Finite cognition and finite semiosis: a new perspective
on semiotics for the information age
1 IntroductionThe amount of human time and energy devoted to interaction with digital systems has risen
year upon year over the previous two decades and a saturation point is not yet in view. The
popularity of internet services such as Facebook, Twitter, and Google and the currency of
terms such as virality, information overload, meme, multitasking and spam evidence a
climacteric in patterns of semiosis.
One defining parameter of this semiotic intensification has been the advent of the “attention
economy”. In advertising discourse, there is now a market for “eyeballs”. Space on web sites
is traded in units of “impressions”, and if a web site can attract a million visitors per day—
any million visitors—it is a financial asset of some magnitude. The strong implication is that
attention—the directedness of thought—is in limited supply. This finiteness of cognition has
become an obvious and highly important consideration in economic, academic and political
praxis, and asks a new question of semiotics: namely, what role does the scarcity of cognition
play in semiosis?
Apart from growing contemporary relevance, however, the exploration of a semiotic model
based on finite cognition is attractive for several theoretical reasons:
1. It can be based upon every day, cenoscopic propositions with a minimum of
ontological commitments.
2. It can provide definitions of semiosis, signs and semiotics constituted from a finite
quantum: cognitive states.
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3. As a systemic theory operating at the population level, it can contextualise existing
theories of semiotics that focus mainly on the individual and dyad.
4. It lends itself to, and provides support for, epistemological modelling and sociological
treatments of knowledge and culture in the manner of Foucault (2002 [1969]) and
Bourdieu (1977 [1972]).
2 A model of semiosis based on the finiteness of
cognition
2.1 Analytical principles
While the core premise that cognition, and hence semiosis, is finite is intuitively appealing, a
formal treatment is a necessary foundation for developing useful results. Moreover, in
proposing any model of semiosis we must recognise that we are seeking to delineate ultimate
mechanisms—those preceding language and all other sign systems. There is no lower level
except, as famously noted, silence (Wittgenstein, 1974 [1922]: 89). An appeal to basic
experience, therefore, can be the only ontological basis for a semiotic viewpoint. To this end,
two main principles informing the model of finite semiosis constructed below are:
1. Minimisation of ontological commitments
2. Evidence from cenoscopic introspection and observation
2.2 Ontological foundation
2.2.1 Universal states
The first assertion is that there is a universe or “world”, and that this world changes. To
formalise this, consider that if the world exists at time 0 in a “universal state” we can label S0,
then at a later time n it exists in a different state that we can label Sn. We can illustrate this
simply in Figure 1 as:
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Figure 1. Change in the universal state or “world” over time.
This everyday assertion is supported by appeals to personal experience: each of us has a deep
intuition that our world changes over time.
Proposition 1
If the world exists at time 0 in a state we can label S0, then at a later time n it
exists in a different state that we can label Sn.
2.2.2 Human-centric discreteness
Despite the implicit necessity of a human observer to impose the labels “world”, “time” and
“change” to derive Proposition 1, so far we have made no claim as to the composition of the
world. We have not claimed that it divides essentially into apples, dachshunds, ant colonies,
human beings, laptop computer keys, sports stadiums, planets, galaxies, jellyfish, or dust
mites. The reason to take such care in introducing these pluralities is that they are ineluctably
subjective, or in our preferred term, human-centric.
The term human-centric recognises that the division of the world into objects in
consciousness, although idiosyncratic, is psychologically real or ultimate. This discreteness
imperative can be introspected and observed in all human thought, and cannot be resisted (for
even to resist it one must have in mind a discrete thing to be resisted). The tendency of
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consciousness to operate via a primary mode of discreteness—seeing an apple as an apple
and not as part of the tree to which it is attached, for example—is a structural reflex, arising
due to the parameters of our neurology, sensory apparatus and other properties and
dispositions of the universal state.
This is most particularly true of our imperative to commonly divide the universal state into a
special category of “human beings” (including the “self”). To introduce the human agent and
all that our viewpoint entails into the model, therefore, we must make explicit that any
divisions drawn hereafter are arbitrarily or subjectively made in relation to human agents by
human agents. We must recognise our own viewpoint as limited, inescapable, and our
tendency to divide the universal state into objects (including ourselves and other human
agents) as simultaneously arbitrary and teleological. Moreover, we must recognise that all
divisions arise because of our being part of the world, not separate from it: that it is only in
relation to our worldly consciousness that the world divides into discrete objects. Without
consciousness, there is no division or need for division.
