Biosemiotics (2012) 5:8393

DOI 10.1007/s12304-011-9121-5
O R I G I N A L PA P E R

A Biosemiotic Approach to the Problem of Structure

and Agency

Shahram Rafieian

Received: 19 January 2011 / Accepted: 6 May 2011 / Published online: 21 May 2011
# Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2011

Abstract A human being is the simultaneous composite of several different

levels of being, from atomic and subatomic to the level of complex social
interaction, and these levels are nested within the individual hierarchically (lower
levels giving rise to higher levels, etc.). One of the most important and
influential approaches developed in the history of science has been that of
systems theory and systemic thinking, in which the different levels of the
hierarchy, and the interactions between those levels, are considered simulta-
neously. Although this model provides a comprehensive view of biological being,
the transition from one level to the other is not well defined in it. Uexkll and
Pauli (Advances: Journal of the Institute for 417 the Advancement of Health
3:158174, 1986) suggested that semiosis is the translator of the events from one
level to the other. From a psychological point of view, a myriad of semiotic events
happen inside an individual, and it has been suggested that among other semiotic
events, inner speech plays an important role in mediating personal agency.
Dialogical theories of the self, Jungian psychology and hypnosis research evidence
show that there is a semiotic multiplicity in human agency and consciousness, and
that these multiple streams are all converge to a central semiotic singularity. I argue
in this paper that by taking a biosemiotic point of view, human agency may be
defined as the ability of an individual to direct the incoming and internal streams of
semioses and the ability to create an integrative and superordinate new stream of
semiosis in addition to the upwardly and downwardly component ones, and how
such a view might open a new door for research into the concept of human
personality and agency.

Keywords Structure and agency . Biosemiotics . Multiplicity . Consciousness

S. Rafieian (*)
Iranian Institute of Higher Health, 6, Kiani Alley, Mir Street, Isfahan, Iran
e-mail: Rafieiansh@yahoo.com
84 S. Rafieian

Introduction

A human being is the simultaneous composite of several different levels of being,

from atomic and subatomic to the level of complex social interaction. Corresponding
to the presence of each of these different levels, from the micro levels to the macro
ones, there exist separate branches of knowledge, each of which focuses on, and has
defined a specific methodology, based on the properties exhibited by that level. It is
for this reason the one of the most important and influential approaches developed in
the history of science has been that of systems theory and systemic thinking.
Although there were earlier thinkers who employed a systemic style of thinking, the
formulation of General System Theory by Ludwig Von Bertalanffy (1973) had a
significant impact on the many different branches of knowledge. In this system-
oriented approach, different levels of the hierarchy of life, and the interactions
between those levels, are considered simultaneously. Thus, it is understood that in
addition to the forces of causality that make changes within each level, such changes
within a level can impose forces upon the levels both above and below it. Such
effects can be described as upward and downward causation, respectively. As human
beings, we deal with a unified reality which has different aspects and that can not be
reduced to any of these levels. In other words, systemic thinking is an alternative
to reductionism. However, there is currently no theoretical framework for
understanding the systemic integration of these various levels. How, then, is
this integration possible?
For such integration to be possible, there need be a property that is common
among all the different levels, and which connects them.. American psychiatrist
George Engel (1977, 1980) tried to apply General System Theory to medicine and
developed a new model that he calls the bio-psycho-social model. In this model,
Engel advances the concepts of upward and downward causation and tries to show
that any damage in the micro level may impose problems on the macro levels, and
vice versa. He stated that a doctor in her or his practice should take such a
comprehensive approach and should consider all levels of patients life in her or his
treatment and diagnosis. What Engel did not consider, however, is the need for an
explanation of how these different levels can be connected. Uexkll and Pauli (1986)
likewise tried to explain this issue from a medical point of view, but with more
attention to this question. They used the concept of (bio)semiosis and stated that
such semiosis is a ubiquitous phenomenon that acts as a translator of the processes
of one level of biological being to another. Not surprisingly, then, in addition to his
contributions in medicine and the development of psychosomatic treatment, Thure
von Uexkllalong with his father, Jacobis considered to be one of the founders
of the biosemiotic school of thought, which today has applications in many other
areas of biological research; its usefulness not being restricted to medicine (Kull and
Hoffmeyer 2005).
Semiosis is the process of sign interpretation. According to the semiotic logic of
Charles Sanders Peirce (18491913), semiosis has three main components: object,
sign and interpretant. In a systematic view, the process of semiosis means that the
interpretation of signs are not only present in each level of the nested hierarchy of
biological being (i.e., the hierarchical biological arrangement of levels within levels
within levels), but also that it mediates the transition of causality from one level to
A Biosemiotic Approach to the Problem of Structure and Agency 85

