#biosemiotics

[ablueorangeintheocean]

The human Umwelt

"so I came round in my thinking to the tick that was kept alive in a laboratory for 18 years without nourishment by a zoologist named Jakob von Uexküll. For 18 years the tick hesitated between life and death. Jakob von Uexküll was an Estonian zoologist and philosopher (1864-1944) who invented biosemiotics, suggesting that every animal, human or nonhuman, has a distinct perceptual universe (an Umwelt or "world-surround") in which it exists and acts and makes meaning. The animal's Umwelt encloses it completely and does not refer to anything beyond itself. The human Umwelt, on the other hand, is open toward the future and toward transcendence (Jakob von Uexküll , Foray p. 219). Jakob von Uexküll's work influenced other philosophers, notably Heidegger, who distinguished animals from humans on the grounds that the animal does not perceive the elements of its Umwelt as things-in-themselves. "The behaviour of the animal is not an apprehending of something as something," Heidegger says. The tick does not apprehend waiting as waiting. It simply has no aim in life except to wait for a smell of warm blood to pass nearby, then drop down and drink blood. A tick has no sense of world or self or anything except the smell of warm blood: for Heidegger this is an instance of "the poverty of animals."

Jakob von Uexküll sees the same situation less negatively. For him the tick and the warm blood are two elements of a single musical score, a giant musical score in which everything in the cosmos participates. "Attunement" is what he calls this. You might find his musical creationism quaint or romantic but it does remind us to look at all life in terms of wholeness, perception and purpose. Biologists nowadays understand life as a thermodynamic process in which complex systems harmonize to achieve equilibrium. Jakob von Uexküll seems to be moving toward the same vision by a different path when he celebrates the subjectivity of non-human beings as a pattern of attunement. "Is the tick a machine or a machine operator?" he asks. Other biologists see animal action as a matter of reflex, i.e., a transfer of stimuli by electrical impulse. "But," says Jakob von Uexküll "a stimulus has to be noticed by the subject." Carson, Anne. "HIK: Hesitation." GJGH Lecture Series, University of Iceland.

[honesteas]

the last three books ive read have been knockouts like me on the floor blood trickling out of my nose tko how am i supposed to keep this up

[horsesource]

We need a biosemiotic account of autism because watching the ping pong match between “biologically determined medical disorder” and “socially constructed identity” makes me grind my teeth

Plus many neurodiversity advocates seem more devoted to the idea of an autistic neurological essence than the neuroscientists wearyingly scanning brains

[xenopoem]

[lesbianboyfriend]

trying to have a really interesting conversation about humanity, anthropocentrism, biosemiotics, sentience etc. in disability class but there’s this one person who’s just really against ai art who keeps making these stupid reductive statements like shut uppp

[santacoppelia]

Never thought I'd comment on a Scooby Doo post, but they mentioned "semiotics" and here I am.

Yeah, I ADORE semiotics, and what I found fascinating is the mix of "semiotics" with "molecular neurobiology". Because… you see… there are a lot of different specializations of semiotics (for example, I'm specialized in cultural semiotics, the way culture creates significance and how that changes over time). The mix of those two disciplines implies that Daphne is working in one of two really cool fields:

Biosemiotics, the field that studies the crossings between biology and semiotics. For example, we are talking about people who are obsessed with the way trees communicate and how they do it and if they recognize and communicate changes in the environment (those things are not only studied by biosemioticians, but they are on that field)

Neurosemiotics, a field that mixes what we know about neurosciences and every sliver of comprehension we have about how we create symbolic systems and process them in the mind (and the mind as a symbolic system). Charles Sanders Peirce, the American philosopher who started the studies on pragmatism and semiotics, was sort of obsessed with that… but he lived on the XIX century. I could never, but to think that Peirce would have loved to live in this exact time, just to know neuroscience and mix that with his studies on logic and "semiosis" (the process through our minds process and build significance)…

I just felt the need to infodump, sorry. I was always more of a Velma fan, but this idea makes Daphne 1'000,000 x times cooler to my eyes 😅🤓

[euleax]

Reflections and salutations on Hannukah, the New Gregorian Year and the need of tikkun olam, tzedakah and tshuvah in the current age of systemic kyriarchy and yet potentiality for resilience and emancipation

Belated Chag Sameach y'all!

Hope everyone had an amazing Chanukah. Bringing in the light of resilience, equality, justice, peace and ethics — the ability and power to live a Jewish life which is central to this chag is also about living and enlivening ethics — ethical monotheism or even in the Secular Humanistic case, the ethics of Secular Humanistic Judaism.

