Biosemiotics DOI 10.1007/s12304-016-9268-1

Me, Myself, and Semiotic Function: Finding the BI^ in Biology Gerald Ostdiek 1

Received: 26 February 2016 / Accepted: 31 July 2016 # Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2016

Abstract This essay argues that stable, heritable, habituated semiotics on one scale of life allows for opportunism, origination, and the solving of novel problems on others. This is grounded in how interpretation is neither caused nor determined by its object, such that success at interpretation simply cannot be defined by any comparison between an interpretation and its object. Rather, an interpretation is a reciprocated incorporation of a living thing and its environment, and successful if it furthers the living, interpreting thing. By applying biosemiotic theory to seemingly disparate studies of parasitic infections (Jaroslav Flegr), autonomic nervous systems (Stephen Porges), and social change (Charles Tilly) as well as the classical pragmatic notion that biology, psychology and sociology are disparate approaches to the singular, radically continuous, and perennial question of who (or what) am I (Dewey, James, Mead). I argue that the distinction (e.g.,) between voluntary and autonomic behavior is but a ghost of older dualisms, the pseudo-contradictions of matter v. mind, body v. soul, but also self v. not self. Moreover, all such pseudo-contradictions (individual v. social, sensation v. response, parasite v. host, and etc.) are resolved as scale thick, self-similar examples of semiotic transaction wherein degeneration or habituation on one scale of life allows for generative or novel interaction on another. Keywords Pragmatic semiotics . Heterarchy . Scale-thick . Inter-subjectivity

Introduction, Evidence and Proposition With respect to Hume, science suffers the problem of hard evidence. All attempts to generate evidence are a furthering of a previous interpretation—a channelizing (control) that limits the dysfunction inherent to interpretation but does not end it. The

* Gerald Ostdiek [email protected]

1

Charles University in Prague, Praha 4, Prague, Czech Republic

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turn to falsification helps, though it alone does not solve the basic problem: each interpretation is a unique constellation that can never be absolutely repeated: each is a consequence of previous constellations, each of which reconstructs both object and interpretant. To ‘repeat’ an experiment is to reproduce it, to set up a novel set of interactions controlled to resemble the first as closely as possible; this is an immensely valuable praxis, not an ‘out’ from the functional limits of interpretation. And yet, an uncritical reading of the nature of proof has lead many to believing that no study that openly turns on interpretation as evidence can ever be science: this includes not only semiotics, but also all the so-called ‘soft’ sciences: psychology, sociology, etc. It is this impulse that has turned biology into a form of physics, and continues to brush aside the hypothesis that biological mechanisms are semiotic contrivances. And yet, the biological impulse to grasp what-is is not deterred by idealizing methodologies. Science functions well enough with complete disregard to the so-called hard/soft divide (Hume be damned) by ways completely familiar to Darwinian thought: redundancy. The whole idea of archaeology is that there must be enough redundancy in the record … Unlike lab science, we can’t mix carbon and sulfur and conclude that such and such happens. So we have something else approaching that. We take advantage of redundancy, so that the evidence repeats itself in broad patterns.1 I argue that there is never another path. Knowingly or not, all understandings turn on redundancy in interpretation—whether openly or under tightly controlled conditions that generate reproducible experiments. Redundancy is key not only for science, but all living things. Living things depend on it to go on living. Science can be fairly described as a method of deliberately checking interpretation (is there a there there to that thing you think?) unique to the human species—yet it remains in radical continuity with all life. To read is to stand one thing for another for the purpose of accessing some possibility for continued living. Multiple, overlapping, redundant reads generates pattern recognition, which drives living behavior. As the semiosic realization of biological mechanisms, pattern mapping within and as biological form depends on a stability of events to generate identifiable patterns. This gives rise to the possibility of ‘knowing’ what likely ‘will’ occur in ‘unknown’ events, thus allowing living things access to the adjacent possible.2 But knowing does not happen alone: as with biological evolution, it is a population driven event made possible by redundancy. Building on this, (not a dismissal of ‘lab’ science, but in addition to it), this essay moves to vignettes that show semiotic function across several scales of living behavior, and then to discussions of semiotic consequence as scale-thick,3 so as to offer evidence and argumentation for the proposition:

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Richard Burger in Hitt (2005) To steal a phrase from Kauffman (2002) 3 Havel (1996): distinct scales appear in nature when the assessing of a phenomena requires a separate set of metrics: a thing is scale thick when it can be measured by multiple sets of metrics and is consequential on multiple scales of being, and scale thin when it is not. 2

