Hortus Semioticus 13 / 2026 – Conversation

Kalevi: Today is the last day of November, the 30th of November, 2024. We are at the Puhtu Biological Station, the former house of Jakob von Uexküll, together with Gabriel, Elea, Kobus, and Kalevi. Let us start with this question: What attracts us to semiotics? We are in semiotics because something attracts us.

Kobus: Semiotics attracts me because it allows me to somehow deal with the ultimate questions in life. Not answering them, though, because I think most of them are not within my reach to answer. It allows me to think about what it means to be alive, to be in our universe, how we relate to it, and how we make sense of it. There is a kind of mystery behind this. Whether you look at it from a biological perspective, a philosophical perspective, or from a spiritual perspective, it is the mystery that fascinates me.

Elea: I started studying philosophy and, at the beginning, the question that interested me most was that of perception – and therefore relationality. With semiotics, there was the hope of finding a technical approach to these issues. Semiotics appeared to me as a tool for addressing a core problem shared by the natural and the social sciences: how are relations created? In this sense, I consider semiotics as an integral part of my philosophical reflection. 

Gabriel: I think I agree more or less with that answer. I think what attracted me, when I originally applied to the program, was athe human experience in general, if we think of semiotics as having something to do with how culture works. I think it ultimately boils down to that as far as my general interest goes.

Kalevi: I grew up as a biologist, studying, as a scientist, biological problems, modelling biological phenomena, and it somehow stepwise occurred to me that the classical biological approach is limited to simple problems, which are not so interesting. Semiotics provides a more interesting formulation of problems and a way to probably also solve the more complex problems of life. So, for me, that part of biology was – and still is – not inhabited enough in terms of knowledge. Therefore, it’s interesting and attractive. An area to discover that provides something undiscovered. 

Elea: You were studying biology. So, how did you come into contact with people working in semiotics? Was it because they were somehow in between disciplines? Or did you take a class in semiotics? 

Kalevi: The word ‘semiotics’ was around when I was in gymnasium.  At that time I was already working as an assistant in an animal behaviour lab here in Puhtu. That served as a kind of background that got me thinking towards semiotics. As a student, I had read already, at least a little about zoosemiotics. 

Elea: Also Lotman? 

Kalevi: Not at that time. I didn’t read anything Lotman wrote, but I did read some popular articles on semiotics. 

Kobus: In terms of my own history, I think living through the end of apartheid and the birth of a new South Africa sort of put me into the cauldron of questioning where things come from, socially, culturally speaking, to put it very generally. You see some things failing, some things succeeding, some patterns recurring, and new things coming out. I think that when I met semiotics, it felt like a way to explore this experience, which is a very personal experience in my own life. 

Kalevi: When was that?

Kobus: Actually, pretty late. My master’s and PhD were in hermeneutics. I did read a bit of French structuralism when I did my Master’s, but it was only 2012, 2013, or 2014 when I really started reading semiotics.

Elea: I actually started with Bergson and, around the same time, a friend of mine was doing research in semiotics, particularly on the Groupe µ. While I was reading Bergson, I found myself wondering about a tension: Bergson talks about the possibility of a non-mediated relation to the world and to thought, whereas semioticians argue that every relation is mediated through signs, through a semiotic process. That contrast really got stuck in my mind. I began to think that Bergson’s idea of intuition actually contained something like semiosis; that ‘non-mediated’ might not mean immediate fusion, but rather something more complex. That’s when I started reading Bergson through a semiotic lens. I gradually discovered what I would call a kind of protosemiotic thinking in his work, especially in his conception of life. That became the bridge between Bergson’s philosophy and semiotics for me.

