Tripartite Umwelt model applied and further developed in ecocriticism MA thesis of Hernández

Mauricio Sánchez Hernández has written the master thesis "Mariposas imaginando árboles de oyamel: Representaciones literarias del umwelt de la monarca migrante y del humano en la ecoliteratura de Homero Aridjis" (in Spanish) at University of Oslo. He refers quite extensively to an article, especially with regard to the tripartite Umwelt model:

Tønnessen, Morten (2015). “Umwelt and language”. En: E. Velmezova, Stephen J. Cowley y K. Kull (eds.), Biosemiotic Perspectives on Language and Linguistics (Biosemiotics 13): 77-96. DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-20663-9_5

The thesis includes a section numbered 2.2.2 and named "El modelo tripartito del umwelt según Tønnessen". Hernández also further develops diagrams based on the tripartite Umwelt model, cf. below (imagen 5, p. 21, imagen 6, p. 21, imagen 7, p. 22).

Tripartite Umwelt model applied in Jeremy Lent´s Berkeley presentation

In his talk at the 18th Gathering in Biosemiotics today (held at UC Berkeley), "“The Tao in one’s own nature”: The congruence of Asian wisdom traditions and cognitive neuroscience in identifying the source and implications of human uniqueness", Jeremy Lent made extensive reference to, or rather use of, my workshop presentation (Language and life workshop, Tartu 2012) "The conceptual Umwelt and its role in the tripartite model of the human Umwelt".

Search image article accepted for publication in BioSystems

I have been notified that my article "The search image as link between sensation, perception and action" has been accepted for publication in BioSystems´ special issue in code biology.

In the round of revisions, I made this figure illustrating the workings of search images, on request by a peer-reviewer:

Abstract for 1st code biology conference: "Codes and interpretation in perception"

Yesterday I submitted the abstract below to the 1st International Conference in Code Biology (Paris, France, May 21-23, 2014).

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Codes and interpretation in perception

Morten Tønnessen, Associate professor at University of Stavanger’s Department of health studies 

In this talk I present work in progress on the role of interpretation vs. codes in perception, where perception is understood in terms of coherent (unified) subjective experience. I follow Jakob von Uexküll (1956, cf. 2010) in assuming that all organisms except plants and fungi have such coherent, unified subjective experience (i.e. Umwelt experience). 

My starting point is the tripartite Umwelt model (Tønnessen 2011), according to which any Umwelt has two aspects (core and mediated) and some have three (including conceptual). In Tønnessen, forthcoming, I outline the workings of the Umwelt in terms of these three aspects in more detail. We can generally conceive of six types, or categories, of acts, and these can be located within the three different aspects of the Umwelt: 

 Core Umwelt

- Automated acts of perception 

- Automated mental acts

Mediated Umwelt 

- Wilful acts of perception 

 - Wilful mental acts

Conceptual Umwelt    

- Habitual acts of perception 

- Habitual mental acts  

By automated, I mean the exact and physiologically based matching of something with something else, by wilful I mean the agenda- and interest-driven matching of something with something else, and by habitual I mean the learned matching of something with something else. Whereas conscious animals carry out all six types of acts, non-conscious creatures, in so far as they perceive, only carry out two, namely automated and wilful acts of perception. Habitual, i.e. conceptual acts are reserved for conscious creatures, but even bacteria can carry out wilful acts of perception, i.e. make choices based on interpretation. 

In general terms automated acts can be said to be code-based, whereas both wilful and habitual acts are interpretation-based. An implication of this claim is that the core Umwelt is generally code-based, and that the mediated Umwelt and the conceptual Umwelt are interpretation-based. If this is correct, the interpretive threshold is not located where animals with a nervous system meet creatures without a nervous system, nor where the biotic meets the abiotic. Instead, the interpretive threshold must be located where core experience meets mediated experience (and since these aspects often intermingle, the dividing line is not in plain sight). 

Questions for further investigation include the following: Can coding in automated acts of perception and in automated mental acts be understood within the framework of code biology (Barbieri, de Beule and Hofmeyr 2014)? Particularly, can they be understood as organic codes? While I have only begun reflecting on the notion of code itself, I will relate codes in perception as presented here to the notions of a neural code and of ecological codes. 

Acknowledgement: The research leading to these results received funding from the Norway Financial Mechanism 2009-2014 under project contract no EMP151, “Animals in changing environments: Cultural mediation and semiotic analysis”. 

References

Barbieri, Marcello, Joachim de Beule and Jan-Hendrik Hofmeyr 2014. “Code biology: A glossary of terms and concepts”. URL: http://www.codebiology.org/glossary.html.

