Victoria N. Alexander's Blog, page 6
July 22, 2022
Chapter 12, Preview of Covid-1984, The Musical
July 16, 2022
Pathologies: Mass Hysteria and Auto-Immune Disease
Pathologies: Mass Hysteria and Auto-Immune Disease
Palacky University, Olomouc, Czechia
Biosemiotics Gathering June 26, 2022
Abstract My research has long been focused on trying to understand creativity from a Biosemiotic perspective. According to my theory of biosemiosis, a system is capable of intentional behavior insofar as the effect of its response to a sign tends to reinforce that type of response to that type of sign. This entrains the system to achieve its goal (it’s always sort of backward looking), but due to the flexible nature of signs, room for creative improvement exists insofar as chance structures can be harnessed as signs to achieve new goals (or same goals via new means). Significantly, the kind of chance I am looking at is not random; it is constrained by the relative similarity and relative proximity of the biological signs.
The other side of creativity by such biosemiosic means is pathology, e.g., mass hysteria, auto-immune disease, and unhealthy addictions. Óscar Castro García, J. Augustus Bacigalupi and I (2021) recently looked at the biosemiosic mechanisms underlying what could be called learned pathological behavior of slime mold. The world has lately witnessed similar kinds of pathology in the “mass formation” behavior, noted by psychologist Mattias Desmet (2022), that has arisen from propaganda related to the pandemic. Desmet’s theory is supported, I believe, byAlexander and Grimes (2017), a biosemiotic reading of subconscious information processing and the etiology of unhealthy addictions. I’ll also look at James Lyons-Weiler’s theory of pathogenic priming in relation to acquired auto-immune diseases. I believe there are similar semiotics processes behind these three different kinds of pathologies.
Although pathologies may arise from the same kind of biosemiosis that give rise to healthy and productive creative actions, it seems to me that pathological actions may be much more regular. I will be exploring the nature of this regularity in view of some of Yagmur Denizhan’s recent comments/lecture on cybernetic systems. Systems that are not open to new information may impose self-harmful constraints through the too-strict application of filters without regard to context.
Alexander, V. N., Bacigalupi, J. A., and García, O. C. 2021. “Living systems are smarter bots: Slime mold semiosis versus AI symbol manipulation,” BioSystems 206.
Alexander, V. N., and Grimes, V. A., 2017. “Fluid Biosemiotic Mechanisms Underlie Subconscious Habits,” Biosemiotics 10(3) 337–353.
Denizhan, Yagmur, 2022. “Intelligence as a Border Activity between Modelled and Unmodelled” Collège International de Philosophie, Dept of French, Dept of Digital Humanities. 10 February.
Desmet, Mattias. 2022. The Psychology of Totalitarianism. Chelsea Green Publishing.
Lyons-Weiler, James. 2020. “Pathogenic Priming Likely Contributes to Serious and Critical Illness and Mortality in COVID-19 via Autoimmunity,” Journal of Translational Autoimmunity (3) 100051.
