Author: Patric Nordbeck

Contrasting Ecological and Computational Strategy in a Virtual Interception Task 1/5

Well, it looks like my master thesis will be admitted and graded. They brought in an extra examiner on my thesis since its philosophically heavy, so it’ll take a few more days to get it graded. When it is, I am going to correct some errors and format it properly (as luck had it, I was following a previous APA-style guideline, it was not appreciated). And I figured, I’ll post the whole thing here in three chunks. The arguments against representationalism, the basic definitions of ecological psychology and radical embodied cognitive science, and lastly, my research paper.

As I have been invited to speak at the Social Sciences Master Graduation Ceremony, I have that to focus on, as well as, wait for critique from my second examiner. Roughly, I’ll be able to post my stuff a few days after the 11th.

Ecological Strategy Favoured Over Computational

I am in the process of writing up my master thesis experiment but can reveal that in this specific task, participants use ecological strategy 53% of trials, computational strategy 26%, a second ecological type strategy 13% and other/non-distinguishable 8%. Also, accuracy is higher when using ecological strategy (63%) compared to computational (32%) and the other two. Inter-rater reliability ~.85. Exciting! It may support the ideas that screen-based research can indeed yield empirical results in Ecological Psychology (and add to that, in favour of Ecological Psychology). I have however yet to analyze the data statistically, to be continued!

We can’t just treat everything as mental disorders and we can’t solve everything with drugs.

I may consider myself to belong to the tough school when it comes to experiences and life lessons. For example, falling in love and getting your miserable self dumped is painful and debilitating but the experience is invaluable. I’ve been taught to cope with the loss, even grief and severely depressive emotions. I couldn’t have without the natural life-experiences and the natural reactions to them.

With this said, in the introduction to “Addicted to love: What is love addiction and when should it be treated?” (Earp, Wudarczyk, Foddy & Savulescu, under review) we find statistics such as “In 2011, over 10% of the murders committed in the United States were committed by the victim’s lover (FBI 2011).”. Firstly, this is a correlation, not a causal relationship. The structure of their paper however leads one to believe that these ten percent are caused by “addictive love”. Later on, however, they suggest diagnostic criteria contain “(2) the person would want to use the technology, so there would be nonproblematic violations of consent”. I doubt they are going to lower the 10% by recruiting people who already want help, as it is conceivable that the ones who would want to already have sought help by being offered the technology in the first place.

In their paragraph on “Implications for treatment” (before which, they go through different theoretical models for, among others, well-being and love) we find another curious quote “Although it is that case that, on this view, everyone who loves is technically addicted, only some subset of cases should be judged to be appropriate candidates for treatment because of their effect on other aspects of our well-being.”. The reason this comes out is because they have a “broad view” of addiction, in that, “the state of being in love” is connected (by them through scarce empirical research) to the same neurotransmitters, and in some cases neural substrates, as in other addictions. Here, we are seeing yet another turn to diagnosing normal, but perhaps extreme, reactions as mental disorders (in light of grief being diagnosable after two weeks in DSM 5).

“In this article, we have argued that there is now abundant behavioral, neurochemical and neuroimaging evidence to support the claim that love is (or at least that it can be) an addiction, in much the same way that chronic drug-seeking behavior can be termed an addiction. And we have argued that no matter how we interpret this evidence, we should conclude that people whose lives are negatively impacted by love ought to be offered support and treatment opportunities analogous to those that we extend to substance abusers.”. First of all, anything can become an addiction, secondly, if there is abundant evidence, then the article needs more empirical sources to convince me. The last sentence is also part redundant as those people should (and are) offered support, there is counselling, CBT, psychoanalysis available for example (and this is mentioned in the paper) -but why on earth would we want treatment to be analogous to substance abuse users opportunities? To push pills.

The trend seems to be to classify any strong emotion, regardless if it is a natural reaction, as mental disorders. And not only that. The proposed solution? Push pills. It’s degrading, at best. Natural fluctuations and reactions in people’s lives are treated as sickness and instead of teaching valuable coping methods (which lead to life-long ability to deal with similar situations) we should just wish the sickness away with pills.

Paper available here (it’s on the academia.edu website).

Disappointment as a consequence of EP. Good riddance, I say.

I believe many will be disappointed to find out that there is no entity called consciousness. There is no entity called self. There is, in fact, nothing of any of this kind. All there is is a half-assed semi-reproduction of sensory input. Reproduction here almost misleads one however, it is not production, it just is perception. Conscious cognitive acts, just are perceptions. There is nothing over and above perception to be had. Creativity is just the rearrangement of perceptions. Imagination is just the semi-production of perceptions.

