The teleosemantic theory of representational content is held by some philosophers to imply that genes carry semantic information about whole-organism phenotypes. In this paper, I argue that this position is not supported by empirical findings. I focus on one of the most elaborate defenses of this position: Shea’s view that genes represent whole-organism phenotypes. I distinguish between two ways of individuating genes in contemporary biological science as possible vehicles of representational content—as molecular genes and as difference-maker genes. I show that (...) given either of these ways of individuating genes, genes fail to meet conditions which the teleosemantic theory requires an entity to meet if that entity is to qualify as a representational vehicle that represents a whole-organism phenotype. The considerations I present against Shea’s view generalize to other attempts to use the teleosemantic theory in support of the claim that genes represent whole-organism phenotypes. (shrink)

In the social constructionist literature, little has been said about what it means for social factors to cause X in such a way that X would count as causally socially constructed. In this paper, I argue that being caused by social factors – and thus being causally socially constructed – is best defined in terms of a contrastive counterfactual notion of causation. Unlike some plausible alternatives, this definition captures what is at stake in actual social constructionist debates. It makes transparent (...) which factors the truth of a causal constructionist claim may depend on. By doing so, it sheds light on what the disagreements over whether X is causally socially constructed may turn on. It also helps us to see under which condition the claim that X is socially causally constructed is compatible with the claim that X is caused by biological factors. (shrink)

Aristotle frequently describes essence as a “cause” or “explanation”, thus ascribing to essence some sort of causal or explanatory role. This explanatory role is often explicated by scholars in terms of essence “making the thing be what it is” or “making it the very thing that it is”. I argue that this is problematic, at least on the assumption that “making” expresses an explanatory relation, since it violates certain formal features of explanation. I then consider whether Aristotle is vulnerable to (...) this problem by examining the explanatory role of essence in Posterior Analytics and Metaphysics Z 17. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that the extent to which a human trait is genetically caused can causally depend upon whether the trait is categorized within human genetics as genetically caused. This makes the kind genetically caused trait an interactive kind. I demonstrate that this thesis is both conceptually coherent and empirically plausible. I outline the core rationale of this thesis and demonstrate its conceptual coherence by drawing upon Waters’ (2007) analysis of genetic causation. I add empirical plausibility to the (...) thesis by describing a hypothetical but empirically plausible mechanism by which the fact that obesity is categorized as genetically caused within human genetics increases the extent to which obesity is in fact genetically caused. (shrink)

The term “time-plan” is introduced in the article to sum up the diversity of temporal processes described by Jakob von Uexküll (1864–1944) in the frameworkof the general Planmässigkeit of nature. Although Uexküll hardly had any connections with his contemporary philosophies of time, the theme of the subjectivetimes and timing of the organisms forms an essential part of his umwelt theory. As an alternative to the dominance of evolutionary time in biological discussions, Uexküll took perceptual and developmental times of organisms as (...) his natural scientific priorities. While discussing the characteristics of the latter, Uexküll departs from an epigenetic position. Discussion about perceptual time entails detecting the primary units of time (moments) as well as how the succession of moments results in the perception of movement. The last part of the article will explicate the significance of the “time plan” concept for biophilosophical discussions. It is suggested that the bioethical question rising from Uexküll’s works may take the following form: do other biological subjects besides humans have a right to their own timing? (shrink)

One of the issues that deeply interested the philosophers of late antiquity, the Ancient Greek Commentators, concerns the priority of substances. While questions concerning ontological priority have recently attracted attention in Aristotelian scholarship and contemporary metaphysics, the Commentators’ discussions have not yet received the attention they deserve. My aim is to start to fill in this gap, by focusing on John Philoponus’s account of the priority of substances in his commentary on Aristotle’s "Categories". In particular, I aim to show how (...) Philoponus develops and defends the view that, while particular substances enjoy priority over accidents and concepts (“universals after the many”), they do not enjoy priority over all other things. Rather, a certain type of universal substance (“universals prior to the many”) enjoys priority over particulars. (shrink)

