Abstract
While organic life is the product of myriads of biochemical processes, it usually escapes notice that the chemistry of life cannot be understood exclusively in terms of chemistry. What must be added is an understanding of the particular organized dynamics, which makes the integration of all these processes into real living creatures possible. This dynamics, however, itself is not a part of chemistry, but is evolutionarily tailored to suit a communicative or semiotic (= sign theoretical) logic (Hoffmeyer, Biosemiotics. An examination into the signs of life and the life of signs, 2008a; A legacy for living systems: Gregory Bateson as precursor to biosemiotics, pp. 27–44, 2008b). Reframing our biological thinking in terms of semiotics, i.e., biosemiotics, deeply challenges basic ontological intuitions that for centuries have informed our thinking in philosophy as well as science. It is claimed that the taboo against final causation (in science) and the rejection of the possibility to know the “thing in itself” (in phenomenology) are interconnected errors reflecting a general failure to recognize the fundamentally semiotic nature of life and cognition. While Cartesian dualism has often enough been criticized, such criticism has rarely touched upon one of its core elements: the belief that our understanding of the world around us is based on sensory mechanics, a belief that is still widely held by scientists and thinkers of today. Replacing sensory mechanics with sensory semiotics opens hitherto not fully explored ways of integrating life and cognition. Human interaction is embedded in semiotic activity that easily penetrates to processes deep in the body and brain and back again. One of the main structuring and enabling principles in the semiotic dynamics across levels has been called semiotic scaffolding a concept that relates to psychological catalyses in interesting ways to be further explored.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
By teleodynamics Deacon means “a form of dynamic organization exhibiting end-directedness and consequence-organized features that is constituted by the co-creation, complementary constraint, and reciprocal synergy of two or more strongly coupled morphodynamic [self-organizing] processes” (p. 552).
- 2.
As is often the case, Darwin himself had a clearer voice. In The Descent of Man he writes quite explicitly: “The fact that the lower animals are excited by the same emotions as ourselves is so well established, that it will not be necessary to weary the reader with many details. Terror acts in the same manner on them as on us, causing the muscles to tremble, the heart to palpitate, the sphincters to be relaxed, and the hair to stand on end” (Darwin 1981/1871, Chap. 3).
- 3.
One might perhaps think of this as a sudden “wake-up” glimpse, a little like when the pocket calculator is switched on (although we do not claim any emotional component in the pocket calculator).
- 4.
That anyone could imagine DNA molecules to possess agency is a total mystery to me.
- 5.
It often takes more than a dozen of different protein molecules to (1) unwind the threads of the double helix, (2) fix the position of the gene in the correct spatial position relative to other, more or less distant, locations on the DNA string, (3) attach the polymerase enzyme at the right location, (4) initiate the transcription, and (5) stop the process at the right place and time.
- 6.
“a homunculus argument as one in which an ententional property is presumed to be “explained” by postulating the possession of a faculty, disposition or module that produces it, and in which this property is not also fully understood in terms of non-ententional processes and relationships” (emphasis Deacon’s; p. 64).
References
Bacon, F. (2000/1620). Novum Organon. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Bekoff, M., & Pierce, J. (2009). Wild justice. The moral lives of animals. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Bshary, R., Wickler, W., et al. (2002). Fish cognition: A primate’s eye view. Animal Cognition, 5, 1–13.
Cabell, K. R. (2009). How to order a baby: Confusions and constructions of a little scientist in the Freudian world. Journal of Integrated Social Sciences, 1(1), 65–92.
Cabell, K. R. (2011). Catalysis: Cultural constructions and the conditions for change. Journal of Integrated Social Sciences, 2(1), 1–12.
Cashman, T. (2008). What connects the map to the territory?. In J. Hoffmeyer (Ed.), A legacy for living systems: Gregory Bateson as precursor to biosemiotics (pp. 45–58). Dordrecht: Springer.
Chalmers, D. (1996). The conscious mind. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Darwin, C. (1972/1859). On the origin of species by means of natural selection or the preservation of favored races in the struggle for life. London: J. M. Dent & Sons.