Our brain doesn’t store anything in that sense, it is solely repeated exposure to specific parts of the ambient energy array, allowing perception to continue past the now and lend itself to re-perception without the need for the concurrent exposure in the environment. It solely speaks to the persistence of environment, objects and agents. We are truly active explorers, and what we explore the most, we become able to more so specifically explore. It is about perceiving what is there to be perceived, what was there to be perceived before but because of repeated exposure we are more and more able to discriminate between smaller and smaller changes in that ambient energy array. Indeed it is what experience is. Perception and movement is all there is. “All”. It gets us very far.

Perceived sense of control, is just that. Perceived. Ecological Psychology or rECS leads to discussions on free will, and rightly so. Many proponents of free will argue that we need it to be able to be held accountable for offenses. I argue we still can even without. It is enough that we perceive our actions to be of free will, it doesn’t have a bearing on the metaphysical account of free will. As long as humans experience the world as if we control our actions in it, we can still be held accountable.

Unofficial lecture on representations, intro to rECS and Master Thesis

So I’m writing my thesis on abandoning representations and replacing it with ecological psychology, and this is bits and pieces of what I’m writing. To fit one lecture I obviously had to leave out a whole lot of information. Even information that would change some of the subject matter. The idea I had was to introduce, not even all of, the basic stuff I have in my thesis and was hoping to get some critique and comments on it.

Link to video; http://bit.ly/ZiqZo3



Most sources used in the video;

Blogs and blogposts
Scandinavia And The World (illustrations); http://satwcomic.com/
Eric Charles blog post; http://fixingpsychology.blogspot.se/2013/04/what-do-we-know-for-sure-about-brain.html
Wilson and Golonka’s blog; http://psychsciencenotes.blogspot.se/

Books
James Gibson – The ecological approach to visual perception
Anthony Chemero – Radical embodied cognitive science
Pfeifer and Bongard – How the body shapes the way we think
Gerd Gigerenzer – Rationality for mortals
Bem and de Jong – Theoretical issues in psychology

Articles
Tim van Gelder – What might cognition be if not computation
Fodor and Pylyshyn – Connectionism and cognitive architecture: A critical analysis

Virtual affordances. Electronic Sports (and Computer Resistence).

I’ve grown up with computers since birth, in fact, one of the first generations to do so. The virtual world needs to be accounted for, but I accept the non-affordance of pictures, depictions, movies and thus screens overall (but see http://psychsciencenotes.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/the-information-available-in-pictures.html for very recent, in-depth, information) I believe it is enough to denote this with the word virtual. This is something I go to some length with in my thesis and the beneath is the preliminary version of that section. While there is some revision still to take place, the main content is there and should provide enough clarity as to what I mean by it.

The world of electronic sports (henceforth; e-sports) is a largely unexplored area even within traditional cognitive psychology. In rECS it is discounted, essentially, because it is performed on a screen and as such does not provide affordances per say. In agreement with this, you still cannot just ignore this massive field. It is not only entertainment, it is for some a way of life and it is for others their monthly income -both as creators as well as players. In an attempt to refrain from legitimising the field further, it stands for itself in the amount of hours played, the number of games produced, the amount of profit for gaming-companies and the prize-pools for e-sports players. One aspect however, that is unstated in the relevant literature, is that unbeknownst to producers and programmers of games, their absolute central aspects, follow exactly that of ecological psychology and rECS. Gibson (1986) made the same analogy, however with greater depth, for the fields of architecture and design.

A programmer creates the environment in which a player is to exist and, hopefully, immerse herself. The virtual environment is created in respect to contain virtual affordances for the player, or for the player to explore and act within. The evolution of computers, as well as the games played on these computers, have increasingly dealt with the fact that players expect more and more virtual affordances to be available to them. There is an expectation to be able to do more things, to increase the complexity of the virtual environment, virtual objects and other virtual agents. When expansions are released for already popular games, they account for this fact by not only adding new items, for example in MMORPGS (massively multiplayer online role-playing games), but also by creating new virtual affordances to players through new game modes (changing virtual affordances of the already known game), allowing completely new virtual behaviours and thus making the virtual environment increasingly complex. For games that insist on reflecting reality, the expectation is that virtual affordances should more and more closely resemble the environment. This is thus an essential area to account for when it comes to rECS and psychology in general. It is necessary however to introduce the term virtual affordances, because as stated, pictures, depictions and even movies do not present affordances (Gibson, 1986 and Wilson & Golonka, 2013). Nevertheless, computer gaming industry works with manipulation of virtual affordances, and thus, virtual affordances are defined as invariants programmed in environment, objects and agents, allowing, limiting or disallowing virtual behaviours, interactions and coupled systems between those environments, objects and agents.

