According to the approach developed by Thomas A. Sebeok (1921–2001) and his ‘global semiotics,’ semiosis and life converge. This leads to his cardinal axiom: ‘semiosis is the criterial attribute of life.’ His global approach to sign life presupposes his critique of anthropocentrism and glottocentrism. Global semiotics is open to zoosemiotics, indeed, even more broadly, biosemiotics which extends its gaze to semiosis in the whole living universe to include the realms of macro- and microorganisms. In Sebeok’s conception, the sign science is (...) not only the study of communication in culture, but of communicative behaviour from a biosemiotic perspective. (shrink)
The sense of precarity is specifically human. It accompanies the consciousness that “what is” is in becoming and can stop being. All lifeforms live through signs, but we humans are also endowed with a capacity for metasemiosis. As semiotic animals, we have self-consciousness, feel responsibility, and feel apprehension: we are consciously aware of our subjection to precarity. G. Semerari called it insecuritas, in relation to both self and others. Fear “of the other” entails a threefold genitive: object, subject, and ethical (...) genitives. When concern for the other becomes overwhelming, the self may pass from non-indifference to indifference, an escape through identity: given competing identities, the other is not my concern. Yet the other remains inextricably involved, especially in globalization. Apprehension for the other cannot be eliminated. Semiotics explains this in terms of sign-network interconnectivity while “semioethics” develops the relations between signs and values. It insists that life can only flourish in relation to the other and calls for responsibility. (shrink)
This paper proposes an analysis of the European Constitution from the perspective of its conditions of possibility. The focus is on the conditions that subtend the European constitution, the conditions, the premises that make the European Constitution possible. In the present context of discourse “possibility” is understood in the sense of Kantian critique. But here critique is based on Reasonableness rather than on Reason—in fact a thesis orienting this essay is that the human being to survive and to survive well (...) must quickly change from a rational animal into a reasonable animal. Is the European constitution possible? Where must we search for the necessary conditions that support the European constitution (1) in common historical and cultural traditions, in common practices, in common social behaviours or (2) merely in a shared decision, an accord, a contract, a convention? There exists a third possibility: the idea that Europe has no future without a European constitution founded on awareness that all European Nations participate in a common destiny, which in the era of globalization is the destiny the whole world, indeed of life over the whole planet. Such participation must be based on the logic of otherness and reasonableness of which the human being alone as a semiotic animal is capable. As a semiotic animal, that is, an animal capable of metasemiosis, reflection and critical consciousness, the human being is responsible for all of life over the planet. (shrink)
Ethical problems connected with biological and medical discoveries in genetic engineering, neurobiology and pharmaceutical research, reach a unified and critical point of view in bioethics as a specific discipline. But even before reaching this stage, ethical problems already belong to two totalities: the semiobiosphere. and the current social form of global communication. Coherently with its philosophical orientation, bioethics must necessarily keep accountof this double contextualisation. The semiobiosphere is the object of study of global semiotics or the semiotics of life. Global (...) semiotics is of particular interest to bioethics not only because of the broad context it provides for the problems treated by bioethics, but also because it provides bioethics with an adequate contextualisation both in terms of extension, of quantity, as well as of quality. From this point of view, "contextualisation" also means critical reformulation. We are now alluding to the need of viewing bioethical problems in the light of today's socio-economic context, that is, in the context of global communication-production. These contextualisations are closely related from the viewpoint of ethics. Semiotics as global semiotics or semiotics of life must accept the responsibility of denouncing incongruencies in the global system, any threats to life over the entire planet inherent in this system. (shrink)
Journal Name: Semiotica - Journal of the International Association for Semiotic Studies / Revue de l'Association Internationale de Sémiotique Volume: 2013 Issue: 196 Pages: 521-532.
