Finite cognition and finite semiosis: a new perspective

on semiotics for the information age

1 IntroductionThe amount of human time and energy devoted to interaction with digital systems has risen

year upon year over the previous two decades and a saturation point is not yet in view. The

popularity of internet services such as Facebook, Twitter, and Google and the currency of

terms such as virality, information overload, meme, multitasking and spam evidence a

climacteric in patterns of semiosis.

One defining parameter of this semiotic intensification has been the advent of the “attention

economy”. In advertising discourse, there is now a market for “eyeballs”. Space on web sites

is traded in units of “impressions”, and if a web site can attract a million visitors per day—

any million visitors—it is a financial asset of some magnitude. The strong implication is that

attention—the directedness of thought—is in limited supply. This finiteness of cognition has

become an obvious and highly important consideration in economic, academic and political

praxis, and asks a new question of semiotics: namely, what role does the scarcity of cognition

play in semiosis?

Apart from growing contemporary relevance, however, the exploration of a semiotic model

based on finite cognition is attractive for several theoretical reasons:

1. It can be based upon every day, cenoscopic propositions with a minimum of

ontological commitments.

2. It can provide definitions of semiosis, signs and semiotics constituted from a finite

quantum: cognitive states.

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3. As a systemic theory operating at the population level, it can contextualise existing

theories of semiotics that focus mainly on the individual and dyad.

4. It lends itself to, and provides support for, epistemological modelling and sociological

treatments of knowledge and culture in the manner of Foucault (2002 [1969]) and

Bourdieu (1977 [1972]).

2 A model of semiosis based on the finiteness of

cognition

2.1 Analytical principles

While the core premise that cognition, and hence semiosis, is finite is intuitively appealing, a

formal treatment is a necessary foundation for developing useful results. Moreover, in

proposing any model of semiosis we must recognise that we are seeking to delineate ultimate

mechanisms—those preceding language and all other sign systems. There is no lower level

except, as famously noted, silence (Wittgenstein, 1974 [1922]: 89). An appeal to basic

experience, therefore, can be the only ontological basis for a semiotic viewpoint. To this end,

two main principles informing the model of finite semiosis constructed below are:

1. Minimisation of ontological commitments

2. Evidence from cenoscopic introspection and observation

2.2 Ontological foundation

2.2.1 Universal states

The first assertion is that there is a universe or “world”, and that this world changes. To

formalise this, consider that if the world exists at time 0 in a “universal state” we can label S0,

then at a later time n it exists in a different state that we can label Sn. We can illustrate this

simply in Figure 1 as:

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Figure 1. Change in the universal state or “world” over time.

This everyday assertion is supported by appeals to personal experience: each of us has a deep

intuition that our world changes over time.

Proposition 1

If the world exists at time 0 in a state we can label S0, then at a later time n it

exists in a different state that we can label Sn.

2.2.2 Human-centric discreteness

Despite the implicit necessity of a human observer to impose the labels “world”, “time” and

“change” to derive Proposition 1, so far we have made no claim as to the composition of the

world. We have not claimed that it divides essentially into apples, dachshunds, ant colonies,

human beings, laptop computer keys, sports stadiums, planets, galaxies, jellyfish, or dust

mites. The reason to take such care in introducing these pluralities is that they are ineluctably

subjective, or in our preferred term, human-centric.

The term human-centric recognises that the division of the world into objects in

consciousness, although idiosyncratic, is psychologically real or ultimate. This discreteness

imperative can be introspected and observed in all human thought, and cannot be resisted (for

even to resist it one must have in mind a discrete thing to be resisted). The tendency of

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consciousness to operate via a primary mode of discreteness—seeing an apple as an apple

and not as part of the tree to which it is attached, for example—is a structural reflex, arising

due to the parameters of our neurology, sensory apparatus and other properties and

dispositions of the universal state.

This is most particularly true of our imperative to commonly divide the universal state into a

special category of “human beings” (including the “self”). To introduce the human agent and

all that our viewpoint entails into the model, therefore, we must make explicit that any

divisions drawn hereafter are arbitrarily or subjectively made in relation to human agents by

human agents. We must recognise our own viewpoint as limited, inescapable, and our

tendency to divide the universal state into objects (including ourselves and other human

agents) as simultaneously arbitrary and teleological. Moreover, we must recognise that all

divisions arise because of our being part of the world, not separate from it: that it is only in

relation to our worldly consciousness that the world divides into discrete objects. Without

consciousness, there is no division or need for division.

