Meaning and Function in the Theory of Consumer Choice:Dual Selves in Evolving Networks

Building on the philosophy of Charles Sanders Peirce, recent advances in biosemiotics haveresulted into a concise framework for the analysis of signs in living systems. This paper exploresthe potential for economics and shows how biosemiotics can integrate two differentresearch agendas, each of which are also connected with biological theories, namely neuroeconomicsand the theory of networks. I introduce the triadic conceptual framework establishedby Peirce which distinguishes between object, sign and interpretant and the correspondingcausal forces in evolving hierarchical systems. This framework is used to systematize recentresults of neuroeconomics in the form of the dual selves approach, following early contributionsof James Coleman, partitioning the individual into the acting self and the objectself. This distinction implies that there is a fundamental information asymmetry between thetwo selves. Against this background, the semeiotic process is an information generating andprocessing dynamics, which is driven by the internal selection of classificatory schemes ofactions chosen and the population level dynamics of sign selection, with mimetic behavior asa driver. This can be further analyzed by means of the theory of signal selection. A centralinsight is that the internal information gap between acting self and object self implies a systematicrole of sign processing in social networks for any kind of consumer choice. I exemplifymy approach with empirical references to food consumption as a most universal andsimple form of consumer choice.