Gabriel: I was assigned Foucault’s Pendulum by Umberto Eco during my final year of undergrad. I thought it was an interesting book. I still don’t think I really understand it, though. I probably need to read it again. Afterwards I did some searching around and found out Eco was engaged in the world of semiotics. I read The Role of the Reader and thought it was particularly interesting because I was studying fiction writing at the time. It gave me a new perspective to think about fiction. That was my introduction. Later, I read some Lotman before coming to Tartu, but as far as biosemiotics or general semiotics is concerned, that was a new territory for me. It’s been interesting learning how big the world of semiotics is. I think something I hear from people who come to Tartu is that they come in with one idea of what semiotics is and quickly realise it is actually a lot of things. I’ve encountered that feeling quite often as well. 

Kalevi: Semiotics really is pretty extensive! But now, there is probably some part where semioticians would share more or less, like there is general physics, or general biology, or general sociology. What would be, according to our view, general semiotics? The expression itself was not so often used. However, it is pretty obvious that it should be. There will be a special issue in Semiotica, appearing in 2026, on general semiotics. That was in the last world congress in semiotics (Warsaw, Poland, 2024) Jamin Pelkey was the one who organised a session in general semiotics, together with Ľudmila Lacková. So, what should be there, what is this general semiotics, according to you? 

Elea: I would say that it is pretty metaphysical. 

Gabriel: Yes. 

Elea: In my opinion, general semiotics is fundamentally about meaning, regardless of the context in which it appears, whether in animal life, human life, large communities, or within the self. It focuses on what is common: the core phenomenon of meaning-making. I see it as a kind of prerequisite for all disciplines concerned with true relations. In that sense, general semiotics plays a role similar to metaphysics in the Aristotelian sense: what comes before physics, the foundational concepts, the most general ones. So, I would say that general semiotics could be seen as a kind of metaphysics for all sciences that deal with the creation of relations.

Kalevi: A prolegomenon to semiotics? 

Elea: Yes, something like that. 

Gabriel: I think the conversation we were having earlier about the difference between translation and interpretation is maybe indicative of what you just said. This idea that you’re really dealing with very basic semiotic units on the lower end of the semiotic threshold and having something to do with coming up with a baseline, establishing some ideas or suppositions through which the rest of semiotics can be worked on. That’s what I understand to be the point of general semiotics. 

Kobus: For me, it’s difficult to say. I can obviously think of what general semiotics should be, but that was not your question.

Kalevi: Yes, what it should be, why not? 

Kobus: I would then say that for me, semiotics should be the place where metaphysics and physics meet. I think it’s easier to describe metaphysics. It’s also easier to describe physics. What fascinates me about this is that it is the meeting point between the world that emerged, which was at some point purely material and kept on being material, and then also became semiotic. And what is that? I haven’t got a clue what it is. 

Elea: I would like to specify my answer. I wasn’t referring to metaphysics as something separate from or beyond physics, but rather, in the classical sense, as first philosophy, meaning the foundational concepts that are required to talk about anything else.

Kobus: Okay. 

Kalevi: In order to place semiotics correctly among the sciences, one must be familiar with, for example, general biology, general physics, and general sociology. They provide general concepts which are necessary to consider before building general semiotics. General concepts and their relationships explained provide the tools, so to speak. What is thought in general biology is pretty well established: there is evolution, development, genetic apparatus, symbiosis, ecosystem – all these concepts. They might not be that strictly defined but more or less established in the way biologists know they are there and use them. That’s the same thing I think would be important for semiotics as well. For semiotics to be at all somehow integrated in the sense that scholars could identify themselves as semioticians. Because if semiotics has some sort of identity, then probably it also should have that kind of general semiotics. However, at once it seems much more difficult, even in some sense a little problematic, maybe in principle, as compared to other sciences. For some reason, in some semiotics, it’s more difficult. My guess here is that this is because the fundamental logic of semiotics is so different. This is a logic, I would say at the level of my current understanding, which starts from contradiction, and, therefore, if you start from contradiction, you cannot get something nicely general. There is something kind of mystical here, even. Nevertheless, even with contradiction, you can get some organisation and understanding. But that means, in semiotics, particularly, the general level is deeper or more different from all other sciences and therefore so much more interesting. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t start making general semiotics but it is really challenging. 