This recognised, we can go on to locate human agents in our model as the single source of
differentiation of the world into objects.
2.2.3 Human agents
Given that we as human agents are part of the universal state of Proposition 1 and require for
our existence to categorise the world discretely, we can extend the model human-centrically
to include ourselves as discrete components. Formalising this innovation, we posit that agents
in the universal state will have Sub-state0 at time 0 and Sub-staten at time n. Our
representation thus becomes Figure 2.
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Figure 2. The universal state with discretising human agents.
Although we have drawn a circle around the agent, the agent’s sub-state is not discontinuous
with the universal state and the separateness we have imposed is, as noted, only a human-
centric convention. Our cognition always remains dependent upon the universal state for its
existence regardless of our division of that universal state. If we see a banana, for example,
for most purposes we see it as some feature of the universal state separate to ourselves.
However a much more continuous and integrated process is at work involving what we
discretise as atoms, light, retinas, optic nerves, synapses, evolution etc. In fact, many factors
could prevent the seeing of the banana that have nothing to do with the “banana” (blindness,
darkness, a yellow background, an optical illusion, brain injury). What produces the “seeing”
is not the banana or the human agent per se but rather some continuous process of universal
change that cannot be completely reduced, isolated, or internally represented in a cognition
that is coextensive with that process. By very useful human-centric convention, however, we
generally say that our “experience” or “consciousness” or “cognition” is produced by the
“object” (“a bee stung me”, “that smell reminded me of Paris”), or by our sub-state (“I saw a
banana”, “I heard a kookaburra”, “I thought of you”). With this awareness, the term “agent
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sub-state”—due to our discretising viewpoint—can be replaced for ease of reference with the
notion of our cognition.
A formal replacement of sub-state with cognition yields Proposition 2:
Proposition 2
To an agent A having cognition based on discreteness, if S0 is a posited
universal state at time 0, and A is ipso facto part of S0, then A has a discrete
cognition at time 0 which we can label C0. Accordingly at some later time n a
universal state Sn will exist, and A will have a cognition of Cn.
2.2.4 Human experience of finite states
A simple corollary of human agency within the progression of universal states outlined above
is that:
Proposition 3
To any agent having cognition based on discreteness, its conscious existence
must consist of a discrete set of cognitive states from C0 to Cn where n is set to
be the length of that agent’s existence.
This is obvious when we posit an introspective or observational sampling of cognition at
interval ni . As i can be made arbitrarily large, intermediate states beyond a certain limit are
indistinguishable to any agent (observed or introspected). For example, if we set i to a large
integer we can reduce the number of theoretical intermediate states to, say, one per second,
one per millisecond, and so on until a time interval of no significance to any human being’s
cognition is reached. The end effect is to demonstrate that an agent has a finite existence
relative to any introspection or observation consisting of a set of discrete, serial, finite
cognitive states.
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In effect, what we have formally derived is nothing more than the common sense result that
our lives are finite in length and consist from our point of view of a series of cognitive
changes. Our derivation, however, has foregrounded discreteness and human-centricity,
establishing these as a foundation for systemic constructs.
2.3 Semiosis: a definition from finite cognition
2.3.1 Definition of semiosis
Having arrived at a theory of human cognition as, relative to itself, serial and finite we move
to a consideration of semiosis, and put forward as a theoretical and analytical tool a new
definition:
Definition 1
Semiosis is the process by which serial, finite human cognition moves from
one state to another.
2.3.2 Finiteness of semiosis
In Section 2.2.4 it was observed that from a human perspective no subdivision smaller than a
certain arbitrary threshold can be relevant in regard to cognition, and that therefore the
number of cognitive states for any agent is restricted to some finite integer. Accordingly, a
human life (somewhat macabrely it must be admitted) might be represented according to this
model as in Figure 3.
