Biosemiotics (2010) 3:315329 DOI 10.

1007/s12304-010-9079-8 O R I G I N A L PA P E R

Why Was Thomas A. Sebeok Not a Cognitive Ethologist? From Animal Mind to Semiotic Self
Timo Maran

Received: 31 January 2010 / Accepted: 4 March 2010 / Published online: 5 May 2010 # Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2010

Abstract In the current debates about zoosemiotics its relations with the neighbouring disciplines are a relevant topic. The present article aims to analyse the complex relations between zoosemiotics and cognitive ethology with special attention to their establishers: Thomas A. Sebeok and Donald R. Griffin. It is argued that zoosemiotics and cognitive ethology have common roots in comparative studies of animal communication in the early 1960s. For supporting this claim Sebeoks works are analysed, the classical and philosophical periods of his zoosemiotic views are distinguished and the changing relations between zoosemiotics and cognitive ethology are described. The animal language controversy can be interpreted as the explicit point of divergence of the two paradigms, which, however, is a mere symptom of a deeper cleavage. The analysis brings out later critical differences between Sebeoks and Griffins views on animal cognition and language. This disagreement has been the main reason for the critical reception and later neglect of Sebeoks works in cognitive ethology. Sebeoks position in this debate remains, however, paradigmatic, i.e. it proceeds from understanding of the contextualisation of semiotic processes that do not allow treating the animal mind as a distinct entity. As a peculiar parallel to Griffins metaphor of animal mind, Sebeok develops his understanding of semiotic self as a layered structure, characterised by an ability to make distinctions, foremost between itself and the surrounding environment. It appears that the history of zoosemiotics has two layers: in addition to the chronological history starting in 1963, when Sebeok proposed a name for the field, zoosemiotics is also philosophically rooted in Peircean semiotics and German biological philosophy. It is argued that the confrontation between zoosemiotics and cognitive ethology is related to different epistemological approaches and at least partly induced by underlying philosophical traditions. Keywords Thomas A. Sebeok . Donald R. Griffin . History of zoosemiotics . Cognitive ethology . Semiotic self . Animal mind . Animal language controversy
T. Maran (*) Department of Semiotics, University of Tartu, Tiigi 78, 50410 Tartu, Estonia e-mail: timo.maran@ut.ee

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Introduction The present article is born out of interest in the paradigm of zoosemiotics, its historical roots, present status and possible future perspectives. In dealing with this topic, one cannot help but notice that zoosemiotics today is surrounded by similar but better-established disciplines, like biosemiotics and cognitive ethology. Biosemiotics was considered by Thomas A. Sebeok as a kind of umbrella term, covering zoosemiotics as well as phytosemiotics, mycosemiotics, endosemiotics and microsemiotics (Sebeok 2001a: 4142). Even today we can observe a wide diversity of different views and approaches in biosemiotics from biohermeneutics to semiotics of codes, which is partly due to the diversity of research objects at different organisational levels of nature. However, the relationship between zoosemiotics and cognitive ethology is more intriguing, as they appear to be comparable entities that are both interested in animal communication and distinctions made by animals in their environment. Regarding the future perspectives of zoosemiotics, a question may arise (from a personal but also from a paradigmatic perspective): would it be fruitful to continue as a separate discipline, or should zoosemiotics merge with some of its larger neighbours? To give a sufficient answer to this question, would, however, presume mapping and bringing out similarities and differences between zoosemiotics and its neighbouring disciplines. In the present article I focus on the relations between zoosemiotics and cognitive ethology. Dario Martinelli, who has been a vigorous propagator of zoosemiotics, has also paid tribute to the central thinkers of cognitive ethologyMarc Bekoff, Colin Allen, Donald R. Griffin and their research program (Martinelli 2007: 3334, 121122, 230275). At the same time, there is an apparent lack of references to semiotics in the literature on cognitive ethology. Relations between the two seminal authors of the respective fields, Thomas A. Sebeok and Donald R. Griffin, are also rather contradictory as we will see in the following pages. From a zoosemioticians point of view, this question can also be formulated as why Thomas A. Sebeok saw his works in zoosemiotics as distinct from the emerging discipline of cognitive ethology. To answer this question, we should probe into the history of semiotic studies of animal communication and consider which of the reasons for the present situation are due to the essential paradigmatic differences, which to the personal inconsistencies and which to the historical inevitabilities. I do not pretend to provide an exhaustive overview of the topic in the following pages but to present some observations that could, perhaps, open up perspectives and lead to future dialogues in zoosemiotics. Zoosemiotics and Cognitive EthologyCommon Roots, Different Routes? For understanding the story of the zoosemiotic paradigm and its relation to cognitive ethology, it is important to put the issue into a correct historical perspective. Namely, Sebeoks initiative in zoosemiotics did not develop out of nothing, but was part of a larger cognitive shift that took place in the 1950s in psychology, anthropology and linguistics against the behaviourist approaches prevailing so far. The shift brought

