A stroll through the worlds of robots and animals: Applying Jakob von Uexküll’s theory of meaning to adaptive robots and artificial life

Despite the relevance of much of Jakob von Uexküll’s work to artificial intelligence and the cognitive sciences, it was largely ignored until the mid1980s. Since then, much research has been devoted to the study of embodied autonomous agents (robots) and artificial life. Such systems are typically said to ‘learn’, ‘develop’ and ‘evolve’ in interaction with their environments. It could be argued that these self-organizing properties solve the problem of symbol or representation grounding in artificial intelligence research, and thus place autonomous agents in a position of semiotic interest. Here we discuss the relevance and implications of Jakob von Uexküll’s theory of meaning to the study of artificial organisms and their use of representation and sign processes. Furthermore, we contrast his position with more mechanistic views, and examine the relation to recent theories of embodied cognition and its biological basis, in particular the work of Maturana and Varela. Finally, we address the issue of whether and to what extent artificial organisms are autonomous and capable of semiosis. ⊕ Published in: Semiotica, 134(1-4), 701-746 (2001). [special issue “Jakob von Uexküll: A Paradigm for Biology and Semiotics”, guest editor: Kalevi Kull]