Chinese environmentalists have called for an ecological civilization. To promote this, ecology is defended as the core science embodying process metaphysics, and it is argued that as such ecology can serve as the foundation of such a civilization. Integrating hierarchy theory and Peircian semiotics into this science, it is shown how “community” and “communities of communities,” in which communities are defined by their organization to promote the common good of their components, have to be recognized as central concepts not only (...) of ecology, but of life itself. This perspective is used to defend Lovelock’s “Gaia” hypothesis and the call of Prugh, Costanza, and Daly for strong democracy. An ethics and political philosophy is sketched based on “eco-poiesis” or “home-making,” which is equated with augmenting the life of communities, both human and non-human. (shrink)

Is there an obesity crisis? Postmodernists like Michael Gard argue that there is not while epidemiologists argue that there is and it is growing. In this paper, I argue that such polarized positions are not a sign of healthy dialectic, but a sign of an increasingly fragmented and reductionist obesity research field. As a further example, I draw on long term seemingly unresolvable disputes within nutrition brought about through reductionist approaches. I argue that there is an obesity crisis, that it (...) is linked to other major global crises and that to meaningfully address it will require greater unity within the obesity research field. I therefore put forward the post-reductionist general concept of semiotic corruption developed by process philosopher, Arran Gare and drawn from the emerging post-reductionist field of biosemiotics, as a potential unifying concept for the field. In doing this I explore the history and nature of biosemiotics and its links to other holistic traditions which all seek to mend the gross philosophical errors committed by those such as Descartes who ruptured the relationship between living and non-living processes. I then discuss some implications of this holistic approach for better understanding obesity as semiotic corruption, particularly focusing on the concepts of embodied, anticipatory systems and the need for a new ethics of health which understands and augments the real complexity and irreducibility of life. (shrink)

As a grand narrative of progress, the utopian project of modernity is primarily concerned with notions of rationalism, universalism, and the development of a metalanguage. The triumph of the Moderate Enlightenment has seen logics of domination, accumulation and individualism incorporated into the project of modernity, with these logics giving rise to globalised capitalism as the metalanguage of modernity and neoliberal economics as the grand narrative of rational progress. The project of modernity is all but complete, requiring only the formality of (...) an end. However, rather than utopia, the foreseeable endpoint of modernity is environmental collapse, with neoliberal economics also serving as a grand narrative of environmental destruction. As an anti-modern response, postmodernism has been a triumphant failure. While there is much to be gained from the postmodern critique of modernity, its incredulity towards metanarratives has left it incapable of forming an adequate response to modernity, especially in regards to action on climate change. Postmodernism is better characterized as a crisis located within modernity itself and it will be argued that rather than the pursuit of the modern or the post-modern, we need to re-imagine ourselves as proto- historical to overcome the impasse of late-capitalism. (shrink)