Cognition and semiotic processing of luminous stimuli in various orders of the natural word

CAIVANO, JOSE LUIS

Cognitive Semiotics

Mouton De Gruyter

Lugar: Berlin; Año: 2015 vol. 8 p. 129 - 140

2235-2066

Abstract: Semiosis, and particularly visual semiosis, is not something unique to humans. All animal species, all living beings (including other forms of life outside the animal kingdom) have semiotic activity. But we can go even beyond that. It is possible to maintain that also in the world that is usually called?inanimate? or ?inert? some kind of semiotic activity takes place. This paperproposes a view in which the elements and organisms in the natural environment,instead of being classified into separate categories are thought of asforming a continuous gradation from one to another, from lower to upper levelsof complexity and semiotic behavior. From this, and from further arguments, itis possible to maintain that semiosis permeates the entire universe. A specialpoint is made concerning the interaction of light stimuli with matter and livingorganisms, which in some cases has produced the systems of vision that manyanimals posses, and in some other cases produce reactions and changes that canbe considered as a kind of protosemiotic activity.