Elea: That reminds me of something Bachelard wrote: that philosophy of science, unlike traditional philosophy, can’t be fully systematised because it deals with materiality, experimentation, and contradictions. It must remain open and dynamic. In this sense, what you said makes me think of how semiotics tries to bridge the gap between the human and natural sciences. That’s a very particular and challenging position: while the humanities and natural sciences each operate within their own domains, semiotics stands in between – and that in-betweenness places conflict at its core.

Kalevi: Yes. And why so? Because, on the one, hand it has to explain meaning but, at the same time, it also has to explain measurement. Measurement as such is also a process for semiotics to explain, clarifying its deep essence. There’s not much else for semiotics to do with physics, but that is already pretty important and, via that, semiotics relates and connects these areas. 

Kobus: We could say that the contradiction is not only logical, but somehow existential.

Kalevi: What do you mean by existential contradiction? 

Kobus: That one thing can be two things at the same time, not only logically, but also as lived. So, we are, for instance, phenomenologically speaking, material and immaterial at the same time, and both of those constitute and contribute to what we are. I’m wondering whether the problem is only at the epistemological level or whether it involves some ontology or existentialism. 

Kalevi: Yes, both. So, free choice, just the free choice itself, cannot be where there is no contradiction. Pure free choice doesn’t exist in purely deductive systems. Pure deduction, as you can have it in scientific descriptions, there is no contradiction, no choice.

Kobus: Hmm. 

Kalevi: I just somehow relate these two, freedom and contradiction.

Marais: You mean freedom as in a more phenomenological experience, and contradiction is the logical counterpoint to it?

Kalevi: Yes. 

Kobus: Okay. 

Kalevi: Yes, yes. So, that means we know now what general semiotics is. 

[Everybody laughs]

Elea: Sometimes I wonder: what’s the difference between semiosis and perception? For instance, when we say that a cell is interpreting something, aren’t we also saying that it’s perceiving? Are these two distinct phenomena, or are they actually the same?

Gabriel: I think this is similar to an example that you, Kobus, brought up during our translation class this semester with regard to Peircean logic. The way I think about the question is that pure perception is almost like a firstness, and the ability to interpret is a quality of thirdness. Maybe this goes back to the question of entanglement versus discreteness. Are they two things that can be separated from each other, or are they two points in the same process? And what is that process if semiotics is part of a bigger process?

Kalevi: Okay, for me, the profound difference is whether there is one or two. In the case of signalling, there is only something as one and no difference as such. Semiosis starts from difference, and in the case of difference, there cannot be just one but at least two. That is the distinction line. Usually, let’s say very often, what’s going on in perception is described as if there is one photon coming, influencing certain neural cells and so on, and so on. In this sense, there is no difference described and no difference as such perceived. Or at least, there is no difference initially in the model. But that’s necessary for meaning-making, in the Batesonian sense of difference. 

Elea: Agreed, but isn’t that essentially a way of deepening or complexifying our understanding of perception, rather than shifting the question itself? Approaching the same issue with more technical tools?

Kalevi: Well, that’s so big a leap between one and two, or one and many, from physics to semiotics, from just one single influence to the difference as such. One as such cannot be even, so to speak, be perceived meaningfully. Only difference can be. 

Elea: Okay, so would you say that things can be perceived non meaningfully? 

Kalevi: What do you mean? If this difference is perceived, then, by definition, perception is always meaningful, but sensing might not be. But it also relies on how you use the term, simply. 

Elea: Yes, okay. 

Kobus: Wouldn’t we get out of some of these problems if we didn’t think of semiosis as something, even a process of something? Semiosis is an aspect of our existence as living organisms. So, you don’t have to sort of determine where it is. Let me say why I think this. One of the things that I figured out in translation is that there’s nothing on this earth and beyond that is only a translation. It’s a translation of a novel, a translation of news, a translation of communication. So, you cannot pinpoint it even as a process or a substance. It is just one aspect. Now, the weakness in this argument is that you then sort of reduce the discussion to epistemology, and you have no ontology behind it.

