Feeling and meaning: A unitary bio-semiotic account

Abstract

This chapter describes feeling and meaning as two aspects of the same material processes in a dynamical system that is always larger than an individual human organism. Both semiosis and emotion occur across multiple timescales and levels of organization in complex open dynamical systems and are spatially distributed, situated, context dependent, active, and culture specific. Consideration is given to feeling and meaning along paths of lived experience, to their evaluative functions, their likely coeval biological origins, and how a unitary account of them informs new perspectives on each.