KNEW-2006, 1-5 September 2006, Kazimierz Dolny, Poland
SEMIOTIC NATURALISM
How to naturalize mentalistic concepts without reducing them too much?
TOMMI VEHKAVAARA
University of Tampere, Department of Mathematics, Statistics, and PhilosophyFI-33014
University of Tampere
e-mail: tommi.vehkavaara[at]uta.fiHomepage: http://mtl.uta.fi/~attove/
Abstract (proposal for a talk):
The ratio of more or less naturalistic or naturalized approaches have been increasing in
modern human sciences and philosophy. In many such cases, the naturalization have meant
some kind of reduction of human, mental, or self-normative phenomena into physical,
physiological, evolutionary, or developmental phenomena so that the concepts referring to
human mental sphere are explained or redefined in terms of physics or biology. The main
criticisms of this tendency contain accusations of falling into some kind of naturalistic errors
in their naturalizations, of narrowing our understanding of these phenomena by removing the
essential from the mentalistic concepts.
However, all naturalizations are not reductionistic, instead, there is perhaps a minor group of
approaches that aim to naturalize mental rather by 'mentalizing' the natural first, i.e. by
extending the scope of the mentalistic concepts beyond human sphere. I am considering here
approaches that can be called 'mental models of life', approaches that use concepts originally
referring only to internal human mental phenomena as theoretical concepts in describing the
functioning of living systems. Examples of such approaches are evolutionary epistemology
(Donald T. Campbell and Konrad Lorenz), biosemiotics (Jesper Hoffmeyer and Claus
Emmeche), and Mark Bickhard's interactivism, but also Hegel's absolute idealism and
Schelling's Naturphilosophie could be classified as such. Thus, some of these models are not
naturalistic at all (or are Hegel and Schelling naturalists?), some aim to be fully naturalistic
(like Bickhard's one), and the rest are somewhere between these extremities.
Mental models of life, i.e. anthropocentric, ethnocentric, egocentric, or logocentric
approaches to nature are, perhaps, an original human way of understanding non-human, but
they carry within a great risk of making anthropomorphic errors, i.e. to predicate properties
and qualities exclusive to humans to non-human natural phenomena. The awareness about
this risk is evidently one common reason of turning toward naturalized models. But although
mental models of life should be somehow deliberately naturalized, a double risk threatens, to
committ both athropomorphic and naturalistic errors. How should the naturalization of mental
models of life be done so that the risk of committing these errors would be minimized?
I will present an outline of the method of semiotic naturalism (see Vehkavaara 2002) that is
supposed to fulfill this need. It is extracted from Bickhard's interactivism, Charles S. Peirce's
pragmaticism, and Campbell's idea about 'the epistemology of the other one'. In it, the
theoretical concepts of mentalist origin are aimed to naturalize by their extensive redefinition
and abstraction. The goal is to expunge the only subjectively approachable content from
mentalist concepts without committing excess reductionism, to acchieve the real pragmatic
benefits of naturalistic approaches without losing the peculiarity of mental phenomena.
Some references:
Bickhard, Mark H.
1993 "Representational content in humans and machines", Journal of
Experimental & Theoretical Artificial Intelligence 5(3): 285-333.
1998a "A Process Model of the Emergence of Representation", In:
Farre & Oksala 1998.
1998b "Levels of representationality", Journal of Experimental & Theoretical
Artificial Intelligence 10(2):179-215.
Callebaut, Werner ('organizer and moderator')
1993 Taking the Naturalistic Turn or How Real Philosophy of Science Is Done,
The University of Chicago Press; Chicago & London
Campbell, Donald T.
1988a "Descriptive Epistemology: Psychological, Sociological, and Evolutionary",
(James-lecture 1977), in: Campbell 1988b, pp. 435-486.
1997 "From Evolutionary Epistemology Via Selection Theory to a Sociology of
Scientific Validity", (toim. Celia Hayes & Barbara Frankel) Evolution and
Cognition 3(1): 5-38.
Emmeche, Claus & Hoffmeyer, Jesper
1991 "From Language to Nature — the semiotic metaphor in biology",
Semiotica 84(1/2): 1-42.
Gould, S. J. & Lewontin R. C.
1979 "The spandrels of San Marco and the Panglossian paradigm: a critique of
the adaptationist programme", Proceedings of the Royal Society of London,
Serie B, 205: 581-598.
Gould, S. J. & Vrba, Elisabeth S.
1982 "Exaptation — a missing term in the science of form", Paleobiology 8(1): 4-15.
Hoffmeyer, Jesper
1993 Signs of Meaning in the Universe, (En Snegl På Vejen: Betydningens
naturhistorie, transl. Barbara J. Haveland, 1996), Indiana University Press;
Bloomington (Indiana) 1996.
Hoffmeyer, Jesper & Emmeche, Claus
1991 "Code-duality and the semiotics of nature", in: Anderson & Merrell (1991),
117-166.
Vehkavaara, Tommi
1998 "Extended concept of knowledge for evolutionary epistemology and for
biosemiotics", pp.207-216 in: Emergence, Complexity, Hierarchy,
Organization. Selected and edited papers from ECHO III, (ed.. George L.
Farre & Tarkko Oksala). No. 91 in Acta Polytechnica Scandinavica;
Mathematics, Computing and Management in Engineering Series;
Espoo 1998. Available online in: http://mtl.uta.fi/~attove/vehka-f.htm .
2002 "Why and how to naturalize semiotic concepts for biosemiotics",
Sign Systems Studies 30(1): 293-313.
A draft available online in: http://mtl.uta.fi/~attove/Fil_ti1.pdf .
2003 "Natural self-interest, interactive representation, and the emergence of objects and
Umwelt: An outline of basic semiotic concepts for biosemiotics". Sign Systems
Studies 31(2)/2003: 547-587.
A draft available online in: http://mtl.uta.fi/~attove/gath2_end.pdf .