The lights of Hanukah, as a taste of the messianic age and of the resilience and dismantling of systemic injustice as in the story of Hannukah — and as the rabbis of Talmud were wise to point and Rabbi Abby Stein reminded us, one should celebrate and embrace Hannukah despite the belligerency (so out of touch with the messianic age) — are specially urgently needed in these hard times of more than 30 wars worldwide, climate change, rising antisemitism, rising islamophobia, as well Hamasniks, Bibists, Revisionists, Religious Nationalists and Kahanists. Systemic kyriarchy, in a nutshell.

A world in which the October 7 took place, and many even those otherwise progressive people attempted to justify the unjustifiable, being yet another concrete example of antisemitism. A world in which it was then followed by collective punishment and massacres against Gazans as can be seen in this article and in this article, with Netanyahu using the war as pretext to stay in power, tighten up his dictatorship and fulfill the dreams of those who yell "Kahane Tzadak", when it's so urgent an imperative that we yell "Bushah!". And then again people attempting to justify the unjustifiable.

Because there's a skepticism about universal human rights precisely in their trait of being universal, not to mention universal rights for nonhuman persons, such as animals, sentient robots, sentient plants and fungi and sentient ecosystems — in the context of second order cybernetics, systems theory, biosemiotics, enactivism and some lines of panpsychism and panprotopsychism (where selfawareness appears in a smoother way in a world which has proto-consciousness or consciousness as an element in its basis).

As Lévinas teaches us, we must be open to the radical Otherness of the Other, as a pure Dasein, so this other be able to be a Thou, and not an It, as Buber teaches us.

The ongoing war on Ukraine. Nazbols ruling over Russia. Rising Nazbols and neofascists worldwide. And then the rising of Leninist autocracy apologists — which I distinguish from non-authoritarian Leninism.

A world of ongoing sexism, ongoing patriarchy, ongoing transmisia, ongoing lgbtqiaplusmisia, a world of misia — hate, and fear — a world of the logic of guillotine and supremacism — a world of belligerency and systemic kyriarchy.

The war in Uganda and Congo. Ultramisogynistic laws in Afghanistan and Iran. Autocracy in Iran. Rampant LGBTQIAplusmisia in so many countries — criminalization, conversion therapy.

Actually, part of bringing in the light, part of hopefilling, part of building hope in such a world, is engaging in tshuva, after a whole Elul, after a whole Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, after living the disenfranchisement at first hand on Sukkot even and specially when it's not easy — historically in Fall in Israel-Palestine —, so we may be able to live the ethical life which Pessach is a preparation of as a remembering slavery and remembering marginalization to fight it yet again, and as one leaves the reality of enslavement and as HaShem, the Holy One, who empowers and frees begins to be known in the whole wandering that follows, with Sinai being the moment Torah itself is given.

This is a very strong impression I have, as one who's currently on a journey towards conversion — taking intro to Judaism classes after years of solo study and watching/attending services, and hopefully soon this year will be able to join the Shul I attend — and someone to whom the liberation theology of "v'ahavta l'reacha kamocha" (love thy neighbor) and "don't oppress the stranger", of tikkun olam, tzedakah and tshuva is very important, and very present in all those holidays — tho other dimensions are certainly present, including those described in the book "Magic of the Ordinary" by Rabbi Gershom Winkler.

I'm also deeply moved by Jewish mysticism — specially Hasidism and Neohasidism — in both its metaphysics and the way liberation theology exists in such a mystical framework.

I'm furthermore as well, someone who's a poet, an arctivist (by which I mean artivismo in Spanish and Portuguese), a lesbian transfeminist, a deep ecologist, a vegan, a cosmopolitan, a world citizen, a world federalist and an Esperantist.

Besides Esperanto, I'm a follower of Zamenhof's collectivist intercultural and interfaith ideal of homaranismo — and I'd even expand beyond humanity, into what I call ularanismo (and to which I shall write more in the future).

