Studying sign processes in the emergence of communication

Communication depends on the production and interpretation \ud of representations, but the study of representational processes \ud underlying communication finds little discussion in \ud computational experiments. Here we present an experiment \ud on the emergence of both interpretation and production of \ud multiple representations, with multiple referents, where \ud referential processes can be tracked. Results show the \ud dynamics of semiotic processes during the evolution of \ud artificial creatures and the emergence of a variety of semiotic \ud processes, such as sign production, sign interpretation, and \ud sign-object-interpretant relations

Synthetic Semiotics: on modelling and simulating the \ud emergence of sign processes

Based on formal-theoretical principles about the \ud sign processes involved, we have built synthetic experiments \ud to investigate the emergence of communication based on \ud symbols and indexes in a distributed system of sign users, \ud following theoretical constraints from C.S.Peirce theory of \ud signs, following a Synthetic Semiotics approach. In this paper, we summarize these computational experiments and results regarding associative learning processes of symbolic sign modality and cognitive conditions in an evolutionary process for the emergence of either symbol-based or index-based communication

Emergence of Self-Organized Symbol-Based Communication \ud in Artificial Creatures

In this paper, we describe a digital scenario where we simulated the emergence of self-organized symbol-based communication among artificial creatures inhabiting a \ud virtual world of unpredictable predatory events. In our experiment, creatures are autonomous agents that learn symbolic relations in an unsupervised manner, with no explicit feedback, and are able to engage in dynamical and autonomous communicative interactions with other creatures, even simultaneously. In order to synthesize a behavioral ecology and infer the minimum organizational constraints for the design of our creatures, \ud we examined the well-studied case of communication in vervet monkeys. Our results show that the creatures, assuming the role of sign users and learners, behave collectively as a complex adaptive system, where self-organized communicative interactions play a \ud major role in the emergence of symbol-based communication. We also strive in this paper for a careful use of the theoretical concepts involved, including the concepts of symbol and emergence, and we make use of a multi-level model for explaining the emergence of symbols in semiotic systems as a basis for the interpretation of inter-level relationships in the semiotic processes we are studying

Symbols are not uniquely human

Modern semiotics is a branch of logics that formally defines symbol-based communication. In recent years, the semiotic classification of signs has been invoked to support the notion that symbols are uniquely human. Here we show that alarm-calls such as those used by African vervet monkeys (Cercopithecus aethiops), logically satisfy the semiotic definition of symbol. We also show that the acquisition of vocal symbols in vervet monkeys can be successfully simulated by a computer program based on minimal semiotic and neurobiological constraints. The simulations indicate that learning depends on the tutor-predator ratio, and that apprentice-generated auditory mistakes in vocal symbol interpretation have little effect on the learning rates of apprentices (up to 80% of mistakes are tolerated). In contrast, just 10% of apprentice-generated visual mistakes in predator identification will prevent any vocal symbol to be correctly associated with a predator call in a stable manner. Tutor unreliability was also deleterious to vocal symbol learning: a mere 5% of “lying” tutors were able to completely disrupt symbol learning, invariably leading to the acquisition of incorrect associations by apprentices. Our investigation corroborates the existence of vocal symbols in a non-human species, and indicates that symbolic competence emerges spontaneously from classical associative learning mechanisms when the conditioned stimuli are self-generated, arbitrary and socially efficacious. We propose that more exclusive properties of human language, such as syntax, may derive from the evolution of higher-order domains for neural association, more removed from both the sensory input and the motor output, able to support the gradual complexification of grammatical categories into syntax

The Emergence of Symbol-Based Communication in a Complex System of Artificial Creatures

We present here a digital scenario to simulate the emergence of self-organized symbol-based communication among artificial creatures inhabiting a virtual world of predatory events. In order to design the environment and creatures, we seek theoretical and empirical constraints from C.S.Peirce Semiotics and an ethological case study of communication among animals. Our results show that the creatures, assuming the role of sign users and learners, behave collectively as a complex system, where self-organization of communicative interactions plays a major role in the emergence of symbol-based communication. We also strive for a careful use of the theoretical concepts involved, including the concepts of symbol, communication, and emergence, and we use a multi-level model as a basis for the interpretation of inter-level relationships in the semiotic processes we are studying