Darwin, C. (1981/1871). The descent of man, and selection in relation to sex. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Deacon, T. (2007). Shannon-Boltzmann-Darwin: Redefining information. Part 1. Cognitive Semiotics, 1, 123–148.
Deacon, T. (2012a). Incomplete nature. How the mind emerged from matter. New York: Norton.
Deacon, T. (2012b). Beyond the symbolic species. In T. Schilhab, F. Stjernfelt, & D. Terrence (Eds.), The symbolic species evolved (pp. 9–38). Dordrecht: Springer.
Grutter, A. (1996). Parasite removal rates by the cleaner wrasse labroides dimidatus. Marine Ecology Pregress Series, 130, 61–70.
Hoffmeyer, J. (1996). Signs of meaning in the universe. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Hoffmeyer, J. (2008a). Biosemiotics. An examination into the signs of life and the life of signs. Scranton: University of Scranton Press.
Hoffmeyer, J. (2008b). From thing to relation. In J. Hoffmeyer (Ed.), A legacy for living systems: Gregory Bateson as precursor to biosemiotics, (pp. 27–44). Dordrecht: Springer.
Hoffmeyer, J. (2010). Semiotic freedom: An emerging force. In N. H. Gregersen & P. Davis (Eds.), Information and the nature of reality: From physics to metaphysics (pp. 185–204). Cambridge: University of Cambrige Press.
Hoffmeyer, J. (in print). The semiome: From genetic to semiotic scaffolding. Semiotica, special issue edited by Timo Maran.
Hoffmeyer, J., & Stjernfelt F. (in press). The great 2 of semiosis. In K. Kull, J. Hoffmeyer, & A. A. Sharov (Eds.), Biosemiotic approaches to evolution. Dordrecht: Springer.
Kant, I. (2003/1787). Critique of pure reason. New York: Dover Philosophical Classics.
Kull, K. (2001). Jakob von Uexküll: An introduction. Semiotica, 134, 1–59.
Kull, K., Deacon, T., et al. (2009). Theses on biosemiotics: The Saka convention. Biological Theory, 4(2), 167–173.
Lewontin, R. C. (1992). The dream of the human genome. The New York Review. May, 28, 31–40.
Peirce, C. S. (1931–1958). Collected papers I–IV. Vols. 1–6, C., (Ed. by C. Hartstone & P. Weiss), Vols. 7–8. (Ed. by Burks). Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Proust, M. (1913–1927). À la recherche du temps perdu. English edition: Proust, M. (2002). In search of lost time (trans: Lane, A.).
Sebeok T. A., & Umiker-Sebeok J. (Eds.). (1991). The semiotic web 1990. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Siegel, D. J. (1999). The developing mind. How relationships and the brain interact to shape who we are. New York: The Guilford Press.
Sjölander, S. (1995). Some cognitive breakthroughs in the evolution of cognition and consciousness and their impact on the biology of language. Evolution and Cognition, 1(1), 3–11.
Sonea, S. (1991). The global organism. In T. A. Sebeok, & J. Umiker-Sebeok (Eds.), The semiotic web 1990. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Stjernfelt, F. (1992). Categorial perception as a general prerequisite to the formation of signs? On the biological range of a deep semiotic problem in Hjelmslev’s as well as Peirce’s semiotics. In T. A. Sebeok & J. Umiker-Sebeok (Eds.), Biosemiotics. The semiotic web 1991 (pp. 427–454). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Valsiner, J. (2000). Culture and Human Development: An Introduction. London: SAGE Publications.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2014 Springer Science+Business Media New York
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Hoffmeyer, J. (2014). Semiotic Scaffolding: A Biosemiotic Link Between Sema and Soma. In: Cabell, K., Valsiner, J. (eds) The Catalyzing Mind. Annals of Theoretical Psychology, vol 11. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-8821-7_5
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-8821-7_5
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, New York, NY
Print ISBN: 978-1-4614-8820-0
Online ISBN: 978-1-4614-8821-7
eBook Packages: Behavioral ScienceBehavioral Science and Psychology (R0)