The philosophical problem of universals is traditionally framed as the problem about the ontological status of universals. It is often said that the ontological status of universals is a post-Aristotelian problem that was bequeathed to the Middle Ages by a famous sentence in Porphyry's Isagoge. 1 Porphyry raises but then refuses to answer three questions about the ontological status of genera and species, saying that they are too "deep" for the present investigation. 2 Although Porphyry is the first to announce (...) the problem, it was Boethius's commentary on Porphyry, rather than the Isagoge itself, that made this sentence famous and that is therefore responsible for the problem of universals in .. (shrink)

Based on interviews with guide dog users from Sweden, Estonia and Germany and participatory observation of the teams’ work, the article discusses three kinds of semiotic challenges encountered by the guide dog teams: perceptual, sociocultural and communicative challenges. Perceptual challenges stem from a mismatch between affordances of the urban environment and perceptual and motoric abilities of the team. Sociocultural challenges pertain to the conflicting meanings that are attributed to dogs in different social contexts and to incompatible social norms. Challenges related (...) to intrateam communication and interpretation of the other counterpart’s behavior are mostly tied to the difficulties of placing the other’s activities in the right context. Germany, Estonia and Sweden differ in their history of guide dog institutions and the organisation of guide dog work, but the challenges of the guide dog users appear to be fairly similar. However, differences appear in the stress laid on one or another type of challenge as well as in the explanations provided by the informants for the background of the challenges. The challenges, as analysed in the article, reflect not only the existing problems of guide dog users, but also their expectations for a social and physical environment, in which the teams would feel welcome. (shrink)

Species conservation activities are gaining more attention in the context of environmental degradation. This article proposes to tackle different semiotic aspects of reintroduction as one possible way of furthering species conservation. More specifically, we aim to bring forth the strength of ecosemiotic perspective when dealing with such a complex matter with many different human and non-human subjects. We concentrate on animal agency, search and function tone, semiotic fitting and changes in umwelten when analysing the reintroduction process from the perspective of (...) the animal. When considering the locals’ perspective, we take into account the appeal and cultural placement of the species, as well as human and non-human umwelt overlap when it comes to resources. As our case study we use the European mink (Mustela lutreola) and its reintroduction to the island of Hiiumaa and planned reintroduction to the island of Saaremaa in Estonia. By employing semiotic analysis, we discover that reintroduced animals need to exhibit innovation and plasticity to establish novel semiotic relations but also restore relations characteristic to the historical environments of the species. We argue that human views and expectations towards the species and (re)introduction efforts account for animals’ appearance and agency. Additionally, contrast with other wild species, the perceived overlap of human and non-human umwelten, and broader conservation discourse are decisive for the formation of interspecific relations in situ. Thus, ecosemiotcs proves to be a valuable research platform for an analysis of conservation practices that targets both, sociocultural context and animal umwelten. (shrink)

Relying on interviews and fieldwork observations, the article investigates the choice of signs made by guide dogs and their visually impaired handlers while the team is on the move. It also explores the dependence of the choice of signs on specific functions of communication and examines the changes and development of sign usage throughout the team’s work. A significant part of the team’s communication appears to be related to retaining the communicative situation itself: to the establishment of intrateam contact; to (...) keeping the other prone to receive messages and to establish adequate sign relations; to giving and receiving feedback. The signs used for the purpose of retaining contact are analyzed in the article mainly with the handler in the role of the addresser. Signs also vary according to the character and aim of the team’s referential communication. Searching for objects and places, orientation and avoidance of obstacles can be discerned as three major functional frames that determine the choice of signs. As the team’s cooperation evolves, so also do the means of communication. The analysis shows that intrateam communication becomes less segmented and the signs used in referential communication shift from symbolic to symptomatic signs and become harder to detect for an outside observer. (shrink)

This special issue centers around Aristotelian metaphysics, construed broadly to cover both scholarly research on Aristotle’s metaphysics, as well as work by contemporary metaphysicians on Aristotelian themes. It focuses on two themes in Aristotelian metaphysics, namely essence and grounding, and their connections. A variety of related questions regarding dependence, priority, fundamentality, explanation, causation, substance, and modality also receive attention.

