Umwelt ethics, deep ecology and Spinoza

In the 30,000 character post 'Bioethics, Defining the Moral Subject and Spinoza', Kvond treats my 2003 article 'Umwelt ethics' in impressive detail, mainly from a Spinozist point of view.

Outline:

An Ecology of Persons
"Code-duality" and Dual Attributes: Where is the seam?
The "Positioning" of an Imitation of the Affects
Triangulation and the Internal of Cause
Why not a Mountain?
The "Ontological Niche"
Total Umwelt and Biosphere Split

In his essay Morten Tønnessen steers somewhat clear from Hoffmeyer’s wider embrace in order to return to the rich heritage of Umwelt-thinking, and he tries to heal any solipsistic phenomenological drag from the concept by postulating various zones of “total Umwelt” expression. These are still phenomenological states, but simply totalized by some measure. Personally, I don’t see the advantage of returning to Idealism’s internal preoccupation and anchoring, something which ever must return to the notion of a subject. Yet, Tønnessen also extracts from von Uexküll the important idea that the animal and its Umwelt are inseparable. While this still leaves us on the wrong side of the ledger, Tønnessen’s transfer from a terminology of “Tier-Umwelt-monade” to “bioontological monad,” which he reads as counterpart to the biosphere[.]