As our hope is that you are spending most of your time working on your papers this week, we'd understand if your twenty minute writes were a little less substantial this week. That said, we also hope you find Jakob von Uexkull's ideas interesting, so we'd like to hear what you think.
You know the drill.
kevin
UPDATE: several folks have reported problems posting. If you have trouble, please feel free to send your 20-minute write to me (kevin.maier@uas...) and I'll post it for you.
Also, both Kevin K and I have been called to an important meeting at 3:00, so our office hours will be short tomorrow. I can be in earlier if you'd like to meet. Again, drop me an e-mail.
Jack
ReplyDeleteDon’t Eat Peas Next to a Sunny Window Sill (pg. 37)
While I would guess the intent is to move forward with this new material, by introducing the concepts of space (the soap bubble), receptor time, and perceptual cues, Jakob Von Uexkull has added depth to the difference between the previous arguments we have covered to date (i.e. might these concepts change the definition of the Corporeal Soul? Would a combination of these concepts affect our consciousness? How are the other categories affected?). I would be interested in hearing how others thought these concepts fit into earlier arguments.
I would suggest that the information introduced this week helps further split the ‘Compare Like Animals – Don’t Compare Like Animals’ arguments the most. Marks, Sartre, and Darwin – all of whom I believe to be opponents of the idea that we should actively pursue comparisons of man to other species, would most certainly agree that it makes even less sense to compare two different species if they are operating with a different concept of space, time, and perceptual cues……what’s the point. What would be the arguments from Wright, Descartes, and Dennett - all believing it to be OK to compare unlike animals? Would they believe Uexkull’s ideas further shrink-or-expand the gap in that argument.
Sartre, Hume, Darwin, Ryle, and Nagel seem pretty convinced that the immortal soul argument is hogwash, yet Descartes and perhaps Dennett’s ‘intentional state’ ideas (as well as his book title) have them in the other camp. Does the information Von Uexkull introduces change the arguments of anyone here? Are these concepts only applicable to the Corporeal Soul? (I would suggest it furthers the split between the two ‘camps’ by pushing those already disagreeing with the consciousness argument even further from it).
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
ReplyDeleteFebruary 24, 2009
ReplyDeleteJohn S. Sonin
Eng. 418—Blog 6
Von Uexkull did a marvelous job of creating a line of explication for the literal relationships internalized to our umwelt. I’m always intrigued by a thought processes that requires stretching my imagination. It’s likely that my sensitivity to attitudes of conscious minds communing with me turned me off to Uexkull’s ideas with his second sentence when he referred to “lowly dwellers of the meadow.” I’m of the firm belief that unless we get-out of ourselves’ will never get off this dead-end vector trying to resolve the eternal conflict—it’s irreconcilable—and his unintentional self-introduction as a bigoted, judgmental egotist set the stage for my skepticism: Talk about a self-consumed LSD trip!
My first read of Gregory Bateson also demanded I shift my center of logic, not just stretch my imagination but find a new center. On the other hand, Bateson’s words didn’t inspire pitiful antipathy for Uexkull and his “soap bubble.” I believe the issue of self-awareness can be resolved by projecting our “out”welt “(surely there’s a German word but I didn’t catch it so “environment” may have to do) into our umwelt. When we try cognize the outer-world as an extension of our inner, we end-up with his kind of convoluted prose, unnecessarily confusing the subject to the point of inefficiency, unwarranted cognitive coercion and, ultimately, wastefulness of energy (the universal aberration), if this twisting of perception produces no insight.
I do vaguely recall as a youngster having irreconcilable visual perceptions, but it’s just as likely my eye’s had not yet fully crystallized. And his scaling with physical dimensions for unquantifiable optical illusions, like the distance of a ‘blank stare’, evoked some unfamiliar spatial relationships, and I’ve certainly experienced time in ways only my subjective point of view could be responsible for, but doesn’t philosophy have some kind of rule of parsimony?
I always knew that the human eye had a limit to how many frames per second it could view, but I always thought it was something like 25-30, not 18. Boy does this have implications, I think, other than it being totally neat.
ReplyDeleteIf all of our senses process data in 1/18 second "moments," then quantifying human experience is suddenly feasible. I have 1080 sensational "moments" in a minute, 64,800 in an hour, 1,555,200 in a day, 567,648,000 in a year, and assuming I live another 70 years, only 39,735,360,000 of those moments left! I feel as if I've already wasted the 13,055,904,000 moments I've already experienced...