This recognised, we can go on to locate human agents in our model as the single source of

differentiation of the world into objects.

2.2.3 Human agents

Given that we as human agents are part of the universal state of Proposition 1 and require for

our existence to categorise the world discretely, we can extend the model human-centrically

to include ourselves as discrete components. Formalising this innovation, we posit that agents

in the universal state will have Sub-state0 at time 0 and Sub-staten at time n. Our

representation thus becomes Figure 2.

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Figure 2. The universal state with discretising human agents.

Although we have drawn a circle around the agent, the agent’s sub-state is not discontinuous

with the universal state and the separateness we have imposed is, as noted, only a human-

centric convention. Our cognition always remains dependent upon the universal state for its

existence regardless of our division of that universal state. If we see a banana, for example,

for most purposes we see it as some feature of the universal state separate to ourselves.

However a much more continuous and integrated process is at work involving what we

discretise as atoms, light, retinas, optic nerves, synapses, evolution etc. In fact, many factors

could prevent the seeing of the banana that have nothing to do with the “banana” (blindness,

darkness, a yellow background, an optical illusion, brain injury). What produces the “seeing”

is not the banana or the human agent per se but rather some continuous process of universal

change that cannot be completely reduced, isolated, or internally represented in a cognition

that is coextensive with that process. By very useful human-centric convention, however, we

generally say that our “experience” or “consciousness” or “cognition” is produced by the

“object” (“a bee stung me”, “that smell reminded me of Paris”), or by our sub-state (“I saw a

banana”, “I heard a kookaburra”, “I thought of you”). With this awareness, the term “agent

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sub-state”—due to our discretising viewpoint—can be replaced for ease of reference with the

notion of our cognition.

A formal replacement of sub-state with cognition yields Proposition 2:

Proposition 2

To an agent A having cognition based on discreteness, if S0 is a posited

universal state at time 0, and A is ipso facto part of S0, then A has a discrete

cognition at time 0 which we can label C0. Accordingly at some later time n a

universal state Sn will exist, and A will have a cognition of Cn.

2.2.4 Human experience of finite states

A simple corollary of human agency within the progression of universal states outlined above

is that:

Proposition 3

To any agent having cognition based on discreteness, its conscious existence

must consist of a discrete set of cognitive states from C0 to Cn where n is set to

be the length of that agent’s existence.

This is obvious when we posit an introspective or observational sampling of cognition at

interval ni . As i can be made arbitrarily large, intermediate states beyond a certain limit are

indistinguishable to any agent (observed or introspected). For example, if we set i to a large

integer we can reduce the number of theoretical intermediate states to, say, one per second,

one per millisecond, and so on until a time interval of no significance to any human being’s

cognition is reached. The end effect is to demonstrate that an agent has a finite existence

relative to any introspection or observation consisting of a set of discrete, serial, finite

cognitive states.

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In effect, what we have formally derived is nothing more than the common sense result that

our lives are finite in length and consist from our point of view of a series of cognitive

changes. Our derivation, however, has foregrounded discreteness and human-centricity,

establishing these as a foundation for systemic constructs.

2.3 Semiosis: a definition from finite cognition

2.3.1 Definition of semiosis

Having arrived at a theory of human cognition as, relative to itself, serial and finite we move

to a consideration of semiosis, and put forward as a theoretical and analytical tool a new

definition:

Definition 1

Semiosis is the process by which serial, finite human cognition moves from

one state to another.

2.3.2 Finiteness of semiosis

In Section 2.2.4 it was observed that from a human perspective no subdivision smaller than a

certain arbitrary threshold can be relevant in regard to cognition, and that therefore the

number of cognitive states for any agent is restricted to some finite integer. Accordingly, a

human life (somewhat macabrely it must be admitted) might be represented according to this

model as in Figure 3.

