics has been proposed by Howard Pattee who investigated the physical conditions that are necessary for codes and symbolic controls. Pattee introduced the concept of epistemic threshold, the boundary region where local matter has not only its intrinsic physical properties governed by universal laws, but where it is also “about” something else. Epistemic matter, in other words, “stands for” something, and the “standing for” relation is usually considered an emergent process that leads necessarily to a triadic Peircean relationship of “matter, interpreter and referent” (Pattee, 1969, 1972, 2001). Today, in short, we have four different models of biological semiosis and at least four different schools of biosemiotics. Despite all that, biosemiotics remains an isolated discipline and many perceive it as a small field that lies at the outskirts of science, somewhere between biology and linguistics. This is because there is a very strange paradox at the heart of modern science. On the one hand it is acknowledged that the genetic code is the bedrock of life, and on the other hand it is underlined that it is not a real code. The argument is that the genetic code would be real only if it was associated with the production of meaning, but modern science does not deal with meaning and is bound therefore to deny any reality to the code of life. According to the dominant paradigm, the genetic code is fundamentally a metaphor. It is a linguistic construction that we use in order to avoid long periphrases when we talk about living systems, but no more than that. It is like those computer programs that allow us to write our instructions in English, thus saving us the trouble to write them in binary digits. Ultimately, however, there are only binary digits in the machine language of the computer, and in the same way, it is argued, there are only physical quantities at the most fundamental level of Nature. This conclusion, known as physicalism,orthe physicalist thesis, has been proposed in various ways by a number of scientists and philosophers (Chargaff, 1963; Sarkar, 1996; 2000; Mahner and Bunge, 1997; Griffiths and Knight, 1998; Griffith, 2001, Boniolo, 2003). It is probably one of the most deeply dividing issues of modern science. Many biologists are convinced that the genetic Editorial xi code is a real and fundamental component of life, but physicalists insist that it is real only in a very superficial sense and that there is nothing fundamental about it because it must be reducible in principle, to physical quantities. This, in fact, is the only answer that allows people to say that there are no signs and meanings at the basis of life, and that semiotic processes are not fundamental events. But what a price to pay! It is perfectly right to mention the genetic code practically in every single problem of biology, provided one keeps in mind that it is not meant to be serious. On the face of this, many biologists prefer to avoid the issue altogether, which is hardly surprising. But some do not. The issue is not so much the physicalist thesis as the nature of life itself. The experimental reality is that proteins are manufactured by molecular machines based on the rules of the genetic code and there is little point in saying that the code must be a metaphor simply because modern science does not know how to cope with meaning. That is the challenge of biosemiotics: the codes are a fundamental reality of life and we simply have to learn how to introduce signs and meanings in science. This book is addressed to students, researchers and academics who are not familiar with biosemiotics and want to know more about it.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Biosemiotic Medicine: from an Effect-Based Medicine to a Process-Based Medicine
    Special article Arch Argent Pediatr 2020;118(5):e449-e453 / e449 Biosemiotic medicine: From an effect-based medicine to a process-based medicine Carlos G. Musso, M.D., Ph.D.a,b ABSTRACT Such knowledge evidences the Contemporary medicine is characterized by an existence of a large and intricate increasing subspecialization and the acquisition of a greater knowledge about the interaction among interconnected network among the the different body structures (biosemiotics), different body structures, which both in health and disease. This article proposes accounts for a sort of “communication a new conceptualization of the body based on channel” among its elements, a true considering it as a biological space (cells, tissues, and organs) and a biosemiotic space (exchange of “dialogic or semiotic space” that is signs among them). Its development would lead conceptually abstract but experientially to a new subspecialty focused on the study and real, through which normal and interference of disease biosemiotics (biosemiotic pathological intra- and inter- medicine), which would trigger a process- based medicine centered on early diagnosis and parenchymal dialogs (sign exchange) management of disease. occur. Such dialogs determine a Key words: medicine, biosemiotics, diagnosis, balanced functioning of organ systems therapy. or the onset and establishment of http://dx.doi.org/10.5546/aap.2020.eng.e449 disease, respectively. The investigation and analysis of such phenomenon is the subject of a relative new discipline: To cite: Musso CG. Biosemiotic medicine: From an biosemiotics, which deals with the effect-based medicine to a process-based medicine. 1 Arch Argent Pediatr 2020;118(5):e449-e453. study of the natural world’s language.