Anyhoo, now when someone wastes my time, I have an objective baseline to refer to when I demand compensation.
All joking aside, the fact that different animals have different "moment" lengths means we may be able to figure out how to (subjectively) slow down time. Imagine being able to inject yourself with a chemical to make your "moment" last 1/50 of a second—you'd be better at everything from shooting enemy soldiers to soldering circuit boards. And if you were having fun time would fly at a slower pace.
I wonder, too, what role adrenaline plays. We've all experienced a scary or exciting moment where time seemed to slow down, so I wonder if our "moment" becomes shorter than 1/18 of a second during these instances. I'd like to see tests done on this subject. I know I've never suddenly been able to see the frames switching on a television when I was scared shitless, but television in the U.S. also runs at 30 frames per second, so unless my "moment" shortened to less than that I wouldn't have noticed.
Also, what about sleep? Or alcohol abuse? I don't feel like 8 hours have passed when I go to sleep (or 5-6 as is usually the case). Some people drink so much they blackout and don't experience time at all. Could it be that "moments" simply reflect the ability of the brain to record memories? If I don't remember an event, it's as if it never happened. Similarly, if I remember 18 moments of an event it seems shorter than if I remember 1080 moments. So maybe these "moments" are simply the way the brain encodes information.
Von Uexkull, brings up an interesting point as to the subjective perception of ones enviornment. He provides overwhelming examples in attempt to explain this theory, almost as if he knows the reader won't get the point from the first, or even third example. He does do a good job of building on his idea with the use of varying complex examples. He takes the idea that Nagel provided of the impossibility of understanding "what it is like to be a bat," and actually attempts to answer this. He does accept the subjectivity of this understanding however. An important point in this venture. For as he says, towards the end, "Should one attempt to combine her objective qualities, chaos would ensue." The objective qualities he reffers to are of course each organisms subjective perception of their environment. There is no overall objectibve reality. Or is there? If there is can it be perceived?
ReplyDelete-Taylor
All I can think of in response to Uexkull’s piece this week is what’s the point. After reading the majority of the 80 assigned pages, I’m left with the sense that I knew this all before, now I just know it in a more articulated sense. We all experience things differently – not just time and space, but also experiences, emotions, etc – however, how does this relate to our attitudes towards animals. I think we can all recognize the fallacy behind anthropomorphizing and also the potential benefits, which is why it is so hard to place ourselves animals’ shoes or rather tracks; we cannot try to view a bat’s perspective from a human point of view because he has a different umwelt, however, sometimes the only way we can relate to another animal, even another human, is by trying to picture what their umwelt might be and then picture how we would react or feel under those pretenses.
ReplyDeleteTo me, the most intriguing part of A Stroll Through the Worlds of Animals and Men was the distinction made between the way physiologists and biologists view the world. Although the argument was for the opposite view, that section actually made it more clear to me why Descartes would approach his studies of Animals the way that he did.
ReplyDeleteThe umwelt concept is very interesting to me. It seems to encapsulate the distinction that Chalmers made in last weeks reading between subjective and objective experiences. As my blog post last week probably made clear (even if I may have misinterpreted Chalmer’s view a little bit), I don’t see how anything could have any experiences that aren’t, to some degree at least, subjective.
The only argument against the idea of umwelt that I can see, then, is the thought that there is no ‘thing’ to have any type of experience at all. Here, I’m obviously talking about Dennett’s scathing response to the Chalmers article. To me, they’re both legitimate positions and, as radically different as they are, I could very easily see myself on either side.
Mostly, I’m at the place right now where the answers to our questions about animals are starting to seem blurrier rather than clearer. Studies on test taking say that a total novice or a complete expert should always go with their initial response. On the contrary, these studies claim, people in the middle, that don’t know as much as experts, but know more than a novice (i.e. my situation right now on the topic of animals) should second guess themselves and reason through the problem. First instincts are often wrong with this group, but second guesses aren’t especially reliable either. A decision for someone in this group – like the decision I’m trying to come to of whether I agree more with Dennett or Uexkull – is basically just a crapshoot. That is the position that I am in right now; I could just as easily see myself on either side of the fence.
Right now, however, I find myself more persuaded by the biologists’ way of thinking about animals, and I think that this is the side that I naturally lean toward. I don’t really see any grounds to throw out Dennett’s argument, and am even persuaded by it sometimes, but I don’t think that I want him to be right.
