Ontogenetic Development of Symbolicity

Human Arenas https://doi.org/10.1007/s42087-018-0024-8 ARENA OF BECOMING

Ontogenetic Development of Symbolicity Denis K. Ebbesen 1

& Jeppe Olsen

1

Received: 4 February 2018 / Revised: 30 April 2018 / Accepted: 4 May 2018 # Springer International Publishing AG, part of Springer Nature 2018

Abstract In this article, we investigate the development of symbolicity from a semiotic point of view. We kick-start this investigation by drawing some fundamental parallels between the re-configurations of inner-outer exchange relations dealt with in biosemiotics (symbolicity) and general psychology (sentience) respectively. In constructing a developmental account of the emergence of symbolicity, we adopt the scenario methodology from general psychology and apply the semiotic vocabulary from Peirce as an analytical strategy. With this synthesis in mind, we visit the scientific field of multisensory perception that deals specifically with understanding the developmental interrelations of the modalities and, more specifically, the phenomenon of perceptual narrowing. Next, we visit certain parts of theoretical biology, more specifically the theory of code-duality, as this theory offers nuanced understandings of temporality that are underdeveloped within psychology. Thus, an overarching theoretical mission of the article is to eclectically combine psychological development with semiotics, so as to initiate the construction of a theoretical framework that links sentience and symbolicity. Through this investigation, we attempt to show how the digital, in its supervenience on the analogue, temporally modifies the subject’s ability to transit from the initial agency of sense-experience of firstness to the symbolic mental representing of thirdness, thus explaining the phenomenon of perceptual narrowing. Keywords Developmental . Sense modalities . Semiotics . Mental representation . General psychology . Code duality . Perceptual narrowing

* Denis K. Ebbesen [email protected] Jeppe Olsen [email protected]

1

Department of Psychology, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark

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Introduction Linking Semiotics and Psychology to Understand the Development of Symbolicity An age-old question in philosophical psychology is whether there is anything more than senseimpressions to the psyche. If there is no more to the psyche than sense-impressions, psychology can be eliminated from scientific explanations, since sense-impressions would thus be explainable through natural and behavioral sciences (Bunge 2010). However, it is by now accepted to state as a psychological fact that we experience the concrete world through our senses in a manner, which produces meaning not reducible to the organic structure of the nervous system (Johnson 2008; Bateson 1972). Thus, there must be a relationship between sensing and abstract thought to understand and conceptualize that reaches beyond that of sense-impressions. In general psychology, this question has been explored with allusion to the inner/outer characteristics of the activity of the organism (Engelsted 2017). In the most primal form of animal activity, the simplest type of activity relying on such inner/outer characteristics has been termed sentience, following Leontyev and the Russian school of Activity Theory (Engelsted 2017, p. 42). According to Leontyev, hominids have developed in four stages starting from this primal and simple activity (sentience), leaping its way through the stage of operational activity (e.g., dogs) characterized by perception, the stage of intellectual activity (e.g., apes) characterized by insight, until finally reaching the stage of specific human activity characterized by human consciousness (Leontyev 2009, p. 137). According to Engelsted (2017, p. 46), each stage of the phylogenetic development, from sentience to human consciousness, entails different cumulative viewpoints: sentience entails the here-and-now present view; operational activity entails the future view through its intentional character; intellectual activity entails the past view; and the specific human activity entails the outside view. Thus, already sentience can be claimed to be a “minimal” type of exchange process, since even bacteria rely on sensing movement and change in its environment. Even from the here-and-now (present) viewpoint, then, we see the amodal property of duration plays its part in sentience (Engelsted 2017, p. 36), in a manner which is inherently bound to the development of movement (Lacan 1949; Køppe et al. 2008). Beyond these characterizations, sentience, and its properties in relation to the developing mind, is not very well understood (Engelsted 2017, p. 40). Similarly to general psychology, the history of biosemiotics also shows theories of the inner/outer boundaries that stand as alternatives to the reductive and mechanistic versions of Darwinism (Kull 1999). Especially the works of Jakob von Uexküll (1864–1944) exemplify this (Favareau 2010). One further example of such a framework is the theory of code-duality, claiming that the development of biological organisms has a dual character, through which they both relate to the continual here-and-now, but also encode their environs in discretely organized systems (e.g., heredity or language) (Hoffmeyer and Emmeche 1991). Thus, within biosemiotics, the analogue refers to the active sentience of the here-and-now, while the digital refers to the memorization enabled by discrete coding (Pattee 1967). Combining general psychology and biosemiotics, then, somewhere along the line of the accumulation of viewpoints (from the present to the outside view) of general psychology, the digital must have supervened on the analogue. Leontyev’s scenario is of course oriented towards phylogeny. However, in this article, we wish to draw on both general psychology and biosemiotics to sketch some fundamental parallels to the ontogenetic development of symbolicity. How does the subject develop from sentience to symbolicity? In this regard,

Ontogenetic Development of Symbolicity

biosemiotics and general psychology seem to be closely related, although any synthesis between them is still waiting to be explored as far as we are aware (Bouissac 1998; Valsiner and Innis 2012). Hence, we take this overlap between biosemiotics and general psychology as our departure for investigating the developmental relation between sentience and symbolicity, i.e., two particular tropes of an inner-outer relation, throughout the first years of life. The methodology we use for this investigation will be that of a scenario construction. This consists in the construction of an explanatory narrative which is built through the synthesis of empirical matters of a scientific field. In this case, the scientific field pertains to the investigation of early development, and the aim of the scenario is to construct a coherent theoretical ensemble of statements framing the developmental phenomenon of symbolicity (Engelsted 1989). Thus, we wish to utilize biosemiotics to address the psychological development from sentience to symbolic thought and furthermore use the scenario as a methodology to approach this topic. The aim of this article then becomes the construction of a tentative scenario that is able to frame the constitution of symbolicity as it develops from sentience in the first years of life. To achieve such a scenario, we will have to visit various theoretical fields throughout the article, but every analytical move is made with the aim of setting forth new ideas and offer explanatory power to account for the human ontogenesis of symbolic activity. Our first move will be to provide some analytical distinctions with regard to the most fundamental concepts implied in any investigation of sentience and its relation to symbolicity.

The Problematic Relation Between Sentience and Representation So far, we have established that sentience is distinct from consciousness, but not unrelated to the meaning which enters consciousness: the interesting issue then becomes how to perceive the developmental relation between sentience and consciousness, and what sort of protorepresentative activity must take place at the semiotic level of sentience. This necessitates some precise terminology with regard to meaning. As an empirical fact, it must be recognized that we exist in a concrete body, which affords us an experiential base (Merleau-Ponty 1975; Johnson 2008) through which various information sources develop (such as the sense modalities and language) and get critically configured in the earliest phases of life (Lewkowicz and Röder 2012; Merleau-Ponty 1960). Given these empirical circumstances, one can conceptually define meaning, as an inherent and fundamental property of the psyche, and hence meaning can be viewed as the conjunction of consciousness and representational activity (Winfield 2011). Historically, however, meaning has been portrayed as either (1) a constant flux of sense-experience (e.g., versions of empiricism, most radically in the philosophy called “sensualism”); (2) an epiphenomenon of stimulus-response patterns (versions of behaviorism); or (3) as some sort of mental representation (Kaitaro 2007; Køppe et al. 2008). Focusing on this last view, one way to conceive of meaning is to analyze the relation between sentience and the content of consciousness, as it occurs through representational activity (Freud 1985). In contrast to such an approach, philosophers such as Descartes and Locke had a tendency to prioritize the reflective and focal aspects of mental experience (Lakoff and Johnson 1980)— a tendency which has led philosophical psychology to focus on representations perceived as spatial formalisms—e.g., truth tables or network models (Valsiner 2012). This has led to a lacking of understanding of the non-focal aspects of representations, such as those related to

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sentience (Engelsted 2017, p. 36), and a myopic focus on representations as formal and cognitive procedures, such as the systematic ordering of stimuli, as if mental activity is equal to moving “stuff” around in an abstract space. However, describing such cognitive capacities cannot provide insights into the psychological development of representing, and it cannot explain how symbolic thought develops and relates to sentience (Winfield 2015). To approach such a developmental perspective on the emergence of meaning from representative aspects and sentience, we suggest the introduction of a basic psychological distinction between the act of representing and symbolic representations (Valsiner 1998).

