Since the multi-scalarity of life encompasses bodies, language and human experience, Timo Järvilehto’s (1998) ‘one-system’ view can be applied to acts of meaning, knowing and ethics. Here, I use Paul Cobley’s Cultural Implications of Biosemiotics (2016) to explore a semiotic construal of such a position. Interpretation, he argues, shows symbolic, indexical and iconic ‘layers’ of living. While lauding Cobley’s breadth of vision, as a linguist, I baulk at linking ‘knowing’ too closely with the ‘symbolic’ qua what can be said, diagrammed or signed. This is because, given first-order experience (which can be deemed indexical/iconic), humans use observations (by others and self) to self-construct as embodied individuals. While symbolic semiosis matters, I trace it to, not languaging, but the rise of literacy, graphics and pictorial art. Unlike Chomsky and Deely, I find no epigenic break between the symbolic and the iconic/indexical. The difference leads one to ontology. I invite the reader to consider, if, as Cobley suggests, meaning depends on modelling systems (with ententional powers) and/or if, as Gibson prefers, we depend on encounters with whatever is out-there. Whereas Cobley identifies the semiotic with the known, for others, living beings actively apprehend what is observable (for them). Wherever the reader stands, I claim that all one-system views fall in line with Cobley’s ‘anti-humanist’ challenge. Ethics, he argues, can only arise from participating in the living. Knowing, and coming to know, use repression and selection that can only be captured by non-disciplinary views of meaning. As part of how life and language unfold, humans owe a duty of care to all of the living world: hence, action is needed now.

Key words: biosemiotics, enactivism, ecological psychology, distributed language, dialogism, biology of cognition, biology of meaning, semiotics, philosophy of language, pragmatics, ecolinguistics

It is shown that the definition of the subject area of Haugenian ecolinguistics is methodologically inconsistent because of the implicit biomorphic metaphor, the language myth, and indiscrimination between the two different approaches to language known as cognitive internalism and cognitive externalism. A more consistent definition of language ecology is given, based on the biology of cognition as a theory of living systems; consequently, the subject area of ecolinguistics is defined differently, with a focus on the nature and function of language as a mode of organization of the living system (society) and its role in the development of the brain, thought, and mind. Relevance: Language ecology is defined, based on the biology of cognition