Biosemiotics (2012) 5:83–93 DOI 10.1007/s12304-011-9121-5 O R I G I N A L PA P E R

A Biosemiotic Approach to the Problem of Structure and Agency Shahram Rafieian

Received: 19 January 2011 / Accepted: 6 May 2011 / Published online: 21 May 2011 # Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2011

Abstract A human being is the simultaneous composite of several different levels of being, from atomic and subatomic to the level of complex social interaction, and these levels are nested within the individual hierarchically (lower levels giving rise to higher levels, etc.). One of the most important and influential approaches developed in the history of science has been that of systems theory and systemic thinking, in which the different levels of the hierarchy, and the interactions between those levels, are considered simultaneously. Although this model provides a comprehensive view of biological being, the transition from one level to the other is not well defined in it. Uexküll and Pauli (Advances: Journal of the Institute for 417 the Advancement of Health 3:158–174, 1986) suggested that semiosis is the translator of the events from one level to the other. From a psychological point of view, a myriad of semiotic events happen inside an individual, and it has been suggested that among other semiotic events, inner speech plays an important role in mediating personal agency. Dialogical theories of the self, Jungian psychology and hypnosis research evidence show that there is a semiotic multiplicity in human agency and consciousness, and that these multiple streams are all converge to a central semiotic singularity. I argue in this paper that by taking a biosemiotic point of view, human ‘agency’ may be defined as the ability of an individual to direct the incoming and internal streams of semioses and the ability to create an integrative and superordinate new stream of semiosis in addition to the upwardly and downwardly component ones, and how such a view might open a new door for research into the concept of human ‘personality’ and ‘agency’. Keywords Structure and agency . Biosemiotics . Multiplicity . Consciousness

S. Rafieian (*) Iranian Institute of Higher Health, 6, Kiani Alley, Mir Street, Isfahan, Iran e-mail: [email protected]

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Introduction A human being is the simultaneous composite of several different levels of being, from atomic and subatomic to the level of complex social interaction. Corresponding to the presence of each of these different levels, from the micro levels to the macro ones, there exist separate branches of knowledge, each of which focuses on, and has defined a specific methodology, based on the properties exhibited by that level. It is for this reason the one of the most important and influential approaches developed in the history of science has been that of systems theory and systemic thinking. Although there were earlier thinkers who employed a systemic style of thinking, the formulation of General System Theory by Ludwig Von Bertalanffy (1973) had a significant impact on the many different branches of knowledge. In this systemoriented approach, different levels of the hierarchy of life, and the interactions between those levels, are considered simultaneously. Thus, it is understood that in addition to the forces of causality that make changes within each level, such changes within a level can impose forces upon the levels both above and below it. Such effects can be described as upward and downward causation, respectively. As human beings, we deal with a unified reality which has different aspects and that can not be reduced to any of these levels. In other words, systemic thinking is an alternative to reductionism. However, there is currently no theoretical framework for understanding the systemic integration of these various levels. How, then, is this integration possible? For such integration to be possible, there need be a property that is common among all the different levels, and which connects them.. American psychiatrist George Engel (1977, 1980) tried to apply General System Theory to medicine and developed a new model that he calls the bio-psycho-social model. In this model, Engel advances the concepts of upward and downward causation and tries to show that any damage in the micro level may impose problems on the macro levels, and vice versa. He stated that a doctor in her or his practice should take such a comprehensive approach and should consider all levels of patient’s life in her or his treatment and diagnosis. What Engel did not consider, however, is the need for an explanation of how these different levels can be connected. Uexküll and Pauli (1986) likewise tried to explain this issue from a medical point of view, but with more attention to this question. They used the concept of (bio)semiosis and stated that such semiosis is a ubiquitous phenomenon that acts as a translator of the processes of one level of biological being to another. Not surprisingly, then, in addition to his contributions in medicine and the development of psychosomatic treatment, Thure von Uexküll—along with his father, Jacob—is considered to be one of the founders of the biosemiotic school of thought, which today has applications in many other areas of biological research; its usefulness not being restricted to medicine (Kull and Hoffmeyer 2005). Semiosis is the process of sign interpretation. According to the semiotic logic of Charles Sanders Peirce (1849–1913), semiosis has three main components: object, sign and interpretant. In a systematic view, the process of semiosis means that the interpretation of signs are not only present in each level of the nested hierarchy of biological being (i.e., the hierarchical biological arrangement of levels within levels within levels), but also that it mediates the transition of causality from one level to