Representation vs Mental Representing In the beginning was the word…(John 1:1) and The word became flesh…(John 1:14) This old doctrine has been resurrected multiple times in the western history of ideas on Ebbesen (2013), p. 367)—most recently within embodiment theories in cognitive semantics (Johnson 2008), where the dimensions and basic properties of the body are treated as the constitutive ground for categories, metaphors, and other semantic aspects (Lakoff and Johnson 1999). Lakoff and Johnson (1980, 1999)) claim that psychological meaning is grounded in image schemas, that is, functional semantic forms that emerge from bodily dimensions, e.g., center-periphery, source-path-goal. However, the specific mechanisms of this bodily grounding are conceptually underdeveloped (Stjernfelt 1992a, b) and so are the developmental arguments of such embodied semantics (Køppe et al. 2008). This last point is especially due to the fact that these paradigms are avowed critics of any notion of mental representations (Køppe 2016). Such a critical position in regard to representations relates to an old issue with regard to meaning and representations: how to understand psychic properties as simultaneously expressive and receptive forms, that is, the sentient base of representation and meaning (Macpherson 2011; Ebbesen 2013). Hence, from a psychological point of view, the interesting questions that the image schemas raise are how basic semantic elements emerge, get transposed, and transformed to allow for semantic fields to emerge from sentience. Since these are all inherently time-bound aspects (Valsiner 1998), these must point towards an investigation of the timeliness of meaning Heidegger (2014). Hence, the configuration of meaning, as it develops through sentience, can be summarized as the time-bound semiotic processes relating subject and object (see Fig. 1). To be able to analytically separate various developmental aspects of meaning, some of which relates to the connection between sentience and representations, and some of which structures the very development of both; it is custom in psychology to distinguish between, on the one hand, structural and trans-individual factors, and, on the other hand, subjective and experiential activities (Køppe et al. 2008; Eyers 2011; Engelsted 1993; Winfield 2015). Adopting this approach, one can distinguish between, on the one hand, representations, and, on the other hand, mental representing. Representations connote the determination of meaning from trans-individual and historical processes, such as cultural artifacts and historically mediated practices (Wartofsky 1973). These are fundamentally based on the relationship between the duality of an individual psyche and its societal embeddedness (Valsiner and Innis 2012). As such, representations are the main determinative factors beyond the psyche, providing the social constraints upon development (Madsen 1970).


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Fig. 1 The subject has multiple sensuous openings which serve both to liminally specify itself from its surroundings and to represent the surroundings to itself

Mental representing, in contrast, connotes the properties and activities residing in the individual pole of such an inevitable socio-cultural duality (Winfield 2011, 2015), and hence, mental representing connotes the sum total of responsive, reactive, and pre-adaptive activities, inherent to the psyche as it develops in determination from, and towards engagement with, mental representations (Winfield 2015). Given this dual aspect of meaning, as simultaneously active appropriation and sociocultural interpellation, the meaning afforded through development of the sense modalities is both historically constrained (Wartofsky 1973) and yet open-ended (Mammen 2008; Engelsted 1989). This is reflected in the fact that sense-experience can take place via one specific sense (which is socio-historically molded), whereas meaning relies on more than one sense, and the particular (open-ended) ways in which these are combined (Køppe et al. 2008, p. 149). Insofar as the psyche supervenes upon the senses,1 and as such achieves a degree of autonomy from them, there must be a meaningful explanatory scenario about the developmental process as it evolves from mental representing towards representations. Adding to this supervenient relation the historically constrained and yet opened-ended character of this specific development, such a scenario must implicate how meaning is constitutively modulated through time-bound processes: a modulation of the individual’s enactive sensing in relation to the determination of senses from trans-individual realms. Thus, we propose to distinguish between representations and mental representing in order to contextualize the development from sentience to symbolicity as a dialectic constitution (Winfield 2013; Žižek 2012) of semiotic constraints (Deacon 2003, 2005), which is both developmentally determined (representation) and developmentally enacted (mental representing) (Gottlieb 2002). 1

In this context, supervenience only refers to the fact that the psyche actively restricts which states of the central nervous system (CNS) get realized at any given time (Bunge 2010), but the psyche cannot cause the CNS to vitally change (through downward causality). In formal logical discourse, the term supervenience cannot obtain any more explanatory power than this (Kim 1993), but in dynamical systems and complexity studies, the notion is still developing (Deacon 2012; Deacon and Cashman 2016).

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With this distinction between representations and mental representing cleared, we now turn to some notions developed in relation to the study of multisensory development, since multisensory development is at its core more narrowly confined to investigating the developmental aspects of sense modalities in early development, which play a vital part in the scenario we seek to establish.

Meaning as Sense-, Cross-, and Amodality The above sections can be recapitulated by stating that the development from sentience to symbolic thought must be conceived of as the constitution of potential meanings as a subjectobject relation. This can be formalized by defining sense modalities as sets of irreducible properties, which are tied to specific modes of the subjects’ relationship to objectives (Køppe 2016; Mammen 1994), that is, the experiential characteristics of the five basic senses are irreducible to each other. For example, all of the classical senses (gustation, vision, audition, soma-sensation, and olfaction) own specific psychophysical-intensity curves; hence, the relationship between objective stimulation at receptors and subjective experience of this stimulation differs across the senses (Marks 1978). However, the psychological anchor of a modality is not merely its physical correlate, but also its qualities (such as sweetness, hue, tonality, granularity, and odor)—which implicates that the meaning of sensations has an irreducible content, distinguishing the senses from one another (Køppe 2016; Winfield 2011). Conceived in this manner, the irreducibility of the senses becomes defined through the meanings they afford via their ongoing combinations. Thus, language, affectivity, and kinesthesia-plus-proprioception (the motor sense) also make up irreducible modalities, since they also manifest irreducible properties of meaning (Køppe et al. 2008), and they can be conceived of as three metamodalities, which stand in addition to the five classical sense modalities (Macpherson 2011). The organic basis of sense meaning properties is multisensory perception (Lewkowicz and Lickliter 1994). Some multisensory properties are amodal. These include form, extension, shape, rhythm, and duration. Amodal properties are manifested in all modalities (Stern 2008) and can be interpreted as properties of objects independent of the specific modality through which they are registered (Lewkowicz 2012). But also, specific common properties exist between the different senses. These are termed crossmodal properties (Lewkowicz 2012) and are properties transferred between modalities (synesthesia and the McGurk effect are classic examples, both exhibiting informational exchange across senses). Chemosensory crossmodal interactions are present at prenatal phases, while visual-tactile and visual-auditory interactions are established at birth (Bremner et al. 2012). All of the crossmodal interactions and combinations have different salience and bandwidth properties, and both amodal and crossmodal aspects are reflected in manifestations of the meta-modalities (Marks 1978). This lends support to the perspective that language, affect, and movement are meaning modalities to the same degree as the five basic senses, since amodal and crossmodal properties extend between them. In contrast to the isomorphism between the senses and higher order modalities, the development of the meta-modalities and the systemic integration of the crossmodal interactions is tied to the phases in development where the child becomes able to move around and attain an upright posture (Køppe et al. 2008; Køppe 2013). As such, the meta-modalities are especially tied to the volitionally exploration and mirroring of all the sense modalities in the objective surroundings (Lacan 1949). The phenomenon of modality integration has, since Aristotle (2001), been coined sensus communis—the establishment of the “common sense”


(Gregoric 2007). In connection with the terminology applied to meaning in this section, sensus communis would implicate a critical and non-reversible set of constraints, placed upon the degrees of freedom inherent to the cross-, meta-, and amodal configurations. Specifically, a constraint upon the ability to sense in unimodal experience is established and this coincides with the development of higher order properties of meaning, i.e., intentional movement and language. As shown in Fig. 1, representing the external world is a process where properties of the objective world are configured by the subject. Meaning is the limit of this process, where representations are brought forth and/or used by consciousness in such a way that the subject actively engages with the areas of the objective world that it has configured to be relevant. As such, one can portray representations as lying on a gradient between amodal sensing and higher order mental properties, in terms of the overlap of the subject and object (as seen in Fig. 1). The realization of crossmodality plays a crucial role in the step towards the psychic dominance of meta-modal properties, and as such crossmodality irreversibly constrains the amodal psychic states. Infant research has revealed a host of interesting findings on crossmodal interactions (Lewkowicz and Röder 2012; Lewkowicz and Lickliter 1994) and theories of categories and semantics debate the relationship between crossmodal and meta-modal interactions and the development hereof (Carey 2009; Johnson 2008). Our purpose in this article is not to review all such interesting findings. Rather, we will suggest a semiotic scenario enabling future explanations of the relational complexity exhibited in the general development of metamodalities from amodal and crossmodal interactions. Therefore, we now proceed to outline some opposing approaches to the general dynamics of the development of sense modalities.

Opposing Views of Sense Development The two most prominent theories on the development of the senses are (1) the holistic theory (developmental-differentiation), claiming that the senses exist as one meaningful core from the start of life, and (2) the integrative theory (developmental-integration), claiming that senses get integrated through development, as the senses start of as initially disconnected parts evolving into a whole.

