![]() | This article may be very hard to understand.(June 2021) |
The semiosphere is a concept in biosemiotic theory, according to which - contrary to ideas of nature determining sense and experience[1][2][dead link][3] - the phenomenal world is a creative and logical structure of processes of semiosis where signs operate together to produce sense and experience.[4][5]
Biosemiotics proposes the primacy of the 'semiosphere' over the biosphere; it is concerned with living systems as nested sets of surfaces. The surface is where multiple signaling processes act on the cell membrane according to contextual recognition.
Our intuition of reality is a consequence of a mutual interaction between the two: Jakob von Uexküll's private world of elementary sensations (Merkzeichen, 'perceptual signs') coupled to their meaningful transforms into action impulses (Wirkzeichen, 'operation signs'); and the phenomenal world (Umwelt), that is, the subjective world each animal models out of its 'true' environment (Natur, 'reality'), which reveals itself solely through signs.
Any environment accommodates numerous organisms, and the plurality of Umwelt in communication constitutes a semiosphere. Semiospheres are emergent systems structured by the triadic logic of signs rather than ecological niches structured by adaptive mechanisms.
It is important that we see the semiosphere not merely as a network of human and artificial intelligence, a kind of world-wide technological exchange but, in keeping with Lotman's view, as a membrane of human conscious acts, which makes communication possible, but cannot be reduced to mere communication and exchange of 'know how.'
Mandelker
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