In the Case of Protosemiosis: Indexicality vs. Iconicity of Proteins
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In the Case of Protosemiosis: Indexicality vs. Iconicity of Proteins Dan Faltýnek 1 & Ľudmila Lacková 1 Received: 17 April 2020 / Accepted: 2 November 2020/ # The Author(s) 2020
Abstract 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). Keywords Genetic code . Iconicity . Indexicality . Protein . Protosemiosis . Protosigns .
Sign typology
Introduction For a long time, life has been thought of as a sign phenomenon. This means that among natural languages and other sign systems, such as orientation marks or artefacts, rules for behaviour within a specific culture, the very essence of the existence of an organism, even its behaviours, might be classified. This is valid even if we think of life as a sign phenomenon in the context of culture only in the metaphorical sense – that is, not as a sign behaviour of higher organisms or their communication, but as the * Ľudmila Lacková [email protected]
1
Palacký University, Olomouc, Czech Republic
Faltýnek D., Lacková Ľ.
essence of life as a form of existence (Kull et al. 2011: 15; Sebeok 2001: 228; Markoš 2002). The convergence of the living and the cultural is also in an disadvantageous position for description, as Rodríguez says: If the task of biosemiotics is the naturalisation of semiotic phenomena and the investigation of the said phenomena in the biological world, and if we are right to consider these as foundational for other semiotic activity, including the realm of culture, the way we present our biosemiotic theories should have an impact on how we develop our theories of culture. (Rodríguez 2018: 109) The way of thinking about life as a sign phenomenon has a long tradition despite the fact that mainstream semiotics was constantly trying to avoid talking about biological phenomena in the context of the signs and semiosis: Probably it would be prudent to say that neurophysiological and genetic phenomena are n
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