University of Tartu in Estonia

The University of Tartu is offering a MA program in Semiotics which is taught in English and covers a 2 year term.  The cost is 6500 Euros (8,500 Dollars) but the website boasts scholarships for high performers and whatever that is supposed to include.  It’s going to take a lot more background work to make a Master’s program worth the money and time abroad but it seems to be the best school for semiotics I have found yet.

Two Worlds. Evolution, NeoDarwinism, Cultural Evolution, Signs

Throughout this paper I will show how evolution works, how it develops not only complex organisms in the ‘physical’ world but also complex culture in the ‘mental’ world and how the concept of signs can help us understand the connection between both.

To be clear, the mental world is consciousness and it is unique because it uses the raw data of the physical world, e.g. light, to build itself.  The physical can exist without us but the mental exists because of us.  How they each exist are the questions of metaphysics and consciousness and, though extremely interesting, I will not explore them here.  Rather, we will take the physical world and the conscious, mental world as a fact and deal with how they function.   But, just as Darwin saw patterns in biological evolution without knowing of DNA, chromosomes or genes, we need to allow for an understanding of cultural evolution without knowing the exact mechanisms behind consciousness.   What we do know, however, is this:

Kansai Independent Learners

Image via CrunchBase

The name may be a little sorry but it says alot and I think stands out on a list of dozen other Meetup groups. We had our first meeting earlier this week and I think it went well.

There was a good turnout and people seemed to be excited about working on projects in between the groups which is good because otherwise folks tend to lose enthusiasm.

As a matter of fact, I have the first assignment which has a self-imposed due date of two weeks.  I’ll be talking about meaning theory, memes, and Dawkin’s extended phenotype if I can get the book read soon.  1,000 words is my goal but on a first shot sketching the ideas I ran 800.  Unlike in University I want more pages but I realize that my works may be only interesting to myself so I won’t subject people to any more than they’ve been kind enough to take on.  I’ll post an abstract by the weekend’s end.

Today I learned that,

an isomorphism (loosely) is a likeness map between two things; an isomorph of a car and truck may include wheels, seats and roofs but not trunks or flatbeds.

Beginning

Reading articles is going to be tough.  They’re pretty dense and the lists and lists of references and bibliographies gives me the distinct feeling I’ve never read before.  Biosemiotics is really intriguing though because it explains the in between of biology and the environment.  Things live in contexts.  Whether a fish born in a sea or people born with a mind suited for articulation it has been uniquely adapted to navigate a given world-niche and it is better able to live because of that niche.

There has been a trend in biology toward reductionist explanations of life’s processes and the notion of information has been taken for granted.  Biosemiotics is trying to qualify the explanatory gap between how systems developed in particular and why systems developed in particular by showing how information constructs and how it makes meaning to organisms, in turn structuring their lives and interactions.

Por examplo, think of what the internet changes for the next generation of offspring. Genes are capable of mingling with genes that would have never met without easy trip planning, organizational capabilities, etc. made possible by modern communication. Plus humans alone can trade in ideas about processed foods that will undoubtedly shape the way future generations develop.  

Biology alone is blind to these operants.

Biosemiotics

… that’s it.  That is my line in the sand of… things worth studying.  It uses biology to explain how signs are informed and that, to me, is the missing link in any theory of meaning.  I wouldn’t expect it to explain consciousness but it might benefit a memetic theory of mind.  How can I study this instead of teaching English?

Daily Dose

Philosophybites offers a huge archive of philosophers interviewed briefly about single topics; cannibalism, Jesus as Philosopher, Plato’s Cave.  The talks are really understandable, often with brief overviews of key concepts, arguments and histories around the subject.  The podcasts are perfect for a quick listen and anyone intrigued by philosophy should check them out.