another. Because semiosis is interpretive in its nature, applying this view to life
describes life itself as a creative process, as in reality, it is. (Emmeche 1991).
To illustrate the role of semiosis in the translation of processes of one level to
another, consider the following example. An old man suddenly realizes that his
young son has died in an accident, and because of the sudden onset of severe
biological stress, he suffers a myocardial infarction, or heart attack. In this case, the
symbolic words that occur on the level of interpersonal interactions are translated at
the level of the psyche to images, thoughts and inner dialogue. The occurrence of
this translation experience, in turn, results in the biological release of neuro-
transmitters which reach the heart, via the nervous system and by the circulation of
the blood. These transmitters are then interpreted as a message of acceleration and
demand. Thus, a stream of semioses begins at the level of interpersonal interaction
and reaches the level of cellular and molecular interactions within seconds.
When we consider this nested hierarchy of human being, from the micro up to the
macro levels, we are dealing with molecular, cellular, organic and personal levels, to
just name the most major levels. It is at the personal level, however, that we deal
with the so called hard problem of consciousness. At this level, a new property
emerges; one that is not itself matter, but that is related to the interactions and
processes that occur in a material context. Interestingly, here again, in the mental
processes, semiosis is present and although it is not clear how subjectivity emerges
from a material context, it is clear that semiosisi.e., the process of translation
between levelsis at work. Thus, here we are considering a pattern which is present
in both the objective and the subjective sides of the life. But when consciousness
itself is considered, one important property to take note of is that there is not a single
stream of consciousness inside a person. An individuals consciousness is the result
of the unification of several streams of micro-consciousnesses (OBrian and Opie
2003), an issue that I now wish to consider in more detail.

Multiplicity of Mind and Consciousness

From a neuropsychological point of view, as Manning and Manning (2007) explain,

there are several different cognitive components present both within a person, and in
the course of development. These different components are coherently integrated:
they function together, and a unified consciousness emerges from this integration.
For example, binocular vision is the result of the integration of the vision of two
eyes, and this integration takes place during the course of child development.
Any disruption in this integration process will result in two unintegrated visual
systems. This integrative process can also be seen, however, at a psychological
level. Such a multiplicity can be clearly seen when one of these normally
integrated components become dissociated from the others and begins to function
independently. There are different situations in which such dissociation might
happen, and one of the most important factors which may cause dissociation is
psychological trauma. It was the French philosopher and psychologist Pierre Janet
who first described the different kinds of psychological dissociation, and the effect
of psychological trauma upon the structure of the psyche, which results in the
loosening of the connections between its different components (van der Hart and
86 S. Rafieian

Horst 1989). One of the most dramatic psychological disorders in which such
dissociation is involved is Multiple Personality Disorder, or as it was called later,
Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID). In DID, chronic psychological trauma during
childhood results in the disintegration of the psyche and the development of
different personalities in a single body. Each personalitywhich we will define
below as a self-coherent stream of semiosestakes the control of the body for a
period of time, and each personality is amnesic about the presence of other
personalities (Ross 1997).
It is a general method in psychology to study pathological disorder to gain insight
into the normal structure and function of the mind. Some theorists believe that DID
is an exaggeration of what normally happens in the mind. This theory suggests that
in a normal person, different personalities are present, but that the difference
between DID and a normal person is that in DID the ability to integrate these
personalities is lost whereas a normal person is capable of integrating different
personalities (Manning and Manning 2007; Howell 2005). But how does this
integration happens?
From a biosemiotic point of view: a personality is a group of interconnected
psychological and bodily- systems of sings which function together for a certain
period of time, and the processes of translational semiosis play a key role in bringing
about this integration. Among others, one important system of signs involved in this
process is language. The process of the development of the self via language is
described in Hermans theory of the Dialogical Self (Hermans et al. 1992;
Hermans 2002). In this theory, the development of the self is considered as the result
of the internal conversation of different internal personalities. Hermans coined the
term the society of the mind to describe the notion that individual actions,
decisions and thoughts are developed by this continuous inner speech.
If we take a biosemiotic viewpoint, in which semiosis is the mechanism by which
different levels in the hierarchy of biological being interact, then semiosis can be
understood to be the translator that connects these different levels. We still do not
know how consciousness emerges from material interactions, obviously, but it is
clear that semiosis is present in the activities of the conscious mind. The idea
that I want to explore here is that the activities of the conscious mind result in
the development of an integrated self mainly via a process of internal
conversation. Building upon the discussion so far, the next section examines
this idea in more detail.