    [Show full text]
  • Peirce's Theory of Communication and Its Contemporary Relevance
    Ahti-Veikko Pietarinen Peirce’s Theory of Communication and Its Contemporary Relevance Introduction The mobile era of electronic communication has created a huge semi- otic system, constructed out of triadic components envisaged by the American scientist and philosopher Charles S. Peirce (1839–1914), such as icons, indices and symbols, and signs, objects and interpretants. Iconic signs bear a physical resemblance to what they represent. Indices point at something and say “there!”, and symbols signify objects by conven- tions of a community.1 All signs give rise to interpretants in the minds of the interpreters. It is nonetheless regrettable that the somewhat simplistic triadic ex- posé of Peirce’s theory of signs has persisted in semiotics as the some- how exhaustive and final description of what Peirce intended. The more fascinating and richer structure of signs emerging from their intimate relation to intercommunication and interaction (Peirce’s terms) has been noted much less frequently. Despite this shortcoming, the full Peircean road to inquiry – per- formed by the dynamic community of learning inquirers, or the com- 1 In fact, according to Peirce (2.278 [1895]): “The only way of directly communi- cating an idea is by means of an icon; and every indirect method of communicating an idea must depend for its establishment upon the use of an icon.” Peirce’s chef d’œuvre came shortly after these remarks into being as his diagrammatic system of existential graphs, a thoroughly iconic representation of and a way of reasoning about “moving pictures of thought”, which encompassed not only propositional and predicate logic, but also modalities, higher-order notions, abstraction and category-theoretic notions.
    [Show full text]
  • A Biosemiotic Framework for Artificial Autonomous Sign Users
    A Biosemiotic Framework for Artificial Autonomous Sign Users Erich Prem Austrian Research Institute for Artificial Intelligence Freyung 6/2/2 A-1010 Vienna, Austria [email protected] Abstract It is all the more surprising that recent publications in this In this paper we critically analyse fundamental assumptions area rarely address foundational is-sues concerning the underlying approaches to symbol anchoring and symbol semantics of system-environment interactions or other grounding. A conceptual framework inspired by problems related to biosemiotics (a notable exception is biosemiotics is developed for the study of signs in (Cangelosi 01)). As we will discuss below, the approaches autonomous artificial sign users. Our theory of reference make little or no reference to specifically life-like or even uses an ethological analysis of animal-environment robotic characteristics such as goal-directedness, interaction. We first discuss semiotics with respect to the purposiveness, or the dynamics of system-environment meaning of signals taken up from the environment of an interaction. These features are, however, central to much autonomous agent. We then show how semantic issues arise of robotics and ALife. It is highly questionable, however, in a similar way in the study of adaptive artificial sign us- ers. Anticipation and adaptation play the important role of whether technical approaches to symbol anchoring should defining purpose which is a neces-sary concept in the be developed devoid of any sound theoretical foundation semiotics of learning robots. The proposed focus on sign for concepts such as “meaning” or “reference”. Until now, acts leads to a se-mantics in which meaning and reference simplistic versions of Fregean or Peircean semiotics seem are based on the anticipated outcome of sign-based in- to have motivated existing technical symbol anchoring and teraction.
    [Show full text]
  • Download/ Nwp File/2013/Notes on a Working Hypothesis.Pdf?X-R=Pcfile D
    Psychosemiotics: communication as psychological action Marko Mili Doctor of Philosophy (Psychology) University of Western Sydney November 2008 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to express my gratitude to my wife Juliana Payne for her patience, accessibility for debate on all issues, practical assistance, and help in avoiding clichés like the plague. My parents Petar and Nediljka Mili shared their enthusiasm for learning and balanced their encouragement with flexibility about the direction that their influence took. My sister, Angela Mili, provided moral and practical support. To my extended family—Ante, Maria, Mirko, Lina, Kristina, Anthony, and Nikolas Mili; and Steve and Veronica Harwood—thank you for your support for this project. Thanks to Megan McDonald for helpful grammatical-stylistic suggestions and to Domagoj Veli, who has been an enthusiastic supporter of this project from the beginning. Professor Philip Bell, Professor Theo van Leeuwen, Dr Scott Mann and Dr Phillip Staines provided me with valuable opportunities to assist in teaching their courses in mass media, semiotics, social theory and the philosophy of language. This experience has significantly enhanced the present work. My supervisor, Dr Agnes Petocz, consistently provided detailed and incisive feedback throughout the conception and execution of this work. Her vision of a richer science of psychology has been inspirational for me. As co-supervisor, Professor Philip Bell has been an exemplary mentor and model for post- disciplinary research. ii STATEMENT OF AUTHENTICATION The work presented in this thesis is, to the best of my knowledge and belief, original except as acknowledged in the text. I hereby declare that I have not submitted this material, either in whole or in part, for a degree at this or any other institution.
