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A Higher Happiness

Bar-Hillel, Yehoshua 1969. Review of Introduction to Theoretical Linguistics by John Lyons. Semiotica 1(4): 449-459. DOI: 10.1515/semi.1969.1.4.449

May I start with quoting myself (from one of the Forum talks, ibid., p. 16):
Who does not know that one has to distinguish betwen a sentence, qua abstract linguistic entity, and an utterance of it, qua concrete physical product of some linguistic act, or even between a sentence and the set of all its actual and potential utterances? (One does not have to make this distinction by using these terms, of course; anything will do, so long as it is realized that one has to deal here with two entities which are different under any name.) But are you really sure that you know how to avoid the trap of regarding (as has been done quite often in the past) this distinction as being of the well-known type-token kind or of the class-member kind? And are you really sure that you will know how to make this distinction when making it is crucial? I could give you hundreds of quotations, including recent ones from leading linguists, where it is obvious that the distinction was not made in places where it hurts.
Now, Lyons is one of the few linguists who insist that "a distinction must be made between 'utterances' and 'sentences'" (p. 52) and that "this distinction [...] is fundamental in most modern linguistic theory", being a distinction between units of langue vs. instances of parole. (Bar-Hillel 1969: 450)

Turns of sentence/utterance follows the speech/language distinction. Pointing out the fundamental nature of this distinction I would term Gardinerismus (with intended Germanicism?) since he appeared to take pleasure in pointing out who does and who does not follow this distinction.

Lyons seems to miss the point here and thereby to create an unnecessary confrontation. What Chomsky and other linguists have in mind is that whether a sequence of words is grammatical is, at the pretheoretical level of the explicandum, (trivially) independent of any particular system [|] of rules, while it becomes (trivially) dependent on such systems, at the theoretical level of the explicatum. Linguists will then differ (as will ordinary people) when attempting to clarify the explicandum 'grammatical' and will differ on the adequacy of a proposed explication, but they will hardly differ on the question whether according to some given set of rules a particular sequence of words will be generated or not. (Bar-Hillel 1969: 454-455)

The rules of grammar are unconscious and become conscious when they are broken. Does this apply on other sign systems, which are sometimes defined as rule-based?

The appropriate place for probabilities is in the rules of correspondence (or interpretation, etc.) that connect linguistic theory with linguistic behavior (language with speech, competence with performance). (Bar-Hillel 1969: 456)

Is language... linguistic theory?

Shands, Harley C. 1970. Momentary Deity and Personal Myth: A Semiotic Inquiry Using Recorded Psychotherapeutic Material. Semiotica 2(1): 1-34.

Over the more recent past, evidence (much of it derived from respected scientific inquiry) gives strong support to a different notion, namely, that communicative techniques necessarily affect the subject matter communicated. The emerging study of patterned communication has been termed semiotics, and perhaps its primary supposition is that of the transactional nature of the relation involving signifying and signified. This view suggests that there is a myriad of 'realities' each of which is significantly related to its appropriate modality of patterned communication (Cassirer 1923: 356). (Shands 1970: 1)

How do the means of communication condition the reality communicated about?

The central importance of these states is the possibility that it is only in such states that truly meaningful influences can be exerted on the one by other persons, usually on a novice by another in the role of preceptor. The specific subdivision of this general problem is that of the psychotherapeutic relation, in which the preceptor-therapist is assigned the task of helping the novice-patient learn more successful techniques of human relatedness. (Shands 1970: 2)

Preceptor is a teacher or instructor. In "informative" communication models, it is implied that the sender is a quasi-preceptor and the receiver a quasi-novice.

On the other hand, there are two other kinds of acute, conscious human experience obviously of intense formative importance; these are falling in love and religious conversion. In both instances we regularly observe at first or second hand that the elevation of a state of human relatedness to the 'transcendent' level of romantic love or of intense religious ecstasy is powerfully influential in changes in behavior or in character in human beings. (Shands 1970: 3)

Sometimes these go hand in hand.

