Dear Mara, lists, Thank you for a thought-provoking question.
The immediate answer is that the Umwelt is a concept on the species level addressing the parts of organism environment which may enter into perception or action connections to the organism. While Universe of Discourse is a concept on the organism level, pertaining to the horizon of objects and relations presupposed by any particular proposition in a given context. But this is only a textbook answer. The former concept comes from Uexküll biology and has, as its prototypical instance, simple organisms (Uexküll's famous tick) where every part of the Umwelt has an immediate, pretty fixed biological meaning. The second comes from logic and later linguistics and has, as its prototypical instance, propositions and human conversation. Both, however, have been extrapolated considerably from their prototypes which is why Mara's question becomes relevant. Where, if at all, do the two meet? The extrapolation of the Umwelt from the tick example to higher animals immediately has to give up the assumption that every aspect of the Umwelt is immediately meaningful - cf. Uexküll's discussion of "neutral objects" in Theoretische Biologie. When do such objects appear in evolution? - at least in animals which have the possibility of constructing an ever so rudimentary mental map of their surroundings, stable from one situation to the next (such a map must consist of related neutral objects not immediately calling for action, like trees, stones, landmarks). In such a mental map, biologically relevant Umwelt objects will, of course, have privileged positions (this is where I found food, this is where I encountered a predator, etc.). But such maps are, of course, individual, and are established in each organism during ontogenetic lifetime. This takes them close to the extrapolation, from the other side, of the Universe of Discourse concept. Are the male and female fireflies, signaling in order to meet, sharing a Universe of Discourse, involving an area with airspace and vegetation, certain other animals, certan signals with certain meanings, etc.? I think you could say so. In that case, I would say that the Umwelt and the Universe of Discourse meet in higher animals. Maybe we could say that the Umwelt remains on the species level, containing all types which may be perceived and enacted by a typical specimen of that species - while the Universe of Discourse saturates that specific Umwelt with local, particular information involving facts on the ground as involved by this or that particular specimen of the species? Best F Den 14/11/2014 kl. 21.44 skrev Mara Woods <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>>: What I am curious about in this section is how the Universe of Discourse concept overlaps with Umwelt theory. For one, it is clear from Stjernfelt's words that he sees the Universe of Discourse as a restriction on the referent objects of discourse. In Umwelt theory, though, it is not just that a species only attends to certain dynamic objects in the environment. All perception and interaction with the environment is already loaded with meaning. It seems that the limitation of an Umwelt is not just on what objects can be detected by a perceptual apparatus but rather what meaning the objects have or potentially could have for the animal. In Uexkull's work this is mediated by the functional tone of the object -- the "what can I do with this"-ness that the object radiates with from the point of view of the perceiver. Thus, if anything, a Universe of Discourse would be the subset of Immediate Objects, the signs of which are picked up because of the framing or priming effects of the interpretants rising from the animal's Innenwelt. I wonder the indexical relation that the immediate object has with the proposition (the perception-action cycle in question) could be said to point to an iconic relation in the Innenwelt between the physiological goals and the psychological drives of the animal. Regardless, a Universe of Discourse would not be limited only by the set of possible dynamic objects but also which interpretants are applicable to the discourse in the first place. This may be domain specific (e.g., the concept of "subject" in the various disciplines, or framing or priming effects of the previous thought) or level specific (e.g., explaining an inference chain to a first year university student or to an expert in the discipline) or application specific (e.g., having a casual conversation versus a problem solving discussion). Whether the immediate objects produced by these different Universes of Discourse may be intelligently brought together to form a referent to the same dynamic object is another issue. In any case, given that Umwelt theory does see the Umwelt as already populated with meaning, or at least counterpoints to meaning "inside" the organism, I am a little concerned that the ventral-dorsal split discussion in NP has the organism scanning the entire perceptual field for "things out there" for further processing without considering the internal affective or even functional need to go looking for somethings out there. Wouldn't we expect that the search image have some influence on which "that out there" is selected/prioritized for further detailed processing? Isn't that what makes objects in the Umwelt always have functional meaning, i.e., the lack of neutral objects in non-human species? In other words, wouldn't the Subjects of these natural propositions already be laden with some type of Predicate -- e.g., danger/GET AWAY FROM -- to enter the Innenwelt at all?
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