The game of choice for exemplification, is League of Legends (launched 2009, by Riot Games, formed in 2006). It is played by 32 million unique players every month, 12 million of which play daily, racking up 1+ billion hours of play each month making it the most played computer game in the world (Riot Games, 2012). They have created a virtual environment in which there is an economic system; killing AI-agents and opponents grants money, from which you may buy items to further enhance your characters basic, level-dependent, properties. The virtual environment affords movement in two dimensions but also limits movement by walls and shrubbery. Each character, 110+ to choose from, is afforded five specific abilities (one passive, meaning it is not “usable” by pressing a button and four active abilities assigned to one key each) plus the choice of two out of thirteen that are common to all players. Some abilities modify movement capability of oneself, of other agents, amount of damage given, amount of damage taken and/or regeneration of vitals (health, mana or for a few characters, a specific other vital coupled to its offensive and/or defensive abilities). Two teams with five players on each team thus comprises (10*5*2) 100 agent-specific virtual affordances, coupled with the dynamic variety in which the virtual environment lends itself to each specific character. Needless to say, perceiving one’s own and other characters’ virtual affordances, in which sequence they are used, and in which situation, the dynamic relationship all these variables have in conjunction with where one is situated in the environment and your, and their, vitals, is what counts as skill in this game. It is a visual perception heavy game but auditory perception enables you to gain information on parts of the environment not currently in your virtual visual field but that may have an impact on your virtual behaviour. The mentioned variables are far from an exhaustive list; there are quite many more virtual affordances to be described, but these should be enough for even the most computer-illiterate to understand that it is far from a simple virtual environment to navigate through successfully. Thus, this complexity gives rise to a vast range of behaviours and emotions, one of the most extreme of which is called “rage-quitting”. It is when you are sufficiently angry, regardless of why, that you exit the game before completion and leave your team severely underpowered against the opponents. Similarly, it is what can be seen in real life interviews when interviewees physically leave the interview prematurely.

Computer-gaming, although not adhering to the strict definitions of rECS, needs to be accounted for and it is suggested that it is sufficient to discriminate between real life and gaming by the verbal notation virtual. When experimentally reporting on computer games or screen-dependent research, it is of great importance to include an exhaustive list of variables and virtual affordances in the previously mentioned task analysis. This leads on to the study at hand, where an attempt is made to follow this task analysis for rECS experimentation, in order to show its practical application; to try and create headway for computer-screen experimentation by refuting the unwillingness within the embodied perspective towards it; discriminate between predictive and prospective strategies in problem-solving to discriminate between computational and ecological strategies; and illuminate how lucrative future research can be on the basis of both the process under observation and, more generally, to produce knowledge about it through rECS.

Nonsense.

The traditional misperception of the brain as infinitely complex perpetuates unfounded credit towards it when rationalising behaviours. Participants compare their strategy in retrospect to that of mathematical capability of a computer. That is, the participant is not capable of mathematically computing rapidly enough an interception point, thus explaining their failure to live up to a clear predictive strategy. “If only we could realise the full potential of our brain.” Nonsense. The fallacy of the brain as the pinnacle of biological evolution, is used as a norm and blamed in an explanation of failure. It is thus perpetuated in every aspect of rationalising, but not for the observable behaviour. If you have a doctrine that constantly explains failure on the same terms, both a priori and a posteriori, there is good reason to examine it even closer. Observable behaviour is supposed to be the basis of assumption, indication and generalisation. I propose that traditional psychology does not. I propose it solely deals with antecedent assumptions and consequential rationalisation. Behaviour is only a means to the end of perpetuating the doubtful conclusions already postulated in the assumptions. There is a strong need for reinvention, to say the least.

Non-(?)necessary discrimination between actualisation and realisation

In Gibson’s perspective, are they not really the same thing? Perception in Gibson’s terms seem to imply that “acting on” is implied by perception. I am confused with how this unfolds in practice. Take the definition I outlined in a previous post, that realisation is the perception of a possible interaction as opposed to actualisation which is the instantiation of an interaction. Perception is interaction?!

I think of studies on mirror neurons (if they exist, if it is assumed they do not do what trad. cog. sci. say they do and instead are simple sensory modality + movement overlap/association -happenstancily, not predeterminally- neurons/cluster of neurons/areas) in that, ‘visual perception of’ and ‘engaging in’ is the same thing physiologically -since, as I suppose Gibson would have it, perception (regardless of which kind) includes oneself always. If one is not separated from the environment, then one perceives what others and oneself do as the same thing (obviously, humans distinguish between self and others, but, even then, not innately -which in itself doesn’t have to decide in the matter, but may inform). Maybe this could be seen as the process behind empathy or sympathy for example. I feel disgust if I perceive rotting meat, because perception is that of systems and parallel modalities and not separate “input pathways”.