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concepts like perception, meaning and communication into the focus of psychological and anthropological sciences. As we are talking here about a development in the scale of a scientific revolution, a huge number of influences, authors, publications and events are involved in this turn. For the development of a specifically comparative approach in animal communication and of zoosemiotics, a series of seminars in anthropology held in the early 1960s in Burg-Wartenstein, Austria and financed by the Wenner-Gren Foundation seemed to have crucial importance. The first symposium, titled Comparative Aspects of Human Communication, was held on 410 September 1960 and its participants included among others Charles F. Hockett, Martin Lindauer, Thomas A. Sebeok, Ren-Guy Busnel and Donald R. Griffin (Conferences 1961: 141142). Sebeok presented the first version of his paper, Coding in the evolution of signalling behavior, and Griffins account was related to his classical work in the communication and orientation of bats. The next symposium, Animal Communication, was held in Burg-Wartenstein on 1322 June 1965, and it was organised by Thomas A. Sebeok and it brought together scholars Stuart A. Altmann, Gregory Bateson, Charles F. Hockett, Peter Marler, Abraham A. Moles, W. John Smith a.o. (Conferences 1966: 251253). Based on the papers of these symposiums, the collections Animal Communication: Techniques of Study and Results of Research (Sebeok 1968a) and Approaches to Animal Communication (Sebeok and Ramsay 1969) were later compiled by Thomas A. Sebeok. The Wenner-Gren symposia were intensive and inspiring meeting places with invited participants; the atmosphere of a later symposium has been vividly depicted by Mary Catherine Bateson (1991). Meetings at Burg-Wartenstein manifested a change in the thinking of many authors mentioned. In Sebeoks case it is evident that we do not find any publication on the issues of animal communication before 1962,1 and the same applies to some extent to Donald R. Griffin, whose focus in the 1960s was still in rather classical studies on the senses and orientation of different animals. In Griffins case intellectual influences are probably quite diverse, as in the mid1970s enthusiasm about animal communication was in the air everywhere and Griffin was also a colleague of ethologist Peter Marler and philosopher Thomas Nagel at Rockefeller University (an overview about the development of the Rockefeller group is given by Radick 2005). At the same time Donald Griffin must have been at least familiar with Thomas Sebeok and his writings as well as with the works of other authors of this line of thinking. This is also exemplified by a partly-overlapping body of references in Griffins books on animal cognition and Sebeoks zoosemiotic essays. Griffins 1976 book, The Question of Animal Awareness, includes references to essays by Peter Marler and W. John Smith published in the abovementioned collection, Animal Communication, as well as a discussion on Charles Morriss distinction between sign and symbol. Sebeoks 1977 collection, How Animals Communicate, already includes Donald R. Griffins programmatic article, Expanding horizons in animal communication behavior (Griffin 1977). What is important to emphasise here is that the thinking of Thomas A. Sebeok and Donald R. Griffin have at least partly the same
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Sebeoks involvement with the issues of animal communication can be traced back to 19601961, when he had a scholarship at the Stanford Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences (Sebeok 1986: 7273).

