**5. The semiotics of Charles S. Peirce 'Synechism' and the life-mind continuum**

In the next section of this chapter, I will be speaking about the theories known as 'wide cognition'. Before, a little introduction to Charles S. Peirce's triadic model of semiosis becomes necessary. In it, an object determines a sign ('representamen') in a process called 'Firstness', which in turn determines another sign or 'interpretant' in 'Secondness'. The 'interpretant', fulfilling its function as a sign of the object, determines a further 'interpretant sign' in 'Thirdness' [48]. The sign, or representamen, stands for something, its object, in some respect or capacity, not in all respects. Peirce calls this the *ground* of the representamen [49].

The distinction related to 'ground' in Peirce's definition is crucial because it recognizes that the sign perceived is relevant to its semiotic object only in a particular respect or capacity. The concept is also important from the perspective of evolutionary anthropology, for instance, in that it emphasizes that what is cognised is a thematic aspect of what preceded it (whether a physical thing or a previous thought). In other words, while some signs are readily perceived, others require prior familiarity with their sign function, often established as habits/laws in social communities (see below).

Peirce's classification of sign interactions moves from monadic relations, expressing quality, to dyadic, expressing reaction, and sometimes resistance, to triadic (symbolic) relations involved in representation and mediation. Three fundamental relations occur between the representamen and its object: iconicity, indexicality, and symbolicity. These relations are based on fundamental cognitive operations.

Iconicity is related to varying grades of semblance/similarity with what is perceived. An icon is a sign that denotes its object by virtue of a quality that resembles or imitates its object. Iconic signs do not possess the properties of the object but reproduce some conditions of common perception. Depending on material aspects, Peirce established three types: (a) the image, which depends on a simple quality; (b) the diagram, whose internal relations, mainly dyadic or so taken, represent by analogy; and (c) the metaphor, which represents by drawing parallelism to something else; for instance, an abstraction represented by physical resemblance. In the early 1970s, a debate ensued trying to clarify the cultural aspects of icons, extending the notion of 'quality' beyond phenomenological analogous relationships, which, according to some scholars prevented from analysing the iconic sign as a social product, and therefore as an object of convention, including its possible ideological depths [50]. Endorsing perceptual aspects of contiguity (i.e. proximity) and factuality (i.e. metonymic part/whole relations, since experience can occur in terms of parts and totalities) indexicality compels attention without conveying information about its object [49]. Finally, symbolic signs are ruled by habits, as we shall see below.

It is important to emphasize that, in Peirce's view, the action of signs only 'enacts' some aspects in a particular space-time within the continuum of experience. For Peirce, cognitive semiotic functions are simultaneously materialized in the brain and the material artefacts used in meaning-making. Emphasizing 'the action of signs', which can both generated and generative, Peirce explained that potentially anything can acquire the function of sign, rooted in the continuities that come about between internal representation and external reality [51]. Thus, Peirce developed a form of phenomenology that he described as 'synechism', from the Greek *synechismos*, wherein 'all that exists is continuous' [52]. In Peirce's view, the action of signs only enacts some aspects in a particular space-time ('ground') within the continuum of experience, a continuum that problematizes the relationship between interiority and exteriority [49]. Peirce explains that language does not only reside in the brain [53], and sustains that "consciousness has a bodily and social dimension, the latter originating outside the individual self" [54].

Winfried Nöth has noted that, in giving the well-known example of the inkstand, in which Peirce claims that the faculty of language resides both in his brain and in his inkstand [55], Peirce's purpose is to illustrate the role of efficient causality in creative semiosis. However, Peirce's example also provides insights into how this efficient cause may evolve to become a factor acting as a final agency. Efficient causes, according to Peirce, are the causes by which machines function, insofar as they are determined by mechanical forces operating 'in a perfectly determinate way' [56, 57]. Peirce asserts that "Final causality cannot be imagined without efficient causality" [58]. Nöth notes that the inkstand is a metonymic sign, an index pointing to the medium of writing which ink makes possible. He explains that authorship also depends on the technical medium of writing so that there is a situation of coagency [59].

