Physical Intentionality: The Phenomenological Roots of Biosemiotics

The concept of intentionality is traditionally ascribed to a state of consciousness or a mental state. The thesis that intention is the mark of the mind implies a representational model, fundamentally connected to the crucial notion of determination or characterization. This essay aims to investigate the seemingly oxymoronic notion of physical intentionality, which implies an expressive model, and the centrality of the notion of forceful (or powerful) property. The reason for this profound paradigm shift is the replacement of the notion of invariance with the notion of tension. This change marks the transition from a phenomenology of the inert to a phenomenology of the living.