Wolfgang Wildgen Semiosis based on the principles saillance and prgnance - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

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Wolfgang Wildgen Semiosis based on the principles saillance and prgnance

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In the sequel of a letter exchange with the biologist Waddington Thom saw ... 'Pr gnanz' (imprinting) in birds (ants, geese, etc.). During a short period after ... – PowerPoint PPT presentation

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Title: Wolfgang Wildgen Semiosis based on the principles saillance and prgnance


1
Wolfgang WildgenSemiosis based on the
principles saillance and prégnance
  • 18-19-20 luglio 2005
  • Semiosi e catastrofi. Leredità semiotica di René
    Thom/ Semiosis et catastrophes. Lhéritage
    sémiotique de René Thom/ Semiosis and
    Catastrophes. René Thom's semiotic heritage.

2
Thoms itinerary towards semiophysics
  • In the sequel of a letter exchange with the
    biologist Waddington Thom saw language in a quasi
    continuity with biological development
    (morphogenesis).
  • The model proposed by Waddington and elaborated
    by Thom was rather global and concerned the major
    topological features and the process of
    differentiation as such (bifurcations, appearance
    of barriers, separation of specific organs and
    subfunctions, etc.).
  • In this realm, Thom could apply the new results
    obtained in catastrophe theory based on the
    classification theorem.

3
Controversies
  • At this point the geometry of the umbilics was
    not yet known in detail and in the second version
    Thom added some remarks concerning the umbilics,
    but he did not modify the list of semantic
    archetypes, although those derived from the
    umbilics could not be maintained under the new
    insights.
  • The classification of paths which had been done
    intuitively by Thom was also problematic for all
    catastrophes beyond the cusp .
  • Meanwhile, the catastrophe controversy which
    regarded mainly the applications proposed by
    Christopher Zeeman (cf. Sussmann and Zahler,
    1978) had weakened the international interest in
    applications.

4
Thoms model of semiosis
  • In the same period (after 1978) Thom went one
    step further and tried to specify the forces
    which govern the process of semiosis and not only
    the topology of its outcomes.
  • Thom first tried to link the forces of the
    morphogenesis of meaning to known basic forces
    like gravitation, radiation (light), etc. These
    universal fields embed the living beings and
    govern their environment (ecology). They are
    naturally the background of all perceptual and
    motor processes.
  • In perception, light is at the basis of our
    visual perception gravitation underlies human
    and animal motor-processes and the sensation of
    pressure and weight sound waves are registered
    by the ear and chemical substances evoke
    reactions of our taste and smell organ.

5
Semiophysics
  • As the dynamics of such fields (e.g., light) have
    been the topic of physics since Newton, and wave
    dynamics were the topic of specific mathematical
    treatments since Maxwell, it was straightforward
    for Thom to postulate a specific field that is
    registered and filtered by our sensory organs. He
    called it saillance, i.e., those effects which
    stand out, may be selected as informative in a
    psychophysical field.
  • His program was to extract as much systematic
    content as he could from the analogy between
    physical fields and perceptual fields.
  • Insofar as perception is the basic stratum of
    semiosis, any perceptually basis symbolic
    structure elaborates the psychophysical fields of
    our sensory systems.

6
Remaining gap
  • Although this strategy from physics to semiotics
    allowed for the transfer of many mathematical
    techniques, which had been shown to be successful
    in physics, there remained a large gap between
    psychophysics (the level of perception) and
    linguistic (or cultural) semiosis.
  • The term prégnance had to fill this gap and to
    explain the transition between very basic
    perceptual reactions and language.

7
The concept of prégnance
  • The basic meaning of the term introduced by Thom
    comes from German Prägnanz, which has been
    internationalized by gestalt-psychology. In
    German the adjective prägnant means that
    something perceived, enounced, remembered has
    outstanding properties, which catch attention,
    makes it relevant, important in a specific
    situation one also associates brevity (laconism)
    and sudden effect as in jokes or aphorisms with
    it.
  • Other words, that may be associated to this
    lexical field, are prägen, Prägung, i.e., the
    coining of piece of money or the imprinting of a
    sign on an object.
  • Prägnanz has a positive value in
    gestalt-psychology insofar as the term gute
    Gestalt (optimal form) refers also to
    Prägnanz.

8
  • Prägnanz has a positive value in
    gestalt-psychology insofar as the term gute
    Gestalt (optimal form) refers also to
    Prägnanz.
  • The term in French prégnance (or even less
    evident in English pregnance) should be
    understood as a lean-translation with the lexical
    content of German Prägnanz.

9
The scientific use of the concept
  • In Pavlovs experiments with dogs, they salivate
    if presented with meat and learn the
    conditioned reflex of an associated bell.
  • Konrad Lorenz observed the process called
    Prägnanz (imprinting) in birds (ants, geese,
    etc.). During a short period after they left the
    egg, many birds select rather unspecific stimuli
    in their environment and quickly elaborate basic
    concepts like that of a mother bird.
  • Jakob von Uexküll. A similar concept of
    Bedeutungswelt (meaningful universe) was
    proposed by another biologist, Jakob von Uexküll.
    For Uexküll every animal creates its own
    Bedeutungswelt which depends first on its
    windows of perception and then on its vital need.

