Tag Archives: human agency

06/11/25

Looking at Alexei Sharov and Morten Tonnessen’s Chapter (2021) “Human Agency” (Part 1 of 5)

1223 The text before me is chapter three of Semiotic Agency (2021, book details on point 830, pages 59-94).

1224 The abstract raises the question of evolution.  The question is addressed earlier in this examination.  Points 0710 through 0752 assert that the actualities of adaptation2b and phenotype2b are not the same.  One does not situate the other.  Instead, their nested forms intersect in such a manner as to constitute a single actuality2.  Adaptation2b and phenotype2b intersect to constitute a living being2.

1225 How shall I proceed?

Semiotic Agency yields the Sharov and Tonnessen noumenal overlay by taking an interscope that is similar to the scholastic interscope for how humans think and transubstantiating it from thirdness to secondness.

In thirdness, the scholastic interscope contains the specifying and exemplar sign-relations.

1226 Here is a diagram.

In secondness, the elements from these triadic sign-relations fit into a dyad, characteristic of Peirce’s secondness.

1227 The dyad consists of two contiguous real elements, very much in tune with Aristotle’s exemplar, matter [substance] form.

The following depicts a dyad within a dyad.  Each dyad exhibits its own configuration.

For the fundament, the specifying sign, SOs is like matter, SVs is like form, and SIs is [substance].  In a sense, a form of the sign-vehicle calls forth the matter of a sign-object, in the way that say, the form of a traffic stop sign2a (SVs) calls forth the matter of stopping the vehicle2b (SOs). 

For the resonant, the exemplar sign, SVe is like matter, SOe is like form, and SIe is like [substance].  The matter of me following the rules of the road2b (SVe) stands for my successful arrival at my driving destination2c (SOe) in regards to making sense3c operating on the possibility that if everyone obeys the rules of the road then each one of us will get where we are going to1c (SIe).

1228 This dyad within a dyad performs what phenomenology claims to do, that is, identify what the noumenon must be.

The noumenon of what?

Biosemiotics.

Or, should I say, “Biosemiotics as an exercise of the Positivist’s judgment, however compromised the positivist intellect may be.”?

1229 Of course, this is a fantastic claim.  But, this examination of Semiotic Agency (see point 830 for book details) and Pathways to the Origin and Evolution of Meanings in the Universe (see point 831 for book details) bears me out.  Sharov, Tonnessen and Mikhailovsky set the stage for a paradigm that not only is phenomenological, but accounts for how phenomenology works.  This examination adds value by presenting the diagrams.

06/6/25

Looking at Alexei Sharov and Morten Tonnessen’s Chapter (2021) “Human Agency” (Part 5 of 5)

1260 Say what?

Here is the intersection, once again.

1261 Yes, I can make out a configuration that looks like an exemplar sign-relation.

One version of the exemplar relation goes like this.  Information2b (SVe) stands for a goal (SOe) in regards to a normal context asking something like, “Does this make sense?”3c operating on the potential of ‘situating information’1c (SIe).

In the above diagram, information2b (SVe) is adaptation2H.  The goal2c (SOe) is the power to live as an agent.  The [contiguity] (SIe) is an intersection with the phenotype3c operating on the potentials that the phenotype provides1c.

1262 For the -darwinism version of exemplar sign-relation, the two actualities are adaptation2b (SVe) and the power to live as agent2c (SOe).  The contiguity is the normal context of an intersection with one’s phenotype3c, operating on the potentials that the phenotypes provide1c (SIe).

1263 For the neo- version of the exemplar sign-relation, the two actualities are phenotype2b (SVe) and the disposition to live as an agent2c (SOe).  The contiguity is the normal context of an intersection with one’s adaptations3c, operating on the potentials that adaptations provide1c (SIe).

1264 What do these two exemplar sign-relations tell us?

Adaptations express power?

Adaptations allow survival to the extent that the phenotype allows them?

Phenotypes express dispositions?

Phenotypes are expressed as a suite of adaptations whether the agent needs them or not?

No wonder biologists cannot “define” evolution concisely.

1265 Surely, this argument does not please the positivist intellect of the physicists and the chemists.

Biological evolution is a mystery, the intersection of two independent sciences, natural history and genetics.

