Fifth semioethics interview: With Augusto Ponzio and Susan Petrilli

After 4 years of waiting since we scheduled to conduct an interview back in 2007, at the Helsinki/Imatra world congress of semiotics, I finally got my interview with Susan Petrilli - and Augusto Ponzio - on semioethics. The interview, which was recorded, took place in New York City, where we were all attending the 11th gathering in biosemiotics, on June 24th. It will be transcribed by me, the interviewer, and then edited in cooperation with the interviewees. It is not yet clear to what journal we will submit it.

I have previously, in 2009, conducted four interviews on semioethics with John Deely, two of which have been published as of today.

The audio recording with Ponzio and Petrilli is about 70 minutes long.

Nova's semiotics book (and third semioethics interview) published

Nova Science Publishers' edited collection Semiotics: Theory and applications has finally been published, a half to one year after schedule. The official publication date is said to be June 1st (though I only received instructions for how to access my complimentary ebook June 14th, and achieved access June 20th).

My contribution in this book volume is "The Semioethics Interviews III: John Deely: Human Understanding in the Age of Global Awareness".

There are two more semioethics interviews with Deely (no. 2 and no. 4). These will appear at some point, perhaps next year.

Reference for third semioethics interview

The delayed semiotics anthology of Nova Science Publishers is still, according to the publisher, in production. On request I was given a reference, however - page numbers, to be precise, resulting in the following reference for my contribution:

Morten Tønnessen 2011. The Semioethics Interviews III: John Deely: Human Understanding in the Age of Global Awareness. Pp171-189 in Steven C. Hamel (ed.): Semiotics: Theory and Applications, New York: Nova Science Publishers.

Nova's semiotics anthology published?

The book collection Semiotics: Theory and Applications, which was to be published in the 4th quarter of 2010, and where I contribute with "The Semioethics Interviews III: John Deely: Human Understanding in the Age of Global Awareness ", has apparently been published by now, in hardcover (status is set to "Available"). The e-book, however, is still in "Final Production".

Nova's semiotics publication: To be released when?

On Amazon, it says that Nova Science Publisher's Semiotics: Theory and applications, where I contribute with "The Semioethics Interviews III: John Deely: Human Understanding in the Age of Global Awareness " (chapter 6), "will be released on 1 February 2011" - today.

On Nova's own pages, however, it still says that the ebook is in "final production", and that the hardcover version is "at press". In both cases, the publication date is still set to "2010 4th quarter".

I have received no notification from the publisher.

Nova publication approaching - semioethics download available

Above you see the frontpage of the upcoming book ´Semiotics: Theory and applications´, where I contribute with ´The Semioethics Interview III: John Deely: Human Understanding in the Age of Global Awareness´.

According to the information given the hardcover version is now ´at press´, whereas the ebook is in ´final production´ (full price for each one: 129$). My article is also available for download for the interesting price of 100$.

The Semioethics Interviews III: John Deely: Human Understanding in the Age of Global Awareness

$100.00

Authors: Morten Tønnessen

Abstract: The general topic of this contribution is semioethics, widely regarded as one of the most significant developments in semiotics after the turn of the 21st century, and along with the existential semiotics of Eero Tarasti (2000) a sign of an ethical turn within semiotics. The term semioethics, which signifies not least the emergence of a sense of global responsibility, was introduced by Susan Petrilli and Augusto Ponzio in 2003, and Petrilli in particular is associated with this emerging scholarly field. The semioethics interviews, conducted by Norwegian-born Tartu semiotician Morten Tønnessen, starts out (in four separate interview articles) with Professor John Deely, a prominent American scholar known among other works for The Four Ages of Understanding: The first Postmodern Survey of Philosophy from Ancient Times to the Turn of the 20th Century (Deely 2001a). Deely, a semiotician as well as a philosopher, has joined Susan Petrilli and Augusto Ponzio in their endeavour by grounding the notion of semioethics in philosophical terms. Topics include the responsibility of humankind, individuals and governments, the place of culture as part of and yet distinct from nature, the semiotic side of modern economic and technological development, the future prospects of human understanding and morality in the light of current economic and political developments, and philosophy – the distinction between ontology and epistemology, and the terminology of rights, ncluded – reviewed in terms of (Peircean) semiotics. In the course of the interview, Deely relates not only to Peirce but further to Petrilli, to Thomas Sebeok, to the biologist Jakob von Uexküll (1864-1944) and to phenomenologist Edmund Husserl. The human condition is examined time over again, drawing on a rich reference material from philosophy as well as from various sciences and scholarly disciplines.

