Category Archives: Meaning, presence & message

03/25/25

Looking at Abir Igamberdiev’s Chapter (2024) “Evolutionary Growth of Meanings…” (Part 1 of 4)

0434 The text before me is chapter twelve in Pathways to the Origin and Evolution of Meanings in the Universe (2024, edited by Alexei Sharov and George E. Mikhailovsky, pages 265-278).  The full title is “Evolutionary Growth of Meanings in the Relational Universe of Intercommunicating Agents”.  The author is a biologist at the Memorial University of Newfoundland, at St. John’s.

0435 The introduction places the term, “agent”, on stage.

How does one know whether “an agent” is an agent?

Well, the agent should be obvious.  An agent is physical.  An agent is the repository of – what Aristotle calls – “final causality”.  Final causality associates to another metaphysics-laden term, “teleology”.

What is the meaning of this term, “repository”.

0436 I only ask this because the thing that we encounter in science associates to what is for the Positivist’s judgment.  Sharov and Tonnessen’s noumenal overlay pertains to what is, and it describes semiotic agency.  Semiotic agency (as the noumenon) gives rise to phenomena that are observed and measured by biologists, then the resulting models are attributed, not to agency2 itself, but to the agent3 and the agent’s intentions1 (that is, final causalities).

0437 “Repository” plays out as a category-based nested form.

The normal context of an agent3 brings the actuality of semiotic agency2 into relation with the possibilities inherent in ‘final causality’1.

The agent3 puts semiotic agency2 into context.  Semiotic agency2 emerges from (and situates) the potential of ‘teleology’1.

These basics are found in A Primer on the Category-Based Nested Form, by Razie Mah, available at smashwords and other e-book venues.

0438 The image of “the agent” as “an obvious repository of final causality” treats the category-based nested form diagrammed above as a thing.

The author presents the image without hesitation, as if that is what human naturally do.  Humans not only treat a thing as a thing, but we also treat a corresponding category-based nested form as a thing.  Not the same “thing”, but still, a thing.

We observe semiotic agency2.  We visualize the agent3 as a physical repository of final causality1.

0439 What does this imply?

Consider the title of the chapter, Evolutionary Growth of Meanings in the Relational Universe of Intercommunicating Agents.

Where do I slip the category-based nested form into this title?

Do category-based nested forms slide into the author’s designation of “relational universe”?

If so, then the substitution brings this examiner face to face with where the author seems to be going, the recovery of Aristotle’s causalities within the milieu of biosemiotics.

0440 If that is the case, let me present a more hylomorphic version of the category-based nested form.

0441 Notice that actuality2 corresponds to Peirce’s category of secondness.  Secondness consists of two contiguous real elements.  In the figure, the contiguity is placed in brackets for the purposes of notation.

For example, for Aristotle, when I encounter a thing, the two real elements that come to mind are matter and form.  Matter is necessary for presence.  Form is necessary for shape.  What is the contiguity between matter and form?  Here, I snatch a term that has been much abused, because it has been so difficult to grasp.  The term is “substance”.  I now assign a very specific, technical definition to the term in hand.  “Substance” is the contiguity between matter and form.

0442 Aristotle’s hylomorphe is an exemplar of Peirce’s category of secondness.

Thus, the recovery of Aristotle’s terminology in the biosemiotic milieu begins.

0443 Abir Igamberdiev is not the only one to imagine a recovery of Aristotle’s causality in light of the postmodern compromise of the positivist intellect.

Mariusz Tabaczek pursues a recovery in the field of emergence.  Emergence endeavors to account for the constellation of higher-order noumena that could not be predicted on the basis of lower-level noumena.  Like biosemiotics, the goal is understanding, rather than prediction and control.

See Comments on Mariusz Tabaczek’s Arc of Inquiry (2019-2024) by Razie Mah, available at smashwords and other e-book venues.  Much of this commentary may be found in Razie Mah’s blog for March, April and May 2024.  Tabaczek’s work is discussed in this examination in points 0276 to 0300.

