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