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Phantom Signs – Hidden (Bio)Semiosis in the Human Body(?) Biosemiotics (IF 1.6) Pub Date : 2024-03-15 Robert Prinz
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Efficiency in Organism-Environment Information Exchanges: A Semantic Hierarchy of Logical Types Based on the Trial-and-Error Strategy Behind the Emergence of Knowledge Biosemiotics (IF 1.6) Pub Date : 2024-03-12 Mattia Berera
Based on Kolchinsky and Wolpert’s work on the semantics of autonomous agents, I propose an application of Mathematical Logic and Probability to model cognitive processes. In this work, I will follow Bateson’s insights on the hierarchy of learning in complex organisms and formalize his idea of applying Russell’s Type Theory. Following Weaver’s three levels for the communication problem, I link the Kolchinsky–Wolpert
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Interspecific Cohabitation in Urban Context: Modelling, Diagnostic and Problem-Solving from a Semiotics Perspective Biosemiotics (IF 1.6) Pub Date : 2024-02-22 Pauline Suzanne Delahaye
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Navigating the Evolvability Landscape — Essay Review of Hansen T.F., Houle, D., Pavlicev, M., & Pelabon, C. (Eds.). (2023). Evolvability: A Unifying Concept in Evolutionary Biology? MIT Press Biosemiotics (IF 1.6) Pub Date : 2024-02-10 David Chun Yin Li
This article reviews the edited volume “Evolvability: A Unifying Concept in Evolutionary Biology?” through biological and philosophical lenses. The book provides diverse angles on evolvability, which is affected by various hierarchical levels, timescales, and types of variation, thus moving beyond a purely genomics perspective. Evolvability is important to biosemiotics because understanding the dynamics
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Embodied human language models vs. Large Language Models, or why Artificial Intelligence cannot explain the modal be able to Biosemiotics (IF 1.6) Pub Date : 2024-02-07 Sergio Torres-Martínez
This paper explores the challenges posed by the rapid advancement of artificial intelligence specifically Large Language Models (LLMs). I show that traditional linguistic theories and corpus studies are being outpaced by LLMs’ computational sophistication and low perplexity levels. In order to address these challenges, I suggest a focus on language as a cognitive tool shaped by embodied-environmental
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Atacama Desert’s Solastalgia: Color and Water for Dumping Biosemiotics (IF 1.6) Pub Date : 2024-01-11 Carolina Sánchez De Jaegher
The blooming desert or ‘El desierto florido’ in Spanish, is a millenarian climate pattern caused by El Niño that warms the surface waters in the eastern tropical Pacific Ocean and creates the conditions for rain in the Altiplano and the Atacama Desert, north of Chile. After some millimeters of abundant rain, a rich biotic community emerges, and in a matter of hours or days, the driest surface on Earth
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Living and Experiencing: Response to Commentaries Biosemiotics (IF 1.6) Pub Date : 2023-12-29 Eva Jablonka, Simona Ginsburg
In our target article, “Learning and the evolution of conscious agents” we outlined an evolutionary approach to consciousness, arguing that the evolution of a form of open-ended, representational, and generative learning (unlimited associative learning, UAL) drove the evolution of consciousness. Our view highlights the dynamics and functions of consciousness, delineates its taxonomic distribution and
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Consciousness as Telos: An Evo-Devo Approach Biosemiotics (IF 1.6) Pub Date : 2023-12-13 Supriya Bajpai, Lalit Saraswat
Simona Ginsburg & Eva Jablonka (G&J), in The Evolution of the Sensitive Soul (2019), explore the nature and status of the mind and subjective experiences from an evolutionary perspective. They raise a fundamental question about ‘the origin of animal consciousness during evolution’ (pg.1). The book begins by tracing the roots of consciousness studies from the Aristotelian perspective on the sensitive
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More Constraints, More Freedom: Revisit Semiotic Scaffolding, Semiotic Freedom, and Semiotic Emergence Biosemiotics (IF 1.6) Pub Date : 2023-12-04 Liqian Zhou