Figure 3. Progression of cognitive states in a human life of length n states. (Note that

the circles representing cognitive states are unevenly spaced to allow for the

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possibility of semiosis occurring at differing rates or rhythms and also of long

transitions between states.)

It follows from this finite progression of cognitive states that the number of moves between

them is also finite and so according to Definition 1, semiosis must also be finite.

2.3.3 Finite semiotics

Following from our novel definition of semiosis comes the opportunity to define finite

semiotics as the study not of signs per se but of finite semiosis—the process by which

cognition moves from one state to another.

This novel conception inaugurates as an analytical field the relation of cognitive states to the

universal state, especially—as will be subsequently explored—the reticular effects of

artefacts (those concepts that achieve status as “objects” in cognition and so consume it).

Signs, which in sign-centric models have been theorised as infinite and irreducible (cf. Eco

(1976: 68-69) on “unlimited semiosis”), can be seen is this model as incidental fluid currency

in a finite semiosic allocation process created by agent dispositions in the universal state.

2.3.4 The semiosic field

Applying Definition 1 at the population level we can posit a semiosic field consisting of all

human agents as population varies over time. Currently this field is of the order of 7 x 109

agents (the approximate population of the earth). We might represent it as in Figure 4.

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Figure 4. The semiosic of field of all agents

This is, of course, a rudimentary representation. In any multidimensional expansion, the

semiosic field would be revealed to have a dynamic terrain marked by asymmetrical agent

relations that determine the evolving conditions for semiosis within the universal state.

2.3.5 Equivalence of the semiosic and epistemological fields

Proposition 3 presents cognition as a finite sequence progressing from birth to death. As all

knowledge must be realised in cognition, the set of cognitive states for an agent must

constitute the epistemological limit or complete allocation for that agent. For if an agent

never thinks of something it cannot be part of the agent’s knowledge in any meaningful

definition of knowledge.

This can be used to formulate Proposition 4:

Proposition 4

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As knowing must depend upon cognition, semiosis as defined in Definition 1

must be epistemologically final. The semiosic and epistemological fields are

therefore equivalent.

As will be explored in a later section, this simple corollary has profound ramifications for

semiotics and establishes a basis for “quantum” effects.

2.4 Patterns of semiosis

Our model of finite semiosis has created a space in which all human cognition is theoretically

contained (the semiosic field). This model, however, as yet says little illuminating about

human experience or observed phenomena. To progress towards this goal, let us begin to

explore some corollaries of the finiteness which the model foregrounds. As a first step, let us

introduce a claim as to the nature of semiosis: namely, that semiosis may be more or less

similar in agents.

2.4.1 Similarity of cognitive states

In what situations does similar semiosis occur within an agent or between agents? Consider

these experiences:

Threading a needle

Driving a car

Writing an essay

Watching the television program Friends

Playing the violin

Sitting in a stadium watching a soccer match

On a global level, each of these experiences is highly likely to be occurring for a large

number of agents at this moment. While it is unlikely that any two individuals having one of

these experiences will have similar cognition, the likelihood of similarity becomes evident at

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the population level. For we may confidently observe two people and say that John and Jane

are thinking different things when watching Friends. But would we say that among a million

people watching Friends no proportion have similar cognition? Taking the soccer match

example: may we consider it probable that some large subgroups of the 100,000 people in the

stadium at any one time are likely to have similar cognitive states as opposed to a group taken

at random from the global population?

We are not asserting a strong claim as to the nature or extent of cognitive synonymy but

simply appealing to the intuition that some similarity can exist. The counterargument would

require that all cognition is unique (which hardly seems supportable given the frequent

success of communication) or that situational factors are irrelevant to cognition (we each

follow a random path of similar states). This latter counterargument, however, could not

explain the result that if shown a piece of fruit and asked to name it a large number of people

answer: “pineapple”. Or that many people at a soccer game manifest similar shouting

behaviour. Moreover, on a biological level, how could it explain that if two people are unable

to obtain water they will rapidly begin to focus much attention on obtaining water in ways

that seem to reflect similar cognition?

