Although expression is a characteristic of all beings, it is generally considered as referring to states that are almost exclusively human., The ubiquity and relevance of extended and embodied cognition are then overlooked, and the psychological correlate of expression in human beings considered as technique.
The term expression is used here more widely than normal to refer to semiotic communication — the making, recognizing, interpreting, using, and responding to signs; whether these are made through, for instance, auditory, visual, mophological, or behavioural media.
External or internal, conscious or not, a being's expression develops in response to the meaningful internal representations generated from the expressions of their sensory systems. expression then is recursive, predicated on elementary, inherited rules, or behavioural modules. For instance, a being's physicality and markings are perceived by others as meaningful, whether through experience or association, and choices are influenced. Selection and inheritance then follow.
awareness arises from differentiated sets of mental activity — temporary foci around which orbits, for instance, our own cognition. Conscious expression is a linear organization of the elements of these foci, and fluency the semiotic competence with which they are identified and translated into a stream of signs.
language is the recognition of a set of signs, the meaning of which has been informed by the macrocosm of metalanguage within which it has developed — cultures are metalanguages within which human languages develop these then driving the development of cultures.
The expression we develop within the cultures of our ontogeny is foundational. In later life, as we engage within other cultures, together with our other elementary, cognitive and bio-mechanical capabilities it commensurately founds our expression in these too.
expression refers here to any signal, sign or symbol, that a being generates, whether external or internal to itself, and whether or not it is consciously or deliberately generated. Its transmission may be through a biophysical channel e.g vocal, luminescence, neural, etc.; a virtual channel e.g text, artefact, smoke, etc.; or a bio-virtual channel e.g telephony, video, etc. It is the effective response of a being to its perception of an external and internal event, constructed from the meaningful internal representations it generates from the chemical, electrical, or electro-chemical expressions of its sensory mechanism.
Mind can be defined as a causally effective inner state.
The endocrine apparatus (the hormone system) .. should not be seen as an isolated regulatory system .. but rather as an integral part of both the immune system and the nervous system. Together, .. these endosemiotic tools are collectively responsible for the interaction of the organism with its social and physical world and constitute the fundament out of which so-called psychological reality, if any, of the organism will emerge.
Language: any system of sounds, gestures, symbols, or other signs that facilitates communication.
Microcosm / macrocosm: a macrocosm is a complex structure that is considered to be a whole; a microcosm is an element with a similar structure that exists within a macrocosm.
Metalanguage: a language or set of symbols that describes or defines another language.
The term being, is used here for all forms of life, whether multicellular (e.g. humans, ants, plants, etc); unicellular (e.g. bacteria, archaea, and some algae), or both (e.g. slime molds), and to other metasystems (e.g. jellyfish, and societies, of ants, humans, deer etc.
Bioemiosis proceeds through recognition — through current sense-data that a being perceives then being recognized by it; as being the same as, or belonging to the same class as, something the being has sensed or perceived before. This then is a recursive process, its first iteration (or 'base case') generating meaning by matching current sense-data and perceptions to those that have previously been recognized, recorded, embodied, and inherited.
Here embodiment refers to the biophysical expression of semiosis and to the semiosis that biophysical expression represents; and embodied cognition is then simply a description of biosemiosis.
A metatransition is a metasystem transition to EITHER a more complex OR a simpler structure, ultimately leading to a transitory OR a permanent evolutionary transition in individuality.
Here, refers to the general, rather than a restricted, controlling or organizational system which maintains the homeostasis necessary for the functioning of a system and its subsystems.
If anthropocentric and creationist teleologies are set-aside, and it is accepted as unavoidable that descriptions of the ineffable are metaphorical, then BEINGS, unencumbered by anthropocentric concepts of the soul, can be defined simply as 'vehicles' of life and life inferred recursively.
BEINGS are not only physical, they are animate and BIOPHYSICAL — the term BIOPHYSICAL then is used here to refer to their actuality as distinct to their BIOSEMIOTIC life. Their META-EXPRESSION (the prefix "meta-" used here as in metalanguage - a system of "signs and symbols", a language, used to describe a language) is BIOSEMIOSIS, the system of "signs and symbols" that articulates the internal and external EXPRESSION of BEINGS.
