Phenomenology paper accepted for 2026 NoSP conference (Tampere, Finland)

I have been informed by the organizers of the 2026 conference of the Nordic Society for Phenomenology (NoSP), to be held at Tampere University, in Tampere, Finland April 22–24, 2026 with the theme “Phenomenology in the Anthropocene”, that my paper “What characterizes a more-than-human phenomenology suitable for the Anthropocene?” has been accepted for oral presentation.

Abstract submitted for NoSP 2026, "Phenomenology in the Anthropocene"

I have just composed and submitted the abstract below to the organisers of the 22nd annual conference of the Nordic Society for Phenomenology (NoSP), "Phenomenology in the Anthropocene", which is to be held at Tampere University, in Tampere, Finland, April 22–24, 2026.

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What characterizes a more-than-human phenomenology suitable for the Anthropocene?   

To address this question, it is pertinent to start out with the observation that the Anthropocene discourse is at its core a discussion about humanity´s impact on the natural environment that emerged from geology. At the same time, the Anthropocene has also over the last several years been vividly discussed from the perspectives of social sciences and the humanities. There is a disconnect between how the Anthropocene has been discussed in a natural science setting, and how it is being discussed in social science and humanities settings, with third-person objective perspectives predominating in the first and subjective perspectives prevailing in the others.

In my view, to be suitable for the circumstances of the Anthropocene, a more-than-human phenomenology must meet the following criteria: 

* It must account for human lifeworlds as well as non-human lifeworlds  

* It must account for human phenomena and non-human phenomena within a consistent and comprehensive theoretical framework 

* It must be capable of explaining how human agency can lead to material changes in the natural world, and how these material changes affect living conditions 

* It must be capable of tackling the problem of human bias which appears e.g. in the form of anthropocentrism and zoocentrism, and which distorts our thinking about nature  

I will present a version of more-than-human phenomenology that draws on biosemiotics and Jakob von Uexküll´s Umwelt theory which I will argue meets the abovementioned criteria. The relevance of such a brand of phenomenology is supported by the fact that Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty both engaged with von Uexküll´s work in their discussions about animal lifeworlds. By outlining the main characteristics of a more-than-human phenomenology suitable for the Anthropocene, I simultaneously address key issues related to the nature, scope, and purpose of ecophenomenology.

My biosemiotic approach to phenomenology criticized in article by Zixuan Liu

The article "Sign-free Biosemantics and Transcendental Phenomenology: a Better Non-Metaphysical Approach to Close the Mind-body Gap" by Zixuan Liu (Department of Philosophy, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, China) has just been published in Biosemiotics. It includes criticism of my approach to phenomenology in the context of biosemiotics, and more specifically "Uexküllian phenomenology". Excerpts (in selection):

Tønnessen et al. (2018: 326-327) have argued that “it does likewise not make sense, from a biosemiotic point of view, to say that there are non-semiotic phenomena”, and argue that “a strictly Husserlian concept of mind is much too narrow to capture all biosemiotic phenomena”. ... On an initial reading, the objection is that Husserl’s theory of meaning is based on phenomenal consciousness, yet we lack robust evidence that this form of consciousness is to be found in primitive forms of life. This argument is implicit in Tønnessen (2015) and Tønnessen et al. (2018), where we find the claim that “a bacterium” has only “non-phenomenal Umwelt experience” because it is not “endowed with mind” (2018: 326). If this is right, it is unjustifiably anthropomorphic to apply Husserlian concepts to biosemiotics. I do not intend to provide strong evidence for the existence of phenomenal consciousness in primitive forms of life, but at least a weak form of quasi-mind thinking can be found in our conception of microbiology. (p. 6)

Husserl would have strongly repudiated subsequent work in biosemiotics that identifies his views with anthropocentrism: “Umwelt theory challenges central dogmas in current phenomenology, starting with the misguided idea that all phenomena are human phenomena” (Tønnessen et al., 2018: p. 328). The difficulties discussed so far merely indicate that phenomenology should reform itself while at the same time reforming biosemiotics. In doing so, it will become possible to tackle primitive forms of life in a scientific manner. p. (7)

"Uexküllian phenomenology and existential phenomena" presented at IHSRC in Molde

I have just presented "Uexküllian phenomenology and existential phenomena" at the International Human Sciences Research Conference at Molde University College, which this year has the theme "Joy, suffering and death - understanding contrasting existential phenomena in the lifespan". Some 15 people attended.

