Living is Surviving

Beyond extrinsic survival (e.g., finding food, avoiding dangers, etc.), intrinsic survival demands continual internal repair and reconstruction to offset the effects of unrelenting internal decay and depletion. The organism must constantly re-produce the conditions of its own existence. The individual’s survival is nevertheless subordinate to that of the species, which is achieved through biological reproduction in the ordinary sense (i.e., assemblage of a working copy of the organism itself, capable of surviving and reproducing in turn.). This article relates these two types of reproduction to others, such as the reproduction of a picture, of a melody, of a movement. I believe all of these reproductive forms are based on a fundamental one, which is the condition of possibility of all forms of replication. This fundamental kind of reproduction resides in the spontaneous reproduction of events under physical causation. On this basis, I advance an interpretation of semiosis as a type of second-order causation: at the level of biosemiotic transactions, semiosis alters habits which are embodied in constraints that in turn determine the extent and direction of physical changes.