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An Integrated Bayesian-Heuristic Semiotic Model for Understanding Human and SARS-CoV-2 Representational Structures Biosemiotics (IF 1.6) Pub Date : 2023-11-13 Sergio Torres-Martínez
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Umwelt Collapse: The Loss of Umwelt-Ecosystem Integration Biosemiotics (IF 1.6) Pub Date : 2023-10-31 Timo Maran
Jakob von Uexküll’s umwelt theory opens new perspectives for understanding animal extinction. The umwelt is interpreted here as a sum of structural correspondences between an animal’s subjective experience, ecosystem, physiology, and behaviour. The global environmental crisis disturbs these meaning-connections. From the umwelt perspective, we may describe extinction as umwelt collapse: The disintegration
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Biosemiotic Achievement Award for the Year 2022 Biosemiotics (IF 1.6) Pub Date : 2023-10-09 Ludmila Lackova, Ahti-Veikko Juhani Pietarinen, Morten Tønnessen
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Interview with Gerd B. Müller on Theoretical Biology Biosemiotics (IF 1.6) Pub Date : 2023-10-09 Kalevi Kull
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Animalista, Narco-Cultural, Conservacionista. Visions of Nature Around the Case of Hippos in Colombia Biosemiotics (IF 1.6) Pub Date : 2023-09-12 Sergio Rodríguez Gómez, Germán Jiménez
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Semiocide and Wasteocene in the Making: The Case of Adana Landfill Biosemiotics (IF 1.6) Pub Date : 2023-09-12 Eylül Tuğçe Alnıaçık Özyer, Rumeysa Çavuş Peksöz
In this article, in an attempt to analyze the crisis caused by the images of imported plastic waste, we consider the relationship between waste and its meaning in the case of geographical dislocation and de- and re-contextualization processes. Our analysis is guided by two recent concepts: The Wasteocene and semiocide. While the Wasteocene clarifies the signifying mechanisms of this period, semiocide
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The Biosynthesis of Proteins for Nano Engines as a Normative Process Biosemiotics (IF 1.6) Pub Date : 2023-09-06 Wim Beekman, Henk Jochemsen
In this article two questions are discussed with regard to semiosis in protein biosynthesis for nano engines. (1) What kind of semiosis is involved in the construction of these proteins? and (2) How can we explain the semiotic process observed? With regard to the first issue we draw attention to comparisons between semiosis in protein biosynthesis and human natural language. The notion of normativity
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Can the ‘Master Narrative’ of Growth be Replaced by New Stories of Shrinking and Degrowth? A Biosemiotic Perspective on the ‘Stories we Live by’ Biosemiotics (IF 1.6) Pub Date : 2023-09-06 Prisca Augustyn
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The Philosophy of Anti-Dumping as the Affirmation of Life Biosemiotics (IF 1.6) Pub Date : 2023-08-14 Arran Gare
Michael Marder in Dump Philosophy claims that that there has been so much dumping with modern civilization that we now live in a dump, with those parts of our environment not contaminated by dumping, now rare. The growth of the dump is portrayed as the triumph of nihilism, predicted by Nietzsche as the outcome of life denying Neoplatonist metaphysics. Marder’s proposed solution, characterized as “undumping”
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Poti-Interpretants, Sin-Interpretants, and Legi-Interpretants: Rethinking Semiotic Causation as Production of Signs Biosemiotics (IF 1.6) Pub Date : 2023-08-11 Ivan Fomin
The study seeks to contribute to the concept of semiotic causation by building a nomenclature of effects (interpretants) produced by signs. As a starting point, the suggested approach uses Charles Peirce’s idea that the interpretant itself is a sign that is produced by another sign. From this, the study suggests that Peirce’s ten-fold division of signs can be used as a basis for the division of interpretants
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Signs of Life and Death: The Semiotic Self-Destruction of the Biosphere Biosemiotics (IF 1.6) Pub Date : 2023-07-19 Alf Hornborg
This article applies some conceptual tools from semiotics to better understand the disastrous impacts of the world economy on global ecology. It traces the accelerating production of material disorder and waste to the logic of the money sign, as economic production processes simultaneously increase exchange-values and entropy. The exchange of indexical and iconic signs is essential to the dynamics
