If Darwin’s account of sexual selection can proceed without invoking meaning, why does the language of signalling return so persistently?
Why do biological traits so readily come to be described as if they represent something?
To answer this, we can turn—carefully—to a contrasting tendency associated with Alfred Russel Wallace.
The point here is not historical attribution in a strict sense, but conceptual orientation.
What matters is the temptation.
From preference to indication
Where Darwin begins with preference, an alternative move begins with indication.
Instead of asking:
which traits are taken up within a system of selection?
the question shifts to:
what do these traits reveal?
In this framing:
elaborate features are not just selected
they are taken to indicate underlying qualities
strength, health, or genetic fitness
The tail does not simply participate in selection.
It becomes evidence.
From indication to representation
Once a trait is treated as indicating something, a further step is close at hand.
If a feature reliably indicates an underlying condition, then:
it can be treated as standing for that condition.
At this point, the language of signalling becomes almost inevitable:
the tail signals fitness
the display communicates quality
the behaviour conveys information
The system is now described in semiotic terms.
The structure of the temptation
The movement can be summarised as a sequence:
- CorrelationA trait co-occurs with some condition.
- IndicationThe trait is taken as evidence of that condition.
- RepresentationThe trait is treated as standing for that condition.
- SignalThe system is described as one of communication.
Where the shift occurs
The crucial transition is from:
indication → representation
Indication is a relation we, as observers, can draw:
we notice that one feature tracks another
we treat it as informative
But representation requires something more:
a system in which one form functions as another
a relation internal to the system, not just observed from outside
The temptation lies in moving from one to the other without marking the difference.
The observer’s projection
Part of the difficulty is that the relation between trait and condition is often visible to us.
We can measure:
correlations between ornament and health
statistical associations between display and reproductive success
From this vantage point, it is natural to describe the trait as informative.
But this is an observer’s description.
It does not follow that:
the organism treats the trait as a representation
or that the system operates semiotically
We may be projecting our own interpretive framework onto the system.
Reliability is not meaning
The temptation is strengthened by reliability.
If a trait:
consistently correlates with a condition
and consistently elicits a response
then it begins to look like a signal.
But reliability alone does not establish semiosis.
A system can be:
reliably responsive
without being meaning-making
Consistency of outcome does not imply the presence of representation.
The drift into communication
Once representation is assumed, the rest follows easily.
representation implies content
content implies transmission
transmission implies communication
And so the biological system is redescribed as one in which:
information is exchanged between organisms.
At this point, the original value-based dynamics of selection are no longer foregrounded. They are reframed as instances of communication.
What is lost
In this shift, something important is obscured.
The explanatory power of:
differential uptake
preference
and selection
is replaced by an appeal to:
signalling
information
and interpretation
But unless semiosis is independently established, this move adds description without adding explanation.
The persistence of the temptation
The Wallace temptation persists because it aligns with powerful intuitions:
that behaviour is guided by information
that organisms respond to what things mean
that coordination requires communication
Reframing the issue
We can now restate the problem more precisely:
when we describe a biological trait as a signal, are we identifying a semiotic relation, or reinterpreting a value-based process in semiotic terms?
The distinction matters.
Because if the latter is the case, then:
meaning is being inferred where it is not required
and the concept of the signal is doing more conceptual work than it can support
Transition
Having identified the temptation, the next step is to return to the underlying dynamics.
If meaning is not required to explain these systems, what is?
What kind of process is actually doing the work of coordination, selection, and stabilisation?
To answer this, we return to the notion introduced earlier:
value as a non-semiotic dynamic.
It is here that the explanatory weight lies.
No comments:
Post a Comment