Subjective Experience

Jakob von Uexküll coined the term Umwelt to describe individuals subjective experiences.[1] Each species, and even individuals within a species, have their own umwelt, which is influenced by factors such as their sensory organs, neural processing, behavior, and ecological niche. For example, the umwelt of a bee is vastly different from that of a human, as bees perceive the world primarily through ultraviolet light and chemical cues.

Umwelt emphasizes that reality is not objective or universal but rather subjective and individualized, shaped by the unique sensory and cognitive abilities of each organism.

Because you can't experience the world in any other way, then it's likely to understand that how you experience the world is the only way to experience the world.

Thomas Nagel made a similar argument in What Is It Like to Be a Bat?

Other authors:

References

Quote

Uexküll realized the subjective experience of every living thing was confined to a private sensory world he called an “umwelt”: different sense organs, different umwelt, distinctive from that of another animal in the same environment. Each creature, therefore, was tuned to take in only a small portion of the total picture. Not that any animal would likely know that, which was Uexküll’s other big idea. Because no organism can perceive the totality of objective reality, each animal likely assumes that what it can perceive is all that can be perceived. (Location 1053) #✂️ #blue


  1. ↩︎