This is not to assert any strict or simple identicality. Two observers of a soccer game may

have differing modalities of elation or disappointment when a goal is scored. However, if we

are careful to consider not just two spectators but an entire stadium of football viewers, we

can imagine that some agents will be in very nearly identical synchronous semiosis (rejoicing

about a goal) while others are in similarly synchronous but different semiosis (being

disappointed about a goal). Still others will be in tangentially related states (e.g. buying a hot

dog while watching on a monitor) or relatively unrelated states (doing a Sudoku or reading

Anna Karenina). What is evidenced in this particular situation, in fact, is a complex relation

of similar and dissimilar semiosis to agent dispositions in the universal state.

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2.4.2 Possible patterns of similar semiosis

If we stipulate that semiosis in a single and multi-agent sense may be similar, we can

enumerate the basic possible patterns. In a single agent, semiosis may be:

1. Novel (having never before occurred)

2. Recurrent (a repetition of previous semiosis)

Between multiple agents, semiosis may be:

3. Similar at the same time (synchronously “synonymous”)

4. Similar at different times (asynchronously “synonymous”)

A visualisation of these possibilities is offered in Figure 5.

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Figure 5. Possible patterns of semiosis within and between agents.

2.4.3 Similar semiosis: the sememe

An important distinction evident above is that similar cognition is not sufficient for similar

semiosis. Similar cognition may occur incidentally on different—although perhaps related—

semiotic vectors. Only if a pattern of movement of cognition of two or more states is similar

can it be said to exhibit similar semiosis. For analytical convenience, a sequence of similar

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semiosis might appropriate the label sememe. A simple example of a sememe might occur

when two people who share the same primary school education solve “7 x 9 =”. They could

be said to have a high likelihood of enacting a similar sememe during the task.

Definition 2

A sememe is semiosis (a sequence of two or more cognitive states) that recurs in the

same or separate agents.

2.5 Semiotic valency

2.5.1 Concept and definition

Following from our definition of a sememe as any similar sequence of semiosis we may now

consider more closely the relation of semiosis (be it in the form of sememes or not) to the

universal state. Proposition 2 asserted that cognition will always be coextensive with change

in the universal state, maintaining that the conception of semiosis as something hermetic,

localised, and contained within a “body” is the necessary but insidious result of human-

centric discreteness. While it is true that semiosis may involve no change perceptible to

another agent and remain irrelevant to the semiosic field, it is also true that any semiosis must

occur simultaneously with changes in neurology, metabolism of food, beating of the heart, as

well as polyadic changes more or less knowable or relevant to the agent or the semiosic field

(a leaf falling from a tree on the other side of the world, for example). It must also be true,

therefore, that all semiosis co-occurs with changes in the universal state upon which it

depends for its existence and which it may influence. Relative to other agents in the semiosic

field, this influence will be in the form of a semiotic valency.

The underlying principle of a semiotic valency is not new. In pragmatics, a valency is already

broadly implicit in Austin (1975 [1962]) and his categorisation of speech acts into

locutionary, illocutionary and perlocutionary types; as well as in the expanded speech act

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classifications by Searle (1976). Accompanying any successful “perlocutionary” speech act

must be some sort of altered cognition exhibiting the effects of the speech act, and in some

sense determined by the speech act. If any language “routine” is to be spoken of it must imply

a regularised allocation of cognition with a certain valency.

However, the concept of valency has generally had a narrow application to language in

dyads. At a universal level, any semiosis has a semiotic valency equivalent to the patterning

of the semiosic field it brings about. Consider, for example, how the yelling of the word

“fire” may pattern semiosis in different contexts. Or consider the effects in the semiosic field

of nightly broadcasts news bulletins, or community updated web sites such as Facebook. A

broad definition of semiotic valency would seem useful.

Definition 3

Semiotic valency is the effect semiosis in an agent has on the universal state and

therefore upon semiosis in other agents in the semiosic field.

2.5.2 Zero semiotic valency

It is important to realise that semiotic valency may well be zero and that zero semiotic

valency may be a common and important result in the semiosic field where suppression,

asymmetrical positioning, and marginalisation of agents is a sine qua non of systemic

stabilisation and equilibration. Cognition that leads to no action and no significant effects in

the semiosic field is useful in maintaining semiotic structures (language, for example) that, in

turn, maintain features of the universal state upon which they depend (books, schools,

computer networks, for example).