Tønnessen 2011. Umwelt Transition and Uexküllian Phenomenology – An Ecosemiotic Analysis of Norwegian Wolf Management (= Dissertationes Semioticae Universitatis Tartuensis 16). Doctoral dissertation. Tartu: Tartu University Press. 232 pp. Introduction available online.

Tønnessen, Morten, forthcoming. „Umwelt and language“. Cahiers de l’ILSL[l'Institut de Linguistique et des Sciences du Langage], special issue „Biosemiotic perspectives in linguistics“, edited by Ekaterina Velmezova, Stephen Cowley and Kalevi Kull.

Uexküll, Jakob von, 1956 [1934/1940]: Streifzüge durch die Umwelten von Tieren und Menschen: Ein Bilderbuch unsichtbarer Welten. Bedeutungslehre. Hamburg: Rowohlt.

Uexküll, Jakob von, 2010: A Foray into the Worlds of Animals and Humans with a Theory of Meaning. Trans. of Uexküll 1956 [1934, 1940] by Joseph D. O’Neil. Minneapolis: University of Minneapolis Press.

"Umwelt and language" completed, to appear in Cahiers de l'ILSL

About four weeks ago I finished my article "Umwelt and language", which is to appear this autumn in a special issue of the Swiss journal Cahiers de l'ILSL [l'Institut de Linguistique et des Sciences du Langage] on biosemiotic perspectives on language guest-edited by Ekaterina Velmezova, Stephen Cowley and Kalevi Kull.

Contents:

1. Introduction

2. 'I language, therefore I model'

2.1 Uexküll and language

2.2 Is language external or internal to the Umwelt? 

2.3 The tripartite Umwelt model

3. Languaging as perception, action and self-deception

3.1 Languaging is more-than-linguistic

3.2 Language and self-deception: The anthropocentric mistake

3.3 In search of the dark matter of our enlightened worlds

4. The genesis and modalities of language

4.1 Origin and evolution of language

4.2 Acquisition of language in childhood

4.3 The various linguistic modalities of the human Umwelt

5. Beyond the anthropocentric mistake: Languaging as if nature mattered

Abstract

It is often asserted that the existence of human language sets us apart from non-humans, and makes us incomparably special. And indeed human language does make our Umwelt (Uexküll), our lifeworld, uniquely open-ended. However, by committing what I term the anthropocentric mistake, i.e. falsely assuming that all true reality is linguistic, we close in on ourselves and our language-derived practices, and as a result we lose sight of much that truly matters (including a proper understanding of our human nature). Like Sebeok and Hoffmeyer I hold that language is a modeling system, but unlike them I argue that language is not external to the Umwelt, but internal to it. Language changes the human Umwelt not by escaping or sidelining it, but by fundamentally transforming it. In consequence supra-linguistic phenomena as well are modeled as internal to the human Umwelt. The Umwelt model presented is termed the tripartite Umwelt model, and includes three aspects of Umwelt: The core Umwelt, the mediated Umwelt and the conceptual Umwelt. Linguistic practices are placed within the latter, but it is furthermore claimed that a number of animals too have conceptual Umwelten, which is said to be characterized by predicative reasoning, the attribution of specific features to someone or something. The activity of languaging is presented as more-than-linguistic, with reference to the distributed language perspective. Given all the dark matter underpinning and surrounding verbal practices, a foray into the hinterland of language is called for. A section on the genesis and modalities of language addresses the origin and evolution of language, acquisition of language in childhood and a simple typology of the various linguistic modalities of the human Umwelt. The concluding section treats Puura’s notion of semiocide, and the question: How can we language as if nature mattered?

Keywords: the anthropocentric mistake, dark cognitive matter, dark cultural matter, distributed language, first-order languaging, genesis of language, perception, semiocide, Umwelt theory

Conference presentation PPTs available in Academia.edu

I have uploaded the following recent conference presentation Powerpoint files to my profile at Academia.edu - all presented in Tartu this July:

• On the notion of induced semiosis, with emphasis on anthropogenic semiosis
• The conceptual Umwelt and its role in the tripartite model of the human Umwelt (NB: Title has changed to "A foray into the hinterland of language: In search of the dark matter of our enlightened worlds")
• In the gaze of the other: Describing cultural affordances by conducting comparative Umwelt mapping in animal studies

Abstract: "The conceptual Umwelt and its role in the tripartite model of the human Umwelt"

This is my abstract for the forthcoming Language and Life workshop (Tartu, Estonia, July 15, 2012), where I will be one of the speakers.

