Ethics Cannot Be Voluntary

Cobley, Paul

doi:10.1007/978-94-024-0858-4_5

Cited by 3 publications

(2 citation statements)

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“…Central to the cluster of concepts and theses that make up contemporary biosemiotics is one fundamental belief: all living systems are semiotic. Whether one takes a historical medievalist perspective following John Deely (2001), a biological natural science approach following Jesper Hoffmeyer (1996) and Kalevi Kull (2009), a cybernetic view following Søren Brier (2005), or an anti-humanist view following Paul Cobley (2016), this fundamental belief holds true. Each position within biosemiotics can possibly be taken to have its own ethical implications, as evidenced by the proponents of each approach (see Deely 2008;Hoffmeyer 1995;Brier 2013;Cobley 2016).…”

Section: From Biosemiotics To Biosemiotic Particularismmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Whether one takes a historical medievalist perspective following John Deely (2001), a biological natural science approach following Jesper Hoffmeyer (1996) and Kalevi Kull (2009), a cybernetic view following Søren Brier (2005), or an anti-humanist view following Paul Cobley (2016), this fundamental belief holds true. Each position within biosemiotics can possibly be taken to have its own ethical implications, as evidenced by the proponents of each approach (see Deely 2008;Hoffmeyer 1995;Brier 2013;Cobley 2016). For instance, Deely has emphasized making a distinction between moral patients (those with moral standing) and moral agents (those capable of moral evaluation).…”

Section: From Biosemiotics To Biosemiotic Particularismmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Justifying Moral Standing by Biosemiotic Particularism

Beever

Tønnessen

2018

sem

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In this essay we examine a fundamental question in biosemiotic ethics: why think that semiosis is a morally relevant property, or a property that supports the moral value of living beings or systems that possess it? We argue that biosemiotic particularism, the view that normative assessment should be based on the particular fulfillment of an organism’s or other biological entity’s specific semiosic capacity, offers a justifiable normative position for the biosemiotic ethicist. If what justifies offering moral standing to all living beings and systems is that these entities are semiosic, then there must be something ethically motivating about semiosis. We examine several arguments in answer to this question. These include arguments for semiotic agency, the claim that all living entities are agential as a result of their semiosic capacities; arguments for subjective or quasi-subjective experience, that all living beings have it and that it matters morally; and arguments for the moral relevance of meaning-making as sufficient for moral considerability. We also address the negative argument that semiosis is at least as defensible as sentience, an alternative candidate capacity for grounding moral relevance, and other cognition-related capacities. Finally, we push further to ask: even if semiosis is a morally relevant capacity of living organisms, is it the morally relevant property? That is, is semiosis the least common denominator for attribution of moral worth, to the effect that sentience-based approaches, among others, could build on biosemiotic ethics as a foundational meta-ethical theory?

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