A-life, Organism and Body: the semiotics of emergent levels

This paper comments upon some of the open problems in artificial life (cf. Bedeau et al 2000) from the perspective of a philosophy of biology tradition called qualitative organicism, and more specifically the emerging field of biosemiotics, the study of life processes as sign processes. Semiotics, in the sense of the pragmaticist philosopher and scientist Charles S. Peirce, is the general study of signs, and biosemiotics attempts to provide a new ground for understanding the nature of molecular information processing and sign processes at higher levels as well. Although we should not expect in Peirce to find any answers to the theoretical challenges and open questions posed by ‘Wet’ Artificial Life, his semiotics (along with emergentist theories and cyborg studies) provide inspiration and conceptual tools to deal with the problems of life, mind, and information in the