On the limits of semiotics, or the thresholds of/in knowing

Kalevi Kull On the Limits of Semiotics, or the Thresholds of/in Knowing … there is non-semiotic territory since there are phenomena that cannot be taken as sign-functions. (A Theory of Semiotics, 1976: 6). In theoretical biology it would be a genuine question to ask – at what point may an organic system acquire knowing? What is minimally required for a system to be able to describe, to be about something? This obvious and really important problem has been effectively masked by the ‘selection’ metaphor used in evolutionary epistemology, when explaining changes on the basis of natural selection or fitness as measured via the success in reproduction or survivorship.1 Indeed, selectedness may illusively be proposed as a value and a measure of knowing. It has taken some effort in order to prove that the source of knowing is not differential reproduction but is, instead, learning, and that proper learning presumes options and choice, or signs and interpretation. Natural selection does not require options or interpretation. This is a difference between “selection” and choice. It has also been observed in biology that while from the genetic aspect the variability is almost continuous, from the aspects of morphology and communication, i.e. of semiotics, the discontinuities are remarkable (e.g., Sinha 2006). Assuming thresholds means that our position is not strongly gradualist. ‘Semiotic threshold’ is a fundamental concept for semiotics as introduced by Umberto Eco. There are signs and interpretations on one side of this threshold, and no signs nor interpretation in the other territory. Eco specified some features and criteria of this difference, but he finally hesitated to point out exactly where the lower semiotic threshold is situated. We need a semiotic study throughout the realm of life in order to identify the threshold(s) – that is a task largely for biosemiotics (see a review of the concept of semiotic threshold in, Huguera and Kull 2017). Semiotics can be an independent science only if its limits are somehow natural, i.e. if its area has some specifics. As commonly accepted, semiotics is the study of signs; since signs can be recognized on the basis of aboutness, we 1 Note a difference between evolutionary epistemology and genetic epistemology; the latter is closer to a semiotic approach. Kalevi Kull, University of Tartu, Estonia DOI 10.1515/9781501507144-007 Brought to you by | De Gruyter / TCS Authenticated Download Date | 9/22/17 4:37 PM 42 Kalevi Kull have a synonymous formulation stating that semiotics is the study of everything intentional (or rather ententional, using Deacon’s term), which is equal to the study of knowing.2 The objects that do not possess those specifics would not belong to the sphere of interest of semiotics, in the sense that semiotics has nothing special to add beyond what has been already discovered by non-semiotic sciences, except maybe about the knowledge acquisition and knowledge organisation that are, of course, semiotic processes. For instance, semiotics has nothing special to say on the structure of crystals. That is, semiotics has nothing to add to physical and chemical knowledge on crystals (except, maybe, on the ways of acquiring and organizing the knowledge about them, as stated above). Semiotics is about knowledge, or knowing. Thus, it means that semiotics may have something to say about the description of crystals, without a possibility to say anything reasonable about crystals themselves. Knowing, from the point of view of semiotics, includes a vast diversity of forms; this includes modelling as any sign does, as well as the modelling that a whole culture may do. However, not everything is modelling. There is a very general rule that characterizes all borders of semiotic systems: semiotic borders are ambiguous. (This is also related to the fact that mathematically formalized theory does not work well for semiotics.) All semiotic boundaries are more than yes/no – to at least a tiny extent, they allow the third. The border has some area, some width or thickness. This means, each semiotic boundary or threshold is a zone. Instead of a semiotic threshold, correctly speaking, we need to speak about the threshold zone.3 This said and remembered, we may return to abridged formulations again.4 2 See Deacon 2013. 3 On the concept of the semiotic threshold zone, see Kull et al. 2009; Kull 2009; 2014. 