Biology is full of signals.
The language is everywhere:
animals signal their fitness
traits communicate information
organisms send messages to one another
behaviours are interpreted by receivers
From the elaborate display of the peacock’s tail to the urgency of an alarm call, the natural world is routinely described as a dense field of communication.
At first glance, this seems not only intuitive, but unavoidable.
What else could this be, if not communication?
The familiar example
Consider the peacock’s tail.
This is commonly described as a case of signalling:
the tail signals fitness.
The logic appears straightforward:
the tail correlates with some underlying condition
the female responds to the tail
the trait evolves because of that response
From this, a further step is taken almost automatically:
the tail means something.
It is taken to stand for, or represent, the fitness of the male.
The unnoticed step
But something has happened here that is rarely examined.
We have moved from:
correlation
to response
to selection
and then, almost without noticing:
to meaning
That final step is not trivial.
It introduces a different kind of explanation altogether.
Two kinds of account
There are, in fact, at least two ways to describe what is happening in such cases.
One account says:
certain traits are differentially taken up within a system
preferences shape outcomes over time
patterns stabilise through repeated selection
This is an account in terms of coordination and value.
Another account says:
one form stands for another
something is expressed and something else is understood
a relation of meaning is established between them
This is an account in terms of semiosis.
The two accounts are not the same.
But in biological discourse, they are very often treated as if they were interchangeable.
The inflation of the signal
The term signal sits precisely at this point of slippage.
It begins innocently enough:
a feature that elicits a response
But it quickly expands:
a feature that carries information
a feature that communicates
a feature that represents
Each step adds conceptual weight.
By the end of the process, what began as differential responsiveness has become a fully-fledged semiotic system.
Why this is compelling
The move is not arbitrary. It is compelling for good reasons.
responses are often reliable
correlations are often stable
patterns are often repeatable
From within such regularity, it is natural to infer:
something is being conveyed.
The world begins to look like it is full of messages.
A suspicion
But we should pause here.
Because the appearance of meaning does not guarantee its presence.
It is possible—indeed likely—that:
what is being described as signalling is doing explanatory work that does not require semiosis at all.
In other words:
coordination may be occurring without communication
alignment may be achieved without meaning
selection may operate without representation
The problem
If this is the case, then a significant portion of biological explanation rests on an unexamined assumption:
that differential response implies meaning.
This series takes that assumption as its starting point.
Not to reject it outright, but to question it systematically.
What is at stake
The issue is not terminological.
It is not about whether we should use words like “signal” or “information.”
It is about whether the phenomena being described actually require a theory of meaning.
If they do, then biology must account for semiosis properly.
If they do not, then the language of signalling may be obscuring the mechanisms at work.
A way forward
To address this, we will proceed by separating two domains that are often conflated:
value — the dynamics of selection, coordination, and differential uptake
meaning — the semiotic organisation of relations within a system of distinctions
By keeping these distinct, we can ask more precise questions:
what work is being done by value?
what work, if any, is being done by meaning?
and under what conditions does one become the other—if it ever does?
Orientation
This series will not begin by assuming that biological signals are meaningful.
It will begin by asking:
what must be in place for something to count as semiosis at all?
Only then can we return to familiar cases—the peacock’s tail, alarm calls, coordinated behaviours—and determine whether they are:
instances of meaning
instances of value
or something more complex
Closing
The natural world is often described as if it were speaking.
Before we accept that description, we should ask:
is anything actually being said?
Or are we, perhaps, hearing meaning where there is only coordination?
The distinction matters.
And once drawn, it may change how we understand not only biological systems, but the place of meaning within them.
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