Beyond Perceptual Heuristics: A Biosemiotic Reinterpretation of Gestalt Laws in Human Meaning Construction.

Abstract

Gestalt psychology has long demonstrated that human perception involves active organization rather than passive registration of sensory information. However, although Gestalt principles successfully explain how fragmented sensory inputs become organized into coherent perceptual structures, they provide comparatively limited explanation regarding how such organized structures become meaningful experiences. This study develops a biosemiotic reinterpretation of Gestalt laws within the context of human meaning construction by proposing that these principles function not merely as perceptual heuristics but as constraints operating within human semiosis. Drawing upon biosemiotic perspectives on sign processes, embodiment, and organism-environment interactions, the study reinterprets similarity, proximity, closure, continuity, and figure-ground segregation as organizational constraints shaping categorization, association, interpretive completion, sign trajectories, and selective meaning formation. Building upon these reinterpretations, a conceptual model of Gestalt-mediated human semiosis is proposed linking perceptual organization with semiotic interpretation and meaning construction. The framework suggests that semiosis may begin during perceptual organization rather than exclusively after it, thereby reducing the conceptual separation between perception and meaning. Rather than replacing classical Gestalt theory, this reinterpretation extends its explanatory scope by integrating perceptual organization more directly within processes of human meaning construction.