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A Peircian Biosemiotic Approach to Understanding Human Ecology

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2227290 D Dupuis Doctoral Thesis A Peircian Biosemiotic Approach to Understanding Human Ecology Damien Dupuis 2227290 2016 Page 1 of 305 2227290 D Dupuis Doctoral Thesis KEY TOPICS: Meaning, Semiosis, Ecology, Nature Philosophy, Biosemiosis, Mind, Awareness, Agency, Moderate and Radical Enlightenment, German Idealism, Romanticism, Naturalism, Peirce's Universal Categories, Hierarchical Ecology, Hierarchical Causation, Representation, Complexity, Objective Idealism, Synechism, Tychism, Fallibilism, Intentionality, Ententionality, Speiltrieb, Umwelt, Conatus. Page 2 of 305 2227290 D Dupuis Doctoral Thesis ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This thesis has been edited for consistency and proofread by Jacqueline Kim Dupuis, according to the Australian Standards for Editing Practice (AESP). No content changes have been made in this process. Damien Dupuis 2016 I warrant that I have obtained, where necessary, permission from the copyright owners to use any third party copyright material reproduced in the thesis (such as artwork, images, unpublished documents), or to use any of my own published work (such as journal articles) in which the copyright is held by another party (such as publisher, co- author). Damien Dupuis 2016 I declare my authorship of this thesis. Everything written herein is my own work, excepting where appropriate acknowledgement has been made. Damien Dupuis 2016 Page 3 of 305 2227290 D Dupuis Doctoral Thesis "I'm over-nighting eyes with a headlight deer stare, one-up Vin-Van, UPS an ear pair. Wear 'em if you need a new perspective on a weird year." (The Uncluded, Delicate Cycle) My humble thanks to all of those who made this thesis possible: Jacqueline Dupuis, my editor and muse, Michael Dix for his supererogatory contributions, Arran Gare for setting me on this path many years ago, Paul Healy for his suggestions along the way, Jason Chalmers for his enthusiasm and musically inclined worldview, Damon Young for encouragement and straight- talk, Jesper Hoffmeyer for a very unexpected response, Jason Ngam, Terry Eyssens, Sally Skinner, Mayur Katariya, Antony McMullen, Svetla Petkova, Cathy Snowdrop Miller, Russell Summers, Steven Groat, Peter Claridge, Paul Elliott, Natalie Rinehart, Sarah Davies, Glen Bates, Greg Murray, Steven Conway, Wendy Doube, Jocelyn Dunphy-Blomfield, Maurita Harney, Ashley Woodward, Swinburne, RMIT, Melbourne and Latrobe University libraries, countless people online who I only know through their code names, Ian Bavitz and Mike Patton for all of their remarkable contributions to music, Ian Bennington and Lara Bosi, Neal Johnstone and brood, Robin Hallett and brood, my blood relatives everywhere, David and Lisa particularly, Mela Kassapidis Milne and Iain McKay for helping me translate Greek whenever I asked, Joe Seitz for being a whetstone for some of my more radical suppositions, Petra Miliankos for fixing my back, Oliver Neilson for every scarce piece of technology needed to keep me from building computers out of duct tape, Mary Filsel for being Mary, Matthew Sant for being massively obsessed, Balrama and Diana Krishnan, Margaret and Phill Roels, and Oliver Dupuis for letting me get so much work done and giving me reason to do it. Dedicated to Oli. Page 4 of 305 2227290 D Dupuis Doctoral Thesis CONTENTS 6 Abstract 8 Introduction 17 Section 1: Awakening to the Awareness of Existence 18 Chapter 1: Tracing the emergence of contemporary mechanistic human self-understanding 35 Chapter 2: Examining the implications of dualist ontologies 48 Chapter 3: Toward an alternative paradigm 64 Section 2: The Human Condition: Semiotic Dissonance 65 Chapter 4: Freedom as dialectic 96 Chapter 5: The human Umwelt 121 Chapter 6: The potency of metaphor 140 Chapter 7: Homo economicus 173 Section 3: Meaningful Existence 174 Chapter 8: From Umwelt to reality: a cosmos of signification 202 Chapter 9: An alternative cosmology: Peirce's objective idealism 224 Chapter 10: Defending objective idealism 270 Chapter 11: Developmental teleology: learning from Nature's aesthetic 286 Appendix: 287 R. W. Emerson, The Sphinx 293 Bibliography: 293 Writings of C. S. Peirce 297 Other Writings Page 5 of 305 2227290 D Dupuis Doctoral Thesis ABSTRACT I argue that existence is infused with meaning, purpose; that the world we live in and our relationship to it can be explained neither through necessity and causation, nor through accidental happenstance, but only through the complexity of purposeful processes, a myriad of signs relating to and acting upon one another. I argue, following Peirce, that "all this universe is perfused with signs, if it is not composed exclusively of signs" (1906, CP 5.448 fn). At lower levels of organisational complexity, communicatory