A not very flattering invitation

Five days ago I apparently received two email invitations to contribute to two different anthologies. One of these were from Nova Science Publishers, to whom I've already submitted a book chapter upon invitation (on semioethics, cf. previous posts). "We have learned about your published work on environmental change", the invite read (earlier: "... on semiotics"). The worktitle this time is Environmental Change: Climate, Energy and Ecosystems. A fitting theme for me, by all means - but at the moment I have no suitable texts thought out (and a full schedule). See also Nova's page for the forthcoming Semiotics: Theory and Applications.

The other invite was from InTech, and signed by a Niksa Mandic. The book in question has the worktitle Globalization. "You are invited to participate in this book project based on your paper "Steps to a Semiotics of Being"...", I am told in the otherwise standardized email. Again, the theme is relevant for me. But while Nova doesn't charge its authors (unless they choose to make use of extra services/functions - open access included), InTech has the courage to ask for 590 Euro from each author. With up to 50 contributors per volume, it is pretty clear that their business model is not so much based on selling books as on profiting on complimenting scholars by inviting them to publish. They present themselves as an open access publisher, but their claim that each of their chapters are downloaded 1.000 times a month does not appear to be legitimate, if you check with their latest online publications.

Academic news in brief IX

1) Saturday - two days ago - I finished my quarterly report for the research project "The Cultural Heritage of Environmental Spaces. A Comparative Analysis Between Estonia and Norway" (5pp).
2) In the process of this year's doctoral attestation review, I was informed that my doctoral school should be the Estonian Graduate School of Culture Studies and Arts (GSCSA) (application submitted).
3) The interview with professor in biosemiotics Kalevi Kull (my supervisor), conducted by me and Riin Magnus, has now been fully transcribed, and is in the process of being edited ("The bio-translator"). The final text will include a full biosemiotic bibliography, and replies to questions by Don Favareau, Timo Maran and Paul Cobley.
4) A couple of weeks ago, on the 21st of June, I met in Oslo with green criminologists Ragnhild Sollund and Guri Larsen to develop our planned anthology on human-animal and human-nature relations. We have sketched the topics of around 18 chapters and discussed potential contributors. Invitations to participate will likely be sent in August.

5) The 'opponent' (commentator) at my presentation on illegal wolf hunting in the seminar series Kriminalpolitisk seminar (University of Oslo) in November will likely be professor of criminology Kjersti Ericsson (1944-). Program for the series appears here.
6) Yesterday John Deely - who will this autumn publish Medieval Philosophy Redefined - agreed that we will submit a book proposal (for softcover publication) involving the four first semioethics interviews. I am very much looking forward to that enterprise.
7) Faithful to tradition, Marcello Barbieri has published photos from the 10th gathering in biosemiotics, which took place in Braga, Portugal, a week ago.
8) Through my company, Spør Filosofen, I have been booked for a philosophical presentation of "The future of the growth economy" at Aker Maritime Hydraulics (by the Aker MH philosophy and literature group).

Previous posts:
Academic news in brief VIII
Academic news in brief VII
Academic news in brief VI
Academic news in brief V
Academic news in brief IV
Academic news in brief III
Academic news in brief II
Academic news in brief I (March 30, 2009)

Third semioethics interview approaching publication

I am right now in the process of proof-reading "The Semioethics Interviews III: John Deely: Human Understanding in the Age of Global Awareness", which will be published in the book Semiotics: Theory and applications.

Nova Publishers have now launched a site for the collection, which is edited by Steven C. Hamel, and included in the "Languages and Linguistics" series. The book, which will cost no less than 129$, is scheduled for publication in the 4th quarter of 2010. Below is Nova's book description and the table of contents (any emphasis is mine).

Book Description:
Semiotics is the study of sign processes (semiosis), or signification and communication, signs and symbols, and is usually divided into three branches: Semantics, Syntactics, and Pragmatics. Semiotics is frequently seen as having important anthropological dimensions. In general, semiotic theories take signs or sign systems as their object of study: the communication of information in living organisms is covered in biosemiotics or zoosemiosis. This book discusses the theory and application of semiotics across a broad spectrum and has gathered current research from around the globe.

