Jakob Von Uexkull's Report

In Jakob Von Uexkull’s book, A Foray into the Worlds of Animals and Humans: With a Theory of Meaning, he demonstrates how animals live in a subjective realm. Uexkull describes this subjective world of animals by demonstrating that everything in the animal’s environment is represented as objects with respect to the subject: the animal itself. One of the main ways Uexkull represents these ideas is through the life of the tick. Uexkull illustrates how the tick is able to respond to certain signs in its perception field, and explains how the tick’s reflex arc is able to produce a response from these stimuli. He continues to describe the tick’s subjective perception of time, and emphasizes that the tick lives in its own subjective world. When examining …show more content…
Although Uexkull describes the tick as having a very objective pattern of action, he describes the tick as having a subjective aspect to the its life in terms of its perceptual world. Uexkull first describes the tick as having a unique perception of time, and how one moment for the tick may last years, while for humans it lasts a fraction of a second (Uexkull 2010: 52). He demonstrates why the tick’s difference in its perception of time compared to humans is relevant to the understanding of the tick’s subjective experiences: “Time which frames all events, seemed to us to be the only objectively consistent factor, compared to the variegated changes of its contents, but now we see that the subject controls the time of its environment” (Uexkull 2010: 52). The concept of time has always been considered a relatively objective construct, in which there is a certain level of order and duration. However, according to Uexkull, the evidence demonstrating that the tick experiences time differently illustrates that the tick must live in its own subjective reality. Uexkull explains that if the tick lives in a subjective environment, then all other species must live in their own subjective realities. Uexkull refers to this animal’s perceptual life-world as its Umwelt (Uexkull 2010: 2). According to Uexkull, the tick, like all other animals, lives in …show more content…
Uexkull explains that there is a fundamental mistake in our interpretations of animal actions. He thinks that humans are accustomed to generalizing depictions of their own goals, and that they believe that animals have goals much like their own (Uexkull 2010: 86). However, Uexkull only characterizes higher mammals, such as humans, as having goal-oriented actions: “But, in describing the life of the tick, we already spoke of how they lie in wait for their prey. With this expression, we smuggled our workaday human concerns, even without meaning to, into the life of the tick, which is led purely according to Nature’s plan” (Uexkull 2010: 86). Uexkull illustrates that the tick’s actions do not have any particular goal, and are merely a part of Nature’s plan. Although Uexkull does not directly explain what Nature’s plan is, he places emphasis on the distinction between having a goal and a plan. Uexkull describes only certain higher-level mammals as perhaps having certain-goal oriented actions, and feels that humans have improperly assumed that this applies to all animals. However, he says that this is not the case. Rather, he describes all animals as being a part of Nature’s plan, and even the mammals capable of having certain goal-oriented actions are also just a part of Nature’s overall plan (Uexkull 2010: 86). Uexkull demonstrates that it is important to consider the