So let’s start with what this paper was ostensibly about: The Semiotic Trajectories To Sociality & Multicellularity.
One thing we saw was the complementarity of biological and semiotic systems:
the evolution of one was also the evolution of the other:
the evolution of sociality is also the evolution of sociosemiotic systems from biosemiotic systems, and
the evolution of multicellularity is also the evolution of intercellular from intracellular biosemiotic systems.
Another thing we saw was that the two evolutionary trajectories displayed the same general organisational dynamics, just at different scales. There are two aspects to this, one phenomenal, the other metaphenomenal.
On the one hand, this iteration or self-similarity across scales is an example of fractality in Nature. This is something we would expect to find because fractality is generated by non-linear processes — those in which outputs are fedback into the system, and both of these trajectories clearly involve continual feedback.
[The mathematics behind fractals began to take shape in the 17th century when the mathematician and philosopher Leibniz pondered recursive self-similarity.]
On the other hand, discovering the same iterated route to complexity has the explanatory advantage of parsimony. That is, it simplifies the overall model, in accordance with what is known as Einstein’s Razor. As Einstein said:
It can scarcely be denied that the supreme goal of all theory is to make the irreducible basic elements as simple and as few as possible without having to surrender the adequate representation of a single datum of experience.
On now to the second of the four points of interest: The Evolution Of Consciousness.