Bioethics, Defining the Moral Subject and Spinoza

An Ecology of Persons I would like to take this opportunity to delve into Morten Tønnessen‘s essay,  “Umwelt ethics,” [download here] (Sign Systems Studies 31.1, 2003), which I could only afford to mention in passing in my post Umwelt, Umwelten and The Animal Defined By Its Relations. I suggested then that Tønnessen had not provided a rigorous [...]

The Distance of Star’s Light, A Coming Memory

A Realism of Differences In reading Wheeler’s Biosemiotic book I’ve come to struggle against Jakob von Uexküll’s highly productive concept of Umwelt (on which I hope to post soon). The concept is, in many of its forms, far too Phenomenal. We perhaps should pursue something like an Exowelt (think, exoskeleton), such that the “experiential world” includes [...]

Crescent to The Whole Creature

Beginning to read Wendy Wheeler’s The Whole Creature: Complexity, Biosemiotics and the Evolution of Culture. I have to say that when the level of my enthusiasm is this high during the first few pages of a book quite often I disappointed at its close. At the very least, the enthusiasm is quite high, and the potential [...]

Biocultures Manifesto: Disease, Technology, Selves and Knowledge

Adrian over at immanence posts the Biocultures Manifesto which he tells us was originally published in New Literary History back in 2007. Certainly worth repeating here: * Science and humanities are incomplete without each other. * It is untrue that the humanities are the realm of values and the sciences the realm of facts. * [...]