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another. Because semiosis is interpretive in its nature, applying this view to life describes life itself as a creative process, as in reality, it is. (Emmeche 1991). To illustrate the role of semiosis in the translation of processes of one level to another, consider the following example. An old man suddenly realizes that his young son has died in an accident, and because of the sudden onset of severe biological stress, he suffers a myocardial infarction, or heart attack. In this case, the symbolic words that occur on the level of interpersonal interactions are translated at the level of the psyche to images, thoughts and inner dialogue. The occurrence of this translation experience, in turn, results in the biological release of neurotransmitters which reach the heart, via the nervous system and by the circulation of the blood. These transmitters are then interpreted as a message of acceleration and demand. Thus, a stream of semioses begins at the level of interpersonal interaction and reaches the level of cellular and molecular interactions within seconds. When we consider this nested hierarchy of human being, from the micro up to the macro levels, we are dealing with molecular, cellular, organic and personal levels, to just name the most major levels. It is at the personal level, however, that we deal with the so called hard problem of consciousness. At this level, a new property emerges; one that is not itself matter, but that is related to the interactions and processes that occur in a material context. Interestingly, here again, in the mental processes, semiosis is present and although it is not clear how subjectivity emerges from a material context, it is clear that semiosis—i.e., the process of translation between levels—is at work. Thus, here we are considering a pattern which is present in both the objective and the subjective sides of the life. But when consciousness itself is considered, one important property to take note of is that there is not a single stream of consciousness inside a person. An individual’s consciousness is the result of the unification of several streams of micro-consciousnesses (O’Brian and Opie 2003), an issue that I now wish to consider in more detail.

Multiplicity of Mind and Consciousness From a neuropsychological point of view, as Manning and Manning (2007) explain, there are several different cognitive components present both within a person, and in the course of development. These different components are coherently integrated: they function together, and a unified consciousness emerges from this integration. For example, binocular vision is the result of the integration of the vision of two eyes, and this integration takes place during the course of child development. Any disruption in this integration process will result in two unintegrated visual systems. This integrative process can also be seen, however, at a psychological level. Such a multiplicity can be clearly seen when one of these normally integrated components become dissociated from the others and begins to function independently. There are different situations in which such dissociation might happen, and one of the most important factors which may cause dissociation is psychological trauma. It was the French philosopher and psychologist Pierre Janet who first described the different kinds of psychological dissociation, and the effect of psychological trauma upon the structure of the psyche, which results in the loosening of the connections between its different components (van der Hart and

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Horst 1989). One of the most dramatic psychological disorders in which such dissociation is involved is Multiple Personality Disorder, or as it was called later, Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID). In DID, chronic psychological trauma during childhood results in the disintegration of the psyche and the development of different personalities in a single body. Each ‘personality’—which we will define below as a self-coherent stream of semioses—takes the control of the body for a period of time, and each personality is amnesic about the presence of other personalities (Ross 1997). It is a general method in psychology to study pathological disorder to gain insight into the normal structure and function of the mind. Some theorists believe that DID is an exaggeration of what normally happens in the mind. This theory suggests that in a normal person, different ‘personalities’ are present, but that the difference between DID and a normal person is that in DID the ability to integrate these personalities is lost whereas a normal person is capable of integrating different personalities (Manning and Manning 2007; Howell 2005). But how does this integration happens? From a biosemiotic point of view’: a ‘personality’ is a group of interconnected psychological and bodily- systems of sings which function together for a certain period of time, and the processes of translational semiosis play a key role in bringing about this integration. Among others, one important system of signs involved in this process is language. The process of the development of the self via language is described in Hermans’ theory of the “Dialogical Self” (Hermans et al. 1992; Hermans 2002). In this theory, the development of the self is considered as the result of the internal conversation of different internal ‘personalities’. Hermans coined the term “the society of the mind” to describe the notion that individual actions, decisions and thoughts are developed by this continuous inner speech. If we take a biosemiotic viewpoint, in which semiosis is the mechanism by which different levels in the hierarchy of biological being interact, then semiosis can be understood to be the translator that connects these different levels. We still do not know how consciousness emerges from material interactions, obviously, but it is clear that semiosis is present in the activities of the conscious mind. The idea that I want to explore here is that the activities of the conscious mind result in the development of an integrated ‘self’ mainly via a process of internal conversation. Building upon the discussion so far, the next section examines this idea in more detail.