In his previous 2009 work, Nöth points out an important consideration: "the agent in the process of semiosis in which the sign creates an interpretant, is the sign, not the addresser, and the agency of the sign is one of final causality: it is the purpose of the sign to create an interpretant" [60]. Signs are not mere instruments but semiotic agents acting with a semiotic autonomy of their own. They mediate relations between things in the world and "operate by final causality, even though they

#### *Cognitive Semiotics: An Overview DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.101848*

cannot do without efficient causes to convey their messages. Final causality involves triadic interaction; it is the long-term causality of purposes, intentions, ideas, signs, and general laws, all of which belong to the Peircean category of thirdness" [60].

This argument serves Nöth to formulate his hypothesis that complex media machines, like AI, are "co-agents in the process of media semiosis to the degree that they determine the availability and choice of signs, partially restricting, partially increasing the creative potential of their users and thus transforming the impact of their messages" [61]. Thus, in the case of certain technologies that may be incorporated to the human body, the distinction of devices external to the human body must be reconsidered. Noting that the term 'organ', which refers to bodily parts, comes from the Greek form *órganon*, meaning 'tool', he insists that "the object and the interpretant of a machine *qua sign* are the ways in which the machine has been produced and used and in which it may be used in the culture to which it belongs" [62].

Thus, objects/tools have practical functions when used to transform directly the environment, but they also have semiotic functions in the subject's indirect interaction with the environment by means of them, "serving a practical purpose thus does not preclude an object from serving semiotic purposes at the same time […] since signs have a semiotic agency of their own" [63]. Therefore, semiotic activity is not only an agency of a sign creator; it is inherent in the sign itself. In Peirce's conception, intentions are not the causes of all sign processes so "it is not altogether surprising if final causality presupposes efficient causality in all cases" [64].

Peirce contended that it is "a widespread error to think that a 'final cause' is necessarily a purpose. A purpose is merely that form of final cause which is most familiar to our experience" [65]. Thus, Peirce set out to clarify the distinction between cause and explanation, concluding that life is an ongoing process where concrete moments are not substances but only momentary states part of a continuum [66]: "We ought to suppose a continuity between the characters of mind and matter" [67]. The transitory nature of these states or events can only be expressed in the form of abstracted forms of explanation formulated by means of 'narrative' propositions (by means of symbols) also called 'facts'. Menno Hulswit clarifies the distinction between causality (a relationship between facts), which might require a 'narrative self', and causation (purely a matter of events, that might be cognized as non-symbolic schemata, relying on Firstness and Secondness) [68].

Peirce is aware that his hypothesis might be called materialistic since it attributes to the mind one of the recognized properties of matter, extension. He also notes that it attributes to all matter a certain excessively low degree of feeling, together with a certain power of taking habits [67]. In other words, in Peirce's view, signs become semiotic habits or cognitive routines. A perceptual embodied experience is associated with a schema of activity embodied non-discursively (icon) which connects to an action-reaction salient cue (index) and builds up a habit that, only in the case of the 'narrative self', comes to represent propositional content (symbols). As already mentioned, Firstness or monadic relations reflect possibilities (quality) [48], Secondness or dyadic relations stand for actualities (action-reaction) [69], and Thirdness or necessity/potentiality (law-habit), which allows Interpretants to transcend external reality through habits [70]. Peirce insists that this situation happens in all things. It is a generalizing tendency that constitutes a regularity, continually on the increase, and it is also capable of similar generalizations; and thus it is self-generative [71].

Peirce's graduated continuum of semiotic functioning brings together the anticipated experiences of an agent organism which, influenced by activity in the present adjusts towards the future [72], thus providing the basis of Peircean Life-Mind continuity [73]. 'Symbols' (signs resulting of Thirdness) evince a more complex

degree of semiotic mediation because they are thoroughly bound up in conventional (law/habit) relationships. Nonetheless, they incorporate 'indices' (signs resulting of Secondness) to point to objects of signification. In turn, indices require 'icons' (signs in Firstness) to make evident the character of objects [74].

