affordances – PsyPhi

Reflections on ‘Radical Enactivism and Ecological Psychology: friends or foes?’

Target article: Zahidi, K., Eemeren, J.V. (2018) Radical Enactivism and Ecological Psychology: friends or foes? (OPC on “Perception-Action Mutuality Obviates Mental Construction” by Martin Fultot et al.)

The article compares some core aspects of Enactivism (REC version) with Ecological Psychology (on the basis that Fultot et al. reflects it), they find disagreement and puts forth a decision between two aspects of EP -one amenable to REC, the other not. The one that isn’t is thankfully not a position held by EP, which makes it seem like the two are compatible (at least on these points). See below for extracts. Finally: The below is an attempt at understanding each other better, I like Enactivism, I think we can mutually benefit each other -but we need to know each other’s positions better. Also, I am not a representative of the entire discipline, nor do I claim to know it. But, this is a beginning to a discussion across fields so we can benefit from each other! (I hope if I mischaracterize Enactivism that you will help me too!)

p. 1 “The first thesis essentially says that all forms of basic cognition are “concrete spatio-temporally extended patterns of dynamic interaction between organisms and their environment ” (Hutto & Myin 2013: 5).”
If you take this quote out of its context of an Enactivism paper, you would need to be citing Gibson (1966, 1979) here and Chemero (2009), as it is a very close definition to how the concept of Affordances is used in EP. I.e. it being a relation within and/or between organisms and environments (this language can be tightened up though if you want, like niche and habitat (Baggs & Chemero, 2018). This is good news, because if it is a central tenet then there is hope we have amenable approaches.

p. 2 “Sensorimotor contingencies are the lawful ways in which sensory stimulation changes as the organism moves or acts in the environment . In perception the organism exploits these sensorimotor contingencies to find its way around the environment.”
I do not know the definition of sensory stimulation in Enactivism, if they mean the traditional behaviorist/representationalist sense that stimulation is the basis of perception, then I disagree. I believe this leads to a path down needing representations/content etc in the brain to build up whatever it is that we “see”. Due to Direct Perception, I cannot accept that. If they mean sensory stimulation the way that Gibson (1979) does, then the next point of issue is the exact definition of sensorimotor contingencies (SMCs) in general. Are SMCs the change in perspective? The change in perspective plus the change in layout that this brings with it? The change in all of the above plus the new changes in action that it also brings with it? The EP way of bringing about lawfulness is through specificity which can be found in Gibson (1979), Turvey, Solomon and Burton (1990), Stoffregen and Bardy (2001) and Chemero (2009) (and there are more…). Specificity is a debated term, what is included, what isn’t, but as a basic definition we need (in the case of vision) light that bounces off a bunch of stuff in the world, making it structured in different directions, this structure is referred to both as an ambient optic array, and information. Information here is not content. Never content. Ever. But with our visual perceptual system (which includes the entire body, not just the eyes) we have evolved to detect differences and changes in this structure. Information is argued by some to imply necessarily an animal, some don’t, yet others argue it doesn’t really matter if it does or not… For all that I can tell, the quoted sentence doesn’t contradict specificity…

p. 2 “However, from a REC point of view that interaction is always embodied interaction. It is the embodied nature of the organism that grounds the kind of interactions that are possible. Note however that the “body” referred to in the Embodiment Thesis is not our common-sense notion of body but rather the body engaged in non-linear and far-reaching sensorimotor interactions while engaging with certain salient features of the environment . In this interaction the physical body ànd brain areas are in play. ”
Gibson (1966, 1979) you cannot be disembodied. Some of the initial research in EP was driven by the idea that due to the definition of affordances, then our perception-action cycles must bear on aspects of our body in conjunction with aspects of the environment when we enact or perceive affordances. See Warren (1984) for an easy example. Lastly, for EP the brain surely does something, I won’t deny it is a curious structure that does something, but I definitely do not hold a modular view of the brain (see e.g. Anderson’s book After Phrenology about the specificity of brain regions). Now, this last point doesn’t necessarily contradict to Anderson, in that the brain does specific things, however, this to me (in both Anderson and REC) invites too easily the concept of representations if viewed strictly, or content if viewed loosely, as something in the brain, and that the brain does. That is not acceptable from an EP standpoint for very many different reasons. So, it does depend on what is actually meant by interaction, and what is supposed that the brain does, which isn’t explicitly stated in this quote.