Developmental Differentiation Since the late 1970s, the holistic theory has gained in popularity, especially due to the “like me” hypothesis on infant development proposed by Meltzoff (2007) and Stern (2008). The idea is that babies are born with an integrated sensibility, an experiential core uniformly registering sense stimuli from all modalities. This integrative core changes through phases, but most importantly the modalities are combined in immanence through intrinsic factors (e.g., Stern’s 2008 concept of “origo”). As such, the developmental trajectory of the subject has a character of differentiation that broadens the types of meaning which reaches consciousness, but the broadening starts from the core’s ability to detect amodal invariants (Gibson 1969). According to this view, this is an ability which provides a degree of sense perceptual integrity sufficient to warrant a core self (Werner 1973). This has the theoretical implication that the self, as a permanent background for sensation, exists from the start of life, and thus, according to this view, the transition to upright movement is not regarded as a critical ontogenetic feature in relation to the establishment of the self. The famous “pacifier” experiment has been interpreted

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as supporting the holistic perspective. In the experiment, Meltzoff (2007) found babies to be sucking on a pacifier longer if they were shown a picture of a familiar face. According to the holistic theory, this result is to be interpreted as an act of integrating semantics. This perspective is schematized in Fig. 2. As illustrated in Fig. 2, cross- and amodality are assumed to be present in some form from birth, and hence, the senses are gathered already from the beginning of life. Sense modalities are then assumed to differentiate increasingly throughout life, becoming more and more specialized and solidified in the process (this is indicated by the arched lines, which also indicate an irreversibility—the subject is not able to return to a phenomenologically undifferentiated state).

Developmental Integration The opposing view, called developmental integration (Lewkowicz 2012), proposes a parts-towhole model, stating that our senses are distributed separately and hence differentiated from the beginning, until they combine to form distinguishable amodal elements and crossmodal states (Birch and Lefford 1963). This integration is concurring with a maturation towards a gradually stabilized equilibrium, enabling higher order mental functions, such as mental representations (Piaget 1967). In this theory, the transition to upright walking can obtain a more crucial role in the constitution of an ego, since no functionally enclosed sensory motor system is posited before sensus communis. As the subject develops, its senses combine (with the “help” of amodal invariants) until crossmodality is established (illustrated by the black dot in Fig. 3) together with a gathered sense of self. This perspective is schematized in Fig. 3. It has been argued that the parts-to-whole theory of crossmodality may imply the activity of more than one active consciousness before the sensus communis is reached (Køppe 2016) which we shall comment upon later. Both the differentiation and integration theories have obtained empirical support (for differentiation see Lewkowicz 2010; for integration see Bremner et al. 2008), which suggests that eclectic models, allowing for both differentiation and integration dynamics in the development of multisensory properties, are warranted. Furthermore, both the differentiation and the integration views have crucial defects from a psychological point of view. The differentiation view is, in principle, reducible to biology: whether the anchor of meaning is self, inter-

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Fig. 2 Developmental differentiation. The subject is born with a core self

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Vision Gustation Audition Somatosensory Olfaction


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Fig. 3 Developmental integration. The subject is born with no core self, since its sense modalities are differentiated from birth

subjectivity, or an amodal base, they are all increasingly posited as innate. On the other hand, the integrationist view can be associated with both nativism (i.e., a blueprint requiring experience as a trigger) and experientialism (which Lakoff and Johnson 1980, 1999 explicitly acknowledge). This position has all of the classic pitfalls of empiricism—the most pertinent being the assumption of a non-explained learning mechanism, which is exactly what a psychological theory of mental representing, is supposed to explain. Thus, both view short circuit theory building on the emergence of symbolicity from sentience by limiting the explanatory scenario to a nature-nurture debate (Lewkowicz 2010).

Perceptual Narrowing and the Necessity of a Third Model The phenomenon called perceptual narrowing (Lewkowicz 2012) reveals that early multisensory development proceeds by processes not adequately conceptualized through a nature-nurture “ping-pong” account (Lewkowicz 2010). Perceptual narrowing is a pruning of multisensory potentials, such that the “[...] ability to perceive cross-species and cross-language multisensory coherence declines because non-native multisensory information is not relevant for everyday functioning.” (Lewkowicz 2012, p. 5). That is, the child loses multisensory functions with age. This reaches beyond both integration and differentiation effects, and underscores the radical embeddedness of the sense modalities. Therefore, a third perspective is warranted. More generally, not even biological properties develop from totally separated parts (Deacon and Cashman 2011), yet, as is extremely evident in the human case, relationally complex properties only emerge through developmental processes (Lewkowicz 2010). Thus, we propose a whole-to-parts model (see Fig. 4) as an alternative to the differentiations and integration perspective. This model implies that crossmodality occurs in a developing unity, which transforms from un-entangled to entangled configurations of the sense modalities. In this manner, the sense modalities change qualitatively through development. Such alternated configurations happen through processes of differentiation and dedifferentiation (Deacon 2005) between intersensory and amodal properties (Gibson 1969). It is our further claim that the meta-modalities develop towards a singularity through such entanglement processes. This will all be further outlined when we proceed to the semiotic details of this account.

Ebbesen and Olsen Sensus-communis established. Digital time introduced (temporal asymmetry present)

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Fig. 4 Different sense modalities cross at different time points, which implies that sensus communis is best thought of as an event constituting the meta-modalities, rather than the crossmodalities an sich

What is important to notice at this point is simply that in this form of developmental account, the modalities exist in qualitatively different states before sensus communis, as compared to after. Hence, it is possible to argue that the sense modalities reside as one consciousness from the start of life, even though the sentience-bound meaning afforded by the modalities are radically different at the earliest phases of life. This argument is legitimized since the existence of semiotically differentiated modes of sensing can correspond to various conscious states, variably manifested over a developmental period. As such, the whole-to-parts scenario (see Fig. 4) can account for those aspects otherwise attributed to the fallacy of synchronically plural consciousness. Thus, Fig. 4 illustrates the central point of this article, but we wish to specify the model in painstaking detail. The rest of the article is dedicated to specifying some of the temporal and semiotic mechanisms of this developmental account of how symbolicity emerges through sentience. Likewise, we will outline what sorts of methodological and empirical endeavors the model can propose, if the model’s theoretical claims are perceived through semiotics.

Temporalities of Development Like the developmental interrelation of the senses and the constitution of meaning, we do not wish to give the impression that the idea of a whole-to-parts theory has not previously been proposed (see, e.g., Moss Brender et al. 2012; Lewkowicz 2012; or Goldstein 1939). Our contribution is merely to expand and strengthen that theory, by making it more analytically concrete and more well-defined in terms of developmental psychology. Hence, we now proceed to specify the type of temporality through which the modalities develop. For this


purpose, however, we need to take what may seem to be quite a roundabout approach, such as to be able to conceptualize a certain and very important amodal property in relation to sentience, namely temporality itself.

The Asymmetrical Relationship Between the Analogue and the Digital: Code Duality At the logical level we may say that the laws of physics describe a one-to-one mapping process, whereas hereditary propagation requires a many-to-one mapping process. Or in more physical terms we may say that the elementary physical laws are symmetric with respect to time, whereas hereditary propagation requires a direction to time. (Pattee 1967, p. 39). In order to better understand how the sensus communis is established through the merging of the senses, we need to take a detour into biological theory. Already 50 years ago, it was proposed that most interpretations of classic biological theories remain vitalist-mechanist, due to a static time conception (Pattee 1967). Theories of DNA replication, for example, have been developed primarily without regard to the environmental and organically embedded basis of such a phenomenon, but rather with regard to a formal usage and one-to-one mapping correlation. For example, the very dominating idea of deterministic gene selectionism proposed by Dawkins (1976) claims to explain the emergence, development, and unfolding structure of organic material with the reliance upon holonomic constraints. Such linear causality with initial conditions predicting end states uncritically assumes a reversible and symmetrical timeline. However, since biological systems are not primarily holonomically constrained, they cannot be grasped as mechanical and static entities. Rather, since a biological system has more degrees of freedom (the amount of parameters able to independently vary) in its static state description than what is possibly realizable in the dynamical unfolding of its organic structure, it is non-holonomically constrained (Pattee 1967). In contrast to the mechanical and physicalist one-to-one mapping, this is what Pattee (1967, p. 38) calls a many-to-one mapping. Thus, a non-holonomically constrained system (i.e., a system not geometrically constrained by initial conditions), such as a biological system, has the potential of developing in several different directions, although the system is only ever in the process of actualizing one of these directions. A biological system is equifinal as long as -final does not refer to a static end state, but rather to the transmission process through which its probable states are actualized (Gottlieb 2002). This is in accordance with the original continental use of the Old French word finalité, which connotes a goal guiding an object (in contemporary French the word is used to denote purpose, among other meanings). This meaning thereby re-introduces a teleological aspect to the word finality (see reference on “finality, n.” in Oxford University Press 2017). As Short (2002, p. 326) put it: “it is the nature of an acorn to grow into an oak, not into a spruce tree or a butterfly. The final cause, then, is a potentiality whether or not actualized” (for a thoroughly nuanced discussion of different uses of teleology within biological theory, see Koutroufinis 2014). Such a system is always already determined although it cannot be predicted (which has caused great confusion within popular accounts of systems theories) (Penrose 1989). The transmission process of such a system thus depends on

