Beever reference

Jonathan Beever, who currently works on a doctoral dissertation addressing the possibility of a biosemiotic ethics, refers to my 2003 article "Umwelt ethics" in his recent article "Meaning matters". Full reference (prior to printed version):

Beever, Jonathan 2011. Meaning Matters: The Biosemiotic Basis of Bioethics [p8-11, Tønnessen 2003: 282, 283, 290, 292]. Biosemiotics, published online October 15th 2011 (doi DOI 10.1007/s12304-011-9133-1).

Excerpts:

P. 8:

The work of Kalevi Kull, Morten Tønnessen, and Jesper Hoffmeyer on the relationship between value and biosemiotics offer important descriptive accounts that can form the basis of a novel prescriptive theory of moral value grounded in a biosemiotic analysis of meaning.

P. 8-9:

Another approach considering the ethical implications of biosemiotics comes from the early considerations of Morten Tønnessen. Tønnessen, in his 2003 Umwelt Ethics, explores the relationship between biosemiotics and Arne Naess’ approach to environmental value, developing what he terms “an Uekullian interpretation or specification of The Deep Ecology Platform.” (Tønnessen 2003, 282) Tønnessen explicates Naess’ eight theses of Deep Ecology through the lens of von Uexkull’s conception of the human animal as what Tønnessen describes as a unique and distinctive bio-ontological monad. (Tønnessen 2003, 290). He argues that moral considerability derives from the semiosic nature of living things.

The reason why it makes sense to regard all semiotic agents, i.e., bioontological monads, as moral subjects, is that in respect to these entities, our actions make a difference. Only for semiotic agents can our actions ultimately appear as signs that influence their well-being. In capacity of meaningutilizers, all semiotic agents, be it the simplest creature, are able to distinguish between what they need and what is irrelevant or harmful to them. (Tønnessen 2003, 292)

Like Kull before him, Tønnessen offers us a descriptive interpretation of the possible connection or compatibility between the ecopolitics of Naess and biosemiotics derived from von Uexkull; again, however, we have no novel prescriptive account of moral considerability. As a direct parallel to the Deep Ecology movement, Tønnessen’s Umwelt Ethics faces similar difficulties. For instance, Naess argues for the value of nature based on our emotive responses to holistic connections to the world: while biosemiotics has the potential to more fully and empirically describe our ecological connections, neither Naess nor Tønnessen sufficiently justify the morally-relevant content of our emotive responses or semiotic connections. While the Deep Ecology Platform has had a continued impact on ecopolitics and social morality, it does not offer us a justificatory metaethical account of value that would be fully prescriptive. Tønnessen does, however, point out the holism inherent in both Naess’ ethic and biosemiotics understanding of the interconnectivity of semiosic nature. The importance of holism for any approach to environmental value cannot be overlooked.

It remains unclear whether, how, or to what extent the distinctive features of the human animal Tønnessen lays out should morally matter. The Umwelt Ethic doesn’t seem to offer us justification for semiotic value nor a thorough account of how we might apply that value. However, the Umwelt Ethic does point us toward the justificatory strategy suggested above: the well-being of semiosic life is contingent, at root, on their abilities as what Tønnessen describes as “meaning-utilizers” (Tønnessen 2003, 292). Here again, at the root of approaches to value, is a central consideration of meaning.

P. 9:

Perhaps the earliest and most formative approach to understanding the role biosemiotics might play in our theorizing about moral value comes from the work of Danish biologist and semiotician Jesper Hoffmeyer. Tønnessen describes his work as “the first systematical exploration of biosemiotics’ relevance for environmental ethics (Tønnessen 2003, 283) and, we might add, one of the most sustained.

P. 10:

Despite facing difficulties as a coherent and prescriptive approach to justifying moral value, biosemiotics and the work of Hoffmeyer, Tønnessen, and Kull mark an important milestone in our thinking about value. For, rather than relying on existing holistic theories of value that have failed to find relevance for science and overcome the metaphysic of fact/value dualism, a biosemiotic approach offers both an empirical methodology and an inherently holistic foundation of moral value. A biosemiotic ethic is necessarily an ecological ethic, bringing together the semiosphere and the biosphere in a theory of meaning tied to individual umwelten and justifying the moral considerability of all living things.

The shortcomings of previous attempts at justifying our best explanations of moral considerability may be overcome by a robustly developed biosemiotic account of value as meaning-making.