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roots. Griffins later turn in 1976, when he published his The Question of Animal Awareness was, however, more radical than views of other scholars, and his uncompromising position found many students and followers, including Marc Bekoff, Irene Pepperberg, Marc D. Hauser, and Gordon M. Burghardt, whose works later formed the core of cognitive ethology. The more moderate approaches of Peter Marler, W. John Smith and others got less attention and are nowadays relatively forgotten. Concerning the development of zoosemiotics the personal history and interests of Thomas A. Sebeok are relevant, as in the case of any other field promoted for a long time by a single scholar. It is relevant to be reminded here that the two major teachers of Thomas A. Sebeok are Roman Jakobson and Charles Morris. Also his understanding of zoosemiotics (at least in his early works) is a synthesis of both scholars. From Jakobson, Sebeok borrows the transmissional communication model and develops this into a research program of six questions for zoosemiotics. These questions are: 1. How does an animal formulate and code its message? 2. How are messages transferred, through what channel and under what circumstances? 3. How does an animal that acts as a receiver in a communicative situation decode and interpret messages? 4. What is the possible repertoire of the specific species? 5. What are the properties of code used by specific species? 6. What role does contextual information have for communication? (Sebeok 1972b: 123124; Sebeok 1990c: 111112). Another essential tool for Sebeok is Charles Morriss typology of syntactics, semantics and pragmatics, interpreted by Sebeok as a distinction between zoosyntactics, zoosemantics and zoopragmatics. According to Sebeoks view, zoopragmatics deals with the origin, propagation and effects of signs. Zoosyntactics targets the combination of signs: such questions as message composition, code, and repertoire of messages available for particular species. Zoosemantics is concerned with the meaning and context of messages (Sebeok 1972b: 124132). These general models made their first appearance in the late 1960s and are later repeated and developed with terminological variations and different emphases. Thus we can say that due to his academic heritage Sebeok also brings influences from linguistic communication theory and behaviourism to early zoosemiotics, both softened by the semiotic interpretations of Sebeok himself and his teachers. Sebeoks interest in the semiotics of life lasts about four decades, which is a time long enough to suspect significant changes in ones views. In principle, it is possible to distinguish two periods in Sebeoks zoosemiotic writings: the first one lasted from 1962when the written version of the paper presented in Burg-Wartenstein was publishedto 1969. The articles of this period are gathered in the collection Perspectives in Zoosemiotics (1972a). Thereafter Sebeok did not publish an original essay in zoosemiotics for 6 years, which creates a kind of natural gap between two periods. Starting with 1975, zoosemiotics and animal communication as a topic appears again in Sebeoks writings, but the focus is now more closely on specific issues such as naming in animals, zoosemiotic aspects of human communication, lying in animals, history of zoosemiotic thought and others. Most of his zoosemiotic writings of this period are published in the collection Essays in Zoosemiotics (1990a). Besides texts included in these collections, many of Sebeoks later articles are also relevant for zoosemiotics, for instance his criticism of language experiments in animals (e.g. Sebeok 1981a, b), overview of artistic behaviour in animals (Sebeok

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1979) and discussion on modelling systems theory of the Tartu-Moscow school of cultural semiotics (Sebeok 1991b). The two periods of Sebeoks writings, represented respectively in Perspectives in Zoosemiotics (1972a) and Essays in Zoosemiotics (1990a), can be distinguished as classical and philosophical.2 The development of Sebeoks zoosemiotic thinking can be well explicated through the authors that most commonly occur in the in-text references of Sebeoks essays (see Fig. 1). Aside from the relatively strong and stable influence of three CharlesesDarwin, Morris and Peircesignificant differences exist between the two books. Sebeoks classical period can be characterised by the influences of classical ethology (mostly Karl von Frisch, Martin Lindauer, as well as Peter Marler, Stuart A. Altmann and Niko Tinbergen) and linguistics (mostly Roman Jakobson, Charles H. Hockett, as well as Karl Bhler and Edward Sapir). In this period a lot of emphasis is put on establishing the zoosemiotic paradigm, describing a communication model for animals and the role of codes and channels in it. In the second, philosophical period Sebeoks views become more heterogenic, zoosemiotics is bonded to the history of semiotics (several references to John Locke, Ferdinand de Saussure, Charles S. Peirce), and in general, a more theoreticalphilosophical approach is taken. The second period is also characterised by the growing influence of German zoological philosophymostly the works of Heini Hediger and Jakob von Uexkll. In general it can be said that Sebeoks attention moves from a structural view of communication processes to the animal as a semiotic entity in its semiotic and communicational environment. This trend, however, seems to get trapped in the dispute of animal language, and in the early 1990s Sebeok turns his attention more towards general and theoretical semiotics. To conclude this chapter, we can interpret zoosemiotics and cognitive ethology as two paradigms that seem to have common roots in a comparative approach to animal communication in the early 1960s. Later, the thinking of Thomas A. Sebeok and Donald R. Griffin develops in different directions, whereas the questions of cognitive capacities and language in animals become an explicit point of disagreement. The widening split between the two scholars and two respective ways of thinking can be illustrated with Sebeoks opinions about Griffins works. In 1977 Sebeok celebrates Griffin as one of a few animal behaviorists of the first rank who have actually concluded that the road now seems open to realize goals of comparative semiotics (Sebeok 1990d: 55). A few years later Sebeoks tone is already more critical although still respectful: Griffins recent (1976) monograph is a most important contribution to this protracted argument [...] whether language and the cognitive structure assumed to underlie it was the critical feature of Homo sapiens that separated him from the speechless creatures [...] which shows no signs of abating (Sebeok 1981a: 127) even though the question itself is no doubt poorly posed (Sebeok 1979:58).