Me, Myself, and Semiotic Function: Finding the BI^ in Biology

Stable, heritable, habituated—even automated semiosic interaction on one scale of living things allows for opportunism, the solving of novel problems, and success at origination on other scales. This proposition presupposes a significant claim: that evolution is (partly) a process of reciprocal incorporation—which can result in the emergence or origination of a novel scale of being. This claim is well addressed elsewhere.4 And this proposition offers three significant corollaries. 1) For good or ill, past transactions are incorporated within/as social and/or biological structures: the past can only be ‘forgotten’ by the generation of successful autonomic or ‘instinctive’ behaviors in which opportunism does not depend on origination and problem solving because they are now structured into the biological/cultural heritage. 2) When such a heritage (the ‘instinctive’ interpretation that ‘this means that’—‘written’ into biotic or cultural mechanism) dysfunctions on one scale of things, there is a negative impact on other scales. I.e., an animal suffers both when cellular and social regulation fails, as a society suffers when individual self-regulation fails. 3) The sense of personhood is a consequence of continuity across various scales of life, generated by differences of degree of habituation of self-similar processes on these scales. (By self-similar, I mean to argue that the processes that are parts of a whole exhibit remarkably similarity to those of the whole). Moreover, the binding of these scales into a single experience (of having a self) is thoroughly biosemiotic, thus biosemiotics is as much a study of self and society as it is of biology. Reading is ubiquitous to life, limited to living things, and scale-thick. The process is self-similar and radically continuous across all scales of life. Pragmatic notions of personhood (I am a society of me), begins with the semiotic realization of biological structure but includes the ‘social sites’ that are post-biological ‘living’ things,5 as well as non-human living things that thrive with my living.6 All this and more are ‘me’—and I become more I, and more able to identify and solve life’s problems when all these other scales of me functions smoothly, automatically, and thoughtlessly.

Evidence: Three Vignettes I turn now to mechanisms by which the very human sense of ‘I’ can often result from ‘decisions’ generally ‘made’ by our ‘other’ selves—either of our bodies, protozoan parasites, or socially generated ‘living’ symbols. Morgan’s canon is important here, though not as Morgan conceived it. The canon attends to evolutionary hierarchy. It states: BIn no case is an animal activity to be interpreted in terms of higher psychological processes if it can be fairly interpreted in terms of processes which stand lower in the scale of psychological evolution and development.^ 7 For our purposes, I would argue against the notion of hierarchy. In contrast to the popular conception, Darwin did not present an eschatology—there is no up and down in evolution: but there is in and 4

Lhotský et. al. (Publication pending) Symbioses from the point of reciprocal re-forming Ostdiek (2012, 2016), Tilly (1998), and Nöth (2013) 6 Flegr (2007) 7 Morgan (1903). p. 59. 5

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out. To live is to be entangled, and living things are more or less tangled together8—the internals of a cell no less than that of a society. In this sense, the canon could then read: In no case is the behavior of a living thing to be interpreted in terms of an atomistic individual bearing singular psychological prowess if it can fairly be interpreted in terms of processes which result from entanglement within and across multiple scales of life. As I read it, behavior of or on the so-called ‘higher’ scales offers no evidence for any kind of transcendental ‘decider;’ rather, it represents greater complexity of interaction across multiple scales of life. I offer three examples. Act one It is well established that within us are trillions of non-human cells and other bits of non-human DNA that regulate not only how we feel (as biological entities) but also how we think (generate meaningful consequence). E.g., the connection between the gut and the brain is so well established that we now conclude that ‘thinking with your stomach’ is no metaphor, but a valid description of actual processes. Many particular thoughts result less from anything ‘human’ than from gut bacteria. 9 With this in mind, I point to work with Toxoplasma gondii, which demonstrates that no small part of our most honored self-identification—a characteristic thought most ‘us’—is sometimes a consequence of a biotic infection. In short, toxo makes us brave.10 Bravery is supposed to define ‘Great Men’ (a concept rejected by Pragmatism 11). But the evidence demonstrates that it sometimes results from the effects of a parasite. According to multiple studies, toxo has significant effects in humans. In addition to the alteration of psychomotor performance found in both mice and men (slower reaction time), Flegr found that the effect range in humans is sexually dimorphic. Infected men Bwere more likely to disregard rules and were more expedient, suspicious, jealous, and dogmatic^ while infected women Bwere more warm hearted, outgoing, conscientious, persistent, and moralistic.^12 So too, there is a dimorphism between toxo and concern for appearance (a factor of socialization), infected men tended to care less about their appearance, and infected women more. All these differences may express acts of bravery, mediated by differing cultural expectations of women and men. A brave man will ‘fear and fight’ the (perceive) ‘bad’ without concern for how others judge his behavior or appearance, and ‘knowingly’ expose himself to danger for the good of the group (i.e., play warrior). And a brave woman will ‘put herself out there’ in terms of wanton acts of socialization, including personal appearance, to push ‘warmly’ for the (perceived) good for the (perceived) moral/morale good, even at risk of social loss. In both cases, toxo makes one brave. The differences highlight the manner in which cultural norms join the entanglement. In both sexes, toxo resulted in Bsignificantly higher apprehension^ 13 which indicates the perception of something ‘bad’ and a willingness to act in the face of it, and bravery coming in the form of a protozoan parasite. This newfound bravery seems a permanent alteration, which persists even after

