The Conventional Understanding of Semiosis

Semiosis is traditionally understood as the production and interpretation of signs.

In linguistics and philosophy, this often involves:

  • symbols
  • representation
  • communication
  • interpretation by a subject

Within biology, semiosis is sometimes extended metaphorically to signalling systems, genetic codes, or animal communication.

These approaches capture important aspects of how organisms interact with their environments, but they can also create confusion.

If semiosis is understood too narrowly, it becomes restricted to language-like representation.
If understood too broadly, all causal interaction risks becoming “meaningful,” making the concept explanatorily weak.

APS reframes semiosis by grounding it in biological organisation.

The APS Reframing

In APS, semiosis is not fundamentally about symbols or representation.

Semiosis is the organisation of differences as mattering within viability-oriented evaluative regulation.

Living systems do not merely undergo physical interactions. They modulate their activity in relation to differences that affect the conditions of their persistence.

A nutrient gradient, a toxin, a temperature shift, or a signal molecule matters to a system because it bears upon the maintenance of viability.

Semiosis therefore arises wherever differences are integrated into evaluative biological activity.

Semiosis and Evaluation

Semiosis depends upon evaluation.

  • Viability establishes the conditions required for persistence
  • Normativity establishes what counts as success or failure relative to those conditions
  • Evaluation modulates activity relative to those conditions
  • Semiosis structures differences as mattering within that evaluative activity

Semiosis is therefore not an independent layer added onto biology. It is part of how living systems organise their interactions with the world.

Differences become meaningful because they alter how activity is regulated in relation to viability.

Semiosis Without Representation

APS does not require organisms to internally represent the world in order for semiosis to occur.

Nor does APS identify semiosis with information processing, signal manipulation, or computational responsiveness considered independently of viability-oriented organisation.

A bacterium moving along a chemical gradient does not need a symbolic model of its environment. What matters is that environmental differences are:

  • detected
  • integrated into regulation
  • acted upon relative to viability

Meaning in this sense is organisational and evaluative rather than representational or symbolic.

APS therefore distinguishes biological semiosis from signal processing in general. Artificial systems may register, classify, and respond to differences without those differences participating in viability-oriented organisational persistence. In living systems, semiosis matters because differences become consequential for the continued existence of the organism itself. For further discussion, see Why AI Is Not Biological Agency.

Semiosis therefore does not depend on:

  • language
  • symbolic encoding
  • internal models
  • conscious interpretation

It depends on the organisation of evaluative activity within living systems.

Functional Lineages of Semiosis

Different organisms may realise semiosis through very different structures and mechanisms.

Chemical signalling in bacteria, hormonal coordination in plants, nervous systems in animals, and symbolic communication in humans all differ materially and evolutionarily.

Yet these systems may participate in related functional lineages insofar as they organise differences as mattering for viability-oriented regulation.

The continuity lies not in identical structures but in the persistence and transformation of organisational roles across evolution.

This allows semiosis to be compared across diverse forms of life without reducing meaning to any particular material substrate or representational architecture.

Semiosis and Cognition

Semiosis and cognition are closely related but not identical.

Semiosis concerns the organisation of differences as mattering for viability.

Cognition arises when semiosis becomes sufficiently integrated and temporally extended such that present regulation is organised in relation to conditions beyond the immediate present.

All cognition therefore involves semiosis, but not all semiosis constitutes cognition.

This distinction allows APS to:

  • ground cognition within biology
  • avoid reducing all life to cognition
  • preserve continuity across living systems

Implications for Biology

Understanding semiosis organisationally has several consequences.

First, it situates meaning within biology itself rather than treating it as something added by minds or observers.

Second, it allows biological systems to be compared without assuming identical neural or representational structures.

Third, it avoids reducing meaning either to:

  • purely physical causation
  • or symbolic representation alone

Meaning becomes a property of viability-oriented organisation.

Semiosis is therefore explained through the same organisational grammar governing biological explanation more generally: agency, process, scale, viability, and evaluation.

Where Semiosis Belongs

In APS, semiosis is the organisation of differences as mattering within viability-oriented evaluative activity.

Living systems regulate themselves in relation to conditions that affect their persistence, and semiosis is the structuring of those conditions within evaluative organisation.

Semiosis therefore grounds biological meaning in viability-oriented organisation rather than representation, allowing continuity across diverse forms of life without reducing meaning to language, symbols, or internal models.