It may be that we should also distinguish the thirdbiosemiotic periodin Sebeoks thinking, which is formed from the essays on zoo/biosemiotic topics published in the second half of the 1990s and in the beginning of the new millennium mostly in the collection Global Semiotics (2001). For discussion about Sebeoks biosemiotic turn, see Kull 2003.
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Fig. 1 Authors who are referred to most in the books Perspectives in zoosemiotics (1972a) and Essays in Zoosemiotics (1990a) by Thomas A. Sebeok. In the analysis, all in-text references were counted, that is, all references to any author s name in the main body of the text (e.g. as Morris has written) and all quotations with the references to an authors name; references given in brackets and bibliographic information in the reference sections of the articles were excluded. Such method was used with the aim of differentiating between references of primary and secondary importance (although in some cases the decision was difficult to make)

The Animal Language ControversyOr How the Dialogue Failed The explicit reason why Thomas A. Sebeoks zoosemiotics opposes itself to cognitive ethology lieson the most general levelin what could be called the animal language controversy. Starting from the 1960s the programs of teaching different sign systems to animals and studying animal language skills become increasingly popular in the Unites States: the works of Allen and Beatrice Gardner and of David and Ann Premack on chimpanzees, of Sue Savage-Rumbaugh on bonobos and also to some extent of John C. Lilly on dolphins are probably the best known examples. Sebeok has been openly critical toward animal language programs and has repeatedly questioned the methodology and scientific objectives of these (pointing out problems in extensive training of animals involved, as well as in reporting and interpreting the results). Sebeok has argued that in many cases the communicative relation between the researcher and the animal may explain the seemingly extraordinary results in the animals language use because of the involvement of the Clever Hans effect that denotes the effect of a researchers expectationsthrough involuntary communicationon the results of research conducted with animals (Sebeok 1981b: 162167). The disagreement led to harsh disputes with personal involvement on both sides. Even if the question of animal language has not been central for cognitive ethology, communicative skills have still been a central argument for demonstrating the cognitive abilities of animals. Griffins position in The Question of Animal

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Awareness (1976) and in later books can be described as advocating the continuity of cognitive and communicative capabilities of humans and animals. The Question of Animal Awareness includes long discussions on animals cognitive capacities, animals awareness of their own behaviour, and the position of the topic of animal cognition in academic discourse. Animal communication has had a special place in Griffins project since for him, as well as for his followers, communication has initially been a tool for reaching into the animal mind. This becomes clear from the research program that Griffin presents as comparative linguistics.3 Comparative linguistics for Griffin is the animal introspection (Griffin 1981: 164), two-way participatory experiments [] as a source of information about whatever mental experiences animals may have (Griffin 1981: 164). He wrote: Human language, despite all its limitations, does convey some information about subjective experiences in our fellow men. We need only extend to animals, with suitable modifications, the basic process by which we assess the mental experience of our own species (Griffin 1981: 160). Differently from Sebeok, Griffins attitude towards the language programs of apes is generally positive, and goes with criticism against Cartesian philosophy, Chomskys theory of universal grammar and Hocketts list of design features of human language (Griffin 1976: 3237).4 Against this background Sebeok soon turned into an intellectual enemy figure for cognitive ethology and this is pretty much the context in which he is mentioned later.5 In cognitive ethology, explicit references to Sebeoks publications are rare and point mostly to his later criticism of animal language experiments and the Clever Hans fallacy (e.g. Burghardt 1985: 905; Griffin 1994: 2425). The philosophical and theoretical foundations of Sebeoks thinking are never seriously considered. Also the collection of Sebeoks later zoosemiotic writings, Essays in Zoosemiotics, got minimum attention among ethologists. This is sad in the sense that cognitive ethology seems to be searching for its theoretical and philosophical foundations, in the course of which the philosophical writings of Daniel Dennett and Ruth Millikan are consulted (e.g. Bekoff and Allen 1997a: 101104), while Sebeoks works could also provide some basis. It has been an unfortunate turn of events of scientific development that the animal language controversy overshadowed the theoretical core of Sebeoks thinking that could perhaps have led to a mutually fruitful exchange of ideas between semiotics and cognitive ethology. To understand Sebeoks critical stance we should look at his perception of the concept of language and how this is positioned with regard to the animal communication debate. Indeed, Sebeok repeatedly presents his opinion that talking about language in other animals beside humans can only be metaphoric and it would be better to avoid this discussion altogether (e.g. Sebeok 1979: 5758). This view is presented most clearly in the second theorem in the programmatic text Initial