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Experimental Semiotics: A Systematic Categorization of Experimental Studies on the Bootstrapping of Communication Systems Biosemiotics (IF 1.6) Pub Date : 2023-05-15 Angelo Delliponti, Renato Raia, Giulia Sanguedolce, Adam Gutowski, Michael Pleyer, Marta Sibierska, Marek Placiński, Przemysław Żywiczyński, Sławomir Wacewicz
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Sensitive Souls and Biosemiotic Agency as Emergence Biosemiotics (IF 1.6) Pub Date : 2023-04-17 Yogi Hale Hendlin
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What if Consciousness has no Function? Biosemiotics (IF 1.6) Pub Date : 2023-04-17 Sofia Belardinelli, Telmo Pievani
In this commentary, as philosophers of evolutionary biology, we will consider the evolutionary framework used in the Target Article by: (i) emphasising the fruitfulness of the interdisciplinary approach employed; (ii) highlighting some potentially controversial aspects of the proposal; and finally (iii) outlining some ideas for further integration within the UAL framework. The critical analysis will
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The Musical Turn in Biosemiotics Biosemiotics (IF 1.6) Pub Date : 2023-04-13 Matthew A Slayton, Yogi Hale Hendlin
Human music and language are two systems of communication and expression that, while historically considered to overlap, have become increasingly divergent in their approach and study. Music and language almost certainly co-evolved and emerged from the same semiotic field, and this relationship as well as co-origin are actively researched and debated. For the sake of evaluating the semiotic content
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On the Evolution of Symbols and Prediction Models Biosemiotics (IF 1.6) Pub Date : 2023-04-04 Rainer Feistel
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Ecosemiotic Analysis of Species Reintroduction: the Case of European Mink (Mustela lutreola) in Estonia Biosemiotics (IF 1.6) Pub Date : 2023-03-27 Riin Magnus, Nelly Mäekivi
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The Metaphysics of Living Consciousness: Metabolism, Agency and Purposiveness Biosemiotics (IF 1.6) Pub Date : 2023-03-23 Anne Sophie Meincke
Life has evolved; and so must have consciousness, or subjective experience, as found in living beings, Eva Jablonka and Simona Ginsburg contend. In their target article, which summarises the main theses of their seminal book The Evolution of the Sensitive Soul, the authors put forward an evolutionary account of consciousness that builds upon the intimate connection between consciousness and life without
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Energy and Expectation: The Dynamics of Living Consciousness Biosemiotics (IF 1.6) Pub Date : 2023-03-13 Michael Trestman
Jablonka and Ginsburg’s target paper (2022) argues that (a) consciousness is closely tied to goal-directed behavior and an open-ended capacity for learning and adaptation driven by exploration-and-stabilization dynamics; and (b) consciousness has this essential dynamical nature due to its emergence in evolution from the spontaneous exploration-and-stabilization dynamics of animal life, which the authors
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Minimal Properties of a Natural Semiotic System: Response to Commentaries on “How Molecules Became Signs” Biosemiotics (IF 1.6) Pub Date : 2023-03-07 Terrence W. Deacon
In the target article “How molecules became signs” I offer a molecular “thought experiment” that provides a paradigm for resolving the major incompatibilities between biosemiotic and natural science accounts of living processes. To resolve these apparent incompatibilities I outline a plausible empirically testable model system that exemplifies the emergence of chemical processes exhibiting semiotic
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Some Reflections on the Evolution of Conscious Agents: The Relevance of body Plans Biosemiotics (IF 1.6) Pub Date : 2023-03-02 Alvaro Moreno
The aim of this commentary article is to discuss several problems in the distribution map for conscious organisms and suggest a different strategy to address their evolutionary development. I propose to complement the model of Unlimited Associative Learning (UAL) that Jablonka and Ginsburg present in their Target Article with the additional consideration of how body plans constrain the possibilities
