Umgebung

In the semiotic theories of Jakob von Uexküll and Thomas A. Sebeok, umwelt (plural: umwelten; from the German meaning "environment" or "surroundings") is the "biological foundations that lie at the very epicenter of the study of both communication and signification in the human [and non-human] animal". The term is usually translated as "self-centered world". Uexküll theorised that organisms can have different umwelten, even though they share the same environment. The subject of umwelt and Uexküll's work is described by Dorion Sagan in an introduction to a collection of translations. The term umwelt, together with companion terms umbegung and innenwelt, have special relevance for cognitive philosophers, roboticists and cyberneticians, since they offer a solution to the conundrum of the infinite regress of the Cartesian Theater. Uexkull's concept of the umwelt was later independently rediscovered by William T. Powers in 1977, who called it Perceptual Control Theory (PCT), and then again in 2013, by M.C. Dyer, who called it Tricyclic Differential Engine (TDE).

Each functional component of an umwelt has a meaning and so represents the organism's model of the world. These functional components correspond approximately to perceptual features, as described by Anne Treisman. It is also the semiotic world of the organism, including all the meaningful aspects of the world for any particular organism, i.e. it can be water, food, shelter, potential threats, or points of reference for navigation. An organism creates and reshapes its own umwelt when it interacts with the world. This is termed a 'functional circle'. The umwelt theory states that the mind and the world are inseparable, because it is the mind that interprets the world for the organism. Consequently, the umwelten of different organisms differ, which follows from the individuality and uniqueness of the history of every single organism. When two umwelten interact, this creates a semiosphere.

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