A Biosemiotic Approach to the Problem of Structure and Agency
Biosemiotics April 1, 2012 Shahram Rafieian
A human being is a composite of multiple nested levels of being, from atomic to social. Systems theory considers these levels and their interactions, but the transition between levels is not well defined. Uexküll and Pauli suggested that semiosis (meaning-making) translates events across levels. Inner speech and other semiotic events mediate personal agency, and evidence from dialogical theories of the self, Jungian psychology, and hypnosis shows a semiotic multiplicity in human agency and consciousness that converges to a central semiotic singularity. The author argues that from a biosemiotic perspective, human agency can be defined as the ability to direct incoming and internal streams of semioses and create an integrative new stream, opening new research into personality and agency.