With our paper we intend to offer a critical overview of state of the art in semiotics, with specific reference to theoretical problems concerning the relationship between culture and nature. In other words, we intend to focus on the relationship between the concepts of semiosphere and biosphere considering the various approaches to this issue and proposing our own point of view. An important reference for a valid overview view of semiotics today is the Handbook Semiotik/Semiotics. It is no incident that (...) the subtitle of this work is A Handbook on the Sign-Theoretic Foundations of Nature and Culture. In this handbook a fundamental role is carried out by Thomas A. Sebeok and his particular approach to semiotics, which may be designated as ‘global semiotics’. One of the pivotal concepts in Sebeok’s global semiotics is that of modeling which traverses nature and culture. This concept connects natural semiosis and cultural semiosis and ensues in an original formulation of the relationship between the notions of ‘semiosphere’ and ‘biosphere’. Such problematics respond to semiotic research in Tartu today, especially as it finds expression in the present journal. And, in fact, as in his book of 2001, Global Semiotics, Sebeok often underlined the importance of the Estonian connection himself in his writings for the development of semiotics. (shrink)
Charles Peirce, Mikhail Bakhtin and Thomas Sebeok all develop original research itineraries around the sign and, despite terminological differences, canbe related with reference to the concept of dialogism and modelling. Jakob von Uexküll’s biosemiosic “functional cycle”, a model for semiosic processes, is alsoimplied in the relation between dialogue and communication.Biological models which describe communication as a self-referential, autopoietic and semiotically closed system contrast with both the linear and the circular paradigms. The theory of autopoietic systems is only incompatible with dialogism (...) if reference is to a linear causal model which describes communication as developing from source to destination, or to the conversation model governed by the turning around together rule. Dialogism understood in biosemiotic terms overlaps with the concepts of interconnectivity,interrelation, intercorporeity and presupposes the otherness relation.As Uexküll says, the relation with the umwelt in nonhuman living beings is stable and concerns the species; on the contrary, in human beings it is, changeableand concerns the single individual, which is at once an advantage and a disadvantage. Thanks to “syntactics”, human beings can construct, deconstruct and reconstruct an infinite number of worlds from a finite number of elements. This distinguishes human beings from other animals and determines their capacity for posing problems and asking questions. The human being not only produces his or her own world, but can also endanger it, and even destroy it to the point of causing the extinction of all other life forms on Earth. The unique capacity for reflection on signs makes human beings responsible for life across the planet, both human and nonhuman. Such reflections shift semiotic research in the direction of semioethics. (shrink)
John Deely’s contribution to semiotics can be synthetically framed in the formula “Versus fallaciam ‘pars pro toto’”. This is an approach he theorized and practiced in close association with Thomas A. Sebeok’s global semiotics, Deely being one of the latter’s major promotors and disseminators. All his monographs, whether books or essays, have contributed to the development of semiotics in this sense, both on a historical level, think of his translation of Poinsot’s work, and on the theoretical. Semiotics for Deely is (...) first of all a philosophical enterprise centred upon the problem of human understanding and its signs and epitomized in the concept of “semiotic animal”. Moreover, Deely’s original analysis of the history of philosophy and its problems within the framework of four ages of understanding can be read as a contribution to our own understanding of the concept of “otherwise than being” as formulated by Emmanuel Levinas. According to Deely, this new horizon is first adumbrated in Thomas Aquinas’s neglected notion that “being as first known” involves equally ens rationis and ens reale: not only inseparable from the Umwelt of any animal, but also constitutive of the species-specific human Umwelt or Lebenswelt. The problem of the recognition of the other as other is present in filigrain in Deely’s writings, leading him to investigate the relation between ethics and philosophy. Our paper is intended as an exposition and development of themes such as these which constitute Deely’s research—interrupted no doubt, but amply developed and rich in signposts for further research itineraries. (shrink)
With our paper we intend to offer a critical overview of state of the art in semiotics, with specific reference to theoretical problems concerning the relationship between culture and nature. In other words, we intend to focus on the relationship between the concepts of semiosphere and biosphere considering the various approaches to this issue and proposing our own point of view. An important reference for a valid overview view of semiotics today is the Handbook Semiotik/Semiotics. It is no incident that (...) the subtitle of this work is A Handbook on the Sign-Theoretic Foundations of Nature and Culture. In this handbook a fundamental role is carried out by Thomas A. Sebeok and his particular approach to semiotics, which may be designated as ‘global semiotics’. One of the pivotal concepts in Sebeok’s global semiotics is that of modeling which traverses nature and culture. This concept connects natural semiosis and cultural semiosis and ensues in an original formulation of the relationship between the notions of ‘semiosphere’ and ‘biosphere’. Such problematics respond to semiotic research in Tartu today, especially as it finds expression in the present journal. And, in fact, as in his book of 2001, Global Semiotics, Sebeok often underlined the importance of the Estonian connection himself in his writings for the development of semiotics. (shrink)
The question of being in today's global communication-production system concerns all life forms over the planet. Global semiotics describes life and semiosis as converging and in this framework faces the question of ontology. Three contexts for a critical approach to the study of signs include the socio-economic, the phenomenological, and the ontological. These are closely interconnected and in this paper are considered from the perspective of global semiotics and semioethics. Politics, war, communication, and subjectivity are critiqued in terms of a (...) dialogic approach to life, signs, and human relations, where dialogism is not only viewed as a cultural but also a biosemiosic phenomenon implying detotalization and otherness beyond the logic of short-sighted identity. (shrink)
Journal Name: Semiotica - Journal of the International Association for Semiotic Studies / Revue de l'Association Internationale de Sémiotique Volume: 2013 Issue: 195 Pages: 373-408.
I aim to demonstrate the pivotal roll of dialogism in semiosis in addition to modeling and communication. The concept of communication is an old one in semiotics. Semiology considered it as central. It was associated with information in the conceptionof sign proposed by “semiotics of communication”, by contrast with Peircean and Morrisian “semiotics of interpretation”. More recently, another central concept has been added in semiotics by the Moscow-Tartu school: modeling, later reinterpreted by Thomas A. Sebeok in the context of his (...) “semiotics of life” or “global semiotics”. In this paper I propose dialogism as a third fundamental concept with modeling and communication in the study of signs oriented in the direction of semiotics of interpretation. (shrink)
