The Semioethics Interviews III 187coming to learn about, especially related to applied science and to our
economic system.
JD: Yes, and that is exactly where the idea of semiotics, of semioethics, is a
remedy. But some people think the solution is not to interfere with nature.
That is not the solution, because we are a part of nature, and nature is
dynamic.
MT: I think nature would be fine with an arrangement like that, but humankind
needs an ambitious agenda of its own. And that, of course, would involve
doing something by means of nature.
JD: It is not true that it implies intervening in nature, if you consider that human
beings are part of nature. Of course the universe can get along without
human beings. But that does not mean that it is better off without human
beings – that human beings are only interfering with these processes.
MT: We are part of nature, and cultural diversity is part of natural diversity.
JD: Yes, we are part of nature, and there is also a sense in which we are an
expression of nature without which nature could not have achieved its
highest goals.
MT: Nature‘s highest possibilities – in humans? But that does not justify killing
off other species.
JD: It is not avoiding the killing that is the secret, it is about understanding
where killing is necessary, and what its consequences are in the whole.
MT: Sure, but in the human realm, it is essential to delimit what limitations there
are to our interference...
JD: That is exactly the consequence of understanding.
MT: You agree that there are certain restrictions?
JD: Obviously. It is exactly the acting like all other animals, rather than as
human animals, that got us into the problem.
MT: That we were naïve animals?
JD: We were naïve animals. Naïve animals see the prey – ―I‘m hungry‖ – ―I‘ll
kill it‖ – end of story.
MT: Maybe that is a good term – the transition from naïve animal to semiotic
animal.
JD: Yes! I just graded a student paper, where this young woman was trying to
argue that ―rational animal‖^6 is a superior definition to ―semiotic animal‖ –
and of course it is not (cf. Deely 2010). And precisely for the reasons that
you are talking about – it belongs to a more naïve understanding that
separates humans as ―above‖ nature, whereas semiotic animal shows both
what is unique to human awareness while at the same time showing how that
awareness is yet tied in with, not simply ―transcendent to‖, the rest of nature.(^6) The notion of Porphyry (man defined as a rational animal). Deely‘s alternative notion of man as a ̳semiotic
animal‘ implies that humans, unlike other animals are capable of distinguishing and treating of relations in
their (insensible and suprasubjective) difference from related objects, and hence to distinguish between things
and objects, and thus to not only use signs but also to know that there are signs strictly in the sense of triadic
relations. This ―semiotic consciousness‖, even when only virtual, enables humans to relate to reality in its less-
than-immediate configurations. The semiotic, thus defined, concerns our awareness of the relationships among
objects and between objects and things. The semiosic, in contrast – the realm to which animals are confined –
concerns our immediate awareness of objects as meaningfully (plus, minus, zero) in our Umwelt (lifeworld).