This is the second article in a series of review articles addressing biosemiotic terminology. The biosemiotic glossary project is designed to integrate views of members within the biosemiotic community based on a standard survey and related publications. The methodology section describes the format of the survey conducted July–August 2014 in preparation of the current review and targeted on Jakob von Uexküll’s term ‘Umwelt’. Next, we summarize denotation, synonyms and antonyms, with special emphasis on the denotation of this term in current (...) biosemiotic usage. The survey findings include ratings of eight citations defining or making use of the term Umwelt. We provide a summary of respondents’ own definitions and suggested term usage. Further sections address etymology, relevant contexts of use, and related terms in English and other languages. A section on the notion’s Uexküllian meaning and later biosemiotic meaning is followed by attempt at synthesis and conclusion. We conclude that the Umwelt is a centerpiece phenomenon, a phenomenon that other phenomena in the living realm are organized around. To sum up Uexküll’s view, we can characterize an Umwelt as the subjective world of an organism, enveloping a perceptual world and an effector world, which is always part of the organism itself and a key component of nature, which is held together by functional cycles connecting different Umwelten. In order to pay respect to Uexküll’s work, we must move from notion to model, from mention of Uexküll’s Umwelt term to actual application of it. (shrink)

It is a widely accepted thesis in the cognitive sciences and in naturalistic philosophy of mind that the contents of at least some mental representations are innate. A question that has popped up in discussions concerning innate mental representations is this. Are externalist theories of mental content applicable to the content of innate representations? Views on the matter vary and sometimes conflict. To date, there has been no comprehensive assessment of the relationship between content externalism and content innateness. The aim (...) of this paper is to provide such an assessment. I focus on the notions of innateness that are employed in innateness hypotheses within the cognitive sciences and adjacent fields of philosophy, and on causal externalist theories of content. I distinguish between three accounts of what being innate might amount to in innateness hypotheses within the cognitive sciences, and between three types of causal externalism. I explain what the possibility of innate externalistically individuated representations depends upon given all nine combinations. I explain why causal externalism can be true of innate mental representations, given but one of these combinations. (shrink)

We often hear how scientists have discovered that a certain human trait – or a trait of another type of organism – is innate, genetic, heritable, inherited, naturally selected etc. All these claims have something in common: they all declare a trait to have significant organism internal (for instance genetic) causes that are present in the organism at its birth. I call claims like these “nativist claims”. Nativist claims are important. They shape our overall understanding of what we are, what (...) we can do and what is good for us. They also impact our practical decision making. For instance, we know that certain types of genes increase the risk of certain diseases, and increasingly this has an effect on healthcare practices. Many people believe that in the matter of children’s education we should consider the fact that many cognitive abilities are highly heritable. Associations between genetics and aggressive behavior have been taken to be alleviating circumstances in criminal sentencing. It is therefore important to correctly understand the content and implications of nativist claims. In this doctoral thesis I analyze, by philosophical means, the content of different kinds of nativist claim. What does it mean that some psychological tendency is innate? What does it mean that intelligence is 50% heritable? How (if at all) do genes come to carry information about the traits of an organism – they are nothing like the information carriers familiar to us, such as newspapers, e-mails, secret codes, and audio files. This thesis emphasizes two things. Firstly, I demonstrate, that in different scientific contexts these words ('innate', 'genetically caused' etc.) can mean very different things. Therefore, the implications of a given nativist claim in one scientific context can be remarkably different from another nativist claim’s implications in some other scientific context. Secondly, I explain how the development of innate, heritable and genetically caused traits can be determined in different and often unexpected ways by our environment and experiences. I demonstrate that the content of a concept that is considered innate by cognitive scientists can be determined by what the organism that possesses the concept has experienced. I also show that even a trait which is 100% heritable can at the same time be a socially constructed trait. (shrink)

