The current article is the first in a series of review articles addressing biosemiotic terminology. The biosemiotic glossary project is inclusive and designed to integrate views of a representative group of members within the biosemiotic community based on a standard survey and related publications. The methodology section describes the format of the survey conducted in November–December 2013 in preparation of the current review and targeted on the terms ‘agent’ and ‘agency’. Next, I summarize denotation, synonyms and antonyms, with special emphasis (...) on the denotation of these terms in current biosemiotic usage. The survey findings include ratings of nine citations defining or making use of the two terms. I provide a summary of respondents’ own definitions and suggested term usage. Further sections address etymology, connotations, and related terms in English and other languages. A section on the notions’ mainstream meaning vs. their meaning in biosemiotics is followed by attempt at synthesis and conclusions. Although there is currently no consensus in the biosemiotic community on what constitutes a semiotic agent, i.e., an agent in the context of semiosis, most respondents agree that core attributes of an agent include goal-directedness, self-governed activity, processing of semiosis and choice of action, with these features being vital for the functioning of the living system in question. I agree that these four features are constitutive of biosemiotic agents, and stipulate that biosemiotic agents fall within three major categories, namely 1) sub-organismic biosemiotic agents, 2) organismic biosemiotic agents and 3) super-organismic biosemiotic agents. (shrink)

Wolf land is in the context of the present article to be considered as an ambiguous term referring to “the land of the wolf” from the wolf’s perspective as well as from a human perspective. I start out by presenting the general circumstances of the Scandinavian wolf population, then turn to the Norwegian wolf controversy in particular. The latter half of the article consists of an elucidation of current wolf ecology related to what is here termed wolf land, and a (...) concluding comment to the now controversial notion of wilderness. The final section of this article further includes identification of changing factors in current Scandinavian wolf ecology in terms of its semiotic niche, and ontological niche, respectively. (shrink)

This paper approaches the question of how to describe the higher-level internal structures and representations of cognitive systems across various kinds of nonhuman (neuro)cognitive systems. While much research in cognitive (neuro)science and comparative cognition is dedicated to the exploration of the (neuro)cognitive mechanisms and processes with a focus on brain-behavior relations across different non-human species, not much has been done to connect (neuro)cognitive mechanisms and processes and the associated behaviors to plausible higher-level structures and representations of distinct kinds of cognitive (...) systems in non-humans. Although the study of (neuro)cognitive mechanisms and processes can certainly be revealing, (neuro)cognitive mechanisms and processes are underspecified with respect to internal structures and representations of non-human cognitive systems because multiple such mechanisms can target, or be mapped onto, the same internal structure or vice versa. This paper outlines a biosemiotic approach to this linking problem in order to bridge the gap between functions of (neuro)cognitive systems in different species and the higher-level cognitive structures and representations. It is contended that the higher-level internal structures and representations of various cognitive systems are biosemiotic constraints on the (biological) functions of (neuro)cognitive systems that serve to restrict the range of functions (neuro)cognitive systems have or are selected for. This turns out to have implications for issues on the convergent evolution of cognitive traits. (shrink)

This paper seeks to understand machine cognition. The nature of machine cognition has been shrouded in incomprehensibility. We have often encountered familiar arguments in cognitive science that human cognition is still faintly understood. This paper will argue that machine cognition is far less understood than even human cognition despite the fact that a lot about computer architecture and computational operations is known. Even if there have been putative claims about the transparency of the notion of machine computations, these claims do (...) not hold out in unraveling machine cognition, let alone machine consciousness (if there is any such thing). The nature and form of machine cognition remains further confused also because of attempts to explain human cognition in terms of computation and to model/simulate (aspects of) human cognitive processing in machines. Given that these problems in characterizing machine cognition persist, a view of machine cognition that aims to avoid these problems is outlined. The argument that is advanced is that something becomes a computation in machines only when a human interprets it, which is a kind of semiotic causation. From this it follows that a computing machine is not engaged in a computation unless a human interprets what it is doing; instead, it is engaged in machine cognition, which is defined as a member or subset of the set of all possible mappings of inputs to outputs. The human interpretation, which is a semiotic process, gives meaning to what a machine does, and then what it does becomes a computation. (shrink)

The analysis of social communication in other-than-human animals poses several theoretical challenges due to the complexity of individual and extra-individual variables. Some previous studies have found a valuable solution in Uexküll’s work by expanding and adapting its usage for the study of communication in a heurtistic manner. An Umwelt analysis provides a theoretical toolbox, which allows researchers to take an emic perspective on the lives and phenomenal world of other animals. However, Umwelt and its elaborations do not allow for a (...) clear distinction between acts of perception and communication and seem to ignore factors that escape the specific communication contexts under analysis. Thus, moving away from the existing linear and cyclical approaches to communication, we propose a complementary approach to the study of social communication by combining Barnlund’s transactional model of communication with Umwelt theory and the functional circle more specifically. Our elaborated model conceives social communication as the process of creating meaning through the interaction of two subjects and emphasizes the role of species-specific and individual features in its creation. Our goal is to re-evaluate the research on social communication of other-than-human animals by advocating for the theoretical and empirical potential of Umwelt, especially pertaining to animals with complex Umwelten. Our model offers a valuable solution to the analysis of intraspecies communication that accounts for the role of private and public cues as well as the subjects’ specific behaviors, messages, and context in the creation of meaning. (shrink)

The main focus of this article is to present the practical aspect of the code rules of variation and the search for a second set of genomic rules, including comparison of sequences to understand how to preserve compatible organisms in danger of extinction and how to generate biodiversity. Three new rules of variation are introduced: 1) homologous recombination, 2) a healthy fertile offspring, and 3) comparison of compatible genomes. The novel search in the natural world for fully compatible genomes capable (...) of homologous recombination is explored by using examples of human polymorphisms and by the production of fertile offspring by crossbreeding. By a rational control of: natural crossbreeding of organisms with compatible genomes (something already happening in nature), the current work focuses on the generation of new varieties after a careful plan. This study is presented within the context of biosemiotics, which studies the processing of information, signalling and signs by living systems. I define a group of organisms having compatible genomes as a single theme: the genomic species or population, able to speak the same molecular language through different accents, with each variety within a theme being a different version of the same book. These studies have a molecular, compatible genetics context. Population and ecosystem biosemiotics will be exemplified by a possible genetic damage capable of causing mutations by breaking the rules of variation through the coordinated patterns of atoms present in the 9/11 World Trade Center contaminated dust (U, Ba, La, Ce, Sr, Rb, K, Mn, Mg, etc.), combination that may be able to overload the molecular quality control mechanisms of the human body. I introduce here the balance of codons in the circular genetic code: 2[1(1)+1(3)+1(4)+4(2)]=2[2(2)+3(4)]. (shrink)