I have recently found out that I am referred to in Susan Stuart's book chapter "Enkinaesthesia, Biosemiotics, and the Ethiosphere" (pp. 305-330 in Stephen Cowley, João Carlos Major, Sune Steffensen and Alfredo Dini (eds.): Signifying Bodies: Biosemiosis, Interaction and Health. Portuguese Catholic University, Braga, Portugal.). The reference appears on page 325, just ahead of the Conclusion:
One brief last word is important to respond to a possible objection and emphasise the range over which the ethiosphere can be said to extend. Tønnessen [2009] distinguishes between the semiotic niche or semiosphere, and an ontological niche. The semiotic niche, he argues, operates within the class of ideal agents, and the ontological niche describes real agential relations. So, the ontological niche concerns living organisms. If we accept his distinction, then the ethiosphere would seem most naturally to apply in real world circumstances where the relations are felt concernful matterings and not over the semiosohere; however, from an enactivist ethical consideration of real, multi-directional, contrapuntal relations [Colombetti & Torrance 2009], it would be possible to conceive of, and even formulate, a normativity that ought to hold in ideal circumstances and, thus, across the semiosphere. So, although at first glance the notion of the ethiosphere seems more clearly co-extensive with the non-ideal ontological niche, there is no confounding reason to think it not, at least, potentially coextensive with the semiosphere as well.Reference:
Tønnessen, M. (2009) “On Contrapuntuality, Semiotic niche vs. ontological niche, The case of the Scandinavian wolf population”, paper given at Contrapuntuality - Gatherings in Biosemiotics, Prague