The Problem of Structure and Agency The problem of structure and agency is one of the key problems in social theory—i.e., Is it the social structure that determines human action, decision and behaviour, or is it individual agency? There are different perspectives on the relationship between social structure and personal agency. Some theorists, for example, the structuralists, believe that human behaviour is predominately shaped by social structure. Others emphasize the role of the agent in the development of social structure (King 2005). British social theorist Margaret Archer (2002) believes that in sociology there have been many efforts to describe the mechanisms involved in the

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shaping of the individual by the sociocultural structure. Foucault’s concept of embodied discourse and Kuhn’s notion of paradigm are examples of such formulations. Archer, however, argues that the mechanisms by which an individual is involved in the process of the transformation of society are not satisfactory explained. In this paper, the structure-agency problem will be analysed from a biosemiotic point of view. To recap: semiosis is present in all levels of the individual’s life. It translates the interactions of one level to the other, and it is the main tool by which downward and upward causation happen. When a person is considered on the level of the single individual, changes in the upper levels and lower levels impose their effects upon that individual’s behaviour. For example, a hormone is released in the blood and transmits a message to a group of cells in the brain and this set of biological changes, in turn, changes the mood of the person and consequently, his or her behaviour. At a different level, a financial crisis in a country may cause many students to change their mind about continuing their education to a higher level. In both cases, a change in a level different from the level of the (coherently integrated) ‘individual’ is transmitted via different processes of sign interpretation, and such changes cause an observable change in the person’s behaviour. Thus, when this process is described to a self-aware person, he or she might begin to wonder: “Does this mean that my behaviour is continuously under control of the changes that happen in upper or lower levels?” To reformulate this question in another way: Is an individual capable of changing the streams of (upwardly and downwardly causal) semioses which are present continuously in his or her life, or is ‘he’ or ‘she’—i.e., the integrated system as a ‘person’—capable of creating a new stream of semiosis in addition to the upwardly and downwardly component ones? To deal with this problem, we need a reconsideration of an individual’s ‘consciousness of the self’ at the ‘personal’ level. As Vygotsky states, inner speech is formed by the internalization of the dialogue with the other that takes place outside of the individual (Emerson 1986). In other words, the semiotic game of ‘dialogue with the other’ becomes extended and internalized in the ‘mind’ of the ‘individual’. Both Peirce and his contemporary, George Herbert Mead (1863–1931), were interested in the process of internal conversation. Mead speaks about the dialogue between “I,” the self in the present moment, and the self which developed in past, which Mead calls “Me”. Peirce sees this internal dialogue from another perspective, and speaks about the conversation between the “I” and the self which will emerge in the future. Peirce called this emerging self “you”. He states that the self development process is the result of the dialogue between “I” and “you”. Wiley (as cited in Bakker 2005) has tried to combine these two views to develop a triadic model of development of self through internal dialogue which is a dialogue between “Me-I-You” (Bakker 2005). Semiosis, as I have noted before, is an ever present process; semiotic events can change the status of a level and this change is then transmitted via a superordinate stream of semiosis to the person. Semiotic processes which are present in the mind of the person likewise have an important influence on her or his action and behaviour. Among the different semiotic processes in the mind, that of internal conversation plays a critical role. Specifically, what I want to propose here is tha the