The transcendent experience serves to unify those sharing it into a group bound together by a common experience and so differentiated from the common run of humanity. The claim validly made by those who have passed through the experience is that no one who has not done so can 'know' the experience - usually this idea gets expanded into the less tenable notion that no one who has not had the experience can know 'the truth', but this idea seldom survives the test of relativity. (Shands 1970: 4)

"The process called communization exposes people to similar experiences and although they do not transmit to each other feelings or thoughts, they know that the other person has some understanding because of the common experience" (Ruesch & Prestwood 1972[1950a]: 327).

In the contemporary scene, in sharp contrast, we find in an increasingly secular age that the search for transcendent experience is no longer a matter of religious belief. Instead, the search involves the use of drugs (LSD, psilocybin, mescaline, marijuana). [...] The interesting common feature appears to be that through the use of drugs, it is much easier to reach transcendent levels of feeling, with at least temporary feelings of uniting, "of oneness with this other person and a oneness with all the world" (Bowers et al., 1967). (Shands 1970: 5)

Today this is common knowledge. Bowels, Malcolm; A. Chipman, A. Schwartz and O. T. Dann 1967. Dynamics of Psychedelic Drug Abuse. Archives of General Psychiatry 16: 560-56.

What these trends in their various contexts of origin suggest - to a [|] rather mundane interpretation - is that the human condition is one in which the primary gratification and feeling of strength comes from a sense of union with his group; on the converse, all of the negative feelings of the human being have close relations with isolation and alienation. In another place in the same essay, Cassirer discusses the mechanism suggested by Usener as a primary source of religious feeling and by implication as a primary method of binding a group together through the use of a consensually shared belief system. (Shands 1970: 5-6)

That's a pretty bold correlation, though on first sight seems to bear scrutiny in relation with the universal emotions (cf. Ekman & Friesen 1969).

The problem of free-floating attention is faced not only by the patient in the therapeutic situation but as well by any creative artist attempting principally to express some significant emotional experience in words or on canvas. Unless he can allow himself to be sufficiently 'loose', as many art teachers prescribe, he cannot allow himself to be the executor of his own imagination. (Shands 1970: 12)

This has become popular recently in terms of diffuse consciousness, i.e. why good ideas come to people when they shower - unconsciously formed ideas can manifest themselves when the mind is not focused on anything. In the next paragraph, same page: "The rationale sometimes offered is that only when conscious direction is relaxed can one see the results of the kind of 'unconscious' structuring which reveals what is ordinarily automatically concealed."

Torop, Peeter 1999. Cultural semiotics and culture. Sign Systems Studies 27: 9-24.

In his theses "Art among Modeling Systems" Lotman defined model through the analogue of an object perceived and the language of a modeling system or the notion of analogue of language. Correspondingly he used the notion of secondary modeling system to describe the functioning mechanisms of systems using natural language as material (Lotman 1990: 8-9). In the framework of this treatment, the status of a secondary modeling system is obtained by poetic language in relation to written language, or the language of pictorial arts in relation to the language of consciousness, i.e. natural language into which it is translatable or by which it is describable. According to this logic, natural language is the primary modeling system in relation to reality, and the secondary modeling system, as a language of description, relates to all other languages of art and in wider sense languages of culture (mythology, religion, behavioral norms, etc.). (Torop 1999: 10)

What is the language of consciousness?

Eco viewed Lotman's extralinguistic attitude to the code as leaving borders of structuralism: "Lotman still understood that looking at text as a message produced on the basis of linguistic code is not at all the same as viewing the text (or set of cultural texts) as a code. Because he was aware of the fact that there is no historical period with one cultural code (although the modelhood constructed can be efficient abstraction), and that in every culture diverse codes exist simultaneously. [...] In the course of his studies Lotman still reached the conclusion that a code identified in culture is much more complicated than the one that can be identified in language, and his analyses became more and more witty and obtained the background of bright and complicated historical knowledge" (Eco 1994: 600-601). (Torop 1999: 11)

Highlighting the importance of Jakobson's permanent dynamic synchrony for cultural semiotics, where "subcodes" can be nonlinguistic (encompassing all artificial sign systems?).