Abstract for IHSRC2019: "Uexküllian phenomenology and existential phenomena"

Today I have composed and submitted the abstract below for the International Human Sciences Research Conference 2019, to be held in Molde, Norway, in June, and which has the theme "Joy, suffering and death - understanding contrasting existential phenomena in the lifespan".

Title: Uexküllian phenomenology and existential phenomena

·       Individual presentation

·       Author/presenter: Morten Tønnessen (Professor of philosophy)

·       Affiliation: Department of social studies, University of Stavanger

“Uexküllian phenomenology” is the phenomenology that is implicit in the Umwelt theory of theoretical biologist Jakob von Uexküll (1864–1944). This is a theory that posits that all living beings relate to meaning by using and relating to signs in their environment, and that all humans and animals are endowed with an Umwelt, i.e. a subjective, experiential lifeworld. A key advantage with making use of an Uexküllian perspective is that Umwelt theory, and the Uexküllian phenomenology derived from it, is applicable in the study of humans as well as animals.

Existential phenomena are usually regarded exclusively human phenomena, and yet few would doubt that many animals too experience e.g. joy and suffering. In normative ethics, joy and suffering are typically presented as central experiential features of sentience. While both humans and individuals of many animal species experience some of “the same” existential phenomena, it is clear that there are at times significant differences with regard to how these phenomena appear to different species and also to different individuals within the same species.

One reason why it is important to understand how existential phenomena are perceived, felt and lived through, is that such phenomena evidently affect human and animal welfare. The contributions Uexküllian phenomenology can make in this context is first, that it makes it possible to study human and animal experiences in all its diversity and complexity within one and the same framework, and second – in extension of this – that it is suitable for studying human–animal interaction and relations. 

Two of my articles cited in de Jesus 2018

My articles

Tønnessen, M. (2011). Semiotics of being and Uexküllian phenomenology. In: Phenomenology/Ontopoiesis retrieving geo-cosmic horizons of antiquity (pp. 327–340). Springer Netherlands.
Tønnessen, M. (2016). Agency in biosemiotics and enactivism. In: Meaning, mind and communication: Explorations in cognitive semiotics. Peter Lang Publishing Group. pp. 69-82

are cited in

de Jesus, Paulo 2018. Thinking through enactive agency: sense-making, bio-semiosis and the ontologies of organismic worlds. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences. Published online March 2nd 2018. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11097-018-9562-2.

Excerpts, p. 17:

BE [Biosemiotic Enactivism] endorses enactivism’s strong life-mind continuity but grounds it on Uexküll’s Umwelt theory and the bio-semiosis (sense-making/meaning-making) of living organisms (see also Meacham 2016).
   In so doing BE explicitly distances itself from enactivism’s reliance on Hans Jonas and suggests in its place, following Morten Tønnessen (2011), an "Uexküllian phenomenology". Which, "is loyal not to Uexküll thought in detail but to the essential finding that nature is constituted by the intricate relations of all living creatures, which are all subjects of the phenomenal world at large" (Tønnessen 2011, p. 331). These relations are in turn conceived as bio-semiotic processes involving, at its most foundational-level, iconic (similarity-based) or/and indexical (causal) and at its most
developed-level symbolic (conventional) signs.

Footnote 11:

Biosemiotics, somewhat like enactivism, is still a field in its developing stages constituted by a loose group of connected yet different approaches. For an overview of the distinct schools and their relation see Barbieri (2009). For an exploration and comparison between enactive and biosemiotic approaches to agency see Tønnessen (2016).

"Uexküllian phenomenology" presented in Kaunas

Yesterday, at the 13th world congress of semiotics (Kaunas June 26-30th), I presented my paper "Uexküllian phenomenology" in the morning session of "Biosemiotics in dialogue". Some 15 people were present.

Uexküllian phenomenology presentation scheduled for June 29th

My presentation "Uexküllian phenomenology" has been scheduled for presentation at the 13th World Congress of Semiotics (Kaunas, Lithuania June 26th to 30th), in the session "Biosemiotics in dialogue", on Thursday June 29th at 9.00-9.30.

Search image paper scheduled for presentation at NoSP 2017 on June 16th

My paper «The Search Image as Link Between Sensation, Perception and Action» has been scheduled for presentation at the 2017 annual conference of the Nordic Society for Phenomenology (NTNU, Trondheim, Norway June 15-17th) on Saturday June 16th at 14.45-14.45 in the session "Phenomenology and cognitive science", chaired by Tarjei Mandt Larsen.

