Ecological perceptual holism – unity of the individual and the environment in perception (original) (raw)
Related papers
A. Chemero, “An Outline of a Theory of Affordances”, Ecological Psychology, 15, 2, 181-195, 2003.
A theory of affordances is outlined according to which affordances are relations between the abilities of animals and features of the environment. As relations, affordances are both real and perceivable but are not properties of either the environment or the animal. I argue that this theory has advantages over extant theories of affordances and briefly discuss the relations among affordances and niches, perceivers, and events.
In her article "Information, Perception, and Action: What Should Ecological Psychologists Learn From Milner and Goodale (1995)?" Michaels (2000) reached 2 conclusions that run very much against the grain of ecological psychology. First, she claimed that affordances are not perceived but simply acted on; second, because of this, perception and action ought to be conceived separately. These conclusions are based on a misinterpretation of empirical evidence that is, in turn, based on a conflation of 2 proper objects of perception: objectively specified objects with properties and affordances.
Dispensing with the theory (and philosophy) of affordances
Theory & Psychology, 2020
This article will contest the claim made by many ecological psychologists that affordances are invariantly the objects of perception. First of all, the lack of agreement concerning what affordances actually are, what their true nature is, is considerable. Second, the metaphysico-ontological debate has obscured the important misunderstanding consisting in conceiving of affordances as ecological objects or entities of any kind. Third, an appropriate analysis of the notion of affordance will show that this concept is not primarily devoted to perception, and believing that it is has unnecessarily impoverished what we (can) see in our environment. From a Wittgensteinian and an ethnomethodological approach, to make sense of the relation between ourselves and our environments we should use only those concepts available to us, and the internal relation between our everyday concepts and the way we invoke them in practice will be shown. No theory of meaning is needed here.
The field and landscape of affordances: Koffka's two environments revisited
Synthese, 2019
The smooth integration of the natural sciences with everyday lived experience is an important ambition of radical embodied cognitive science. In this paper we start from Koffka's recommendation in his Principles of Gestalt Psychology that to realize this ambition psychology should be a "science of molar behaviour". Molar behavior refers to the purposeful behaviour of the whole organism directed at an environment that is meaningfully structured for the animal. Koffka made a sharp distinction between the "behavioural environment" and the "geographical environment". We show how this distinction picks out the difference between the environment as perceived by an individual organism, and the shared publicly available environment. The ecological psychologist James Gibson was later critical of Koffka for inserting a private phenomenal reality in between animals and the shared environment. Gibson tried to make do Our thanks to 123 Synthese with just the concept of affordances in his explanation of molar behaviour. We argue however that psychology as a science of molar behaviour will need to make appeal both to the concepts of shared publicly available affordances, and of the multiplicity of relevant affordances that invite an individual to act. A version of Koffka's distinction between the two environments remains alive today in a distinction we have made between the field and landscape of affordances. Having distinguished the two environments , we go on to provide an account of how the two environments are related. Koffka suggested that the behavioural environment forms out of the causal interaction of the individual with a pre-existing, ready-made geographical environment. We argue that such an account of the relation between the two environments fails to do justice to the complex entanglement of the social with the material aspects of the geographical environment. To better account for this sociomaterial reality of the geographical environment, we propose a process-perspective on our distinction between the landscape and field of affordances. While the two environments can be conceptually distinguished, we argue they should also be viewed as standing in a relation of reciprocal and mutual dependence.
An Outline of a Theory of Affordances
Ecological Psychology, 2003
A theory of affordances is outlined according to which affordances are relations between the abilities of animals and features of the environment. As relations, affordances are both real and perceivable but are not properties of either the environment or the animal. I argue that this theory has advantages over extant theories of affordances and briefly discuss the relations among affordances and niches, perceivers, and events.
Philosophy of Science, 2003
I examine the central theoretical construct of ecological psychology, the concept of an affordance. In the first part of the paper, I illustrate the role affordances play in Gibson's theory of perception. In the second part, I argue that affordances are to be understood as dispositional properties, and explain what I take to be their characteristic background circumstances, triggering circumstances and manifestations. The main purpose of my analysis is to give affordances a theoretical identity enriched by Gibson's visionary insight, but independent of the most controversial claims of the Gibsonian movement.
What will you do to me when you see me? Perception as searching for affordances in the environment
Avant: Journal of Philosophical-Interdisciplinary Vanguard, 2012
Contemporary research on action-perception coupling draws on Gibson's concept of affordances. The text outlines the conceptual basis of this issue, showing how the notion of affordance is embraced in the theory of perception, understood as an active search for structured information that could improve the functioning of the organism in the environment. It also mentions a philosophical parallel (Martin Heidegger's philosophy of tools) and concludes that the intuitions behind the concept of affordances have been more inspiring to cognitive scientists, neuroscientists and researchers in robotics than to psychologists studying perception.
The Social Orders of Existence of Affordances
Philosophia scientiae, 2022
Des figures centrales de la tradition phénoménologique, telles qu'Aron Gurwitsch, Jean-Paul Sartre et Maurice Merleau-Ponty, se sont largement inspirées de la psychologie de la gestalt dans leurs écrits. Le dialogue entre la phénoménologie et la psychologie qu'ils ont entamé se poursuit aujourd'hui dans le domaine des sciences cognitives incarnées. Nous reprenons cette conversation à partir de la riche analyse phénoménologique de la perception du monde culturel réalisée par Aron Gurwitsch. Ses descriptions phénoménologiques de la perception du monde culturel ressemblent de façon frappante aux travaux de la science cognitive incarnée qui s'inspirent de la psychologie écologique de Gibson. Gibson a inventé le terme « affordance » pour désigner les possibilités d'action qui peuvent être directement perçues par les personnes [Gibson 1979]. Cependant, dès ses premiers écrits, Gibson a fait une distinction entre une forme de perception universelle, strictement individuelle et non sociale, et une perception du monde soumise à des influences sociales et culturelles. Nous utilisons Gurwitsch pour argumenter contre la compréhension individualiste de la perception directe de Gibson. Chaque affordance qui peut être sélectionnée comme objet de perception se réfère à un contexte socioculturel plus large, que Gurwitsch a appelé un « ordre d'existence ». Nous terminons notre article en abordant la question de la relation entre la description phénoménologique du monde perceptif et les explications de l'expérience perceptive fournies par la science cognitive incarnée.
Ecological Psychology and the Environmentalist Promise of Affordances
CogSci 2018 Proceedings, ISBN: 978-0-9911967-8-4, 2018
What is ecological about Gibsonian Ecological Psychology? Well-known senses in which Gibson's scientific program is 'ecological' have to do with its theoretical, ontological and methodological foundations. But, besides these, the Gibsonian framework is 'ecological' in an additional sense that has remained understudied and poorly understood—a sense of " ecological " that connects Gibson's view to the environmentalism of environmental psychology and environmental ethics. This paper focuses on the latter sense of 'ecological', and explores the relevance of Gibson's notion of " affordance " for thinking about environmental issues like deforestation, pollution and climate change. One existing account is criticized and an alternative is proposed.