I have agreed to be a member of the Scientific Committee of the conference "Traces of Extinction: Species Loss, Solastalgia, and Semiotics of Recovery", which is to be held at University of Tartu, Estonia, June 5–7 2024.
Abstracts are due December 1st - see the call for papers.
The interview "Making Meaning With Morten And Martin", conducted by Thorolf van Walsum, has been published in the blog of Tartu´s student journal Hortus Semioticus, featuring me and Martin Avíla (Konstfack, Stockholm). At about 4.000 words, its is a quite long interview.
Today I have given my keynote speech "A Comprehensive Framework for Studies of Changing Umwelten" at the conference Contemporary Umwelt Analysis: Applications for Culture and Ecological Relations, which has been held yesterday and today in Tartu, Estonia, at Estonian Naturalists´ Society, organized by the University of Tartu´s Department of semiotics. Some 30 people attended. The speech was also streamed live via Zoom.
I have composed an abstract for my plenary speech at the conference “Contemporary Umwelt Analysis: Applications for Culture and Ecological Relations” (to be held April 18-19th in Tartu, Estonia).
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Title: “A comprehensive framework for studies of changing Umwelten”
By Morten Tønnessen
Using Jakob von Uexküll´s classical Umwelt theory and updated knowledge on how human agency works as a driver of environmental change as starting points, I will present a comprehensive framework for studies of changing human and animal Umwelten. The framework indicates how past Umwelten, contemporary Umwelten, and future Umwelten can be studied by drawing on Umwelt theory accompanied by other relevant fields of study. The framework is comprehensive not only in that it allows for studies of different Umwelt temporalities, and different “layers” of the Umwelt (core – mediated – conceptual), but also by being applicable at different levels of biological organization, and by showing how changes in the Umwelt (outer subjective world) are correlated with changes in the Innenwelt (inner subjective world) and the physical environment. By seeing changes in the Umwelt, the Innenwelt, and the physical environment in context, we can achieve a better understanding of the interplay between semiotic causation and efficient causation in socio-ecological and socio-cultural contexts, and of how human agency can cause environmental problems – and solutions. In the setting of culture, socio-cultural transformations are particularly pertinent. In light of the framework presented here, these can be understood as involving collective Innenwelt transitions that in turn affect how we perceive our Umwelt. As part of my presentation, I will outline how Umwelt theory can serve as the basis of a more-than-human descriptive phenomenology suitable for studies of animal Umwelten and human–animal relations. I will further share some tentative ideas about how Umwelt theory can play a role in phenomenological triangulation, in which 1st, 2nd and 3rd person perspectives are combined (drawing on methodology developed by Jordan Zlatev).
Bionote: Morten Tønnessen (born 1976) is a Professor of philosophy at University of Stavanger´s Department of social studies, Norway. He has worked with Jakob von Uexküll´s Umwelt theory since his master degree in philosophy (University of Oslo, 2002) and ph.d. thesis in philosophy and semiotics (University of Tartu, 2011).
I will be a keynote speaker at the conference “Contemporary Umwelt Analysis: Applications for Culture and Ecological Relations”, which will be held in Tartu, Estonia, 18th-19th of April, 2023, at the University of Tartu, Estonia, along with Kalevi Kull (University of Tartu) and Carsten Herrmann-Pillath (University of Erfurt, Germany).
Abstracts are due January 31st 2023. For more info, see the conference webpage.
I have just composed the abstract below, for my invited talk at Tartu Summer School in Semiotics 2021, which has the theme "Semiotic horizons: time, memory and future(s)".
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Semiotic futures: Transformative semiotics and its role in facilitating change in human self-comprehension
Morten Tønnessen
Abstract
The human being is far from the only being that relates to the passage of time. All organisms that are endowed with an Umwelt (subjective lifeworld) live through what Jakob von Uexküll called an Umwelt-tunnel. Moreover, we can safely state that organisms with an Umwelt also go through Umwelt transitions and partake in Umwelt trajectories. But the human species is, however, unique in some of the ways in which it relates to time. We collectively negotiate our memory of the past and our assumptions about the future, and are furthermore consciously aware that we are mortal, and constantly strive to make our lives meaningful in light of this fact.
Quite a bit can be known about future Umwelten. In some contexts, Umwelt predictions can be made about future lifeworlds, in others, we can develop a number of plausible Umwelt scenarios. Such predictions and scenarios can help us make more informed choices whenever we discuss actions, lifestyles or policies that have an impact on future lifeworlds. While Umwelt futurology, the study of future Umwelten, can help us understand aspects of the future, transformative semiotics allows semioticians to engage in discussions about value issues. By ‘transformative semiotics’, I mean a normatively conscious form of semiotics that explicitly relates to value issues and aims to frame a perceived need for normative transformation (i.e., normative change) in semiotic terms.
To be of any use for contemporary society, Umwelt futurology as well as transformative semiotics should be empirically informed. I will briefly summarize and review major changes in common understandings of the environmental crisis, starting with the emerging awareness of a global environmental crisis and ending with the growing acknowledgement of the Anthropocene notion in recent years. While the current predominant understanding of the global environmental crisis is an improvement over earlier understandings on some points, it lacks direction with regard to necessary courses of action.
In 1984, Thomas Sebeok wrote a technical report for the Office of Nuclear Waste Isolation (USA), titled “Communication measures to bridge ten millennia”. This is an interesting example of applied semiotics in the context of long-term future environmental and societal change. I will review Sebeok´s message in the report, and discuss its relevance for contemporary discussions about Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) as a climate mitigation measure, which has a similar time perspective.
The question about how humans´ relation to nature has to change over the next century or so, is intimately related to the question about how the self-comprehension of human beings must or should change in the same process. This was a central premise for Deep Ecologist Arne Næss. In light of philosophical anthropology, just as much as it is concerned with environmental or societal change, transformative semiotics is concerned with human self-comprehension. This brings us back to the issue of what role semiotics can play in addressing the urgent issues of the Anthropocene.
As John Deely stressed, human beings´ knowledge and awareness about our semiotic capabilities, and about the real-world consequences of our actions, makes us ethically responsible in ways that animals are not. It also opens up fundamental philosophical questions for renewed reflection. Before we can start acting in sustainable ways, we need to develop a sustainable notion of what it means to be human. This requires a thoughtful revision of our human self-comprehension. Increased sensitivity to our own semiotic capabilities, and to the ways in which our actions have an impact on the semiotic lifeworlds of humans and non-humans alike, is key to managing the sustainability transition.
I have agreed to be a plenary speaker at Tartu Summer School of Semiotics 2021, which will be held in Sammuli, Estonia, on August 13-16th. The topic for the summer school is "Semiotic horizons: Time, memory and future".
Velmezova, Ekaterina 2016. On semiotic (un)predictability: Tartu Summer School of Semiotics 2015. Sign Systems Studies 44(1/2): 248–250.
The 2015 conference was organized by the Department of Semiotics of the University of Tartu, the Nordic Association for Semiotic Studies and the Estonian Semiotics Association. Tiit Remm (the main organizer), Kalevi Kull, Kristin Vaik, Lauri Linask and Tyler Bennett participated in the work of both the scientific committee (that, besides them, also included Inesa Sahakyan, Luis Emilio Bruni, Morten Tønnessen, Peeter Torop, Sara Lenninger and Timo Maran) and of the organizing team (which also included Katre Pärn, Liina Sieberk and Maarja Vaikmaa). The conference was attended by over a hundred scholars from more than twenty countries [...]
