Information into intelligence: an interaction between two dynamical processes

We give a general sketch of the architecture of the dynamical processes that make it possible for a natural system to interact semiotically with its environment. The two foci are on the relation the semiotic characteristics bear to the internal dynamical processes that enable them, and on the manner in which material interactions become conceptualised. The paper is in two parts. In the first one, the dynamical profile of energetically complex systems is introduced to show the manner in which emergent properties are related to those of their material substrate in natural systems. The second part is devoted to a sketch of the manner in which information, in the sense of Shannon, is transformed into the semiotic dimensions of intelligence. In a brief coda, the value of this analysis is shown to lie in the fact that the only systems that can be said to be semiotic in the full sense of this expression are natural ones, and that any modelling of these processes is bound to be constrained by the laws which govern their natural expressions