Is there not a hidden parallel with zoosemiotics as well as a certain irony, when one recalls Sebeoks background in linguistics? 4 At the same time Griffins expressions on the topic of animal language remain somewhat carefulhe writes about language as a combinations of signs (Griffin 1981:103) and the language-like behavior of animals (Griffin 1981:103). 5 This attitude remains, even if later cognitive ethology distances itself from the studies of animal cognition and communication made in the controlled laboratory environment (e.g. Bekoff, Allen 1997b).
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conditions for biosemiotics: All the animals paleontologists classify generally as Homo, and only such, embody, in addition to a primary modeling system [...] a secondary modeling system, equivalent to a natural language (Sebeok 2001b: 71). This position goes hand in hand with the understanding that human language should stay outside the scope of zoosemiotics (while nonverbal communication of humans is definitely part of it). Upon closer inspection, we see, however, that Sebeoks argumentation is more articulated and his standpoint carefully positioned between the possible extremes of the continuitydiscontinuity debate. He is a linguist by education and also his understanding of language is a linguistic one, emphasising the specific structural organisation that allows, on the basis of certain rules, to combine smaller and stable units into a potentially infinite number of sentences. According to Sebeok, language as a complex syntactic system is indeed a peculiarity of our species. As a species-specific feature, human language holds a similar position to the echolocation of bats or the drumming of woodpeckers. The species-specificity of the syntax-based language is exactly the reason why it falls outside the scope of interest of zoosemiotics. Zoosemiotics according to Sebeok is a comparative discipline of semiosis and communication in animals, whereas linguistics and literary studies can be considered as specific disciplines interested only in the communicative capabilities of one species, being thus at the same time less and more than zoosemiotics. Simultaneously, Sebeok develops the view of the dual modelling systems of humans, according to which the linguistic modelling capacity is coupled with zoosemiotic modelling, shared with other animals, that can be used in communication (Sebeok 1991b: 5758), but also for instance in artistic creation and perception (Sebeok 1979: 6062). On the other hand, Sebeok does not support the view of discontinuity between animal and human sign systems. In contrast to most representatives of European semiology, Sebeok widens the range of semiotic phenomena to cover all living organisms: the process of message exchanges, or semiosis, is an indispensable characteristic of all terrestrial life forms (Sebeok 1991a: 22). Also Sebeoks views on symbolicity and symbolic signs in animals are significant in this aspect. It is rather common in linguistics and semiotics to reserve the use of symbolic signs with the concepts of arbitrariness and conventionality to humans only. Sebeok, however, proceeding from Peircean terminology, attributes the capability to employ wholly arbitrary symbols also to other animals, using the tail-wagging dance of bees and wedding-gifts of some insects as examples (Sebeok 1990e: 4243). Sebeoks long discussion on proper names in animals should also be reminded in this context (Sebeok 1990b). With such views on symbolicity and arbitrariness of sign systems, Sebeok goes even further than some current authors in biosemiotics. In addition to the animal language controversy, we can think of several other reasons why the dialogue between zoosemiotics and cognitive ethology did not turn out to be successful. First, most cognitive ethologists starting with Griffin had their academic background in ethology or in other disciplines of natural sciences, whereas Sebeok was a linguist by education. Thus Sebeoks attempt to use zoosemiotics for building a bridge can be interpreted as one in a series of many unsuccessful attempts to merge natural sciences and humanities. Sebeoks terminology, philosophical background and also scope of generalisation must have seemed strange to ethologists at the time. Besides that there were also some problems with the word

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zoosemiotics itself, which was not always greeted with enthusiasm (Sebeok 1968b). Third, there seem to have been some differences in understanding to what extent science should be prescriptive. In the program of cognitive ethology, an ethical attitude towards animals has always been present either as an underlying assumption or an explicit topic (e.g. Griffin 2001: 252269; Allen and Bekoff 2007). In Sebeoks zoosemiotics there are almost no comparable ethical connotations, and as a long-time general editor of the journal Semiotica and the series Approaches to Semiotics, Advances in Semiotics, The Semiotic Web a.o. Sebeok seems to have held the position that science and ideology should be kept apart.

