174 Morten Tønnessen
questioned. It seems to me to be an unexamined axiom of modern culture
that growth is good, and that more growth is better than less. Where do these
premises come from? If you look at this in purely semiotic terms, size and
volume in themselves do not seem to have significance. They only have
significance if they have some kind of effect on society.TO BE AWARE THAT SOMETHING EXISTS INDEPENDENTLY OF US
JD: I certainly do not think that capitalism is the answer to anything. And what is
amazing is that we have not figured out a system that works better – the
communist system was a disaster, an absolute disaster. But the real
capitalists are people who live from making money; they do not produce
anything, they do not do anything.
MT: They move money around to make their money grow.
JD: Yes, they move money around. And there has got to be a better system than
that. What would it be? I do not know. Semiotics is not an answer to
everything, semiotics simply gives you a perspective on the sign processes
that are essential for communication in the modern era.
MT: In this context I think a semiotic perspective could raise some crucial
questions, such as: ―Where is the meaning?‖ – of this or that political
system. That is a fundamental semiotic question. But then again, the answer
is up to each one of us – semiotician or not. Is that perhaps the responsibility
of a semioethicist – to raise such questions? At any rate, political practices
have to justify somehow that they are meaningful – if nothing else, then on
their own terms.
JD: For me, the term semioethics certainly means that there is a need to rethink
human responsibility in a larger context than simply behavior between
human beings. The terminology of rights – such as the question of so-called
animal rights – creates more problems than it solves. Then you have people
saying: ―You cannot have rights without responsibility‖ – and animals
cannot have responsibility, so in consequence they cannot have rights. Only
human beings have responsibilities. Lions and tigers do not have
responsibilities.
MT: To me it is a plain point that the only criterion you need to satisfy in order to
qualify for responsibility, is that it matters how you relate through your
actions to a certain issue. If so, you already qualify for responsibility – to the
extent that it is actually a moral issue.
JD: Take a dog that lives with a family. The dog learns that it cannot bite
members of the family. But you probably cannot attribute responsibility to
the dog – saying to the dog: ―Listen, you are responsible for not urinating on
the rug‖.
MT: The responsibility we are talking about here is a kind of conscious
responsibility which you can probably not say that the dog has. But it could
be said to have a kind of social responsibility. It does not make sense to talk