In spite of all these forms of triadic organization, Peirce also recognized the complexity of the natural world and explained that laws are not merely mechanical but probabilistic; springing from diversity and spontaneous occurrences, rather than following deterministic patterns [75]. Moving from the material world (Firstness) to the world of abstractions (Thirdness) reduces the number of dimensions within the 'ground' of each undefined 'First' (thing), which carries potential semiosis. The number of dimensions is reduced as the 'First' relates to a 'Second' becoming a named 'object', later interpreted as 'Third' carrier of 'significant' information. In the case of human Interpretants, the ideas and pre-conceptions to which one links a 'thing' over-determine, to some extent, its interpretation as an 'object' in the mind. In other words, prior knowledge may over-determine semiosis, as seen in the different ways of interacting with the world that children and adults exhibit. The reduction in dimensions from 'thing' to 'object' in human cognition is achieved by establishing neural patterns (symmetries, similarities, regularities, repetitions) between different observations. The following quotation from Peirce makes this evident:

*Doctor X: I should think that so passionate a lover of doubt would make a clean sweep of his beliefs.*

*Pragmaticist: You naturally would, holding the infant's mind to be a tabula rasa and the adult's a school state on which doubts are written with a soapstone pencil to be cleaned off with the dab of a wet sponge. But if they are marked with talc on man's 'glassy essence,' they may disappear for a long time only to be revived by a breath [76].*

In terms of agency modulation, we might distinguish between 'routines', which look for symmetries to define a problem; 'non-reflexive actions', which are sometimes experiences of an intuitive static moment in finding a solution; and 'intentional purposive actions' [77]. Peirce also spoke of "a modification of a person's tendencies toward action, resulting from previous experiences or from previous exertions of his will or acts, or from a complexus of both kinds of cause" [78] and "degrees of self-control" that lead humans to "outgrow the applicability of instinct" [79]. As experience and learning merge, embedded in particular institutional and cultural contexts, it becomes almost impossible to establish a vertical hierarchy of influences. The entire exchange occurs in a continuum that involves the materiality of things: "Time and space are continuous because they embody conditions of possibility, and the possible is general, and continuity and generality are two names for the same absence of distinction of individuals" [67, 80].

## **6. Wide cognition**

Peirce's concept of 'synechism', "the tendency to regard everything as continuous" [81] has been discussed as anticipating 'wide cognition' approaches [77, 82]. Clark and Chalmers' 'Parity Principle' in their 'Extended Mind' hypothesis claims that if a part of the world functions as a process which, were it done in the head, we would easily recognize as part of a cognitive process, then that part of the world is part of a cognitive routine [83, 84]. Their hypothesis asserts that certain

#### *Cognitive Semiotics: An Overview DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.101848*

forms of adaptive behaviour arise from perceptual dynamical 'couplings' between the nervous and the peripheral sensorimotor systems in a sort of multidirectional process. These couplings between an organism's perceptions and the objects/artefacts in its environment play a functional role when filtered in sensorimotor activity and propagated across the cognitive system. However, it is not the mere presence of a coupling that matters, but its effect; that is, the way it poises (or fails to poise) information for a certain kind of use within a specific kind of problem-solving routine [85].

The consideration of 'extended mind' activity is, in Clark's words, a modest insight into cognition, not a grandiose theory of everything, and presupposes a view of agency connected to semiotic activity. In Peirce's definition of the sign relation to its Object and Interpretant, the latter is "that which the Sign produces in the Quasi-mind that is the Interpreter by determining the latter to a feeling, to an exertion, or to a Sign, which determination is the Interpretant" [86]. It is clear that the Interpretant is not a person but the result of sign semiosis. It does not presume human consciousness. The Interpretant approximates the object-sign relationship through a representation that is informed by the object and directly brought about by the sign [69, 78, 87, 88]. Thus, a signing action can be itself a sign for the next, since signs have their own agentive properties, becoming a "more developed sign" [49]. According to Peirce, a sign is not a sign unless it translates itself into another sign in which it is more fully developed [89].