From Animal Mind to Semiotic Self After this excursion to the histories of zoosemiotics and cognitive ethology, we are ready to proceed with the real diagnosis of the relationship between the two disciplines. It seems to me that the animal language controversy as well as differences in understanding the moral obligations of science are mere symptoms of a deeper difference between cognitive ethology and zoosemiotics, a difference that is rooted in the historical traditions of thought, hidden at first but becoming more and more obvious as the two disciplines develop and grow apart. The history of zoosemiotics itself could thus be constructed as having double layers: one, a chronological layer dates from 1963, when Sebeok proposed a name for the field, and the second layer, that unrolled bit by bit as Sebeok crafted out the semiotics of animal communication, is thus much older than the concept of zoosemiotics itself. As an outsider, my observations concerning cognitive ethology remain superficial, but I hope that despite simplifications the essential difference between the two fields can be brought out. Marc Bekoff has defined cognitive ethology as the comparative, evolutionary, and ecological study of nonhuman animal (hereafter animal) minds including thought processes, beliefs, rationality, information processing, and consciousness (Bekoff 1999: 371). From the bystander s perspective the concept of animal mind, which lies at the heart of this definition, also seems to be the connecting metaphor for cognitive ecology. The same phrase is present in the titles of Donald R. Griffins two books: Animal Minds (1992) and Animal Minds: Beyond Cognition to Consciousness (2001). The phrase has also later been used by other authors of the discipline in the titles of monographs and articles (e.g. Cognitive Ethology, The Minds of Other Animals (Ristau 1991), Species of Mind: The Philosophy and Biology of Cognitive Ethology (Allen and Bekoff 1999)). Being aware of the cautiousness needed when talking about mind because of the complex history of the concept in philosophy and psychology, it seems that the metaphor of animal mind brings well out some basic presumptions of cognitive ethology: 1) both human and nonhuman animals are assumed to have minds (although there may be differences in complexity), and, 2) mind is considered to be an individual private entity of a specific organism. An animal mind is thus located in the animal organism: nervous systems are also, at least in humans, the organ of the mind (Allen and Bekoff 1999: 13), and it makes possible private mental experiences (that include or equal various phenomena such as awareness, consciousness, intentionality a.o., Griffin 1982: 35).

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Thus one may ask to what extent zoosemiotics shares cognitive ethologists understanding of the animal mind with its underlying philosophical assumptions. Related to this question, it seems characteristic that Sebeoks criticism of animal language experiments was often targeted against the methodology and setting how and where the experiments were carried out. Rather than considering this criticism as a manifestation of Sebeoks eccentricity or malevolence, one could see this as an expression of his semiotic standpoint. Sebeoks views were in concordance with and grounded upon the general logic of Peircean semiotics (see Deely 2003 for a detailed discussion). The central concept of Peircean semioticssignis essentially a threefold relation between the sign, thing signified, cognition produced in the mind (CP 1.372) and such relational signs can link whatever is present in the organisms environment. Sign processes, language and also consciousness are not located in the mind or its physical carrierthe brainbut they are relations. Furthermore, the mind itself is a configuration of signs for Peirce: the content of consciousness, the entire phenomenal manifestation of mind, is a sign resulting from inference (CP 5.311). Therefore, it is very difficult to make a distinction between communication and the setting where communication takes place; or between information from the message and information from the context. According to this semiotic view, the mind grows into an environment or it grows with the environment.6 Concerning studies on animal cognition, this means that the researcher s semiotic influence as well as the impact of the environmental setting on the animals that he/she tries to understand become the crucial elements of the study. An organism in a semiotic perspective is always a relational unit connected to its environment, and any equivalent to animal mind in semiotics would also be a dialogical or open entity. In his writings, Sebeok almost does not use the concept of mind. One of the few such occasions truly characterises Sebeoks semiotic position: I define mind as a system of signs, or representations, of what is commonly called the world, or, more exactly, the Umwelt (von Uexkll) or ground (Peirce [...]) (Sebeok 1981c: 262). Even in this definition we can observe a crucial difference from the understanding of mind in cognitive ethology, as mind is considered to be a system of representations. Starting from the late 1970s Sebeok begins to develop his own understanding of what could be an equivalent of animal mind in cognitive ethology, namely the semiotic self. This direction of thinking is elaborated in four short essays, Semiotic self (first published in 1977) and Semiotic self revisited (1989), Tell me where is fancy bred? The biosemiotic self (1991) and The cognitive self and the virtual self (1998). Based on Sebeoks writings it seems that the essential property of a semiotic self is an ability to make distinctions, first to distinguish between the self and the other, or in other words, a semiotic self is characterised by an ability of self-recognition. As such, a semiotic self can recognise itself in different ways, its self-awareness or borders are not fixed and there is also room for error, as in the case of the phenomenon of phantom pain felt in missing limbs or the body treating some part of
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Similar contextual aspects of animal communication are also strongly emphasised in the works of W. John Smith in the form of the context-specificity of the messages transmitted in communication (Smith 1965).