Based on his previous elaborations on semiotic fitting, Kalevi Kull develops a relations-focused theory of beauty in the organic world. I will point to further strands of thought in the Western history of ideas that have introduced the convergence of the aesthetic and organic. The reflections of Immanuel Kant and the early romantics are foundational for these parallels, although not necessarily in concordance with the biocentric and biosemiotic stance of Kull. This comment also raises some questions related to the compatibility (...) of some arguments with the authors who are mentioned as inspirational sources of the theory. In the end, additional authors are suggested as potential associates of biosemiotic aesthetics, authors who might help to broaden the scope of aesthetic phenomena covered by the theory. (shrink)

Established at the annual meeting of the International Society for Biosemiotic Studies on July3rd 2014, in conjunction with Springer Publishing, publishers of the Society’s official journal, Biosemiotics,the Annual Biosemiotic Achievement Award seeks to recognize those papers published in the journal thatpresent novel and potentially important contributions to the ongoing project of biosemiotic research, itsscientific impact, and its future prospects. Here the winner of the Biosemiotics Achievement Award for 2018is announced: the award goes to Mirko Cerrone for his article ‘Umwelt and (...) Ape Language Experiments: onthe Role of Iconicity in the Human-Ape Pidgin Language’. (shrink)

On the basis of a comparative analysis of the biosemiotic work of Jakob von Uexküll and of various theories on biological holism, this article takes a look at the question: what is the status of a semiotic approach in respect to a holistic one? The period from 1920 to 1940 was the peak-time of holistic theories, despite the fact that agreement on a unified and accepted set of holistic ideas was never reached. A variety of holisms, dependent on the cultural (...) and disciplinary contexts, is sketched here from the works of Jan Smuts, Adolf Meyer-Abich, John Scott Haldane, Kurt Goldstein, Alfred North Whitehead and Wolfgang Köhler. In contrast with his contemporary holists, who used the model of an organism as a unifying explanatory tool for all levels of reality, Jakob von Uexküll confined himself to disciplinary organicism by extending the borders of the definition of “organism” without any intention to surpass the borders of biology itself. The comparison reveals also a significant difference in the perspectives of Uexküll and his contemporary holists, a difference between a view from a subjective centre in contrast with an all-encompassing structural view. Uexküll’s theories are fairly near to J. S. Haldane’s interpretation of an organism as a coordinative centre, but even here their models do not coincide. Although biosemiotics and holistic biology have different theoretical starting points and research-goals, it is possible nonetheless to place them under one and the same doctrinal roof. (shrink)

Context: Maturana’s lifework is extensive, and consists of a coherent network of interlinked ideas the consequences of which have not been fully explored. Problem: What does it take to understand Maturana’s work? Is “learning” Maturana as arduous as learning a completely different language, or is there sufficient value in learning selected elements of his network of ideas? Method: We discuss these fundamental questions and relate them to aspects of understanding, word meaning and the scientific method. Results: While getting only partially (...) familiar with Maturana can have its merits in certain contexts, there is a clear danger of trying to understand Maturana on the basis of words such as autopoiesis, consciousness, cognition, and science. Implications: We identify three directions in which Maturana’s ideas can be further explored: preparing social media videos, finding ever new domains of application, and their historical-conceptual relativization. (shrink)

Context: Humberto Maturana has generated a coherent and extensive explicatory matrix that encompasses his research in neurophysiology, cognition, language, emotion, and love. Purpose: Can we formulate a map of Maturana’s work in a manner that is consistent with the systemic matrix it represents and that serves as an aid for understanding Maturana’s philosophy without reifying its representation? Method: Our arguments are based on experience gained from teaching and presentations. Results: We present a map that that represents Maturana’s main contributions as (...) clusters of notions clustered according to how we see them to be related to each other as a projection of a matrix of ideas onto a two-dimensional space. We claim that there are many paths through these clusters of ideas. Though ideas relevant to individuals are obtained from various partial perspectives, a deep understanding of any element is dependent on an understanding of the whole matrix. Furthermore, we summarize the contributions to this special issue on Maturana. (shrink)