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non-actualized states that carry information (in the sense of bringing something into form) and which are, potentially, a coding principle that allows for the construction of a conceptual description of these states, and an interpreter who is able to realize the representation of these states. The transmission process is thus a description of how biological phenomena go from being digital to analogue or from being analogue to digital. It is a process where the analogue (irreversible time) and the digital (models/representations assuming reversible time) coincide, leading to preservation of systemic properties across time. It is within this transmission process that an asymmetrical temporal relationship between the digital and the analogue manifests itself as being neither purely static and pre-determined nor purely chaotic and non-determinable. Rather, this asymmetrical relationship is revealed within the transmission process through the coding principles by which one understands the duality of the digital and the analogue. As Pattee (1967) points out, the reliability of biological theories (in example the merging of the senses) lies in the understanding and interpretation of the coding principles within the transmission process. One way to understand the interconnectedness of the virtual states, the coding principle, and the interpreter has been given by Hoffmeyer and Emmeche (1991). They argue that the coding principle is best understood as a semiotic translation process consisting of a duality of digital and analogue (code dual) representation processes. They describe the digital as encapsulated information—information that can be modulated infinitely through time and space (for example, language, the composition of a symphony, or DNA), regardless of the analogue medium that is needed to express it (in example the larynx, an orchestra, or cellular organization). Hence, in the digital sphere, elements are coupled in a systematic or functional manner, which stands in contrast to the analogue sphere, which is (physically) irreversible and hence non-repeatable (it only manifests uncoupled occurrences). As Pattee (1967) concludes in the opening quote, physical laws (in their formality) operate on the level of symmetrical time. However, with the code duality in mind, it now becomes clear that physical laws operate on the level of symmetrical time because they have been formulated within the digital sphere of representations: properties across occurrences have been preserved through representing their analogue basis (“real” bodies of motion depicted in laws of motion for example). This dialectic transmission process of representations (the digital) and mental representing (as they occur analogically) is thus an initial step towards the conceptualization of a temporality which is adequate to account for the development of symbolicity.

Code Duality and Modalities The identification of the time-bound code duality has immediate implications regarding the various modality properties. A system mainly relating to its environs through amodal properties only realizes highly analogue states. When viewed in isolation from the perceptual system in which they exist, the amodal properties, however, are quite digital. This is so because these properties all code for extremely abstract invariances (Gibson 1969). However, the mental states to which these amodal properties give rise to are non-discrete, that is, a liquidated mode of perception; hence, the amodal properties give rise to analogue states (when conceived in relation to the perceptual system they are realized in). This is due to the isomorphic qualia arising from all the amodally channeled senses (Wimsatt 1981). Thus, amodal properties, conceived of in terms of a perceptive system, code non-specifically.


The crossmodal properties enable digital sensing, since they are perceptually more specifically coded (i.e., unisensorily combined). As such, the crossmodal properties approach an equal distribution of analogue and digital characteristics. This is because the transference of properties between modalities requires a higher degree of code reliability than unisensory and amodal properties. That is, the existence of certain elements between two or more sense modalities enables abduction: the generation of meaning through similarity detection as, e.g., co-occurrence or spatio-temporal proximity (E.P. 2.227; Bateson 1972). Non-discrete mental states (i.e., those realized through amodal perception) cannot materialize similarity detection, since they provide no discrete units to evaluate similarity across. Hence, certain dynamics between the amodal and crossmodal states in development provide a symmetry breakage in mental representing: it is from this breakage that the meta-modalities emerge. The meta-modalities develop towards the highest manifestation of code specificity, namely reconfiguring affection and the motor sense, and, developmentally, the meta-modalities escalate into articulated language and discursive thought (Winfield 2013). Thus, we have now obtained a first approximation towards the temporal implications of the code duality with regard to the specific semiotics related to the emergence of symbolicity.

Symmetry Breaking as the Splitting of Temporality Code duality is the reason why, according to Pattee (1967), we need a direction to time, a focus upon the relationship between different temporalities. The central issue of code duality and the relationship between the analogue and the digital is, then, the fact that digital representations and analogue representing contain qualitatively different temporal properties. The speciesspecific relation between organism and environment occurs in analogue manifestations, which means that no exact one-to-one repetition of any phenomena can occur (Deleuze 2012 [1968]). Thus, action, according to Peirce, is analogue (C.P. 5.397), and its temporality is irreversible (e.g., you cannot unscramble scrambled eggs). On the other side of the code duality processes, the digital aspect, however, makes possible the manifestation of reference between analogue events due to the higher degrees of semiotic freedom inherent in this sphere of the code duality (Hoffmeyer 2005). Thus, memory, according to Peirce, is digital (C.P. 5.264) and is tied to a temporality given by organisms’ (or subjects’) historicity-based preservational practices. This digitalization allows for holonomic constraints (like syntax and grammar in language) to discretize, and thus, preservations, permanence, and hierarchical organizations of elements become evolvable (Bateson 1972). I.e. the analogue implies irreversible time, whereas the digital implies a direction to time.2

2 Both in physics and biology, the analysis of systems must assume an arrow of time, such that two states A and B of a system are analyzed as a mapping: A → B. In physics, the uncertainty of measuring is related to the end state B and associated boundary conditions on A (a purely analogue ideal, where the irreversibility is only manifested through the formal separation of states). In contrast, biological analysis must assume that “the uncertainty is in the arrow itself” (Gómez-Ramirez 2014, p. Viii). The latter therefore necessitates a transition of states via a teleological orientation towards time, whereas the former necessitates a transition of states in (the irreversibility of) time. Another way to put it is that the physical mapping assumes a probability vis-à-vis A → B in (analytical) retrospect, whereas biological development is in medias res probabilistic (Gottlieb 2002).

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The Temporality of Semiosis According to Sebeok (2001, p. 19), codes3 have emerged twice on earth: (1) endosemiotically with the emergence of life and (2) anthroposemiotically with the emergence of pictorial and articulatory languages. Whether or not Sebeok’s bold conjecture holds true is not of our concern here. What is important is the principles of emergence that are implied in Sebeok’s assertion. These principles include that coding emerges when a system becomes evolvable via the establishment of a reliable ordering of elements in relation to environs (Deacon and Cashman 2016). Allow us to specify in what sense Sebeok talks about the emergence of a code. Imagine a computer programmer. Such a person programs/writes in an already established code. As a novice, the programmer appropriates a code like Haskell, and he/she may initially start out with a representation of accelerating the (computer-based) expression of some structure, which is then enabled by the specific type of code in Haskell (Hudak et al. 2007). As the programmer becomes more experienced, the mental activity of engaging with the program gets more procedural, through the digitalization of the particular code. One begins to think “in” the code. Therefore, he/she does no longer rely on analogue trial-and-error actions. However, this is a digitalization of an activity, not the emergence of a code. An emergence of a new code (in the example of programming codes) would be the creolic creation of a new programming language: like the developments in category theory that led Haskell Curry to develop his program, like the ideas of abstracting across different programs (Rodin 2014). The code emergences that Sebeok had in mind, however, is not restricted to the creation of symbolmanipulating programs, but the creation of what von Uexküll termed the “Umwelt” of a given organism realizing the code, thus, Sebeok is thinking about the emergence of the very possibility of systems having their activities digitized, that is, of transforming action into memory. Such code emergence implies that a new sort of order or form is constituted. As complexity studies have shown (Davies and Gregersen 2010), this sort of process, called symmetry breaking, is required for the emergence and stabilization of evolvable systems in the empirical world (Kauffman 1993; Schrödinger 1944; Gähde et al. 2013). Especially through the research on the Belousov-Zhabotinsky reaction in non-linear chemistry, it has been established that symmetry breaking is not just a spatial phenomenon (like an eschewed weight-load distribution breaking a pillar rod) but also a temporal phenomenon (Davies and Gregersen 2010). This is exactly what must underlie any emergence of a coding process. The environment of any system, or more exactly the tempo-environment, is more syncrete, symmetrical, and unordered/uniformed prior to code genesis, whereas it is more solidified, asymmetrical, and ordered afterwards. Thus, the “form” in information emerges co-concurrently with the constitution of different tempi in the sign interpretation of any semiotic system and hence: [...] Time must be conceived of twice, in two complementary modes, which exclude each other reciprocally: That is, completely as the living presence of those finite bodies which acts and suffers, but likewise, completely in accordance with those infinitely splittable instances in past-future, in those un-bodily causes, which results from the bodies, of their actions and their sufferings (Deleuze 2004, p. 18). 3

When talking about code, we are not referring to the information theoretical use of the term. Rather, we follow the semiotic tradition, defining code as a semiotic resource: a vehicle for meaning-generating activity to emerge (Hoffmeyer 2014, p. 109).


