Perzeption, Interaktion und die Ökologie der Gesellschaft — eine systemtheoretische Suche nach den Sinnen

This paper is an attempt to analyze the senses from a sociological perspective and within the context of Niklas Luhmann’s reflexive theory of social systems. A functional specification of the persceptive senses for the constitution and structuring of social systems will be achieved by means of the basic distinctions of system/environment, consciousness/communication, and interaction/society. Essentially, four levels can be distinguished with regard to perception, consciousness, and communication: 1) reflexive sensory perception of perceptions, 2) sensory perception of communication, 3) sensory perception due to communication, 4) communication based on purposefully initiated perception. As a result, the senses can be understood, on the one hand, as an infrastructural resource of communication and an ecological condition of society; on the other hand, they are themselves a binding, immanent structural principle of the social, or, more precisely, of interactions.