Semeiotic Causation and the Breath of Life

Abstract

Following Peirce’s semeiotic and theory of causation, we will argue that the distinctive character of life is its being a semeiotic process, that is, a genuine triadic relation expressed as the flow of causation by which an object causes an effect, called interpretant, due to the mediation of a sign. Living organisms are characteristic examples of processes causally directed toward general end states, that is, states that represent habitual dispositions to behave in the future according to successful past experiences. Familiarity through habit-taking provides the necessary information to denote correctly the objects of attention of daily experience, without which no living being would survive. To be able to have such dispositions to act coherently, the teleology of living beings must involve a combined action of final causation, efficient causation, and chance. All of this is an expression of semeiosis, which provides the formal aspect of causation by which transmission of forms from causes into effects becomes possible. Thus, symbols (the only signs that can be conditional propositions about the real) are living signs capable of gathering information during experience and of conveying it to its interpretants so as to produce general habits of conduct attuned with the causal patterns, or laws that govern reality. The flow of causation that we perceive in reality provides the form of a genuine and continuous triadic relation, which is the predicate of every true proposition. Any living species is analogous to a true proposition as much as it is attuned to the flow of causation that grounds the real and allows its permanence.KeywordsPast EventProductive EventContinuous SequenceInternal OrderObjective ChanceThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.