The temporal asymmetry suggested by ascribing an analogue and a digital part to meaning making does not separate mind (as semiotics) from body (as materiality), but rather, as Deleuze philosophizes in the quote above, fundamentally intertwines them, which necessitates a double description of time. The complementary duality of the digital and the analogue constitutes the co-habitat of body and mind,4 namely the psyche (which, in so far as we understand Sebeok, is first constituted with anthroposemiotics). Hence, the ontological glue that makes the analogue and the digital stick together in one duality is exactly the temporal asymmetry that appears when the analogue and the digital coincide in the coding process. The description of this coding process is thus a description of how the digital negates the analogue, and how the analogue negates the digital. Following Hegel, this is what could be termed Aufhebung (Žižek 2012): the initial elements have been dissolved only to be reconfigured at a higher order of complexity: as such, the transmission presupposes the initial elements (in their analogue existence), yet this new order (the digital representation) is not reducible to them. In our example, the two types of temporality dissolve and re-emerge as traces in one united “sense” of time. Hence, the two temporalities constitute the code duality in their negation.

Continual Ruptures as Dialectics The conception of temporality performed above necessitates an explicit position with regard to the question of continuity versus discontinuity in development. Following Hegel’s logic of dialectics, we reject the Bergsonian doctrine that “The person is not a stable being, but a stable coming into existence” (Hoffmeyer 2014, p. 46 [our translation]), which is a quite prevalent perspective within the biosemiotic field (Kawade 2009). Here we would like to bring the science of psychology into play and must insist that the problem we face is exactly that we simultaneously possess the feeling of a gathered sense of self as a stable being, although we are constantly changing both physically (cells in our body) and mentally (mental representing). If the Cartesian dualism is to be overcome, the answer is not to choose between continuity and ruptures, but to figure out how these co-exist. This philosophical question of course also relates to Darwinian theory—does evolution happen gradually or in leaps? The answer is of course both. Organic material evolves gradually and quantitatively while the unfolding activity of the organism (whether this is on a human or micro-organismic level) is qualitative and characterized by leaps, due to constant changes and reversals in the organism’s relation to its environs (Engelsted 1984; Deacon 2011). Of course, this perspective entails that one does not simply exclude dialectics from the sciences by rejecting it as an idealism, which is often done (Hoffmeyer 2014; Stjernfelt 1992a, 1992b). Dialectics must be included in materialism (Eyers 2011; Žižek 2012; Pfeifer 2012). This is of crucial importance for the scientific existence and development of psychology and semiotics. That is, what is at stake is the self and it’s rescuing from being rendered a mere epiphenomena, by either taking a physicalist or a phenomenologicalist stance. Only in this way can mental representing be studied as a scientific subject-object-matter (Winfield 2013). From this follows that the process of semiosis can be described as the (ontological) tension of 4

We do not intend to suggest any easy leap (of faith) over the abyss of the substance dualism, but we are of the opinion that it is a relevant point, even in this extremely tentative format, that the dimension of time could provide a valuable conceptual frame for eventually transcending the psychophysical dualism as it to this day still haunts psychology (Mammen 2017).

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incompleteness between what is and what emerges (Deacon and Cashman 2016). Psychological meaning is, then, inherently a semiotic process (Valsiner 2000). Through this clearly explicated philosophical positioning, we are now able to explore our emergent phenomenon through a semiotic framework, since this offers an approach to understanding the transmission process between the digital and the analogue. To analyze or deconstruct the composition of a set of psychological characteristics, structural dichotomies can suffice, but to follow the development of such psychological characteristics—like the emergence of symbolic thought as it develops from sentience—the semiotic trichotomies have certain benefits (Durst-Andersen 2009, p. 39). However, we are merely Peirce enthusiasts, not experts. Hence, we introduce Peirce’s framework to explicate constitutive constraints on sign processes, and our appropriation of the complicated system of Peirce’s semiotics is only intended as a methodological tool. Thus, in the following, we wish to develop Peirce’s semiotics as it relates to our scenario about the ontogeny of symbolicity in early development.

Towards the Semiotic Mechanisms of Early Development All organismic sense and communication develop through realizations of and constraints upon sign processes (Hoffmeyer 2005). The semiotics of communication consist of combinations between properties related to the sign vehicle (e.g., the anatomy of a larynx or the wire circuits of hardware), properties related to the sign object (the singular frequency spectrum of the individual organism or the digitally constrained wire circuits of the computer), and properties related to the sign interpretant (the interlocutor of an articulatory or gestural act versus the subject guided by software). It is the achievement of Peirce to have distinguished this triadic morphology of sign processes (Stjernfelt 2006). According to Peirce, semiosis (communicative processes via signs) reaches beyond linguistics. It occurs as an irrevocable (and somewhat metaphysical) trinity (C.P 1.345) realized between the properties of the abovementioned sign entities. As shown in Fig. 5, where the arrowheads indicate the determination flow of semiosis, any aspect of any object must pass through a representational mediation in order to signify for an interpretant. Thus, the bar separating the object and interpretant from the representamen indicates the fact that any sign must pass through the sphere of physical and energetic mediums (like airwaves of speech or light waves striking the retina) in order to enable reference between the interpretant and the object (C.P. 1.335). Thus, a direct line between object and interpretant would approximate telepathy (Jappy 2013). A representamen is anything (material and energetic) which is potentially able to signal, gesture, or communicate, that is, to become a sign.5 Hence, a sign is a special case where the representamen affords significance for some organisms via the presentation of some of the properties of the represented object (C.P 1.339). An object is thus that entity or event which is perceived, represented, or inferred through a material or energetically medium. However, with signs signifying by arbitrary properties, like symbols, the objective and referential implications can be highly derivative and generally founded on intricate relations between less arbitrary 5

To provide some contrast for this, one can imagine at least two exceptions of the metaphysical category of a representamen. Firstly, if Heidegger (2014) is correct, death is an exception for humans. And maybe for Peirce, the apocalyptical thermal equilibrium is likewise an exception from representamens, interestingly proving the rule (Peirce in Voetmann 1996).


Object

Interoretant

Representamen Fig. 5 Illustrating the relationship between object, representamen, and interpretant

signs (C.P. 2.230-41; Deacon 2011). Furthermore, the functions or structures of the existential object determine the functions or structures of the sign: “[...] whatever structure a sign has, it inherits it in some way from the object it represents.” (Jappy 2013, p. 5).6 The interpretant is the effect or set of effects that a sign affords for the entity interpreting it (C.P. 2.242). Hence, the interpretant is not the hermeneutical interpreter, and so the agency of meaning is not the interpretation as such (according to Peirce), but the ability to become a sign or influence further semiosis (C.P. 1.88). Thus, semiosis is the realization of a sign as it is mediated between the object represented and an interpretant. The three correlates necessarily combine simultaneously in the processes of signification and interpretation (C.P. 1.344). To exemplify the triadic sign structure and the mediatory properties between its poles, we now complicate the previously shown model and outline the mediating aspects of the sign structure (Fig. 6). We now proceed to outline the above model. Let us start off with a contrived scenario: imagine the scene of a bank robbery, where the thief runs out of the bank and a policeman runs towards him shouting “FREEZE.” This outburst is the representamen (iconically embodied in airwaves and symbolically in the law), representing the object of arrest signaling different actions: to the thief, it could signal acceleration or surrender. To the policeman, it could signal suspense, in regard to whether or not to escalate the law enforcement by firing his gun towards the criminal. Hence, a sign ratchets an object for an interpretant, and as such enables a digitalization of the analogue aspect of reality, wherein the three parts would exist as extra-semiotic and 6

This statement should be related to Peirce’s position in the universalisms strides: Peirce is a mediated realist, that is, he claims that universal significations are related to object in the physical world not depending on the signifying subject (or interpretant to be precise) but that they are only perceivable in mediated shapes (Peirce 1931; Stjernfelt, 1992a, b). Furthermore, there exist various interpretations of whether or not symbols own any resemblance to objectives; Bennett (2015) has performed an incredibly thorough work on this topic, which has resulted in a hierarchy of arbitrarily existing sign elements which reaches a maximum with the so-called decontextualized signs (Bennett, 2015, p. 460).