8

Darwin (1859). P. 490 Stilling (2013) and Mazmanian (2013) Flegr (2002, 2007). 11 James (1956) pg. 216–254 12 Flegr (2007) 13 Flegr (2007) 9

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Me, Myself, and Semiotic Function: Finding the BI^ in Biology

extensive removal and without any other recognizable effect of the parasite. 14 The evidence argues that the parasite leaves a novel stability in its wake; a novel read that is a novel person. With humanity (whose unique functional scale is self-awareness), this increases the potential for opportunism (successful or not) as (epistemologically) confronting a problem generally results in greater opportunities to solve it. So too, it appears that toxo generated bravery is heritable both within the self—from one sense of being to another (from biologically infected to ideationally ‘infected’ living thing) as well as between individual selves—as one act of bravery inspires another. Act 2 Mammalian communities may well depend on automated social interactions. According to evidence marshaled by Porges, much human-human communication results from autonomic nervous structures. 15 I hold the polyvagal theory as key to the proposition that automation on one scale of life can result in opportunism and novel problem solving on another. Porges argues that all mammals have not two (as has long been assumed) but three distinct autonomic nervous systems—social, sympathetic and parasympathetic, each of which is linked to specific phyletic development.16 These three autonomic systems are: Bbehaviorally linked to social communication (eg, facial expression, vocalization, listening), mobilization (eg, fight–flight behaviors), and immobilization (eg, feigning death, vasovagal syncope, and behavioral shutdown).^ 17 The second and third autonomic systems are well described in literature dating back to the 1920’s.18 Our interest is in Porges’ contribution, the biological structure of autonomic social response, and the import of this discovery to the notion that an autonomic ‘read’ on one scale of life can open opportunities on another. I ignore Porges’ focus on phyletic development (he argues the social autonomic response system is ‘highest’ such system) to argue that these systems are all bound together in radical continuity within the mammalian body, and bind the body further into its environment. The so-called ‘higher’ stages actually represent a greater entanglement: i.e., a larger continuity of reciprocity between the animal and its environment, a faster turning of the function-circle, and greater opportunism afforded by greater settling of habit, which turns interpretation into automated responses and biological mechanization. The social autonomic system is physiologically distinctive in that it is associated with myelinated vagal nervous tissues, which are unique to mammals, while those associated with the other autonomic systems are unmyelinated. Not only is the conduction of the nervous impulse is faster in a myelinated nervous system; the system is more responsive, more prone to open access to the possible. In short, myelinated autonomic systems are ‘smarter’ than non-myelinated systems; they accomplish more of our ‘deciding’ than other autonomic systems—specifically, they automate no small amount of our social decision-making. Within human society, as in all animal communities, many social interactions are regulated by ‘hard-wired’ biological mechanism. Mammalian societies are marked by a greater degree of flexibility afforded by ‘wired in’ (habituated, automated, ‘instinctive’—i.e., biological) mechanisms, which is largely a function of ‘decisions’ made not 14

Ingram et al. (2013) Porges (2003) 16 Porges (1995) 17 Portes (2009) 18 E.g., Langley (1921) 15