Figure 3. Progression of cognitive states in a human life of length n states. (Note that
the circles representing cognitive states are unevenly spaced to allow for the
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possibility of semiosis occurring at differing rates or rhythms and also of long
transitions between states.)
It follows from this finite progression of cognitive states that the number of moves between
them is also finite and so according to Definition 1, semiosis must also be finite.
2.3.3 Finite semiotics
Following from our novel definition of semiosis comes the opportunity to define finite
semiotics as the study not of signs per se but of finite semiosis—the process by which
cognition moves from one state to another.
This novel conception inaugurates as an analytical field the relation of cognitive states to the
universal state, especially—as will be subsequently explored—the reticular effects of
artefacts (those concepts that achieve status as “objects” in cognition and so consume it).
Signs, which in sign-centric models have been theorised as infinite and irreducible (cf. Eco
(1976: 68-69) on “unlimited semiosis”), can be seen is this model as incidental fluid currency
in a finite semiosic allocation process created by agent dispositions in the universal state.
2.3.4 The semiosic field
Applying Definition 1 at the population level we can posit a semiosic field consisting of all
human agents as population varies over time. Currently this field is of the order of 7 x 109
agents (the approximate population of the earth). We might represent it as in Figure 4.
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Figure 4. The semiosic of field of all agents
This is, of course, a rudimentary representation. In any multidimensional expansion, the
semiosic field would be revealed to have a dynamic terrain marked by asymmetrical agent
relations that determine the evolving conditions for semiosis within the universal state.
2.3.5 Equivalence of the semiosic and epistemological fields
Proposition 3 presents cognition as a finite sequence progressing from birth to death. As all
knowledge must be realised in cognition, the set of cognitive states for an agent must
constitute the epistemological limit or complete allocation for that agent. For if an agent
never thinks of something it cannot be part of the agent’s knowledge in any meaningful
definition of knowledge.
This can be used to formulate Proposition 4:
Proposition 4
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As knowing must depend upon cognition, semiosis as defined in Definition 1
must be epistemologically final. The semiosic and epistemological fields are
therefore equivalent.
As will be explored in a later section, this simple corollary has profound ramifications for
semiotics and establishes a basis for “quantum” effects.
2.4 Patterns of semiosis
Our model of finite semiosis has created a space in which all human cognition is theoretically
contained (the semiosic field). This model, however, as yet says little illuminating about
human experience or observed phenomena. To progress towards this goal, let us begin to
explore some corollaries of the finiteness which the model foregrounds. As a first step, let us
introduce a claim as to the nature of semiosis: namely, that semiosis may be more or less
similar in agents.
2.4.1 Similarity of cognitive states
In what situations does similar semiosis occur within an agent or between agents? Consider
these experiences:
Threading a needle
Driving a car
Writing an essay
Watching the television program Friends
Playing the violin
Sitting in a stadium watching a soccer match
On a global level, each of these experiences is highly likely to be occurring for a large
number of agents at this moment. While it is unlikely that any two individuals having one of
these experiences will have similar cognition, the likelihood of similarity becomes evident at
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the population level. For we may confidently observe two people and say that John and Jane
are thinking different things when watching Friends. But would we say that among a million
people watching Friends no proportion have similar cognition? Taking the soccer match
example: may we consider it probable that some large subgroups of the 100,000 people in the
stadium at any one time are likely to have similar cognitive states as opposed to a group taken
at random from the global population?
We are not asserting a strong claim as to the nature or extent of cognitive synonymy but
simply appealing to the intuition that some similarity can exist. The counterargument would
require that all cognition is unique (which hardly seems supportable given the frequent
success of communication) or that situational factors are irrelevant to cognition (we each
follow a random path of similar states). This latter counterargument, however, could not
explain the result that if shown a piece of fruit and asked to name it a large number of people
answer: “pineapple”. Or that many people at a soccer game manifest similar shouting
behaviour. Moreover, on a biological level, how could it explain that if two people are unable
to obtain water they will rapidly begin to focus much attention on obtaining water in ways
that seem to reflect similar cognition?