Culture, in turn, is also describable through the description of three levels: a level of subtextual meanings, a level of culture as a system of texts, and a level of culture as a set of functions serving texts (Lotman 1970: 73-77). By the beginning of the 1980s, the symbiosis of text and culture has taken place, and the text as a monolingual foration has become into multilingual and semiotically heterogeneous formation that, all the more, has intellectual capabilities and memory. Besides recording and transmitting a message, the text is also concerned with the creation of new information. (Torop 1999: 13)

Is this not a personification of "text"? How dynamic can a fixed series of signs be?

Thus the most important notion of semiosphere is the boundary. Once Lotman needed the notion of framedness in order to confine the text. New it is boundary what frames the semiosphere, but the entanglement of boundaries inside semiosphere is just as important: "the boundary of semiotic space is the most important function and structural position of this space that determines the essence of the semiotic mechanism of it. Boundary is a bilingual mechanism that translates external messages into the internal language of semiosphere and vice versa. So it is only through the boundary the semiosphere can be in contact with the non-semiotic and alien semiotic space." (Torop 1999: 18)

I wonder if "transduction" wouldn't be a more accurate term for the translation on the boundary of the semiosphere (cf. Hoffmeyer 2008: 176).

Portis-Winner, Irene 1999. The dynamics of semiotics of culture; its pertinence to anthropology. Sign Systems Studies 27: 24-45.

Among the agenda coming to the fore In the spirit of such semiotically oriented scholars as Charles Sanders Peirce, Mikhail Bakhtin, Roman Jakobson, Jurij M. Lotman, V. V. Ivanov and B. A. Uspenskij are the following: the close relations between verbal and non-verbal realms; an emphasis on ambiguity and dynamics in place of static structures; the integration as well as tension and factions within and between cultural units; the search for the inner point of view including memory; the significance of culturally specific versions of history and their relations to official accounts, and the fefect of the anthropologist upon the group studied. (Porti-Winner 1999: 24)

"Peirce and the Russians" might be a suitable band name.

Innis finds that the position of Peirce, Bühler, and Cassirer "arrive at the same conclusion: the theory of perception must necessarily advert to the sign-functions of the sense data found in it" (Innis 1994: 4-5). Innis also notes Vološinov's argument that "not only does 'expression organize experience' but 'there is no such thing as experience outside of embodiment in signs'" (1994: 5, citing Vološinov 1933). (Porti-Winner 1999: 26)

Above, language was defined as linguistic theory (Bar-Hillel 1969: 456), which makes a bit of sense with regard to stuff like "theory of mind" (ToM), but here it seems that the object- and meta-level have gotten confused: how can a theory of perception (not itself perception) "advertise" its data to semiosis? Weird. I'd like to agree that a semiotics of perception is a significant part of Peirce's semiotic theory (can't yet speak for Bühler and Cassirer) but at the moment I'm going to slap this with Austin's "signs of cheese" (cf. Adamson 2007: 89).

Importantly, Peirce sees two kinds of objects, which may be verbal or nonverbal, the immediate object and the dynamical object. Peirce's object is anything with which the sign presupposes an acquaintance in order to convey some further information concerning it. Peirce also held that there are various interpretants, the immediate, the dynamical and the final or logical. (Porti-Winner 1999: 27)

From what I've gathered, the "object" is a rather common term in 19th century philosophy. I think Peirce is sometimes gratuitously praised for introducing "the real" into the semiotic equation (where Saussure seems to lack it) when he in fact seems to follow the common sense (philosophy) of the time. The syntax, here, is again confusing for me: are signs "acquainted" with objects? (I would say, with Clay, that signs are the means for a mind to "embrace" the object, but this is no less metaphorical.)