Abstract for NoSP 2017: " The search image as link between sensation, perception and action"

I have just submitted the abstract below to NoSP 2017, the 15th annual conference of the Nordic Society for phenomenology, entitled "Phenomenology and the body - Contemporary perspectives". 

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The search image as link between sensation, perception and action

As part of his Umwelt theory, a theory on the subjective, experiential worlds of animals, Jakob von Uexküll (1864–1944) introduced the notion of the search image (Suchbild). A search image is an imagined object that an animal or human being has in mind as it searches for something. The search image plays a central role in what I have termed the mediated Umwelt, the aspect of Umwelt in which Umwelt objects are encountered indirectly by way of some mediation (e.g. memory, fantasy, anticipation). It is generally related to an animal´s agenda- or interest-driven matching of something it is searching for with something in its environment. Search images are key to understanding how perception works as distinguished from sensation, and how an animal´s perception and action are connected. The search image acts as an intermediary between perception and action, and between the mediated Umwelt and the core Umwelt, the aspect of Umwelt in which Umwelt objects are encountered directly. The imagined object has the form of a schema, and encountered objects may or may not be perceived as fitting with the anticipated schema. The perception of a match may furthermore be either correct or incorrect. Object recognition occurs when an encountered object is correctly perceived as fitting with an anticipated schema. But search images, with their implied schemata, may also be confused with actual perception images of encountered objects. The functioning of search images can help explain why it is that action-related brain activity appears to precede the experience of having made a choice of action. When an animal or a human being operates with a search image, we anticipate encountering the imagined object. We act not only in response to encountered objects, but also in response to imagined ones.

Paper "Uexküllian phenomenology" accepted to presentation in Kaunas

I have been informed that my abstract for the 13th IASS-AIS World Congress of Semiotics (Kaunas, June 26-30th) has been successfully reviewed by the scientific committee of the congress. This must concern my abstract for the session "Biosemiotics in dialogue", entitled "Uexküllian phenomenology".

Abstract for World Congress of Semiotics (Kaunas): "Uexküllian phenomenology"

Today I composed and submitted an abstract for the session "Biosemiotics in dialogue" at the 13th world congress of semiotics, entitled "Uexküllian phenomenology".

Uexküllian phenomenology 

Abstract

We are located at the junction of nature and culture, and of semiotics and phenomenology. Can they be reconciled? More particularly, can subfields such as biosemiotics and eco-phenomenology be mutually enriching? I, for one, believe that they can. Uexküllian phenomenology is derived from the Umwelt theory of the Baltic-German biologist Jakob von Uexküll (1864–1944). Its basic premise is that we can assume the universal existence, in the realm of life, of a genuine first person perspective, i.e., of experienced worlds. This assumption characterises Uexküllian phenomenology and makes it a genuine perspective within phenomenology. In this paper I prepare the ground for such a phenomenology by treating the notion of phenomenology, the relation between semiotics and phenomenology, Husserl’s notion of Lebenswelt, and finally the notion of Uexküllian phenomenology. The purpose is to make the case that Uexküllian phenomenology is justified, and to situate it within phenomenological and semiotic thought at large. 

Reference

Tønnessen, Morten 2015. Uexküllian phenomenology. Chinese Semiotic Studies 11(3): 347–369. 

Abstract to constructivist SI: "Descartes, phenomenology, and the epistemology of biosemiotics"

In the end of January I submitted the abstract below, upon invitation, to the editors of a planned special issue of Biosemiotics on constructivist biosemiotics (Tommi Vehkavaara and Alexei Sharov).

Descartes, phenomenology, and the epistemology of biosemiotics

By Morten Tønnessen  

Associate professor in philosophy at University of Stavanger’s Department of social studies 

René Descartes (1596–1650) has been reckoned as a primary antagonist of biosemiotics ever since Friedrich Salomon Rothschild introduced his seminal 1962 paper with the following statement (p. 774): 

The concept of the symbol shows the way to overcome René Descartes’ partition of man into the self as res cogitans and the body as res extensa. In the symbol psychological meaning and physical sign appear as a unit. 

What is referred to here, and has repeatedly been referred to in later biosemiotic literature, is Descartes’ infamous substance dualism, which is often associated with the mind–body problem, a problem Descartes can be said to have introduced in the modern age. While substance dualism is an instance of ontological dualism, Descartes’ position, which was so important to the establishment and growth of modern science, also implied epistemological dualism, i.e. the view that the (in Cartesian sense human) subject and the objects perceived by it are radically different. In simplified terms, this perspective can be characterized as implying that the knowing subject stands “outside”, or is independent of, the world which it comes to know about. 