p. 2 “All interactions are made possible by previous interactions between the organism and its environment (and recall that the history of interactions may extend beyond the organism’s life-time). ”
Question for Enactivists, I like the idea, if it doesn’t invite nativist arguments. How is it brought about across generations? (I can think of candidate answers but do not wish to speculate.)

p. 2 “The answer is that the interactions affect and change the neural and non-neural body of the organism. In the neural machinery the past experience is sedimented, and in order to explain current interactions this “sediment” is called upon.”
Another question, is REC ok with content either outside of or inside of the body, in whatever shape it takes? Ecological Psychology is not, for either, this to me hints at a real divide if content is assumed anywhere in the system on behalf of REC.

p. 2-3 “There is thus no danger that by invoking neural structure in enactivist explanation, representations slip back in by the back door.”
I want to apologize if I am reading REC unfavorably, but even though it is insisted upon that representations are not accepted in REC, it does seem like REC wants to talk about content without talking about representations. Is that true? Is that possible? If so, it hints again at a divide.

p. 3 “If the net of perception is so widely cast and is constituted by certain types of behavior by which organisms adapt to conditions in their environment, and if it is its aim to find in all these different kinds of behavior a kind of common structure as the essence of perception thus conceived, then it is unsurprising that perception does not depend on neural structure. One may wonder whether trying to find a communal structure to such a diverse set of behaviors is going to result in something genuinely explanatory.”
Firstly, ‘the essence of perception’ is not something that exists, it sounds representational/computational to me. A communal structure is slightly unclear what exactly is meant, I took it to mean that structure does things, but EP wouldn’t say that a structure does things. In fact, the way it is written makes me think it is referring to a fallacy not in EP but in representional/computational psychology due to the assumption of content. Structure, in EP, is of course implicated, but it is not the driver, it is not the controller -because there isn’t one.

p. 3 “Arguably, these are the phenomena for which REC invokes neural structure to explain them .”
This may be our currently dividing aspect, it’s not that neural structure is not involved, I of course think the brain is active, but I do not want to assign function to the brain if I don’t need to. So far, I haven’t come across any behavior, concept, situation, event, that I need to invoke content/representations/computation for. Maybe I will, and then that would be ok in certain forms, but I am going to try to explain things without the brain first, and if I can’t well then it may just be that ‘the brain does it’.

p. 4 “There is, at this point no reason to assume that the meaning of objects is in some way perceived by the organism . But EP makes the further assumption that the meaning is actually perceived through the perception of affordances. The way affordances are perceived is through the invariants in the optical array. The latter (as well as the ambient light at a convergence point) is said to contain (as in “content”) information about objects and their lay-out in the environment.”
Meaning is perceived in EP along with the relation between environment and organism, it is inherent in the term affordances. Since affordances (and the quote of Fultot) insists that ‘behavioral implications’ are what are important to the organism (for whatever reason, based on whatever past, current, and future that the organism is currently acting on). Content, it is never assumed in EP, there is no place for it. If some piece of writing seems to invite this idea, rest assured it is a misreading (or that it is really hard with the language we have at our disposal to say it in a different way that sounds better). Again, information is structure in an energy array, like the optic array in vision, which we can detect if we have perceptual systems sensitive to light (although it is deeper than this). Starting with Gibson (1966) is a good idea and then reading and noticing changes to his 1979 book. But there is a host of theorizing since then up until now also as a previous comment to a quote says (viz. specificity).

p. 4 “The use of the word “about” seems to indicate that information is a semantic notion and thus that information has semantic content.”
This made me think that perhaps the above, and this, hints at that this is a problem in philosophy -I’m a psychologist and I will throw around the word about or for interchangeably, in philosophy it seems to be a thing. Information does not have semantic content (however, see Michaels & Carello’s, 1981, about information about vs for). Content is not a concept in EP.

p. 4 “That Fultot et al. take this semantic road is far from clear, however, we suspect they do (cf. their complaint in § 51 that REC “doesn’t even tolerate content”).”
Fultot, just like me, aren’t representative of the entire field, although I of course understand that their article is the focus of Zahidi and Eemeren’s OPC. This statement, if true, doesn’t generalize to EP in general.