03/21/25

Looking at Abir Igamberdiev’s Chapter (2024) “Evolutionary Growth of Meanings…” (Part 4 of 4)

0460 Section 12.3 covers meaningful information in autopoetic systems.

“Auto” means “self”.  “Poetic” means “powered”.

0461 To start, the universe is full of spontaneous processes that may be modeled by truncated material and efficient causes.  Entropy increases.  Agency does not need to be present.

Autopoetic systems are not really self-powered.  Instead, they entangle a spontaneous process (where entropy increases) in a triadic relation, so that, as movement towards thermodynamic equilibrium proceeds, some of the free energy is diverted to the maintenance and construction of an “autopoetic” being.  This is the nature of emergence.  Emergence associates to life.

0462 Igamberdiev notices that biological dynamics include both low-energy and high-energy processes separated by an epistemic cut.  The epistemic cut becomes obvious when visualizing the way that formal and final causes envelope material and efficient causes.  Formal and final causes associate to “low-energy”.  Material and efficient causes go with “higher-energy”.

In the above figure.  Low-energy describes the ontolon (in purple).  Higher-energy describes the vortices (in green).

0463 Now, it seems that the low-energy and the high-energy dynamics must work in tandem.  For example, models of self governance and potential courses of action and of salience should capture basic structural interactions between a living organism and its environment.  Jacob von Uexkull (1864-1944 AD) coins the term, “Functionkreis”.  Functionkreis may be regarded as systems of reflexive loops (vortexes) generating a network of biological codes(ontolons).

0464 Codes?

Yes, the concept of codes is already discussed in points 0409 through 0433.

0465 The high-energy, hard work of Functionkreis is investigated in biological laboratories throughout the world.  What are the truncated material and efficient causalities that go into… say… whether a mitochondria is operating properly or malfunctioning?  Laboratory scientists aim for mechanistic answers, but the terminology that frames their research questions betray the biosemiotic reality that they cannot allow to infect their methodologies.

The low-energy, epistemologically relevant work of codes is investigated by biosemiotics, as shown in the following figure.

0466 In section 12.4, Igamberdiev introduces the term, “codepoesis”.

Codepoesis contrasts with autopoesis.

“Codepoesis” labels an intrinsic property of biological entities, where the holistic living system maps out onto a finite set of constituent… um… semiotic agents.  Yes, the organism maps (through codepoesis) onto its organs and systems as semiotic agents.  Then, organs and systems as semiotic agents map onto tissues and anatomical arrangements.

0467 The list continues downwards towards physical poesis.

Upwards, the list ends with a holistic terminus that exhibits the rewards of codepoesis, but itself is not so bound by a superior level of code.  In autopoesis, the “soul” is the kinetic perfection (substitute the word, “completion”, for “perfection”) of the body and the body is the holistic terminus of codepoesis.  The levels of codepoesis may also be called “subagencies”. 

0468 In section 12.5, Igamberdiev adds one more level of poesis.  The autopoesis of the individual human occurs within a super-organism that has its own autonomy.

0469 Here, at the end of Part II of Pathways to the Origin and Evolution of Meanings in the Universe (2024, edited by Alexei Sharov and George E. Mikhailovsky, pages 187-278), the value of the category-based nested form comes to the fore as a style of semiotic inquiry within the category of sociopoesis.

Igamberdiev lays out a hierarchy as well as a frame for that hierarchy.

Sharov and Tonnessen’s semiotic agency captures what is common in all biological processes.

Sharov and Tonnessen propose their noumenal overlay within the hierarchy of sociopoesis.

So, Abir Igamberdiev seems to get the last word.

0470 This concludes my examination of Part II of Pathways, containing chapters nine through twelve titled and “Meanings in the Evolution of Life”.  My thanks to each author and the editors for publishing these challenging essays.

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.