Yuhang Guo

Disaster semiotics occupies an intersection between biosemiotics and disaster studies. Contemporary scholarship, in establishing a connection between disaster and semiotics, often separates instrumental rationality from practical rationality within biosemiotic systems, while adopting deontology and utilitarianism as normative foundations for biosemiotic ethics. However, strong accountability fails to adequately recognize the ethical dimension of non-human semiotic processes, whereas weak accountability struggles to address ecological responsibility and the problem of meaning generation. Without confronting the deep-seated technological-linguistic hegemony embedded in human history, it is difficult to realize a life-centered maximization principle of happiness. This paper argues that a virtue-ethical disaster semiotics—characterized by the genuine circulation of meaning and grounded in the material and institutional infrastructures that regulate semiotic processes—should serve as the core framework of moral evaluation. Authentic semiotic relations not only explain disaster phenomena but also guide action under conditions of uncertainty. Human virtues include cultivating resilience among affected populations, as well as humanitarian attitudes and professional virtues among rescue workers. Political virtues include semiotic coordination oriented toward the public good, the cultivation and dissemination of practical wisdom, and the simultaneous development of justice and benevolence in disaster contexts. Finally, historical primacy requires responding to the phenomenon of voicelessness in digital disasters. Moral openness is manifested in the historical adaptability of semiotic practices, the physiological basis of perceptual conflict, and the multi-level responsive feedback mechanisms among living systems.

Contemporary debates in the source of normativity in machine ethics display a growing tendency to separate instrumental rationality from practical reason. The rationalist approach understands AI as an extension of the ideal rational agent, presupposing strong autonomy to ground normativity in internal coherence. Rationalist approaches exclude the possibility of understanding the external world through instrumental means and therefore fail to provide an adequate answer to the problem of normativity. The reasons why individuals act morally are not reducible to the validity of rational argumentation itself. Rather, any response to the problem of normativity must be grounded in respect for humanity and in the recognition of one’s own intrinsic value. The externalist approach treats machines as bearers or executors of moral law and can be divided into rigorist and teleological models. Yet, in both cases, AI is ultimately confined to an instrumental existence, and moral responsibility becomes difficult to sustain insofar as human agents are characterized by weak autonomy or problematized forms of autonomy. By invoking the Power of the Other in response to structural pressures in digital life, rather than compelling individuals to conform to algorithmic logic, this perspective promotes an open moral framework. It emphasizes ethical engagement grounded in relational awareness, enabling individuals to navigate the complexities of algorithmically mediated environments while maintaining attentiveness to the Other and the ethical significance of their actions.

Contemporary scholars often separate the instrumental rationality embodied in biosemiotic systems from practical rationality, adopting deontological and virtue-ethical frameworks as the normative basis for biosemiotic ethics. However, strong accountability models fail to recognize the ethical dimensions of non-human semiotic processes, while weak accountability models struggle to address genuine ecological responsibility and meaning generation. Without confronting the inherited techno-linguistic hegemonies embedded in human history, it is difficult to envision a shared good life oriented toward living beings. This article contends that a utilitarian semiotics—defined by the genuine circulation of meaning and grounded in the material and institutional substrates of semiotic regulation—ought to serve as a central framework for moral evaluation. Its framework does not presuppose consciousness or intention, but is manifested in the historical adaptability of semiotic behavior, the physiological basis of perceptual conflicts, and the multi-level response-feedback mechanisms among living systems.

© 2015 Macmillan Publishers Limited. Matrix stiffness potently regulates cellular behaviour in various biological contexts. In breast tumours, the presence of dense clusters of collagen fibrils indicates increased matrix stiffness and correlates with poor survival. It is unclear how mechanical inputs are transduced into transcriptional outputs to drive tumour progression. Here we report that TWIST1 is an essential mechanomediator that promotes epithelial-mesenchymal transition in response to increasing matrix stiffness. High matrix stiffness promotes nuclear translocation of TWIST1 by releasing TWIST1 from its cytoplasmic binding partner G3BP2. Loss of G3BP2 leads to constitutive TWIST1 nuclear localization and synergizes with increasing matrix stiffness to induce EMT and promote tumour invasion and metastasis. In human breast tumours, collagen fibre alignment, a marker of increasing matrix stiffness, and reduced expression of G3BP2 together predict poor survival. Our findings reveal a TWIST1-G3BP2 mechanotransduction pathway that responds to biomechanical signals from the tumour microenvironment to drive EMT, invasion and metastasis.