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itself as an intruder in the case of autoimmune diseases (Sebeok 1991c: 37; Sebeok 2001c: 123124). According to Sebeok, semiotic self is a multilayered structure, based on all memory-capable codes in the body (Sebeok 2001c: 124) including at least immunological, neurological, cognitive and in the case of human animals also verbal and narrative layers. Semiotic self is not permanent but developing and conditional with regard to the organisms lifecycle (Sebeok 2001c: 121) and surrounding circumstances: semiotic self is engaged in continual scanning, or monitoring, or a process of meta-interpretation of its modeling system (Sebeok 2001d: 133). This claim allows Sebeok to pose interesting questions regarding an animals self-image, such as: Does an animals self-appraisal include an awareness of its detachable appendages (such as spontaneous tail amputation in the course of evasive maneuvers of many Sauria)? Of its exclusive body odour? Of its image reflected in water? Of its shadow upon ground? (Sebeok 1991d: 45). Differently from the understanding of animal mind in cognitive ethology, semiotic self is not located in any one organ of the body, even the brain (Sebeok 2001c: 126), but it is rather a result of interpretational processes, an interplay of references between an animals Innenwelt and Umwelt (Sebeok 2001c: 121, 124). Consequently semiotic self is not limited by an animals body, it is not bounded by an animals skin, but can reach out into the environment, as in Hediger s typology of personal spheres (Sebeok 2001c: 125); we can even speak of virtual self as a projection of the semiotic self onto pseudo-reality (Sebeok 2001d: 133134). The present comparison between the animal mind and semiotic self can be questioned by claiming that mind and self are concepts of different levels, the latter being just an aspect of the former. At the same time, for Sebeok semiotic self has many properties that also characterise the mind or cognition in animal ethology (discrimination, memory, self-awareness a.o.). The principal difference between the two concepts appears to lie rather in the underlying philosophical position. The thinking of Griffin and his school seems to be based on some sort of realist or physicalist view of their study object, where the goal is to argue for the true or real existence of the animal mind that can be studied or proved with the help of scientific methods. For Sebeok, semiotic self appears to be the result of an animals semiotic activity, a unique description, a configuration of signs, and therefore in principle not fixed in (although dependent on) the physical realness. Sebeoks position is related to his attempt to redefine the opposition between the inner and outer in animals in semiotic terms (Sebeok 1990d: 5961; Sebeok 1991d: 45) and his later biosemiotic conviction that signs are the only true reality and semiosis is the criterial attribute of life (Sebeok 1986: 73,74). Whereas cognitive ethology seems to have remained faithful to the Darwinian view of continuity between cognition and communication in humans and other animals and is therefore destined to repeat similarity, continuity and anthropomorphism as epistemological bridges to other animals over and over again, Sebeok emphasises difference not only between humans and other animals but between distinct semiotic selves in general. Developing an approach called deep ethology, a leading cognitive ethologist, Marc Bekoff, writes: As a deep ethologist [ ] I, as the see-er, try to become the seen. I become coyote. I become penguin. I try to step into animals sensory and locomotory worlds to discover what it might be like to be a given individual, how they sense their surroundings, and how they behave and

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move in certain situations (Bekoff 2002:11).7 While for Bekoff such connection is in principle possible, for the semiotic view this would mean the creation of yet another layer of interpretations in our human Innenwelt, since: any self can and must interpret the observed behavior of another organism solely as a response to its interpretations to its universe (Sebeok 2001c: 126) and we can, of course, and regularly do, spin fantasies about, or imagine, the situation of an other , or even perhaps empathize with a fellow-humans or some pets singular individuality, but our respectively impenetrable semiosic orbits are perpetually kept apart by a rigid intergalactic void: the self s perception of any other is composite, partial, and forever incomplete.8 (Sebeok 2001c: 126). There are no shortcuts to the personal experiences of other animals according to the Sebeokian view. Perhaps the only way to describe such complex semiotic phenomena as the self is through multiply contending, mutually complementary visions (Sebeok 2001c: 126), an understanding, that has made modelling and complementary analysis the basic research methods of Sebeokian semiotics, whereas cognitive ethology has relied more on participatory observation and critical anthropomorphism. The background of this deep difference between the approaches lies probably in the persistent intellectual traditions that have endured despite the changing names and generations of scientists. The approach to the animal mind in cognitive ethology can be traced back at least to the works of George J. Romanes and Edward L. Thorndike, who initiated comparative psychology (although the concepts philosophical legacy is definitely much oldersee, for instance Sorabji 1993). The later thinking of Thomas A. Sebeok is, on the other hand, notably influenced by the philosophy and semiotics of Charles S. Peirce as well as German biological philosophy (note that almost half of the authors that Sebeok most often refers to belong to the German intellectual tradition, see Fig. 1). It is also not a coincidence that in his late overview of biosemiotics, Sebeok focuses on European thinkers Jakob von Uexkll, Heini Hediger, Thure von Uexkll and Giorgio Prodi as founders of the tradition (Sebeok 2001a).9

