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.
Beings, here includes those that are unicellular (e.g. bacteria, archaea, and some algae); and those that are both unicellular and multicellular (e.g. slime molds) as well as those that are multicellular and, therefore, societies —cellular metasystems (e.g. humans, ants, jellyfish).
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 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..