This is not to assert any strict or simple identicality. Two observers of a soccer game may
have differing modalities of elation or disappointment when a goal is scored. However, if we
are careful to consider not just two spectators but an entire stadium of football viewers, we
can imagine that some agents will be in very nearly identical synchronous semiosis (rejoicing
about a goal) while others are in similarly synchronous but different semiosis (being
disappointed about a goal). Still others will be in tangentially related states (e.g. buying a hot
dog while watching on a monitor) or relatively unrelated states (doing a Sudoku or reading
Anna Karenina). What is evidenced in this particular situation, in fact, is a complex relation
of similar and dissimilar semiosis to agent dispositions in the universal state.
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2.4.2 Possible patterns of similar semiosis
If we stipulate that semiosis in a single and multi-agent sense may be similar, we can
enumerate the basic possible patterns. In a single agent, semiosis may be:
1. Novel (having never before occurred)
2. Recurrent (a repetition of previous semiosis)
Between multiple agents, semiosis may be:
3. Similar at the same time (synchronously “synonymous”)
4. Similar at different times (asynchronously “synonymous”)
A visualisation of these possibilities is offered in Figure 5.
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Figure 5. Possible patterns of semiosis within and between agents.
2.4.3 Similar semiosis: the sememe
An important distinction evident above is that similar cognition is not sufficient for similar
semiosis. Similar cognition may occur incidentally on different—although perhaps related—
semiotic vectors. Only if a pattern of movement of cognition of two or more states is similar
can it be said to exhibit similar semiosis. For analytical convenience, a sequence of similar
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semiosis might appropriate the label sememe. A simple example of a sememe might occur
when two people who share the same primary school education solve “7 x 9 =”. They could
be said to have a high likelihood of enacting a similar sememe during the task.
Definition 2
A sememe is semiosis (a sequence of two or more cognitive states) that recurs in the
same or separate agents.
2.5 Semiotic valency
2.5.1 Concept and definition
Following from our definition of a sememe as any similar sequence of semiosis we may now
consider more closely the relation of semiosis (be it in the form of sememes or not) to the
universal state. Proposition 2 asserted that cognition will always be coextensive with change
in the universal state, maintaining that the conception of semiosis as something hermetic,
localised, and contained within a “body” is the necessary but insidious result of human-
centric discreteness. While it is true that semiosis may involve no change perceptible to
another agent and remain irrelevant to the semiosic field, it is also true that any semiosis must
occur simultaneously with changes in neurology, metabolism of food, beating of the heart, as
well as polyadic changes more or less knowable or relevant to the agent or the semiosic field
(a leaf falling from a tree on the other side of the world, for example). It must also be true,
therefore, that all semiosis co-occurs with changes in the universal state upon which it
depends for its existence and which it may influence. Relative to other agents in the semiosic
field, this influence will be in the form of a semiotic valency.
The underlying principle of a semiotic valency is not new. In pragmatics, a valency is already
broadly implicit in Austin (1975 [1962]) and his categorisation of speech acts into
locutionary, illocutionary and perlocutionary types; as well as in the expanded speech act
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classifications by Searle (1976). Accompanying any successful “perlocutionary” speech act
must be some sort of altered cognition exhibiting the effects of the speech act, and in some
sense determined by the speech act. If any language “routine” is to be spoken of it must imply
a regularised allocation of cognition with a certain valency.
However, the concept of valency has generally had a narrow application to language in
dyads. At a universal level, any semiosis has a semiotic valency equivalent to the patterning
of the semiosic field it brings about. Consider, for example, how the yelling of the word
“fire” may pattern semiosis in different contexts. Or consider the effects in the semiosic field
of nightly broadcasts news bulletins, or community updated web sites such as Facebook. A
broad definition of semiotic valency would seem useful.
Definition 3
Semiotic valency is the effect semiosis in an agent has on the universal state and
therefore upon semiosis in other agents in the semiosic field.
2.5.2 Zero semiotic valency
It is important to realise that semiotic valency may well be zero and that zero semiotic
valency may be a common and important result in the semiosic field where suppression,
asymmetrical positioning, and marginalisation of agents is a sine qua non of systemic
stabilisation and equilibration. Cognition that leads to no action and no significant effects in
the semiosic field is useful in maintaining semiotic structures (language, for example) that, in
turn, maintain features of the universal state upon which they depend (books, schools,
computer networks, for example).