Table of Contents:
Preface

Signifying the Transition from Modern to Post-Modern Schooling through Analyzing Changes in the Material Culture of Schools (Kostas Dimopoulos, Associate Professor of Learning Materials, Dept of Social and Educational Policy, University of Peloponnese, Greece)

Beyond Signification: The Co-Evolution of Subject and Semiosis (Tahir Wood, University of the Western Cape, Cape Town, South Africa)

Language, Emotion, and Health: A Semiotic Perspective on the Writing Cure (Louise Sundararajan, Chulmin Kim, Martina Reynolds, Chris R. Brewin, Rochester Regional Forensic Unit, Rochester Institute of Technology, Rochester, New York, and others)

Re-Thinking the Place of Semiotics in Psychology and its Implications for Psychological Research (Agnes Petocz, University of Western Sydney)

How Israelis Represent the Problem of Violence in their Schools: A Case Study of a Discursive Construction (Douglas J. Glick, Department of Anthropology, Binghamton University, Binghamton, New York)

The Semioethics Interviews III: John Deely: Human Understanding in the Age of Global Awareness (Morten Tønnessen, Department of Semiotics, Institute of Philosophy and Semiotics, University of Tartu, Estonia, and others)

A Semiotics Discourse Analysis Framework: Understanding Meaning Making in Science Education Contexts (Kamini Jaipal-Jamani, Brock University, St. Catharines, Ont., Canada)

Semiotic Constraints of the Biological Organization (Abir U. Igamberdiev, Memorial University of Newfoundland, Department of Biology, St. John’s, NL, Canada)

Corpus-Based Approaches to Metaphor and Metonymy: Review of Stefanowitsch, Anatol, Gries, Stefan Th. (eds.) (Zhiying Xin, School of Foreign Languages, Sun Yat-sen University, P. R. China)

The Role of Sign Vehicles in Mediating Teachers’ Mathematical Problem Solving (Sinikka Kaartinen, Timo Latomaa, University of Oulu, Finland)

Interaction and Interactivity: A Semiotic Commentary (Jan M. Broekman, Distinguished Visiting Professor of Law, Penn State University Dickinson School of Law, Pennsylvania)

Multimodal Stylistics: The Happy Marriage of Stylistics and Semiotics (Nina Nørgaard, Institute of Language and Communication, University of Southern Denmark)

References to Umwelt ethics in Deely's Semiotic animal

Yesterday I received by post John Deely's new book Semiotic animal: A postmodern definition of "human being" transcending patriarchy and feminism (St. Augustine's Press, 2010), where he refers to my 2003 article Umwelt ethics. In connection with one of the two mentions of that article, the Norwegian philosophers Jon Wetlesen and Arne Johan Vetlesen are referred to as well.

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While Umwelt ethics is referenced in the historically layered references - p. 148 - a quote is represented on p. 107, and a further issue discussed pp. 108-109. The quote starts out the final chapter of the book, 'The Ethical Entailment of Semiotic Animal, or the Need to Develop a Semioethics'.

"Modern man" can indeed be said to have been "the animal that does not want to be an animal" [1. Tønnessen 2003: 287], that did not admit to its animality (at least not in its fullness, if at all), preferring [Nöth 2001: 283] "a Cartesian dualism between culture and nature which has opposed humans to the rest of the natural world for centuries". Of course, modern man to the end adhered to the illusion that "man" is a sufficiently comprehensive linguistic expression to designate the human species of animal as a whole, male or female!

Pp. 108-109:

The modern treatment of ethics [...] that is to say, the ethical discourse to which we have become accustomed, especially in the wake of the pathological "linguistic turn" within the Analytic tradition - requires its own transformative assimilation to befit the postmodern context. Nor is the point de depart for this assimilation of philosophy's past (not only modernity! but the middle Latin and Greek ages as well) far to seek. It must surely be in the development of Hoffmeyer's distinction, taken up by Tønnessen,[4] between "moral subject" and "moral agent", which at once enables and requires the postmodern thinker to extend the notion of a "right to moral consideration" on the part of moral agents beyond the realm of human interactions within culture to include the larger biosphere presupposed to [the] very existence and healthy development of (as Sebeok put it) "that miniscule segment of nature" modern thought has tended to "grandly compartmentalize as culture."

Footnote (pp. 108-109):

4. Hoffmeyer 1993: 152-176, esp. 164-166 (= 151-153 in the 1995 reprint) "Biosemiotics and the Question of Moral Subjects"; see further Tønnessen 2003, passim. Tønnessen's expressed reservations concerning Hoffmeyer's foundation, however (2003: 284n2), speaks rather in Hoffmeyer's favor than toward the narrower ethical purview that Tønnessen proposes. Both Hoffmeyer and Tønnessen draw in this discussion from Jon Wetlesen 1993. The point seems to be one coming into general recognition. Thus Arne Johan Vetlesen (1994: 3), announcing that he restricts "discussion of 'morality' to what obtains - or fails to obtain - between human subjects", yet asks the reader to "note that this does not imply that I hold only humans to have a moral standing". In the semioethic view - that is, a view of ethics stringently derived from semiosis itself precisely as involving the human - morality cannot be restricted only to what obtains or not between human subjects, but concerns also the actions and impact of human subjects upon the environment itself, both physical, biological, social, and cultural.

