In the Case of Protosemiosis: Indexicality vs. Iconicity of Proteins

The concept of protosemiosis or semiosis at the lower levels of the living goes back to Giorgio Prodi, Thomas A. Sebeok and others. More recently, a typology of proto-signs was introduced by Sharov and Vehkavaara. Kull uses the term of vegetative semiosis, defined by iconicity, when referring to pla...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Biosemiotics 2021-04, Vol.14 (1), p.209-226
Main Authors: Faltýnek, Dan, Lacková, Ľudmila
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Artificial Intelligence
Biomedical and Life Sciences
Evolutionary Biology
Life Sciences
Linguistics
Original Research
Philosophy of Science
Proteins
Psychology
Signs
Typology
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Summary:The concept of protosemiosis or semiosis at the lower levels of the living goes back to Giorgio Prodi, Thomas A. Sebeok and others. More recently, a typology of proto-signs was introduced by Sharov and Vehkavaara. Kull uses the term of vegetative semiosis, defined by iconicity, when referring to plants and lower organism semiosis. The criteria for the typology of proto-signs by Sharov and Vehkavaara are mostly based on two important presuppositions: agency and a lack of representation in low-level semiosis. We would like to focus on an alternative approach to protosign classification. In particular, we aim to provide a sign-typological characteristic of proteins (in analogy to Maran’ s classification of environmental signs). Our approach is focused on representation, that is, we only consider the relation between a sign and its object. We are considering representation independently from the role of interpretant and interpretation (which is an epiphenomenon of agency). Two hypotheses are investigated and accordingly evaluated in this paper: (I) Proteins are indexical protosigns. (II) Proteins are iconic protosigns. The conclusion our argumentation leads to supports the hypothesis (II).
ISSN:1875-1342
1875-1350
DOI:10.1007/s12304-020-09396-7