The emerging epistemic community of ecosemioticians and the multidisciplinary field of inquiry known as ecosemiotics offer a radical and relevant approach to so-called global environmental crisis. There are no environmental fixes within the dominant code, since that code overdetermines the future, thereby perpetuating ecologically untenable cultural forms. The possibility of a sustainability transition (the attempt to overcome destitution and avoid ecocatastrophe) becomes real when mediated by and through ecosemiotics. In short, reflexive awareness of humankind's linguisticality is a necessary condition for (...) transforming ecologically maladaptive cultural forms. As a multidisciplinary, interdisciplinary research program integrating the human and natural sciences, ecosemiotic inquiry closes the gap between biophysical ecology and human ecology. A provisional outline of a pragmatic theory of ecoserniotics attempts to describe the processes by which adaptive cultural changes might be facilitated and points toward substantive content areas that constitute sites for further research. Ecosemiotic inquiry frames cultural codes as these shape and reproduce the ongoing stream of individual and societal choices that shape distinctively human existence in a larger context of biophysical realities that drive natural selection. However, while ecosemiotics is a necessary condition for the sustainability transition, it is not a sufficient condition. (shrink)

Resumo: O sinequismo é o pensamento que insiste na idéia da importância primordial da continuidade na filosofia. No seu aspecto metodológico, o sinequismo aponta para a necessidade de se levantar hipóteses que envolvam uma verdadeira continuidade. O principal motivo para isso é evitar hipóteses de que isto ou aquilo seja inexplicável, pois o sinequista defende que a única justificativa para uma hipótese é a de que ela forneça uma explicação para os fenômenos. O objetivo deste trabalho é explorar o aspecto (...) metodológico do sinequismo. É a concepção do sinequismo como um princípio regulativo da lógica, prescrevendo que espécie de hipótese deve ser mantida e examinada, que nos revela o significado pragmático do sinequismo que, segundo Peirce, apresenta uma correspondência muito próxima com o significado pragmático da mente.Palavras-chave: pragmatismo, Peirce, mente, sinequismo, hipótese.: Synechism is the kind of thought that insists on the idea of the primordial relevance of continuity in Philosophy. In its methodological aspect, synechism points to the need of raising hypotheses involving true continuity. The main reason for that is to avoid hypotheses that this or that is inexplicable, since the synechist claims that the only justification for a hypothesis is that it provides an explanation to phenomena. The aim of the present paper is to explore the methodological aspect of synechism. It is the conception of synechism as a regulative principle of Logic, prescribing the kind of hypothesis to be entertained and examined, that reveals to us the pragmatic meaning of synechism; a meaning that, for Peirce, presents a very close correspondence to the pragmatic meaning of Mind.Key-words: pragmatism, Peirce, mind, synechism, hypothesis. (shrink)