Call for General Meeting of Minding Animals Norway

As the chair of Minding Animals Norway, about a week ago I wrote the call of the board for this year's General Meeting, which will take place in Oslo September 22nd in connection with the first Animal ethics conference (Dyreetikkonferansen, September 21st) and this year's Minding Animals Norway research seminar (September 22nd). The whole call is available in Norwegian in my Norwegian language blog Utopisk Realisme.

Planning day at UiS

Thursday August 9th I took part in a planning day at the University of Stavanger with the two lecturers in nursing that I cooperate with this autumn semester in the teacher-assisted group work in Examen Philosophicum (introductory philosophy, here for nursing students). Altogether there will be 12 x 45 minutes (occurring at 5 dates) of such group work, and the 210 or so students will be divided into 24 groups.

Conference presentation PPTs available in Academia.edu

I have uploaded the following recent conference presentation Powerpoint files to my profile at Academia.edu - all presented in Tartu this July:

• On the notion of induced semiosis, with emphasis on anthropogenic semiosis
• The conceptual Umwelt and its role in the tripartite model of the human Umwelt (NB: Title has changed to "A foray into the hinterland of language: In search of the dark matter of our enlightened worlds")
• In the gaze of the other: Describing cultural affordances by conducting comparative Umwelt mapping in animal studies

Philosophy lecture at UiS I

On Monday 20th of August I gave the first lecture in Examen Philosophicum (introductory philosophy) this autumn semester (at University of Stavanger's Department of Health Studies), with some 150 nursing students present. I lectured for 4 x 45 minutes.

The topics were:

1. What is philosophy? Views on Man ("menneskesyn" in Norwegian). What does it mean to act like a nurse?
2. About the arrangements in Ex.phil.
3. What is science? What does it mean to think like a nurse?
4. Announcement of exam questions

September 12th: Founding meeting of International Society for the Study of Interactivity, Language and Cognition (ISSILC)

On September 12th at 6.30 pm, during the 1st International Conference on Interactivity, Language and Cognition (CILC - Odense, Denmark September 12-14 - see full programme here), a founding meeting of the International Society for the Study of Interactivity, Language and Cognition (ISSILC) will be held. The last few weeks I have been in correspondence with Sune Steffensen, Stephen Cowley and Paul Thibault concerning the new learned society's constitution, providing other constitutions as examples and giving input and feedback regarding the ISSILC's draft constitution, which will be treated at the founding meeting/General Assembly of ISSILC. 

CILC talk scheduled for September 13th

My upcoming talk "Beyond the anthropocentric (aka linguistic) mistake: Languaging as if nature mattered", to be presented at the 1st International Conference on Interactivity, Language and Cognition (CILC) (Odense - Denmark, September 12-14), has been scheduled for Thursday September 13th at 16.15-16.45, as part of the session "Human interactivity in a natural world: Lessons from animals, genes and biosemiosis". The conference is hosted by the University of Southern Denmark.

The full program is available here.

UiS profile page updated

I have updated my profile page at the website of the University of Stavanger by adding a few links and revising the overview of my competence and research interests.