Developments in biosemiotics and democratic theory enable renewed appreciation of the possibilities for ecological democracy. Semiotics is the study of sign processes in meaning-making and communication. Signs and meanings exist in all living systems, and all living systems are therefore semiotic systems. Ecological communication can involve abiotic and biotic communication, including human language, facilitating an integration of politics and ecology in the form of ecological democracy encompassing communicative networks in nature and human society.

El propósito de este estudio es dilucidar algunos de los rasgos distintivos de la concepción del ser humano que mantiene Jürgen Habermas y sus implicaciones en la teoría de la acción comunicativa. De este modo, se trata de mostrar que la antropología habermasiana se singulariza por adoptar una perspectiva naturalista y darwinista. En la primera parte, se analiza el legado epistemológico de Darwin como un programa de investigación y se contrastan los estudios de Habermas sobre antropología biológica con las últimas (...) investigaciones en genética y paleontología. En la segunda parte, se presenta la propuesta de Habermas de afrontar un dualismo epistemológico mediante un naturalismo débil noreduccionista, como crítica de la metafísica moderna y estructurador de un nuevo realismo. (shrink)

Issues concerning naturalism have increasingly become the subject of philosophical reflections involving ontological, epistemological, and even ethics affairs. The most popular topic for contemporary philosophy has been the relationship between ontological results of Darwinism and epistemology. Despite the varied circumstances of its establishment, naturalism almost always produces recommendations that reflect a worldview much “weaker” (as in the case of Habermas) than the strong one more common among scientism. There are good structural reasons for this difference. The aim of this paper (...) is to elucidate some of distinctive social features of Habermas's conception of the human being and its implications in the Theory of Communicative Action (1982). Therefore, it is shown that his anthropology takes a naturalistic and Darwinist perspective in the weak naturalism perspective. In the first part, Darwin ́s legacy is analysed as a research program, and Habermas ́s studies on biological anthropology are compared with the latest research in genetics and palaeontology. In the second part, we will show Habermas's proposal to confront an epistemological dualism through a weak non‐reductionist naturalism as a critique of modern metaphysics, which structures a new pragmatic realism. (shrink)