Biosemiotische Ethik / Biosemiotic Ethics

Abstract

This issue presents the rapidly growing field of biosemiotic ethics. In the past two decades, biosemioticians have began to tease out the ethical implications of semiosis as a capacity of living beings. The foundational argument is that if semiosis is a morally-relevant capacity, and if all living systems are semiotic, then biosemiosis can serve as the basis for justifying the attribution of moral status to humans, to animals and plants, and even to ecosystems. Biosemiotic ethics opens the road towards a perspective that connects ecological thinking with ethical perspectives