On the Logic of Animal Umwelten: The Animal Subjective Present, or Zoosemiotics of Choice and Learning
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.31261/ZOOPHILOLOGICA.2023.11.06Keywords:
animal cognition, biosemiotics, meaning-making in animals, semiosis, types of umweltAbstract
Our aim in this study is to demonstrate a mutual relationship between the classes of signs, mechanisms of learning, and types of the umwelt. This is necessary in order to describe and understand the animal ways of meaning-making in the context of various forms of semiosis. We assume that semiosis only occurs in the present, in the subjective Now. An account of the linkage of vegetative, animal, social, and cultural umwelten with corresponding classes of signs and mechanisms of learning (imprinting, conditioning, imitating, conventioning) is provided. We also formulate two general rules of semiotic development that characterise the ontogeny of the umwelt.
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