The Problem of Structure and Agency

The problem of structure and agency is one of the key problems in social theoryi.e., Is
it the social structure that determines human action, decision and behaviour, or is it
individual agency? There are different perspectives on the relationship between social
structure and personal agency. Some theorists, for example, the structuralists,
believe that human behaviour is predominately shaped by social structure.
Others emphasize the role of the agent in the development of social structure
(King 2005). British social theorist Margaret Archer (2002) believes that in
sociology there have been many efforts to describe the mechanisms involved in the
A Biosemiotic Approach to the Problem of Structure and Agency 87

shaping of the individual by the sociocultural structure. Foucaults concept of

embodied discourse and Kuhns notion of paradigm are examples of such
formulations. Archer, however, argues that the mechanisms by which an individual
is involved in the process of the transformation of society are not satisfactory
explained. In this paper, the structure-agency problem will be analysed from a
biosemiotic point of view.
To recap: semiosis is present in all levels of the individuals life. It translates the
interactions of one level to the other, and it is the main tool by which downward and
upward causation happen. When a person is considered on the level of the single
individual, changes in the upper levels and lower levels impose their effects upon
that individuals behaviour. For example, a hormone is released in the blood and
transmits a message to a group of cells in the brain and this set of biological changes,
in turn, changes the mood of the person and consequently, his or her behaviour. At a
different level, a financial crisis in a country may cause many students to change
their mind about continuing their education to a higher level. In both cases, a
change in a level different from the level of the (coherently integrated)
individual is transmitted via different processes of sign interpretation, and such
changes cause an observable change in the persons behaviour. Thus, when this
process is described to a self-aware person, he or she might begin to wonder:
Does this mean that my behaviour is continuously under control of the changes
that happen in upper or lower levels?
To reformulate this question in another way: Is an individual capable of changing
the streams of (upwardly and downwardly causal) semioses which are present
continuously in his or her life, or is he or shei.e., the integrated system as a
personcapable of creating a new stream of semiosis in addition to the upwardly
and downwardly component ones?
To deal with this problem, we need a reconsideration of an individuals
consciousness of the self at the personal level. As Vygotsky states, inner speech
is formed by the internalization of the dialogue with the other that takes place
outside of the individual (Emerson 1986). In other words, the semiotic game of
dialogue with the other becomes extended and internalized in the mind of the
individual. Both Peirce and his contemporary, George Herbert Mead (18631931),
were interested in the process of internal conversation. Mead speaks about the
dialogue between I, the self in the present moment, and the self which developed
in past, which Mead calls Me. Peirce sees this internal dialogue from another
perspective, and speaks about the conversation between the I and the self which
will emerge in the future. Peirce called this emerging self you. He states that the
self development process is the result of the dialogue between I and you. Wiley
(as cited in Bakker 2005) has tried to combine these two views to develop a triadic
model of development of self through internal dialogue which is a dialogue between
Me-I-You (Bakker 2005).
Semiosis, as I have noted before, is an ever present process; semiotic events can
change the status of a level and this change is then transmitted via a superordinate
stream of semiosis to the person. Semiotic processes which are present in the mind
of the person likewise have an important influence on her or his action and
behaviour. Among the different semiotic processes in the mind, that of internal
conversation plays a critical role. Specifically, what I want to propose here is tha the
88 S. Rafieian

