Guest lecture by Jordan Zlatev (Lund University) on the connections between phenomenology and cognitive semiotics in the study of the life world

On 15 October at 10:15, Jordan Zlatev will give a guest lecture titled 'Phenomenology and Cognitive Semiotics in an Extended Life World'. Zlatev is a professor at Lund University, one of the leading cognitive semioticians in the world and one of the foremost semioticians in Sweden.

Abstract

In his co-authored recent work, Zlatev has proposed reconciling the perspectives of cognitive semiotics and biosemiotics by endorsing an extended, non-anthropocentric notion of the life world (Lebenwelt), one of the key concepts of phenomenology (Zlatev & Mouratidou 2024). They approached this by applying the cognitive-semiotic principle of cognitive semiotics, phenomenological triangulation, along two planes, following and elaborating a proposal of Sonesson (2022). The first plane is ontological and concerns the dimensions of Self, Others and Things. The second is epistemological, and deals with the way phenomena are accessed: from a First-person (transcendental), Second-person (empirical in a qualitative sense) and Third-person (scientific in a quantitative sense) perspective. 

On the basis of this analysis, Zlatev argues that:

(1) the life world is co-constituted by a plurality of subjects in intersubjectivity; 

(2) the encounter between with Others is not only ontological and ethical, but also allows an epistemological distance via the Second-person perspective and 

(3) the scientific detached “world view” is still a view “from somewhere”, presupposing dependence on the previous two perspectives, 

(4) with each of the three epistemological perspectives, the life world becomes correspondingly extended, and is thus neither static nor confining, 

(5) it is not anthropocentric, since on each of the three levels, the Other does not necessarily need to be another human being, but rather a non-human animal.

Jordan Zlatev is the opponent of Oscar Salvador Miyamoto Gomez's doctoral thesis, “The Forms of Memory: Biosemiotic Modelling of Alloanimal Episodic Semiosis. " The thesis will be defended on 14 October at 12:15 in Senate Room (Ülikooli 18- 204) and can also be followed on Zoom.

Sonesson, G. (2022). Cognitive Science and Semiotics. In J. Pelkey (Ed.), Bloomsbury semiotics Volume 4: Semiotic movements (pp. 293-312). Bloomsbury Academic.

Zlatev, J., Mouratidou, A. (2024) Extending the Life World: Phenomenological Triangulation Along Two Planes. Biosemiotics (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12304-024-09576-9