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1、Seminar Presentationat the Seminar on Symbolic FormsEcole Normale Suprieure, ParisFebruary, 6, 2004Semiotic Autoregulation:Dynamic sign hierarchies constraining the Stream of Consciousness Jaan ValsinerDepartment of PsychologyClark University950 Main StreetWorcester, Ma. o1610, USAe-mail: jvalsinerc
2、larku.eduABSTRACT. For all human sciences, understanding of how the mind works requires a new theory that starts from the assumption of potential infinite variability of human symbolic forms. These forms are socially constructed by the person who moves through an endless variety of unique encounters
3、 with the world. A theory of symbolic forms needs to capture the essence of hyper-dynamic, irreversible nature of the stream of consciousness and activity. Henri Bergson can be considered to have opened the door to the investigation of both the irreversible processes in nature (later to have been en
4、famed by Ilya Prigogine), and the study of development of the mind (cognitive epistemology of Jean Piaget and the cultural-historical perspective of Pierre Janet, Lev Vygotsky and Alexander Luria). The perspective outlined here builds on the cultural-historical perspective through a focus on of semi
5、otic autoregulation of the mind. The human mind is regulated through a dynamic hierarchy of semiotic mechanisms of increasingly generalized kind, which involves mutual constraining between levels of the hierarchy. It is demonstrated that semiotic mediation leads to a triplet of personal-cultural con
6、structions a new symbolic form, a meta-symbolic form, and a regulatory signal to stop or enable the construction of further semiotic hierarchy. In everyday termshuman beings produce new problems, together with new efforts at solving them, and make decisions when to stop producing the former two. Hen
7、ce, semiotic mediation guarantees both flexibility and inflexibility of the human psychological system, through the processes of abstracting generalization and contextualizing specification. Context specificity of psychological phenomena is an indication of general mechanisms that generate variabili
8、ty. Scientific investigation of human psychological complexity is necessarily oriented to the study of variability within the individual persons psychological time-space.I have created the world in thoughtHence I am greater than thoughtBut I worship thoughtIs this not surprising? Ramamirtham, 1986(q
9、uoted via Eichinger Ferro-Luzzi, 2002, p. 128)Human beings are amazingthey create subjective worlds of high complexity- and take it to be objective reality. They organize their mental realms through continuously creating hierarchies of semiotic mediating devices. These devices regulate their relatio
10、ns with their immediate environments by giving meaning to their extra-actions that change the environments, and intra-actions that change their own subjective worlds. Persons create deeply subjective and abstracted from the immediate life meaningswhich are at times personified in terms of deitiesper
11、sonal gods or shrines (Oliveira & Valsiner, 1997; Valsiner, 1999), or of images of idealized “social others(e.g., Baoule “wooden spousesRavenhill, 1996; Vogel, 1997). All of these cultural forms are symbolic resources (Zittoun et al, 2004) that function as their external regulators. In the generaliz
12、ed form, such acts of personal-cultural creation can be summarized by the following:The PERSON constructs MEANING COMPLEX X.OBJECTIFIES it by FIXING ITS FORM.,(e.g. internalinternalized social norm, orexternalmonument, picture of deity, figurine).and starts to act AS IF the objectifiedmeaning comple
13、x X is an external agent thatcontrols the PERSONMost of the Worlds religious architecture, art, rituals, and reasons for all kinds of quarrels are due to this simple projective-constrictive process. We construct the meanings that lead us to reconstructing the objective worldand the reconstructed wor
14、ld guides our further construction of meanings. Both the Notre Dame and the McDonalds are architectural objective realities in this subjective chain of meaning construction. It is here where culture enters into the human psycheand infinitely complicates the construction of the sciences of the human
15、mind. All scientific terminologysimilarly to its everyday counterpart- is in fact a version of such regulating system. It is that part that is meant to objectively and abstractly explain the complexity of our psychological phenomenaa scientific theory is a kind of a mental cathedral that stands in t
16、he center of the booming and buzzing confusion we call living a life.Homage to Henri Bergson: uniqueness of irreversibilityThe philosophy of Henri Bergson is perhaps too famous to be important. When the educated public in Paris tried hard to get to his presentations in early 20th century and gossiped about his mysticism of the lan vital, the major role he play