Conclusions In science, we should not underestimate its history; not all names bring along new content. Even in the Darwinian theory of evolution, which can be considered a major change in biological thinking, old ideas of Natural Theology persisted. This article has demonstrated how zoosemiotics and cognitive ethology both emerged from
Compare to Griffins program of comparative linguistics, discussed above. We could also recall here von Frischs struggle against enthusiastic over-interpretation of his study as an indication of the consciousness of bees as reported by Tania Munz: he [von Frisch] believed there were significant epistemological barriers to proving its presence scientifically and that the inaccessibility of its inner and outer manifestations dictated a scientific agnosticism (Munz 2005: 546548). 9 An interesting parallel is the distinction between generalist and ecological programs in animal cognition studies conducted by Jacques Vauclair (1996: 163166). According to his view, the generalist program aims to investigate the generality and continuity of cognitive processes across species and the evolution of human cognition, whereas the ecological program searches for cognitive processes in natural settings and compares different species in similar environmental settings.
7 8

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comparative studies of animal communication, then established their own identities, but soon lapsed into much older tracks of philosophical thinking about animals. The animal language controversy that is often treated as an explicit cause for the conflict between Thomas A. Sebeok and cognitive ethology is actually a symptom of this deeper development. In the tetralogy of essays on semiotic self, Sebeok works out his own views on animal subject, based on a foundation different from cognitive ethologys understanding of the animal mind. Semiotic self is a relational entity, a configuration of signs that results from a succession of semioses, developed upon the physical possibilities of the environment and intertwined with other semiotic subjects and communicational relations. Such understanding of an animals identity gives zoosemiotics a good starting point for developing a strong ecological perspective, focusing on the semiosic and communicative participation of animals in their particular environments. In the introduction a question was posed about the relationship of zoosemiotics to its neighbouring disciplines. Keeping its mind open to the dialogue with various disciplines, zoosemiotics seems to have a better chance at succeeding under the umbrella of biosemiotics, inasmuch as they share the same theoretical core and philosophical background in Peircean semiotics and German biological philosophy. Developing the organismic level of studies in addition to endosemiotics and microsemiotics is important for the paradigmatic integrity of biosemiotics and the work done by biosemiotic groups in Prague, Urbino and Brazil are valuable in this respect. Inside biosemiotics emphasising the role of the historical legacy of zoosemiotics can also bring along a need to critically revise the relations between zoo- or biosemiotics and cognitive semiotics, in as much as the latter leans toward the cognitive sciences. Regarding the relationship between zoosemiotics and cognitive ethology, there indeed exist differences in philosophical foundations and methodologies, but there is also some common ground in the form of the heritage of the comparative studies of animal communication in the 1960s as well as the overlapping subject matter of animal communication. Sebeoks later works in zoosemiotics could be relevant for cognitive ethology, but whether we will witness a rediscovery of these in cognitive ethology is a question open for the future. At the same time the different understandings regarding the animal subject and anthropomorphism will probably remain a controversial issue. It also seems that zoosemiotics cannot easily take a position in the continuitydiscontinuity debate regarding communication in humans and animals, in which cognitive ethology has a strong ideological involvement. Instead of supporting either side, zoosemiotics could develop its own, a third way that we have described as a pluralistic approach in the introduction to Reader in zoosemiotics (Maran et al. 2010). Based on Uexklls Umwelt theory, the pluralistic approach would not strive towards any hierarchical understanding of animal communication systems but would rather emphasise and investigate their specific peculiarities in different Umwelten, individual histories and relations to the environment. In this framework ethical involvement in environmentalist debates should also be possible for zoosemiotics, but the starting point in such case would be emphasising the value of animal life because of its uniqueness and difference as well as mutual involvement in semiotic networks rather than solidarity based on resemblance or empathy.

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Acknowledgments This research was supported by the European Union through the European Regional Development Fund (Centre of Excellence CECT, Estonia) and by Estonian Science Foundation Grant No. 7790.

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