In contrast, phenomenology (in its non-Cartesian versions) and hermeneutics have maintained that the knowing subject is always a part of the world that it navigates in and attempts to understand. This perspective is also central to Jakob von Uexküll’s Umwelt theory, and to Uexküllian phenomenology (Tønnessen 2011), a version of phenomenology derived from Uexküll’s work and characterized by the assumption of the universal existence (in the realm of life) of a genuine first person perspective, i.e., of experienced worlds. A living being and its phenomenal world is a unity, and the two can only be understood in tandem. 

“Knowing”, as Kalevi Kull (2009: 81) has argued, “is a distinctive feature of living systems.” Animals know – plants know – even microorganisms know (not to mention distributed knowing in various composite systems). It is the task of biology to study and describe what they know, and how they know what they know. This implies the ontological finding that all living beings are knowing creatures, and the related epistemological observation that in order to get to know as much as possible about the world at large (the natural world included), we must base much of our human knowledge on getting acquainted with what non-humans know. In consequence, biology, and perhaps zoology in particular, is key to contributing to overall human knowledge. This perspective is very unlike that of Descartes, which was that animals are machine-like and bereft of any true intelligence or rationality. 

In this article, I will discuss the relevance for biosemiotics of Michael Polanyi´s notion of ´tacit knowledge´. All organisms have tacit knowledge. This is the kind of knowledge that connects us directly with non-humans. Moreover, I will contrast Uexküllian phenomenology with Peircean phenomenology, and also draw on phenomenologists such as Husserl, Schütz, and Abram. 

In conclusion, I will refer to the common critique of Cartesian dualism found in health science in general and nursing science in particular. In doing this I will discuss to what extent biosemiotics does or should share a (w)holistic view of humanity, and of nature. In one version, such a view of humanity implies that human life has four dimensions, namely a physical, a psychological, a social and a spiritual dimension (and a reductionist view typically amounts to acknowledging only the physical dimension). 

References

Kull, Kalevi (2009). Biosemiotics: To know, what life knows. Cybernetics and Human Knowing 16(3/4): 81–88.

Rothschild, Friedrich Salomon (1962). “Laws of symbolic mediation in the dynamics of self and personality”. Annals of New York Academy of Sciences 96: 774–784.

Tønnessen, Morten (2011). Umwelt Transition and Uexküllian Phenomenology – An Ecosemiotic Analysis of Norwegian Wolf Management (= Dissertationes Semioticae Universitatis Tartuensis 16). Doctoral dissertation. Tartu: Tartu University Press. Introduction available online.

"Uexküllian phenomenology" published online in Chinese Semiotic Studies

Chinese Semiotic Studies 11(3), August 2015, has been published online (see contents). I have contributed with:

Tønnessen, Morten 2015. Uexküllian phenomenology. Chinese Semiotic Studies 11(3): 347–369. Published online August 7th 2015 (DOI: 10.1515/css-2015-0018).

"Uexküllian phenomenology" proof-read

On July 21st I proof-read my article "Uexküllian phenomenology", which is to appear in Chinese Semiotic Studies (see previous posts).

"Uexküllian phenomenology" revised

Today I have finished revising my article "Uexküllian phenomenology", to appear in Chinese Semiotic Studies.

"Uexküllian phenomenology" to be published in Chinese Semiotic Studies

Today I have been notified that the editors of Chinese Semiotic Studies have decided that they will publish my article “Uexküllian phenomenology”. A revised version of the mansucript is due early June.

See also:

"Uexküllian phenomenology" revised and submitted

"Uexküllian phenomenology" revised and submitted

Today I have submitted a revised version of my text "Uexküllian phenomenology" to Chinese Semiotic Studies.

"Umwelt trajectories" published online in mid-February

My article "Umwelt Trajectories", published in Semiotica no. 198 (Special Issue on zoosemiotics, guest-edited by Timo Maran), was ahead of print publication published online on February 15th 2014 (DOI: 10.1515/sem-2013-0106). Abstract and keywords is available to non-subscribers.

Phenomenology and the environment collection not to feature Uexküllian phenomenology

Today I was notified by Bryan Bannon that my book chapter proposal "Uexküllian phenomenology" will not be included in his edited collection Phenomenology and the environment.

See also:

Book chapter proposal on Uexküllian phenomenology