Extended Concept of Knowledge for Evolutionary Epistemology and Biosemiotics : Hierarchies of Knowledge Storages and Knowing Subjects

Tommi Vehkavaara

A dominant view to evolution has been that genes or DNA-strings play a central role in it. What matters in genes is not the material, DNA, but the order, structure, or information that they contain. It is not biologically relevant to consider this information as just the physical or statistical information that can be objectively and quantitatively measured but rather as a meaningful information - biological "information is based on differences which make a difference to somebody". In the first place the point is biosemiotical, but it is included in evolutionary epistemology (EE) too.

The central idea in biosemiotics is that life consists in various kinds of semiotic processes, processes of the interpretation and communication of meaningful information. Jesper Hoffmeyer has developed the theory of living systems as dually coded. Living systems consist in one digital and one analog code. Digital code (e.g. DNA) works as a 'memory' of a system (for reproduction) and analog code is needed for action in 'real world'. In epigenesis the fertilized egg-cell interprets the digital genetic code and produces the developing phenotype, the analog code of living organism. "Through 'reading the DNA-text', the fertilized egg learns how to construct itself in a manner which served the survival of its parents."

The tradition of EE followed here is founded by Donald T. Campbell and Konrad Lorenz, and further developed by Henry Plotkin. Its central point is to emphasize an analogy between evolutionary adaptation and the increase of environmental knowledge. A genetic code, DNA is only an example of a structure where this kind of knowledge through adaptation can be stored and how it is coded. Adaptations can also be stored at the phenotypic level. For example Plotkin has a theory of nested hierarchy of knowledge storages with four levels.

In both lines of thought the concept of knowledge is usually used ambiguously - it is said that DNA-strings or other non-linguistic sign-systems can carry knowledge, but the concept is not explicitly distinguished from the traditional concept of knowledge, knowledge as true well-justified belief or proposition. This criticism is more serious for EE than for biosemiotics, but if the coherent concept of knowledge could be defined for EE, it might very well suit for biosemiotics too. Both Plotkin's EE and Hoffmeyer's biosemiotics seem to be naturalistic programs, but the traditional concept of knowledge is nevertheless in many ways ideal(istic). Therefore serious difficulties appear, if they are tried to combine together. A more realistic concept of knowledge is needed.

The classical definition of knowledge can be extended in a following way:

1. Knowledge is (part of) the order of some structure. This structure does not have to be linguistic or mental - DNA, cytoskeleton, neural network, or social practice suits as well.

2. There must be a subject of knowing, a knower, but it does not have to be any self-conscious being, it is enough that it is living and has a relative

functional autonomy.

3. Knowledge is about something, it has the object, but this object does not need to be 'objective' and it can be as general entity as 'an environment'.

4. Knowledge as structural order is formed in a process in which the fit between it and its object has increased.

This extended definition is very general but it is applicable to many different subjects of knowing and for many different structures of knowledge storages - therefore I would call it extended concept of knowledge. The traditional concept of knowledge remains as a special case; knowledge that is not in the form of linguistic or mental representations can be named structural knowledge. For humans, part of it can be conscious but the most part is not. From EE we can get a cue for hierarchies of knowledge storages and processes, but what we need more is hierarchy of knowing subjects. For that biosemiotical approach can be relevant.