Abstract
In this chapter we discuss the phenomenological tradition within philosophy with emphasis on representative phenomenological positions on subjectivity, sentience, consciousness and self-consciousness, and make the argument that giving phenomenology a biosemiotic grounding will make it more comprehensive. Even though both Husserl and Heidegger, two classics of phenomenology , acknowledged that animals have subjective lifeworlds, their respective phenomenologies were clearly anthropocentric. The same goes for most mainstream versions of contemporary phenomenology . Heidegger states this anthropocentric bias plainly when, after referring to the Umwelt theory of Jakob von Uexküll, he claims that animals are “poor in world”. The Umwelt theory offers an alternative, more pluralistic framework for phenomenology – a phenomenology beyond the human, with a biosemiotic basis. Von Uexküll’s Umwelt theory was discussed by Merleau-Ponty and has further inspired several contemporary philosophers within and beyond phenomenology . In the chapter we also discuss the relation between semiotics and phenomenology , including Peirce’s ideas and recent calls for a naturalized phenomenology. While modern phenomenology was from its inception programmatically presented as anti-naturalism, leading contemporary phenomenologists favour realignment between phenomenology and naturalism. With its roots in sign theory and biology, biosemiotics can contribute further to this endeavour, and be an important piece in the puzzle when realigning phenomenological studies of subjective experience and behaviour with natural science.
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Notes
- 1.
In this chapter we mainly use the notion ‘consciousness’ rather than ‘cognition’ because the former concept is a better match with the traditional discourse in phenomenology.
- 2.
We here apply the term ‘animal’ in the sense in which it is applied within biology. In popular science and lay language, the term is often taken to refer to sentient animals only. Most phenomenologists would probably agree that all sentient animals have a first-person experience.
- 3.
Stereotypically, human beings are regarded as having reflective consciousness, without reservation. But there are clearly many exceptions to this rule, e.g., in early life stages and possibly during sleep. In fact, even though human beings for the most part have reflective consciousness, no human being has reflective consciousness throughout the entire lifetime. The ways in which human consciousness can be reflective are also eroded under the influence of certain brain diseases including Alzheimer’s disease and other instances of dementia, and during abnormal mental states such as psychosis.
- 4.
However, interviews with various experts on animal behaviour (who may be academics or practitioners such as e.g. farmers, veterinarians or zookeepers) can fruitfully be used to inform and enrich studies of animal consciousness within a more-than-human descriptive phenomenology (Tønnessen, 2021, forthcoming).
- 5.
Combining these two explanations might be most correct. Even if the neglect of animal consciousness were mostly due to an anthropocentric bias, the exceptional nature of aspects of human consciousness could help explain some of the disinterest in non-human forms of consciousness, since this exceptional character makes ignoring at least some aspects of animal forms of consciousness more reasonable. And conversely, even if the neglect of animal consciousness were mostly due to the exceptional nature of human consciousness, an anthropocentric bias (i.e., a predominant bordering on exclusive focus on the human form of consciousness) could help explain the neglect of animal consciousness given the lack of competence on animal consciousness such a bias will result in.
- 6.
Along with Husserl’s phenomenology, Heidegger’s hermeneutics has also been influential as theoretical foundation for qualitative approaches within nursing science.
- 7.
Though the term is associated with Husserl, and Husserl adopted it as the name of his brand of philosophy, he did not coin the term. By the time of Husserl’s adoption of the term, it had already been in use for more than a century, including by prominent philosophers such as Hegel and Kant (Spiegelberg, 1982).
- 8.
In a similar way, through his reliance on Kant, Jakob von Uexküll has been criticized for his idealist outlook, which several contemporary semioticians with inclinations towards empirical science find problematic.
- 9.
Merleau-Ponty based substantial parts of his interpretation and further development of Husserl’s thoughts on the latter’s unpublished manuscripts. Through visits to the Husserl Archive in Louvain, Merleau-Ponty had access to several of these prior to their posthumous publication.
- 10.
The latter thus mostly takes the form of ‘philosophical phenomenology ’ without being properly informed by ‘scientific phenomenology’ in this context.
- 11.
It should be noted that the fact that unicellular organisms are proper subjects in this sense whereas plants and fungi are quasi-subjects does not imply that plants and fungi are less semiotically and phenomenologically complex than unicellular organisms. Usually, they engage in more complex biosemiosis.
- 12.
Their denial of any phenomena experienced by animals may be consistent with their possible acknowledgement of animal consciousness and subjectivity, provided that they regard only reflective self-consciousness as the subject matter of phenomenology and regard the human species as the only species endowed with reflective self-consciousness .
- 13.
In Husserl (1970) ‘Umwelt’ is consistently translated as ‘surrounding world’, cf. ibid.: 6, footnote. Although ‘Umwelt’ is also the German word for ‘environment’, in the quotation Husserl appears to use the term in von Uexküll’s sense rather than in the common sense.
- 14.
The same can probably be said about (Merleau-Ponty, 1962 [1945]).
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Sharov, A., Tønnessen, M. (2021). Phenomenology. In: Semiotic Agency. Biosemiotics, vol 25. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-89484-9_9
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