According to David Chalmers, the hard problem of consciousness consists of explaining how and why qualitative experience arises from physical states. Moreover, Chalmers argues that materialist and reductive explanations of mentality are incapable of addressing the hard problem. In this chapter, I suggest that Chalmers’ hard problem can be usefully distinguished into a ‘how question’ and ‘why question,’ and I argue that evolutionary biology has the resources to address the question of why qualitative experience arises from brain states. From this (...) perspective, I discuss the different kinds of evolutionary explanations (e.g., adaptationist, exaptationist, spandrel) that can explain the origins of the qualitative aspects of various conscious states. This argument is intended to clarify which parts of Chalmers’ hard problem are amenable to scientific analysis. (shrink)

The aim of this contribution is to investigate certain selected parts of the extended evolutionary synthesis which all have a common denominator, namely evolution by meaning attribution. We start by arguing that living organisms can manipulate and interpret their genetic script via epigenetic modifications in a semiotic manner, that is, by meaning attribution. Genes do not build living beings to be transmitted to future generations. Genes have been shaped by evolution as a memory medium that is transmitted from one generation (...) to the next, but the actual reading of such scripts is modified by momentary contexts. Secondly, we show that phenotypic evolution variously re-uses already existing homologies which in evolving systems acquire a new meaning. We also suggest that the ways in which organisms perceive their environment and other living beings is an important but still largely neglected evolutionary force. Variations in perception influence the direction and intensity of sexual selection and some behaviourally mediated regimes of natural selection. Thirdly, we point out that especially if we want to study their evolution, living beings should not be considered in isolation but in their mutual coexistence, in their historically established being together. Recent attempts to view living beings as constructors of niches and holobionts seem compatible with the classical Umwelt theory. This approach seems capable of accounting for both competitiveness and cooperation, thus making the overall image of evolution more comprehensive. And finally, we argue that if we want to expand our understanding of biological evolution, in addition to variation, selection, and inheritance we also need to take into account processes which participate in meaning attribution. (shrink)

This review paper discusses the perspective of complex biological systems as applied to inheritance and ontogeny, focusing on the continuity of genetic, epigenetic and microbiotic inheritance. The informational processuality within this continuity can be used as to exemplify the insufficiency of hierarchical concepts in grasping the complex and integrated nature of biological processes. The argument follows Bruni and Giorgi in emphasizing that while structures and substrates are organized hierarchically, communicational processes are organized heterarchically. The essay also argues the insufficiency of (...) a single, basic, i.e. genetic level of description, which is the prevalent idea of twentieth century biology, to explain all phenotypic variation. I argue that inheritance and development cannot be fully explained by some sub- or super-ordination and that such descriptions are merely heuristic tools that do not reflect the nature of such processes. (shrink)

Meaning is a central concept of (bio)semiotics. At the same time, it is also a word of everyday language. Here, on the example of the world information, we discuss the “reduction-inflation model” of evolution of a common word into a scientific concept, to return subsequently into everyday circulation with new connotations. Such may be, in the near future, also the fate of the word meaning if, flexed through objectified semantics, will become considered an objective concept usable in semiotics. We argue (...) that reducing meaning to a technical term essentially synonymous to code and stripped of most of the original semantic field is not a necessary prerequisite for a meaningful application of the concept in semiotics and in biology. (shrink)

Evolution and life phenomena can be understood as results of history, i.e., as outcomes of cohabitation and collective memory of populations of autonomous entities across many generations and vast extent of time. Hence, evolution of distinct lineages of life can be considered as isomorphic with that of cultures. I argue here that cultures and culture-like systems – human culture, natural languages, and life forms – always draw from history, memory, experience, internal dynamics, etc., transforming themselves creatively into new patterns, never (...) foreseen before. This is possible thanks to the fact that all forms of life are descendants of life. Ontogeny and speciation in various lineages draw from continuous re-interpretation of conservative genetic/generic “texts”, as well as from changes of the interpretative process itself. The result is continuous appearances of new lineages-cultures and/or communities-cultures, in a semiotic process of re-interpretation and inventing new ways of living. The topic is developed here on the backgrounds of ideas presented by R. A. Rappaport in “Ritual and religion in the making of humanity” and J. Flegr in “Frozen evolution”. (shrink)

To view language as a cultural tool challenges much of what claims to be linguistic science while opening up a new people-centred linguistics. On this view, how we speak, think and act depends on, not just brains, but also cultural traditions. Yet, Everett is conservative: like others trained in distributional analysis, he reifies ‘words’. Though rejecting inner languages and grammatical universals, he ascribes mental reality to a lexicon. Reliant as he is on transcriptions, he takes the cognitivist view that brains (...) represent word-forms. By contrast, in radical embodied cognitive theory, bodily dynamics themselves act as cues to meaning. Linguistic exostructures resemble tools that constrain how people concert acting-perceiving bodies. The result is unending renewal of verbal structures: like artefacts and institutions, they function to sustain a species-specific cultural ecology. As Ross argues, ecological extensions make human cognition hypersocial. When we link verbal patterns with lived experience, we communicate and cognise by fitting action/perception to cultural practices that anchor human meaning making. (shrink)

The discovery of the genetic code has shown that the origin of life has also been the origin of semiosis, and the discovery of many other organic codes has indicated that organic semiosis has been the sole form of semiosis present on Earth in the first three thousand million years of evolution. With the origin of animals and the evolution of the brain, however, a new type of semiosis came into existence, a semiosis that is based on interpretation and is (...) commonly referred to as interpretive, or Peircean semiosis. This suggests that there are two distinct types of semiosis in Nature, one based on coding and one based on interpretation, and all the experimental evidence that we have does support this conclusion. Both in principle and in practice, therefore, there is no conflict between organic semiosis and Peircean semiosis, and yet they have been the object of a fierce controversy because it has been claimed that semiosis is always based on interpretation, even at the cellular level. Such a claim has recently been reproposed in a number of papers and it has become necessary therefore to reexamine it in the light of the proposed arguments. (shrink)