Maybe it’s because of my own subjective experience. I can’t understand what I, or any human, would be if it wasn’t anything to “be like” me. It is almost impossible to think of anything else acting in the same way, because I don’t have any idea what it is like to be nothing. Even what I try to think about or act like nothing would, I find that I can’t do it without thinking or acting. I don’t understand this concept because it’s so paradoxical with my specific umwelt, which makes me lean toward that theory, but I am anything but sure at this point.
I am enjoying that others here are viewing this last reading as a waystation as well. A time to rest and reflect on all we have looked into.
ReplyDeleteIn considering much of what we have read before, a recurring central question tends to defining consciousness and philosophy of mind. At this point, I am tasting sauces, smelling spices, and generally contemplating the stew ahead that I preparing for.
What Uexkull has given me pause about was his final words of caution- the contradictions of differing sciences and the difficulty in resolving their conflicts regarding 'Nature'. Much like the incompatibility of physics, there is a macro and a micro and as of now, the twain have difficulty meeting.
It is interesting to note that a cursory search leads to a series of explorations of Artificial Intelligence that explores Uexkull and applies his theories to cognitive science and AI research. From its beginnings, these areas were dominated by the computer analogy of the mind. By using his research on the understanding of minds and meanings there is explorations into these newish theoretical realms that are refreshing due to the previous roadblocks of the [I]internalist trap[/I]. Fun article and I will read Uexkull again because of it.
Brian Nichols
ReplyDeleteEnglish 418
Maier/Krein
Umwelt
Uexkull essay put forth the idea that all animals, humans included, have different perceptions of the environment that surround them. Uexkull argued that these different perceptions were a product of the reflex arc, in which, each species have different sorts of receptor cells, sensory cells, and effecter cells. Since each species is unique in its anatomy and physiology, their responses to external stimulus is different as well. An animal’s response to the environment is its Umwelt.
Each animal’s Umwelt was different in that they perceived only stimulus that is useful to them. Uexkull called this functional tone. For example, in a room man well perceive all items that are useful to him-chairs, table, glasses, plates, books…etc. But, a dog, would only perceive the chairs, glass, and plates because it can sit in the chair and drink or eat from the cups or plates. The dog, however, cannot read books nor have use of a table so it would not perceive these items.
I also enjoyed the section about the magic Umwelten. Uexkull tells how children often live in magic worlds. For example, a girl might see the witch from the fairy tale Hansel and Gretel in her Umwelt. To an adult such a sight would be discarded as imagination and not of the real world. Adults see the world in a way they believe to be reality but is this not just one way of looking at the world? Uexkull essay has shown that other animals see the world differently and he further argues so do other people. For example he states, "explorers have often come upon experiences of this kind among primitive people. It is maintained that they live in a magic world where fantastic phenomena mingle with the perceptually given things around them” (67). As we discussed in class Uexkull used these examples to show that different animals perceive reality according to their own needs.
Given the discussion from last week: "Who cares about Jakob von Uexkull," I thought that the most intriguing part of the reading for this week was John Berger’s discussion of anthropomorphism: “Until the nineteenth century, however, anthropomorphism was integral to the relation between man and animal and was an expression of their proximity.”
ReplyDeleteI find this interesting, because I almost never hear anthropomorphism addressed in a positive way, but here it is. And in many ways, that makes more sense to me. We tend to think that by understanding everything else in terms of ourselves, we are somehow doing a disservice by not respecting the individuality or distinctness or something of different objects and species. But what are the implications of sitting back (ala Nagel) and saying “Animals are too different from us to even begin to understand”? I’m sure Nagel would hold that, despite not being able to understand animals, we can be ‘morally certain’ about them (maybe the only thing that he and Dennett would ever agree on), but if animals are nothing like us, why would we extend them the same rights as other humans? To me it is similar to the paradox that arises with the fact that Descartes never advocated doing any harm to animals – if animals are like machines, why wouldn’t we treat them like machines?!?
And even if what Nagel claims is true, what good does it do to acknowledge it? If we can’t understand animals in terms of themselves, why not understand them in terms of ourselves? Even if thinking about animals like humans is not correct, it preserves the sort of moral integrity that seems universally recognized. We think that we are somehow harming animals by understanding them in terms of ourselves, but in the end, I can’t see what harm we are actually doing. If in the past, anthropomorphism represented a closeness of us and the animals, I can’t understand why it would represent human arrogance now. Emphasizing the differences rather than the similarities between humans and animals comes when we criticize anthropomorphism. The real harm comes when we treat them as different from us altogether, because how are you supposed to treat a different thing?