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Semiosis as Eigenform and Observation as Recursive Interpretation
Context • Recent decades have seen the development of new branches of semiotics, including biosemiotics, cognitive semiotics, and cybersemiotics. An important feature of these concepts is the question of the relationship between linguistic and extralinguistic reality; in particular, the constructivist question of the role of observation and the observer in semiosis.
Problem • Our understanding of the observer’s role in the framework of second-order cybernetics is incomplete without understanding where in the observation the significant activity, semiosis, takes place. By describing this mechanism, we see that semiosis has the structure of an eigenform. In this article I will concentrate on linguistic semiosis, and will illuminate the role of the sign and interpretation, emphasizing the scheme and logic of this process.
Method • I use theoretical and conceptual methods of argumentation, such as logical (deductive) and philosophical (phenomenological) proofs and thought experiments.
Results • This research explores the importance of including the interpretation (via the observer) in the process of signification, and maintains both the reciprocal connections between all three elements and their cyclic nature. I apply this approach to show that semiosis works according to the principle of an eigenform because of the cyclic and recursive nature of semiotic interpretation.
Implications • My conclusions have productive implications for epistemic theories, linguistic theories, philosophy of language, theories of semiology, and semantics.
Constructivist content • Radical constructivism claims that we do not have access to a mind-independent world. It considers knowledge to be the ordering of experience to cope with situations in a satisfactory way.