    [Show full text]
  • Picasso's Cubism: Politics And/Or Semiosis
    MIT 4.602, Modern Art and Mass Culture (HASS-D+CI) Spring 2012 Professor Caroline A. Jones Notes History, Theory and Criticism Section. Department of Architecture Lecture 10 SERIALISM & SEMIOSIS: Lecture 10: Picasso's Cubism: Politics and/or Semiosis 1990: Picasso's primitivism is part of a cultural discourse in which "Africa" conveyed widely accepted meanings that cannot be extricated from allusions to its art and people. - Patricia Leighton, 'The White Peril and I 'art m?gre ... " 1981 /'98: The extraordinary contribution of collage is that it is the first instance within the pictorial arts of anything like a systematic exploration of the conditions of representability entailed by the sign. - Rosalind Krauss, "In the Name of Picasso" I. Picasso's escape via Paris: from paternal academy, and provincialism A. The international "Youth Style" (Jugendstil, Joven Tut, Arte Joven magazines) B. Impressionist modes and motives, Barcelona -> Paris C. "Blue period" 1) the depressed fliineur (harlequin) 2) a "Moorish" Spaniard in France II. Picasso's escape from Paris: The Demoiselles d' A vignon A. Picasso's self-described "exorcism" - of what? B. The way modem abstraction works 1) African sculpture as "raisonnable ,. (conceptual) 2) towards a system of visual signs (away from representing towards signifying) C. Colonialist critique through performing the primitive (how different from Gauguin?) III. Cubism- hermetic language, or popular culture? A. "Braque, c 'est ma femme" - the codes of a private language 1) Georges Braque - wit, conceptualism, pattern, (French) fancypaint traditions 2) Pablo Picasso - weight, sculptural concerns, "modeling," oscillations between depth! surface B. The force of caricature in the portraits C.
    [Show full text]
  • Marketing Semiotics
    Marketing Semiotics Professor Christian Pinson Semiosis, i.e. the process by which things and events come to be recognized as signs, is of particular relevance to marketing scholars and practitioners. The term marketing encompasses those activities involved in identifying the needs and wants of target markets and delivering the desired satisfactions more effectively and efficiently than competitors. Whereas early definitions of marketing focused on the performance of business activities that direct the flow of goods and services from producer to consumer or user, modern definitions stress that marketing activities involve interaction between seller and buyer and not a one- way flow from producer to consumer. As a consequence, the majority of marketers now view marketing in terms of exchange relationships. These relationships entail physical, financial, psychological and social meanings. The broad objective of the semiotics of marketing is to make explicit the conditions under which these meanings are produced and apprehended. Although semioticians have been actively working in the field of marketing since the 1960s, it is only recently that semiotic concepts and approaches have received international attention and recognition (for an overview, see Larsen et al. 1991, Mick, 1986, 1997 Umiker- Sebeok, 1988, Pinson, 1988). Diffusion of semiotic research in marketing has been made difficult by cultural and linguistic barriers as well as by divergence of thought. Whereas Anglo-Saxon researchers base their conceptual framework on Charles Pierce's ideas, Continental scholars tend to refer to the sign theory in Ferdinand de Saussure and to its interpretation by Hjelmslev. 1. The symbolic nature of consumption. Consumer researchers and critics of marketing have long recognized the symbolic nature of consumption and the importance of studying the meanings attached by consumers to the various linguistic and non-linguistic signs available to them in the marketplace.
