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  1. Umwelt Collapse: The Loss of Umwelt-Ecosystem Integration.Timo Maran - 2023 - Biosemiotics 16 (3):479-487.
    Jakob von Uexküll’s umwelt theory opens new perspectives for understanding animal extinction. The umwelt is interpreted here as a sum of structural correspondences between an animal’s subjective experience, ecosystem, physiology, and behaviour. The global environmental crisis disturbs these meaning-connections. From the umwelt perspective, we may describe extinction as umwelt collapse: The disintegration of an animal’s umwelt resulting from the cumulative errors in semiotic processes that mediate an organism and ecosystem. The loss of umwelt-ecosystem integration disturbs “ecological memory,” which provides the (...)
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  • Ecosemiotic Analysis of Species Reintroduction: the Case of European Mink (Mustela lutreola) in Estonia.Riin Magnus & Nelly Mäekivi - 2023 - Biosemiotics 16 (2):239-258.
    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 (...)
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  • Collateral Beauty, Adjacent Semiosis.Timo Maran - 2022 - Biosemiotics 15 (1):37-40.
    Kalevi Kull’s biosemiotic aesthetics has apparent potential for ecosemiotics. This potentiality will be elaborated through the concepts of collateral beauty and adjacent semiosis. If diverse organisms aim towards better fitting, perfection, and beauty, than aesthetics arises in ecosystems occasionally yet recurrently. Perceiving such collateral beauty becomes an effective means to create new semiotic connections and associations, thereby contributing to the integrity and coherence of the semiotic system. Collateral beauty may help humans become better connected with the broader ecosemiosphere, or to (...)
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  • Natural Selection and Self-Organization Do Not Make Meaning, while the Agent’s Choice Does.Kalevi Kull - 2021 - Biosemiotics 14 (1):49-53.
    Demonstration of illusiveness of basic beliefs of the Modern Synthesis implies the existence of evolutionary mechanisms that do not require natural selection for the origin of adaptations. This requires adaptive changes that occur independently from replication, but can occasionally become heritable. Plastic self-organizational changes regulated by genome are largely incorporable into the old theory. A fundamentally different source of adaptability is semiosis which includes the agent’s free choice. Adding semiosis into the theory of Extended Evolutionary Synthesis completes the distancing from (...)
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  • Grounding Biosemiotic Aesthetics: Extensions Back and Forward.Riin Magnus - 2022 - Biosemiotics 15 (1):41-45.
    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 (...)
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  • The Biosemiotic Fundamentals of Aesthetics: Beauty is the Perfect Semiotic Fitting.Kalevi Kull - 2022 - Biosemiotics 15 (1):1-22.
    We propose a model which argues that aesthetics is based on biosemiotic processes and introduces the non-anthropomorphic aesthetics. In parallel with habit-taking, which is responsible for generating semiotic regularities, there is another process, the semiotic fitting, which is responsible for generating aesthetic relations. Habit by itself is not good or bad, it is good or bad because of semiotic fitting. Defining the beautiful as the perfect semiotic fitting corresponds to the common conceptualisation of the aesthetic as well as extends it (...)
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  • The Ecosemiosphere is a Grounded Semiosphere. A Lotmanian Conceptualization of Cultural-Ecological Systems.Timo Maran - 2021 - Biosemiotics 14 (2):519-530.
    Growing ecological problems have raised the need for conceptual tools dedicated to studying semiotic processes in cultural-ecological systems. Departing from both ecosemiotics and cultural semiotics, the concept of an ecosemiosphere is proposed to denote the entire complex of semiosis in an ecosystem, including the involvement of human cultural semiosis. More specifically, the ecosemiosphere is a semiotic system comprising all species and their umwelts, alongside the diverse semiotic relations (including humans with their culture) that they have in the given ecosystem, and (...)
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  • The Evolutionary Origin(s) of the Umwelt.Morten Tønnessen - 2022 - Biosemiotics 15 (3):451-455.
    Although Jakob von Uexküll´s Umwelt theory is not mentioned in Jablonka and Ginsburg´s Target article, von Uexküll´s theory is clearly relevant in the context of the article, with the authors´ emphasis on the origin of “subjective experiencing”. I relate some of Jablonka and Ginsburg´s main claims to an evolutionary perspective on Umwelt theory. As it turns out, the Umwelt has multiple evolutionary origins depending on our exact definition(s) of Umwelt.
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  • Semiotic Fitting, Co-option, and the Art of Life.Karel Kleisner - 2022 - Biosemiotics 15 (1):31-35.
    The intricate appearances produced by various lineages of biota have long been viewed as calling for a rational explanation. Biologists are capable of interpreting still just a relatively small part of the overall range of organismal forms and patterns. In fact, we can explain only those for which we find a functional role. Kalevi Kull’s current initiative, which aims at establishing biosemiotic foundations of aesthetics and introduction of concepts such as semiotic fitting, may help us elucidate various hitherto largely neglected (...)
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