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on the scale of the imagined self, but by regulation via the 10th cranial (vagal) nerve, which regulates the primary apparatus of communication (i.e., sight, hearing, voice and face appearance), as well as significant bodily responses to interpretation (e.g., heart and breath rate and coordination). The social autonomic system functions through an integration of behavioral response between (e.g.,) behavior of the striated muscles of the face and head to some stimuli (the sight of another person)—which are in turn read (by the other). This regulation enables the possibility of inter-subjectivity, and the human experience of the self. Moreover, BThe Polyvagal Theory emphasizes how neural circuits involved in the regulation of autonomic state evolved to support various adaptive biobehavioral responses to challenges.^19The ‘smart’ vagal nerves allow for greater adaptive response within and of society. Moreover, were mammals incapable of such immediate reads, the human experience of inter-subjectivity could never have developed. The value of this as evidence for our proposition should be clear, and yet it demands we deemphasize Porges’ focus on a hierarchy of phyletic development. The social autonomic system is better described as more tangled—within the animal, and consequentially between animals. With act 3, no such caveat is needed. Act 3 Humanity capitalized on the social autonomic system by originating a unique scale of living thing: the post-biotic life of symbolic abstraction.20 While Bevery symbol is a living thing,^ 21 some symbols take on specific social roles, which make intersubjectivity possible by automating social interactions through the casting of complex roles to be filled or Bsites^ to be Boccupied^ by a social actor. Tilly’s sociology is scale thick; an actor is Bany set of living bodies (including a single individual) to which human observers attribute coherent consciousness and intention.^22 And the identity of an actor is interactive, symbolic, and emergent: it is the Bexperience of a category, tie, role, network, group or organization, coupled with a public representation of that experience [which] often takes the form of a shared story, a narrative.^ 23 Moreover, all this interaction is best described as ongoing performance that undergoes incessant reproduction with variation plus selection. The eventual outcome of all this is the storing of shared relations as history 24: the cultural equivalence of the semiotic realization of biological mechanism. The value of Tilly’s sociology to our thesis should be clear: humanity is what it is in no small part because living symbols give an autonomic shape to our interactions. For example, a ‘father’ is simultaneously a living symbol and an intersection of social beings. It is a Bsocial site^ that exists by being Boccupied.^ Roles such as this take on certain expectations—certain autonomic functions that regulate individual transactions. These adapt as countless individuals occupy or abandon the site, find or loose their unique expression therein, and succeed or fail at solving the problems thereby entailed. The individual is more likely to succeed when the site offers coherent, correspondent and useful limitations on her choice of actions. E.g., when the site Bpoliceman^ entails certain behavior that functionally serves and protects all civilians, both society and 19

Austin et al. (2007) Ostdiek (2012, 2016), and Nöth (2013). Peirce (1998) EP 2.222, italics added 22 Tilly (1998b), pg. 456 23 Tilly (1996), pg. 7 24 Tilly (2000) 20 21

Me, Myself, and Semiotic Function: Finding the BI^ in Biology

individuals tend to succeed. But when the idea of policing is also for police to serve themselves and the socially powerful (i.e., ‘real’ citizens), all the while ignoring or abusing the marginalized, then the value to society of Bpolicing^ is lost. When law abiding persons cannot automatically know they would be aided by calling on the law, the existence of police then harms both individuals and society. And it matters not whether or not some police serve the community well: a few good apples cannot make the barrel whole. The Great Man hypothesis is both a Platonic fairy tale and a failed proposition.25

First Discussion: the Present Past I further the central proposition of this paper by reference to George Santayana and what is perhaps his single most famous statement: BThose who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it.^26 This assertion, apparently offered in presumed disagreement with James,27 reflects an idealized misunderstanding of James, who consistently applied Darwinian principles (which rejects the concept of the Ideal) to even the most abstract philosophical positions. Inherent to both Darwinian biology and Pragmatic thought is the notion that the past is ‘immortal’ so far as present forms are shaped by past events. I argue that this too is a process of reciprocal incorporation; once incorporated, past transactions ‘pass’—but leave novel opportunities in their wake. As James put it: BI propose […] to throw my description into the bubbling vat of publicity where, jostled by rivals and torn by critics, it will eventually either disappear from notice, or else, if better luck befall it, quietly subside to the profundities, and serve as a possible ferment of new growths or a nucleus of new crystallization.^28 In a classical Darwinian fashion, James does not argue that we should or even can ‘dis-remember’ the past, but that we necessarily let go of it. We ‘let go’ of the past (and thus ‘move on’ with life) not by erasure but by incorporation, and by having incorporated we no longer need worry ourselves over it. A living thing is what it is due to ongoing adaptation to ongoing change: it is no different for post-biotic ‘life’—which includes the inter-subjective and symbolically derived experience of having a self. I simply cannot remain ‘I’ solely by maintaining a self conceived in and of past experience (then claimed as a ‘transcendental’ I). Rather, I do so by incorporating my ‘past’ selves (both individual and social ideations), thus allowing my ‘past’ to ‘live’ within me and to ‘be’ me. Should a past-I survive, it does so only by begetting new life, a new ‘I’ (the only alternative to adaptation is extinction). A healthy self will ‘let go’ of its past selves (as psychologically healthy parents do for their children) by allowing that past self to 25

James (1956) pg. 216–254 Santayana, G. (1980/1905) pg. 284 27 Santayana (1920), pgs. 7, 53–4, 64–96, Santayana held that James was ‘irresponsible’ towards the past (which he ‘raided’ philosophically), and that he belied progress by begetting forgetfulness. And yet, Santayana also offered James the highest praise available within his weltenshauung, that he had Bthe temperament of an artist.^ Theirs was a complicated relationship. 28 James (1904a), pg. 533 26