Since "every thought is a sign" and "life is a train of thoughts [...] (this) proves that man is a sign; so that every thought is an external sign, proves that man is an external sign. Thus, "when we think we are at that moment a sign [...] the man and the sign are identical" (CP 5.314). (Porti-Winner 1999: 27)

I can't help thinking this is where logic gets ya. Jam is an existent; man is an existent; hence man is jam. Surely the whole of life is not summarised by "thoughts", lest we limit life to organisms with central nervous systems sufficiently complex to be considered "thinking"; likewise, a man's insides are indeed filled with colourful goo that's tasty to carnivores, but jam is not all we are. I think this is an example of Peirce's "odd sort of conceptualism" (Murphey 1965: 14).

In its Theses (1929) the Prague Circle adopted Buehler's three functions for the verbal message, the referential, the emotive, and the conative. And the Theses added a fourth, the poetic (later broadened to the aesthetic) function focused on the message for its own sake, [...] (Porti-Winner 1999: 28)

"The phenomena of the Inextended Mind are usually comprehended under three heads:" Feeling, Volition, and Thought. Bühler merely translated a commonplace in philosophical psychology into his linguistic psychology. Because of this, I think he is sometimes treated as inventing the system, which appears in fact to reach back to Aristotle, i.e. "the ancient triad of ideals, the true, the beautiful, and the good" (Potter 1966: 14).

In 1960 Jakobson defined two more functions of the message, the phatic and the metalingual. Both have parallels in Bakhtin's program and for Lotman the meta conception is fundamental for all semiotics. (Porti-Winner 1999: 28)

What is Bakhtin's take on or equivalent to the phatic function?

Now, the factual similarity which typifies the icon finds its logically foreseeable correlatie in the imputed similarity which specifies the artifice, and it is precisely for this [|] reason that the latter fits into the whole which is now forever a four-part entity of semiotic modes (Jakobson 1987: 451-452).
It is not clear, I believe, that we need a fourth semiotic mode, the artifice, since may already be accounted for by Peirce's hypoicon and degenerate index. Nor can we necessarily distinguish factual and imputed similarity for they blend into each other in index and symbol. (Porti-Winner 1999: 28-29)

Adept criticism. Exactly what I was thinking when reading the passage. I'd retain that there might be some heuristic advantage to Jakobson's artifice but essentially it's a blend of Peircean categories with continental linguistic thinking, which don't mesh as well IMO as Jakobson thought. Peirce, as far as I know, did not operate with similarity and contiguity in this way. But I get what Jakobson was going for, I intuit it as placing the poetic sign above the common symbol; in a sequence of complexity, the artifice creates a higher-order similarity, i.e. something like Susanne Langer's "formulated feeling" (cf. Freeman 2008: 103).

Madden, Edward H. 1966. James H. Fairchild and the Oberlin Philosophy. Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 2(2): 131-144.

Fairchild's teleological view of moral judgment emerges early in his Moral Science. He writes that duty and obligation depend upon the prior notion of good. He admits that there is a moral use of the word "good" which is exhibited in sentences like "John has a good character"; but he has in mind a non-moral use of "good" exhibited in sentences like "John had a good time." (Madden 1966: 132)

Yes, yes, but why is this paper in this journal?

Since in fact everyone is motivated only by prospects of his own happiness, he must, in order to be a moral agent, find this happiness in acting benevolently - a "higher happiness." Fairchild called this view alternately "the selfish system" and "utilitarianism." He called it the selfish system because it claims that everyone is motivated only by prospects of his own happiness and utilitarianism because it holds that one should act benevolently, for the well-being of all. His criticism of it is skillful and devastating. (Madden 1966: 134)

I'm getting flashbacks to a particular bar scene in A Beautiful Mind, where glasses-wearing Russell Crowe works out the math on every man in the bar scoring a chick, or something like that..

