Information and Semiosis in Living Systems: A Semiotic Approach

Or, to put it in more detailed terms, the production of an effect of the sign on the interpreter results from the communication of the form of the object (as a regularity), via sign, to the interpretant. The interpretant then becomes itself a sign which refers to the object in the same manner in which the original sign refers to it (i.e., there is an invariance in the reconstruction of the form of the object by the interpreter).

as a connection between form and matter, and logically (W 1.276), as the product of extension and intension of a concept.

That which is communicated from the Object through the Sign to the Interpretant is a Form; that is to say, it is nothing like an existent, but is a power, is the fact that something would happen under certain conditions (EP2, p. 544, n.22).

Peirce (CP 8.177) writes that a sign determines an interpretant in some ‘actual’ or ‘potential’ Mind (in other passages, a ‘quasi-mind’. See CP 4.536). We take this suggestion to introduce in our analysis a differentiation between ‘potential’ and ‘effective’ semiosis. Potential semiosis is defined as a triadically-structured process which is not taking place, which is only in potency. Effective semiosis, in turn, is a sign in effective action, i.e., a sign which, by being actualized, has an actual effect on the interpreter.

In sum, the semiotic analysis of the genetic information system developed above leads to the following conclusions:

  

(i)i.          Genes should be regarded as signs in DNA, which can only have any effect on a cell through a triadic-dependent process (semiosis);

  

(ii)ii.          This process is genetic information and involves more than just genes as signs in DNA but also objects and interpretants;

  

(iii)iii.          Genetic information is the process by means of which a form in a dynamical object (a functional protein) is communicated to an interpretant (the reconstruction of a specific sequence of amino acids in a cell) by means of signs in DNA