i’m lookin at my roomies dog and if his ‘world’ is 90% smells and mine is 90% visuals, we aren’t even living in the same reality, yeah?
it’s kind of a trip to think that there isn’t just one ‘real’ world sitting out there, just a bunch of different versions depending on whos looking
This applies to humans as well. We view the world through the lens of our past experiences and the language(s) we have to reflect on those experiences. On broad terms we have “consensus reality” (which is frequently confused with “objectivity”) most people agree on but seeing as there isn’t an universal language that perfectly captures human experience, we do live in subtly different realities. Or sometimes dramatically different ones.
I always wondered if the shape and size of your ears and nose etc change the way you register smells and hear sounds. Like your hearing isn’t the same as the person next to you etc.
Sort of like how different radar arrays are shaped different and pick up different frequencies differently etc.
The article’s illustrations suggest that feedback cycles were an important part of von Uexküll’s theory, but the text of the article never mentions it. Is that an aspect that got dropped from the theory later on?
I think the Wikipedia summary might be incomplete. Feedback cycles are central to von Uexküll’s theory. He described the Umwelt as a dynamic process where an organism’s sense organs pick up cues from the environment, leading to actions that change the environment, which in turn creates new cues.
This would be a deeper dive: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/380319292_The_circulation_of_meaning_a_biosemiotic_perspective_on_the_functional_circle
Thinking about how animals experience life is very interesting, so I looked deeper into than the Wikipedia article. I do not regret it.
Luhmann, Hegel, and a secret third thing mixed into one.
secret third thing??
There is something lodged in my mind but I’m not able to really put my finger on it