    [Show full text]
  • A Semiotic Theory of Music: According to a Peircean Rationale
    A SEMIOTIC THEORY OF MUSIC: ACCORDING TO A PEIRCEAN RATIONALE The Sixth International Conference on Musical Signification University of Helsinki Université de Provence (Aix-Marselle I) Aix-en-Provence, December 1-5, 1998 José Luiz Martinez (Ph.D.) [1] The recent growth of musical applications of Peirce’s general theory of signs, such as in the works of David Lidov (1986), Robert Hatten (1994), William Dougherty (1993, 1994), shows that this approach, once set properly in both musical and semiotic contexts, has great analytical power on questions of musical signification. In this paper I will present the structure of a semiotic theory of music, as demonstrated in my doctoral dissertation, Semiosis in Hindustani Music (Imatra: International Semiotics Institute), submitted and approved by the University of Helsinki in 1997. [2] Peirce, in his studies of semiotics, concluded that thought is only possible by means of signs (vide CP 1.538, 4.551, 5.253). Music is a species of thought; and thus, the idea that music is sign and depends on significative processes, or semiosis, is obviously true. A musical sign can be a system, a composition or its performance, a musical form, a style, a composer, a musician, hers or his instrument, and so on. According to Peirce, signification occurs in a triadic relation of a sign and the object it stands for to an interpretant (CP 6.347), which - in music - is another sign developed in the mind of a listener, musician, composer, analyst or critic. [3] In Peirce’s classification of the sciences, semiotics (or semeiotic) has three branches: Speculative Grammar, Critic and Methodeutic (or Speculative Rhetoric) (CP 1.192).
    [Show full text]
  • Review: Marcello Barbieri (Ed) (2007) Introduction to Biosemiotics. the New Biological Synthesis
    tripleC 5(3): 104-109, 2007 ISSN 1726-670X http://tripleC.uti.at Review: Marcello Barbieri (Ed) (2007) Introduction to Biosemiotics. The new biological synthesis. Dordrecht: Springer Günther Witzany telos – Philosophische Praxis Vogelsangstr. 18c A-5111-Buermoos/Salzburg Austria E-mail: [email protected] 1 Thematic background without utterances we act as non-uttering indi- viduals being dependent on the discourse de- Maybe it is no chance that the discovery of the rived meaning processes of a linguistic (e.g. sci- genetic code occurred during the hot phase of entific) community. philosophy of science discourse about the role of This position marks the primary difference to language in generating models of scientific ex- the subject of knowledge of Kantian knowledge planation. The code-metaphor was introduced theories wherein one subject alone in principle parallel to other linguistic terms to denote lan- could be able to generate sentences in which it guage like features of the nucleic acid sequence generates knowledge. This abstractive fallacy molecules such as “code without commas” was ruled out in the early 50s of the last century (Francis Crick). At the same time the 30 years of being replaced by the “community of investiga- trying to establish an exact scientific language to tors” (Peirce) represented by the scientific com- delimit objective sentences from non-objective munity in which every single scientist is able the ones derived one of his peaks in the linguistic place his utterance looking for being integrated turn. in the discourse community in which his utter- ances will be proven whether they are good ar- 1.1 Changing subjects of knowledge guments or not.
    [Show full text]
  • Relational Categories
    Gentner, D., & Kurtz, K. (2005). Learning and using relational categories. In W. K. Ahn, R. L. Goldstone, B. C. Love, A. B. Markman & P. W. Wolff (Eds.), Categorization inside and outside the laboratory. Washington, DC: APA. Relational Categories Dedre Gentner and Kenneth J Kurtz Relational Categories This chapter is concerned with the acquisition and use of relational categories. By relational category, we mean a category whose membership is determined by a common relational structure rather than by common properties. For instance, for X to be a bridge, X must connect two other entities or points; for X to be a carnivore, X must eat animals. Relational categories contrast with entity categories such as tulip or camel, whose members share many intrinsic properties. Relational categories cohere on the basis of a core relationship ful- filled by all members. This relation may be situation-specific (e.g., passenger or accident) or enduring (e.g., carnivore or ratio). Relational categories abound in ordinary language. Some are restricted in their arguments: For example, car- nivores are animals who eat other animals. But for many relational catego- ries, the arguments can range widely: for example, a bridge can connect two concrete locations, or two generations, or two abstract ideas. As with bridge, the instances of a relational category can have few or no intrinsic properties in common with one another. Research on categories has mostly ignored relational categories, focusing instead on entity categories-categories that can be characterized in terms of intrinsic similarity among members, like those shown in Figure 9.1. Further, as Moos and Sloutsky (2004) point out, theories of categorization have often oper- ated under the assumption that all concepts are fundamentally alike.
