Link HERE. Copying abstract below.
"Peirce, Biosemiotics, and the Scope of Semiosis"
Jonathan Beever
Rock Ethics Institute, Penn State University
Biosemiotics relies on an account of semiosis, or meaning
making. That account is fundamentally Peircean, using Peirce's triadicity to
extend semiosis beyond human communication to all living systems. But the scope
of semosis is an open question whose answer might be that not only all living
systems but also some nonliving ones must be considered semiosic: an unpleasant
result for the biosemiotician. This paper will demonstrate the Peircean basis
of biosemiotics and examine a range of justifications for stopping semiosis at
life, finding each one insufficient in distinguishing between our common
conceptions of life and artifact. This problem - namely, how the biosemiotician
might conceptually differentiate, say, trees from thermostats within the
Peircean framework - points to an important problem for both biology and Peirce
scholarship.
