Wednesday, 24 June 2009

Defining biological meaning

Here's my provisional definition of the concept of meaning within the life sciences (submitted ahead of Gatherings in biosemiotics 9, to be arranged in Prague - where there will be an open roundtable discussion on this very topic):
"It is the meaning-ful character of the encounter between physical, organic bodies and the material externalization of their life worlds that mediates between the inner and the outer, the self and the world."

1 comment:

Morten Tønnessen said...

At the end of my presentation "On contrapuntuality: Semiotic niche vs. ontological niche: The case of the Scandinavian wolf population", in Prague, July 3rd, I added these two phrases:

PS! Meaning is...

... The correlation between
(1) what something is taken to be
and
(2) what it is acted upon as becoming

In other wor(l)ds:
A location in the semiosphere (with semiotic coordinates)

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT: Timo Maran