Ebbesen and Olsen Sign-to-referent Object

Interpretant

Sign-vehicle

Sign-to-interpretant/ semiotic context

Representamen

Fig. 6 The model is constructed by the authors for the particular analytical purpose of this article and is an attempt to synthesize our understanding of Jappy (2013), Hoffmeyer (2005), Deacon (2011), and C.P. (1. 330-45 and 2.218-42)

syncrete entities. Peirce writes that: “The triadic relation is genuine, that is, its three members are bound together by it in a way that does not consist in any complexus of dyadic relations” (C. P. 1.354). Thus, the activity of representing requires signs, and signs are psychologically irreducible to anything below the integrity of these three parts (Nesher 1997). Now, for our purposes, the value of this model is not its tripartite metaphysics, but its capacity to distinguish different parts of the process of representing (Liszka 1996) which enables one to discern the intrinsic mediation of the signifying process. Thus, we now proceed to outline the referent, vehicle, and context relations. The aspects of representing which have to do with the sign vehicle function irrespective of any referential capacity (Deacon 2011). For example, the same grammatical entity can be embodied in a string of letters or in a word, and the same semantics of these could be posited in a picture. Other aspects have to do with the referential properties of a sign, the sign-to-referent relation, constituting the mediation between object and interpretant (C.P. 2.240). These referential properties are not redundant across modes of representation (redundancy, in information theoretical terms, is when isofunctional elements occur in different channels accessible to one and the same receiver). This is because the amodal manifestations of, for example, a word uttered by a voice enable qualitatively different crossmodal impressions than the same word on a piece of paper, and the thought operations which can be performed on a string of letters are significantly different than those on a figure, diagram, or painting (Stjernfelt 2006). Finally, some aspects reside in the relationship of the sign to its interpretant, that is, in the semiotic context. This third aspect probably seems quite obvious/trivial, but it is actually a very intricate aspect of the sign (Stjernfelt 2014). The semiotic context has to do with the degree and type of informational modularity in the Umwelt. If an investigator stands before a wall at a crime scene, and a message is written on the wall with invisible ink, the illumination of the message with the complementary light frequency is a modulation (also called a manipulative abduction; Magnani 2004) of information. If the message says “DIG DEEPER” (maybe as a sardonic remark of the criminal), and the investigator interprets this as an imperative to crack the wall open, then the sign on the wall has served a double function in the semiotic context—i.e., to both describe the criminological game and to refer to the wall (E.P. 2.320).


Such double functions are automated in meta-modal aspects like the subject-predicate property of language, but Peirce claimed that they have a multitude of implications for the interpretation of various kinds of sign relations (Stjernfelt 2014). This dual structure of sign interpretation plays an important role in the development of symbolic signification. This has been shown (in a psychological context) by Freud’s (1920) famous fort-da case, where it is illustrated how the child comes to modulate its own affective tone vis-à-vis object permanence, by appropriating the symbolic dialectics of presence versus-and-through absence. As an aside we note that one theoretical possibility (pertinent for psychology) would be to view the dual structure of sign interpretation as a manifestation of temporal input analyzers, a time-bound organization of sense perception, a theoretical proposition which would be in accordance with the Ftheory-theory_ paradigm in studies of concept development (Carey 2009; Gopnik 2003). The difference between signification via the sign vehicle and the semiotic context is that the signifying through sign vehicle properties rests on isomorphisms between the object represented and the medium through which it is represented (embodied in the vehicle), while the semiotic context relates to the information afforded by a specific and context-bound mediation. As such, the relation between the represented object and the interpretant is mediated in two manners: both in terms of the properties of the sign vehicle and in terms of the semiotic context; this has affinity to Peirce’s distinction between an immediate object of a sign, an object intrinsically constructed via the sign (e.g., an abstract thought), and an mediate (dynamic) object, the object outside of and hinted at by the sign (e.g., a concrete thought or gesture) (SS 83; C.P. 8.314). All three aspects (the sign-to-referent, the sign vehicle, and the semiotic context) and their integral relation can be implemented in an operationalization of mental representing, and herein lies a methodological force of co-joining semiotics and developmental psychology. Thus, when an infant and a caregiver interact by gestures, the same patterns of movement embodying a signification may refer to completely different modes of meaning, especially before and after the transition to symbolic semiosis/mental representing. And furthermore, completely different movement patterns can signify the same meaning under different contexts due to the semiotic contingencies. With this in mind, we shall now present our semiotic reconceptualization of multisensory development. This will proceed in a manner that is in accordance with the phenomenon of perceptual narrowing. In parallel to this, we will synthesize aspects of the holistic and parts-towhole theory, and reinterpret these semiotically, into the whole-to-parts theory.

Disconnected Sense Modalities in a Primary System (Firstness)7 As we mentioned earlier, perceptual narrowing implicates a pruning of the developmental potentials: i.e., the reduction in the child’s ability throughout the first year of life to sense and perceive non-native multisensory coherence (Lewkowicz 2012; Lewkowicz and Röder 2012). This means, semiotically, that the range of signification is much more open-ended in the beginning of life (irrespective of exactly when or for how long) than in later (post-digital) phases of development.

7

The following use of Peirce categories is, besides the explicit references based on C.P. 1.545-2.49, 4.530-572, 6.222-37 and W 3.257-302

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Adding on to this semiotic openness, the fact of the human infants’ morphological immaturity (Gould 1977) convinces of to adopt the view that the sense modalities are initially disconnected, and yet the psyche is one system, held together by the semiotic affordances of amodal invariants. The foundation of the semiotic whole-to-parts model (see Fig. 4) therefore depicts the sense modalities as disconnected in a primal type of integrated system. This primary integration consists of the registering of qualities, the psychic activity inherent to the biological fact of interiority (Hoffmeyer 2005,) or a sensuous agency (Køppe et al. 2008). The states of consciousness in this first phase of development are thus maximally analogue, since all modalities express the same qualities, and hence, no qualitative distinctions between sign elements have emerged in the psyche yet (Winfield 2011). This can be characterized as firstness (or quality) in Peircean terms (C.P. 5.66). Here, qualisigns embody all sense impressions (Raees and Anderson 2007). Thus, every act of mental representing takes the form of an icon, which refers through similarity, and hence, the sensuous impressions are as psychophysically adequate as will be in ontogenesis. This has the implication that every experience is a phenomenal impression of temporal objectivity: what Husserl (1991) termed retention, a mode of perception experienced as a temporally extended present and thus not a full-blown memory8 (divided into past-present-future). Every spatial occurrence in the Umwelt is perceived as a temporal duration, because the semiotic context of this phase is rhematic, that is, everything that happens is perceived as continual and non-divided (C.P. 2.229; Jappy 2013). As Deleuze (2004, pp. 167–190) describes it, this mode of the infant’s mind is primarily an experience of the pure noise of the body (one’s own cries, the rumbling of the intestines etc.), a temporal rise and fall of intensities. However, a qualisign is a borderline case of semiosis (C.P. 1.302) and thus might not be empirically realizable (Stjernfelt 2006).

The Process of Crossmodal Realizations (Secondness) The multifactorial interpellation process of early development necessitates psychic work, so that mental representing becomes informative, and not only experiential (pure noise of the body), in regard to the intersubjective surroundings (Freud 1985; Winfield 2013, 2015). The empirical testimony of this process is the expression of crossmodal sensing (Bremner et al. 2012). At these early phases of life, the psychic properties associated with combinations of the senses arise. This is a crucial step. It is the constitution of what Peirce calls Secondness (or reaction) (C.P. 5.90). Semiotically, these sense combinations initially give rise to sign vehicles called “sinsigns,” since they are singularly manifested, a characteristic related to the irreversibility of the physical analogue time. This we term the primary irreversibility of mental representing. Our view differs then, radically, from the holistic theories, which often claim that rhythms (e.g., biorhythms) provide a feeling of continuity from the start of life (DelafieldButt and Trevarthen 2015; Stern 2008). According to this semiotic whole-to-parts scenario, there must be a phase where every digestion, awakening, and eye contact afford qualitatively differentiated experiences: they are singular signs (C.P. 3.361 and 3.434). Hence, in this period, the acts of the primary caregivers function as sinsign vehicles, carrying information which is 8 Of course Husserl’s notion was developed as part of a more encompassing model of the experience of duration, including the functions primal impression and protention, where the latter is the futuresque aspect of any given present via, e.g., expectation, and as such is the complementation to retention (Husserl, 1893–1917/1991). Interestingly, Husserl might have undersold an asymmetric conception of the relation between re- and protention (Dimitreu 2013). However, we only mention retention in this context to give a phenomenological characterization of the limit case of purely amodal perception.


qualitative and singular. These features enable sentient differentiation through the realization of indexicality—as a way of referring “across” singular instances—in this period. This means that the initial indexing between events has an index-icon form. Hence, an object can be referenced via contiguity or symptomality through an index, as is often manifested in children’s early gesturing and pointing (Deacon 1997; Gopnik 2003). This index-icon mode-of-reference catalyzes the earliest manifestations of index-index combinations, where whole séances are correlated in mental representing. This implicates that mental representing must have enabled crossmodal impressions to attain resemblances with the amodally based experiences, but also an interrelation must exist across crossmodal sensations, e.g., an interrelation between audiovisual and audio-tactile experiences (Marks 1978). Soon after these realizations, the relations between, for instance, audio-visual and tactile-gustatory experiences are represented mentally.

