A Critique of Biosemiotics
A Critique of Biosemiotics
A Critique of Biosemiotics
Barbieris
Scientific Biosemiotics
Marc Champagne
York University, Canada
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4. Ibid. 33.
5. Taborsky 1999: 601.
6. For a survey of the questionable role of intuitions in abstract inquiries, see DePaul
and Ramsey (1998).
7. Deely 2004: 17.
8. Deely 2006: 22.
9. Barbieri 2008: 33.
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to life. Casting this assertion in point form gives it an air of being scientific.
But that rhetorical effect to the side, the postulate as Barbieri lays it down
amounts to nothing more than a combination of unreflective metaphysics
and primitive inclinations. As the literature on biosemiotics grows (as such
enterprises are wont to do), the corpus mass will nevertheless leave wholly
untouched the fact that at the heart of it all, at least for those who accept
Barbieris construction of Sebeoks view, lies an assumption which is as undefended and indefensible as Saussures assertion that semiotics should
study la vie des signes au sein de la vie sociale (1916: 33) a tenet which
also spawned many journals.12 Which of these competing postulates should
one adopt? Well, to echo a famous saying, those who like this kind of thing
will find it the kind of thing that they like. Not surprisingly, philosophers of
mind hold that representation is inherently a mental phenomenon; linguists
hold that it is social; biologists hold that it is organic; etc. So much for the
(laudable) thesis that what essentially characterizes a sign is a relation patently
indifferent to the accidents that carve up such divisions.
These remarks are not to be taken as an endorsement of pansemiotism, the
view that the universe consists exclusively of an action of signs. The situation
is not such that anybody who dares call into question the pertinence of life
for the study of signs ipso facto thinks rocks talk amongst themselves. Barbieri
states matter-of-factly13 that whosoever adopts a more liberal construal of
interpretation than he does perforce believes that semiosis exists everywhere
in the universe. Such a false disjunction with a straw man on one side and
a promised land on the other is both uncharitable and self-serving. At any
rate, the supposed inference from triadicity to pansemiotism does not follow.
To say that A interprets B as representing C may be noncommittal, but make
no mistake: it does not necessarily include everything, and in fact excludes a great
many things (most notably brute altercations occurring between two things).
Peirce insisted14 that a representamen must be capable of determining
an interpretant which will assume the same triadic relation to its Object.
Thus, any representamen which does its job of renvoi correctly stains by that
very fact its interpretant with this semiotic role, such that the interpretant
Sebeoks original proposal (although, in fairness, Sebeok liked to keep his options open in a
way Barbieris more dismissive comments do not mirror).
12. Asking for a review of the mounting primary and secondary literature on biosemiotics
would therefore totally miss the point. It would be akin to a builder who, faced with some
ominous cracks in the foundations, adds more storeys to the edifice in the hope of remedying
the situation. Such a response, to my mind, is endemic of a bad (Kuhnian) epistemology, which
basically holds that one can run a science on a little abduction and lots of ink.
13. Barbieri 2008: 33.
14. Peirce 1903: EP 2.272.
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the biological one, some of us have been fortunate enough to catch a glimpse
of what semiotics could and should be: a confident inquiry in its own right.
I dont want to be misunderstood: a semiotics of life is warranted, overdue, and very much welcomed (just as one can carry out a semiotics of mind
without being mentalistic). In fact, preliminary investigations into the topic
have already begun to enrich our view of natures complexity in a way that
cannot fail to capture the attention of semiotician and scientist alike. But if
the blueprint put forth in professor Barbieris article is any indication, all a
scientific biosemiotics is bound to accomplish is bouger le mal de place.
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