p. 4 “One way to do this is to interpret EP information as co-variance of worldly lay-out in relation to a convergence point and optical structure at that certain point .”
In comparison the the above quote, this one is closer to what you’d find in Gibson and authors after.

p. 4 “In other words, while the meaning of the objects is something objective (which we can, from a third-person perspective, describe), that meaning is not given in perception to the organism, it is something the organism enacts.”
Nothing is objective, objective and subjective doesn’t really exist. There is a commonly used Gibson quote that says that affordances cut across the subjective objective divide, it is both, or neither (1979). I take EP to include and couch behavior in culture, customs, norms, societies, groups, families, histories, futures… the list can be made long. We live in nested spatio-temporal scales. Of course, you can use words as if there is perspective such that, but in the reality of things, it is just a “pole of attention” (1979) and not some, actual, real, perspective that exists in the world. I think EP can give REC something here if my assumptions of REC aren’t too misguided.

p. 5 “For example, in order to avoid falling back on some “impoverished stimulus”-type of psychology, some ecological psychologists like Michael Turvey have swayed in the opposite direction, postulating ultra-information-richness of the media (light, air, …) around us. (cf. A. Chemero 2009: 106-107).”
“Ultra” richness is misleading, it just has a certain richness. EP does not say we perceive light as such when we go about our daily business, but, imagine the number of photons in certain cubic area -yeah it is super ultra amazing rich! But the point is that, we take it so for granted that we don’t realize that this is the norm. Impoverished stimulus is not. Light is incredibly dense, the pure physics of it checks out…

p. 5 “Here, the structure of the optical array determines completely the (behavioral) meaning of the object: there is no ambiguity possible . However, Rob Withagen and Anthony Chemero (2009) have challenged this view on evolutionary grounds.”
This is not exactly true, see Stoffregen and Bardy (2001) in their concept of the global array, and also see the reponses to their article (contained in the same pdf that the link directs to). The global array is a contested concept along with specificity, but it should give some insight into where the debate is. Also, there is ambiguity possible -but not in the traditional sense that would open up for arguing about impoverished stimulus- and also not only for evolutionary reasons, but for reasons you’ll find in Eleanor Gibson’s absolutely stunning theory of development within Ecological Psychology (e.g. Gibson & Pick, 2003). It really is a game-changer.

p. 5 “It merely allows for information available through the optic array to not fully specify affordances . That doesn’t imply a need for it to be supplemented through some type of mental construction. The organism can find out the affordances of the object by interacting with it . When the available (optic) invariant co-varies only moderately with the affordances, so to say, the history of interaction, c.q. learning history, explains the organism’s improved adjustment to its situation .”
Not fully specifying affordances gets tricky technically, other authors including myself, are skeptical about this, because it depends on where you think the consequence might “pop up” if we allow a 1-1-1 specificity (see Turvey, et al. 1990 above). As an example, finding out by interacting is a way of exploring the world for invariants -sometimes other invariants than the ones we first paid attention to that happened to be nonspecifying. See Stoffregen and Bardy (2001) for this, link further up. Finally, see Eleanor Gibson’s developmental theory, it does an excellent job of explaining learning history through differentiation.

p. 5 “With respect to the use of semantic notions, we have argued that these can be banned from EP without loss of explanatory power.”
This is good news because we don’t have anything called “semantic information” or “semantic notion” in our theory =D.

Enactivism and Ecological Psychology (preface to upcoming posts)

I am interested in the cooperation of Enactivism (EN) and Ecological Psychology (EP). At the root of it, EP has a strong research program, EN needs one. EN has a non-content story about “inside the body stuff”, EP has a non-content story about “outside stuff” (I won’t touch on it here, but I want to use Anderson’s re-use and Raja’s resonance to build a non-content story about the brain). To do this, each approach EN, EP, need to know each other’s literature. I will not propose that I know EN inside and out and will rely on others to correct my misinformed assumptions, but I will also do this favor for anyone interested in EP. Then of course, it should be known that there are diverging opinions within EP and I stick the closest to Chemero’s and Withagen’s understandings (although you should read their literature yourself).

My attempts in upcoming posts will be to try and catch out misconceptions and refer to literature so that we can build a stronger intuition about what it actually is that EP says. I do not think I have the knowledge or capability to be an arbiter of correct EP theory. But, I wish to at least start a dialogue between the fields, my attempt is a well-intended one, not a point-and-blame one.

