Semiotic Agency

Alexei Sharov, Ph.D., retired from the staff scientist position at the US National Institute on Aging, NIH. He is currently a Vice President in Bioinformatics at Elixirgen Scientific Inc. (Baltimore, USA). Since 2013 he serves as an Editor-in-Chief for the journal Biosemiotics, and from 2015 - as an editor of the Book Series in Biosemiotics (Springer). He was a member of the Research Group on Theoretical Biology at Moscow State University (Russia), organized seminars and two conferences on biosemiotics, and has awards for research in forest ecology, USA. He has published two books (in Russian) and edited two special issues in scientific journals and a book “Habitability of the Universe before Earth” (2018). Among his over 160 peer-reviewed publications, the following articles explore foundations of the concept of semiotic agency: “Functional information” (2010), “Protosemiosis: agency with reduced representation capacity” (2015, with Vehkavaara), “Evolutionary biosemiotics and multilevel construction networks” (2016), “Composite agency: semiotics of modularity and guiding interactions” (2017), and “Mind, agency, and biosemiotics” (2018). Morten Tønnessen, Ph.D., is Professor of philosophy and Head of department at the Department of social studies, University of Stavanger, Norway. He is currently the President of the Nordic Association for Semiotic Studies (NASS), and a member of Norway´s Council for animal ethics. In the period 2013–2019, he served as an Editor-in-Chief for the journal Biosemiotics. In his biosemiotic research, Tønnessen has particularly been engaged in discussing, criticizing and applying the Umwelt theory of Jakob von Uexküll, aiming to make Umwelt theory more applicable in contemporary times. Key texts in this regard include “Umwelt ethics” (2003), “Umwelt transitions: Uexküll and environmental change” (2009), “Steps to a semiotics of being” (2010), “Umwelt trajectories” (2014) and “Introduction: The relevance of Uexküll's Umwelt theory today” (2015).

Chapter1. Introduction.- Chapter2. Historical Overview of Developments of the Notion of Agency.- Chapter3. Human Agency.- Chapter4. Agency in Non-Human Organisms.- Chapter5. Origins of Life.- Chapter6. Conceptualizing Agency.- Chapter7. Semiosis.- Chapter8. Semiogenesis.- Chapter9  Phenomenology.- Chapter10. Composite Agency and Semiotics of Modularity.- Chapter11. Human Agency and Ecology.- Chapter12. Agentology: Crosspollination of Science and Philosophy.