This study seeks to outline a neuro-evolutionary semiotic model for our perception and interpretation of moral ambiguities in the wake of neuroaesthetics. This model is actually an integration of the Saussurean network of differences and the recently discovered default mode network: it serves on the one hand to rectify automatic responses generated by the mirror system in real-life situations, and on the other, to expand the applicability of the sign system for our appreciation of eerie or scary details found in the arts. Such a framework functions not only to blur binary oppositions set between high and lowly arousal emotions, but also to enhance our skills and confidence in dealing with uncertainties and oddities found in the arts. As opposed to experimental schemes devised in neuroaesthetics, which quantify our instant ratings of specific audial and visual inputs, the neuro-evolutionary model allows us some freedom and flexibility to re-evaluate our perceptions of motives concealed in characters’ behaviors. This study therefore enlarges on a qualitative approach to conceptualizing spectatorship in the world of art. We as intelligent and self-governing spectators should manage to align with odd characters’ positions so as to regain meaning, understanding, and harmony from our dealings. By way of comparing and contrasting two film characters’ dealings with valuable paintings and endearing families, the author argues for the fruitful functioning of the neuro-evolutionary sign system in revising our biases against seemingly immoral characters. It is observed that the sign system is characterized with the capacity of multiplying meaningful connections between characters’ motives, choices, and actions. It enables us to sort out and to appreciate strings of actions that enlarge on characters’ persistence and consistence of achieving certain goals. All in all, our choice of engaging with the daunting and the disconcerting fosters not only our pleasure and intelligence of viewing, but also the survival of odd characters in our community.
In the field of biosemiotics in our time, Ferdinand de Saussure's theory of semiology has been dismissed for its glottocentric, anthropocentric, and dyadic characteristics and as such unsuitable for the said field. Such accusation is symptomatic of an extremely narrow view of Saussure, which ignores the e fforts he made in tackling problems concerning the unification of biology (natural sciences) and semiotics (human sciences). A broader view of Saussure, emerging from the newly-discovered orangery manuscripts along with his thought-provoking course lectures, reveals that his epistemology is actually grounded in evolutionary differences and the concept of uniformitarianism. In order to demonstrate the value of his ideas, this paper proceeds through five sections. (1) To begin with, the understandings and misunderstandings of key terms are summarized while seeking to reconcile arbitrary and relatively arbitrary (analogical) modes of consciousness within the network of differences that Saussure proposes in his manuscripts. (2) My study points out how such a network blurs disciplinary or systematic boundaries between language and non-verbal systems and how it might serve as a framework for appreciating true analogies between natural sciences and the science of language. (3) The paradox of analogy, torn between the synchronic and diachronic schemes of time, is discussed. This unravels several strings that have made the functioning of analogy into such a delicate point in Saussure's theory of evolution. ( 4) The concept of état de langue is made comprehensive in relation to appropriations of Darwinian model and Neo-Darwinian ideas. Saussure's model of evolution explicates the phenomenon of symbiogenesis, which is non-linear, nonadaptive, non-restrictive as regards localities, yet claims certain truths about nature and culture. ( 5) Finally, my study draws attention to the implications of conceptualizing non-linear evolution within and across systems. There are indeed disparities between Saussure's epistemology and that of biosemiotics: nineteenth-century confused epistemology reoccurred within biosemiotics in its early phase.
This study seeks to articulate some notions concerning “aesthetics” in Saussure for the greater benefit of the study of art history. Throughout the history of elaborating on the congeniality between Saussure and Peirce,“ logic” and “temporality” have been considered as keys to perceiving and interpreting inter-systemic similarities and differences of the arts. Meanwhile, the trope of “negation” has been utilized to align Saussure’s thoughts with those of the forerunners of analytical aesthetics such as Hegel. These two strands of developing semiotics cum semiology as a metalanguage have on the one hand dissolved the superficial distinctions assumed to exist between “symbol” and “sign”, and on the other renewed the trope of “allegory” as traditionally conceived in German Romanticism. By means of these enlightening revisions of semiotic theories, this study sheds light on (1) the revised notion of allegory which Saussure has sketched briefly towards the end of his orangery manuscripts; (2) the semiotic quality of certain conceptual tools which Hegel has developed in theorizing the relation between representation and language. All in all, this study suggests a connection between Hegel and Saussure on the basis of a non-teleological appreciation of the former.
This essay explores the historical development of Umwelt and its links with related terms, such as environment, milieu(x), ambiens-ambiance, and circonstances, the latter of which are used by Jakob von Uexku ¨ll's predecessors to di¤erent ends in France. To observe the conditions in which the concepts of Umwelt, milieu, and environment have crossed the borders, this essay o¤ers a narrative for each word derived from dictionary entries and articles in the encyclopedia of semiotics, and relates these materials to four surveys by Spitzer, Canguilhem, Aarsle¤, and Sutrop. The process will basically reveal the loaded value of a word within its national and disciplinary boundaries. However, it is argued that, in making sense out of a discipline like Umweltforschung, it is neither su‰cient nor wise to stay within the German boundary. As the travelling of a word has been more purposeful than simply accidental, the history of its routes can reveal its conceptual equivalents hidden in other linguistic, scientific, and cultural constructs, which go beyond the word equivalents compiled in the dictionaries. From the hindsight of the positive receptions of the concept of Umwelt by the French philosophers during the 1930s and 1940s, the essay alleviates the charged hostility against Taine's concept of milieu in Germany and brings forward the sense of biological harmony and equilibrium shared between Uexku ¨ll and his French predecessors.
Jakob von Uexküll’s problematic is manifested in his paradoxical portraiture of form within the plan of nature: the one a sensual schema and the other a transsensual ideal form. At first sight, Uexküll’s belief in the Platonic and the Reformational notions of the immobile becoming of form seems to be a resignation from the heated debates among his contemporary materialists, vitalists, dynamists, and evolutionists. However, in terms of the Kantian subjective teleology, Uexküll’s appropriation of the ancient philosophy reinstates the invisible, static, but repetitive cycle as his regulating principle in the observation of the activity of animals. This regulating principle distinguishes itself from the rule of resemblance established by the appearances and fossil remains of animals, which is linear, incomplete, and digressive. In the light of Michel Foucault, the transition from the visible to the invisible recoups the study of nature from the living beings (les êtres vivants) to the life itself (la vie), from natural philosophy to biology. My study suggests that we recast Uexküll’s sign theory from his observations on the crux that models and triggers an animal to action in its Umwelt. Bracketing Uexküll’s transcendental configuration of form and image, we still find that schema, in its sensual and functional context, evolves from a reflection of the objects to a summary of their features plus an ignorance of their proper names. Uexküll's erasure of proper names (in different languages) that directs our attention to the presentation in its pure form (Gestalt) not only constitutes an important step in epistemology, but also in a life science that meticulously delves into the genotypes.
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