No ‘content’ in EcoPsych and Direct Perception

TL/DR: While a valid concern, I don’t think EcoPsych relies on ‘environmental’ content.

I share the worry with Dr. Edward Baggs, that Enactivist criticism of Ecological Psychology’s Direct Perception hints at a possible dualism -even if I think it may mostly arise from reading EcoPsych unfavourably or indeed unfavourably expressing EcoPsych.

The idea is this. Representationalists assume content is in the brain (created and/or passed on from the senses as input). Perception is simply input for the brain-processor which sends output signals to the passive body, hence Indirect Perception, what our eyes see is ultimately not what we experience, we experience what the brain creates (subject to criticism of being idealist and/or dualist, but that’s a different blog post). EcoPsych instead says, hang on, the world is its own best model, there is absolutely no need to conceptualize the perceptual system as mere, passive, input devices, and there is no need to conceptualize the brain as a processor -we need no processing (in the traditional sense anyways). Rather, perception is active and intelligent on its own, what you are currently experiencing is unmediated by any interpretational processes, what you experience is what your perceptual system detects. Perception requires movement, perception and action are in this sense inseparable (your legs, e.g., are also a part of seeing, cue embodied theories). However, importantly, perception is action, action is perception. It’s a continuous and simultaneous loop…

Enactivism asks however, if this means that EcoPsych simply places content on the outside, as opposed to representationalists on the inside. If so, we are not really losing the dualistic consequences that believing in content brings with it.

I think one problem may arrive from reading specificity (roughly: guaranteed perception) into Direct Perception. The straightforward answer here is that this is a bit too literal a take on Direct Perception, although it comes from considerations such that if what we see is the world then why does the world look different to different people -we have access to the same information. A simple answer from EcoPsych would be that firstly we all have different capabilities that we bring to any situation, we inhabit different bodies, we can have different goals, and they all bring effects on what we attend to and why.

Another issue is that some EcoPsych’s talk about properties and effectivities, as if you can divide up organism from environment, landing us in traditional dualisms again. I do not subscribe to this way of talking specifically about the organism or the environment because I think it too easily invites dualist interpretations -but those who do still would say the affordance is primary, that we then can talk about its corresponding parts doesn’t mean that they see them as non-constitutive. Which sounds fine to me, but, I also understand how people can misread this.

As for answering the central question of -do EcoPsychs conceptualize content to be on the outside, I think a resounding ‘no’ is in order. Organisms detect structure in ambient arrays (e.g. the optic array) and they perceive/act on affordances (which necessarily is a relational aspect of the current, and continuously evolving, organism-environment system). The information itself (the structure in an ambient array) is not content, in the case of vision it is (from a specific point of observation) all of the converging photons from all angles (as a whole, continuously flowing) on that point that has bounced off of surfaces where light has been partly absorbed, reflected, etc (which is part of how light becomes structured) that then reaches the eyes. The eyes themselves have evolved to detect differences in structure to the point that was necessary for survival, and we bring an entire cultural/societal/historical as well as developmental baggage with us as we have started naming structures that we are taught from young age to reproduce. But there is no content, there is no standing-in-for the things in the environment = a wooden table is made up of wooden particles which are made up of atoms, when light strikes the top of a dark wood, photons are to a larger degree than a light wood absorbed by the material, but then of course, this becomes circular because we have already defined “dark” and “light” through the property of absorption. (It should be added here that “illusions” where dark and light can look the same, or where a blue dress can look yellow, is only a valid counter-argument if you rely on traditional optics where you discount contextual factors like general lighting conditions etcetera.)

First conference talk and proceedings publication!

Going to CogSci17 in London this summer for my first research presentation, the paper is to be published in the proceedings (and can be found here). Here’s the abstract:

The actualization of affordances can often be accomplished in numerous, equifinal ways. For instance, an individual could discard an item in a rubbish bin by walking over and dropping it, or by throwing it from a distance. The aim of the current study was to investigate the behavioral dynamics associated with such metastability using a ball-to-bin transportation task. Using time-interval between sequential ball-presentation as a control parameter, participants transported balls from a pickup location to a drop-off bin 9m away. A high degree of variability in task-actualization was expected and found, and the Cusp Catatrophe model was used to understand how this behavioral variability emerged as a function of hard (time interval) and soft (e.g. motivation) task dynamic constraints. Simulations demonstrated that this two parameter state manifold could capture the wide range of participant behaviors, and explain how these behaviors naturally emerge in an under-constrained task context.

