Extending Biosemiotics
The Extended Evolutionary Synthesis also extends the role of biosemiotics. This paper will seek to extend it further, both to the metaphysics of C. S. Peirce and A. N Whitehead and to Ingold’s treatment of inheritance (Ingold, 2022).
Firstness, experience without reaction, is fundamental to Peirce’s metaphysics, giving qualia an ontological status equivalent to matter. Thus his broader concepts, such as tychism and synechism, are actually aspects of panpsychism. By bringing Peirce and von Uexküll together, biosemiotics restores meaning, and hence subjectivity, to biology. This paper will propose to move beyond biology to a more universal view of subjectivity.
At first sight it might appear that Hoffmeyer agrees, since he notes “This world is full of subjects and something must have created them.” (Hoffmeyer, 1996, page 57). However, he stops short of panpsychism and takes subjectivity to be something that emerges with an evolutionary increase in semiotic freedom.
But to say that evolution proceeds without subjectivity and then at some point it just emerges is hardly an explanation. If evolution is accompanied by an increase in subjectivity, there must have been some there to start with. It is more parsimonious to claim that subjectivity occurs universally to a greater or lesser extent.
This paper will suggest that taking this view offers an opportunity to extend biosemiotics, not only towards metaphysics but also towards Ingold’s radical view of evolution itself, in which ecology is central. Further, it will propose that this will make biosemiotics more relevant to the ecological crisis facing us all (Pickering, 2023).
References
Hoffmeyer, J. (1996) Signs of Meaning in the Universe. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Pickering, J. (2023) Metaphysics Matters: Towards Semiotic Causation. Journal of Consciousness Studies, Vol. 30, No. 1 -2, 215-237.
Ingold, T. (2022) Evolution without Inheritance: Steps to an Ecology of Learning. Current Anthropology, Vol. 63, supplement 25, 32-54.