Fairchild, however, quickly runs into difficulty in his efforts to reduce all virtues to the single one of benevolence. A difficulty appears immediately in his analysis of gratitude. A person bears a special relation to his benefactor; he cherishes the well-being of his benefactor because of that special relationship and not simply because he cherishes indiscriminately the well-being of all. If he cherished the well-being of a benefactor because of his love of being in general there would be nothing unique in his attitude to [|] count as gratitude. The same point is true of patriotism. A person bears a special relationship to his fellow countrymen; he cherishes their well-being because of that special relationship and not simply because he cherishes indiscriminately the well-being of all. If he valued the well-being of his countrymen because of his love of being in general there would be nothing unique in his attitude to count as patriotism, nothing to distinguish it from his benevolent attitude toward foreigners. Fairchild was not aware of this problem for he wrote that "in the nature of the case, those with whom we are associated have claims upon us which others have not." "We are specially responsible for their interests," he said, because we have "special ability to serve them." But he missed the point of the special claims. True to form, he gave a teleological analysis of this special relation. We have special obligation to our countrymen because we have greater means to implement their well-being. The point is rather that our special relations determine the nature of our benevolence, making it distinct from all other manifestations of benevolence. (Madden 1966: 136-137)

Turns out that benevolence towards others is dependent upon our association with them. The argument here is utilitarian: in these relationships you can be more benevolent because it's possible; whereas I feel that one is more benevolent in such cases because one desires to benefit friends, acquaintances and the in-group.

Unlike most of his peers, Fairchild spent considerable time analyzing the concept 'wrong' as well as 'right.' He believed that wrong is always pursued for selfish reasons and never for its own sake. "The wrong course is pursued in spite of its wickedness," he wrote, "and not for the sake of it." (Madden 1966: 139)

Made me recall this tidbit: "[...] in my last stages of believing that there was a God, I had real hatred for the fact that he could permit evil and at the same time insist upon the goodness of man... This was related to my feelings that perhaps Dr. S. is completely wrong - perhaps the answer lies in being totally evil..." (in Shands 1970: 17).

Weiner, Philip P. 1967. A Soviet Philosopher's View of Peirce's Pragmatism. Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 3(1): 3-12.

Melvil admits that "In Marxist literature Peirce is almost an unknown," and offers the excuse that little was known about Peirce anywhere during the first third of this century. Students of Peirce, of course, did not have to wait until the 1930's to know that William James's public acknowledgement of Peirce as the founder of pragmatism was made in 1897. Mrs. Ladd-Franklin, one of Peirce's students at The John Hopkins University, paid tribute in 1916 to Peirce's logic of relations, only two years after Peirce's death. Morris R. Cohen surely brought Peirce's philosophy to the attention of the philosophic world in the early 1920's, as did John Dewey in 1922, in a special number devoted to American philosophy in the Revue de Metaphysique et de Morale. It is true that European philosophers knew much more about William James's writings than of Peirce's, perhaps because of the more graphic style of James's essays, and because James was hailed by Bergson and others as a pioneer psychologist; the United States was not expected to produce any noteworthy philosophers. (Weiner 1967: 4)

I had similar, if less informed, objections (cf. Melvil 1966). Also, for future reference, here is the special edition on Peirce in The Journal of Philosophy, containing papers by Royce, Dewey, Ladd-Franklin, Cohen, and others.

Of course, for Soviet philosophers, the only sound logic and methodology must be based on dialectical materialism. Hence, Peirce with his remarkable contributions to the logic and philosophy in Melvil's view of science is an "unusual phenomenon in bourgeois philosophy," and can only be explained as "the typical contradiction of a scientist living in a capitalist country." Why is there no such contradiction in the scientific writings of Marx and Engels, Lomonosov and Pavlov, who also lived in a capitalist society? Evidently revolutionary thinkers and prerevolutionary Russian scientists are exempt from the contradictions which afflict bourgeois scientists. (Weiner 1967: 5)

I believe this is what the modern bourgeois call "a burn".

Despite Peirce's severe and penetrating criticism of Berkeley's and Mill's nominalism, of Mach's and Pearson's sensationism and of James's psychologism, Melvil insists on branding Peirce's pragmatism as "subjective idealism." (Weiner 1967: 6)

Perhaps a point of connection (even if one of criticism) between Peirce and Malinowski, as the latter was a student of E. Mach (cf. Thornton 1985).