But, that is not all.  I can delineate an implication for one of the contradictions inherent in biological evolution.

Phenotype is necessary for a -darwinian explanation, where “evolution” operates as an agent.  Phenotypic dispositions are inseparable from individual adaptive powers.

1266 Also, adaptation is necessary for a neo- (or genetic) explanation, where “evolution” operates as an agent.  Adaptive powers are inseparable from species-specific dispositions.

1267 Yes, I am arriving at a contradiction that cannot be resolved into either natural history or genetics.  Both of these discipline’s semiotic agency have the same agent, “evolution”.  But, what is the ‘final causality’?

1268 Here, the logics of firstness come into play.  The logics of firstness are inclusive and allow contradictions.  Evolution as an agent3 brings the actualities of adaptation and phenotype as semiotic agencies2 into relation with ‘a creative potential that evolutionary scientists regard as real’1.  But, it is unreal, because it represents a ‘final causality’ that stands beyond anything than the human can imagine.

After all, humans are evolved living beings.  What are we imaging when we try to picture this ‘final causality’?

1269 Modern evolutionary biologists may attribute the reality of the creative potential underlying evolution as an agent to matter alone, rather than matter [substance] form.

Postmodern biosemioticians may attribute the reality of the creative potential to triadic relations, such as the triadic relations reified into the matter [substance] form of semiotic agency.

1270 What does this imply?

The attribution of the biosemiotician encompasses the attribution of modern evolutionary biology.

The answer approaches the metaphysical in precisely the way that the Aristotle-tolerating positivist intellect currently uses the term, “metaphysics”, for “religious”.

The positivist intellect declares, “Religious empirio-schematic models are not allowed.”

1271 And, this raises a question, “How to define the word “religion?”

This question is the title of one of Razie Mah’s three masterworks.

More on that later.

06/5/25

A Brief Overview of What Razie Mah offers Biosemioticians in 2025 (Part 1 of 3)

1272 Biosemiotics challenges the current scientific vision of human evolution (as of 2025).

Okay, maybe I should correct that.

Razie Mah presents a challenge.  Biosemioticians can board the academic siege-apparatus at their leisure.

Leisure?

In 2010, in the book, Semiotic Animal, John Deely describes the owl of Minerva taking wing in the twilight of the modern Age of Ideas.  He, Thomas Sebeok and (no doubt) biosemiotician Alexei Sharov, know that the Third Age of Understanding comes to a close.

1273 In October 2023, Razie Mah blogs a review, titled Looking at John Deely’s Book (2010), “Semiotic Animal”.  This examination contains the scholastic interscope for how humans think.  The initial version of this interscope is developed in Razie Mah’s e-book, Comments on John Deely’s Book (1994) New Beginnings.  The interventional sign-relation comes into view in Comments on Sasha Newell’s Article (2019) “The Affectiveness of Symbols”.

1274 Then, starting in July and running through October 2024, Razie Mah offers a series of examinations in his blog, including Looking at Steve Fuller’s Book (2020) “A Player’s Guide to the Post-Truth Condition”; Joesph Pieper’s book (1974) “Abuse of Language: Abuse of Power”; Vivek Ramaswamy’s book (2021), “Woke, Inc.”; Michelle Stile’s book (2022), “One Idea to Rule Them All”; and N.H. Enfield’s book (2022), “Language vs. Reality”.

These reviews, full of diagrams of the interventional sign relation and detailing its relevance to the current historical moment, are collected in three e-books, Parts 1, 2 and 3, of Original Sin and The Post-Truth Condition.

1275 The owl of Minerva lands in the dawning Age of Triadic Relations.

1276 This brings me to the question of human agency.

Section 3.6 of Semiotic Agency is titled, “Development of Human Agency in Historical Perspective”.

The authors’ story begins with the Neolithic Revolution of the Fertile Crescent, starting around 12,000 years ago, then seamlessly drifts to our own current day.  It reads as if our current Lebenswelt starts with the Neolithic archaeological period.

1277 This story of the development of humanity is not much different from the written myths of the ancient Near East, where humans are um… created… when some differentiated god places special seeds in the soil… or something like that.  These ancient myths are recorded on cuneiform clay tablets, that are preserved by their incineration in royal libraries thousands of years ago.  

