Semiotic Matrix Theory (SMT)

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Semiotic Matrix Theory (SMT) was first shared informally as an ecological outcome psychological theory at the international conference on SETI in the 21st Century conference in Sydney, Australia. Then, it contained a revision of the Drake Equation to include a "being" value (f_b) that included the probability of extraterrestrial contact with an added eco-psychological feature: the likelihood that a "contacting" species would have internalized sustainable approaches in both ecological (umwelt) and psychological (eigenwelt) spaces producing an enduring society with radio-astronomical capabilities.

SMT was formally proposed a year later in a publication by the same name, Ecological Outcome Psychological Theory (EOPT) (Conesa, 1999). Two years later, after further elaborations and revisions that strengthened its biosemiotic premises, and without the SETI feature, it was presented in its final form at the International Summer Institute for Semiotic and Structural Studies in Imatra [1], Finland (Conesa, 2001). Concurrently with these presentations, SMT was employed as a means to explore issues of non-ergodicity in AI systems.

In short, SMT subsumes systems theory in an ontosemiotic (sometimes pansemiotic) proposal that can be tested empirically through linguistics, psycholinguistics, semiotics, and biosemiotics proper.

Contents 1 Not metaphysics 2 Basic premises 3 Conclusions, consequences, and applications 4 Applications 5 References

[edit] Not metaphysics

SMT employs astrophysical evidence to make reasonable assumptions about the origin of energy, matter, and life. One basic boundary constraint or quality of Energy is its "flutter" or its tendency to wax and wane while interacting in a myriad ways with energy-qua-energy and energy-qua-matter. What this could mean is that the instability and "flutter" of Energy is expected to be carried over when it organizes into matter giving rise to homeostatic "concerns" for safety and impacting opportunity and possibility.

[edit] Basic premises

Semiotic Matrix Theory's basic proposal contains the following premises (Conesa, 2001; and Conesa, 2005):

1. Living organisms (and other "things") are matrices. Therefore, in living entities, for example, Energy, Safety, and Possibility needs and functions, and their feedback interactions, are consubstantial giving rise to the emergent dynamics of what it is defined as matricial activity, or a matrix as an integral entity.
2. As matrices 'we' embody energy, safety and possibility needs and the umwelt provides sensorially and perceptually comprehensible sets of invariant information that can then be turn into affordances (J. J, Gibson, 1979). Affordances can then be interpreted as providing these basic matricial needs. This is why SMT is a biosemiotic theory, because it takes into account that a seamless and pervasive existential complementary exists between the object, the sign, and the interpreter which provides the basic sustenance for all meanings (a hermetic biosemiosis). This existential complement and yoked-in triad permeates and predates all sign systems, and all sign transactions. The historicity of an organism, partly programmed by its own genome and partly learned, is fundamentally and existentially the historicity of energy, safety and possibility needs however this historicity is played out in the diverse attempts to deal, and to eke out an existence.
3. Organic matrices-- maenadic-animals, ensilic--plants matrices have evolved countless metabolic, physiological, behavioral, and mental adaptations to express and complement these matricial needs by first reacting, responding, identifying or labeling objects in any environment that they encounter as resources to meet these needs. Other matrices can be found in the context of inorganic processes, or in meme-texts (tartanic-inorganics, and ideonic-ideas, concepts). Thus, a pansemiotic structure might be derived from a description, understanding, and prediction of these interactions. The topological mathematics of Kurt Lewin's 1936 and 1939 Life Spaces may be a computational first step to learn something about these interactions, if only Lewian terms are replaced with matricial functionality and jargon.
4. All human knowledge, in all areas of interest, is an attempt to describe, understand, and/or predict how these matricial interactions occur. Incommensurability across scientific or humanistic fields exists only insofar as lower level, technical jargon is used to define (without interdisciplinary effort) their phenomena of interest, a continua of biosemiosis.
5. The summary of this quest and understanding agrees with systems theory somewhat in that life transactions are all ecological (systemic). However, there are limitations to systems theory addressed by SMT (Conesa, 1999; and Conesa, 2001).
6. To understand the 'system' is to have a science that predicts how the system might behave. This understanding must also be semiotic as others intuited, pointed out and corrected (Maturana & Varela, 1980; Maturana & Varela, 1987; and Kull, 1997). In this sense, a good 'life' theory, psychological, biological, economical, etc., describes significant matricial events that occur in a system and is able to make predictions about these.
7. Ecological Ethics, or Ecoethics--even eco-psychology--is an emergent necessity and the backbone describing the manner and nature of these relationships/interactions insofar as development proceeds from one smaller and physiologically restrictive matrix, to a larger one, and yet to a larger one (zygote, womb, mother, family, school, community, nation, planet, etc.). The perceptual and cognitive movement from simpler to increasingly complex umwelts, if it is to succeed, must include a see-through universal biosemiotics or panbiosemiosis rooted in more or less easy to interpret, or easy to learn signs that assists the becoming of an organism during its ontogenesis. To this end, human organisms (and other species) invent "rules" of ecological engagement that allow them to maximize potential within reason, without destroying the delicate balance of these tenuous relations. Sometimes an organism ignores these ethical rules in order to maximize matricial procurements (to dysfunctionally, in the sense of ignoring the consequences to its ecological setting, monopolize) it does this at the developmental or matricial detriment of others and while causing injury to an ecosystem. Biosemiotics, in the end, has to deal with ethical questions and must include a notion of functional limits found in each umwelt lived.
8. Life processes allow an almost infinite number of strategies for achieving organismic potential; but at the root of these endeavors are the matricial beta elements: Safety, energy, and possibility.
9. Semiotic Matrix Theory specifies the way in which pansemiosis can be structured through an empirical program that tests the ecological validity of these interactions that then can be applied to any study that examines systems.
10. Encapsulated physical bodies are 'simply' the phenotypic expression of these matricial forces encountering and surviving diverse environments. Moreover, both genomic and phenotypic adaptations and developments are servicing, through simple and complex feedback systems, the achievement of a matricial homeostasis. Being that all organic systems are being drafted, consciously or not, toward this end, matricial integrity, then the entire enterprise of merely surviving and/or meaningful existence is participating in a common ground of being. If so, then surely a panbiosemiosis dominates from the bottom up and anything else we can explain or discover about semiosis is really a forced relatedness or a forced semiosis and sociality that it is always matricial at its core.
11. The historicity of an organism, any system, however complex, colorful or idiosyncratic, makes an explicit or an implicit reference to matricial necessities. It is an existential situation, from the bottom up and in reverse, where a pervasive biosemiotic field is inescapable--a hermetic biopansemiosis.

