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Abstract: This paper argues that a central explanatory role for the concept of Umwelt in theoretical biology is to be found in developmental biology, in particular in the effort to understand development as a goal-directed and adaptive process that is controlled by the organism itself. I will reach this conclusion in two (interrelated) ways. The first is purely theoretical and relates to the current scenario in the philosophy of biology. Challenging neo-Darwinism requires a new understanding of the various components involved (...) |
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Recent accounts of teleological naturalism hold that organisms are intrinsically goaldirected entities. We argue that supporters and critics of this view have ignored the ways in which it is used to address quite different problems. One problem is about biology and concerns whether an organism-centered account of teleological ascriptions would improve our descriptions and explanations of biological phenomena. This is different from the philosophical problem of how naturalized teleology would affect our conception of nature, and of ourselves as natural beings. (...) |
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Deacon suggests the autogen as a minimal Kantian Whole where the parts exist for and by means of the whole. An Autogen is a “for whom” information is created. Semantics of information comes first, syntax later. There are no entailing laws for the emergence and evolution of new meanings, which likely happened long before template replication and the genetic code. The evolution of life and meaning are based on physics but rise creatively above physics. |
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Deacon develops a minimal model of a nonparasitic virus to explore how nucleotide sequences came to be characterized by a code-like informational at the origin of life. The model serves to problematize the concept of biological normativity because it highlights two common yet typically implicit assumptions: that life could consist as an inert form, were it not for extrinsic sources of physical instability, and that life could have originated as a singular self-contained individual. I propose that the origin of life, (...) |
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In his Target Article, Terrence Deacon develops simple models that assist in understanding the role of RNA in the origins of life. However, his models fail to adequately represent an important evolutionary dynamic. Central to this dynamic is the selection that impinges on RNA molecules in the context of their association with proto-metabolisms. This selection shapes the role of RNA in the emergence of life. When this evolutionary dynamic is appropriately taken into account, it predicts a role for RNA that (...) |
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How semiotic freedom emerges in the evolution and development of organisms through semiotic scaffolding is a core problem for biosemiotics. There is a paradox in explaining this semiotic emergence: reduction in (semiotic) freedom leads to the creation of new semiotic freedom. Semiotic emergence is a species of dynamic emergence. Accordingly, the paradox of semiotic emergence is a species of the paradox of dynamic emergence. The latter paradox claims that reducing lower-level freedom generates new freedom at a higher level. The solution (...) |
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The paper introduces mathematical encoding for subjective experience and meaning in natural cognition. The code is based on a quantum-theoretic qubit structure supplementing classical bit with circular dimension, functioning as a process-causal template for representation of contexts relative to the basis decision. The qubit state space is demarcated in categories of emotional experience of animals and humans. Features of the resulting spherical map align with major theoreties in cognitive and emotion science, modeling of natural language, and semiotics, suggesting several generalizations (...) |
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How did molecules become signs? First, according to Deacon, there had to be an interpreter, a physical process capable of making use of some property of a molecule that offered a “semiotic affordance.” He proposes the model of an “autogenic virus,” the most primitive conceivable recursively self-maintaining kind of molecular system that could broach the boundary between physico-chemical process and “interpretive competence.” In this comment I work up to the question of how Deacon introduces concepts such as “representation” and “record” (...) |
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Deacon’s target article is a welcome contribution not only on “biological information” but, more generally, on representation in cognitive science. Some kind of explanation and justification for use of the terms “representation” and “interpretant” for primordial autogen system would be helpful. A connection between the notions of “information” and “representation” can be elaborated more in this respect. |
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The ability of predicting upcoming events or conditions in advance offers substantial selective advantage to living beings. The most successful systematic tool for fairly reliable prognoses is the use of dynamical causal models in combination with memorised experience. Surprisingly, causality is a fundamental but rather controversially disputed concept. For both models and memory, symbol processing is requisite. Symbols are a necessary and sufficient attribute of life from its very beginning; the process of their evolutionary emergence was discovered by Julian Huxley (...) |
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In “How Molecules Became Signs”, Prof. Deacon outlines a plausible mechanism whereby biochemical systems could be understood to fulfill the conditions of being “alive” in the context of the two broad families of requirements, namely the energetics of metabolism and the informatics of coding. In so doing, he addresses head-on how to account for the origin and the action of coding in physical systems, and thereby the necessary and sufficient conditions for life. I review some of the relevant issues around (...) |
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Forty-five years ago, while still an undergraduate student at Western Washington University’s Fairhaven College of Interdisciplinary Studies, Terrence Deacon produced as his honours thesis a programmatic manifesto for re-situating the semiotic logic of Charles Sanders Peirce “out of the realm of philosophy and [revealing instead] its necessary association with the information sciences and its close parallels with current systems theories”. Deacon’s project, then and now, has been to show how, within the context of naturally occurring physical processes, Peirce’s essential insight (...) |
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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 causal properties from basic nonliving chemical processes. This model system is described as an autogenic virus because of its virus-like form, but its nonparasitic self-repair and reproductive (...) |
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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 appears to be of great importance for both. A comparison also demonstrates differences. Nevertheless, because of the (...) |
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