Witzany, Guenther 2008. The Viral Origins of Telomeres and Telomerases and their Important Role in Eukaryogenesis and Genome Maintenance. Biosemiotics 1(2): 191-206. DOI: 10.1007/s12304-008-9018-0

Biosemiotics investigates rule-governed, sign-mediated interactions both within and among cells, tissues, organs and organisms. It also investigates genetic sequences as codes/texts that rae coherent with the laws of physics and chemistry but, in addition, follow a complementary mix of combinatorial (syntactic), context-sensitive (pragmatic, content-specific (semantic) rules (Witzany 2000, 2007). (Witzany 2008: 191)

One of my goals is to write up a biosemiotic approach to the cultivation and use of the nootropic plant Bacopa monnieri. The obstacle is finding concrete manifestations of these aspects of sign-mediation.

The gap at the donor site is repaired in a cut-and-paste transposition or filled up with a copy of the transposon by a gap repair technique (Slotkin and Martienssen 2007). Transposons can also integrate themselves in phages and plasmids, and are transferred with them into other cells (Frost et al. 2005). This is evidence for a self/non-self differentiation competence. (Witzany 2008: 194)

A fundamental indicator of "purpose", self-protection. Arguably, the secondary metabolites called bacosides in BM are part of the plant's immune system; deduced from the fact that the contents of these secondary metabolites is very low in an intact plant (cf. Sharma et al. 2015b: 746).

To understand the evolutionary emergence of the eukaryotic nucleus with its key features such as telomeres and telomerases in the eukaryotic replication process, it could be useful to reconstruct the natural genome-editing competences of viruses (Witzany 2006). Recent research in microbiology, based on comparative genomics and phylogenetic analyses, has demonstrated that life must be viewed from the [|] perspective of the crucial role played by viruses (Forterre 2001, 2002, 2005, 2006a, b; Kroonin 2006; Villarreal 2005; Tran et al. 2004). [↩] This contradicts former concepts which focused on viruses in the framework of (1) escape theories, i.e. viruses are intact or deformed genetic praasites which escaped from cellular life, or considered that viruses (2) evolved from cellular ancestors or (3) that they are not living beings because they cannot live without cellular life. From these perspectives, viruses could not play crucial roles in the evolution of cellular life. [↩] Interestingly, phylogenetic analyses do not support the former concept of RNA and DNA viruses descending from cellular life. These analyses also show that DNA viruses and RNA viruses most probably did not have a common ancestor but evolved independently. Viruses probably have to be placed at the very beginning of life, long before cellular life evolved (Villareal 2005). (Witzany 2008: 197-198)

An earlier paper in this journal briefly made the same point but in more condensed form. Nice to have this made explicit.

Persistent endogeneous agents competent in both natural genetic engineering and natural genome editing apparently prefer a special kind of habitat characterized as non-coding DNA sectors. They use a syntax mainly consisting of repeats. They colonize analogous DNA genomes by inserting their sites between coding elements; then they use these coding elements for different needs. This developed to the point that, in the human genome, only 3% of coding regions remained. The remaining 97% serves as a habitat for persistent viral operators that orchestrate a highly sophisticated division of labour. (Witzany 2008: 201)

Viruses edit or "junk DNA"?

Kleiner, Karel 2008. The Semantic Morphology of Adolf Portmann: A Starting Point for the Biosemiotics of Organic Form? Biosemiotics 1(2): 207-219. DOI: 10.1007/s12304-008-9014-4

Adolf Portmann developed an original approach to the phenomenon of life, with special emphasis on its representational aspects (Portmann 1960a, 1960b, 1969). This paper re-introduces and elaborates his basic ideas, in the belief that they can be a source of inspiration for modern biosemiotics. The evolution of particular constituents of the body may be driven, not only by selective pressures that increase their functional utility, but also by their ability to interact with the umwelten of other living beings in a meaningful and contextual way. This is to say that without these interactions, the functioning of any sexual display, mimicry or deceptive behavior can hardly be understood. Organs of display (i.e., semantic organs) act through the meaning that they acquire during umwelt-specific interpretations. (Kleiner 2008: 207)

If organs of display are semantic organs, are organs of functional utility "pragmatic organs"?

