Reconciling the Notion of Agency in Biosemiotics and Enactivism

The notion of agency has been developed almost independently in two interdisciplinary research areas of biosemiotics (BS) and enactivism (E). Both of them attempt to overcome the Cartesian dualism of body and mind. However, both of them include conflicting factions, and this makes it important not only to defend theoretical principles within the same research area, but also look for similar ideas in a sister discipline. The strong point of E is in its constructivist stand towards cognition. According to E, there are no passive representations of reality; instead, agents actively construct and reproduce sensorimotor patterns in their interactions with the outside world. BS is still struggling on its path towards constructivism due to incompatibility with objectivist philosophy of Peirce. However, Peirce’s semiotics helps BS to avoid the pitfall of radicalism that often leads to solipsism. Weakened notions of representation and object are worth to retain. E attempts to develop a strongly monistic theory of agency on the basis of physics and logic, following the footsteps of Rosen, Maturana, and Varela. Agents are autopoietic, and each component has to be renewed exactly through the action of other components. As a result, agency and autonomy become reduced to autopoiesis, which is a physical process, and this idea is the main obstacle for merging autopoietic E with semiosis of evolution and learning, which lie beyond physics. BS offers a non-physical notion of agency by referring to goal-directedness and meaning-making in the interaction of agents with their environment. Goals and perceptions are signs because they point to something else, which may not yet exist or accessible but can be reached or constructed. Agents can redefine the boundary between self and non-self, and delegate some functions to subagents. Autonomy of agents is always partial because they are constructed by other agents for a purpose, and use other agents either for assistance or as resources. Agents may coexist in the same body by tolerating each other’s functions. Autopoiesis is not essential for agency, and many agents are not self-reproducing (ribosomes, mules, human neuro-somatic system). I envision this non-physical notion of agency as a future meeting point of BS and E.
Pays: 
États-Unis
Thème et axes: 
Sémiotique et Sciences Biologiques
Institution: 
National Institute on Aging (NIA/NIH)
Mail: 
sharov@comcast.net

Estado del abstract

Estado del abstract: 
Accepted
Desarrollado por gcoop.