Slide 70: Biological–Socio-Semiotic Analogy

But, there is a deeper analogy that emerges from this way of modelling.

In proposing a social origin for ‘higher’ consciousness, we suggested that,  through mimesis (imitation), conscious agency can be thought of as propagating through meaning groups down the generations like a wave disturbance through a medium.

We can take this further, and see this propagation of ‘higher’ consciousness through mimesis as the socio-semiotic analogue of biological reproduction.

That is: just as biological reproduction results in the creation of a new biological individual, an organism, socio-semiotic imitation results in the creation of a new socio-semiotic individual, a meaner.

And, just as the creation of a new organism involves the replication of biological potential, through the instantiation of the species genome, the creation of a new meaner involves the replication of semiotic potential, through the instantiation of the language as system.

This, then, adds another dimension to the mapping between biological and socio-semiotic levels of human individuality.

It also resonates with the view expressed by philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer, in his work The World As Will And Representation, that Homo sapiens has gone beyond the notion of species, as applied to other animals, ‘since among men each individual is in himself, as it were, a species’ (Campbell 1991: 33).