practices abound almost without limit –within or between species, and across divides of organisational complexity, with every living thing in every environmental sphere capable of – and actively engaged in – the production and interpretation of meaning through sign relations. These communicative practices emerged and developed processually within their environments, from the least complex interactions of organisms with their environments to the complexity of the human semiosphere. The meaning infused into all of existence is not objective meaning, but subjective to both communicator and interpreter. Meaning is entirely open to interpretation, and can be interpreted differently than was intended. We will first identify some of the shortcomings of current approaches which ignore the role of semiosis within nature, or which misunderstand or do not take into account the roles of (bio) semiosis in human ecology. The implications of a continued misconception of human ecology extend beyond any ontological concerns we might have, speaking instead to the very praxis of our continued existence on this planet. Central to this is the Page 6 of 305 2227290 D Dupuis Doctoral Thesis question of human agency and freedom, and the origins of that agency; namely mind and awareness of existence, and their determinants. For contemporary ecology to incorporate this position requires an hierarchical theory of natural interrelationships, within which ecological regulation and facilitation is economically accomplished through a diffuse multiplicity of low-energy expenditure processes of complex representation and signification, mediation and interpretation. Moreover, it is biosemiosis − emerging at successively higher levels of nature – which makes possible mind and human awareness, and thus human agency. This thesis presents Peircian objective idealism (constructed architectonically through the further developments of synechism, tychism, and the revelation of evidence of a cosmic conatus) as a perspective which affords us a greater philosophical (and ontological, and practical) understanding of ourselves within this cosmos perfused with meaning than do any of the alternative conceptions of humanity and human agency which have hitherto dominated the discussion. Page 7 of 305 2227290 D Dupuis Doctoral Thesis INTRODUCTION Human life is saturated by meaning, and thus by processes of semiosis: the interpretation and production of meaning from signs. This is the world as we experience it – the human Umwelt. Our interpretation of all things depends entirely on our own attribution of meaning - that is, what we interpret as significant. A sign is only a sign when it is interpreted as a sign. In contemporary human life, ecology is a concern of undeniable importance, as it is the scale and pervasiveness of human-induced environmental impacts which have produced contemporary ecology's (and thus, humanity's) most pressing concerns for the very continuance of our species. This demands that we investigate the roles of human agency, and thus of awareness, and of mind, within nature - the source of human agency. I argue that it is biosemiosis - emerging at successively higher levels of complexity within nature - which makes possible mind and human awareness and thus human agency, and further, that through our own systems of prioritisation, we have reached a position of semiotic dissonance, whereby we have elevated in priority our own constructed systems of meaning hierarchically above and before all other forms of semiosis, in particular the biosemiosis we are emergent from and dependent upon for our survival, and through which we discover our legitimacy as a species within the biosphere itself. This thesis seeks to propose a method by which semiotic dissonance may be made consonant with Nature's patterns through a Peircian biosemiotic approach to understanding human ecology. * Page 8 of 305 2227290 D Dupuis Doctoral Thesis While our lives depend on biosemiosis, we live, primarily, in a reality of our own culturally constructed layers of semiosis; from the economy, to the conventions of road travel, to our languages and systems of communications; we live daily in a world of our own constructed meanings. In lived human experience, these meanings come before any others in our interpretive schema – as a consequence of the requirements for the continuance of any particular life, it is necessary to be able to immediately interpret these relationships of meaning, as failure to do so would inhibit the functionality of the individual. In contemporary human life, a failure to functionally interpret the semiosis of the economy and our system of attributing (monetary) value through symbolic representation and ownership would leave an individual unable to access a great deal of human culture and endeavour, and would make existence in such
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