10
  • In the realm of psychology Gibson elaborated the
    concepts of prägnante Gestalt and Valenz of
    his teacher Koffka and coined the term of
    affordance. Any object or process in our
    environment may have affordances thus a chair
    allows for sitting, a bed for sleeping, etc.
  • Cassirer generalized the perceptual/motoric
    Prägnanz to symbolische Prägnanz as
    perception is the first level of semiosis (symbol
    creation) in his system.
  • The application of the concept Prägnanz
    (imprinting) to language acquisition was proposed
    by William Stern, who recognized a type of
    goal-oriented, internally controlled process in
    language acquisition.

11
Thom adds two new ideas
  • The salience (saillance) effect in perception
    may be linked via psycho-physical laws to the
    dynamics of objective fields in physics and
    chemistry .
  • The prégnance effect applies to the topology of
    salient objects and events via a process called
    diffusion de prégnance (channeling of
    prégnance). In this channeling the multiple
    forms of (perceptual) saillance are molded into
    the instinctive and inborn (poor) forms and
    elaborate them to rich and context-dependent
    fields of categorical perception and behavior.

12
Where mathematics come in
  • It was clear (for Thom) that the psychophysical
    transition calls for the application of the laws
    of physical dynamics
  • The first line has been further elaborated by the
    group of Turvey, Kelso and others and in my own
    work.
  • The second line (diffusion of prégnance), calls
    for something like fluid dynamics and models of
    growth in space and time.
  • One may ask however if the generalization of
    mathematical models from physics to psychology
    (neuropsychology) and from there for linguistics
    (semiotic systems) is philosophically sound. The
    work of Cassirer (mainly after 1935) may guide
    this inquiry.

13
Mathematics in psychology and semiotics
Cassirers scepsis
  • The basic question are
  • How is the mathematical study of the physical
    world related to the study of the mental and the
    cultural word?
  • Is there continuity such that the concepts of
    mathematics successful in the scientific capture
    of features in the objective world may be applied
    (with the same success) to the mental and the
    cultural world?

14
Answers
  • In mathematical Platonism, the mathematical model
    has an existence of its own right and its
    application to physics is just one possible field
    among many.
  • A more synthetic view of mathematics assumes a
    specific adaptation to major problems of physics
    and technology in the course of millennia
  • An even more radical view (Lakoff) may even state
    that mathematics are a specialized deformation of
    natural (language) reasoning and thus are biased
    for the analysis of language and culture.

15
Cassirers position
  • Cassirer argued in several articles written
    towards the end of his life, that mathematics
    (mainly Kleins geometry and topology) describe
    only a realm of possibilities (e.g., possible
    Euclidean and non-Euclidean geometries) and that
    an empirical study of visual perception can at
    its best select, specify, even combine these
    geometries or their features.
  • The basic selection must be made based on
    empirical arguments. The fact that certain
    mathematical structures have been invented
    historically does not allow any statement about
    the structure of visual perception.

16
Leytons critique of the Klein (Erlangen) Program
  • Leyton (2001) even argues that the invariant
    structures arrived at by Felix Klein have
    eliminated the memory and thus the information
    contained in visual and linguistic (symbolic)
    forms.
  • Leytons criticism affects Thoms models insofar
    as elementary catastrophes correspond to the
    geometrical groups of regular polygons, Platonic
    solids, etc. (cf. Slodowy, 1995). Therefore, one
    may assume that the elementary catastrophes are
    structures stripped off their (semantic)
    information and that via deformation, breaking of
    symmetry and combination of the catastrophe
    schemata the information may be recovered or
    reconstructed.

17
A new perspective on Thoms proposals
  • This puts a new interpretation on Thoms
    semiophysics but the major concern is now, not
    how to find (or construct) the archetypes, but
    how to describe the modes of accumulating
    meaning, starting from these meaningless forms.
  • The process of diffusion de prégnance is now
    rather a process of meaning creation than of
    meaning distribution from an original source full
    of (pregnant with) meaning.
  • This puts Thoms semiophysics from its head to
    its feet and at the same time it diminishes the
    role of basic releasers

18
The propagation of prégnance and the dynamics
of language
  • All basic meanings are theoretical entities,
    i.e., they are difficult or impossible to
    observe, but must be assumed in order to
    understand the observable effects.
  • We may observe basic behavioral categories in
    babies, register the semantic structures in
    one-word or two-word utterances and finally
    describe the lexicon and syntax of the adult
    language.

The theoretical starting level S0 must evolve
regularly given a human genome and normal
conditions of maturation (before birth).
19
  • At birth only some auditory capacities already
    developed in the womb exist the first period of
    development concerns our other sensory organs and
    basic motor programs (cf. Piagets senso-motor
    level of cognitive development).
  • The genome cannot code for specific sensory forms
    or motor-patterns, i.e., it can only fix some
    gradients that allow the detection of relevant
    input in order to trigger the process of
    elaboration (intrinsic) and learning (extrinsic).
  • Parallel to these basic gradient-fields the
    sensory capacities and corresponding categorical
    and memory capacities evolve. For simplicity
    sake, I assume only one basic (inborn) gradient
    (a correlate could be found in the genetic code)
    called P (prégnance).

