TY - GEN
T1 - World, environment, Umwelt, and innerworld: a biolocical perspective on visual awareness.
AU - Koenderink, J.J.
N1 - 8651
PY - 2013
Y1 - 2013
N2 - 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 “innerworld” 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 innerworld, e.g., it considers speech to be a movement of air molecules.The innerworld 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 mean something in addition to the movements of molecules. These views lead to a model of vision as an “optical user interface”. It has consequences for many applications. © (2013) COPYRIGHT Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE). Downloading of the abstract is permitted for personal use only.
AB - 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 “innerworld” 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 innerworld, e.g., it considers speech to be a movement of air molecules.The innerworld 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 mean something in addition to the movements of molecules. These views lead to a model of vision as an “optical user interface”. It has consequences for many applications. © (2013) COPYRIGHT Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE). Downloading of the abstract is permitted for personal use only.
U2 - 10.1117/12.2011874
DO - 10.1117/12.2011874
M3 - Conference contribution
SN - 9780819494245
T3 - Proceedings of SPIE
BT - Human Vision and Electronic Imaging XVIII
A2 - Rogowitz , Bernice E.
A2 - Pappas , Thrasyvoulos N.
A2 - Ridder , Huib de
PB - SPIE
ER -