A Biosemiotic Approach to the Problem of Structure and Agency

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.

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Abstract

A human being is the simultaneous composite of several different levels of being, from atomic and subatomic to the level of complex social interaction, and these levels are nested within the individual hierarchically (lower levels giving rise to higher levels, etc.). One of the most important and influential approaches developed in the history of science has been that of systems theory and systemic thinking, in which the different levels of the hierarchy, and the interactions between those levels, are considered simultaneously. Although this model provides a comprehensive view of biological being, the transition from one level to the other is not well defined in it. Uexküll and Pauli (Advances: Journal of the Institute for 417 the Advancement of Health 3:158–174, 1986 ) suggested that semiosis is the translator of the events from one level to the other. From a psychological point of view, a myriad of semiotic events happen inside an individual, and it has been suggested that among other semiotic events, inner speech plays an important role in mediating personal agency . Dialogical theories of the self, Jungian psychology and hypnosis research evidence show that there is a semiotic multiplicity in human agency and consciousness, and that these multiple streams are all converge to a central semiotic singularity. I argue in this paper that by taking a biosemiotic point of view, human ‘agency’ may be defined as the ability of an individual to direct the incoming and internal streams of semioses and the ability to create an integrative and superordinate new stream of semiosis in addition to the upwardly and downwardly component ones, and how such a view might open a new door for research into the concept of human ‘personality’ and ‘agency’.