20
  • A first division of P may be due to the
    multiplicity of Si. If the different sense organs
    evolve in a consecutive order, e.g., Sau(ditive)
    ? Svi(sual), the types of P invested by Sau may
    condition the structure of P invested by Svi.
    This leads to a cascade of Pk invested by Si
  • The same thing may occur with all sensory fields
    (whose number is open, traditionally five,
    maximally 30). If the first investments prefigure
    the later, we obtain a more complicated net

21
Evolutionary dynamics of language
  • A new level is reached in alarm calls, i.e.,
    perception is coupled to a behavior which is able
    to redistribute the perception and triggered
    action to a community (independent of
    consciousness, free will or intentionality).
  • In this case, the category of interpretant begins
    to surface in behavior (not yet in
    consciousness). If the propagation of P is the
    base line which links perception and action, than
    the alarm is caused by the stability of the link
    between both which causes thirdness (the
    interpretant).

22
The alarm-call is perceived and causes action (in
adult animals who have learned the rule) and we
can proceed further in the hierarchy of semiosis.
The circular process of semiosis begins.
23
Selforganization of complex systems
  • If call-repertoires beyond the number of two,
    three, four evolve this may be assumed as soon
    as bodily group communication (e.g., lousing) is
    replaced by call patterns (cf. the work of
    Dunbar).
  • A new type of phenomenon occurs which may be
    called the denotational and connotational fields.
    The set of external and social meanings is now
    organized by criteria of parsimony and distance
    in a semantic space.
  • For the denotational space, processes of
    metonymical and metaphorical generalization have
    been shown to be crucial cf. Lakoff and Johnson
    (1980).
  • In the case of social meanings Osgood was able to
    show that an abstract space E (Evaluation), P
    (Potency) and A (Activity) may be assumed.

24
Propagation of prégnance P into more and more
segmented attractor fields
  • The simple propagation of prégnance typically
    produces a cascade of attractors with diminishing
    energy,

25
Valence patterns
  • In the case of valence we must assume two stages
  • A bifurcation into two categorically opposed
    fields e.g., subjectpredicate (or
    topiccomment figureground trajectorylandmark)
    .
  • In the next stage a bifurcation of one nominal
    role (NP) into two or three (in extreme cases
    four).
  • The valence pattern is described by a conflict of
    prégnances in Thom (1978c 76). If these
    conflicts are stripped off their specific
    intentional and real-life content, a formal
    topologico-dynamic pattern is left, which can be
    matched against the hierarchy of elementary
    catastrophes in Thom (1972).

26
Is there a pragmatic prégnance?
  • The fact that full linguistic competence is
    neither achieved under extreme social depravation
    as in Kaspar-Hauser cases suggests the necessary
    maturation of a specifically human social
    competence.
  • If autism has genetic sources, there may even be
    a genetic basis for this maturation i.e. genes
    and social context must be guaranteed in order to
    allow for language acquisition.

27
  • This type of imprinting may be specific for
    humans, although precursors may exist in other
    social mammals, and more specifically primates
    (cf. bonobos). It could have evolved out either
    of more primitive sexual and/or child rearing
    instincts.
  • A neural precondition were probably the mirror
    neurons which allow for motor imitation and
    sympathy effects with the other
  • The ethic principle love your next is perhaps
    the best compression of this prégnance feature.

28
Linguistic/cognitive consequences
  • Multi-agent systems and conflicts/alliances
    between agents presuppose a social schema which
    goes beyond perceptual saillance
    (center/periphery and prototype effects may
    generalize based on saillance).
  • The agent/patient opposition makes use of the
    basic consciousness of self/other.
  • Causal cognition elaborates the effect Ego
    has/intends to have on others and reinterprets
    the interaction with objects in this
    agent/patient light.
  • The instrumental relation is further elaborated
    in the context of early tool industries or it
    gives rise to these industries and thus to modern
    technology and science.

29
Conjecture on the source of valence patterns
  • The complexity of valence patterns and basically
    already the possibility of predication ask for
    something beyond animal instincts (hunger,
    thirst, sex) and sensory categorization and make
    up the basic human nature of natural languages.
  • The genetic disposition for this faculty is still
    open, but a morphosemiosis without such a factor
    remains incomplete.

30
Conclusions
  • If we remember the skeptical remarks by Cassirer
    concerning the psychology of perception, we can
    say that the mathematically derived archetypes
    are only an abstract set of possible schemata,
    which may find applications in rather divergent
    fields.
  • The specific choice, elaboration and filling is
    an empirical task in semiotics.
  • The empirical specification may be found at
    different levels
  • classificatory procedures of descriptive
    linguistics, which specify semantic roles and
    frames (valence patterns),
  • experimental psycholinguistics and developmental
    results concerning the formation and
    interpretation of sentences,
  • neurolinguistics and neurodynamics of sentence
    production and understanding,
  • evolutionary anthropology and genetics (which
    have to include a social factor).
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