In addition, I'm an intercultural cultural Zionist (by which I mean Brit Shalom, Ihud, Buber, Magnes) and someone deeply inspired by Edward Saïd, someone deeply inspired by Hadash, Da'am, Zochrot, B'Tselem, ACRI, Mesarvot, Breaking the Silence, Noar Neged Diktatura, Standing Together, Combatants for Peace, A Land for All, Hand in Hand, Women of the Sun, Women Wage Peace, Rabbis for a Ceasefire, Peace Now, Shoresh, Anarchists Against the Wall, Israeli Anarchism, T'Ruah, Do Lado Esquerdo do Muro; as well as other movements for social justice, peace, equality and human rights in Israel-Palestine through secular intercultural constitutional democracy for all citizens and all inhabitants from the river to the sea, in Israel, Gaza and the West Bank, with the Palestinian right of return alongside the Jewish law of return (as envisioned also by Saïd in his article The One-State Solution).

Such an egalitarian democracy is the way to fulfill the promise of the Declaration of Independence of equality regardless of race and religion, in which the relationship with Jewishness is about refuge — specially in the context of pogrons, massacres and the Shoah — and it's about acknowledging Israel-Palestine as an ancestral homeland to the Jewish people, rather than about having an ethnonational state — as the nation-state law decrees, jeopardizing founding principles of the Declaration of Independence by using the vagueness of the term Jewish state as a pretext for ethnotheocracy — not just vagueness, but the usual pattern of ascribing ethnic and/or religious labels to a polity implying a hierarchy of those labels as official social markers of difference of the polity.

Whereas, if one pays attention, to many people, even inside Labor Zionism, the expression Jewish and democratic state, specially in the light of the Declaration of Independence and Base Laws towards egalitarianism of citizens, actually meant precisely egalitarian democracy + the Law of Return.

Ofc, historically the implementation of the Law of Return ended up being done in a way which not guaranteed such egalitarianism, and got prey to the systemic marginalization of Arabs and Palestinians and the Nakba — and one can discuss whether this or that person, movement or institution planned this or that action (tho the actions themselves are historical facts arrested by the collective memory of significant number of Israelis and Palestinians as well as in historical evidence). But then the problem isn't the Law of Return itself, but a particular mode of its implementation.

The Palestinian Right of Return rationale is precisely of same order, acknowledging Israel-Palestine is the ancestral homeland of Palestinians as well, and addressing the need of refuge of Palestinians, specially in the face of Nakba and systemic marginalization in Israel-Palestine and in the diaspora — just like there was and still is a need of refuge for Jews in the face of worldwide systemic antisemitism.

Even if I think the partition was the culmination of the tragedy of conflicted detachment in dispute for hegemony — sociocultural historical phenomena can be heterogenous, specially across polities: historically and currently there's a clash of systemic racism against Arabs and against Palestinians in Israeli society and systemic antisemitism in Palestinian society as Kahanism — together with Revisionism, Bibism and Religious Nationalism — and Jihadism — in the context of Muslim Arab and/or Persian ethnotheocracy — fight for hegemony, vis-a-vis the struggle of civilians to survive amidst all this; one must nevertheless respect the self-determination of Israelis (including Palestinian Israelis) and Palestinians with respect to the existence of their polities, including democratic and egalitarian projects of polity.

After a long time not really using Tumblr, then dealing with depression crisis and accumulation of sensory and emotional overloads, specially in such a world of rising kyriarchy... I ended up not really posting here, nor even being able to dedicate myself to my undergrad formation as a prospective philosopher.

May I proactively hopefill a forecoming light, the inspiration to have kavanah to do tshuva, and to be open to a light that will bring and create hope — a hopefilling light, a light that will make us and the world hopeful.

I said Hannuka lights and hopefilling are deeply needed, and it's because despite all the hate, warmongering, supremacism and kyriarchy, there's light and hope at the end of the tunnel, as there's potentiality of proactively building the hope and bringing the light by openness (in a mystical way, to let the light flow to us) and by one's own mitzvot — and an ethical life is precisely connected to becoming more open to receive. And also this : on a more straightforward way, there's really potentiality for overcoming kyriarchy, overcoming brainwashing , overcoming indoctrination by the ideology of kyriarchy and there's potentiality for bringing in solidarity, peace, resilience, equality and justice.

With that I mind, I share the Trilingual New Year Salutation I wrote.

*******

A HAPPY 2025 full of peace, justice, equality, wisdom, prosperity and hopefilling to all everywhere.

A cosmopolitan wish of well being to every one!

**********

FELIĈAN 2025 plenan je paco, justeco, egaleco, saĝeco, prospero kaj esperplenigado al ĉiuj ĉie ajn.

Mondcivitanecan bondeziron al ĉiu ajn ulo!