agency of the person is mediated by semiotic processes, especially internal

conversation. This internal conversation is under the influence of the language signs
presented in the dialogue with the other. This means that even when a person is in a
dialogue with another person, internal conversation is present and there is a dual
dialogue between the person and the other and the person and her- or him-self
(Sullivan and McCarthy 2004).
Margaret Archer (2003) has likewise tried to explain the mechanisms by which
the agency of the person acts to change the social structure. In her research, she
shows that the process of internal conversation plays a critical role in a persons
decision making and the defining of her or his behaviour. Here, too, then, we see that
Archer is addressing here a kind of semiotic multiplicity. This multiplicity takes the
form of the language games, and of the conversations between the different
personalities inside the persons mind. This would mean that the process of semiosis
which is present in other levels of an individuals being is presentand perhaps
even foregrounded in consciousnesshere again.
However, it is not clear what the position of I is in this so called society of the
mind. Do these different personalities (or streams of semiosis) each make an equal
contribution to the process of decision making and formation of his or her behaviour
or not? There is some evidence which shows that these contributions are not equal,
and this evidence will now be briefly reviewed.
The first evidence comes from case reports of the treatment of Dissociative
Identity Disorder (DID) patients. Generally, DID patients are thought to have
different personalities with different ages, sexes and behaviours. Interestingly,
however, it is often that case that one of the personalities has some unique
properties. This personality is usually that of an older person who knows everything
about the patient and has the full memory of other personalitiesi.e., it is not
amnesic of any event or memory in the patients life. It is claimed in conversations
with the patient that he or she belongs to another world like the world of
spirits and that this personality thus never takes control of the body. Some
therapists even attempt to make contact with this personality via the other
personalities who take his or her advice, which is given in the patients dreams.
This personality is called Internal Self Helper (ISH) (Manning and Manning
2007; Bob 2003), and he advice and comments of this personality are then used
in the course of treatment.
Additional evidence comes from research on hypnosis. Hypnosis is considered by
some theorists as itself a dissociative experience and one of the phenomena which
are seen in the subjects with high hypnotizibility is called the hidden observer
phenomenon. Ernest Hilgard (1977, 1992) who first coined this term describes a
classical case of this phenomenon, as exhibited by a blind student of his. In an
experiment, the blind student was hypnotized and told that he would become deaf.
During hypnosis, he would not answer any question and made no reaction to loud
voices. Then the hypnotist tried to find out if any part of the subject, any other
personality within the subject, was hearing. To establish whether or not this was
the case, he said to the hypnotized student: Perhaps there is some part of you that is
hearing my voice and processing the information. If there is, I should like the index
finger of your right hand to rise as a sign that this is the case (Hilgard 1977, p. 186).
The subject then raised his finger. When the hypnosis terminated, moreover, the
A Biosemiotic Approach to the Problem of Structure and Agency 89

student remembered that his finger was raised and he said to Hilgard: I felt my
finger rise in a way that was not a spontaneous twitch, so you must have done
something to make it rise, and I want to know what you did (p. 186). The
hypnotist then pressed him to speak about what he remembered. He said that
after becoming deaf during hypnosis, because there was no visual and auditory
stimulus, he busied himself with a statistical problem and suddenly he felt the
movement of his finger. Subsequently, Hilgard hypnotized him again and
attempted to converse with that part of the subjects mind that was listening to
him in the previous session, while he was supposedly hypnotically deaf.
Surprisingly, this personality was able to recall all that had happened in the
period of hypnotic deafness. According to this and other similar experiments,
Hilgard proposed the metaphor of the hidden observer as an information source
capable of a high level of cognitive functioning not consciously experienced by
the hypnotized person (Hilgard 1992, p. 21). Although the presence and the nature
of this so-called hidden observer personality is controversial, there have since
been other studies that support Hilgards view (Bob 2003, 2008).
Carl Jung (18651971) was also interested in the idea of dissociation and
developed the concept of the psychological complex around it. (Everest 1999; Bob
2003). Jung believes that a group of thoughts and emotions can coalesce around a
powerful emotional theme and develop a self-perpetuating system that has its own
function. Everest (1999) in her paper about the relationship between the findings on
DID and the works of Jung writes:
He regarded the ego as being the most important of the complexes, being
associated with a given name and normally being the centre of consciousness.
However, what impressed Jung most was the ability of the complexes to become
autonomous and to form splinter psyches Often complexes seemed to possess a
will, a life, and a personality of their own and in some cases to take over from the
original ego-complex (p. 448).
In Jungs view, in the process of individuation, the totality of the psyche
what he calls the Selfis released. This Self is considered as the experienced
wholeness and the center of the person. Thus, Jungs concept of the Self is
not synonymous with the related concept of the Ego. Ego (or the ego-complex) is
just one of the complexes, playing an executive role in the person, claims Jung.
Jung (1921) writes: Inasmuch as the ego is only the centre of my field of
consciousness, it is not identical with the totality of my psyche. . . . I therefore
distinguish between the Ego and the Self since the ego is only the subject of my
consciousness, while the self is the subject of my total psyche, which also includes
the unconscious (p. 425).
Having considered the semiotic multiplicity described at the personal level,
and the related concepts of Internal Self Helper, Hidden Observer and Self, again
it is seen that the behaviour of a person is under the control of myriad semiotic
processes which are present in his or her mind, body and the environment. Our
critical question from earlier thus returns: Is the behaviour of the person is
merely defined by these semiotic processes which continuously come from
different levels of hierarchy of her or his existence? To gain some traction on this
question, another aspect of the philosophy of Peirce, his cosmology, will be
briefly considered.
90 S. Rafieian