4 The problem of the lower semiotic threshold has been an issue in many semiotic writings. For more detail, see, e.g., Bruni 2015; Nöth 1994; 2000. See also the entry ‘Semiotic threshold’ in Martinelli’s “A glossary of people, paths and ideas” in zoosemiotics (Martinelli 2010: 266). One of the very few conferences on the topic of lower semiotic threshold was organised by Winfried Nöth in Kassel in February 16–17, 2001. The conference was titled “The Semiotic Threshold from Nature to Culture” and it included presentations by W. Nöth, A. Ponzio and S. Petrilli, J. Deely, J. Hoffmeyer, M. Krampen, K. Kull, U. L. Figge, C. Ljungberg, F. Merrell, F. Stjernfelt, L. Santaella, C. Emmeche, S. Brier, D. Schmauks, and C. v. Pückler. Brought to you by | De Gruyter / TCS Authenticated Download Date | 9/22/17 4:37 PM On the Limits of Semiotics, or the Thresholds of/in Knowing 43 Lower semiotic threshold zone For Eco, semiotic thresholds are natural boundaries of semiotics. Eco introduced the concepts of lower and upper semiotic threshold in his A Theory of Semiotics (Eco 1976).5 The lower threshold indicates “the point where semiotic phenomena arise from something non-semiotic” (Eco 1976: 21). The idea on the lower semiotic threshold was more-or-less clearly formulated already in 1960s; however the term was still absent. For instance, an early formulation of Sebeok’s thesis on the co-extensiveness of life and semiosis speaks about the limit of semiotics: “[…] a mutual appreciation of genetics, animal communication studies, and linguistics may lead to a full understanding of the dynamics of semiosis, and this may, in the last analysis, turn out to be no less than the definition of life” (Sebeok 1968: 12).6 John Deely, in the chapter “At the turn of the twenty-first century” of his Four Ages (Deely 2001: 689–733), comments on Eco’s Theory of Semiotics in detail, and says about the semiotic threshold: “In particular, information theory is one of the more immediate objects of Eco’s concern to distinguish “politically” from semiotics, and for this his distinction between “codes” and “s-codes” serves nicely. At the “lower threshold” of semiotics, Eco points to the sort of “communicative process” improperly so called that involves merely the transmission or exchange of physical signals, in order to distinguish it from the sort of communication properly so-called that involves signification whereby one item not merely triggers but stands for another” (Deely 2001: 711). As Eco writes, “Probably it would be prudent to say that neurophysiological and genetic phenomena are not a matter for semioticians, but that neurophysiological and genetic informational theories are so” (Eco 1976: 21). Umberto Eco, in certain way, returns to the question of limit in all his major books on semiotics that followed to A Theory of Semiotics.7 In Semiotics and the Philosophy of Language (Eco 1984), he touches upon the concept of the genetic code (p. 182–184), asking whether this is only a code in a metaphorical sense or whether it indeed is a semiotic code. As he says, a stereo- 5 Here I restrict the references to Eco’s work to their English translations. 6 This was the first publication of the text that has been republished several times later (e.g., Sebeok 1970: 624). 7 The problem of the lower semiotic threshold appears also in several other Eco’s texts, particularly those which touch upon the views of Thomas Sebeok or his Italian colleague Giorgio Prodi (e.g., Eco [ca] 1989). Brought to you by | De Gruyter / TCS Authenticated Download Date | 9/22/17 4:37 PM 44 Kalevi Kull chemical complementarity does not yet make a code.8 However, he concludes: “even at the elementary level of these biological phenomena, there is no sensible difference […] between equivalence and inference, each equivalence being a quasi-automatic inference” (Eco 1984: 184). In The Limits of Interpretation (Eco 1990), the chapter “Interpreting animals” deals with the positioning of latratus canis within semiotics. Descriptions of “animal language” in medieval and early modern texts has been one of Eco’s interests (Eco et al. 1984, 1986, 1989). In Kant and the Platypus (Eco 1999), the topic of lower threshold is lengthily analysed via the concept of primary iconicity. He states: “I am admitting with Prodi (1977) that […] it is necessary to assume that certain “material bases of signification” exist, and that these bases lie precisely in this disposition to meet and interact that we can see as the first manifestation (not yet