Ethics of Plants: Interconnections between Biosemiotics and Critical Plant Studies

The rise of the more-than-human characterises our era. Every day, we are surrounded by evidence that our planet is subject to different forces and agencies. Various entities, from animals to plants, act in their environments, changing and performing territories. This paper will analyse the biosemiotic vegetal agency and its ethical consequences. Starting from the biosemiotic approach and some phytosemiotic theories, I will show how critical plant studies, particularly plant ethics, can benefit from adopting a multidisciplinary viewpoint. Following the biosemiotic definition of agency, semiosphere, and semiotic freedom, vegetal action can be better grounded, and the intrinsic value of plants can be assessed more straightforwardly. This paper, therefore, aims to contribute to the communication between plant philosophy and biosemiotics, showing how biosemiotic theories can go beyond the purely semiotic field of study.