World, environment, umwelt, and inner-world: A biological perspective on visual awareness

World, environment, umwelt, and inner-world: A biological perspective on visual awareness

Koenderink, J.J.

Industrial Design Engineering

Industrial Design

2013-12-31

The world is all physical reality (Higgs bosons, and so forth), the environment is a geographical locality (your city, . . . ), the "Umwelt" is the totality of possible actions of the environment on the sensitive body surface of an agent (you, your dog, . . . ) and the possible actions of the agent on the environment (mechanical, chemical, . . . ), whereas the "inner-world" is what it is for the agent to be, that is awareness. Awareness is pre-personal, proto-conscious, and (perhaps) proto-rational. The various "worlds" described above are on distinct ontological levels. The world, and the environment are studied in the exact sciences, the Umwelt is studied by physiology and ethology. Ethology is like behavioristic psychology, with the difference that it applies to all animals. It skips the inner-world, e.g., it considers speech to be a mere movement of air molecules. The inner-world can only be known through first person reports, thus is intrinsically subjective. It can only be approached through "experimental phenomenology", which is based on intersubjectivity among humans. In this setting speech may perhaps mean something in addition to the movements of air molecules. These views lead to a model of vision as an "optical user interface". This has consequences for numerous applications.

Umwelt
ecological niche
inner world
awareness
experimental phenomenology
user interfaces

http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:ac717d9f-fad1-46f6-84b0-66439afd6372

https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2011874

SPIE

9780819494245

Proceedings of SPIE, vol. 8651

Institutional Repository

conference paper

(c) 2013 Koenderink, J.J. and SPIE