von Uexkull's Theory of Meaning and Gibson's Organism-Environment Reciprocity

Jakob von Uexkull is mostly known for his concept of Umwelt-the meaningful surrounding of animals. von Uexkull insisted vehemently on the fact that Umwelt vindicated Kant's subjectivist epistemology in the biological domain. However, we argue that a crucial yet widely overlooked development in von Uexkull's theory of meaning implies a more radical vision strikingly germane to J. J. Gibson's own direct realist epistemology-ontology and in tension with his own subjectivist concept of Umwelt. Gibson argued that organism and environment are complementary and meaning is not constructed via a subjective act but is directly available in the world as opportunities for action, namely, affordances. We show that von Uexkull's notion of functional tone is similar to Gibson's concept of affordance in that it includes action in perception. More important, von Uexkull introduces the musical metaphor of harmony to characterize the relationship between animal and environment. Like Gibson's reciprocity, harmony implies an unmediated isomorphism between the dispositions of the animal and those of the environment that allows for direct perceptual contact with the world and action upon it.