Reviews done for Biennial Meeting of the Polish Association for CogSci, «Making Sense of Meaning-making»

I have today conducted peer-review of 6 abstracts submitted to the Biennial Meeting of the Polish Association for CogSci, «Making Sense of Meaning-making», aka XV Zjazd Polskiego Towarzystwa Kognitywistycznego 2026 (PTK26), which is to be held in Lublin, Poland, September 21-23rd, in my capacity as a member of the scientific committee.

#43

Today I have had an article writing day, with some 1.000 words added to my article "Prolegomena to lifeworld-oriented studies of contested climate pasts and futures", which is aimed for a special issue of Journal of Cognitive Historiography about "Cognition and Evolution in Historical and Social Research". This brings the number of writing days so far this Spring up to 43, including 25,5 article writing days.

Joining Scientific Committee of 2026 "Biennial Meeting of the Polish Association for CogSci"

I have accepted to join the Scientific Committe of the conference "Biennial Meeting of the Polish Association for CogSci", with the theme «Making Sense of Meaning-making», which is to be held in Lublin, Poland September 21–23rd.

Abstract for Lund conference: "Prospective studies of contested climate pasts and futures"

I have just composed the abstract below for the organisers of the upcoming conference "Cognition and Evolution in Historical and Social Research", which is to be held September 23–24, at Lund University, Sweden (I have been invited to contribute). 

***

Prospective studies of contested climate pasts and futures  

While most researchers in relevant fields of study may agree that the current scale of human impact on current ecology is massive and unprecedented, there is no agreement on the time frame for the Anthropocene. Like the epoch itself, the current conceptualisation of the Anthropocene remains a work in progress. We are currently situated in the middle of an ongoing climate crisis. On this background, it may come as no surprise that both how we should understand recent modern history, and how we should understand possible climate futures, is contested. In this presentation I will outline how biosemiotics and Umwelt theory can contribute to prospective studies of past and future lifeworlds. I will then proceed to discuss how climate futures may be construed by way of a few examples. The presentation will draw on my articles «The study of past Umwelten» (Discipline Filosophische, 2023) and «What can be known about future Umwelten?» (The American Journal of Semiotics, 2019) as well as my forthcoming book Captured: CCS and the fight for the soul of the environmental movement (Bloomsbury Academic). In relation to Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS), I will touch upon the influence ideas about CCS have had on envisioned climate futures over the last 30 years or so. Disturbingly, there is no consensus among researchers or regulators on the relevant time scales for CO2 storages. Short retention times for CO2 in CO2 storages (<10,000 years) may delay rather than solve the problem of climate change, in effect exposing future generations to the risk of anthropogenic climate change caused in our time. Lastly, I will look into the challenges of long-term waste management in the contexts of radioactive waste and CO2 storage, respectively, including the challenge of communicating across multiple generations.  

Short bio: Morten Tønnessen (born 1976) is a professor of philosophy at University of Stavanger, Norway. Academic (b)log: https://utopianrealism.blogspot.com 

5 appointments

Today - after three consecutive days of sick leave - I have attended half of the "fagdag" for Cognitive Lab at UIS, where I was part of opening the day, and three more scheduled appointments. I will furthermore attend the faculty leadership group´s dinner on town this evening, where my stepping down as Head of department will be marked.

5 meetings, including second Cognitive lab steering group meeting

Today I have taken part in 5 meetings. This included the second meeting of the steering group for Cognitive lab, which I chair. By now 5 of the 7 ph.d scholars have been employed, two more are in the process of being recruited. Moreover, there will shortly be a call for an engineer position. The lab has also started working on a strategy, and remodeling of lab premises is currently under consideration.,

iMotions demo

Today I have attended an online demo by iMotions along with colleagues who are also involved in the establishment of Cognitive lab at University of Stavanger.

Extensively cited in Jaroš & Pudil 2020

The article "Cognitive Systems of Human and Non-human Animals: At the Crossroads of Phenomenology, Ethology and Biosemiotics" by Filip Jaroš & Matěj Pudil (published in Biosemiotics) cites my work quite extensively.

Footnote 2:

Our contribution should not be understood as adhering to an Uexküllian puritanism. Influenced by an evolutionary-ontogenetic approach, we fully acknowledge the usefulness of the concept of umwelt transition (Tønnessen 2011) and recognize that a one-sided endorsment of umwelt theory can obscure many phenomena of interspecies communication (cf. Lestel 2011b).

P. 4:

In an editorial in this journal, Tønnessen et al. (2018) examine the relationship between phenomenology and biosemiotics and conclude that phenomenological investigation, which is traditionally focused on the experience of the human individual, can be enriched by biosemiotically oriented research on the experience of animals – only against this background will the specificity of human experience emerge.

