SemEco Emblem Elucidation

Alfred LangAlfred Lang	University of Bern, Switzerlandern Switzerland
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The Evolutive Semiotic Function Circle Some Remarks Elucidating the Emblem		0210 Emblem Elucidation 30 KB >>> @SemEcoEssay >>> @SemEcoProleg >>> @GenSem
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The following diagram schematically represents the essence of Semiotic Ecology. Therefore it is used as an emblem standing for SemEco thinking: Living individuals and their Umwelt are both conceived to be complex Semions; they are receptively and actively connected by Semiosis,. i.e. by meaning using and meaning making semiotic Processes. Semioses continuously spiral through time and maintain as well as change both, the Environment by organismic activity and the Psychic Organisation within the living entity by receptive sensitivity. This scheme applies for organisms, especially humans. In human Culturality, in particular, parts of their self- and other-made Umwelt effects back upon the Person and so generates continuously to an extended Psychic Organisation of the Person and to the Cultural Environment of the groups the Person belongs to. The function circle applies in principle to all living beings and their Umwelt, although Changes within the four sections of the Function Circle may be reduced in non-experience making entities; it applies even to information processing devices, though all sections be be limited to well-defined symbols.

Background Organism Umwelt IntrO- IntrA- ExtrO- ExtrA-Semioses

The diagram depicts an Ecosystem, i.e. a concrete living being (the red rectangle) together with its specific and individual environment (i.e. its Umwelt, the green rectangle) in the surrounding world at large (the surface environing the red-and-green rectangle) and indicates the sequencing of four kinds of Structure Formation Processes within that Ecosystem (the four colored arrow-shaped figures); together these semiosic processes form a circle that relates the orgnaism time and again with its Envioronment.The idea behind this is to conceive of the totality of the Biotic including the Human Condition as a becoming or evolving universe composed of interacting ecosystems of the given constellation and the changes in the four sectors brought about by the continuously circling semiosic Process, als long as that organism is said to be alive. In the perspective of the organism IntrO- and ExtrO a,.re effecting into an out of the organism respectively, whereas IntrA- and ExtrA-Processes are taking place within or outside of the organism respectively. The effect of this may be that in the organism in some sense its environment is present, and in the evironment effects of the organism can be observed. Although these processes are quite specific in simple organisms, smaller or larger parts of the effect are pertinent to other organisms too because the constribute to the common Environement.

Organic Structures are differentiated from their environment and grow and further differentiate under influence with their environment (IntrO). At the same time they, in turn, influence their environment (ExtrO). Within more than rudimentary living Structures Interaction among parts also generate and change each other (IntrA) and given various living and nonliving agencies around any organic Structure we have also to think of generation and change within that environment (ExtrA).

These four phases of the Ecosystem cycle perpetually through any living organic Structure within the Biotope or common surroundings and variety of organisms living loosely or tightly together. The Interaction of any organism with its Umwelt is both passive or world-receptive and active or world-shaping. It is best conceived to spiral through time in the four phases described and both regulatively maintaining and renewing continuously both any organism and its Umwelt and their common environs. Living world and Environment are thus being dialogically evolving, i.e. both innovating and maintaining, each Ecosystem with its changing balance of regulative stabilization and surprising renewal. The relation to the larger Environmtn is not diagrammed

Note that the diagram essentially depicts a concrete Ecosystem at a specific time stretching over one sequence of the four essential interactional phases that constitute the system's continuous becoming: Interactions between and within the organismic and the environmental subsystems. The diagram is, of course, intended to depict the general Structure and Process of Ecosystems that is characteristic of all Ecosystems however simple or complex they are. This one diagram is a generic schema of any ecological system and process, such as e.g. you reader in the present context: while your computer screen (or printed paper) depicting and commenting the semiotic function cycle is the surface of your actual Umwelt you yourself are the culturally competent individual person interested in understanding what these symbolic presentations mean and can bring you. You may have been incited by the diagram, have seen it repeatedly on the site, have called the present page by clicking on the emblem, desire some better understanding and now navigate through sentences checking time and again with the diagram, understanding some of its parts and understanding their connections and imagining how this could operate in real situations such as the one you are presently in. Obviously this is at the moment a relatively recepetion-dominated process; but still you here and there, you ponder terms and sentences, you bring them in relation to each other and probabily build up, in due time and after some substantial effort, something that might be an imaginative equvalent diagram of the one presented here. Your are aware of part of that process and its ongoing and differentiating result; but the process between that relatively stable ExtrA-screen-picture, the IntrO-processes bringing some aspects of it via your eyes into yur head, the IntrA-processes binding aspects of that "input" to components of your older understanding and enlarging, improving, shattering, reorganizing that understanding, and the ExtrO-actions of loking here and keying or mousing you the pertinent places are running many, many times through the Semiotic Function Cycle in a couple of minutes. Perhaps, later in time, after more differentiated understanding, you shall gain a renewed understanding of your being in the world and it may change some of your actions. In other words, you have perhaps gained an insight that perceiving, thinking, imagining, navigating, receiving information here and there, bringing various aspects together, etc. are not separate procedures but intrinsically connected and interrelated; and that all thins

An important point in this conception of the four-phased function cycle lies in the discovery that the for Semioses, while entirely different phenomena, can be conceptualized in essentially the same terms. The cycle progressing through time although large parts of the internal and the external remain stable since the change concerns only small parts of the two subsystems at any given time.

