[FRIAM] semiotics, again?

[glen ☣]

EricS' categorization of a cumulative hierarchy for reflective complexity reminded me of this:

  A Linguist Responds to Cormac McCarthy
  http://nautil.us/issue/48/chaos/a-linguist-responds-to-cormac-mccarthy

particularly the difference between a "hard-coded" referent (e.g. a hypothetical neuroanatomical structure tightly coupled to efficient language acquisition and use) versus an ambiguous/multi-valent referent.  And that launched my typically vague meandering back to the semiotics 3-tuple: <sign,object,interpretant>.  Freedom can occur in any of the three.  A sign can refer to multiple objects, be interpreted by multiple interpretants, multiple objects can be signified by the same sign, etc.  This leads directly to Sedivy's point about compositionality of signs and works its way back to my beef with the idea that subsystems like the BZ reaction (or any context-dependnt module) are complex systems.

Unfortunately, I'm too ignorant of the fleshing of semiotics to know whether these freedoms (in any/all of the triad) have been explored.  So, please hand me some clues if you have them!

-- 
☣ glen