Claudio Julio Rodríguez Higuera

We propose a semiotic framework to underpin a posthumanist philosophy of education, as contrasted to technological determinism. A recent approach to educational processes as semiotic phenomena lends itself as a philosophy to understand the current interplay between education and technology. This view is aligned with the transhumanist movement to defend techno-scientific progress as fundamental to human development. Particularly, we adopt a semiotic approach to education to tackle certain tensions in current debates on the human. Transhumanism scholars share the optimistic belief that there is no limit to how the ethical use of technology can help alleviate suffering and increase our health and wisdom. From this perspective, it appears possible to acquire capacities that require rethinking the notion of human altogether. For others, this undermining of essentialist concepts of humanity entails serious risks, especially related to ethical egalitarianism. We adopte the perspective of edusemiotics, a framework that brings together semiotics, educational theory and philosophy of education. As a theoretical-practical framework, edusemiotics affords a hermeneutic and semiotic method for our approach. Peirce’s logic of signs is used to analyze socio- educational interactions as environmental. We observe two lines of thought. On the one hand, technological transhumanism enhances Cartesian mind–body dualism. On the other hand, philosophical posthumanism seeks to overcome this dichotomy. The former proposal construes human transformation as an artifactualization derived from techno-scientific enhancements. The latter position proposes an integrative posthumanism, capable not only to include edusemiotic theory but also to rethink the concept of learning as mutual to that of human.

Charles S. Peirce’s philosophy of signs, generally construed as the foundation of current semiotic theory, offers a theory of general perception with significant implications for the notion of subjectivity in organisms. In this article, we will discuss Peirce’s primary claims in semiotic theory, particularly focusing on their relevance to biosemiotics. We argue that these claims align with certain areas of the philosophy of biology, specifically epistemological and ontological considerations, despite the limited formal interaction between disciplines. This article serves as a general introduction to Peircean biosemiotics as a philosophical perspective on biological subjectivity.

Studying the origin of semiosis is a task obscured by terminological and metaphysical issues which create an ambiguous set of definitions for biosemiotics when referring to the concept of emergence. The question is, how emergent can semiosis be? And what are the conditions for semiosis to be an emergent of a certain type? This paper will attempt to briefly deal with the general terminology of emergence from a philosophical point of view and will discuss the characterization of semiosis as an emergent phenomenon based on the distinctions made by Bedau, Kim and Chalmers. Accordingly, we will consider the possibility of strong and weak emergence in an attempt to bring some clarity to what it means for something in biosemiotics to be an emergent and how the philosophical concepts play out when applied to biosemiotic research. In inquiring into the metaphysical status of semiosis, we change our semiotic theories to correspond to the assumptions contained in the elementary objects of our theories. This being the case, the way semiosis–the constitutive element that it is for semiotics–is taken to be with regards to its possible ontology, will conduct to different research objects for the long-term investigation of its origins and necessary conditions.

The prevalent idea that semiosis is evolutionary is a driving point for biosemiotic research, starting from the Peircean premises of continuity and including a large number of views on how signs evolve. In this paper I wish to add a small pinch of skepticism to an otherwise productive point of view. Briefly, the question to be asked is: Is there any proper and fair connection between the logical abstraction of signs, genetic expressions interpreted as signs and the animal usage of signs? And how do we go about answering this? Instead of attempting a negative account of the possibility of an evolutionary view of biosemiosis, I will attempt to make an argument in favor of skepticism as a way to make a more fine-grained distinction across the areas where biosemiotic thinking seems to have some impact. The aim is then to find philosophical strategies to overcome this skepticism when possible, while also raising some awareness about the possible limits of current biosemiotics regarding the ideal evolutionary chain of signs. Ultimately, the idea is reexamining some core assumptions of the biosemiotic point of view at its most general, accounting for some possible ways in which theory may move forward. The potential incompatibility of theoretical standpoints between some of the different approaches that may be taken is, it will be argued, a desirable outcome for biosemiotic research. That is, the way we deal with the possible theories on the evolutionary continuity of signs will also affect our different research programs, and having a nuanced philosophical discussion on it can only contribute to the expansion and clarification of where different positions within biosemiotics currently stand.

The Annual Biosemiotic Achievement Award was established at the annual meeting of the International Society for Biosemiotic Studies in 2014, in conjunction with Springer and Biosemiotics. It seeks to recognize papers published in the journal that present novel and potentially important contributions to biosemiotic research, its scientific impact and its future prospects. Here the winner of the Biosemiotic Achievement Award for 2020 is announced: The award goes to Filip Jaroš and Matěj Pudil for the article “Cognitive systems of human and non-human animals: At the crossroads of phenomenology, ethology and biosemiotics”.

Theory change is a slow, tortuous process. Problems associated with how we communicate ideas and how these ideas are received by our peers become catalysts for change in how we ourselves perceive and sanction what the discipline is capable of doing. Some parts of semiotics, and particularly biosemiotics, have come under critical scrutiny because of their heavy commitment to Peircean philosophy, but at the same time, the contributions of Peircean philosophy are almost impossible to discount. The ripples of this situation are quite visible in the emergence of code biology as a post-semiotic research programme. Yet there is a general balance between those who do not put that much stock in Peircean concepts and those who cannot conceive semiotics without these.This paper will ask whether a biosemiotics after Peirce is possible at all in the sense of acknowledging Peirce’s contributions to the field while also taking to heart the criticisms raised by those skeptical of the implications of Peircean semiotics. While the answer is most likely positive, it depends on what background our concept of meaning relies on and how it may bleed into the other areas of semiotics that biosemiotics may claim a stake on. Being able to discuss potential theoretical distinctions across semiotics while also allowing communication between the areas caught in this differentiation will be crucial for the health of the discipline as the gap between theories becomes more profound.

What do we quantify when we attempt to quantify semiotic systems and theories? How sound are potential quantifications in terms of interpretive values within some varieties of semiotic theory? We will make a distinction between formalization and quantification in order to understand what to quantify, how to quantify it and why quantification may be a desirable outcome for semiotic theory. The implications of this stance may be relevant and philosophically interesting in light of the naturalized project of biosemiotics. In this paper we will try to understand some ideas behind the rationale of formalizing and quantifying semiotic phenomena and discuss whether this possibility can or should map to functionalized descriptions of semiosis and the sign.

The present article is framed within the biosemiotic glossary project as a way to address common terminology within biosemiotic research. The glossary integrates the view of the members of the biosemiotic community through a standard survey and a literature review. The concept of ‘semiotic threshold’ was first introduced by Umberto Eco, defining it as a boundary between semiotic and non-semiotic areas. We review here the concept of ‘semiotic threshold’, first describing its denotation within semiotics via an examination on the history of the concept, its synonyms, antonyms, etymology, usage in other languages and context in which it is used. Then we present a general overview of the survey among researchers, analyzing the difference in responses for the concept of ‘lower semiotic threshold’ and related concepts. From the answers we also review the difference between the general usage of ‘semiotic threshold’ versus its specific use within biosemiotics, and attempt to make a general synthesis of the concept taking into account what we have learned from the survey and the literature review.