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The Landscape of Fear as a Safety Eco-Field: Experimental Evidence Biosemiotics (IF 1.6) Pub Date : 2023-03-02 Almo Farina, Philip James
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A Methodology for the Study of Interspecific Cohabitation Issues in the City Biosemiotics (IF 1.6) Pub Date : 2023-02-23 Pauline Delahaye
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Questions for Jablonka and Ginsburg Drawn from Lamarck’s Life-Made World Biosemiotics (IF 1.6) Pub Date : 2023-02-20 Jessica Riskin
The Romantic- and Revolution-era French naturalist Jean-Baptiste Lamarck is an important precursor for Jablonka’s and Ginsburg’s theory of living beings as beings that learn. Lamarck defined living beings as beings that compose and create. Like Jablonka and Ginsburg’s learning theory, Lamarck’s composing and creating theory locates life in the capacity for a kind of purposeful striving. A consideration
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A Functional - Helix Conceptualization of the Emergent Properties of the Animal Kingdom: Chronoception as a Key Sensory Process Biosemiotics (IF 1.6) Pub Date : 2023-02-09 Amelia Lewis
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Closures as a Precondition of Life, Agency, and Semiosis Biosemiotics (IF 1.6) Pub Date : 2023-02-06 Jana Švorcová, Anton Markoš
The goal of this paper is to explain the evolution of life through the evolution of cellular and supra-cellular closures, two distinct ways of strict delimitation against the surroundings. Such closures are a necessary precondition of organisation, semiosis, and agency. We argue that in addition to the basic, first-order, cellular closures, which have been in existence without interruption since the
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Semiotically Mediated Human-Bee Communication in the Practice of Brazilian Meliponiculture Biosemiotics (IF 1.6) Pub Date : 2022-12-30 Heidi Campana Piva
Stingless bees are among the most dominant pollinators in the south tropics. As such, the rational beekeeping of stingless bee species, called meliponiculture, is an ancient and relevant activity, related to sustainable agricultural development, and which connects traditional knowledge to innovation and novelty. Given the relevance of this topic, this paper discusses the possibilities of a semiotically
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How Minimal Can Consciousness Be? Biosemiotics (IF 1.6) Pub Date : 2022-12-29 Louis N. Irwin
This commentary on the argument by Jablonka & Ginsburg (2022) that unlimited associative learning (UAL) provides an evolutionary marker for the transition to consciousness raises the question, “Transition to what?” The proposal that a level of consciousness required for UAL would embody eight specific criteria is credible, but can a limited degree of sentience still exist in animals that lack some
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And the Flesh in Between: Towards a Health Semiotics Biosemiotics (IF 1.6) Pub Date : 2022-12-20 Devon Schiller
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A new Frontier for Organismal Biology Biosemiotics (IF 1.6) Pub Date : 2022-12-14 Jana Švorcová
Almost forty years after Adolf Portmann’s death, we welcome the publication of a collective monograph about the life and legacy of this unique zoologist and anthropologist. This work should be of interest to biologists who study the theoretical aspects of animal morphology or are interested in animal patterns, but also to philosophers of biology who investigate the aesthetic aspects of nature or the
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Time Transformation in the Sign System of the Conditioned Reflex Biosemiotics (IF 1.6) Pub Date : 2022-11-21 Konstantin S. Mochalov
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Embracing the Learning Turn: The ecological context of learning Biosemiotics (IF 1.6) Pub Date : 2022-11-14 Cary Campbell
My aim in this commentary article is to observe and comment on some of the main conceptual and methodological continuities and discontinuities between recent biosemiotics-informed learning theory and the model of Unlimited Associative Learning (UAL) that Jablonka and Ginsburg (2022) present in this Target Article. UAL as a model, presents important synthesis and clarity around the ecological context