[edit] Conclusions, consequences, and applications

Without the basic ontological assumptions presented in SMT, the dynamics of life would be otherwise bizarre, and would include the following incongruities (Conesa, 2005):

1. Any sufficiently distinct frame of reference would be truly incommensurable, thus intraversable and impassable, within the spaces of self and cultural semiosis. Passing would be, if not impossible, extremely difficult, reducing the range of semiosis we observe in the life (and historicity) of this planet to indescribable and unthinkable senseless events. Life would not exist.
2. Also, speciation would not be possible, assuming that we describe speciation semiotically, as passing from a vanishing set of existential accommodations to another emerging set of significantly different existential accommodations, in varying degrees of difference and success.
3. Interspecies fidelity or sympathy could not occur, also an example of #1. We, for example, could not have meaningful relationships with pets, or they with us—the harder test. Also, Wilson's biophilic and consilient (Wilson, 1984; and Wilson, 1998) theories would not be acceptable on any grounds. In general, no scientist could put forth any theory that included the observation of natural history and adaptation. We would not know the name of Charles Darwin.
4. The idea of God-as-a-matrix-in-the-sky-with-diamonds that might now, or at some future time, be responsible for our matricial integrity and continued transcendental becoming, would not be part of so many vocabularies nor the reason for such commotion. No religion would exist. Nor any of its anti-theses.
5. Neither rewards nor punishments would make a difference in adapting one's behaviors to circumstances. There would be no amygdala, no cerebellum, and no hippocampus.
6. Every organism would go hungry and starve to death for no apparent reason.
7. Every organism would choose celibacy over the risky alternative and opportunity to engage the other in the most intimate of fashions. Copulation, as an example of primal forced relatedness or forced semiosis would be a bizarre undertaking, or would not take place at all.
8. The sun's energy would not have had any effect whatsoever on the life history of our planet: sunflowers would prefer darkness; they would be called, if any one existed to designate their mobility, Girapenumbras.
9. There would be no need for nests, burrows, or houses with thermostats and fences. No claws, no embraces, no kisses, no caresses, no fights, no blood spilled for love and country, neither, the distinction between enemy and friend.
10. No more shivering from cold. No more feathers, scales, or skin. No horns, arms, nor legs needed. No hypothalamus for maintaining homeostasis.
11. We could all read Rudyard Kipling's Just So Stories, if we could even read at all, and these tales could be as veridical and testable an account of natural history as any other tall tale, including The Book of Genesis.
12. Understanding the drama, the comedy, the actions of a hero, the pain of others, anticipating love, living for love's sake, all this semiosis would be lost to us and all these activities and accompanying text would seem to be a strange series of decontextualized meaningless ontological hyperbolic maneuvers.
13. We would not be sensitive to superstition and would be bold enough to end any list we enumerate with 13 items instead of ten or twenty commandments. There would be nothing, not even stars.
14. A patient could not do transference with Freud, Mickey Mouse would not be entertaining, and the irony of Gary Larson's cartoon series, The Far Side, would never have been so humorous or popular.
15. There would be nothing instead of being. There would be no point in writing this text for there would be no sign, signifier, or object to signify—no "text" relations.

[edit] Applications

The following, original mathematical relationship has been used to test problems in multidisciplinary fields:

The usefulness of this relationship is being falsified against probable scenarios and could change according to new discoveries and data.

SMT has been empirically tested and applied in psycholinguistics (Conesa, 1999); as a deconstructive model while examining anthropocentric psychological models [2] (Conesa, 1999; and Conesa-Sevilla, 2006) to study territoriality (Conesa, 2001/2005b); to the semiosis of lucid dreaming and sleep paralysis (Conesa-Sevilla, 2004); to explore other philosophical [3]and semiotic models and/or theories (Conesa, 2005a); and applied to problems of complexity and emergence (Conesa-Sevilla, 2007).

[edit] References