The Cascade-Like Effects of Crossmodality: from Firstness to Secondness and Inevitably Beyond What is important to notice here is that in this phase of development (around 3– 6 months of age), qualitatively different elements of meaning materialize through the activity of mental representing. Thus, the earliest sense-bound categories develop in cooccurrence with crossmodality. This enables the preservation of meaning features across the syncretism of their irreversible temporal existence. In contrast to firstness, where every sense-impression is represented equivalently, the sense coupling across modalities enables the psychic formation of primary categories. This is so because distinct elements (e.g., something auditive and something tactile), rather than something indistinct (e.g., an impression of an intensity), are represented together (e.g., an auditory-tactile grouping). As such, the realization of indexicality is the semiotic correspondence of crossmodality. Specific sets of crossmodal patterns, e.g., tactile-auditory to visual-auditory, which cooccur during the awakening of the child, can now be coupled so as to refer to amodal patterns of, for instance, affective form or intensities, and thus, a primary sort of memory emerges. We stipulate that this is a primary and fragile sort of memory, since the singular character of the sign vehicles realized at this stage (sinsigns) relies heavily on extra-representational cues, like self-stimulations (Freud 1985) or repetitively structured intersubjective interactions with the caregiver (Stern 2008). Hence, action-based cues must support this early memory. Hence, the indexical combinations of crossmodal impressions must, in this phase, be aided by double indexing: one indexing between qualitatively distinguished meaning elements from the different sense modalities, and another from these to the amodal patterns. At this phase, we assert a psychic representing of bioactivity-bound rhythms can occur. This is so because the semiotic context of this phase is dicentic, grounded in co-localization of events (C.P. 2.262). This might explain why Stern has such trouble deciding whether vitality affects (his term for the intersubjective forming of early development) are mainly tied to crossmodal or amodal properties (Køppe et al. 2008)—conceived as a double indexing, both are the case. Now, the development of crossmodal representing, as it realizes indexicality, institutes a redundancy in mental representing. This is so because the impressions are represented not only in single senses, but also via properties enabled only by the coupling of senses (Marks 1978). For example, the audio-tactile sensing occurring through babbling represents impressions both in the tactile self-stimulation of the tongue touching surfaces in the mouth cavity and the selfproduced sound waves transmitted through the auditory system (this is an example of a sense

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impression combined from two single senses). But the special attention pattern evoked through babbling is a property of the co-localization of the input/output temporality of these two senses. Thus, an irreducible crossmodal property is realized together with the beginning of a direction to time as the main factor of the inner-outer relation. Hence, the sense information is represented through two very different channelings: one unimodal and one crossmodal. In the initial phases of indexicality/crossmodality, this redundancy is compounded in the sense that the crossmodal properties are grounded (refers) via an immediate coupling to crossmodal patterns or contours. Furthermore, integration and differentiation of the senses are both taking place in this development, since the senses are both integrated in crossmodal interrelations (Lewkowicz and Röder 2012), but at the same time, the sensing is differentiated from the sole existence in firstness. Hence, sentience now also exists in secondness. Thus, the crossmodal integration is a differentiation from strictly amodal sensing, and this enables a referentiality through a direction to time: All that is required [for temporal synchronization in perception] is the detection of the concurrent onsets and offsets of stimulus energy across modalities. In contrast, the detection of amodal cues requires the ability to perceive the equivalence of some of the higher-level types of correlated patterns of information[…] (Lewkowicz 2012, p. 2) As such, the higher order amodal invariants become redundant as intersensory crossmodality is established. The “detection of the concurrent onsets and offsets of stimulus energy across modalities” enables a primary form of discrete information, which is the necessary condition for the shuffling of sense qualities and the emergence of thirdness.

Towards Symbolicity and Language (Thirdness) At this phase, the child discovers that the index-index relations can be used as cues in their own right. Thus, the crossmodal indexing of being picked up after a nap is decoupled from its co-indexing to the iconic amodal qualities associated with the very same event: the indexing can now move beyond events. As such, being picked up becomes relatable to a specific amodal pattern occurring while being fed (for example, hunger → feeding → fulfillment as a specific temporal intensity pattern). Shortly after achieving such relatability, indexing will have developed further towards being related to no amodal pattern at all, but instead to the crossmodal indexing of being picked up and being fed (a primal sort of generalization). This enables a qualitative leap from analogue intension of the primary categories (what manifestation of amodal features is indexed) to a digital extension of the primary categories (the index patterns as such). This is a new way of referring which is necessary for the realization of legisigns (cf. C.P.4.543). These are sign vehicles that are able to embody symbolic reference, and interestingly for our account, thirdness is some places coined representation by Peirce (C.P. 3.456-552). Legisigns are characterized by increasing arbitrariness and decontextualization (Bennett 2015). This we term the secondary irreversibility of mental representing. The primary irreversibility had to do with the irreversibility of analogue physical time. The secondary irreversibility has to do with the irreversible split intrinsic to the activity of representing itself. It is a split between mental representing where the semiotic context is bound and symbolic representations where the semiotic context becomes increasingly unbound. From here-on-after, sensing exclusively in one modality becomes impossible. Such is the price for entering the semiotic context of thirdness. This semiotic contextuality is coined argumentative by Peirce (cf. C.P. 2.780). It enables the child to become fully embedded in a


native language and as such to represent the contingent logic(s) of its culture (Madsen 1970), a contextuality thoroughly structuring its thought hereafter (Foucault 1969). Hence, mental representations become psychically pertinent for the developing mind (discourses and ideologies), and these are construed completely on elements negatively given, that is, they are not referring to anything immediately present anywhere in the environs.

The Semiotic Emergence of Symbolicity and Its Relation to Sensus Communis The realization of thirdness is fueled by the transition to upright walking. This transition is a crucial element for establishing sensus communis, and hence, it has an important role for the stabilization of thirdness. This is due to two factors: (1) the array of action-based contexts increases exponentially with the capacity to explore the environment by one’s own motoric means (Ainsworth and Bell 1970) and (2) in so far as the sense of one’s own body has previously been tied to context-bound experience and very primary memorizations, the relations of the body now become embedded in an integrated motoric capacity, so that the body’s dimensions can more readily be indexed onto the environment. As such, the emergence of indexical referentiality corresponds to a pruning of contextual and sense-bound impressions (a perceptual narrowing), and the psychic energy thus freed up potentiates the organic developments necessary for developing the motor coordination for upright posture: The child anticipates - at the mental level - the conquest of its own body's functional utility, which is still incomplete at that level of volitional motoricity at that point in time [i.e. prior to 18 months of age] (Lacan 1949, p. 112) Hence, it is the psycho-semiotic development that enables ontogenetic features to emerge, not the gradual unfolding of organic material (Engelsted 1984; Gottlieb 2002; Valsiner 2007). This provides a deep argument for claiming that the psyche is more than merely sense-impressions, and, furthermore, that sentience is a semiotically mediated and developmentally altered process. The abilities to explore the environment as a motor system co-develop with thirdness, and in conjunction with these symbolic properties, movement can provide the catalyzing conditions for the recombination of the capacity to represent. This means that the abilities to schematize and project symbolically co-occur with the mirroring aspects of sensus communis. This provides a possible basis for claiming that embodiment affords abstract language acquisition, since categorization emerges as a co-development of symbolization and motor integration. Thus, in the phase of secondness, a perceptual narrowing in the semantic field occurs, whereas the syntactic, grammatical, and pragmatic aspects of language acquisition all occur with the co-emergence of symbolic reference and motoric exploration. As such, this supports the idea that semantics is prior to grammar (Deacon 1997, 2005). Furthermore, this intertwinement of symbolicity and motoricity implicates the development of an entanglement between properties of sentience and symbolic thought in the early phases of life, since the co-development of these features establishes reciprocal influences on their connection to meaning. However, this does not mean that the later development towards fullblown engagement in symbolic representations, and the acquisitions of more and more symbolic practices, can be explained by reference to sentience and movement alone (which seems to be the assumption in parts of modern cognitive semantics cf. Lakoff and Johnson 1999). The reason why we introduced our Hegelian meditation and commitment was exactly to avoid this reduction. Sentience is no longer the same after sensus communis. Sentience

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becomes dialectically enmeshed in a new totality of development, as symbolic thought emerges from it (Winfield 2015).

