Dr. James Batcho explores Audible Semiotics in new essay

Dr. James Batcho, Professor in the Division of Social Science and Humanities, has published an essay titled Signs of Life: A Process Philosophy of Audible Semiotics. The work introduces audible semiotics, a study of signs through hearing and listening, through a critique of James Williams’ 2016 concept of process signs. While Williams separates consciousness from signs to expand their “life,” Dr. Batcho argues that this approach conflates life and signs and favors visual thinking. By focusing on auditory experience, the essay emphasizes attention, interpretation, and lived experiences across humans and animals. Drawing on psychology, biosemiotics, neurocognition, and animal cognition, it proposes a new framework for understanding signs audibly, with implications for epistemology, ecological studies, and the arts.

The essay advances Dr. Batcho’s scholarship on “other ways of knowing,” developing two key concepts: audibility, the creative capacities that arise from hearing and listening, and unseeing, the state of temporarily being denied visual verification. Using a critique of Williams’ work as a foundation, he grounds his argument in an “audible” perspective.

“This particular essay concludes about three years of work connecting these concepts to 'semiotics,' or the study of signs,” stated Dr. Batcho. “I'd read a book by the well-regarded theorist James Williams on his 'process philosophy of signs,' and I was unsatisfied with his conclusions. So I used a critique of his work to ground my own ideas on the same topic, but from an 'audible' perspective.”

During peer review, a reviewer highlighted a wealth of cognitive science research on working memory, which describes the reservoir of thought processes that activate in different parts of the brain during cognition. These empirical studies complemented the philosophical research Dr. Batcho had gathered over many years of research on duration, providing a solid foundation for his conclusions. His findings suggest that the semiotics of audibility involves processes of interpretation not only in humans but across all life forms capable of hearing and listening (biosemiosis). “While cognitive sciences currently emphasize language and visual processing, I hope this essay will provide a theoretical framework to advance research in audible working memory,” he explained.

Click here to read the essay about Signs of Life: A Process Philosophy of Audible Semiotics by Dr. James Batcho.