Gabriel: But in this sense, it seems like translation is almost the semiosphere’s energy. If I can use that term to the extent that you define energy as being born from opposition or constraint. So, it seems like translation is almost the energy through which culture emerges?

Kobus: That could be a consequence of my conceptualisation of translation. I’m just wondering, what bothers me is thatthe whole thing about choice makes a hell of a lot of sense. But I’m wondering if this isn’t a reduction to logic, and what about the experience beyond logic, if there is such a thing? This is why I’m saying that it might be easier not to pinpoint something but to just describe an aspect. 

Kalevi:  There is certainly prelinguistic logic, because what we commonly mean by logic is basically what presupposes language, but here this is something that comes before. This is pretty hard to describe, and this is not a contradiction in the sense of common logic, where this is related to negation. But it is more general and very similar. In a way, this is analogical. Of course, when we ask what the first semiotic phenomenon was, whether that was semiosis, umwelt, contradiction, incompatibility in this sense, whether that was first perception, perception-action circle, or whether that was the triadic process. Anyway, since what I have listed  converges in something like a general model of semiosis or meaning-making. This is an area that hasn’t been worked out enough yet, in general semiotics. Or maybe it’s even more! We can also call that part something like fundamental semiotics. Not necessarily common parts of semiotics. General semiotics should be something that can be taught, while here we have something for professionals. 

Kobus: Should we ask whether perception is semiotic? Or, should we ask about the semiotic aspect of perception?

Elea: In that sense, we would suppose that perception is more general than semiotics? Semiosis would be an aspect of perception, and not its whole?

Kobus: No, I don’t mean a part of a whole, I just mean a feature. I’m talking about a descriptive feature. Perception can be described philosophically, it can be described biologically, but it can also be described semiotically. You can find a semiotic dimension which is not part of the whole, it’s just a characteristic of that thing. Apart from all the photons and neurons and everything that you can describe, there’s also meaning being made. 

Elea: Yes. I would just say that, at its core, perception means having something other than oneself present to oneself, and in that sense, it already involves semiosis. It’s a form of interpretation: being in relation with something different from oneself and integrating it as if it were part of oneself. I don’t see how perception could make sense without a semiotic dimension. And from the same perspective, semiosis is always about this kind of relational process. So, even if we use two different terms, they point to the same underlying phenomenon. That’s why, to me, perception and semiosis could be ultimately seen as one and the same.

Kalevi: Yes, very good, but also perception cannot ever be without action. Perception and action are always together, and the capacity to perceive is because it is together with action. Therefore, it’s a little bit strange for me to ask this question and mention perception without, at the same time, mentioning action. Say process. 

Kobus: I once asked this question to a Brazilian semiotician. His latest work, quite like you have been saying, is in the domain of cognition. At some point, I asked him: “Is it still valuable for us to distinguish between cognition and semiosis? Can we not just do away with it? What will we lose if we just completely say there’s no such thing as semiosis, it’s only cognition?”.

Kalevi: It’s a convention. There is so much that is the same, but whether we want to distinguish between these two terms or not, this is more like that. But we could say that yes, it’s the same. 

Elea: It depends on the definition of cognition, right? For a long time, through cognitivism, they thought  cognition was computational, so in that sense, there would be no semiosis. 

Kobus: But I mean, without having the theory of semiosis, you can explain, can’t you? how cognitive processes work to create interpretations. So, aren’t we wasting our time? 

Kalevi: 50 minutes. Would we like to take one more question? What can there be, what are some interesting, not yet discovered, not yet solved problems for us in semiotics? Or, we could do it in a more literal way: How do we feel our connection to Uexküll being in this place? 

Elea: I would like to ask one more question. What do you think, in the way it’s used, the difference between making sense and meaning-making is? Are they just synonymous, or are they different?

Kalevi: To me, there’s a big difference. Making-sense usually has a much narrower meaning than meaning-making. When I’m thinking about meaning-making, I would start from the existence of a subjective world as such, Umwelt as such. And that’s already meaning-making, always. You cannot have Umwelt without meaning-making. But whether that makes sense to me, usually our common understanding is that this is more specific. I can see something without it making any sense to me. In this sense, this is different. I think this is how we usually use the expression. 