A 'quasi-mind', in Peirce's terms, can be any organism capable of cognition, whether human or nonhuman: "What we call matter is not completely dead, but is merely mind hidebound with habits" [90]. Thus, Peirce seems to imply a certain scaling of 'agency attribution' and a potential differentiation in the agentive qualities between humans and nonhumans, animate and inanimate. He explains that thought is not necessarily connected to a brain and that it appears in the work of bees, crystals, and throughout the physical world; it develops in the world through being embodied. Without embodiment, he writes, there would be no signs [91].

Peirce's assertions are being discussed in the context of the problems that the cognitive sciences face today. (1) How to scale-up the 'couplings' between organisms, entities, and their environments; (2) whether mental models, schemata, and internal planning procedures are part of representational structures in the brain, or if they are temporally emergent and dynamic products of situated activity; and (3) how to measure agency attribution, particularly in nonhumans.

Material Engagement Theory (MET) emphasizes material agency from a non-anthropocentric approach, opening the way to posthuman conceptions: "For MET's proponents then, the world is not an external realm that transmits information to an internal processor, but an emergent product of the organism's coupling with the environment" [92]. A key figure in MET, Lambros Malafouris, views artefacts as integral parts of the thinking process and, like Peirce, speaks of a continuum "dynamic co-evolutionary process of deep enculturation and material engagement" [93].

MET draws also upon enactive sensorimotor contingency theory [41, 43] to support the idea that active engagement with material things/signs brings forth meaning-making, that is, semiotic activity. In the case of symbols, following Peirce's categorization of signs, Malafouris indicates that engagement takes the form of a sort of visual code or language and thus invites reading. This suggestion seems to be aligned with Gallagher's claims about the 'narrative self'. Overall, MET agrees with the Extended Mind hypothesis but tries to go beyond, claiming that Chalmers and Clark's theory is simply an expansion of the ontological boundaries of the *res cogitans* rather than the dissolution of those boundaries altogether. Malafouris claims that the functional anatomy of the human mind includes the whole organism, brain

and body, and adds that it is also socially embedded in everyday experiences which are often constituted by the use of material objects. Thus, he believes that all these aspects should be seen as continuous, integral, and active parts of the human cognitive architecture [94].

As to agency, rather than seeing it as the result of prior intention, Malafouris sees it as the emergent product of semiotic activity: "meaning is not the product of representation but the product of a process of conceptual integration between conceptual and material domains" [95]. In its attempt to decouple agency from human consciousness, MET affirms that "While agency and intentionality may not be properties of things, they are not properties of humans either; they are the properties of material engagement, that is, of the grey zone where brain, body and culture conflate" [96]. Furthermore, some materials, such as clay, afford a flow of noetic activity beyond skin and skull that enhances neural plasticity. Malafouris speaks of a symmetric relationship between potter and clay: "trying to separate cause from effect inside the loop of pottery making is like trying to construct a pot trying to keep your hands clean from the mud" [97]. He explains that although it is the potter who makes the decisions, external factors like the texture of the clay, its physical properties etc., may determine some parts of the actions performed by the potter. The potter's wheel, for instance, "shapes the field of action and has a share and saying on our will and intentions" [98].

Accordingly, Malafouris argues that agency needs to be de-coupled from subjectobject distinctions and dissociated from intentionality as unique human property. Appealing to Searle's distinction between 'prior intention' in premeditated or deliberate action, and 'intention in action', where no intentional state is formed in advance of the action, Malafouris concludes that in 'intention in action' the internal intentional state and the external movement become indistinguishable, but still have a pragmatic effect in the world. This shows that agency is an emergent product of mediated activity in material engagement, not an innate and fixed attribute of the human condition: "The ultimate cause of action in this chain of micro and macro events is none of the supposed agents, humans or non-humans; it is the flow of activity itself" [99].

