Sign Systems Studies 39(1), 2011 Axiomatizing umwelt normativity Marc Champagne Department of Philosophy, York University 4700 Keele, Toronto, Canada M3J 1P3 e-mail:
[email protected] Abstract. Prompted by the thesis that an organism’s umwelt possesses not just a descriptive dimension, but a normative one as well, some have sought to annex semiotics with ethics. Yet the pronouncements made in this vein have consisted mainly in rehearsing accepted moral intuitions, and have failed to concretely fur- ther our knowledge of why or how a creature comes to order objects in its environ- ment in accordance with axiological charges of value or disvalue. For want of a more explicit account, theorists writing on the topic have relied almost exclusively on semiotic insights about perception originally designed as part of a sophisti- cated refutation of idealism. The end result, which has been a form of direct given- ness, has thus been far from convincing. In an effort to bring substance to the right-headed suggestion that values are rooted in the biological and conform to species-specific requirements, we present a novel conception that strives to make explicit the elemental structure underlying umwelt normativity. Building and expanding on the seminal work of Ayn Rand in metaethics, we describe values as an intertwined lattice which takes a creature’s own embodied life as its ultimate standard; and endeavour to show how, from this, all subsequent valuations can in principle be determined. 10 Marc Champagne No animal will ever leave its Umwelt space, the center of which is the animal itself. (Jakob von Uexküll 2001[1936]: 109) I wished to find a warrant for being.