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A biosemiotic reading of Michel Onfray’s Cosmos: Rethinking the essence of communication from an ecocentric and scientific perspective

  • Keith Moser EMAIL logo
Veröffentlicht/Copyright: 31. Oktober 2018
Semiotica
Aus der Zeitschrift Semiotica Band 2018 Heft 225

Abstract

In Cosmos, Onfray argues in favor of a (re-) conceptualization of communication based on recent scientific discoveries. Similar to many researchers in the field of biosemiotics, the controversial philosopher posits that all life forms engage in constant semiosis. As opposed to being a singular characteristic that only homo sapiens possess, Onfray contends that all organisms are endowed with semiosic faculties that enable them to exchange information in purposeful and meaningful ways. Appealing to scientific logic, the philosopher debunks the common misconception that non-human vocalizations are merely the product of an internal machinery. Onfray offers concrete examples from both the animal and plant kingdom illustrating the astounding complexity of non-human semiosis. Nonetheless, in his reflections about the advent of hyperreality, the philosopher nuances his philosophical position by underscoring what makes the human primary modelling device of “language” the most sophisticated form of semiosis that exists in the biosphere. Although all material beings communicate with each other effectively in order to survive, to relate to each other, and to reproduce, Onfray recognizes that humans appear to have a heightened predisposition for symbolic exchange. The philosopher affirms that the human Umwelt is the richest and most complex semiotic space of all. Due to the pervasive nature of human semiosis in the modern world that threatens the ability of other life forms to create, stockpile, emit, and interpret signs, the philosopher also insists that preserving the fragile semiosic diversity of the “soundscape” is the key to averting the impending, anthropogenic eco-apocalypse.

Keywords: Michel Onfray; biosemiotics; Anthropocene; non-human semiosis

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Published Online: 2018-10-31
Published in Print: 2018-11-06

© 2018 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston

Artikel in diesem Heft

  1. Frontmatter
  3. Genome as (hyper)text: From metaphor to theory
  4. The work of Peirce’s Dicisign in representationalizing early deictic events
  5. The double function of the interpretant in Peirce’s theory of signs
  6. Integration mechanism and transcendental semiosis
  7. The communicative wheel: Symptom, signal, and model in multimodal communication
  8. Discursive representation: Semiotics, theory, and method
  9. Translation as sign exploration: A semiotic approach based on Peirce
  10. When does the ritual of mythic symbolic type start and when does it end?
  11. Iconoclasms of Emmett Till and his killers in Lewis Nordan’s Wolf Whistle: A new generation of historiographic metafiction
  12. A dialogical semiosis of traveling narratives for self-interpretation: Towards activity-semiotics
  13. Entre éthologie et sémiotique : Mondes animaux, compétences et accommodation
  14. A pentadic model of semiotic analysis
  15. Linguistic violence and the “body to come”: The performativity of hate speech in J. Derrida and J. Butler
  16. Cultural tourism as pilgrimage
  17. A simple traffic-light semiotic model for tagmemic theory
  18. From resistance to reconciliation and back again: A semiotic analysis of the Charlie Hebdo cover following the January 2015 events
  19. Bilingual and intersemiotic representation of distance(s) in Chinese landscape painting: from yi (‘meaning’) to yi (‘freedom’)
  20. Power-organizing and Ethic-thinking as two paralleled praxes in the historical existence of mankind: A semiotic analysis of their functional segregation
  21. Semiosic translation
  22. Construction of new epistemological fields: Interpretation, translation, transmutation
  23. A biosemiotic reading of Michel Onfray’s Cosmos: Rethinking the essence of communication from an ecocentric and scientific perspective
  24. Coherence and truthfulness in communication: Intracommunicational and extracommunicational indexicality
  25. Poetic logic and sensus communis
  26. Intrinsic functionality of mathematics, metafunctions in Systemic Functional Semiotics
  27. Ciudadanos: The myth of neutrality
  28. Multilingualism and sameness versus otherness in a semiotic context
https://doi.org/10.1515/sem-2017-0043
Schlagwörter für diesen Artikel
Michel Onfray; biosemiotics; Anthropocene; non-human semiosis

Artikel in diesem Heft

  1. Frontmatter
  3. Genome as (hyper)text: From metaphor to theory
  4. The work of Peirce’s Dicisign in representationalizing early deictic events
  5. The double function of the interpretant in Peirce’s theory of signs
  6. Integration mechanism and transcendental semiosis
  7. The communicative wheel: Symptom, signal, and model in multimodal communication
  8. Discursive representation: Semiotics, theory, and method
  9. Translation as sign exploration: A semiotic approach based on Peirce
  10. When does the ritual of mythic symbolic type start and when does it end?
  11. Iconoclasms of Emmett Till and his killers in Lewis Nordan’s Wolf Whistle: A new generation of historiographic metafiction
  12. A dialogical semiosis of traveling narratives for self-interpretation: Towards activity-semiotics
  13. Entre éthologie et sémiotique : Mondes animaux, compétences et accommodation
  14. A pentadic model of semiotic analysis
  15. Linguistic violence and the “body to come”: The performativity of hate speech in J. Derrida and J. Butler
  16. Cultural tourism as pilgrimage
  17. A simple traffic-light semiotic model for tagmemic theory
  18. From resistance to reconciliation and back again: A semiotic analysis of the Charlie Hebdo cover following the January 2015 events
  19. Bilingual and intersemiotic representation of distance(s) in Chinese landscape painting: from yi (‘meaning’) to yi (‘freedom’)
  20. Power-organizing and Ethic-thinking as two paralleled praxes in the historical existence of mankind: A semiotic analysis of their functional segregation
  21. Semiosic translation
  22. Construction of new epistemological fields: Interpretation, translation, transmutation
  23. A biosemiotic reading of Michel Onfray’s Cosmos: Rethinking the essence of communication from an ecocentric and scientific perspective
  24. Coherence and truthfulness in communication: Intracommunicational and extracommunicational indexicality
  25. Poetic logic and sensus communis
  26. Intrinsic functionality of mathematics, metafunctions in Systemic Functional Semiotics
  27. Ciudadanos: The myth of neutrality
  28. Multilingualism and sameness versus otherness in a semiotic context
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