2.5.3 Scale of analysis
The incidental examples I have given during this modelling of semiosis have been of a
specific, situational type for purposes of accessibility and clarity. The nature of semiosis,
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however, is systemic at a population level. In the example of the stadium of soccer spectators
the idea of similar semiosis was used to demonstrate how a certain placement in the universal
state could lead to similar semiosis. The similarity of semiosis, however, is much better
conceptualised as a discrete random variable of some size rather than the binary true/false
condition overly intimate examples often suggest.
Even on the scale of the football stadium example it can be said that the salient feature of the
semiosis of the 100,000 participants (and countless others on television etc.) in the semiosic
field is not some localised valency but rather a uniformity of interrelated valencies and a
restriction of semiotic possibilities or consumption of cognition. The soccer match serves to
consume cognition before, during, and after its occurrence and assures some stability and
reinforcement of an evolving system whose alternatives might include civil unrest, domestic
violence, gardening, model railroad building, or revolution—each with a potentially more or
less destabilising trajectory in the semiosic field. It is perhaps a razor of semiotics based on
finite cognition that the broadest effects in the semiosic field are the most relevant.
2.6 Artefacts
Each agent is inaugurated into and develops coextensively with the universal state. Each
agent—equipped with whatever properties and predispositions it might have—encounters and
participates in conditions that foster and shape its semiosis. This relation of the agent to the
universal state is fundamentally idiosyncratic. However, among multiple agents in
historically developed societies the environment for this process has become regularised, and
artefacts have been proliferated from the universal state to satisfy the human imperative to
discreteness. These artefacts do not simply supply the cognition of agents. They operate
asymmetrically to pattern cognition into reticular equilibria that perpetuate themselves, often
for many lifetimes.
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Consider, for example, the simple word “Hello” when spoken to you by someone making eye
contact. To someone raised to speak English, this artefactual stream of sound and visual
presentation ceteris paribus will lead to certain well-known progressions of cognitive states
with a certain semiotic valency, and probably a reply of “Hello” or “How are you?” If one
wishes to affirm that there is an allocation of finite cognition in such an exchange, one simply
has to attend an event where one must say hello to several dozen people in quick succession.
This small phatic routine has great power to shape how cognition is allocated and thereby
shape or equilibrate any effects. In other words, it tends to have a semiotic valency as
discussed above.
Definition 4
An artefact is a more or less dynamic division of the universal state that works in a
reticular manner to determine and regulate cognition and perpetuate itself.
Note that artefacts are posited as having a mediating effect between cognition and the
universal state, not as being objects themselves. In our model there are no objects except as
constituted in finite cognition in some retrospective analytical routine that persists in a certain
western tradition—an artefact in itself.
3 ApplicationsWith the main concepts of the model of finite semiosis presented above, it will be useful to
sketch very briefly some larger ideas it suggests and one major avenue for its future
application and expansion.
3.1 Quantum like problems in semantics
Attempts at observation of the semiosic field require semiosis. To become knowledge such
observation must create artefacts and consume cognition in the field they claim to describe.
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They therefore cannot avoid disturbing and determining the system under analysis, nor avoid
the discrete limits of cognition that create the field. Even if some isolation of the semiosic
field is concocted during “measurement”, none can be possible for any communication of the
measurement, for it is always done at a later time from different initial conditions. There is no
neutral or time-independent viewpoint: speaking or other “signing” is always part of the
world and always changes the world, despite our individual experience of the world as static,
dynamic, discrete or amorphous.
This “quantum effect” in relation to cognition (cf. Busemeyer & Bruza, 2012) can be seen via
the finite semiosis model as a downstream alteration in cognitive states due to the attempt at
observation. Awareness of this effect reveals the paradox of semantics. In introspectively
seeking to capture the “meaning” of any artefact we must implement a cognitive (and thus
semiotic) procedure that fulfils a certain definitional function. This procedure allocates our
cognition and thereby keeps us from the “natural” or “unconscious” meaning of the target
artefact. The meaning we nonetheless produce via the definitional procedure is a new
rhetorical artefact (a “definition”) with its own semiotic valency and reticularity that becomes
a new centre for semiosis. We may revert to an attempt to infer a “natural” meaning through
observation of use by others (as in the distributional vector space models currently in use in
natural language processing) and produce new statistical artefacts as our definition. But this
again requires the proliferation of artefacts and a tendentious evolution of the semiosic field.
