Burghardt Paper Earns Biosemiotics Award
Burghardt paper on interpreting animal behavior earns Biosemiotics Award for 2024.
Professor Emeritus Gordon Burghardt received the 2024 Biosemiotics Achievement Award for his contribution to a special issue of Biosemiotics, titled “Jakob von Uexküll, heterophenomenology, and behavior systems I: Core ethology and Merleau-Ponty.”
In the special issue, Umwelt Theory and Phenomenology, Burghardt’s winning paper compares early philosophical ideas from Maurice Merleau-Ponty with Jakob von Uexküll’s theories and contemporary studies in animal behavior. He argues that phenomenology—the study of subjective experience—should include observations of animal behavior and use critical anthropomorphism—interpreting animal actions while being mindful of human biases—to better understand their mental lives.
Historically, behaviorists have focused on observable behaviors and conditioning with the idea that sensory cues played a role in instinctive actions but have not taken into account the deeper experiential worlds of animals. Burghardt examines contemporary research that shows studying these cues can provide insights into the private experiences of different species.
This award was established in 2014 at the annual meeting of the International Society for Biosemiotic Studies (ISBS) in conjunction with Springer Publishing, publishers of Biosemiotics, the society’s official journal. The award recognizes papers published in the journal that present novel and relevant contributions to the ongoing project of biosemiotic research, its scientific impact and its future prospects.
By Randall Brown