These interactions are in fact transactions insofar they results in gradual changes of structures throught a sort of "dialogue". Ecologically the basic transaction is between living organisms or their parts and selected parts of the subset of their surrounds which are their environments. These transactions are mutual and, over time, constitute and regulate these two major parts of any ecosystem, the individual and its environment. However, the "dialogue" is progressive while dialoguing entities _____exchange, levels____ Formations and reformations go in both directions and thus come about within the organismic and in the environmental subsystems of the ecosystem. Note that any organism constitutes and is constituted and regulated by its proper environment.

In what respect and extent the involved structures are active or passive is an empirical question and should not be presupposed by defintion, if this is a meaningful question at all. While there are processes among structures entirely within the individual and entirely within its environment, in all transactional processes are based by an encounter of structures from both subsystems. Semiotic ecology as a theory operates on the concrete or singular process and concrete or singular structure level. This conception of dialogical evolution (in contradistinction to what is often called "self-organisation") is well known in the biotic domain; in semiotic ecology it is transformed into an abstract principle and then generalized to cover all evolution. In particular, it deals with interweaving of biotic, individual and cultural evolutions.

In the diagram which depicts the elementary sequence of the concrete singular process of structure formation within and around the individual being, but refers on the type level to all singular concrete ecosystems in operation, the organismic subsystem is represented by the upper reddish background, its environmental subsystem by the lower greenish background. Any particular ecosystem singled out occurs naturally within the larger surround or universe which may be seen represented in the rest of the webpage on screen or paper.

The semiosic arrow (Ref - Int - Pre) represents the triad of entitites involved in any process conceivable in any ecosystem. It combines into an inseparable process unit the three roles partaking in any transaction: a Referent (indicated by the circle), an Interpretant (indicated by a ribbon) and a Presentant (indicated by a rhombus). The semiosic arrow represents the process of a referent structure being transcribed by an interpretant structure into a presentant structure. The presentant incorporates thus the referent in the light of the the interpretant. The semiosic arrow symbolizes the basic causation or condition-effect process of any evolution: an encounter of A and B resulting in C. It is to be distinguished from the common linear notion of causation of an active A affecting a passive B. Linear causation is a special case of triadic causation; triadic causation or generation cannot be thought of as composed of linear causation.

This type of process covers all transactions in the ecosystem. It pertains to transaction between organisms and their environment in both directions (extro and intro) and also comprises change within organisms (intra) and within the environmental subsystem (extra) of all ecosystems. These four classes of semiosis actually occur in sequence and readily form the four phases of the function circle comprising the sum total of relations between organisms and their environment if seen as laid out in time.

IntrO-Processes: Structure formation and modification processes of the organismic (sub)system itself result from encounters of a particular organismic (sub)structure with some suitable or affine environmental structure having effects upon one or several sensory systems of that organism; organisms themselves and their understanding of and memories about and their action potentials in dealing with their environment etc. are formed that way. In terms of semiotic ecology: some organismic subsystem interprets (IntrO-Int) some environmental reference structure (IntrO-Ref) into some new, modified, or actualized internal structure (IntrO-Pre). It is obvious that all known animal organisms have suitable sensory system assuring theThe diagram depicts an Ecosystem, i.e. a concrete living being (the red rectangle) together with its specific and individual environment (i.e. its Umwelt, the green rectangle) in the surrounding world at large (the surface environing the red-and-green rectangle) and indicates the sequencing of four kinds of Structure Formation Processes within that Ecosystem (the four colored arrow-shaped figures); together these semiosic processes form a circle that relates the orgnaism time and again with its Envioronment.The idea behind this is to conceive of the totality of the Biotic including the Human Condition as a becoming or evolving universe composed of interacting ecosystems of the given constellation and the changes in the four sectors brought about by the continuously circling semiosic Process, als long as that organism is said to be alive. In the perspective of the organism IntrO- and ExtrO a,.re effecting into an out of the organism respectively, whereas IntrA- and ExtrA-Processes are taking place within or outside of the organism respectively. The effect of this may be that in the organism in some sense its environment is present, and in the evironment effects of the organism can be observed. Although these processes are quite specific in simple organisms, smaller or larger parts of the effect are pertinent to other organisms too because the constribute to the common Environement.

IntrO-Processes: Structure formation and modification processes of the organismic (sub)system itself result from encounters of a particular organismic (sub)structure with some suitable or affine environmental structure; organisms themselves and their understanding of and memories about and their action potentials in dealing with their environment etc. are formed that way. In terms of semiotic ecology: some organismic subsystem interprets (IntrO-Int) some environmental reference structure (IntrO-Ref) into some new, modified, or actualized internal structure (IntrO-Pre).