Due to an unfortunate turn of events, the family name of the first author was erroneously published as ‘RoffÕ’ in the original publication. The correct representation of the first author’s family name is listed above and below.

The main approaches to semiotic inquiry today contradict the idea of the individual as a separate and self-sufficient entity. The body of an organism in the micro- and macrocosm is not an isolated biological entity, it does not belong to the individual, it is not a separate and self-sufficient sphere in itself. The body is an organism that lives in relation to other bodies, it is intercorporeal and interdependent. This concept of the body finds confirmation in cultural practices and worldviews (...) based on intercorporeity, interdependency, exposition and opening, though nowadays such practices are almost extinct. An approach to semiotics that is global and at once capable of surpassing the illusory idea of definitive and ultimate boundaries to identity presupposes dialogue and otherness. Otherness obliges identity to question the tendency to totalizing closure and to reorganize itself always anew in a process related to ‘infinity’, as Emmanuel Levinas teaches us, or to ‘infinite semiosis’, to say it with Charles Sanders Peirce. Another topic of this paper is the interrelation in anthroposemiosis between man and machine and the implications involved for the future of humanity. Our overall purpose is to develop global semiotics in the direction of “semioethics”, as proposed by S.Petrilli and A. Ponzio and their ongoing research. (shrink)

Cognitive gadgets puts forward an ambitious claim: language, mindreading, and imitation evolved by cultural group selection. Defending this claim requires more than Heyes' spirited and effective critique of nativist claims. The latest human “cognitive gadgets,” such as literacy, did not spread through cultural group selection. Why should social cognition be different? The book leaves this question pending. It also makes strong assumptions regarding cultural evolution: it is moved by selection rather than transformation; it relies on high‐fidelity imitation; it requires specific (...) cognitive adaptations to cultural learning. Each of these assumptions raises crucial yet unaddressed difficulties. (shrink)

The article discusses evolutionary aspects of mimicry from a semiotic viewpoint. The concept of semiotic scaffolding is used for this approach, and its relations with the concepts of exaptation and semiotic co-option are explained. Different dimensions of scaffolding are brought out as ontogenetic, evolutionary, physiological and cognitive. These dimensions allow for interpreting mimicry as a system that scaffolds itself. With the help of a number of mimicry cases, e.g. butterfly eyespots, brood parasitism, and plant mimesis, the evolutionary dynamics of mimicry (...) in the open bio-semiosphere is investigated. The main argument is that biological mimicry largely develops through sign relations and communicative relations between organisms. It is proposed that mimicry systems should be described as two-layered structures composed of the ecological composition of the species involved and the semiotic structure of their communication. (shrink)

This article presents results from simulations studying the hypothesis that mechanisms for landmark-based navigation could have served as preadaptations for compositional language. It is argued that sharing directions would significantly have helped bridge the gap between general and language-specific cognitive faculties. A number of different levels of navigational and communicative abilities are considered, resulting in a range of possible evolutionary paths. The selective pressures for, resp. against, increased complexity in either faculty are then evaluated for a range of environments. The (...) study aims specifically to identify whether there is a viable evolutionary path leading to compositional language, and if so, under what circumstances. The results show that environmental conditions can render a step towards more complex communication either desirable or harmul, and suggest that very specific initial conditions and changes in the environment, resp. the ecological niche occupied, would have been needed to select for compositional language. Subject to these conditions, a (proto)language using order, but no hierarchical structure could evolve. This represents a middle ground, which brings closer hypotheses about syntax that have so far appeared difficult to reconcile. (shrink)

The role of gene expression in evolutionary adaptation has been a subject of debate for over 40 years.cis‐regulation of transcription has been proposed to be the primary source of morphological novelty in evolution, though this is based on only a handful of examples. Recently the first genome‐wide studies of gene expression adaptation have been published, giving us an initial global view of this process. Systematic studies such as these will allow a number of key questions currently facing the field of (...) gene expression evolution to be addressed. (shrink)