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There is Umwelt Before Consciousness, and Learning Transverses Both Biosemiotics (IF 1.6) Pub Date : 2022-11-09 Kalevi Kull, Donald Favareau
We comment here on a target article by Eva Jablonka and Simona Ginsburg, which adds an interesting and important contribution to semiotic biology by their discussion of cognition and learning. In agreement with the aims and outlook of the authors, we offer a few observations about how the seminal biosemiotic concept of umwelt may be a critical tool to aid in this investigation of biological learning
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Learning as Becoming Conscious: A note on Jablonka and Ginsburg’s Notion of Learning Biosemiotics (IF 1.6) Pub Date : 2022-11-03 Alin Olteanu
This commentary addresses the concept of learning stemming from Eva Jablonka and Simona Ginsburg’s theory of the emergence of consciousness. Jablonka and Ginsburg find strong support in biosemiotics for their argument that learning offers an evolutionary transition marker for the emergence of consciousness. Indeed, biosemiotics embraces a view on evolution that integrates both phylogeny and ontogeny
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The Evolution of Consciousness and Agency Biosemiotics (IF 1.6) Pub Date : 2022-11-03 Denis Noble
Conscious Agency is a major driver of evolution. Artificial Selection (i.e. Conscious Selection by human breeders) was the foil against which Charles Darwin defined Natural Selection. In later work, he extended Artificial Selection to other species. That ability for social (e.g. sexual) selection must have evolved. Jablonka and Ginsburg identify markers of conscious agency, such as Unlimited Associative
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The Evolutionary Origin(s) of the Umwelt Biosemiotics (IF 1.6) Pub Date : 2022-11-03 Morten Tønnessen
Although Jakob von Uexküll´s Umwelt theory is not mentioned in Jablonka and Ginsburg´s Target article, von Uexküll´s theory is clearly relevant in the context of the article, with the authors´ emphasis on the origin of “subjective experiencing”. I relate some of Jablonka and Ginsburg´s main claims to an evolutionary perspective on Umwelt theory. As it turns out, the Umwelt has multiple evolutionary
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Perceptions of Context. Epistemological and Methodological Implications for Meta-Studying Zoo-Communication Biosemiotics (IF 1.6) Pub Date : 2022-10-31 Sigmund Ongstad
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Lyapunov Stability as a Metric for Meaning in Biological Systems Biosemiotics (IF 1.6) Pub Date : 2022-10-17 Richard L. Summers
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UAL is a Token, not a Type Biosemiotics (IF 1.6) Pub Date : 2022-10-11 Arthur S. Reber, František Baluška, William B. Miller
Our comment is based on a simple but, we believe, compelling principle. The proposed cognitive processes and functions that are components of Jablonka and Ginsburg’s Unlimited Associative Learning (UAL) are real and are fundamental elements in the varieties of consciousness, cognition, problem solving, and sentience in the species they identify. But, from our perspective, they didn’t function as the
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Biosemiotic Achievement Award for the Year 2021 Biosemiotics (IF 1.6) Pub Date : 2022-09-27 Alin Olteanu, Vinicius Romanini
The Annual Biosemiotic Achievement Award was established at the annual meeting of the International Society for Biosemiotic Studies (ISBS) in 2014, in conjunction with Springer and Biosemiotics. It seeks to recognize papers published in the journal that present novel and potentially important contributions to biosemiotic research, its scientific impact and its future prospects. Here the winner of the
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René Thom, Reader of Jakob von Uexküll (Meaning as Topological Space) Biosemiotics (IF 1.6) Pub Date : 2022-09-20 Arthur Araujo
In this paper, I draw a parallel between aspects of René Thom’s topological program understood as semiophysics, and Jakob von Uexküll’s theory of meaning. Through the use of Thom’s semiophysics, I believe that it is possible to interpret Uexküll’s intuition that meaning unfolds a kind of transformation in an organism’s transactions with the environment: that is, meaning incorporates topological spaces