From Sentience to Symbolicity Let us now tie the foregoing theoretical scenario to the concepts of code duality and perceptual narrowing. The phase of secondness heralds the first digitalizations in the activity of mental representing. A primordial preservation of meaningful elements is enabled vis-à-vis indexicality, and this leads to a redundant representing of sensing. Redundancy is functionally a prerequisite for any coding process (Deacon and Cashman 2011; Gómez-Ramirez 2014). However, this initially minimal memory afforded by indexicality has not yet attained the preservability of long-term memory. That is, this level of indexicality is not referencing irrespective of the contextual specificities, but depends on a double indexing (C.P. 5.91). This is not sufficient to warrant the radical pruning of informational potentialities caused via perceptual narrowing. The ability to perceive straight into the symbolic elements of multisensory information requires a thorough reduction in the perceptual field (Deacon 1997), so that the degrees of freedom of otherwise potential qualisigns become unrealizable (constrained). At the phase of secondness, the infant is still representing by context binding to amodal invariants. Hence, the transition to secondness is only a processual change necessitated by the instability of firstness. The leap to thirdness, however, is constituted through a reference technique which couples sense elements, such that sentience manifests crossmodality. Hence, thirdness is realized through the establishment of a meta-coupling (Bateson 1972), a coupling of couplers, i.e., a representing not only of two senses through crossmodal properties, but also a representing across different crossmodal features as illustrated in Fig. 7. It is this proto-symbolic recombination of senses through which thirdness emerges. Thirdness thus leads to a substitution of crossmodal properties and amodal invariants with semiotic invariants. This enables a radical, concentrated, and critical exclusion of whole domains of the iconic and sense-bound potentials of firstness. Our semiotic framework thus provides a plausible explanatory mechanism for the emergence of perceptual narrowing, since it has the adequate character of symmetry breaking and form generation, to account for the irreversibility of this phenomenon, and its repercussions in development. Schematically, we thus propose that the mechanisms (e.g., redundancy, recombination, primary, and secondary irreversibility) proposed in our whole-to-part model are viewed as a developmental pathway going from sentience in firstness/analogue, to active mental Second cross-modal coupling (V+S) G First meta-coupling potentiality(V,S+A,O) V

S A Sensus-communis established. All meta-coupling potentialities have been realized.

O

First cross-modal coupling (A+O)

Fig. 7 G gustation, V vision, T tactility, A audition, O olfaction, S somatosensation


representing in secondness/initial discretizing and irreversibly towards symbolicity in thirdness/digitalization. The cascade effect of secondness thus solidifies the code duality of analogue and digital through the establishment of a transmission process in mental representing. This mental work is steadily interpellated towards representational structuration. Hence, perceptual narrowing reflects the ontogenetic establishment of code duality. As such, perceptual narrowing occurs through an emergent process which acts back on its constitutive elements, so that the realization of thirdness becomes developmentally channelized through its very emergence (Deleuze in Anderson 2009 and Gottlieb 2002).

A Widened Conception of Perceptual Narrowing This scenario widens the understanding of perceptual narrowing, since it makes the phenomenon conceivable as a trace of underlying semiotic processes. The scenario thus implicates perceptual narrowing in the research of language acquisition. The realization of thirdness is what solidifies code duality in the inner-outer relation of the psyche. In thirdness, the semiotic functioning of firstness, which approximate a strict analogue experimentalism, are not deleted. Instead, via the emergence of digital representations, the analogue undergoes an upheaval

Thirdness - Language - Discursive thought - Mental representing ge ou al al n A git Di

Secondness - Icon - Index

Symbols

Sensus-communis

Firstness - Amodal invariance - Semiotic function: Iconic Categorial perception

V G A O S

Meta-coupling

Cross-modality

Fig. 8 Perceptual narrowing as the empirical manifestation of semiotic realizations. G gustation, V vision, T tactility, A audition, O olfaction, S somatosensation

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(“aufhebung”), so that the emergent symbolic memory is sustained through the continuous rewritings of semiosis. Thus, the analogue is transformed by the emergence of the digital, and the digital is only sustained through this transformation. As such, the code duality is actually the digital supervening on the analogue, which is exemplified in Fig. 8 (notice that the transition from firstness to secondness does not implicate the same criticality as the transition from secondness to thirdness, which is a radically emergent process). Interestingly, our scenario is not merely a reification of structuralism. Structuralism famously claimed that historicity is split into the complementary existence of synchronic (analyzable) relations, and diachronic (un-analyzable) changes (Madsen 1970). Our theory of code duality is not claiming that an entity, the psyche, exists in a duality of time and timelessness, rather, it claims that the psyche exists as a duality of qualitatively different times. Thus, where structuralism claims a duality of time and timelessness, code duality, in our version, claims a duality of simultaneous yet different times!

Testability If one is empirically inclined and claims that any such emergent leap is un-observable, then let us suggest how further research could specify the connection between the semiotic leap and perceptual narrowing. This could for example be done via some of the new statistical tools of structural equation modeling. For instance, one could apply the statistical concept of latent variables in regard to the emergence of thirdness and then treat the various predictors of perceptual narrowing as manifest variables (Westland 2015). Hence, the following operationalization would ensue: if the predictors of perceptual narrowing occur before the child has reached the mirror stage (which typically onsets when the child is 6–18 months of age), or diverge independently from each other throughout the period of early verbalization (8– 36 months of age), then our theory is falsified. Meanwhile, our scheme has received empirical nuancing through Kraebel (2012), showing that complex behavior patterns in 3-year-olds require the redundancy of amodal properties to be modeled. On the one hand, this indicates that our scheme is not wholly accurate in terms of the concrete timeline of the development. On the other hand, the study supports the intersensory redundancy hypothesis, indicating, that early exploration occurs through multiple codings of sensory information, and our scenario could be understood as a semiotic specification of such a hypothesis.

Concluding Remarks and Future Work In conclusion, we hope to have shown that there is indeed something else to the psyche than mere sense-impression, and that a crucial aspect of this irreducibility is reflected in the dialectical development of semiotic constraints. Hence, from a psychological point of view, the human arena is a processual sphere where the relation between sentience, mental representing, and symbolic representations is in constant development, and this situates the human spirit as a point of tension between external determination and internal appropriation (Engelsted 1993). The irreversibility of the entrance into the two-layered temporality of code duality is manifested in the fact that it is almost impossible to adequately describe the analogue totality of firstness, since it is in a lot of ways antithetical to symbolic communication (like when we


are writing this): all sciences need symbolically driven theories (Rodin 2014), and such formalizations are inherently antagonistic to any purely analogue experience (Lakoff and Johnson 1980, 1999). It can, however, be argued that some aesthetic processes, in regard to unisense experiences, can approximate this phenomenological ground-zero of the mind (firstness) (Køppe 2013; Husserl 2014). Hence, we stipulate that instances such as mindaltering psychedelic trips (e.g., on LSD), religious transcendence, and near-death experiences would approach such (non)states of mind in a multimodal fashion (Merleau-Ponty 1960; Deacon and Cashman 2009). However, this antinomy of primordial sentience and symbolic thought also renders our scenario vulnerable to the type of fallacious thinking whereby the analyzed properties are conceived of as overly robust (Wimsatt 1981), since our scenario is a heavy mixture of empirical matters and abstraction; hence, it is quite possible that aspects of the emergence of sensus communis which we have not been attentive enough towards (e.g., specific certain dyadic interplays or early institutionalization) do not conform to the temporal duality and transformation process which we suggest. Our scenario is therefore crucially in need of objective corrections, since other definitions of temporality could prove much more robust, that is, include more empirical aspects of multi-sensorial development. There are however good theoretical reasons to suggest that circumstances—subjective and intersubjective—related to the immature status of human infants play a crucial role in developing sentience towards mental representations (Lewkowicz 2010; Deacon 1997). Whether time split mental representing is unique to humans should be specified through phylogenetic analyses, and theories about the future (de)evolution of sentience and representing should likewise be debated psycho-semiotically. Acknowledgements This article is the result of a joint work carried out by Denis Ebbesen (Instructor in Developmental Psychology, UCPH) and Jeppe Olsen (Instructor in Philosophy of Science, UCPH), under the generous supervision of Professor Simo Køppe, UCPH, Department of Psychology, whom we would like to thank. We would also like to thank Associate Professor Tom Teasdale, UCPH, Department of Psychology, for helping us articulate some of the most intricate phrases. Compliance with Ethical Standards Conflict of Interest The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest. Human and Animal Studies This article does not contain any studies with human participants or animals performed by any of the authors.

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