Peircean Cosmology and Self Development

The self concept is very important to the symbolic interactionist approach in

sociology. George Herbert Mead, a key figure in the development of this approach,
was himself influenced by Peirces ideas (Bakker 2005). Apart from his semiotics,
Peirce defines three categories which are the main elements of his cosmology. These
are Firstness, Secondness and Thirdness. Firstness consists of possibility in the realm
of material interactions, and such possibility-states include the forms of qualia and
pure feeling in sentient beings . In Peirces view, possibility is located at the heart of
the matter, and Secondnessthe state of of facts and the actualitiesproceed from
it. Secondness is thus the category of what happens and exists in the universe.
Thirdness is the mediation between Firstness (possibility) and Secondness
(actuality). Thirdness includes the category of rules and laws. It is this
mediatingcategory between possibility and actuality that makes prediction possible
(Nth 1990).
The organization of the living organism, and in its highest form, the nervous
system of a human being, provides a context in which this aspect of Thirdness
can be fully expressed (Brier 2005). In terms of human phenomenological
experience, Firstness is the experience of I in the here and now, and Secondness
is the awareness of this experience, which is perceived via sensation and
perception. Bakker (2005) describes the relationship between these categories as
follows:
Our lived reality in everyday life is understood by us in retrospect
through the use of signs, but the immediate moment of awareness is
presignifactory awareness. We are aware before we can articulate that
awareness. When we do attempt to articulate our Firstness we quickly get
stuck in our Thirdness and our Thirdness is never purely our own, unless of
course we are considered insane and heard to be speaking nothing but
gibberish.(p. 79)
The individual in the phenomenological position of first person experience is
thus heavily involved in a semiotic event. Such internal conversation, which is a
continuous event throughout the individuals life, is a semiotic process. Mental
images and what we see and experience in our daydreaming and during sleep are
also symbols, icons and indices which are interpreted and change our behaviours and
our decisions, and thus influence our agency. To put this differently, there is a source
of Firstness in the individual which produces different kinds of signs throughout
the course life, without interruption. There is an unlimited degree of freedom in
this productivity, which is the nature of Firstness. Nobody knows from where
ideas, thoughts and images come, and the case studies on creative personalities
show that the moment that the creative person finds a new idea is generally a
trance-like experience in which he or she has a deep inner experience. For
example, Kekule saw the image of a snake biting its tail during his daydreaming
and solved the problem of the arrangement of carbons in the structure of the
benzene molecule. The experience of creativity in daydreaming or trance-like
situations has also reported by others: Archimedes, the mathematician Jacques
Hadamard and Samuel Taylor, to name just a few. (Boden 2004).
A Biosemiotic Approach to the Problem of Structure and Agency 91