****************

FELIZ 2025 cheio de paz, justiça, igualdade, sabedoria, prosperidade e esperançar a todo o mundo de toda parte.

Um cosmopolita desejo benfazejo a toda gente!

[kamanori]

"To better understand the melodic dimension of SAR dog work, we now focus on Merleau-Ponty’s comprehension of behaviour as melodic, in which he is inspired by Uexküll."

Kasprzak, K., Bornemark, J. Umwelt and Melody: The Inter-Species Dynamics of Search and Rescue Dog Teams. Biosemiotics (2024).

[simongadbois]

Congratulations to Laura Kiiroja that successfully defended her interdisciplinary PhD thesis today ("Assistance dogs for PTSD: A study of canine detection accuracy, therapeutic potential, and ethical dimensions"), with Dr. Riin Magnus (biosemiotics), Dr. Andrew Fenton (philosophy/ethics), Dr. Sherry Stewart (psychology/psychiatry), myself (supervisor), and Dr. Karen Overall (external examiner).

[linguistlist-blog]

Books: The Complexity of Social-Cultural Emergence: Marais, Meylaerts, Gonne (eds.) (2024)

Based on previous work that linked biosemiotics, semiotics and translation studies, this book further explores a variety of factors that play a role in social-cultural emergence. The volume, which presents a selection of papers read at a conference in 2022 with the same title as the book, engages the systems of matter-energy, biology, and significance from which and in relation to which society-culture emerges. The volume entails an interdisciplinary complex of perspectives, drawing on quantum p http://dlvr.it/T87j9H

[penghusound]

2017 : "How Corals Think 珊瑚如何思考", exhibition

"How Corals Think" is an exhibition combining an essay and underwater recordings related to the project Penghu Experimental Sound Studio. The photo above was taken in 2023 during its last incarnation (Tokyo, Japan).

This video retraces my first successful audio recordings in the coral reefs in Penghu archipelago and the sharing of ideas which came to my mind, related to readings in anthropology and biosemiotics.

The original mixed-media installation entitled "How Corals Think", was an invitation by curator Hsu Manray for the exhibition "The South", at Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts, Taiwan, in 2017, and which was soon shown in Prizren for the Kosovo Biennale 2017, at TheCube Space Project, in Taipei, for the exhibition "Ocean after Nature" curated by Alaina Claire Feldman and adapted into a sound piece for YNK/SAVVY radio program curated by Nicolas Perret and Silvia Ploner during Documenta #14. It was also part of the exhibition "Under the Surface, the Dreaming and Lingering Ones" with Wan-Shuen Tsai and Gaël Le Friec, at the Penghu Reclamation Hall, Makong in 2019. It was shown again in 2023 in Taichung at Galerie Pierre (exhibition "The Collaboration Ground" curated by Eric Chen) and in Za Koenji Theatre, Tokyo, Japan (exhibition "Do Corals Dream of Mountain").

Since then, I pursued the audio documentation and survey of the coral reefs in Penghu, witnessing the climate changes that let them to bleaching and dying in 2020-2023.

While the perspective of this project dramatically changed, the work is still in progress...

More information about Penghu Experimental Sound Studio can be found at www.kalerne.net

-- Y.D. 29.10.2023

[weasel-reads-house-of-leaves]

Schools of thought

Zampano’s weird lists, Chapter 1, p. 4

In fact a few eager intellectuals have already begun to treat the film as a warning in and of itself, perfectly suited for hanging whole above the gates of such schools as Architectonics, Popomo, Consequentialism, Neo-Plasticism, Phenomenology, Information Theory, Marxism, Biosemiotics, to say nothing of psychology, medicine, New Age spirituality, art and even Neo-Minimalism.

Nothing comes up with the acrostics type code.

The words

Architectonics is apparently just the normal word for the science of architecture, a little disappointing tbh I thought it was going to be related to tectonic plates

Popomo seems to be an abbreviation of post-postmodernism. Borges’ Labyrinths mentioned in HoL are a good example of postmodernism, idk what post-postmodernism means and the wikipedia page sounds like it’s disputed.

Consequentialism is “a theory that says whether something is good or bad depends on its outcomes” (from The Ethics Centre). Sounds like what most ppl believe but don’t directly say/realize is what it’s called, I feel like.

Neo-Plasticism means “new art” and was a thing in like the 1910s. Looks like lots of blocky color things, basically what comes to my mind when someone says modern art.