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become a mere Bferment of new growths.^ From this view, the notion of an essential or transcendental self (or soul) becomes a dangerous thing—an egoism that blocks adaptation and drives the soul to extinction. As I read it, this is a heritable psychosomatic process of reciprocal symbiosis or scale thick enculturation—built on the basic Darwinian model of origination as reproduction with variation plus selection. With this in mind, I amend Santayana, reconstruct his claim, and re-orient it to fit the central proposition of this paper: Those who do not incorporate the past are condemned not merely to repeat it, but to remain mired within it and thereby actually be it. In this context, to remain the past means to have failed to adapt to changing circumstances. To have a past means to have ‘gotten over’ that past by having successfully incorporated the consequences of the previous interactions, habituated the reciprocity (both across and in time and space), and thus originated novel methods of dealing with some situation that allows one to no longer have to ‘deal’ with that situation—because the ‘dealing’ has become ‘instinctive’—i.e., autonomic or settled habit. This applies equally to biology and epistemology. To develop habit practically to the point of automation while still maintaining the capacity for creative response with novel events is to live in a healthy symbiosis with one’s biological/ecological/cultural milieu. By this, a living thing can incorporate its past so as to generate new opportunities in the present, but also reciprocally incorporate into its living whatever objects or beings it encounters (either on the same or from another scale of life). In this, living things thus afford novel opportunities that only become available by the settling of interactions into reflexive, practically automated habit.

Second Discussion: Modernism as Habit and Trope One defining characteristic of modernity—modern science and thought but also the bulk of society (still dominated by modernism) is the notion (a habit of thought, really, or perhaps more exactly a trope) that in all our striving, we best begin at the beginning and go through to the end. In all conceivable effort, success, it is said, depends on this. This trope can fairly be described as intrinsic to the mentation of modern civilization. It is likewise commonly held as a second well-established motif, habit, or trope of modernity that this is true not only in practical terms and not only as a corollary of the human sense (and scale) of intentionality, but as an ontological fact—that to be is to begin at the beginning and go through to the end. In terms of human thought, this is the reign not only of induction, but also of deduction. For it is third well-established motif, habit, or trope that all this necessarily interweaves space as well as time. Space, as time, is thus singular and mono-directional: space/time moves forward, and an effect is subsequent to a cause, thus (it is presumed: taken as necessary and turned into a trope) causation too can only move ‘forward’ from the ‘finer’ to the ‘grosser,’ from the specific to the general. In science, this normatively means from the physical objet to the phenomenal; but in the larger culture, it generally means from a presumed metaphysical object to physical fact. The question of direction clearly divides modernity. In each of these three tropes, some hold (the much older notion) that the beginning, the ‘fine’ is ‘consciousness’ or

Me, Myself, and Semiotic Function: Finding the BI^ in Biology

some other such transcendental thing, while the end, the ‘gross’ is contingent, determined or even designed body or ‘stuff.’ For these, deduction is the default logic. Others hold that the ‘fine’ is physical—usually the most minute particle. For these, induction is the default logic and redundancy in interpretation (not physical fact as is often presupposed) generally replaces presupposition. In both cases, experience is something that begins outside the self, happens to the self, and ends (is known or simply known about), causally, inside the self. This is a primary feature of modern thought. Yet due to the difference of perceived direction (up v. down), these logics both speak past each other and ignore (or render inconceivable) inference from abduction (the logic of which renders modernism irrational). Following the classical Pragmatists, biosemiotics unites abduction with the notion of the functioncircle wherein ‘experience’ is transaction that involves a living thing and its surrounds, which always results in the reconstruction of both the living thing and its surrounds. In the largest sense, experience began with life; in the narrower sense, it begins anew with every new living thing.29 Either way, genuine experience is always a ‘living’ transaction incorporated within a living being and realized as a biological structure through the process by which an interpretation generates an interpretant.30 But this understanding is opposed by a further trope of modernism, which is the habit of thinking that an interpretation is successful only so far as it is entirely determined by some antecedent thing that is exterior to the action of interpretation and to the minding action of the self. With this notion, there is no interpretant; rather interpreters (internally) interpret (external) things, and thence grasp or understand them. And thus, this habit or trope presumes, the object under study necessarily determines success at understanding it; and a successful interpretation is necessarily and determinably ‘caused’ by its object (the thing being interpreted). Within the ‘hard’ sciences (i.e., science grounded in or analogous to a Newtonian approach), the only possible object of successful interpretation is presumed to be some discrete physical object. Alternatively, within the ‘soft’ sciences (i.e., science that cannot fit the Newtonian model), this is often taken to be some discrete psychical object. Either way, we grasp what-is-going-on by beginning at the beginning (some ‘thing’) and end at the ending (knowledge of that ‘thing’). Alternatively—occasionally within dysfunctional pseudo- science but overwhelmingly within contemporary human culture—the ‘cause’ and determiner of a successful interpretation is taken to be metaphysical or even supernatural object. (Such is the case with the imagined racial superiority that informs James Watson.) In this, we see the (presumed) definition of success in interpretation as necessarily ‘caused’ or ‘determined’ by its antecedent— though in this case the antecedent is an (perceived) immaterial absolute, whether it is some presumed transcendental self/soul, or a presumed ‘cause’ (or determiner) of the specifics of that self/soul (god/s stars, Nature, race, essence, Cthulhu, etc.).

