Essays on William James, Alfred N. Whitehead and Jakob von Uexküll: Experience, Process, Meaning

This collection of essays highlights a triangulation between the respective works of William James, Alfred N. Whitehead, and Jakob von Uexküll. As the result of the author’s research on these three authors, the essays may interest a diverse audience not only in philosophy, particularly philosophy of mind and epistemology, but also in biosemiotics and ecological psychology. Considered a central concept throughout all the essays, “meaning” represents the point of triangulation between James, Whitehead, and Uexküll. Unlike the main trends of thought throughout the 20th century (phenomenology, hermeneutics, and analytic philosophy), the author explores the notion of meaning as a process: a dynamic process that unfolds in certain contexts and forms of both non-human and human life. Thus, to the extent that the author understands meaning as a process of transition between the non-living and the living, meaning becomes the central element of these essays, from which the following maxim emerges: where there is life, there is meaning (and conversely).