Organic form can be explained by two kinds of causes: extrinsic and intrinsic. Reasoning from extrinsic causation emphasizes the influence of various forms of selective pressures caused either by other organisms or by environmental conditions. This way of reasoning is entirely at the service of survival. Every part of an organism must be formed in such a way as to fulfill its life-sustaining function; from this it follows that reproduction is the sole and ultimate purpose of all formal-structural representations of life. Consequently, reproduction in the sole referential frame that is adequate to explain all manifestations of life. [↩] On the other hand, reasoning from intrinsic causation accents the importance of the inner potentialities of organisms that generate a particular form. (Kleiner 2008: 208)

Live to breed. See, for example, "the selfish gene" and the idea that life consists primarily of self-replication.

The uniqueness of Adolf Portmann's approach may be found in his explanation that organic form is in itself something valuable. Portmann acknowledged that the external surface of an organism has its own formal value and a certain kind of autonomy over other life-sustaining functions. He was convinced that this outermost aspect of an organism opens a way to the innermost dimensions, because surface manifestation reflects inner self-experience and the very selfhood of every organic being, thus bringing us closer to understanding the existence of living creatures (Portmann 1969: 315). For these reasons he developed a terminology, or rather a conceptual framework, specific to such a purpose. (Kleiner 2008: 209)

"And, not coincidentally, the skin and the brain both originate from the same germ material, i.e., from the embryo's ectoderm layer" (Hoffmeyer 2008: 171).

This attempt stemmed from Portmann's idea that the opaque surfaces of organisms represent a new specific kind of organ, and not merely a mechanical barrier that binds together inner structures and metabolic processes in order to protect them from external influences. Presumably, the appearance of ornamented opaque surfaces is associated with the origin of vision. It is highly probable that prior to the emergence of vision, most organisms had a semitransparent surface, not dissimilar from the milky whitish semitransparent coloring of vertebrate embryos. A certain comeback of such neutral and indistinct surface colorations is apparent in organisms dwelling in a dark environment, especially in parasitic forms or in inhabitants of caves or of the earth underground. On the contrary, some organisms have developed incredible transparency; consider the naturally transparent frog Hyalinobatrachium bergeri (Castroviejo-Fisher et al. 2007). (Kleiner 2008: 213)

BBC - Earth - The bizarre beasts living in Romania's poison cave: "Despite a complete absence of light and a poisonous atmosphere, the cave is crawling with life. There are unique spiders, scorpions, woodlice and centipedes, many never before seen by humans, and all of them owe their lives to a strange floating mat of bacteria. [...] Many are born without eyes, which would be useless in the dark. Almost all are translucent as they have lost pigment in their skin. Many also have extra-long appendages such as antennae to help them feel their way around in the darkness."

Brandt, Per Aage and John Hobbs 2008. Elements in Poetic Space: A cognitive reading. Cognitive Semiotics 2: 129-145. DOI: 10.1515/cogsem.2008.2.spring2008.129

According to Larsen (1996) and Brandt (1995), human representations manifest distinct but connected versions of an imaginary space, which unfolds canonically into three phenomenologically basic forms: the bio-imaginary, the socio-imaginary, and the phantasmic imaginary. (Brandt & Hobbs 2008: 129)

An eerily familiar trichotomy: natural, cultural, and non-cultural (Lotman); phylogenetic, ontogenetic, and ethogenetic (Harré & Secord 1976). Most generally, the biological, the sociocultural, and the idiosyncratic.

The guiding principle is that the experienceable spaces are articulated by the natural elements into contrasts between proximal and distal sections, and that the bodily experience of 'near' and 'far' is further connected to thymic opposition of euphoric and dysphoric values assigned to figurative content. (Brandt & Hobbs 2008: 129)

Define:thymic - "relating to the thymus gland or its functions". While I've wondered long how to call this opposition (Grammarly doesn't recognize "dystopian" as a word), I'm not sure if the connection with thymus gland is accidental or intentional. Footnote on p. 132 explains: "The term is used as in Greimas & Courtés (1979)."