Third semioethics interview finished, submitted and approved

The third semioethics interview, "The semioethics interviews III: John Deely: Human understanding in the age of global awareness" was in the main finished the last weekend and finally submitted (with minor changes) this Monday to Nova Science publishers for their forthcoming edited collection "Semiotics: Theory and applications". Wednesday it was accepted for publication.

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I have further cleared it for possible cross-publication in their topical journals.

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CONTENTS

Introduction

To consider products as processes

To be aware that something exists independently of us

To realize that this planet is what we have

To realize that tomorrow is not a forever thing

To pinpoint who are responsible

To understand the domino effect

To conceptualize reality appropriately

To foresee negative consequences of miraculous technologies

Conclusion

Third semioethics interview confirmed

My contribution (abstracted) “The Semioethics Interviews III: John Deely: Human Understanding in the Age of Global Awareness”, submitted upon invitation to Nova Science Publishers' planned anthology Semiotics: Theory and Applications, has been accepted for inclusion in this volume.

The publication is likely to appear either late this year or early in 2011.

Semioethics interview in Nova's semiotics anthology

I have submitted an abstract entitled “The Semioethics Interviews III: John Deely: Human Understanding in the Age of Global Awareness” to Nova Science Publishers' planned anthology Semiotics: Theory and Applications, upon invitation.

The first interview in this series was published in Hortus Semioticus. The second and fourth are still to find their places of publication (interested, anyone?).

More uploads

Now available on Scribd.com:

The Nature View Held by Environmentalists (Attitudes in the Norwegian Environmentalist Establishment)

Signs Grow - But Should They? Semioethics and the Dominant Semiosis of Homo sapiens sapiens

Tell me, where is Morality Bred? The Semioethics Interviews I, with John Deely

First semioethics interview published + "Meditationes Semioticae"

Hortus Semioticus no. 4 (2009) appeared some days ago. My contributions:

Pp57-80 "“Tell me, where is morality bred?” The Semioethics Interviews I: John Deely" PDF here

Pp81-84: "Meditationes Semioticae: Signs grow – but should they? Semioethics and the dominant semiosis of Homo sapiens sapiens" PDF here

Proceedings of the world congress in semiotics 2007

At long last I have received the proceedings of the 9th congress of the IASS/AIS - Helsinki-Imatra, 11-17 June, 2007, "Communication: Understanding/Misunderstanding", edited by Eero Tarasti (associated editors: Paul Forsell and Richard Littlefield). And quite a work it is, in 3 volumes (Acta Semiotica Fennica XXXIV, International Semiotics Institute, Imatra/Semiotic Society of Finland, Helsinki 2009).

My text "Where I end and you begin: The threshold of the self and the intrinsic value of the phenomenal world" appears pp. 1798-1803 (vol. III). Here, for the first time in Earth history (in print), I offer "a critique of a critique", namely of semioethics: "While I agree with several of the foundational statements of a semioethics proper, i have some critical remarks as to its present manifestation." I have now been engaged with semioethics for 2 years plus, not least through this spring's first "semioethics interviews" with John Deely, the first of which will sooner-than-ever be published. The article also contains seeds to what I now call "semiotic economy".

In the article I refer to:
David Agler
Gregory Bateson
Donald Favareau
Arne Næss
Susan Petrilli and Augusto Ponzio
David Rothenberg
and myself ("Umwelt ethics")

The name of my article appears in the Contents (vol. I, p. xx). I ("Tonnesen") is further referred to in the Thematic index (vol. III) under the keywords "biosemiotics" (p. 1971) - but not under "ethics", nor "politics", nor "semioethics".

Reflection piece in Hortus Semioticus

Yesterday I finished a little article entitled "Signs grow - but should they? Semioethics and the dominant semiosis of Homo sapiens sapiens".

What is the nature of semiosis? And what is the culture of semiosis?

To be published in the soon-to-be-published Hortus Semioticus (where the first semioethics interview - with John Deely - will be published as well). "Signs grow - but should they?" represents the first in a series of reflections by young semioticians fully occupied in "the semiotic garden".