El objetivo de este trabajo es poner al descubierto los principales valores cognitivos y epistemológicos desde los que Warren Weaver puso en marcha el Programa de Biología Experimental, un programa que llevado a cabo desde la presidencia de la división de ciencias naturales de la Fundación Rockefeller, marcó y condicionó en buena medida el posterior desarrollo de la investigación biológica. Para tal fin se mostrará, en primer lugar, cómo fue la llegada de Weaver a la Fundación Rockefeller, así como las (...) razones bajo las cuáles el consejo de esa institución decidió entre 1932 y 1933 dar prioridad a las investigaciones biomédicas, y la manera por la cual lo hicieron. En un segundo momento, el más extenso e importante, veremos algunos de los elementos más significativos de la perspectiva epistemológica y cognoscitiva de de Weaver. Finalizaremos viendo cómo esa perspectiva, desarrollada en conexión con el Programa de Biología Experimental, inter-actuó con la visión reduccionista de la biología a la que el programa parecía apuntar. The aim of this article is to uncover the main cognitive and epistemological values that influenced Warren Weaver in starting the Experimental Biology Program, a program carried out from the time that he became president of the Natural Sciences Division of the Rockefeller Foundation, and which significantly marked and conditioned the subsequent development of biological research. To this end, we first describe the arrival of Warren Weaver at the Rockefeller Foundation, and the reasons for which the Board of this Foundation, between 1932 and 1933, decided to prioritize biomedical research, and the manner in which they did so. Then, secondly, in the largest and most important part of the article, we will present some of the most significant elements of Weaver's epistemological and cognitive perspective. Finally, we will show how this perspective, developed in connection with the Experimental Biology Program, interacted with the reductionist view of biology to which the program seemed to point. (shrink)

This article utilizes three premises. There are commonly ecologically oriented, naturally selected specialized differences in frequency and/or quality as well as sexually selected differences between the sexes. Sex in the sense of coming together and going apart or going apart and coming together is trade in these naturally selected differences, i.e., there is a mating market in sexual species. While such trade is beneficial to the population as a whole, sexual competition and selection is conflict over the profits of that (...) trade and can be detrimental to the population as a whole. These premises yield a naturally selected sex allocation theory of the possible directions and forms of sexual selection, i.e., one that includes costs as well as frequencies. This can explain conventional sex roles, the sex-role reversed, inter- as well as intrasexual selection, and passive as well as active choice. Any of these alternatives may be over mates, over gametes, or both. A hypothetical example based on density dependence relative to resources is provided, one that suggests that centrioles may be a cytoplasmic resource in males in multicellular animals, and which are the target of active choice and the mechanism of manipulation in passive female choice. As a whole, the approach yields a truly general theory of sexual selection, provides an alternative to the mechanism for Fisher’s principle, and gives a theoretical explanation for Mayr’s biological species definition. (shrink)

This research aims to propose a new theory to account for the functions of biological objects. For this, I will show that the most accepted theories of biological functions fail, and then I will propose a new alternative that overcomes the given counterexamples. The research is divided into the following questions: i) appealing to various counterexamples, noting that there is no robust theory capable of accounting for the phenomenon; finally ii) I will give a minimal provisional / operational theory, which (...) allows us to continue incorporating the functional dimension of the features. (shrink)

In his recent book on Darwinism, Daniel Dennett has offered up a species of a priori selectionism that he calls algorithmic. He used this view to challenge a number of positions advocated by Stephen J. Gould. I examine his algorithmic conception, review his unqualified enthusiasm for the a priori selectionist position, challenge Dennett's main metaphors (cranes vs. skyhooks and a design space), examine ways in which his position has lead him to misunderstand or misrepresent Gould (spandrels, exaptation, punctuated equilibrium, contingency (...) and disparity), and discuss recent results in developmental biology that suggest that an a priori position does not fill the demands of an evolutionary biology. I conclude by insisting that evolutionary biology is many leveled, complicated, and is carried on an ever shifting and expanding empirical base that when disregarded results in caricature. (shrink)

According to the modern synthesis, evolution is the gradual change of gene frequencies in a population. The MS is closely allied to adaptationist explanations of phenotypes, where organismic form and behavior is treated as previously selected for and owes its genesis to some remote past. However, some new theories of evolution broadly aligned with the extended evolutionary synthesis, in particular developmental plasticity theory and niche construction theory, foreground the fact that evolution is sometimes much more rapid than previously imagined, and (...) occurs through the active engagement of organisms accommodating and modifying their environments. This article describes how these contemporary theories reveal two interconnected sides of being an adaptive subject, a situated agent that modifies itself and its environment as it lives, and contributes to evolution in turn. MS and adaptationism have a generic logical structure that can be taught anywhere, but because developmental plasticity theory and niche construction theory point to an ontology that foregrounds the agency of the organism, they benefit from in situ exploration. I argue biology as a subject needs to adapt, and call for the renewed importance of field studies, outlining some elements of how such studies might be conceived. I close by considering how understanding organisms as adaptive subjects of evolution has important implications for sustainability education. (shrink)