They may however have a practical, communicationally, significant aspect to them since it makes it easier to explain perspective or experience of a situation in those terms. Though I also get the feeling that they refer to the false dichotomy of conscious/unconscious perception. Something superfluous to the ecological model. Indeed, it perpetuates the false assumption of consciousness per se. Note here however that “how we consciously experience” situations, is central to psychiatry, for example, and can be useful to navigate within in therapy. Experimental psychology however, should refrain from allowing this massive source of frame-of-reference error to guide theory too heavily.

Temporary conclusion on subjective/objective perspective and affordances (3/3)

I should stop writing “Temporary” in front of my titles. It should be presupposed that all theory is always temporary.

I may have gained an understanding leading on from the previous posts on subjective and objective perspectives, on the definition of affordances and perception, relating Gibsons ecological view with traditional philosophy and cognitive psychology.

As Gibson defines perception of the environment and oneself as the same thing at the same point in time, neither a subjective nor objective perspective discriminates between what is perceived and not. Both are perceived, always, for any point of location of observation. This is true for both an objective perspective and a subjective perspective. Since both are perceived, any concept related to perception will necessarily imply this conclusion. If one assumes a non-static observation point (as we almost never have a static one, we move), then the experience of perceiving affordances are of both environment and self always coupled, non-separable, always pointing in both directions. This conclusion is then perpetuated by direct perception.

The only issue I am facing with this is that when one wants to begin defining from a philosophical perspective, one immediately wants to ground theory in realism, inviting subjective and objective perspectives, mind-dependence and independence, since, it is a way in which we can discriminate between dualism and monism for one. Coming from a strictly ecological perspective, or perhaps, Gibsonian ecological perspective, and grounding theory from ecology, one does not need these perspectives since they do not discriminate between anything, they do not show any difference when either perspective is subsumed. It should then be for this reason that Gibson confuses me when he speaks of nothing being subjective nor objective or both, because the meaning of those perspectives do not have a bearing on experience or theory, i.e. change the perspective per se. They are presumably brought in because of tradition and norm, because they are words used widely in the classic literature -and are most fitting in philosophically (Hegelian argumentally) founded perspectives like traditional cognitive psychology.

Are affordances retained? 42.

You see, it doesn’t really matter. We are not in the area of discussing the physical world. We are not concerned with matter in the ontological sense at this point (although we, as written about in several previous posts, obviously take a realist stance if forced to define things in traditional linguistics and perspectives). The reason the answer is 42, then, is because we perceive and act in the “coupled” perspective (self & environment) always. We assume affordances are retained, that the ground affords walking if we should want to walk tomorrow on that surface. But the question is misleading, because it forces upon the answerer to provide an explanation from a physical perspective. It forces one to deal with terms in a traditional cognitive language. It forces discussion on words like realism, objective, subjective, memory (for past) and imagination (for future). When I am lead to believe Gibson would rather speak of perception, movement, senses and affordances.

On subjectivity/objectivity of affordances… (2/3)

Building on the previous post.. Reading Gibson.. I think, unfortunately, that there is good use of communicating an objective and subjective perspective to clarify what there is and isn’t. This is an objective perspective in itself. Besides that, consider the point of which misperception of affordances comes into play, just by the word “misperception” there is an implication that -in a subjective perspective we may perceive an affordance, that in actual fact, is not there. Then, it has to have not been there in an objective sense to begin with.

I appreciate the fact that Gibson tries intently to explain and visualise the non-subjective/objective nature of affordances themselves -I am on board here. It’s only that, the dichotomous relationship of subj.-obj. bears on the information communicated and is entrenched in the linguistics. I do not think we can escape them unless we resort to dualism in some sense. Each time an affordance exists and not exists it must be said in a subjective sense. Unless, we wish to abandon that specific set of philosophical underpinnings.. is that possible?

[Edit, 12:17, 3/4-2013]
[Gibson also seems to confuse me at times in this area, he speaks of affordances very strictly as relationships in an initial definitional sense, but goes on saying that objects always afford their affordances to actors in a .. behavioral sense? But this is not entirely true, it is not only in a behavioural sense that he speaks of them as retained. He doesn’t speak of them differently in separate philosophical terms either (ontologically/epistemologically).. Could it be the distinction between realisation and actualisation that separates Koffka’s and Gibson’s view here? That Gibson picks up on but doesn’t mention explicitly?]