This picture of creativity can be described from a biosemiotic perspective:

generally an individual is under control of the streams of semioses which he or she
receives from the upper and lower levels of the nested hierarchy of biological being.
He or she is under control of the semiotic events that happen incessantly on the
micro level of neurotransmitters and cellular and molecular interactions, as well as
from the streams of semioses which are conveyed to her or him from society, from
interpersonal interactions, and from interactions with the environment. But there is a
source of Firstness present in each individual that can potentially produce a stream of
semiosis that may be conveyed to the micro or macro levels, and thereby change the
currently existing structure of either of these. This source of Firstness is necessary
for the production of signs at the mental level. Such signs might be images,
conversations or dreams, and they will, in turn, be translated to other signs; the
stream of semiosis proceeds through the levels and makes changes in both macro
and micro levels as it does so .
Importantly, the majority of time, people are controlled by the streams of
semioses that are coming from higher and lower levels; the number of times that
people produce original signs that have great impact on the other levels is not large.
Perhaps it can be stated that as Peircean Firstness is spontaneity and potentiality, and
Firstness in the person is the source of new ideas and creativity, anything is possible
at the level of imagination, dreams and internal conversation. Firstness is an
undifferentiated state, and thus a unified source, but at the level of actuality or
Secondness, the different streams of semioses might become dissociated, and I want
to propose here that it is the self- referential mechanisms discussed above that can
connect them. This picture is comparable to Jungs description of the relationship
between the complexes and the Self. In my model, the Self can be considered as
Firstness and the complexes are the different systems of signs which have become
dissociated and have come to exert their own kind of autonomy. The presence of the
Internal Self Helper (ISH) in DID and the phenomenon of the Hidden Observer in
hypnosis both imply that all dissociated systems of sign in the afflicted person yet
converge and are connected to a unified source. But why in some people is Firstness
more productive? Can it be suggested that in some people Firstness is more active,
or that these people are more in touch with Firstness, whereas in others Firstness is
weaker or they are not so connected to the experience of Firstness? Imagination and
internal dialogue are products of Firstness; paradoxically, although Firstness is
necessary for the production of the signs, there is no sign in Firstness itself. This
means that in phenomenological experience, whenever the person is involved in any
form of semiosis he or she is not experiencing Firstness.
This paradoxical conception of Firstness is similar to the assumptions of different
methods of meditation. In meditation, the person tries to be in the present moment
and have non-judgmental attention (Mace 2007; Mcgee 2008; Shapiro et al. 2006).
From a biosemiotic perspective, this means that the person should try to terminate
or perhaps not even beginthe process of sign interpretation. The interpretation of a
sign is another sign and the process of semiosis goes on ad infinitum. But in
meditation, the person tries to avoid engaging in this process and to stay in the
present moment. In my experience of mindfulness meditation, I was instructed to
come back to my breathing whenever I became involved with imagination,
dreaming or internal conversation. In other words, I was instructed to avoid the
92 S. Rafieian

dialogue with both the Meadian Me and the Peircean you and be just I
which is equivalent to the experience of Firstness.
Again, this model raises the question of whether or not creative people who have
had a significant role in social change were in touch with the experience of Firstness
via mediation or similar methods of internal exploration. Using the above
framework, one might think about the ways that we can, in a sense, reinforce
Firstness, or help people move closer to Firstness, in order to become more creative
within society. These are areas for more research and further contribution.

Conclusion

Thinking about the problem of structure and agency needs an interdisciplinary

framework to connect the acts of the individual to social change, and vice versa. This
paper has attempted to show how biosemiotics provides this framework, and how
new insights for research and practice may emerge from it. In this view, the agency
of the person (in the context of society) gives direction to the streams of signs which
are produced from Firstness, and which are available in the psyche of any person. If
we consider agency as the authority or power to direct a stream of semiosis, then
this conception, though helpful, still does not actually prove that people genuinely
have this ability. There are schools of thought such as behaviourism, for example,
that believe human behaviour is completely under the control of environmental
clues. Recently, however, researchers in social psychology have brought new
evidence to show that there are many implicit factors in a persons life which can
control her or his behaviour (Bargh 2008). I believe that it is impossible to prove that
a person has control of her or his life, because there are many factors involved in the
development of personal behaviour; and it is beyond the ability of any researcher to
consider all these factors. It means that belief in the ability of the human to control
her or his life should be accepted as an axiom, though it is not possible to prove it by
any research method. This aside, biosemiotics can provide a theoretical framework
for thinking about the ways in which human agency is mediated.

Acknowledgment The author wishes to express his thanks to Tim Clark and anonymous reviewers for
their comments regarding the earlier version of this paper.

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