Tartu Ülikooli toimetised. Tööd semiootika alalt. 1964-1992. 0259-4668

http://www.ester.ee/record=b1331700*es

The Cultic Roots of Culture

Current conceptions of meaning and culture tend toward extreme forms of disembodied abstraction, indicating an alienation from the original, earthy meaning of the word culture. I turn to the earlier meanings of the word and why the “cultic,” the living impulse to meaning, was and remains essential to a conception of culture as semeiosis or sign-action. Culture and biology are often treated by social scientists as though they were oil and water, not to be mixed. I am fully aware of the assumed nature-culture dichotomy, but I reject it, not because I am a sociobiologist, quite the contrary, but rather because I am a semiotician, and my studies of signs have led me toward a critical reconstruction of the concepts of nature and culture. In my perspective, culture is a living, social metaboly of signs, not limited to a convention but in transaction with the inmost recesses of the person, and with the qualitative, physical, and significant environment. The question is not whether culture is a “system” or not, but whether we shall continue to conceive of culture as an inert, mechanical system or code, incapable of self-critical cultivation, or as a “living system”--a way of living--fully open to contingency, spontaneity, purposive growth and decay. Putting the “cult” back into culture requires a reconception of the relations between human biology and meaning, and between non-discursive, non-rational reason and modern rationality. Such a reconception involves considering how the technics of the biosocial human body itself form the primary source of culture

Among Umwelten: Meaning-Making in Critical Posthumanism

Conceptualizations of meaning ground formulations of human/nonhuman animal similarity and difference. Anthropocentric accounts of meaning-making are increasingly untenable in light of contemporary knowledge of nonhuman life, yet they remain influential, implicit and intractable even within conceptual frameworks that otherwise reject their explicit premises. This study traces dynamic, process-oriented notions of meaning from Jakob von Uexkll's seminal work through autopoietic, phenomenological, biosemiotic and Deleuzian thought. I critically examine how this lineage counters Cartesian dualist and humanist notions of meaning-making in favour of a view of meaning as dynamic process. The relationship between organism and environment is characterized by Uexkll as a relationship of meaning. Uexkll envisions life as myriad complex melodic relations that entwine organism and environment in a practice of meaning-making. Uexkll's work and its extensions across a range of disciplines form a rich theoretical foundation for contemporary critical posthumanist efforts to change how human/nonhuman animal difference and similarity is conceptualized. Contemporary critical posthumanism especially the work of Karen Barad, Rosi Braidotti, Elizabeth Grosz and Cary Wolfe works to resituate human meaning-making within a wider ecological context. Yet a cohesive and comprehensive view of meaning grounded in critical posthumanism and its foundational works is fragmented across a broad and complex disciplinary and conceptual terrain. I draw out and develop from this literature the key components for a critical posthumanist concept of meaning

A semiotic and emergent theory of religious communities

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Boston UniversityTwo influential twentieth-century theorists of religion, Émile Durkheim and Roy Rappaport, analyzed religious communities in terms of distinctive features that emerge under special circumstances from the complex dynamics of ordinary human sociality. Durkheim was deeply impressed by the emergent features of religious sociality, to the point that he interpreted a religious community as expressing the way society - thought of as a system of active forces arising from and operating on the constituent individuals - can become self-aware, thinking and feeling through individuals. The status of Durkheim's strong language about religious communities having states of consciousness is a matter of debate but, however his usage is construed, he does make a strong claim on behalf of the emergent properties of complex social systems. Rappaport proposed that a religious community is an adaptive system maintaining itself in an environment, in a manner formally similar to biological organisms. In both cases, emergence is a central theme, yet it is insufficiently explained and theorized. This dissertation argues that emergence theory as it has been developed in the years since Durkheim and Rappaport published, most notably by Terrence Deacon, illuminates the arguments of Durkheim and Rappaport and can render their claims about emergent properties and adaptive social dynamics more precisely and more fruitfully. In general terms, emergence theory analyzes the way relational and organizational features of an aggregate play a causal role in system dynamics, resulting in new system capabilities and qualities. Deacon's achievement is to characterize different kinds of emergent systems in terms of the different ways meaning and reference (semiotics) function in system dynamics. This conceptual linkage between emergence and semiotics is extremely promising for interpreting the emergent features of forms of sociality in which religious meanings and beliefs play vital roles. In applying Deacon's account of emergence to the theories of religious community presented by Durkheim and Rappaport, this dissertation characterizes religious communities as semiotic-emergent systems, and from this perspective analyzes the organizational form of religious community dynamics