Yes, incineration.

The tablets are made of clay.

The capital burns.  Clay fires to brick.  Brick lasts so long that an archaeologist can read the script of a tablet millennia later.

1278 The origin myths of the ancient Near East testify that humans are recent creations, formed from differentiated gods, for the god’s own purposes.  That sounds like our current Lebenswelt to me.  That sounds like the “Development of Human Agency in Historical Perspective”.

Why don’t civilized humans have the agency to see beyond the start of their own civilizations?

1279 Biosemiotics has an answer.  Civilized humans practice a type of semiosis that differs from the type of semiosis that their ancestors practiced.

What am I talking about?

The evolution of talk is not the same as the evolution of language.

1280 Our current Lebenswelt of civilizations practices speech-alone talk.  Speech-alone talk offers the comforts of implicit abstraction (characteristic of icons and indexes) and facilitates the unexpectedly profitable rewards (and the unanticipated costs) of explicit abstraction.  Speech-alone talk can attach a label to anything.  In short, anything can become a sign-vehicle (SVs), just by speaking the label.

1281 So, what does a spoken word mean?  Is the nature of its presence merely a label?  What message does that send?  The answers to all these questions are explicit abstractions.  Spoken words facilitate explicit abstractions based on the purely symbolic-sign qualities of symbols.

1282 The Lebenswelt that we evolved in practices hand-talk (for the Homo genus) and hand-speech talk (for the species Homo sapiens).  Hand talk permits implicit abstraction.

What do I mean by “implicit abstraction”?

The diagrams in my examination of Alexei Sharov’s and Morten Tonnessen’s book, Semiotic Agency, depict purely relational structures that hominins adapted to over the course of millions of years.  The idea is mind boggling to the modern.  However, implicit abstraction accounts for modern trends, such as the appearance and success of phenomenology in a civilization prospering on empirio-schematic inquiry.

1283 One of the first items of value for the biosemiotician are works that are contained in the series, A Course on Implicit and Explicit Abstraction, by Razie Mah, available at smashwords and other e-book venues.

1284 The Lebenswelt that we evolved in practices only implicit abstraction.Our current Lebenswelt also practices explicit abstraction.

06/3/25

A Brief Overview of What Razie Mah offers Biosemioticians in 2025 (Part 3 of 3)

1294 Biosemiotics is born out of the tradition of phenomenology.

Biosemiotics explains of how phenomenology works in light of modern biology.

In Semiotic Agency (7821 U0′), Alexei Sharov and Morten Tonnessen effectively propose the first step of a biosemiotic noumenal overlay.  Alexei Sharov and George Mikhailovsky complete the overlay in 7824 with Pathways to the Origin and Evolution of Meanings in the Universe.

The biosemiotic noumenal overlay consists in semiotic agency and the interventional sign-relation.

1295 The examination of these works has proceeded in Razie Mah’s blogs since the start of January, 2025.  The examination is not exhaustive.  But, it has been revealing.  These blogs will be collected into four books, titled Biosemiotics as Noumenon (by Razie Mah, available at smashwords and other e-book venues).

Of course, Razie Mah has been writing and blogging on semiotic topics for over a decade.  The blog may be found at Razie Mah’s website.  E-articles and e-books for sale are available at smashwords and other e-book venues.  These works are placed in series for convenience.  A full table of contents for e-works and the blog should be available by the end of the year.

Meanwhile, a few suggestions for further research follow.

1296 For the Lebenswelt that we evolved in, the following should be of interest.

1297 For the twist in human evolution, the following applies.

1297 For our current Lebenswelt, there are many threads to follow.

1299 All these works pertain to chapter three of Semiotic Agency, titled “Human Agency”.

They show what biosemiotics can do.

1300 My thanks to Alexei Sharov, Morten Tonnessen and George Mikhailovsky, as well as the many contributors to Pathways, for interesting material to examine.  As noted elsewhere, all the material in these examinations, as well as in Biosemiotics as Noumenon, are available to these authors and contributors to use in their efforts to build biosemiotics as a specialization… or… maybe I should say… a “noumenalization” of what all biological processes have in common.