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Learning and the Evolution of Conscious Agents Biosemiotics (IF 1.6) Pub Date : 2022-09-05 Eva Jablonka, Simona Ginsburg
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Towards a More Effective Thick Description: A Biosemiotic Approach to Meaning in Psychotherapy Biosemiotics (IF 1.6) Pub Date : 2022-08-23 Annibale Fanali, Francesco Tramonti, Franco Giorgi
Thick description was originally proposed to overcome the limitations of quantitative research and ground anthropological observations in concrete people’s expectations, rather than in normative theories. The ultimate objective was to account for the emotional aspects of worldviews and value-orientations that would otherwise be left tacit or implicit by quantitative investigations. The present paper
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Modelling Animal Creativity from Uexküllian Approach—Attention, Search Image and Search Tone Biosemiotics (IF 1.6) Pub Date : 2022-08-16 Siiri Tarrikas
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Perception, Action, and Sense Making: The Three Realms of the Aesthetic Biosemiotics (IF 1.6) Pub Date : 2022-08-10 Barend van Heusden
It is argued that Kull’s approach to aesthetics complements a cognitive semiotic approach to culture. The concept of ‘ecological, semiotic fitting’ allows us to connect the three main concepts of beauty we encounter in discussions about the aesthetic, where the term beauty is, firstly, used to refer a positive experience in relation to what is perceived, or, secondly, to a positive experience in relation
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Semiotics, Biosemiotics, and Aesthetics: the Concept of Beauty and Beyond Biosemiotics (IF 1.6) Pub Date : 2022-08-10 Mark Reybrouck
This short commentary expands a little on the disciplinary history of semiotics and biosemiotics, and its relation to aesthetics. It aims at positioning Kalevi Kull’s approach to this elusive matter (Kull, 2022) within this broader field by commenting on his attempts to connect semiotics, aesthetics, and biology. It highlights the merits of his approach to proceed thereafter to formulate possible extensions
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Things, Organisms, Buildings, You: Meaning and Agency in the Built Environment Biosemiotics (IF 1.6) Pub Date : 2022-08-09 Michael Benedikt
Buildings are meaningful parts of the environment; and when they are architecture (as over “mere buildings”), they aspire to greater meaning. Several accounts of architectural semiosis have been offered based on analogies to biology and language. These are critiqued. Critiqued, too, are accounts of semiosis generally that use systems-theoretical concepts and language. The essay goes on to outline what
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Semiogenesis: A Dynamic System Approach to Agency and Structure Biosemiotics (IF 1.6) Pub Date : 2022-08-09 J. Augustus Bacigalupi
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Living and Dwelling: A Biosemiotic and Anthropological View on Inhabiting, Art and Design Biosemiotics (IF 1.6) Pub Date : 2022-08-03 Katarzyna Machtyl
This paper juxtaposes biosemiotic and anthropological perspectives to consider the issue of dwelling and living, with particular reference to nonhuman agency and design. The author discusses the fundamental issues and theoretical concepts associated with this issue before making comparisons with reference to a case study (an artistic project: Zoepolis) and defining a stance on the agency of animate
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The built environment in Social Media: towards a Biosemiotic Approach Biosemiotics (IF 1.6) Pub Date : 2022-07-29 Federico Bellentani, Daria Arkhipova
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Ontography and Maieutics, or Speculative Notes on an Ethos for Umwelt Theory Biosemiotics (IF 1.6) Pub Date : 2022-07-05 Silver Rattasepp
There is renewed interest in questions of ontology in various fields, as there has been in biosemiotics. But for umwelt theory, ontology needs to be approached in particular ways, in order to avoid it from being yet another “philosophy of access”, part and parcel of the epistemology-ontology dyad, where “ontology” is the leftover of epistemology, or any sort of subjective constitution of things. The