Cognitive modules are internal mental structures. Some theorists and empirical researchers hypothesize that the human mind is either partially or massively comprised of structures that are modular in nature. Modules are also invoked to explain cognitive capacities associated with the performance of specific functional tasks. Jerry Fodor (1983) considered that modules are useful only for explaining relatively low-level systems (input systems). These are the systems involved in capacities like perception and language. For Fodor, the central (high-level) systems of mind — (...) those involved in capacities like judgment (the “fixation of belief” in Fodor’s jargon), planning (practical reasoning), decision-making, and so forth — are not explainable in terms of modular mechanisms. However, some other philosophers as well as proponents and practitioners of evolutionary psychology consider that it is sensible — and even necessary — to invoke modules for explaining these systems, too. Indeed, the debate over modularity is mainly a debate over the modularity of central systems (high-level cognitive capacities). Admittedly, it is also possible to raise doubts about the modularity of peripheral systems (Prinz, 2006), but this kind of skepticism is not widespread in the literature. In contrast, both the empirical and the theoretical (a priori) cases in favor of central modularity are usually contested on multiple fronts and in tough terms. The case for the modularity of central systems is the core of the case for the massive modularity of mind hypothesis (viz. the hypothesis that consists in asserting that both the peripheral and the central systems of human mind are largely composed of modules). Granted, the massive modularity of mind hypothesis is an empirical statement and, as such, its truth should be ultimately decided in an empirical way, not a priori (Sperber, 1994, 2001). Nonetheless, much of the debate over massive modularity has taken place on theoretical grounds. This is due to an alleged underdetermination of the hypotheses regarding the modularity of central systems by data. In such conditions, the remaining open option has been to advance theoretical considerations in favor of the plausibility — and not directly in favor of the empirical truth or truthlikeness — of the massive modularity of mind generally, and of the modularity of some central systems in particular. These theoretical considerations are mostly based on an adaptationist view of evolution cum a classical computationalist approach to mind. They include arguments about the nature and evolution of hierarchically ordered complex systems (the evolvability of complexity argument), a presumption of optimality expressed in the apparent design of phenotypic traits shaped by natural selection (the task-specificity argument) and dismissing nonmodular mental architectures as computationally intractable (the tractability argument). Is the massive modularity of mind hypothesis a cogent view about the ontological nature of human mind or is it, rather, an effective/ineffective adaptationist discovery heuristic for generating predictively successful hypothesis about both heretofore unknown psychological traits and unknown properties of already identified psychological traits? Considering the inadequacies of the case in favor of massive modularity as an ontological hypothesis, I suggest approaching and valuing massive modularity as an adaptationist discovery heuristic. (shrink)

María Gabriela Fissore Facultad de Filosofía y Humanidades, Universidad Nacional de Córdoba, Argentina Múltiples estudios en neurociencia cognitiva sugieren que … Read More →.

This paper is focused on the concept of finality in the bio-philosophical study of life and organisms. After some methodological remarks, the definition of biological finality is addressed. There are, in fact, wide variations regarding the concept of finality in biology, alt-hough the notions of finality as function or terminus are the most widespread. Given the vast and independent literature on functions, this paper mainly focuses on finality as a terminus, that is, a state or condition a biological entity reaches, (...) or has the possibility of reaching. For what concerns the content of this concept, biologists have stressed above all the importance of self-maintenance and reproduction. Then, various types of finality are classified. Finally, as to the ontological and epistemological value of the concept, it seems that in general biology there is a slight tendency in favour of its use. (shrink)

Evolutionary psychology often does not sufficiently document the innate constraint and domain specificity required for strong adaptationist argument. We develop these criteria within the domain of music. First, we advocate combining computational, developmental, cross-cultural, and neuroscience research to address the ways in which a domain is innately constrained. Candidate constraints in music include the importance of the octave and other simple pitch ratios, the categorization of the octave into tones, the importance of melodic contour, tonal hierarchies, and principles of grouping (...) and meter. Second, we advocate combining psychological, neuroscience, and genetic research across cognitive domains to address the domain specificity of such constraints. Currently available evidence suggests that the innate constraints in music are not specific to that domain, making it unclear which domain(s) provided the relevant selection pressures. (shrink)