The abstracted, inferred psychological attributes of BEINGS — in humans referred to as awareness, consciousness, EGO and mind — are METABIOPHYSICAL characteristics; the PERCEPTIONS that we generate from the information our senses provide of the NOUMENA we actually EXPERIENCE — generated in much the same way as our PERCEPTIONS of colour are. In actuality, psychology then is either BIOSEMIOSIS, or METABIOLOGY, or it is the study and classification of the METABIOPHYSICAL.
In an individual, the evolution of wellness and illness is a function of the interaction of their BIOPHYSICAL and METABIOPHYSICAL actuality with their environment. The social support and care that they receive, or are privated of, and any medical or psychological intervention then impact this system as a whole. Wellness and illness are 'psychosomatic'.
Research into cancer and other diseases has identified both the existence and the primacy of these METABIOPHYSICAL systems, and for various reasons of the need to address them as wholes; however, the institutions of modern societies and their broadcasting, despite increasingly appear obdurately set on discounting it in favour of reductionist models.
The International Classification of Functioning (International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health), an holistic overview of wellness and illness, was first drafted by WHO, an international 'political' body, a quarter of a century ago in 1980. Despite this, and the fact that "biopsychosocial" models are taught in medical schools today, their significance to social organization and its institutions appears minimal, perhaps because of the powerful lobbies that work to maintain and promote the fundamentalist belief of scientific reductionism.
After nine years of international revision efforts coordinated by the World Health Organization (WHO), the World Health Assembly on May 22, 2001, approved the International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health and its abbreviation of "ICF." This classification was first created in 1980 ... by WHO to provide a unifying framework for classifying the consequences of disease. ... Functioning and disability are viewed as a complex interaction between the health condition of the individual and the contextual factors of the environment as well as personal factors. The picture produced by this combination of factors and dimensions is of "the person in his or her world." The classification treats these dimensions as interactive and dynamic rather than linear or static. It allows for an assessment of the degree of disability, although it is not a measurement instrument. It is applicable to all people, whatever their health condition. The language of the ICF is neutral as to etiology, placing the emphasis on function rather than condition or disease. It also is carefully designed to be relevant across cultures as well as age groups and genders, making it highly appropriate for heterogeneous populations.
"When people originally believed that the earth was flat, if that had not been questioned, science wouldn’t have advanced this far. ..saying (the) biopsychosocial model has no value, and that it is "woo", is very similar to that." Sandyshore - university researcher and wikipedian.
The article, from which the above quote was taken, although apparently accessible in 2024, has been taken down by Stanford Medicine. The new article (at https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2004/02/link-between-sleep-cancer-progression-explored-by-stanford-researcher.html) still refers to Spiegal's work, but the expurgated quote there now seems to downplay the research and distance Stanford from Spiegal and the view he expressed.
Life is the state of being. Being is the condition of BEINGS.
A BEING is a descendant of a BEING.
I am a BEING.
It is as correct or incorrect to say that hormones create love as it is to say that love creates hormones. Love is not definable in the way that hormones are; they are terms of different reference frames.
Noumenon, is a Greek word meaning "that which is perceived". It is used here in that simple sense. Although Kant was the first person to use the term as a loanword, it is not used here to refer to his philosophy generally.
Kant adopted the Greek word, noumenon, to refer to the thing-in-itself so that this underlying reality might more readily be distinguished in discussion from the recognition by an observer of it that then renders it as a sign. However, whereas Kant referred to this recognition as perception — and to the perception of the thing-in-itself as a phenomenon — here the term perception is used simply to refer to a specific step in the process of biosemiosis.
A language is a system of arbitrary signals used to communicate information. To communicate, is to convey information through a system of arbitrary signals. Semantic means of or relating to meaning. Meaning refers to the sense or reference of an expression. To recognize, is to know something as the same as, or belonging to the same class as, something known before.
Science is an elementary practice. Scientism is a belief. Eugenics and the Holocaust are among the brutal consequences and stark reminders of not recognizing this distinction..