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The conceptual Umwelt and its role in the tripartite model of the human Umwelt

Morten Tønnessen

Associate professor at Institute of Health Studies, University of Stavanger

Researcher in the grant Dynamical Zoosemiotics and Animal Representations (Department of Semiotics, University of Tartu)

At the outset of this paper biosemiotics, the study of living systems as sign systems, or the semiotic study of topics of biology, will be briefly introduced in order to facilitate understanding for those that are not already familiar with the concept. In broader terms the various brands of semiotics of nature include zoosemiotics (semiotic zoology) and ecosemiotics (semiotic ecology and/or semiotic human ecology) in addition to biosemiotics (semiotic biology). A basic idea of semiotics of nature is that the sign in its various manifestations constitutes a real-world entity (or process) in the realm of the living. Signs are thus not as such merely human phantom entities, nor merely animal phantom entities for that matter (though the wide-reaching realm of signs – the semiosphere (Lotman, Hoffmeyer) at large, as many have taken to call it – admittedly counts a multitude of ghostlike phenomena among its members as well). The reality of signs, and of Umwelten (von Uexküll), implies that living beings are enmeshed in worlds of meaningful, significant phenomena and occurrences at several levels of biological organisation. From a philosophical point of view the biosemiotic perspective has intriguing though debated implications for ontology, for epistemology and philosophy of science, and for ethics. What is at stake is the nature of key notions including ‘subjectivity’, ‘agency’, ‘mind’ and indeed ‘reality’. The biosemiotic idea provokes new insights into many a phenomenon’s character (by way of involvement in sign relations) of being relational.

Language (as in human language) has been approached in conflicting manners by biosemiotic scholars. Two distinct approaches that both address the relation of language to the Umwelt are, respectively,

a) Thomas A. Sebeok’s, which sees the Umwelt as a primary modelling system and language as a secondary modelling system.

b) Jesper Hoffmeyer’s, which sees language as transcending the human Umwelt.

Like Sebeok thought and Hoffmeyer thinks, I too think of language as being a species-specific human capability that has tremendous impact on the character of human affairs and of human being. The main part of this paper will be devoted to a presentation of the conceptual Umwelt (or, the conceptual aspect of the Umwelt, where applicable) and its role in the tripartite model of the human Umwelt.

By core Umwelt, I mean the aspect of Umwelt in which one interacts directly and immediately with other creatures or Umwelt objects, in (to use a figure of speech) ‘face-to-face’ encounters. By mediated Umwelt, I mean the aspect of Umwelt in which Umwelt objects are encountered indirectly by way of some mediation (memory, fantasy, anticipation, modern media, etc.). I suggest that this particular aspect of Umwelt can generally be associated with von Uexküll’s notion of the search image (Suchbild). By conceptual Umwelt, I mean the aspect of Umwelt in which one navigates among Umwelt objects in terms of predicative reasoning in general or human language in particular. Conceptual Umwelt objects are in the latter case Umwelt objects whose functional meaning is imprinted linguistically. Though the conceptual Umwelt is particularly central in the human case (to the point where we confuse linguistic reality with reality as such), a number of “higher animals” qualify for being attributed conceptual Umwelten as well, in so far as they are capable of conducting predicative reasoning. I theorise that these three layers interact dynamically so that one or two of the layers are occasionally temporarily suspended (in other words, human perception is subsequently focused – more or less exclusively – on different Umwelt layers).

The conceptual Umwelt is the most novel aspect of Umwelt in evolutionary terms and corresponds somewhat to what Sebeok characterised as humans’ secondary modelling system. But there is a difference between my perspective and that of both Sebeok and Hoffmeyer, namely that these two eminent biosemiotic scholars think of human language as being external to the human Umwelt. For both of them the Umwelt represents the ‘animal’ side of the human creature, whereas human culture can only be understood in terms of something that escapes the Umwelt (particularly language). In my perspective, human language is a special case of more widespread systems of predicative reasoning, and enmeshed in the Umwelt that is our lifeworld, our phenomenal world. Language is internal to the Umwelt, not external to it, and there is a dynamic relationship between the conceptual Umwelt and the other aspects of Umwelt. This situates the Umwelt as a rich notion capable of serving as theoretical and methodological foundation for studies of the world of the living and the world of human affairs alike.

Presentation scheduled for Language and Life event; title sketched

I will be one of three presenters during the Language and Life event in Tartu July 15th, two days ahead of this year's gathering in biosemiotics. My tentative title is "the conceptual Umwelt and its role in the tripartite model of the human Umwelt". There will further be a roundtable and group work, and presentations by Stephen Cowley and Leo van Lier. Attendance will be open to all interested.

Abstracts for our three presentations are due by March 16th.

See also previous posts on joining the research cluster Language and Life, and involving an update as of last summer.