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‘agency’ of the person is mediated by semiotic processes, especially internal conversation. This internal conversation is under the influence of the language signs presented in the dialogue with the other. This means that even when a person is in a dialogue with another person, internal conversation is present and there is a dual dialogue between the person and the other and the person and her- or him-self (Sullivan and McCarthy 2004). Margaret Archer (2003) has likewise tried to explain the mechanisms by which ‘the agency of the person’ acts to change the social structure. In her research, she shows that the process of internal conversation plays a critical role in a person’s decision making and the defining of her or his behaviour. Here, too, then, we see that Archer is addressing here a kind of semiotic multiplicity. This multiplicity takes the form of the language games, and of the conversations between the different personalities inside the person’s mind. This would mean that the process of semiosis which is present in other levels of an individual’s being is present—and perhaps even foregrounded in consciousness—here again. However, it is not clear what the position of “I” is in this so called “society of the mind.” Do these different ‘personalities’ (or streams of semiosis) each make an equal contribution to the process of decision making and formation of his or her behaviour or not? There is some evidence which shows that these contributions are not equal, and this evidence will now be briefly reviewed. The first evidence comes from case reports of the treatment of Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID) patients. Generally, DID patients are thought to have different ‘personalities’ with “different ages, sexes and behaviours”. Interestingly, however, it is often that case that one of the personalities has some unique properties. This personality is usually that of “an older person who knows everything about the patient” and has the full memory of other personalities—i.e., it is not amnesic of any event or memory in the patient’s life. It is claimed in conversations with the patient that “he or she belongs to another world like the world of spirits” and that this personality thus never “takes control” of the body. Some therapists even attempt to make contact with this ‘personality’ via the other personalities who take his or her advice, which is given in the patient’s dreams. This personality is called Internal Self Helper (ISH) (Manning and Manning 2007; Bob 2003), and he advice and comments of this ‘personality’ are then used in the course of treatment. Additional evidence comes from research on hypnosis. Hypnosis is considered by some theorists as itself a ‘dissociative experience’ and one of the phenomena which are seen in the subjects with high hypnotizibility is called the hidden observer phenomenon. Ernest Hilgard (1977, 1992) who first coined this term describes a classical case of this phenomenon, as exhibited by a blind student of his. In an experiment, the blind student was hypnotized and told that he would become deaf. During hypnosis, he would not answer any question and made no reaction to loud voices. Then the hypnotist tried to find out if any part of the subject, any other ‘personality’ within the subject, was hearing. To establish whether or not this was the case, he said to the hypnotized student: “Perhaps there is some part of you that is hearing my voice and processing the information. If there is, I should like the index finger of your right hand to rise as a sign that this is the case” (Hilgard 1977, p. 186). The subject then raised his finger. When the hypnosis terminated, moreover, the

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student remembered that his finger was raised and he said to Hilgard: “I felt my finger rise in a way that was not a spontaneous twitch, so you must have done something to make it rise, and I want to know what you did” (p. 186). The hypnotist then pressed him to speak about what he remembered. He said that after becoming deaf during hypnosis, because there was no visual and auditory stimulus, he busied himself with a statistical problem and suddenly he felt the movement of his finger. Subsequently, Hilgard hypnotized him again and attempted to converse with that part of the subject’s mind that was listening to him in the previous session, while he was supposedly hypnotically ‘deaf’. Surprisingly, this ‘personality’ was able to recall all that had happened in the period of hypnotic deafness. According to this and other similar experiments, Hilgard proposed the metaphor of the hidden observer as an information source capable of a “high level of cognitive functioning not consciously experienced by the hypnotized person” (Hilgard 1992, p. 21). Although the presence and the nature of this so-called ‘hidden observer personality’ is controversial, there have since been other studies that support Hilgard’s view (Bob 2003, 2008). Carl Jung (1865–1971) was also interested in the idea of dissociation and developed the concept of the psychological “complex” around it. (Everest 1999; Bob 2003). Jung believes that a group of thoughts and emotions can coalesce around a powerful emotional theme and develop a self-perpetuating system that has its own function. Everest (1999) in her paper about the relationship between the findings on DID and the works of Jung writes: “He regarded the ego as being the most important of the complexes, being associated with a given name and normally being the centre of consciousness. However, what impressed Jung most was the ability of the complexes to become ‘autonomous’ and to form ‘splinter psyches’ Often complexes seemed to possess a will, a life, and a personality of their own and in some cases to take over from the original ego-complex” (p. 448). In Jung’s view, in the process of individuation, the totality of the psyche— what he calls the “Self”—is released. This ‘Self’ is considered as the experienced “wholeness” and the “center” of the person. Thus, Jung’s concept of the Self is not synonymous with the related concept of the Ego. Ego (or the ego-complex) is just one of the complexes, playing an executive role in the person, claims Jung. Jung (1921) writes: “Inasmuch as the ego is only the centre of my field of consciousness, it is not identical with the totality of my psyche. . . . I therefore distinguish between the Ego and the Self since the ego is only the subject of my consciousness, while the self is the subject of my total psyche, which also includes the unconscious” (p. 425). Having considered the semiotic multiplicity described at the personal level, and the related concepts of Internal Self Helper, Hidden Observer and Self, again it is seen that the behaviour of a person is under the control of myriad semiotic processes which are present in his or her mind, body and the environment. Our critical question from earlier thus returns: Is the behaviour of the person is merely defined by these semiotic processes which continuously come from different levels of hierarchy of her or his existence? To gain some traction on this question, another aspect of the philosophy of Peirce, his cosmology, will be briefly considered.