P. 5:

But not only interspecific differences are worthy of attention. The human individuals also undergo transformations during their own ontogenesis, as reflected in the biosemiotic literature (Tønnessen 2014) and also in Merleau-Ponty´s own work (Merleau-Ponty 2002).

Footnote 4:

For a resolution between signs and signals and its connection with the phenomenality of animal umwelten see Tønnessen et al. (2018: 4).

P. 7:

Accordingly, Tønnessen (2014: 302) notes that language acquisition is connected with a certain loss of those non-verbal aspects of human experience and so “the mature human being’s umwelt consists for the most part only of those objects that can be named”. Once human language is acquired to this extent, it becomes a superior realm of meanings that often pushes out other, e.g. pictorial, representations of the world (cf. Portmann 1990: 113).

P. 7:

Language changes us, it gives us a fully subjective dimension by which we relate to the world because it penetrates our perception, changes it, but also stays flexible. In this sense, language becomes the way by which we live.6 Tønnessen (2014: 288) in this sense distinguishes three aspects of umwelt: the core umwelt, based on automated acts of perception and automated mental acts; mediated umwelt, based on wilful acts of perception and wilful mental acts; and conceptual umwelt, characteristic for higher animals, as an aspect of umwelt distinctive by its habitual acts of perception and habitual mental acts defined as “the learned matching of something with something else”. In the case of humans, this last aspect of umwelt is specifically connected with language use.

Footnote 6:

See Tønnessen (2014: 291): “In terms of umwelt, i.e. subjective experience, we gradually individuate and become first animal, then human, then eventually persons.”

P. 11:

Within the biosemiotic tradition, subjectivity is attributed to every creature that has an umwelt (Tønnessen 2014; Tønnessen et al. 2016).

P. 13:

According to a canonical understanding of umwelt (Tønnessen et al. 2016: definitions 3–5), the form of these meanings is predetermined by belonging to the particular species and is bound to its physiological properties and limitations.

References:

Tønnessen, M. (2011). Umwelt transition and Uexküllian phenomenology: An ecosemiotic analysis of Norwegian wolf management. Doctoral thesis, Department of Semiotics, University of Tartu, Estonia.
Tønnessen,M. (2014). The ontogeny of the embryonic, foetal and infant human umwelt. Sign Systems Studies, 42(2), 281–307. https://doi.org/10.12697/SSS.2014.42.2-3.06.
Tønnessen, M. (2015). Uexküllian phenomenology. Chinese Semiotic Studies, 11(3), 347–369.
Tønnessen, M., et al. (2018). Phenomenology and biosemiotics. Biosemiotics, 11(3), 323–330. https://doi. org/10.1007/s12304-018-9345-8.
Tønnessen, M., Magnus, R., & Brentari, C. (2016). The Biosemiotic Glossary Project: Umwelt. Biosemiotics 9(1): 129–149.

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).

Search image article finished

On July 9th, the night before July 10th, I finished my article "The search image as link between sensation, perception and action", submitted for a special issue of BioSystems on code biology.

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

On September 30th I finished the abstract below, which is for a forthcoming article.

The search image as link between sensation, perception and action

Abstract

Morten Tønnessen 

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. Animals need search images in order to navigate in their environment, in order to pursue some of their biological needs, and in order to direct attention to their immediate or prioritised needs. They are also key to understanding how perception works as distinguished from sensation, and how an animal´s perception and action are connected. Generally, Umwelt codes – codes that are required to perform the functions of perception and action – include neural codes and ecological codes (and cultural codes as well in the case of human beings). 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. In consequence, we can assume that neural codes and ecological codes coalesce in the functioning of the search image. 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. Perception is not an entirely accurate endeavour. Nevertheless, the search image is an indispensable instrument in the perceptual tool box of any animal with a saturated Umwelt. In addition to contributing to a proper understanding of how sensation, perception and action are linked, studies into the phenomenon of search images can shed light on some present puzzles in cognitive science. As an example, contemporary science posits that underlying, action-related brain activity by far precedes our subjective experience of choosing to act in a certain way. This has even been taken to imply that human beings do not in fact have free will. In some of these cases, however, 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. In short, when an animal or a human being operates with a search image, we anticipate encountering the imagined object. Accordingly, we act not only in response to encountered objects, but also in response to imagined ones. And whenever an encountered object is in hindsight correctly perceived to be a match to an imagined object, we may have acted in response to that anticipated object before we could confirmatively perceive it as a match to our search image.