The inquiry into the semantics of the imaginary as such, or the 'imaginative mind' (Roth 2007), is a new enterprise in cognitive poetics, whereas it has many resonances in modern literary criticism. (Brandt & Hobbs 2008: 129)

This is Roth, Ilona 2007. Imaginative Minds. I wonder if it could be used to elaborate upon the role of imagination in "body language in literature" (which I have ill-termed somatoception).

Presence and proximity are evaluated as euphoric, whereas absence and distance are evaluated as dysphoric. The paradigm now carries a system of 'phoric' or thymic values. In this version or register, which is called the bio-imaginary (Larsen 1996), the proximity of the other is euphoric, while distality is dysphoric. Objects and Others will circulate between these opposite zones in the bio-imaginary. (Brandt & Hobbs 2008: 132)

"[...] the human condition is one in which the primary gratification and feeling of strength comes from a sense of union with his group; on the converse, all of the negative feelings of the human being have close relations with isolation and alienation" (Shands 1970: 5-6).

In keeping with Wordsworth's well-known theory of poetry-writing as motivated by "emotion recollected in tranquility" rather than immediate experiences (Bate 1991: 344), he describes how visual memories of the daffodils repeatedly "flash upon that inward eye", apparently prompting him to write the poem some two yars later. (Brandt & Hobbs 2008: 142)

Poetry, in this sense, is an outcome of "free-floating attention" (cf. Shands 1970: 12).

Tsur, Reuven 2008. Comparing Approaches to Versification Style in Cyrano de Bergerac. Cognitive Semiotics 2: 146-168. DOI: 10.1515/cogsem.2008.2.spring2008.146

Since the first publication of my book Toward a Theory of Cognitive Poetics (1991), many scholars adopted the term "Cognitive Poetics", and it is now widely used - in quite different senses. For instance, there is a difference to be observed between, on the one hand, the understanding informing certain approaches based on cognitive linguistics and, on the other hand, my own understanding of Cognitive Poetics. (Tsur 2008: 146)

Indeed Cognitive Poetics should be the name of this journal because thus far it has touched very little on semiotics. Semiotics is more general than linguistics, including nonverbal sign-processes, and poetics is more specialized than linguistics, only focusing on the aesthetic use of language. From Wikipedia I gathered that Tsur formed his "Cognitive Poetics" approach in 1971 in the U.K., which makes a lot of sense - "cognitive", as a signifier for approaches that have very little to do with cognitive theory, was popular at the time (see Cicourel's Cognitive Sociology).

Sweetser adopts the venerable Form-Content dichotomy; I adopt Wellek and Warren's more recent notion (1942) of "Materials" and "Structure". And, as I said, we are working within a meaning-oriented and a gestalt-oriented theory, respectively. (Tsur 2008: 148)

I don't ride cars; I ride automobiles.

Articulateness and Requiredness are two sides of the same coin; they are aspects of breaking up a whole into segments. When we speak of articulateness, we imply that a whole has been broken into parts, and that this facilitates perception of the whole. When we speak of requiredness, we imply that each part is essentially to the whole: when a part is omitted, there is an acute feeling of incompleteness, of imbalance. Articulateness and requiredness depend on the relative strength of the whole. Requirednesse is possible only where the whole is highly organised. If the integrity of the whole is not felt, then deficiently cannot be felt either. (Tsur 2008: 151)

Unwellformedness.

Actually, lustres ('chandeliers') need not be of a low register; after all, it is a decorative appliance, typically hung from the ceiling of some large, imposing building. Third, the words luster and illustres are opposed as part of speech (noun vs. adjective), reinforcing the dissimilarity of meaning, in spite of the etymological relation. (Tsur 2008: 159)

Sadly this post already has a title. I know of only one instance when a chandelier has become a functional poetic device: "He [A. Kruchonykh] would scream out the first word while covering his mouth with his hand in order to direct his voice toward the ceiling, toward a real chandelier that would begin to tremble and resonate" (Pomorska 1983: 175).

In some of my recent publications, I introduced the notion of "relative finegrainedness" in critical discourse. (Tsur 2008: 164)

Unwellformedness.

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