2.5.3 Scale of analysis

The incidental examples I have given during this modelling of semiosis have been of a

specific, situational type for purposes of accessibility and clarity. The nature of semiosis,

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however, is systemic at a population level. In the example of the stadium of soccer spectators

the idea of similar semiosis was used to demonstrate how a certain placement in the universal

state could lead to similar semiosis. The similarity of semiosis, however, is much better

conceptualised as a discrete random variable of some size rather than the binary true/false

condition overly intimate examples often suggest.

Even on the scale of the football stadium example it can be said that the salient feature of the

semiosis of the 100,000 participants (and countless others on television etc.) in the semiosic

field is not some localised valency but rather a uniformity of interrelated valencies and a

restriction of semiotic possibilities or consumption of cognition. The soccer match serves to

consume cognition before, during, and after its occurrence and assures some stability and

reinforcement of an evolving system whose alternatives might include civil unrest, domestic

violence, gardening, model railroad building, or revolution—each with a potentially more or

less destabilising trajectory in the semiosic field. It is perhaps a razor of semiotics based on

finite cognition that the broadest effects in the semiosic field are the most relevant.

2.6 Artefacts

Each agent is inaugurated into and develops coextensively with the universal state. Each

agent—equipped with whatever properties and predispositions it might have—encounters and

participates in conditions that foster and shape its semiosis. This relation of the agent to the

universal state is fundamentally idiosyncratic. However, among multiple agents in

historically developed societies the environment for this process has become regularised, and

artefacts have been proliferated from the universal state to satisfy the human imperative to

discreteness. These artefacts do not simply supply the cognition of agents. They operate

asymmetrically to pattern cognition into reticular equilibria that perpetuate themselves, often

for many lifetimes.

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Consider, for example, the simple word “Hello” when spoken to you by someone making eye

contact. To someone raised to speak English, this artefactual stream of sound and visual

presentation ceteris paribus will lead to certain well-known progressions of cognitive states

with a certain semiotic valency, and probably a reply of “Hello” or “How are you?” If one

wishes to affirm that there is an allocation of finite cognition in such an exchange, one simply

has to attend an event where one must say hello to several dozen people in quick succession.

This small phatic routine has great power to shape how cognition is allocated and thereby

shape or equilibrate any effects. In other words, it tends to have a semiotic valency as

discussed above.

Definition 4

An artefact is a more or less dynamic division of the universal state that works in a

reticular manner to determine and regulate cognition and perpetuate itself.

Note that artefacts are posited as having a mediating effect between cognition and the

universal state, not as being objects themselves. In our model there are no objects except as

constituted in finite cognition in some retrospective analytical routine that persists in a certain

western tradition—an artefact in itself.

3 ApplicationsWith the main concepts of the model of finite semiosis presented above, it will be useful to

sketch very briefly some larger ideas it suggests and one major avenue for its future

application and expansion.

3.1 Quantum like problems in semantics

Attempts at observation of the semiosic field require semiosis. To become knowledge such

observation must create artefacts and consume cognition in the field they claim to describe.

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They therefore cannot avoid disturbing and determining the system under analysis, nor avoid

the discrete limits of cognition that create the field. Even if some isolation of the semiosic

field is concocted during “measurement”, none can be possible for any communication of the

measurement, for it is always done at a later time from different initial conditions. There is no

neutral or time-independent viewpoint: speaking or other “signing” is always part of the

world and always changes the world, despite our individual experience of the world as static,

dynamic, discrete or amorphous.

This “quantum effect” in relation to cognition (cf. Busemeyer & Bruza, 2012) can be seen via

the finite semiosis model as a downstream alteration in cognitive states due to the attempt at

observation. Awareness of this effect reveals the paradox of semantics. In introspectively

seeking to capture the “meaning” of any artefact we must implement a cognitive (and thus

semiotic) procedure that fulfils a certain definitional function. This procedure allocates our

cognition and thereby keeps us from the “natural” or “unconscious” meaning of the target

artefact. The meaning we nonetheless produce via the definitional procedure is a new

rhetorical artefact (a “definition”) with its own semiotic valency and reticularity that becomes

a new centre for semiosis. We may revert to an attempt to infer a “natural” meaning through

observation of use by others (as in the distributional vector space models currently in use in

natural language processing) and produce new statistical artefacts as our definition. But this

again requires the proliferation of artefacts and a tendentious evolution of the semiosic field.

