Loet, Karl, Steven --
> S: The difference between us and animals is basically language.
> S: Why not 'check out' 'Biosemiotics'?
>
> STAN
Dear Stan,
I don't understand the "bio" in this. If we distinguish between two systems
of reference for knowledge -- discursive knowledge to be attributed to
interhuman communication, and personal knowledge to be attributed to human
psychologies -- the latter one is biologically embedded by the body, but the
former is only embedded by human minds (which are of course embodied).
Knowledge can then also be globalized and become person-independent. In
other words: discursive knowledge is generated bottom-up, but control can be
top-down.
S: You raise a ramifying issue here. Your focus here is on discursive
knowledge, which is mediated by language (and its attendant developments).
Inasmuch as it learned by individuals, it is top down. It is society's way of
inhabiting minds. It is our main means of getting outside ourselves; language
is
our major externalizing medium. Internally we have intimations, intuitions,
etc.
These may come to be harnessed by linguistic forms, top-down. Internal
excursions unharnessed by language are the basis of creativity and criminality.
Note that in language we do make a functional distinction here: the
internal
is carried by the First Person, present progressive tense, the external in
Third
Person, universal present tense reports. These cannot be mixed, although one
can be bracketed within the other. In our culture the external is privileged
(except in, e.g., modern poetry).
Shouldn't it therefore be "psycho-semiotics"? "Bio-semiotics" is only valid
for personalized knowledge.
Here I must inform you that biosemiotics has two prongs. Originally (von
Uexküll) it was about ethology, more latterly it is based in the 'language' of
genetics and DNA. All of this was/is external, discursive. I think I can say
that
there is as yet no 'psychosemiotics', in the sense I think you mean it, as
such.
Semiotics is taken to be about communication and interpretation.
(For the good order, let me hasten to add that
the two systems of knowledge -- the interpersonal and the personal ones --
are reflexive to each other.)
Yes. Internally one might -- in the discursive, Third Person mode --
try to
interpret one's feelings and intuitions. But this the external reaching in,
controlling from outside.
-----------------------------
Karl -- replying in part:
-snip-
The difference between us and animals is that we can exchange foreground and
background and discuss how the world changes - in our perception, not really.
We can step back from the artefacts of our perceptional apparatus and try to
see
white on black and not only black on white. Then we could discuss how the
world presents itself if we use TWO ways of reading the mixture of black/white
patterns.
von Uexküll showed that each species lives in its own 'innenwelt'. So
each
kind of animal has a different mind than any other. If we could put all the
minds
together, we still would not have a complete view of existence (all those
species
now extinct!).
That what is the collection of what we know and can know is delineated by the
rules by which we contrast the foreground to the background.
These rules could be quite different in different species.
---------------------------------
Steven -- answering in part --
Dear Stan. Loet, List ...
I have never understood the idea of "biosemiotics." This, or any other
qualified semeiotic, seems to introduce a fundamental misunderstanding
about the nature of semeiotic theory.
These terms have come about because of the natural tendency of discourses
to fragment into specialities. Thus, for some, biosemiotics centers around
intracell communication based in the DNA 'language'. Several specializations
are becoming distinguished -- 'physiosemiotics', 'biosemiotics',
'anthroposemiotics'. This makes sense from an evolutionary, and materialist,
point of view. If humans have a property, then our ancestral systems must have
had precursor systems from which these evolved.
STAN
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