#### **7. Posthuman agency**

Until recently, agency was considered only in relation to human consciousness and in connection to intentional action. This view originated in Cartesian dualism, which posited self-awareness and purposefulness as essential components of the human mind. Peirce described dualism as "the philosophy which performs its analyses with an axe, leaving as the ultimate elements, unrelated chunks of being" [100]. The Cartesian view also highlighted anthropocentrism and justified the use of the natural world to satisfy the needs of humans as superior beings. During the 20th century, however, the increasing engagement with digital machines gave rise to an inquiry into non-anthropocentric considerations of agency and human relationships with nonhumans, from complex machines to bio-entities (animal, plants, and the environment in general) [101].

Several disciplines, including semiotics, are exploring new theories on agency to recognize the active role of nonhumans. Quantum physicist Karen Barad has explored 'agential realism', and the concept of 'intra-action', which modulates the concept of agency, not exclusively tied to human subjectivity. For Barad, the agency is "a matter of intra-acting; it is an enactment, not something that someone or something has" [102].

#### *Cognitive Semiotics: An Overview DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.101848*

In the context of global warming, climate change, and the unexpected impact of environmental aspects upon human life, Jane Bennett speaks of 'thing-power' [23] and Stacy Alaimo of 'transcorporeality' [24]. Like proponents of enactivism, these scholars emphasize that agency and intentionality are not "properties of things, they are not properties of humans either; they are the properties of material engagement" [102]. Exploring nonhuman agency in trees, Owain Jones and Paul Cloke (2008) speak of several forms of agency: 'Agency as routine action', associated with the ongoing process of life existence. 'Agency as transformative action', involving natural fields of relations often bound up with geo-transformation. 'Agency as purposive action', beyond human intentionality, for nonhumans can influence courses of action through the encoded blueprint present in their DNA. Finally, 'agency as non-reflexive action', recognizing that nonhumans can engender affective and emotional responses from humans [103].

Like Peirce, these authors consider that only final causation, which involves complex semiosis, yields the 'experience of agency', which relies on self-consciousness, and is different from simple 'agency'. In Gallagher's enactive interaction theory, complex interpersonal understanding aligns with an elaborate understanding of others' motives and goals, due to a shared familiarity with self-narratives, and understanding that resembles Peirce's distinction between having a mind and having the experience of mind [55].

There are, however, detractors to these ideas. Mendoza-Collazos and Sonesson (2021), for instance, consider that relationships between human and nonhuman actors are nonsymmetrical. According to these authors, agency is the capability to act based on the agent's intrinsic intentionally. This implies that agents must be living beings [104, 105]. Aligned with humanist and internalist approaches, the authors attribute the "capability to plan, imagine, and improve artefacts, by means of the intentional shaping and assembly of materials" as manifest expression of the uniqueness of human agency, distinct to that of other species, including primates [106]. For Andy Clark, the problem lies in that consciousness may be internalist, even if the mind is extended.

The discussion above is of interest not only to conceptions of the posthuman related to the environment but also in relation to AI. As indicate before, complex machines that convey information via digital artefacts connected to analogic instruments are strong candidates for extended cognition. For instance, an optical microscope extends human visibility range through lenses. However, an Atomic Force Microscope (AFM) can produce data, in the place of an optical visual process. Complex machines might not increase the power of human observation by delivering immediate sensory data. Instead, they offer access to nonobservable data, even if this process does not resemble human perception. Furthermore, digital information can now be stored in biological tissue and DNA (see work by Mark Bathe at the Broad institute MIT & Harvard). Facial recognition technologies, and even wearable devices, are also activated from physiological parameters, which are then transformed into digital data. The concept of the DNA of Things (DoT) is already merging biological and digital information [107], an integration that creates additional concerns regarding agency, since there is often a long causal chain of mixed human and machine interactions.

*There are not only many (human) hands; there are also what one could call 'many things': many different technologies. In AI process and history, various software is involved but also more literally various things, material technological artefacts: things that are relevant since they causally contribute to the technological action, and that may have some degree of agency [108].*
