Category Archives: Meaning, presence & message

03/12/25

Looking at Alexei Sharov and Morten Tonnessen’s Chapter (2021) “Agency In Non-Human Organisms” (Part 1 of 7)

531 The text before me is chapter four of Semiotic Agency (2021).  Details on the text may be found on point 0473.  Chapter four covers pages 95-122.

0532 This chapter is an overview of both hierarchy and the evolution of living systems composed of hierarchies of sub-agents.

0533 Section 4.1 concerns a gradation of competence in semiotic agency.  The gradation arises from the intuitively obvious structure of animals.

0534 The above picture suggests that each level of semiotic competence both encompasses and transforms the adjacent lower level.

0535 Does the adjacent lower level come under the control of the higher level?

It makes me wonder about the term, “control”.

Does “control” assume the functionality of adjacent lower-level subagents?

Does “control” indicate that the higher-level agent uses lower-level subagents in order to achieve its goal?

0536 Well, here is one way to diagram the relation between agent and subagent.

The agent relies on the subagent to behave like its supposed to behave.

Does that accord with the meaning, the presence and the message of the word, “control”?

Yes, the agent uses the subagent and assumes the functionality of the subagent.

But “control”?

0537 Is there any other term that applies to the metasystem transition implied by the above figure?

Take a look at the normal contexts.

The logics of thirdness are exclusion, complement and alignment. 

How do these apply to the above figure?

Obviously, the relation between the agent and subagent is one of alignment.  This implies that the possibility of ‘final causality’1 for the agent3 is included in the possibility of ‘final causality’1 for the subagent3.  Otherwise, the subagent3would be excluded from the agent3.

0538 Well, what about the other two logics?

Surely, exclusion and complement must have roles to play.

They do, in an evolutionary schema.

Recall, biological evolution is a mystery, consisting of the intersection of adaptation and phenotype.  If evolution starts with an agent, and ends up as agent with subagents, then the subagents differentiate (exclusion), specialize (complement) and then align (alignment).  If evolution starts with an independent agent (exclusion), who ends up as a subagent within another agent, then maybe some sort of phenotypic change comes into play (compatibility), leading to incorporation (alignment).

0539 Here is a picture of both routes.

0540 Consider the domestication of the dog.

Can I imagine the logics of exclusion, complement and alignment in play?

The agent is like an Umwelt to the subagent.  The subagent participates in the Innerwelt of the agent.

03/5/25

Looking at Alexei Sharov and Morten Tonnessen’s Chapter (2021) “Agency In Non-Human Organisms” (Part 7 of 7)

0592 What is Pavlov up to?

He is a modern scientist, who has adopted the precepts of the Positivist’s judgment.

0593 At the end of this chapter on non-human agency, the authors warn against anthropomorphic theories.

Clearly, that is not the only danger facing biosemiotics.

The fact that a word in common use is used as the label for a class of psychological models attests to the way that (for triumphalist science) models may be used to overshadow and occlude their noumena.

Pavlov’s experiment is widely regarded as foundational in psychological empirical science.  Yet, this examination suggests that, even before designing his experiment, Pavlov might have imagined that “anticipation” is what the noumenon must be, when it came to animal behavior.

0593 If correct, Pavlov’s work demonstrates that phenomenology is practiced in the formation of social sciences long before Husserl develops an explicit methodology for arriving at what the noumenon must be.  This is discussed in points 0120 to 0129.

The word, “anticipation” papers over the noumenon for a wide variety of psychological phenomena.  But, some scientists treat the word as if it is only a technical term in the scientific discipline of psychology.

0594 This conclusion is far more difficult to grasp that any warning about anthropomorphic theories.

Why?

Today’s psychologists think that “anticipation” is the thing itself when it comes to operant and instrumental conditioning.

0596 On top of that, neither “anticipation as noumenon” nor models of conditioned responses are semiotic.  They do not face the reality that the thing itself can only be recognized within a purely relational structure.  The noumena for biology, psychology and sociology are not as obvious as the noumena of the empirical sciences.  They are not obvious because they are actualities2 that only manifest in their proper normal contexts3 and potentials1.

Indeed, at some level of awareness, both social scientists and phenomenologists have always known this.  Sharov and Tonnessen’s noumenal overlay may be the first attempt to ground noumena in the biological and social sciences in the realness of triadic relations.

0597 This brings me back to agency in non-human organisms.  The interactions between agents and subagents, as well as between agents, has been a focus on dyadic research for the modern era.  These interactions will need to be reframed for the postmodern era of triadic relations.

0598 Indeed, take a look at the following figure, depicting the semiotic agency of Pavlov and his dogs as if they are subagents in a scientific institution.

Both the apparatus and the dog in the sling cohere to the relational structure of semiotic agency (as formulated by the S&T noumenal overlay).

0599 But, look at that dashed line arrow.

I wonder, “Is that arrow dyadic?  Or does it hide a triadic relation?”

So concludes this examination of chapter four of Semiotic Agency.