Elea: Hmm, okay. So, would you say that it is more related to human experience? 

Kalevi: Not only for humans. Of course, making sense might be related to making some specific decision about a situation. But now, decision-making, on the other hand, can be seen as rather primitive. Well, animals can usually, in that regard, make sense of a situation. Therefore, it’s not so easy to put the limit and to know you can make sense of this question. 

Elea: [to Gabriel] What do you think? 

Gabriel: I think I agree with that first definition. I would understand meaning-making as having more to do with perceiving the environment and making sense of it. It has something to do with making a value judgement. Hearing a language, for example, that one is not familiar with might be a good parable. You hear a language, and you understand that it is a language, but you’re not deriving any real meaning from it beyond that. It’s just noise. You can differentiate between where one word ends and another word begins. But as far as making sense of how these words are working in connection to each other, that’s maybe a different kind of thing. That requires some experience or conditioning.

Kalevi: So, any other questions? 

Kobus: You were asking about Uexküll, and our relations to Uexküll?

Kalevi: Yes, that’s a good question to conclude, maybe? 
[Everybody agrees]

Kobus: So, one of the things I’m pondering is about Uexküll, in terms of his functional circle, which is closed by the object, as I understand it. I understand that the model was developed as a sort of basic model of basic life. My question is: how far can one expand that? If you can fill that object not with material things but with ideas, then Uexküll actually gives us a really good link between matter, ideas, biology, and culture. That’s something that over the past few weeks has sort of just exploded in me. If that is a possible argument, I would really like to pursue that and see what one can make of that. I will obviously have to read a lot more about what he meant by that and how far one can expand it. I don’t know whether you have any ideas about that now.

Kalevi: That’s a good point, indeed. It’s so nice that, on the one hand, it is described as an object being a material thing, somehow that exist in meaning-making processes via functional circle. But, on the other hand, Uexküll has been interpreted as a radical constructivist. And in that sense, constructivism would be very far from that kind of materialist explanation. And, now, the beauty of it is that it would fit for both! The model would fit for both! Why does it fit for both? I think indeed it is in the core where these worlds somehow fit together. Of course, there should be more said to describe all these links. But I think that a very good seed is there. 

Kobus: Yeah, so being here in Uexküll’s place is nice for my thoughts. 

Elea: Theoretically, I’m not that related to Uexküll’s work. I mean directly. It is more through the work of others, so I don’t really know what to say. My relationship is mainly historical, let’s say. Uexküll has had a lot of influence on the works I have read and took inspiration from. I can’t really spot a particular problem, though. 

Gabriel: I guess for my topic right now, I’m mostly thinking about human experience. The experiential differences that Uexküll emphasises through the umwelt theory between different species of animals are quite interesting for me. I know that Heidegger was reading Uexküll while writing Being and Time, so I think it’s pretty interesting to track the lineage of his thought as well. It’s pretty amazing that this house still exists and can be visited. It’s kind of off the beaten path in a country that, maybe on a global level, is a bit off the beaten path as well.

Elea: It’s interesting to be able to go through both legacies: the material and the theoretical.

Kalevi: When I was here as a gymnasium student, we didn’t know that it belonged to Jakob von Uexküll’s family before the Second World War. It wasn’t in any way, also for biologists working here, related to Uexküll as a biologist. There was an Uexküll’s family here, yes, but this was a big family in Estonia! They have lived in this country for centuries. At a certain point, because we were doing some ethology here, related to Konrad Lorenz work, and there was a reference by Konrad Lorenz to the work about Kumpan, and my supervisor asked me to find out that reference, that source, and that was the same Uexküll, an important biologist. Here in Estonia, he was almost forgotten until 1970. But, later on, his son, Thure von Uexküll was here also, and  Jakob’s grandson, who bears the same name was here … Yes. 

So, thank you! Very nice.