If the concept of the signal can be defined without invoking meaning, the next question is whether meaning is nevertheless required to explain how such systems actually work.
A natural place to test this is sexual selection.
It is here that some of the most striking biological phenomena appear: elaborate displays, costly ornaments, and highly specific patterns of preference. These are also the cases most frequently described in terms of signalling.
The peacock’s tail is the canonical example.
Selection through preference
In the account developed by Charles Darwin, the explanation for such traits does not begin with representation.
It begins with preference.
females do not mate randomly
certain traits are preferentially selected
those traits become more common over generations
The process is simple in structure:
variation → preference → differential reproduction → amplification
At no point in this sequence is it necessary to assume that one trait stands for another.
What matters is not what the trait means, but how it is taken up.
The peacock reconsidered
Consider the peacock again.
The tail is:
large
energetically costly
and potentially detrimental in terms of survival
Yet it persists, and even becomes more elaborate.
Why?
Because:
females preferentially select males with certain tail features
those males reproduce more successfully
the trait is reinforced across generations
This is sufficient as an explanation.
Nothing further is required.
Where meaning is usually inserted
At this point, an additional step is often introduced:
the tail signals fitness.
This reframes the process:
the tail is taken to represent an underlying condition
the female is taken to respond to that representation
the system is described as one of communication
But notice what this adds.
It introduces:
a relation of standing-for
an implicit interpretive process
and a layer of meaning
The question is whether any of this is doing explanatory work.
Correlation without representation
It is entirely possible that:
the tail correlates with aspects of the male’s condition
and females respond to the tail
without the tail functioning as a representation of that condition.
Correlation does not entail representation.
A system can be sensitive to patterns:
without those patterns meaning anything
without anything being signified
without any semiotic relation being established
What is required is responsiveness, not interpretation.
Selection does not require understanding
Darwin’s account operates without attributing interpretive capacities to the organisms involved.
Females do not need to:
recognise fitness as an abstract property
infer it from the tail
or interpret the tail as a sign
They need only:
respond differentially to certain features
That response, repeated across instances and generations, is enough to shape the system.
Value without semiosis
This is where the distinction introduced earlier becomes decisive.
The process described by Darwin can be understood entirely in terms of value:
certain features are preferentially taken up
those preferences structure outcomes
patterns stabilise through selection
The tail is not a message.
It is a participant in a value dynamic.
Its persistence is not due to what it means, but to how it is valued within the system.
The economy of the explanation
One way to see this clearly is to compare two accounts:
Account A (value-based):
traits vary
organisms respond differentially
selection reinforces certain patterns
Account B (semiotic):
traits represent underlying conditions
organisms interpret those representations
responses are guided by meaning
If Account A is sufficient, then Account B introduces additional assumptions.
The question is whether those assumptions are necessary.
Darwin’s account suggests they are not.
The cost of adding meaning
Adding meaning where it is not required has consequences.
It can:
obscure the actual mechanisms at work
attribute capacities that are not needed for the explanation
and blur the distinction between responsiveness and representation
Most importantly, it can make it difficult to see that:
coordination can emerge without communication.
Reframing the case
From this perspective, the peacock’s tail does not need to be understood as a signal in a semiotic sense.
It can be understood as:
a feature that is differentially taken up
within a system of preferences
that stabilises through selection
This is enough to explain its persistence and elaboration.
What Darwin gives us
Read in this way, Darwin provides a remarkably clean model:
no appeal to meaning
no appeal to representation
no appeal to communication
Only:
variation
responsiveness
and selection
This is a theory of coordination through value.
Transition
If Darwin’s account works without meaning, then the appeal to signalling in such cases may be doing less explanatory work than it appears.
The next step is to examine how and why meaning gets reintroduced into these explanations—and what is gained, or lost, in the process.
To do that, we turn to an alternative tendency in evolutionary thought: the inclination to read biological traits as indicators, and from there, as signs.
No comments:
Post a Comment