Keywords: affordances, dynamic systems, cusp catastrophe, dynamic modeling, simulations, constraints

The ontological status of affordances…

…only exist when they are being actualised and/or are being realised. It is not that they do not exist when not, there always exists the information of -but until this information is picked up, they practically do not exist.

Information, independently exists. It exists for so long as there is a source to “illuminate” it: The sun shines, and other stars shine, and only if the source of photons cease to exist, shall the visual information that the visual systems of life forms do not have even the possibility of detecting it.

While information is not “what we see”, affordances are (often based on the middle-hand of medium-sized objects if our visual system is unaided). I guess you could say that objects are made up of information, but I’d be hard pressed to agree to this articulation in a strict scientific sense, it’ll do to make the point clear however. Affordances, being relationships between (for this example’s sake) properties and objects of the environment and the capabilities and effectivities of a human, seem to be able to not exist.

If we are in a room with chairs in it, and we leave the room, the chairs in the room still offer the affordance of sitting if we were to observe the room through a camera (the realisation part). If no life form is in the room to detect the information of said chairs affording sitting, then the affordance is what I’d like to call passive (or let’s say, doesn’t practically exist). It’s ontological status is pending a life form able to perceive the information of and act in accordance with, the affordance.

[Start Edit]Think of it as an establishment of any kind of relationship. Before one has been perceived/realised by anyone, there is a flux of information to be discovered and there is a non-relationship. Once discovered however, that relationship most probably cannot be undone. It reminds me of the very dramatic difference between not being able to not perceive the relationship when it has been established once, compared to when it is either just perceived or when we have yet to discover what type of relation we have/can have to it.

Is this problematic? I don’t think so. On the level of information, it must still exist. On the level of affordances however, it cannot. This is not problematic since nothing is going in and out of existence, but, the relationship between environment and actor necessarily incorporates both and is temporarily suspended -it is inactive, or passive. Innovation and creativity is sometimes defined as the discovery of new ways to relate to existent (or new) objects, properties, life forms, ourselves, etc…[End Edit]

Is this important? Perhaps not. However, ontology is important in a general sense. I think it necessitates at least a mention in a blog post, in a galaxy, far, far away.

Do depictions afford us anything?

First and foremost to be able to argue for the framework below, restructuring of the language use surrounding depictions may be needed. It is argued here that the overarching term should be alternative objects and alternative environments including the two (or four) subcategories depicted objects/environments and virtual objects/environments.

The main division bears on the ongoing discussion if depictions afford us anything (Wilson, 2013). This is an attempt to further this discussion.

Virtual objects (such as those used in screen-based research) are able to be interacted with –however, only in the virtual environment. Virtual objects, then, relies on a virtual environment. They do not afford the agent anything, unless the virtual objects are connected to the environment (for example controlling movement of an object in the environment by virtue of a Human Computer Interface). They do afford the virtual agent whatever the virtual environment and virtual objects are programmed to afford. Depicted objects then, do not afford an agent anything, but can provide (accurate or inaccurate) information about what the depicted object represents. They can inform us of possible affordances in the environment just like objects afforded to others, perceived by us, inform us that this affordance may be possible. The point of divergence then is that depicted objects do not afford us anything because we cannot become part of the depicted environment as depicted agents. Also, we cannot become agents in a depicted environment, we can only ever be agents in the environment. If we can become part of the depicted environment, it is not a depicted environment but a virtual environment -and we only become part of it as a virtual agent. Virtual objects do not afford agents anything if we strictly speak of the environment, however, as a virtual agent in the virtual environment the depictions afford the virtual agent, while it still only informs the agent because hie [ie:] is only ever in the environment. This is also to say that although an agent interacts with a virtual environment it necessarily has to be done through some form of apparatus/machinery, without it, the virtual environment would merely be a depiction.

An agent is thus not afforded anything, by neither depicted nor virtual objects/environments. Depicted objects can provide information that may or may not be useful in the environment, just like perceiving objects in the environment can provide such information. Virtual objects can afford virtual agents, just like objects can afford agents. They can also provide information, just like depicted objects. They can only afford agents by virtue of being connected back to the environment. This is however an oxymoron, because agents are still only in the environment, and only afforded something in the environment.

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.

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?]