Third Biosemiotic Glossary Project survey: "Intentionality"

The third survey in the Biosemiotic Glossary Project is now open. Don Favareau is the assigned author of the third review article, to be published in Biosemiotics, and the term surveyed is "intentionality".

Responses are given online, in two parts, here and here - by early July.

The base variants of semiotic causation

I am doing some writing, and in the process developing my notion of 'semiotic causation', which is coming to inhabit a central place in my semiotic worldview. Ten days ago I conceived of 'intentional causation' - the range of which in the realm of the living must correspond to each semiotician's notion of 'intention', which is likely to be somewhat intertwined with his or her notion of 'interpretation'.

Today I am introducing a distinction between 'horizontal semiotic causation' and 'vertical semiotic causation' tied to Peirce's levels of symbols (thirdness), indices (secondness) and icons (firstness), and a further distinction between 'mutual' and 'unilateral' semiotic causation (within either horizontal or vertical semiotic causation). Such subdivision is useful, but it should not be taken in any dogmatic vein. Part of my motivation is demonstrating the radical difference between semiotic interplay that is closed off from e.g. ecological developments (typically: horizontal semiotic causation, especially horizontal symbolic causation), and semiotic interplay which is in contact with such reality (typically: vertical semiotic causation).