Phenomenology seems to be some abstract philosophical concept about the structure of experience and consciousness. The wikipedia page opens with this helpful quote:

A unique and final definition of phenomenology is dangerous and perhaps even paradoxical as it lacks a thematic focus. In fact, it is not a doctrine, nor a philosophical school, but rather a style of thought, a method, an open and ever-renewed experience having different results, and this may disorient anyone wishing to define the meaning of phenomenology.[3]

Information theory is the same “IT” as the IT guy at the office. It’s something I technically study (bioinformatics) and is mostly about probability and computer science. No clue what it has to do with House of Leaves, unless this is a joke about how much time we’re spending trying to crack codes in this text.

Marxism. You know what this means. It is unrelated.

Biosemiotics. I cannot parse the wikipedia page for this one like at all. Here, you try:

...studies the prelinguistic meaning-making, biological interpretation processes, production of signs and codes and communication processes in the biological realm.

Please for the love of god just use an Oxford comma.

psychology, medicine, New Age spirituality, art... He’s basically just saying every realm of academia and culture at this point.

Neo-Minimalism is another relatively obscure art movement that I’m confused why he’d use this word instead of a more common equivalent. Looks like the kind of clipart and boring graphic design that I associate with the shittification of the internet:

Well, this is definitely making me feel insane so well done you, MZD.

[xenopoem]

Xenopoem, as a speculative literary form involving alien languages and semiotics, functions as an ideal medium for exploring the deceptive nature of the universe. Viewed through the perspective of Jakob von Uexküll's biosemiotics, the universe becomes an intricate web of subjective worlds, each shaped by unique biological and cognitive frameworks. Uexküll’s concept of the Umwelt—the subjective world of an organism—emphasizes that meaning is not fixed but emerges from an organism’s interaction with its environment. In his view, “Every organism inhabits its own Umwelt, a world full of signs, which it interprets according to its sensory and cognitive capacities.” When applied to the cosmos, this biosemiotic framework suggests that the universe is not a singular, objective reality, but rather a network of subjective experiences, each shaped by the observer’s unique perspective. The universe, in this light, is not a straightforward entity but a labyrinth of deceptive signs, each one interpreted differently depending on the Umwelt of the observer. Xenopoem, as a literary form, becomes a vehicle for engaging with these cosmic deceptions. Its fragmented, alien language reflects the inherent ambiguity of the universe and its capacity to deceive. Just as Uexküll’s animals perceive their worlds through a network of signs specific to their sensory abilities, xenopoem challenges human readers to navigate a foreign, often indecipherable system of meaning. The deception of the universe is embedded in its complexity: it presents itself as coherent but constantly eludes complete understanding. Xenopoem, in its refusal to conform to human semiotics, embodies this cosmic deception by presenting a language that is intentionally alien and disorienting. In nature, deception is not an anomaly but a vital survival strategy. From the mimicry of animals to the complex signaling of bacteria, deception is a fundamental tool for organisms to navigate their environments.

[victorianalexander]

Technosemiotics

May 8 @ 18:00 – 19:30 EEST The second seminar in the Technosemiotics discussion series will explore the conceptual apparatus offered by biosemiotics and its cybernetics-inspired analytical models. Relying on a recently published joint paper,* Victoria Alexander, Josh Bacigalupi and Òscar Castro discuss the qualitative or interpretive aspects of biological semiosis. The slime mold as a minimal…

[rebeccathenaturalist]

Umwelt: What Matters Most in the World

(Originally posted at my blog at https://rebeccalexa.com/umwelt-what-matters-most-in-the-world/)

I will be the first to admit that a lot of philosophy tends to bend my brain in ways that I’m really not prepared for. I’m a very earthy creature, and I am more comfortable in physical, solid spaces than in abstract conceptualizations. Even the modalities of psychology I gravitated toward in grad school tended to be based in our interactions with physical nature, and measurable effects thereof. But it was a casual discussion on philosophy with regards to the awareness of animals that introduced me to the concept of umwelt.

Originally coined by biologist Jakob Johann Freiherr von Uexküll, umwelt describes the unique way in which a given animal experiences the world around it. Uexküll looked at how various beings take in information through their senses; the way that a blind, deaf worm engages with their environment through taste and touch is very different from how we with our hearing and color vision connect with our world. Even when I am walking with my dog out in the woods, her interpretation of what’s going on around us is going to be much more heavily influenced by hearing, and especially smell, than my sight-heavy approach. (And when we engage with each other, our respective umwelten create a semiosphere!)