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To be more exact, we must differentiate between genuine and degenerate experience: here, I speak of the first, which involves sentiency, Peircean Firstness, and the opening of possibility, and not the second, wherein consequence is determined by object and interaction, and which involves probabilities but not possibilities. See Ostdiek (2014) 30 For the original idea, see Peirce e.g., (1977/1908) S.S. p. 80; for its development as a biology of minding, see Dewey (1934) chapters 1 and 3, and by biosemiotics as a philosophy of science, see Ostdiek in Favareau et al. (2012) pgs 263–5

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From the biosemiotic perspective, the attempt to determine the success of an interpretation by comparison to its object opens an infinite regress, an endless appeal to further interpretation. In contrast, biosemiotics argues pragmatically: a successful interpretation is determined not by antecedent objects or processes but by the potential opened for further living. This is a consequential thing/event—and thus capable of empirical falsification. A living thing that incorporates the living of the thing into its interpretation is more likely to survive—not necessarily every time but often enough to generate a redundancy of consequence. Thus an interpretation that furthers the living of the living thing is successful; one that does not, is not. And the interpretation is its own thing, a novel event in time and space—it is not ‘caused’ by ‘its’ object, by the thing interpreted, but emerges from living of a thing as it seeks to go on living. Interpretive success is biological success, and vice versa. Within living things, and in science no less than art, tropism is the dearth of origination, perhaps even its elimination. A trope will counter, perhaps cancel cultural speciation; but it is not necessarily the dearth of creatively adaptive or generative behavior. It may be evolutionarily advantageous that habits (structures) may settled just enough to stretch when needed to cover unusual situations, but yet ‘snap back’ when that situation is removed.31 In evolutionary terms, this is punctuated equilibrium. Applied to epistemology and philosophy of science, it may well describe Kuhnian function. By trope I mean not the biological sense of movement of a plant as it bends towards light, (which is an opportunistic act). Nor do I mean just the literary sense of ‘a common or over used theme or idea.’ I argue that a trope is factor of elastic—as opposed to plastic—evolution. It is an opposition to opportunism that furthers the stability of a biological or cultural ‘life.’ Anyone who has seen their 10th or 20th or 100th zombie movie can attest to the persistence of a trope: but not all such derivative artifacts are ‘less’ than the original (Romero’s Night of the Living Dead was not necessarily the best zombie movie ever). However they are self evidently less original. It may be less obvious but nevertheless equally true that the investment of resources in producing cultural artifacts (movies—but also ideologies, philosophies, sciences, etc.) has its limits, and for every zombie movie that gets made, some other movie exploring some other ‘world,’ is not. And yet, tropism is a factor of habituation, a channelization of opportunism via the settling of opportunities into familiar grooves and well-worn pathways. A trope, as I see it, is habit become autonomic; it serves a vital role in the process by which interpretation becomes mechanism—on and across all scales of life. I hardly need point out that living things are necessarily and incessantly opportunistic; and it goes without saying that it is semiotic function that makes this opportunism possible for by the settling of interpretation into habituated function. Tropism can assist a living thing not only ‘find’ what it needs to go on living, not only discover novel ways of ‘finding’ and thus living, but also by acting on tropes the living thing streamlines the process of interpretation and thus frees up resources (time and energy) for the finding (reading into being) of novel methods of problem solving, novel methods of further entangling the living thing within its life by entangling it within its life.

31

Ostdiek (2011) and Flegr (2010)