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Peircean Cosmology and Self Development The ‘self’ concept is very important to the symbolic interactionist approach in sociology. George Herbert Mead, a key figure in the development of this approach, was himself influenced by Peirce’s ideas (Bakker 2005). Apart from his semiotics, Peirce defines three categories which are the main elements of his cosmology. These are Firstness, Secondness and Thirdness. Firstness consists of possibility in the realm of material interactions, and such possibility-states include the forms of qualia and pure feeling in sentient beings . In Peirce’s view, possibility is located at the heart of the matter, and Secondness—the state of of facts and the actualities—proceed from it. Secondness is thus the category of what happens and exists in the universe. Thirdness is the mediation between Firstness (possibility) and Secondness (actuality). Thirdness includes the category of rules and laws. It is this ‘mediating’category between possibility and actuality that makes prediction possible (Nöth 1990). The organization of the living organism, and in its highest form, the nervous system of a human being, provides a context in which this aspect of Thirdness can be fully expressed (Brier 2005). In terms of human phenomenological experience, Firstness is the experience of “I” in the here and now, and Secondness is the awareness of this experience, which is perceived via sensation and perception. Bakker (2005) describes the relationship between these categories as follows: “Our “lived reality” in “everyday life” is understood by us in retrospect through the use of signs, but the immediate moment of awareness is presignifactory awareness. We are aware before we can articulate that awareness. When we do attempt to articulate our Firstness we quickly get stuck in our Thirdness and “our” Thirdness is never purely our own, unless of course we are considered insane and heard to be speaking nothing but gibberish.“(p. 79) The individual in the phenomenological position of ‘first person experience’ is thus heavily involved in a semiotic event. Such internal conversation, which is a continuous event throughout the individual’s life, is a semiotic process. Mental images and what we see and experience in our daydreaming and during sleep are also symbols, icons and indices which are interpreted and change our behaviours and our decisions, and thus influence our agency. To put this differently, there is a source of Firstness in the individual which produces different kinds of signs throughout the course life, without interruption. There is an unlimited degree of freedom in this productivity, which is the nature of Firstness. Nobody knows from where ideas, thoughts and images come, and the case studies on creative personalities show that the moment that the creative person finds a new idea is generally a trance-like experience in which he or she has a deep inner experience. For example, Kekule saw the image of a snake biting its tail during his daydreaming and solved the problem of the arrangement of carbons in the structure of the benzene molecule. The experience of creativity in daydreaming or trance-like situations has also reported by others: Archimedes, the mathematician Jacques Hadamard and Samuel Taylor, to name just a few. (Boden 2004).