The central concern of this book is us human beings. The authors’ basic question is: ‘How is it that we can live in mutual care, have ethical concerns, and at the same time deny all that through the rational justification of aggression?’ The authors answer this basic question indirectly by providing a look into the fundaments of our biological constitution, concentrating on what they term emotioning, that is the flow of emotions in daily life that guides the flow of the (...) systemic conservation of a manner of living. Maturana and Verden-Zoller claim that the fundamental emotion that gave rise to humans as sapient languaging beings was love, and that this remains our fundament even when other emotions become socially prevalent. (shrink)

What Druzhinin, in the target article, names as “counterfactuals” are stories that an observer claims are more valid than another story. Normally, we treat such conjectures lightly, though all ….

Introduction: Framing nature and culture.

Hoerl & McCormack risk misleading people about the cognitive underpinnings of the belief in a privileged “now moment” because they do not explicitly acknowledge that the sense of existing in the now moment is an intrinsically temporally dynamic one. The sense of happening that is exclusive to the now moment is a better candidate for the source of belief in a privileged now.

We analyze a series of interviews with Estonian humanities researchers to explore topics related to the beginning of academic careers and the relationships with supervisors and mentors. We show how researchers strive to have meaningful relationships and produce what they consider quality research in the conditions of a system that is very strongly oriented towards internationalization and project-based funding, where their efforts are compromised by a lack of policies helping them establish a stable position in academia. Leaving researchers to face (...) these obstacles alone places a great burden on them and may lead to a loss of talent in academia. Identifying and addressing these issues is thus important for both the well-being of early career researchers and the future of academia. (shrink)

The guiding idea behind this collection of papers is a presentation of the transdisciplinary scope of the new semiotics offering a deeper and broader framework than the structuralist semiology that has been the foundation of most European semiotic analyses of culture, texts and languages.

Digital Pills are an innovative drug-device technology that permits to combine traditional medications with a monitoring system that automatically records data about medication adherence as well as patients’ physiological data. Although DP are a promising innovation in the field of digital medicine, their use has also raised a number of ethical concerns. These ethical concerns, however, have been expressed principally from a theoretical perspective, whereas an ethical analysis with a more empirically oriented approach is lacking. There is also a lack (...) of clarity about the empirical evidence available concerning the application of this innovative digital medicine. To map the studies where DP have been tested on patients and discuss the ethically relevant issues evident therein, we performed a scoping review of the empirical literature concerning DP. Our search allowed us to identify 18 papers reporting on studies where DP were tested on patients. These included studies with different designs and involving patients with a variety of conditions. In the empirical literature, a number of issues with ethical relevance were evident. At the patient level, the ethical issues include users’ interaction with DP, personal sphere, health-related risks and patients’ benefits. At the provider level, ethically relevant issues touch upon the doctor-patient relationship and the question of data access. At the societal level, they concern the benefits to society, the quality of evidence and the dichotomy device-medicine. We conclude that evidence concerning DP is not robust and that more research should be performed and study results made available to evaluate this digital medicine. Moreover, our analysis of the ethically relevant aspects within empirical literature underscores that there are concrete and specific open questions that should be tackled in the ethical discussion about this new technological solution. (shrink)

Despite the promise to boost human potential and wellbeing, enhancement drugs face recurring ethical scrutiny. The present studies examined attitudes toward cognitive enhancement in order to learn more about these ethical concerns, who has them, and the circumstances in which they arise. Fairness-based concerns underlay opposition to competitive use—even though enhancement drugs were described as legal, accessible and affordable. Moral values also influenced how subsequent rewards were causally explained: Opposition to competitive use reduced the causal contribution of the enhanced winner’s (...) skill, particularly among fairness-minded individuals. In a follow-up study, we asked: Would the normalization of enhancement practices alleviate concerns about their unfairness? Indeed, proliferation of competitive cognitive enhancement eradicated fairness-based concerns, and boosted the perceived causal role of the winner’s skill. In contrast, purity-based concerns emerged in both recreational and competitive contexts, and were not assuaged by normalization. (shrink)