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Minimal mind

In Liz Stillwaggon Swan (ed.), Origins of mind. New York: Springer. pp. 343--360 (2012)

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  1. Biosemiotics and Applied Evolutionary Epistemology: A Comparison.Nathalie Gontier & M. Facoetti - 2021 - In Nathalie Gontier & M. Facoetti (eds.), In: Pagni E., Theisen Simanke R. (eds) Biosemiotics and Evolution. Interdisciplinary Evolution Research, vol 6. Springer, Cham. Cham: pp. 175-199.
    Both biosemiotics and evolutionary epistemology are concerned with how knowledge evolves. (Applied) Evolutionary Epistemology thereby focuses on identifying the units, levels, and mechanisms or processes that underlie the evolutionary development of knowing and knowledge, while biosemiotics places emphasis on the study of how signs underlie the development of meaning. We compare the two schools of thought and analyze how in delineating their research program, biosemiotics runs into several problems that are overcome by evolutionary epistemologists. For one, by emphasizing signs, biosemiotics (...)
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  • In the Case of Protosemiosis: Indexicality vs. Iconicity of Proteins.Dan Faltýnek & Ľudmila Lacková - 2021 - Biosemiotics 14 (1):209-226.
    The concept of protosemiosis or semiosis at the lower levels of the living goes back to Giorgio Prodi, Thomas A. Sebeok and others. More recently, a typology of proto-signs was introduced by Sharov and Vehkavaara. Kull uses the term of vegetative semiosis, defined by iconicity, when referring to plants and lower organism semiosis. The criteria for the typology of proto-signs by Sharov and Vehkavaara are mostly based on two important presuppositions: agency and a lack of representation in low-level semiosis. We (...)
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  • Is Empiricism Empirically False? Lessons from Early Nervous Systems.Marcin Miłkowski - 2017 - Biosemiotics 10 (2):229-245.
    Recent work on skin-brain thesis suggests the possibility of empirical evidence that empiricism is false. It implies that early animals need no traditional sensory receptors to be engaged in cognitive activity. The neural structure required to coordinate extensive sheets of contractile tissue for motility provides the starting point for a new multicellular organized form of sensing. Moving a body by muscle contraction provides the basis for a multicellular organization that is sensitive to external surface structure at the scale of the (...)
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  • Composite Agency: Semiotics of Modularity and Guiding Interactions.Alexei A. Sharov - 2017 - Biosemiotics 10 (2):157-178.
    Principles of constructivism are used here to explore how organisms develop tools, subagents, scaffolds, signs, and adaptations. Here I discuss reasons why organisms have composite nature and include diverse subagents that interact in partially cooperating and partially conflicting ways. Such modularity is necessary for efficient and robust functionality, including mutual construction and adaptability at various time scales. Subagents interact via material and semiotic relations, some of which force or prescribe actions of partners. Other interactions, which I call “guiding”, do not (...)
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  • Evolutionary Biosemiotics and Multilevel Construction Networks.Alexei A. Sharov - 2016 - Biosemiotics 9 (3):399-416.
    In contrast to the traditional relational semiotics, biosemiotics decisively deviates towards dynamical aspects of signs at the evolutionary and developmental time scales. The analysis of sign dynamics requires constructivism to explain how new components such as subagents, sensors, effectors, and interpretation networks are produced by developing and evolving organisms. Semiotic networks that include signs, tools, and subagents are multilevel, and this feature supports the plasticity, robustness, and evolvability of organisms. The origin of life is described here as the emergence of (...)
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  • Evolution of Natural Agents: Preservation, Advance, and Emergence of Functional Information.Alexei A. Sharov - 2016 - Biosemiotics 9 (1):103-120.
    Biological evolution is often viewed narrowly as a change of morphology or allele frequency in a sequence of generations. Here I pursue an alternative informational concept of evolution, as preservation, advance, and emergence of functional information in natural agents. Functional information is a network of signs that are used by agents to preserve and regulate their functions. Functional information is preserved in evolution via complex interplay of copying and construction processes: the digital components are copied, whereas interpreting subagents together with (...)
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  • Protosemiosis: Agency with Reduced Representation Capacity.Alexei A. Sharov & Tommi Vehkavaara - 2015 - Biosemiotics 8 (1):103-123.
    Life has semiotic nature; and as life forms differ in their complexity, functionality, and adaptability, we assume that forms of semiosis also vary accordingly. Here we propose a criterion to distinguish between the primitive kind of semiosis, which we call “protosemiosis” from the advanced kind of semiosis, or “eusemiosis”. In protosemiosis, agents associate signs directly with actions without considering objects, whereas in eusemiosis, agents associate signs with objects and only then possibly with actions. Protosemiosis started from the origin of life, (...)
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  • Constructive Aspects of Biosemiotics.Tommi Vehkavaara & Alexei Sharov - 2017 - Biosemiotics 10 (2):145-156.
    We argue that constructive approaches in epistemology and systems science, which are focused on normativity, knowledge, and communication of organisms and emphasize the primacy of activity, self-construction, and niche-construction in the cognitive agents, fit naturally to the both methodology and theory of biosemiotics. In particular, constructive view was already present in the works of the major precursors of biosemiotics: von Uexküll and Bateson, and to some extent Peirce. Biosemiotics has a chance to function as a mediating field in the theoretical (...)
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