Semiotics today. From global semiotics to semioethics, a dialogic response

Resumé

With this essay the authors project global semiotics into the domain of ethics, or more properly what they propose to call ‘semioethics’, as they explore the priorities of semiotics today. Thanks to its biosemiosic bias, semiotics as it is now practiced internationally, that is, in conjunction with the sciences of culture together with the sciences of nature, not only evidences how body and mind are interconnected, but also offers the central possibility for understanding life on earth in its general complexity and multiplicity. In fact, semiosis, the object of semiotic studies and which according to Thomas A. Sebeok’s axiom converges with life, is the key for understanding the dialogic dialectics between unity and multiplicity in the overall semiobiosphere. This essay is not a straightforward survey of who is currently operating in semiotics and why they are important for the pursuit of knowledge in general. Instead, the aim in a semioethic perspective is to show how a semiotic consciousness is not only integral to understanding developments in the world today, but that it is crucial to the future of the planet.