So umwelt is essentially the sum total of all the ways in which an animal takes in that sensory information and attaches meaning to each fragment thereof. It’s how they tell the story of the world around them, and understand their place in it. And they rank the signs according to importance; umwelt is more strongly formed by things that are of particular interest to the animal.

That means that umwelt, rather than being constant throughout life, is always shifting according to new sensory input, or changes in how the senses work; as my dog gets older, her hearing and vision may not be as good as they were, but if her nose stays sharp then smells may become an even more important part of how she navigates her world.

Or look at a Virginia opossum (Didelphis virginiana), which is born as a blind, deaf little hairless being with two front legs that they use to crawl to the mother’s abdominal pouch. At that time their umwelt centers on seeking and retaining the warmth of their mother’s pouch, and the sensation of the constant flow of warm, nourishing milk. After about ten weeks they leave the pouch as a miniature furry little possum and travel on their mother’s back while learning to walk; their umwelt has expanded quite a bit to include the sight and smell of their mother, the visual and scent cues that tell them how close they are to known food sources, and visual, sound, and audio information warning of various dangers. At around five months, the opossum becomes independent, and their mother fades from their umwelt while being replaced by an even larger network of food, danger, and perhaps even potential mates. Over a lifetime, as the opossum’s senses develop (and, with age, decline) and their priorities shift, so does their umwelt evolve with them.

This then led me into a bit of a rabbit hole with biosemiotics. Semiotics is the study of symbols and the communication of meaning, to include communication with the self. Biosemiotics, then, is how non-human beings assign meaning to various things in their lives, and interpret the world they live in. Zoosemiotics specifically refers to the semiotics of animals, like the examples I’ve given so far, while endosemiotics (aka phytosemiotics or vegetative semiotics) is semiotics at a cellular or even molecular level.

One example of endosemiotics can be found in our immune systems. A B lymphocyte can recognize an invader such as a virus or bacteria, and it sends out a signal (an antigen) to T lymphocytes that then attack the invader. The B lymphocyte’s umwelt consists of information received through surface receptors that can detect certain proteins and other molecules, and the response it’s programmed to have as a result of detecting an invader. The T lymphocyte’s umwelt, on the other hand, centers on the B lymphocyte’s antigen signal, as well as the invader itself.

Biosemiotics is important because it moves meaning-making beyond humans, demonstrating that we are not the only beings who assign more importance to one part of our world than another. It promotes the idea that human language is not necessary for an organism to be able to find meaning in their environment. I’m cautious about anthropomorphization–assigning human traits to non-human beings–but biosemiotics allows each being to be its own unique self, rather than being gauged by human standards.

It’s all too easy for me to get overwhelmed by just how technical some of the discussion over biosemiotics can get (especially when delving into the “semotics” part of it!) But my takeaway is that it’s nice to have a term–umwelt–that encapsulates the unique experience that every animal, plant, fungus, slime mold, and other being has, no matter how large or small its world may be.

I can envision millions upon millions of overlapping umwelten in every ecosystem, becoming semiospheres whenever two or more of those umwelten nudge, slide, or crash into each other. I’m already delighted by knowing that I myself contain several ecosystems, with microbiomes in my organs and on my skin and more. But I can now also consider the umwelten and semiospheres of the lymphocytes in my immune system, along with all the other cells that are carrying on their existences within my various tissues, fluids, and so forth.

Of course, this gets into discussions of whether umwelt requires some level of consciousness, the nature of consciousness, sentience vs. sapience, etc., etc., all of which are the sort of headache-inducing philosophical discussions that I try to avoid at this stage of my life. So I can understand that this whole umwelt-biosemiotics thing is still being hammered out and explored and critiqued, but also use it to augment my own personal model of my world, internal and external (my innenwelt!) And for now, umwelt is a perfectly good shorthand for “the unique way in which an organism experiences its environment.”

Did you enjoy this post? Consider taking one of my online foraging and natural history classes, checking out my other articles, or picking up a paperback or ebook I’ve written! You can even buy me a coffee here!

[artofthemindblog]

[Philosophical problems] are, of course, not empirical problems; but they are solved through an insight into the workings of our language, and that in such a way that these workings are recognized — despite an urge to misunderstand them. The problems are solved, not through the contribution of new knowledge, rather through the arrangement of things long familiar. Philosophy is a struggle against the bewitchment (Verhexung) of our understanding by the resources of our language.

Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, 1953