Me, Myself, and Semiotic Function: Finding the BI^ in Biology

Third Discussion: Sexual Identity and the Scale of the Pragmatic Self In his earliest published works, Dewey argues that experience consists of a ceaseless transaction consisting of the coordination of stimulus and response that is a living organism and its environment.32 For Dewey, experience is biological. Billiard balls do not experience: they are acted upon but do not act to further their acting, thus they cannot extract experience out of existence. Building on Dewey’s concept (which is related to Uexküll’s notion of the function circle), I would argue that, in part, knowledge consists of a turning of this wheel of coordination in a self-interested direction— and not its mere spinning round and round. This act of turning is largely an act of propositional thought and a deliberated self-reflection intended to coordinate self with non-self (or, as I prefer to describe it: to turn non-self into other-self via intersubjectivity writ large). As classical pragmatism argues, this largely consists of a bodily minding of a problem to be solved.33 A second element that I find (underdeveloped) within classical pragmatism is that (as a subset of knowledge) self-awareness consists in a tight coordination of the various scales on which the function circle occurs. Dewey’s famed essay The reflex arc concept in psychology furthers James’ discussion of how a child learns that fire burns by building on Peirce’s notion of radical continuity. Dewey argues that experience begins Bnot with a sensory stimulus, but with a sensori-motor coordination^ i.e., by Blooking, and not a sensation of light.^ This experience is furthered, if it is furthered at all, by falling within Ba larger coordination^ which consists of a continuation of the minding/bodily coordination, such as reaching or grasping for something seen. Placing one’s hand into a fire, for example, is a furthering of the experience of seeing a lit candle that further develops both the experience and the living thing, as well as the sign that transforms the first via the second, and the second via the first. As Dewey tells us, the stage in which the child is burned: is simply the completion, or fulfillment, of the previous eye-arm-hand coördination and not an entirely new occurrence. Only because the heat-pain quale enters into the same circuit of experience with the optical-ocular and muscular quales, does the child learn from the experience and get the ability to avoid the experience in the future. More technically stated, the so-called response is not merely to the stimulus; it is into it. The burn is the original seeing, the original optical-ocular experience enlarged and transformed in its value. It is no longer mere seeing; it is seeing-ofa-light-that-means-pain-when-contact-occurs.34 The coordination that Dewey places at the center of experience is not a ‘mindbody’ connection (as if these were two things that needed connecting). It is a single coordination—a body minding its environment, furthering itself (both as mind and as body) by acting propositionally upon objects it discovers (including 32

E.g., Dewey et al. (1903) and James (1904b) James (1907) Chapter 2 34 Dewey (1896) 33

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its own mind) within its surrounds. Biologically speaking, this is the functioning of an ecological niche. Epistemologically speaking, this is a corollary of the argument that the interpretation generates the interpretant. Even in its simplest variation, to grasp what-is reconstructs the grasper, the grasped, and the grasping. Neither Dewey nor any of the classical pragmatists devote much attention to the many scales on which this occurs. Nor do they postulate, as do I, that selfawareness is a biologically novel method of binding together these scales via self-similar behavior across these various scales of life—that generates opportunism (novelty) by settling habituation on some other scale. However, these ideas can be understood as a furthering of pragmatic methodology in the light of contemporary biology. This is relevant to the central proposition of this essay. If opportunity is opened by wantonly self-aware acts of propositional thought35 and if the ability to think propositionally is grounded upon stability/automation of semiosic interactions on not-I scales of life,36 then we might also expect a radical continuity of stimulus and response not only within the animal scale as described by Dewey but across several scales. Moreover, we might expect to find opportunity furthered by greater continuity (greater coordination, greater self-similarity) across these various scales. I argue this is a valid inference of evidence given, and offer the following proposition by way of example. When the biological fixation of sexual preference is matched both by sexual behavior and social/cultural expression, the human person functions better (biologically, individually, and socially) and is more able to solve the various problems that existence will toss his or her way, and thus experience/develop a more healthy sense of their biological, individual, and social ‘I’. In short, a self that experiences greater continuity across these scales is more likely to succeed than one that experiences discontinuity across these scales. Dan Savage, cultural icon, sex advice columnist and BBertrand Russell of modern relationships,^ has proposed what he calls the sexual identity Bcombo platter.^ There's who you wanna do, who you are doing, and who you tell people you are. You can't control who you wanna do—sexual orientation is not a choice—but you get to choose who you wind up doing and who you tell people you are. Don't wanna have a miserable sex life? Do who you wanna do. Don't wanna be a messy closet case […]? Tell the truth about who you're doing.37 Davin O’Dwyer, a journalist with the Irish Times, develops this as a Bhierarchy of desire^ that is broadly applicable to the human experience of life. The basic idea is: The closer the alignment of those layers, the happier and more content we are, the more ourselves we feel, basically. The further apart those layers are, the greater 35 This being a central tenant of Pragmatism, e.g., James (1956), pg. 131 BMan's chief difference from the brutes lies in the exuberant excess of his subjective propensities^ 36 This claim is a) the central proposition of this essay, b) a corollary of the immediately previous proposition, and c) valid—based on evidence offered above. 37 Savage (2010)

