Biosemiotics

In praise of Brainwaves as Tissue. A biosemiotic perspective Until discovery of telescopes Saturn was thought, by proto-scientists, to be the last planet of our solar system. Equally nowadays, in anatomic perspective, the skin is considered histologically the furthest tissue that divides us from , and is in contact with the external environment. But exactly […]

Ecosemiotics between matter and life: starting from John Deely’s interpretation of semiotic scaffolding The presentation is an extension of the arguments proposed by John Deely in his article “Building a Scaffold: Semiosis in Nature and Culture”, published in 2015 in the journal Biosemiotics. In particular, the idea that physical scaffolding prepares the plans for the […]

An attempt at a semiotic approach to animal play and joking Play in the animal kingdom is an extremely widespread phenomenon, most studied in higher vertebrates (birds and mammals), but clearly existing in the behavior of reptiles and fish, possibly even arachnids and insects. Definitely in cephalopods, chiefly octopuses. The phenomenon of animal play is […]

A biosemiotic perspective on the human condition and the environmental crisis In this presentation I will present the book chapter “A biosemiotic perspective on the human condition and the environmental crisis” (Tønnessen, forthcoming). The chapter presents a biosemiotic perspective on the basic situation for human beings and that of other organisms, with an emphasis on […]

The thresholds for extending the evolutionary synthesis: How far can we go? The research project “Methodological design of extended evolutionary synthesis: interdisciplinary framework for social and life sciences” (Russian Science Foundation, № 22-18-00383) faces the challenges of crossing interfaces between traditional scientific disciplines, paradigms (in Kuhn’s sense), research programmes (in Lakatos’ sense) and even subtler […]

Semiotics of potential meanings Because semiosis is coextensive with living and life-dependent semiotic agents, meanings (relations of entities to something else that is significant for agents) exist only on condition that semiotic agency exists capable of using/interpreting them. However, meanings can be actual or potential, depending on whether they are interpreted by semiotic agents at […]

Discursivity and semiotic complexity as driving the shape of animal choice and human freedom Biosemiotics, it seems, holds the key not only to understanding life but also to one of the more intractable issues that has been bewildering philosophy for a long while – the question of freedom. If we are to try and reconcile […]

Danger Modeling: Meaning-generation in Three Dimensions In the struggle for existence, any known species of organisms must avert danger to ensure survival. To do that, they need to identify—or model—it in ways that are specific to their species and actualized in concrete situations. This is an act of generating meaning that falls perfectly within the […]

More constraints, more freedom: Revisiting semiotic scaffolding, semiotic freedom, and semiotic emergence Technically, constraint is defined as the reduction of degree of freedom. However, novelties emerge in dynamic systems with constraints. Constraints make once almost impossible states become possible. That is, constraint may raise the probability of the actual realization of possible states once being […]