Relationality paper presented at Moscow gathering in biosemiotics

Here at the 19th international gathering in biosemiotics at Moscow State University, I have just presented my paper "How relationally connects the individual and ecological level of biological study". Some 30 people were present.

Terra invited presentation in Tromsø scheduled for June 7th

On June 67th and 7th I will attend the conference "Terra: Complex relations and dependencies on the Earth", in the New Frontiers in Environmental Philosophy" conference series held at University of Tromsø. On Friday June 7th at 13.00-14.00 I will present my invited presentation "Implications of the Relational Nature of Living Beings for Agency, Autonomy and Moral Status".

Invited presentation to be given at Terra conference in Tromsø

I have been invited by the Environmental Philosophy Research group at University of Tromsø to speak at the conference "Terra" which will be held at University of Tromsø on June 6-7th. The work title for my presentation is "What implications do the relational nature of living beings have with regard to their agency, autonomy and moral status - and our world view?"

No Bodily phenomenology

My abstract "Intercorporality and relational being: Nature considered as an intercorporal body (the body of all bodies)" has been rejected by the organizers of the conference Bodily phenomenology.

Contribution to the conference "Bodily Phenomenology"

I have just submitted my contribution to the conference Bodily Phenomenology, to be arranged in Sweden in May.

MORTEN TØNNESSEN
INSTITUTE OF PHILOSOPHY AND SEMIOTICS, UNIVERSITY OF TARTU, ESTONIA

INTERCORPORALITY AND RELATIONAL BEING
NATURE CONSIDERED AS AN INTERCORPORAL BODY (THE BODY OF ALL BODIES)

ABSTRACT SUBMITTED TO THE CONFERENCE BODILY PHENOMENOLOGY
TO BE ARRANGED BY THE CENTRE FOR STUDIES IN PRACTICAL KNOWLEDGE
MAY 19-21, 2010
AT SÖDERTÖRN UNIVERSITY, SWEDEN.

The body and the world are obviously related. Not only is the body the immediate centre of the physical world for any given perceiving (and acting) subject. Not only is any perception of ‘the world’ necessarily mediated by the body (organism) of the perceiver. We can further observe that the living world (nature) is in actual fact constituted intercorporally, in other words by the numerous relations that exist between the countless bodies about which we have come to learn.

For me, as a biosemiotician, embodiment is perhaps the most central general topic possible. Consciousness is but the top of the iceberg – mind, in the elemental sense of awareness of something, is everywhere in nature, since every living being is capable of, and dependent on, interpreting, understanding and acting upon its relevant surroundings. Mind, then, is more-than-human, even more-than-animal, and embodied mind must in its most general sense be taken to signify the embodiment not necessarily of an anthropoid, more or less articulate consciousness, but of a highly diverse repertoire of oftentimes diffuse awarenesses.

This is nature. An intercorporal body – a global web of bodies attuned to each other and routinely in conflict with each other – the body of bodies. This is nature – where body relates to body, as partner, as predator, as prey – a world built on bodies all partaking in relational being, a kind of existence wherein the particular beings (you, me, Muki) are constituted in and by their relationships with others.

In the course of this talk, I will allude to elements of the philosophy of embodiment in the work of Jakob von Uexküll, David Abram, Gabriel Marcel and Maurice Merleau-Ponty. My broader project is that of contributing to the development of an Uexküllian phenomenology worthy of the designation semiotics of being.