172 Morten Tønnessen
included – reviewed in terms of (Peircean) semiotics. In the course of the interview,
Deely relates not only to Peirce but further to Petrilli, to Thomas Sebeok, to the biologist
Jakob von Uexküll (1864-1944) and to phenomenologist Edmund Husserl. The human
condition is examined time over again, drawing on a rich reference material from
philosophy as well as from various sciences and scholarly disciplines.INTRODUCTION
The current chapter represents the third in a series of four interviews with Professor John
Deely in the series ―The semioethics interviews‖, all conducted by Morten Tønnessen (see
Tønnessen and Deely 2009 and further Tønnessen 2009a). The author first engaged with
semioethics in 2007, cf. Tønnessen 2009b (especially the section ―A critique of a critique‖).
This particular interview session took place May 12th, 2009 in Tartu, Estonia. As for Deely,
he has previously written about semioethics among other places in Deely 2005, 2008a and
2008b.
The actors: John Deely (hereafter ̳JD‘) and Morten Tønnessen (hereafter ̳MT‘)The scene: An apartment by Raekoja Plats (Town Hall Square), Tartu (where Deely was
a visiting professor the spring term of 2009)TO CONSIDER PRODUCTS AS PROCESSES
MT: (begins by mentioning ̳climate change‘ as a key notion) Climate change –
which you think is a misleading term. Climate destabilization...
JD: You mean global warming – sure.^2
MT: How would you relate the era of global warming to the emergence of
semioethical awareness?
JD: We are starting to feel the consequences of the two or three centuries of
industrialization. We did not realize what we were doing. Just as we polluted
the rivers, it turns out, we have polluted the atmosphere in such a way that
the whole relationship between the Sun and the Earth is being affected.
MT: The Sun and the Earth.
JD: The Sun and the Earth, the atmosphere – with all this energy that comes
from the Sun, which life totally depends upon. But it has to come through
the atmosphere.
MT: Here, the atmosphere is a mediator between the Sun and the Earth. This
concerns the Earth‘s relationship to the Sun, but not the other way around.
JD: Well, the Sun does not care.(^2) In Deely‘s opinion, ‘global warming‘ is a misleading phrase because it does not capture what is characteristic
of what is commonly referred to as ̳climate change‘. While neither climate change nor global warming is a
new phenomenon in geological terms, anthropogenic climate destabilization is indeed a fairly recent
phenomenon.