Me, Myself, and Semiotic Function: Finding the BI^ in Biology

the mental and emotional dissonance, and the greater the toll it takes trying to reconcile them, or worse, enduring the impossibility of reconciling them. 38 I argue that this is central to the human experience not just of sexuality but also of the self, and emblematic of the uniquely human (i.e., potentially self-aware) manner in which life exists as self-similar function crisscrosses and binds together multiple scales of being. As such, I would expect to find this to have similar consequences on different scales. O’Dwyer continues: And of course, the principle doesn’t just apply to our desires — the conflict between who we want to be, who we really are and who we present ourselves to others as is the central tension behind our sense of self. It’s a tension that has been explored by generations of thinkers, from Descartes to Hume, from Freud to Lacan… But perhaps the hierarchy applies not just to people but to societies as well. What does a society truly want to be, how does it function in practice, what image does it project to the world? O’Dwyer places these three phenomena in an ascending order, with the biology of sexual preference at the bottom of the stack, individually chosen behavior in the middle, and social representation—the image of the self projected to the world, itself a coordination of individual behavior and cultural automation (i.e., the occupation of culturally stable social sites)—at the top. This is in keeping with modern tropes, but not particularly useful (though his extrapolations from relationship advice to social commentary are). Savage’s original formulation is not hierarchical yet it does suffer from the implication that we ‘choose’ the social site that we occupy. Rather, our social representamen is not so much a choice as a negotiation between an individual and culturally specific structures/demands/sites. Identity is not planned. It is certainly not an ascending (ascendable?) artifact (pyramid or ladder). Nor is it merely a randomly mixed selection of stuff (goulash or hash). Both these approaches tend to obscure the self. Rather, to have a self is to experience some consequence of the coordination (or lack thereof) of the scales of life. And again, I argue that automation (in this case: of the relationship between sexual preference and the occupation of social sites) opens opportunity on one scale (that of individual choice). Savage hit closer to the mark by calling it a combo platter, as identity is an arrangement of interactive elements that takes a life of its own (presents itself as a whole). As argued by James39 and 40 and professed by 41 the experienced self (the I) is no hierarchy (nor is it goulash), but a society that consists not only of biological and ideational/symbolic objects, but also the physical and social environment as well as whatever consequence the arrangement entails, settled into a single (relatively) coherent, experienced (narratively constructed) psychosomatic being. 38

O’Dwyer (2015) James (1890) Vol. 1 pg. 291 and Ostdiek (2016) 40 Mead (1913) and also Ostdiek (2012) 41 Whitman (1892/1855): e.g., section 51, lines 1324–6 39

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Neither biology (writ large) nor identity (again, writ large) is structured from the bottom up (‘beginning’ to ‘end’) in such a way that the ‘bottom’ (biology) ‘determines’ the top (society)—neither are either structured from the top (however defined) down. It goes without saying that neither biology nor identity is structured randomly (however selected). Rather, both are mutually referential assortments of phenomena that are set (settled) together within a single experience, (a combo platter) in which success at individuation is directly proportional to the coherence of self-similarity. As per Dewey, what matters is furthering into the experience, as per Savage, what makes a coherent I is a correspondence crossing the various scales of life. I argue: this coherence and correspondence can only become apparent if its appearance becomes useful to the living thing.

Conclusion A myriad of relationships comprise and compose living things; these include the psychophysiological ecology that is the experience of ‘I’ and a consequence of myriad ‘human’ and ‘non-human’ parts. Learning to identify and knowingly manipulate the semiotic transactions that unite all these into a single experience may be one avenue by which biosemiotics might revolutionize (achieve reciprocated incorporation with/within) ‘normal’ biology—as well as sociology, anthropology, epistemology, etcetera. This may well depend on a social habituation that links success at interpretation with the success of the interpretant. At the center of biosemiotic theory lays the hypothesis that life is a scale-thick heterarchy,42 in which the historical contriving of evolution happen both on and across multiple scales of living things and involves of a weaving together of selfsimilar patterns of transaction. More, as life is as it signs, and as signs both form and are the minding activity that allows living (bounded or bordered) things to identify that which they must in-corporate, ex-corporate, or merely avoid so as to go on living. This behavior is not, as is commonly assumed, necessarily associated with self-aware or voluntary behavior; nor is it necessarily associated with the commonly observed automations of semiosic interaction found at all scales of subjective experience. Rather the first is a composite and a consequence of the second. My experience as an ‘I’ includes gut bacteria, protozoan infections and many other ‘non-human’ biotic structures, as well as symbolic/ideational points of social transaction. These generally operate so smoothly or ‘thoughtlessly,’ their semiotic/biotic mechanisms seamlessly ‘think’ for me, which frees ‘my’ thoughts to focus elsewhere. Heritable stability on one such scale thus allows opportunism on another. In this, we find our ‘I’—the experience of individual meaning that exists on every scale and none. BI^ truly am a society of the multitudes of me: we now know this is true on more scales than the classical pragmatists ever conceived.

42

Bruni and Giorgi (2015)

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