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Why Was Thomas A. Sebeok Not a Cognitive Ethologist? From “Animal Mind” to “Semiotic Self”

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Abstract

In the current debates about zoosemiotics its relations with the neighbouring disciplines are a relevant topic. The present article aims to analyse the complex relations between zoosemiotics and cognitive ethology with special attention to their establishers: Thomas A. Sebeok and Donald R. Griffin. It is argued that zoosemiotics and cognitive ethology have common roots in comparative studies of animal communication in the early 1960s. For supporting this claim Sebeok’s works are analysed, the classical and philosophical periods of his zoosemiotic views are distinguished and the changing relations between zoosemiotics and cognitive ethology are described. The animal language controversy can be interpreted as the explicit point of divergence of the two paradigms, which, however, is a mere symptom of a deeper cleavage. The analysis brings out later critical differences between Sebeok’s and Griffin’s views on animal cognition and language. This disagreement has been the main reason for the critical reception and later neglect of Sebeok’s works in cognitive ethology. Sebeok’s position in this debate remains, however, paradigmatic, i.e. it proceeds from understanding of the contextualisation of semiotic processes that do not allow treating the animal mind as a distinct entity. As a peculiar parallel to Griffin’s metaphor of “animal mind”, Sebeok develops his understanding of “semiotic self” as a layered structure, characterised by an ability to make distinctions, foremost between itself and the surrounding environment. It appears that the history of zoosemiotics has two layers: in addition to the chronological history starting in 1963, when Sebeok proposed a name for the field, zoosemiotics is also philosophically rooted in Peircean semiotics and German biological philosophy. It is argued that the confrontation between zoosemiotics and cognitive ethology is related to different epistemological approaches and at least partly induced by underlying philosophical traditions.

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Notes

  1. Sebeok’s involvement with the issues of animal communication can be traced back to 1960–1961, when he had a scholarship at the Stanford Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences (Sebeok 1986: 72–73).

  2. It may be that we should also distinguish the third—biosemiotic period—in Sebeok’s thinking, which is formed from the essays on zoo/biosemiotic topics published in the second half of the 1990s and in the beginning of the new millennium mostly in the collection Global Semiotics (2001). For discussion about Sebeok’s biosemiotic turn, see Kull 2003.

  3. Is there not a hidden parallel with zoosemiotics as well as a certain irony, when one recalls Sebeok’s background in linguistics?

  4. At the same time Griffin’s expressions on the topic of animal language remain somewhat careful—he writes about language as a “combinations of signs” (Griffin 1981:103) and the “language-like behavior” of animals (Griffin 1981:103).

  5. This attitude remains, even if later cognitive ethology distances itself from the studies of animal cognition and communication made in the controlled laboratory environment (e.g. Bekoff, Allen 1997b).

  6. Similar contextual aspects of animal communication are also strongly emphasised in the works of W. John Smith in the form of the context-specificity of the messages transmitted in communication (Smith 1965).

  7. Compare to Griffin’s program of comparative linguistics, discussed above.

  8. We could also recall here von Frisch’s struggle against enthusiastic over-interpretation of his study as an indication of the consciousness of bees as reported by Tania Munz: “he [von Frisch] believed there were significant epistemological barriers to proving its presence scientifically and that the inaccessibility of its inner and outer manifestations dictated a scientific agnosticism” (Munz 2005: 546–548).

  9. An interesting parallel is the distinction between generalist and ecological programs in animal cognition studies conducted by Jacques Vauclair (1996: 163–166). According to his view, the generalist program aims to investigate the generality and continuity of cognitive processes across species and the evolution of human cognition, whereas the ecological program searches for cognitive processes in natural settings and compares different species in similar environmental settings.

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Acknowledgments

This research was supported by the European Union through the European Regional Development Fund (Centre of Excellence CECT, Estonia) and by Estonian Science Foundation Grant No. 7790.

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Correspondence to Timo Maran.

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Maran, T. Why Was Thomas A. Sebeok Not a Cognitive Ethologist? From “Animal Mind” to “Semiotic Self”. Biosemiotics 3, 315–329 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12304-010-9079-8

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