The continuity of semiosis between the physical, bioecological and technoanthroposphere

• Grant number: 22/05866-5
• Support Opportunities: Regular Research Grants
• Start date: February 01, 2023
• End date: January 31, 2025
• Field of knowledge: Interdisciplinary Subjects
• Principal Investigator: Maria Lucia Santaella Braga
• Grantee: Maria Lucia Santaella Braga
• Host Institution: Pró-Reitoria de Pós-Graduação (PRPG). Pontifícia Universidade Católica de São Paulo (PUC-SP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil
• Associated researchers: Adriano Messias de Oliveira ; Magaly Parreira do Prado ; Winfried Maximilian Noth

Abstract

Among the sub-themes proposed by Fapesp, in the Call LinCAr, this project is located in the great sub-theme of "human and non-human" and, in its basic research modality, aims to advance knowledge about the Anthropocene, the change in the geological period of the Earth. For this, the project starts from C. S. Peirce's notion of synechism, a key concept of continuity that allows, through the notion of semiosis, which has continuity as its logical principle, to deconstruct the dichotomies and isolationist separations between the physiological, the bioecological and the technoanthroposphere. Therefore, taking as a basis synechism or the radical antidualism of Peirce's objective idealist metaphysics, the project aims to propose a rupture with all the dualist divisions inherited from Descartes, in order to, from that, develop the thesis of the inexistence of separation, but, yes, continuity, not only between the biosphere and the sphere of technoculture or anthroposphere and the bioecosphere, but also between these and the physiosphere. For this, the aim is to explore the concept of semiosis to understand the gradations between the spheres. When studied beyond a mere technical definition, in the light of the metaphysical concept of synechism, the notion of semiosis appears as a synthetic notion that integrates in the same logical fabric the different substances of the physical, ecobiological and techno-anthropological worlds. This leads to the understanding of the differences between these spheres as differences of degrees and not of nature, which lives up to Peirce's assertion that the universe is permeated with signs, constituting, therefore, a vast semiosphere, pregnant with differentiations, but all of them united by the logical threads of semiosis. (AU)