    [Show full text]
  • Qualia NICHOLAS HARKNESS Harvard University, USA
    Qualia NICHOLAS HARKNESS Harvard University, USA Qualia (singular, quale) are cultural emergents that manifest phenomenally as sensuous features or qualities. The anthropological challenge presented by qualia is to theorize elements of experience that are semiotically generated but apperceived as non-signs. Qualia are not reducible to a psychology of individual perceptions of sensory data, to a cultural ontology of “materiality,” or to philosophical intuitions about the subjective properties of consciousness. The analytical solution to the challenge of qualia is to con- sider tone in relation to the familiar linguistic anthropological categories of token and type. This solution has been made methodologically practical by conceptualizing qualia, in Peircean terms, as “facts of firstness” or firstness “under its form of secondness.” Inthephilosophyofmind,theterm“qualia”hasbeenusedtodescribetheineffable, intrinsic, private, and directly or immediately apprehensible experiences of “the way things seem,” which have been taken to constitute the atomic subjective properties of consciousness. This concept was challenged in an influential paper by Daniel Dennett, who argued that qualia “is a philosophers’ term which fosters nothing but confusion, and refers in the end to no properties or features at all” (Dennett 1988, 387). Dennett concluded, correctly, that these diverse elements of feeling, made sensuously present atvariouslevelsofattention,wereactuallyidiosyncraticresponsestoapperceptions of “public, relational” qualities. Qualia were, in effect,
    [Show full text]
  • MEANING, SEMIOTECHNOLOGIES and PARTICIPATORY MEDIA Ganaele Langlois
    CULTURE MACHINE VOL 12 • 2011 MEANING, SEMIOTECHNOLOGIES AND PARTICIPATORY MEDIA Ganaele Langlois Summary What is the critical purpose of studying meaning in a digital environment which is characterized by the proliferation of meanings? In particular, online participatory media platforms such as YouTube, Facebook, Wikipedia and Twitter offer a constant stream of user-produced meanings. In this new context of seemingly infinite ‘semiotic democracy’ (Fiske, 1987), where anybody can say anything and have a chance to be heard, it seems that the main task is to find ways to deal with and analyze an ever-expanding field of signification. This article offers a different perspective on the question of meaning by arguing that if we are to study meaning to understand the cultural logic of digital environments, we should not focus on the content of what users are saying online, but rather on the conditions within which such a thing as user expression is possible in the first place. That is, this article argues that we should focus less on signification, and more on the question of regimes of the production and circulation of meaning. By expanding the question of meaning and using it to explore commercial participatory media platforms, this article offers a new framework for looking at online communication: one that decentres human subjects from the production of meaning and that acknowledges the technocultural dimension of meaning as constituted by a range of heterogeneous representational and informational technologies, cultural practices and linguistic values. Online participatory media platforms offer an exemplar of the new conditions of the production and circulation of meaning beyond the human level: they offer rich environments where user input is constantly augmented, ranked, classified and linked with other types of content.
    [Show full text]
  • Title Peirce's General Theory of Signs Author(S)
    View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Kyoto University Research Information Repository Title Peirce's General Theory of Signs Author(s) Clare Thornbury Finding Meaning, Cultures Across Borders: International Citation Dialogue between Philosophy and Psychology (2011): 49-57 Issue Date 2011-03-31 URL http://hdl.handle.net/2433/143046 The copyright of papers included in this paper belongs to each Right author. Type Article Textversion publisher Kyoto University 49 Peirce's General Theory of Signs CLARE THORNBURY Institute of Education, University of London Charles. S Peirce was one ofthe founders ofPragmatism, alongside William James and John Dewey. This paper looks at Peirce's later work on his theory of signs, or semiotic. Peirce's semiotic is a broad one, including as signs things that other semioticians may reject. Peirce's semiotic includes a key division ofsigns into the three categories ofIcon, Index and Symbol. This trichotomy and the breadth ofPeirce's semiotic makes it well suited to, for example, a semiology of cinema. The basic structure ofthe sign in Peirce is also triadic, being a relation between sign-object-interpretant, and this brings us to a further appreciation of the sign as sign-action: a move from semiotic to semiosis. Peirce's approach to the philosophy of language goes beyond language to a theory of signs in general, and this 'semiotic' is deeply embedded within his broader systematic philosophical works. To understand it therefore, it is helpful to do two things: 1) to understand the breadth of Peirce's semiotic and 2) to differentiate it from other philosophical theories in the field.
    [Show full text]