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This picture of creativity can be described from a biosemiotic perspective: generally an individual is under control of the streams of semioses which he or she receives from the upper and lower levels of the nested hierarchy of biological being. He or she is under control of the semiotic events that happen incessantly on the micro level of neurotransmitters and cellular and molecular interactions, as well as from the streams of semioses which are conveyed to her or him from society, from interpersonal interactions, and from interactions with the environment. But there is a source of Firstness present in each individual that can potentially produce a stream of semiosis that may be conveyed to the micro or macro levels, and thereby change the currently existing structure of either of these. This source of Firstness is necessary for the production of signs at the mental level. Such signs might be images, conversations or dreams, and they will, in turn, be translated to other signs; the stream of semiosis proceeds through the levels and makes changes in both macro and micro levels as it does so . Importantly, the majority of time, people are controlled by the streams of semioses that are coming from higher and lower levels; the number of times that people produce original signs that have great impact on the other levels is not large. Perhaps it can be stated that as Peircean Firstness is spontaneity and potentiality, and Firstness in the person is the source of new ideas and creativity, anything is possible at the level of imagination, dreams and internal conversation. Firstness is an undifferentiated state, and thus a unified source, but at the level of actuality or Secondness, the different streams of semioses might become dissociated, and I want to propose here that it is the self- referential mechanisms discussed above that can connect them. This picture is comparable to Jung’s description of the relationship between the complexes and the Self. In my model, the Self can be considered as Firstness and the complexes are the different systems of signs which have become dissociated and have come to exert their own kind of autonomy. The presence of the Internal Self Helper (ISH) in DID and the phenomenon of the Hidden Observer in hypnosis both imply that all dissociated systems of sign in the afflicted person yet converge and are connected to a unified source. But why in some people is Firstness more productive? Can it be suggested that in some people Firstness is more active, or that these people are more in touch with Firstness, whereas in others Firstness is weaker or they are not so connected to the experience of Firstness? Imagination and internal dialogue are products of Firstness; paradoxically, although Firstness is necessary for the production of the signs, there is no sign in Firstness itself. This means that in phenomenological experience, whenever the person is involved in any form of semiosis he or she is not experiencing Firstness. This paradoxical conception of Firstness is similar to the assumptions of different methods of meditation. In meditation, the person tries to be “in the present moment” and “have non-judgmental attention” (Mace 2007; Mcgee 2008; Shapiro et al. 2006). From a biosemiotic perspective, this means that the person should try to terminate— or perhaps not even begin—the process of sign interpretation. The interpretation of a sign is another sign and the process of semiosis goes on ad infinitum. But in meditation, the person tries to avoid engaging in this process and to stay in the present moment. In my experience of mindfulness meditation, I was instructed to “come back to my breathing” whenever I became involved with imagination, dreaming or internal conversation. In other words, I was instructed to avoid the

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dialogue with both the Meadian “Me” and the Peircean “you” and be just “I”— which is equivalent to the experience of Firstness. Again, this model raises the question of whether or not creative people who have had a significant role in social change were in touch with the experience of Firstness via mediation or similar methods of internal exploration. Using the above framework, one might think about the ways that we can, in a sense, reinforce Firstness, or help people move closer to Firstness, in order to become more creative within society. These are areas for more research and further contribution.

Conclusion Thinking about the problem of structure and agency needs an interdisciplinary framework to connect the acts of the individual to social change, and vice versa. This paper has attempted to show how biosemiotics provides this framework, and how new insights for research and practice may emerge from it. In this view, the agency of the person (in the context of society) gives direction to the streams of signs which are produced from Firstness, and which are available in the psyche of any person. If we consider agency as the authority or power to direct a stream of semiosis, then this conception, though helpful, still does not actually “prove” that people genuinely have this ability. There are schools of thought such as behaviourism, for example, that believe human behaviour is completely under the control of environmental clues. Recently, however, researchers in social psychology have brought new evidence to show that there are many implicit factors in a person’s life which can control her or his behaviour (Bargh 2008). I believe that it is impossible to prove that a person has control of her or his life, because there are many factors involved in the development of personal behaviour; and it is beyond the ability of any researcher to consider all these factors. It means that belief in the ability of the human to control her or his life should be accepted as an axiom, though it is not possible to prove it by any research method. This aside, biosemiotics can provide a theoretical framework for thinking about the ways in which human agency is mediated. Acknowledgment The author wishes to express his thanks to Tim Clark and anonymous reviewers for their comments regarding the earlier version of this paper.

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