LIFE, TEMPORALITY AND SEMIOSIS: THE PLACE OF BIOSEMIOTICS WITHIN GENERAL SEMIOTICS 36th Annual Meeting of the Semiotic Society of America

I would like to present some new perspectives on the reciprocal foundational links which are discernable between general semiotics, anthroposemiotics and biosemiotics. To that end I offer an examination of the peculiar place occupied by temporal relations within the relational framework of semiotics. I support these considerations by drawing on previous work about a relational standpoint presently emerging as a unifying perspective within diverse fields of inquiry (biology, quantum physics, philosophy of science, mathematics), which I have previously characterized as a ―relational turn.‖ A common, positive feature of these developments is the recognition of the relational nature of physical reality. This portends an implicit repudiation of the traditional nominalistic bias of the natural sciences and removes a long-standing obstacle to the acceptance of semiotics. Until recently these new approaches have only considered relations of a dyadic nature, or their dyadic combinations. I argue for the need to supplement the Peircean elucidation of semiosis in terms of triadicity with other equally unique relational features, which I characterize as ―radical temporality‖ and selfreference. A brief sketch of the different roles played by relations of temporality in organisms in general (biosemiotics) as opposed to in organisms immersed in a historically constituted culture of symbols and artifacts (anthroposemiotics) serves to disclose the relations of mutual epistemic dependence that underlie these disciplines.