The attempt to derive meaning thus becomes simply a rhetorical harnessing of an existing

procedure to enforce special objective status for the analysis. The paradox of semantics is that

any answer to a question of meaning can only succeed by first consuming cognition to which

finiteness rather than meaning is most fundamental.

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3.2 Disciplinarity and corpora of knowledge

The recognition of the finiteness of semiosis via the human-relative finiteness of cognition

asserts also that any semiosis (any “signification”, any “knowledge”, any “communication”,

any “information”) can only exist by occupying some portion of the finite resource of

cognition. If we think of the past we must do so in finite cognition. If we think of the future

we must do so in finite cognition. If we think of Hamlet we must do so in finite cognition.

We may think of a quark or a multiverse, but we have done only one thing: thought. When

we finish a thought, time has moved on and the world has changed (including the cognition

of other agents). Cognition may support various modes and relations but it cannot bear

simultaneity or non-seriality. The ramifications of this basic structural limitation may not be

at first obvious, but are provocative.

The core implication is that communication is by nature, and exclusively, a disciplinary

process. It can succeed in no other way. If one agent is able to affect the cognition of another

through language, gesture, or physical contact, the effect is only possible as a disciplinary

action. It is not possible to succeed in communicating “this apple is rotten” if one does not

use up some finite portion of another agent’s cognition with the concept of “this apple is

rotten”.

One might object that this disciplinarity is a trivial corollary of the human propensity towards

communality built on “sign systems” and retort that we experience incidental discipline only

to receive the signs we then use for our own purposes. However, any perception of triviality

is perhaps the result of ubiquity. For if one considers an agent’s lifespan in terms of the

progression of cognitive states we see that semiosic discipline constitutes all that can be

comprehended of an individual and that any so-called “private thoughts” remain beyond our

knowledge due to their zero semiotic valency. This provides, I believe, a convincing micro-

basis for structural social theories such as those of Foucault (1977, 2002 [1969]) and

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Bourdieu (1977 [1972]) in which the term power seems to parallel what I have called

disciplinarity. In particular, finite cognition marries well with Foucault’s concept of socio-

semiotic “corpora of knowledge”, which I would describe as systems of episteme-delimiting

artefacts by which the finite agent is progressively corralled to have only finite options for

cognitive progression.

Corpora of knowledge—in the present age evolving database systems leading to ubiquitous,

homogenised presentations on electronic devices may be prime examples—lead to consistent

and persistent positioning of the agent in the universal state, and, to coin a nominalisation,

patterned “artefactualisation”. Artefacts in this arena are both paradigmatically and

syntactically constituted. They both pioneer cognitive states to support them, being

introduced in a sense ontogenetically, and provide a grammar for cognition to traverse. A

specific contemporary example is the habit of returning to a smart phone at regular intervals

to follow a ritual of checking apps and taking actions such as emailing, texting, tweeting etc.

This complete process leads to a reticular harnessing of agent cognition within the semiosic

field, and the marginalisation of other uses of that cognition.

4 ConclusionCommentators such as McLuhan (1994 [1964]) and Baudrillard (1994) have asserted that the

power of technology to simulate, replicate and interpolate plays a determinative role in

cognition. However, even in their innovative discourse cognition was implied to be an

abundant, metaphysical non-commodity. If, in the information age, cognition has re-entered

our field of view as a scarce resource with a misunderstood but no longer sacrosanct mode of

allocation, a theory of semiosis based on finite cognition will be essential for understanding

the world to come.

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In particular, it is hoped that the model of finite semiosis sketched above may help

researchers find provocative explanations for a range of contemporary phenomena arising

from the “attention economy”. Such explanations are rapidly becoming inseparable from the

fields of computational intelligence, information theory and human computer interaction,

whose corpora of knowledge are increasingly responsible for dividing the world into the

artefacts that consume our thought—for intensifying and structuring the attention economy.

For this reason they likely offer the most fertile and strategically important ground for

application and refinement of the theory of finite semiosis presented here.

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