cognitive and certainly not mental) of primary iconism” (Eco 1999: 107). And a core point Eco makes is this: “we must liberate (even if this means going against Peirce […]) the concept of likeness from the concept of comparison. […] the icon is a phenomenon that founds all possible judgments of likeness, but it cannot be founded on likeness itself” (Eco 1999: 103). “[…] It is the icon that becomes a parameter of similarity and not vice versa” (Eco 1999: 106). Again, the problem is tackled in the chapter “The threshold and the infinite: Peirce and primary iconism” in the book From the Tree to the Labyrinth (Eco 2014: 508–530). Here, the aspect of the phenomenal is explicitly included: “The complexity of a quale, if it is definitive of the meaning of a perception or a perceptual judgment, must be present and recognized as pertinent to the perception insofar as it determines the meaning of the perception. And to the extent to which the further segmentability of the quale is not definitive for this perception, to the same extent that quale is simple or primary. It is valid as Firstness and there are no pertinent inferential processes below its threshold” (Eco 2014: 529–530).9 We can also refer here to a more recent analysis that demonstrates the emergence of qualia together with optionality or incompatibility in organisms, which 8 Although, Eco does not notice a big difference between transcription and translation processes in the genetic apparatus (also, e.g., Eco 1988: 7). In a transcription process, the self-assembly can repeatedly make the same correspondences (and this is not called a genetic code), while in a translation process the mediators (tRNAs) need to be replicated in order to make the same correspondence (the genetic code) preserved. I.e., translation works on a correspondence that is arbitrary, while transcription is based on a non-arbitrary correspondence. 9 Eco’s approach on primary iconicity in Kant and the Platypus got criticized by Peirceologists (cf. Eco 2014: 510), and so Eco’s formulations became even more precautious but, as we can see, also more precise. Brought to you by | De Gruyter / TCS Authenticated Download Date | 9/22/17 4:37 PM On the Limits of Semiotics, or the Thresholds of/in Knowing 45 means that we can identify the lowest semiotic threshold as the emergence of the phenomenal present, or the internal now (Kull 2015: 620). Upper semiotic thresholds If the lower semiotic threshold surrounds the area of semiotic, and the intermediate thresholds (indexical, emonic, symbolic) mentioned below describe the most deep divides within the territory of sign-functions, then why the upper threshold, as also mentioned by Eco? Indeed, the concept of the upper semiotic threshold does not get much explicit attention in Eco’s writings. However, the concept makes sense, and we can even distinguish between two versions of it (still connected): (a) between living and “zombies”, or between organisms and man-made machines; (b) between meaning-making explicitly focused, or not. Umberto Eco introduced the concept in the following words (Eco 1976: 6): “But by the same term I also mean a vast range of phenomena prematurely assumed not to have a semiotic relevance. These are the cultural territories in which people do not recognize the underlying existence of codes, or, if they do, do not recognize the semiotic nature of those codes, i.e., their ability to generate a continuous production of signs.” Winfried Nöth accepts this and provides a good reformulation (1990: 213): “Eco’s upper threshold of semiotics is that between the semiotic and various nonsemiotic points of view. […] When studied as signs, these phenomena belong to the semiotic field. When studied from other […] points of view, they are beyond the upper threshold of semiotics”. Various causal and stochastic models of social and linguistic phenomena may not explicitly relate themselves to the processes of interpretation or meaning-making or semiosis; in this sense, these models are above the upper semiotic threshold.10 When trying to find some earlier accounts of the upper semiotic threshold, we may notice that this distinction is remarkably close to the one introduced by Gustav Teichmüller, between the specific knowledge and the semiotic knowledge (Teichmüller 1889: 270, 276–277). 