Jan Koenderink
D E C LOOTCRANS P RESS
World, Environment, Umwelt
and Innerworld
Jan Koenderink
i
fallacy to believe that Homo Sapiens is special in the larger scheme of things,
What is this? except from being dear (that is: understandable) to us.
I fight such ideas by attacking the Gods Eye View, that most unfor-
tunately still pervades current scientific(?) thinking.
The contents of this eBook are the slides of an invited talk held This eBook contains the slides only. They will be hard to follow without
by me at San Francisco CA at the IS&T/SPIE Electronic Imaging me (the speaker) providing the glue. For those who attended the talk this
(Conference 8651 Human Vision and Electronic Imaging XVIII) eBook might be of some use. Others I would suggest to use the slides for
meeting, february 2013. The talk was scheduled for an hour, hence meditation. When read through fast, the sequence of slides will not make
the many slides. much sense, and will seem trivial. But I touch on important conceptual issues
Judging from the responses (of course, most people were nice to that (as you may notice yourself) are not easily exhausted. At least, they are
me!) the larger part of the audience failed to get the message. Many likely to keep me busy for a lifetime. This only works if you find your own
expressed surprise that I apparently didnt believe in reality, a sure problems, of course.
indication of mis-communication. Most of the audience found the For this eBook I added Internet references to the slides. They are indicated
talk entertaining though, as I hope you will. Nevertheless, my aims by a yellow icon with a black question mark. Click them (make sure you
(though not my expectations) were set higher. I seriously believe are online!) to obtain additional information. At this moment (march 2013)
this to be important stuff! Perhaps people are right in considering the free Adobe Reader seems to be the only application that handles dynamic
me an old fool. PDF well though. It is available on most common platforms.
The topic
The topic of the talk involves the relations between awareness, mind, and
the scientific description of the world. I argue that awareness is best under-
stood as an interface with the physical world. Of course, this implies that the
physical world cannot be known, the reason being that interfaces screen the
user from unnecessary complexity. Here the necessity can be interpreted in
terms of biological fitness.
Your reality is made up of interface elements, not replicas of physical
entities. Thus the qualia and meanings of your awareness are like the (arbi-
trary!) icons on your computer desktop: these dont reveal anything of interest
concerning the underlying electronics of the machine.
Another important topic is that different beings have different interfaces,
reflecting their life styles. Even the simplest beings (say an amoeba) have
complete, and (for their life styles) perfect interfaces. It is an anthropocentric
1
World, Environment, Umwelt and Innerworld
a biological perspective on visual awareness
Jan Koenderink
1
Jakob von Uexkll
(1864 - 1944) was a
Baltic biologist who may
be considered the
father of ethology
2
fuzzy concepts:
physical world
geographical location
environment
ecological niche
Umwelt
3
Frank Frazetta
4
the sense world of
- bats is ultrasonic
- dogs is olfactory
- sharks is electric
- humans is visual
5
- rattlers inject poison
- chameleons change color
- electric eels shock
- man displaces mass
the action worlds differ
6
environment Umwelt
action: erect spines
(just in case)
sea urchin
action: flee
(if dynamic)
scallop
action: visit
(among more)
honey bee
7
8
the oak tree is different for the forester and little girl
both in their sense worlds and in their action worlds
the space peculiar to each animal, wherever that animal may be,
can be compared to a soap bubble which completely surrounds the
creature at a greater or lesser distance
Aphid-ranching ants
10
the ant & aphid largely share their ecological niches
their Umwelts are almost disjunct - but meshed
11
12
according to von Uexkll although each actor simply plays its own role,
the result is a play that suggests a concerted action
- this is the harmony of nature (the totality of beings & objects) 13
Indras net illustrates Leibnizs monadology: the monads have no windows,
but each reflects all others in pre-established harmony
von Uexklls Umwelts also mesh - harmony is not pre-established by a
Creator, but von Uexkll does perceive overall structure, not a chaos
where Darwins evolution describes the vertical structure, von Uexkll
describes the horizontal structure of the organic world 14
a famous example due to
von Uexklls researches
after affixing
itself to a
rock the
mature animal
eats its own
brain
the Umwelt of the larvae has space, but the adult doesnt need one:
a sentient being may lose or gain space during the course of its life! 19
Konrad Lorenz
Niko Tinbergen
20
excellent visual acuity!
reality-as-it-is-in-itself is an
utterly incoherent concept -
all claims to reality can be
reduced to intuition
23
back to basics
(biology of awareness
from an evolutionary
perspective)
24
human newborns share a core system with all vertebrates
25
the
human
sense
world
Hans Makart
blind guy
but phenomenologically,
the senses co-exist
harmoniously, no single
sense taking the lead
27
blind monks investigating an elephant
each gains
a different
perspective
28 Itcho Hanabusa
they perceive the elephant as being similar to
a wall
a tree trunk
a snake
a rope
a fan
a spear
their data is not conflicting, but neatly complementary
a hard task:
30
an easy task:
a hard task:
31
an easy task:
a hard task:
it does so instantaneously.
Walter Gerbino
33
Grfin Vera von Lehndorff-Steinort (1939-present) famously uses
body painting to create scenes where immediate visual awareness
overrides cognition or even reflective thought 34
visual awareness (sense) might
be called proto-rational
it creates reality!
Peter Jeroense
42
von Uexklls functional loop is what we
now call the perception-action cycle
43
von Uexklls functional loop is what we
now call the perception-action cycle
44
von Uexklls functional loop is what we
now call the perception-action cycle
45
46
von Uexkll introduces a new cycle (Neuer Kreis), which is nothing but
von Holst and Mittelstaedts Reafference Principle (of 1950!)
according to von Uexkll the inner world in terms of qualia & meanings is not subject
to objective, scientific research, it is essentially subjective
47
von Uexkll introduces a new cycle (Neuer Kreis), which is nothing but
von Holst and Mittelstaedts Reafference Principle (of 1950!)
according to von Uexkll the inner world in terms of qualia & meanings is not subject
to objective, scientific research, it is essentially subjective
48
20th c. progress
seeks to explain
the inner world as
a representation
of the physical
world (inverse
optics)
von Uexkll
explains
properties of
objects as
deriving from
their role in the
interface
(counter world)
Fritz Kahn
in psychology inverse optics
implies behaviorism
49
are humans any different from generic vertebrates?
50
von Uexkll speculates that the counterparts of invariants of the perception-action
cycle will gain a functional tone based on continual experience
51
52
53
thus we arrive at an interface theory of perception (Im
indeed very sympathetic to Don Hoffmans ideas!)
55
The key argument is
OTHER E B OOKS FROM T HE C LOOTCRANS P RESS :
de cloten sullen uyt haer selven een eeuwich roersel maken, twelck
1. Awareness (2012) valsch is.
2. MultipleWorlds (2012)
3. ChronoGeometry (2012) Simon Stevin was a Dutch genius, not only a mathematician, but also an
4. Graph Spaces (2012) engineer with remarkable horse sense. I consider his clootcrans bewijs one
5. Pictorial Shape (2012) of the jewels of sixteenth century science. It is natural philosophy at its
6. Shadows of Shape (2012) best.
7. Through the Looking Glass: on Viewing Aids (2012)
8. Painting to Marble (2012)
9. Experimental Phenomenology: Art & Science (2012)
10. World, Environment, Umwelt and Innerworld (2013).