The attempt to derive meaning thus becomes simply a rhetorical harnessing of an existing
procedure to enforce special objective status for the analysis. The paradox of semantics is that
any answer to a question of meaning can only succeed by first consuming cognition to which
finiteness rather than meaning is most fundamental.
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3.2 Disciplinarity and corpora of knowledge
The recognition of the finiteness of semiosis via the human-relative finiteness of cognition
asserts also that any semiosis (any “signification”, any “knowledge”, any “communication”,
any “information”) can only exist by occupying some portion of the finite resource of
cognition. If we think of the past we must do so in finite cognition. If we think of the future
we must do so in finite cognition. If we think of Hamlet we must do so in finite cognition.
We may think of a quark or a multiverse, but we have done only one thing: thought. When
we finish a thought, time has moved on and the world has changed (including the cognition
of other agents). Cognition may support various modes and relations but it cannot bear
simultaneity or non-seriality. The ramifications of this basic structural limitation may not be
at first obvious, but are provocative.
The core implication is that communication is by nature, and exclusively, a disciplinary
process. It can succeed in no other way. If one agent is able to affect the cognition of another
through language, gesture, or physical contact, the effect is only possible as a disciplinary
action. It is not possible to succeed in communicating “this apple is rotten” if one does not
use up some finite portion of another agent’s cognition with the concept of “this apple is
rotten”.
One might object that this disciplinarity is a trivial corollary of the human propensity towards
communality built on “sign systems” and retort that we experience incidental discipline only
to receive the signs we then use for our own purposes. However, any perception of triviality
is perhaps the result of ubiquity. For if one considers an agent’s lifespan in terms of the
progression of cognitive states we see that semiosic discipline constitutes all that can be
comprehended of an individual and that any so-called “private thoughts” remain beyond our
knowledge due to their zero semiotic valency. This provides, I believe, a convincing micro-
basis for structural social theories such as those of Foucault (1977, 2002 [1969]) and
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Bourdieu (1977 [1972]) in which the term power seems to parallel what I have called
disciplinarity. In particular, finite cognition marries well with Foucault’s concept of socio-
semiotic “corpora of knowledge”, which I would describe as systems of episteme-delimiting
artefacts by which the finite agent is progressively corralled to have only finite options for
cognitive progression.
Corpora of knowledge—in the present age evolving database systems leading to ubiquitous,
homogenised presentations on electronic devices may be prime examples—lead to consistent
and persistent positioning of the agent in the universal state, and, to coin a nominalisation,
patterned “artefactualisation”. Artefacts in this arena are both paradigmatically and
syntactically constituted. They both pioneer cognitive states to support them, being
introduced in a sense ontogenetically, and provide a grammar for cognition to traverse. A
specific contemporary example is the habit of returning to a smart phone at regular intervals
to follow a ritual of checking apps and taking actions such as emailing, texting, tweeting etc.
This complete process leads to a reticular harnessing of agent cognition within the semiosic
field, and the marginalisation of other uses of that cognition.
4 ConclusionCommentators such as McLuhan (1994 [1964]) and Baudrillard (1994) have asserted that the
power of technology to simulate, replicate and interpolate plays a determinative role in
cognition. However, even in their innovative discourse cognition was implied to be an
abundant, metaphysical non-commodity. If, in the information age, cognition has re-entered
our field of view as a scarce resource with a misunderstood but no longer sacrosanct mode of
allocation, a theory of semiosis based on finite cognition will be essential for understanding
the world to come.
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In particular, it is hoped that the model of finite semiosis sketched above may help
researchers find provocative explanations for a range of contemporary phenomena arising
from the “attention economy”. Such explanations are rapidly becoming inseparable from the
fields of computational intelligence, information theory and human computer interaction,
whose corpora of knowledge are increasingly responsible for dividing the world into the
artefacts that consume our thought—for intensifying and structuring the attention economy.
For this reason they likely offer the most fertile and strategically important ground for
application and refinement of the theory of finite semiosis presented here.
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