10 This does not mean these models are physical. Cf. Nöth 2000: 50. Brought to you by | De Gruyter / TCS Authenticated Download Date | 9/22/17 4:37 PM 46 Kalevi Kull Epistemological threshold This threshold, “the third sort of threshold, an epistemological one” (Eco 1978: 28), concerns the semiotic inquiry itself, dividing the knowledge-getting from knowledge in the embodied world of cognition and culture. This “condition of the semiotic approach [… is] like exploring a forest where cart-trails or footprints do modify the explored landscape, so that the description the explorer gives of it must also take into account the ecological variations that he has produced” (Eco 1976: 29). This is the threshold which is “ruled by a sort of indeterminacy principle: […] to ‘speak’ about ‘speaking’, to signify signification or to communicate about communication cannot but influence the universe of speaking, signifying and communicating” (Eco 1976: 29).11 This is the last threshold of semiotics.12 Eco (1979: 29) states: “If semiotics is a theory, then it should be a theory that permits a continuous critical intervention in semiotic phenomena. Since people speak, to explain why and how they speak cannot help but determine their future way of speaking. At any rate, I can hardly deny that it determines my own way of speaking”. This is the limitation of semiotics by the dependence of learning on the scaffolding that is a product of earlier learning and that is becoming modified as a result of current learning. Coda As Umberto Eco said, “in my Theory of Semiotics I have traced an upper and lower threshold of semiotics, maintaining that […] semiotics had to deal only with the subject matter lying in between” (Eco 1988: 3). In addition, every time when in development a new mechanism of knowledge-creation is introduced, together with a new type of logic that organizes the signs, we can identify an intermediate semiotic threshold. Thus, besides the lower semiotic threshold, we may have the indexical (of association), the emonic (of imitation), and the symbolic (of convention) threshold (zone). While the symbolic threshold is extensively studied (e.g., Deacon 1997), the indexical and emonic thresholds have received very little analysis in semiotics yet (just a hypothesis that the indexical threshold zone distinguishes vegetative from animal, and the emonic threshold zone distinguishes, roughly, vertebrates from non-vertebrates). 11 See also the chapter “The boundaries of semiotics” in Caesar (1999: 102–111). 12 It has also been nicely characterized by Bellucci (2011). Brought to you by | De Gruyter / TCS Authenticated Download Date | 9/22/17 4:37 PM On the Limits of Semiotics, or the Thresholds of/in Knowing 47 Given that semiosis is the basis of biological, psychological, social, linguistic, and cultural phenomena, it is certain that semiotics is the fundamental field for all these sciences. However, since it is not always necessary to reveal the meaning-making aspects in the research, the upper semiotic threshold (besides the lower one) delimits the application of semiotic models. “Let me stop this absolutely incomplete survey”.13 The problem of semiotic thresholds may seem simple. However, this only seems so, because the concepts used are hardly identifiable in order to get an agreement in scholarly negotiations.14 Sign identification is paradoxically hard. Eco’s attempts in this deserve more response and more attention in our work to follow. 15, 16 13 From Umberto Eco’s talk “Animal language before Sebeok” at the meeting in memory of Tom Sebeok in June 29, 2002 in San Marino. 14 We should remember that the lower semiotic threshold has been identified as the boundary between matter and mind (cf. Deacon 2013), and the intermediate semiotic thresholds as the boundaries between the major types or levels of mind. 15 During our conversation (August 17, 2008, in Eco’s summer-cottage in Monte Cerignone), asking him about locating the lower semiotic threshold, he says he just does not know about it, explaining that he is a professional on metaphor but not on the semiotic threshold. He admits that if it is possible to clearly demonstrate that there exist true codes (i.e., non-stereochemical relations) in cellular processes, then it implies the existence of semiosical already at these levels of life processes. 16 I am thankful to Umberto Eco for our meetings and conversations on semiotic problems in San Marino, Monte Cerignone, Tartu, Tallinn, Milan, … And thanks to the Estonian and Italian cultures of science that finds semiotics valuable (cf. IUT2–44). Brought to you by | De Gruyter / TCS Authenticated Download Date | 9/22/17 4:37 PM