Both the psychology of perception and the philosophy of perception seem to show a new face when the process is considered at its own level, distinct from that of sensation. Unfamiliar conceptions in physics, anatomy, physiology, psychology, and phenomenology are required to clarify the separation and make it plausible. But there have been so many dead ends in the effort to solve the theoretical problems of perception that radical proposals may now be acceptable. Scientists are often more conservative than philosophers (...) of science. I end, therefore, as I began, with a plea for help. (shrink)

Several recent accounts claim that imagination is a matter of simulating perceptual acts. Although this point of view receives support from both phenomenological and empirical research, I claim that Jean-Paul Sartre's worry formulated in L'imagination (1936) still holds. For a number of reasons, Sartre heavily criticizes theories in which the sensory material of imaginative acts consists in reviving sensory impressions. Based on empirical and philosophical insights, this article explains how simulation theories of imagination can overcome Sartre's critique by paying attention (...) to the motor dimension of imagination. Intending to clarify the status of the sensory in imagination, a motor theory of imagination is presented in which the sensory component of imagination is interpreted in terms of anticipated sensory consequences of preparation for motor action. (shrink)

Radical embodied cognitive science is split into two camps: the ecological approach and the enactive approach. We propose that these two approaches can be brought together into a productive synthesis. The key is to recognize that the two approaches are pursuing different but complementary types of explanation. Both approaches seek to explain behavior in terms of the animal–environment relation, but they start at opposite ends. Ecological psychologists pursue an ontological strategy. They begin by describing the habitat of the species, and (...) use this to explain how action possibilities are constrained for individual actors. Enactivists, meanwhile, pursue an epistemic strategy: start by characterizing the exploratory, self-regulating behavior of the individual organism, and use this to understand how that organism brings forth its animal-specific umwelt. Both types of explanation are necessary: the ontological strategy explains how structure in the environment constrains how the world can appear to an individual, while the epistemic strategy explains how the world can appear differently to different members of the same species, relative to their skills, abilities, and histories. Making the distinction between species habitat and animal-specific umwelt allows us to understand the environment in realist terms while acknowledging that individual living organisms are phenomenal beings. (shrink)

Ecological Psychology and Enactivism both challenge representationist cognitive science, but the two approaches have only begun to engage in dialogue. Further conceptual clarification is required in which differences are as important as common ground. This paper enters the dialogue by focusing on important differences. After a brief account of the parallel histories of Ecological Psychology and Enactivism, we cover incompatibility between them regarding their theories of sensation and perception. First, we show how and why in ecological theory perception is, crucially, (...) not based on sensation. We elucidate this idea by examining the biological roots of work in the two fields, concentrating on Gibson and Varela and Maturana. We expound an ecological critique of any sensation-based approach to perception by detailing two topics: classic retinal image theories and perception in single-celled organisms. The second main point emphasizes the importance of the idea of organism-environment mutuality and its difference from structural coupling of sensations and motor behavior. We point out how ecological - phenomenological methods of inquiry grow out of mutualism and compare Gibson’s idea of visual kinesthesis to Merleau-Ponty’s idea of the lived body. Third, we conclude that Ecological Psychology and varieties of Enactivism are laying down different paths to pursue related goals. Thus, convergence of Ecological Psychology and Enactivism is not possible given their conflicting assumptions, but cross-fertilization is possible and desirable. (shrink)

Theorizing about perception is often motivated by a belief that without a way of ensuring that our perceptual experience correctly reflects the external world we cannot be sure that we perceive the world at all. Historically, coming up with a way of securing such epistemic contact has been a foundational issue in psychology. Recent ecological and enactive approaches challenge the requirement for perception to attain epistemic contact. This article aims to explicate this pragmatic starting point and the new direction of (...) inquiry that this opens up for psychology. It does so by detailing the development of James J. Gibson’s ecological psychology. Securing epistemic contact has been a leitmotiv in Gibson’s early work, but subsequent developments in Gibson’s works can teach us what it takes to adopt a pragmatic approach to psychology. We propose a reading of the developments in Gibson’s original works that shows that, since perception is a mode of acting, perception aims for pragmatic contact before allowing for epistemic contact. Amplifying these pragmatist lines of thought in Gibson’s works we end by considering situations where an individual is adapted to the intricacies of specific social practices. These situations show how pragmatic contact can also afford attaining epistemic contact. (shrink)

Open peer commentary on the article “Perception-Action Mutuality Obviates Mental Construction” by Martin Flament Fultot, Lin Nie & Claudia Carello. Upshot: I contrast enactivist and ecological perspectives on some of the themes raised by the authors. I discuss some of their worries about the notion of sense-making and other epistemological aspects of enactivism.

This paper will explore one aspect of the relationship between pretence and narratives. I look at proposals about how scripts play guiding roles in our pretend play practices. I then examine the views that mental representations are needed to guide pretend play, reviewing two importantly different pictures of mental guiders: the Propositional Account and the Model Account. Both accounts are individualistic and internalistic; the former makes use of language-like representations, the latter makes use of models, maps and images. The paper (...) will discuss some worries with the notion of mental guiders, and offer some positive suggestions about what else might be playing the guiding role in pretence. I propose that environmental affordances and socially scaffolded engagements provide the basis of pretence guiders, and suggest that engagement in narrative practices further frames and allows elaborations of acts of pretend play. I take first steps in developing a new embodied, enactive and intersubjective understanding of pretence, showing why it is a viable alternative to the mental representational accounts of pretence. (shrink)

James Gibson’s concept of affordances was an attempt to undermine the traditional dualism of the objective and subjective. Gibson himself insisted on the continuity of “affordances in general” and those attached to human artifacts. However, a crucial distinction needs to be drawn between “affordances in general” and the “canonical affordances” that are connected primarily to artifacts. Canonical affordances are conventional and normative. It is only in such cases that it makes sense to talk of the affordance of the object. Chairs, (...) for example, are for sitting-on, even though we may also use them in many other ways. A good deal of confusion has arisen in the discussion of affordances from (1) the failure to recognize the normative status of canonical affordances and (2) then generalizing from this special case. (shrink)

Many current neurophysiological, psychophysical, and psychological approaches to vision rest on the idea that when we see, the brain produces an internal representation of the world. The activation of this internal representation is assumed to give rise to the experience of seeing. The problem with this kind of approach is that it leaves unexplained how the existence of such a detailed internal representation might produce visual consciousness. An alternative proposal is made here. We propose that seeing is a way of (...) acting. It is a particular way of exploring the environment. Activity in internal representations does not generate the experience of seeing. The out- side world serves as its own, external, representation. The experience of seeing occurs when the organism masters what we call the gov- erning laws of sensorimotor contingency. The advantage of this approach is that it provides a natural and principled way of accounting for visual consciousness, and for the differences in the perceived quality of sensory experience in the different sensory modalities. Sev- eral lines of empirical evidence are brought forward in support of the theory, in particular: evidence from experiments in sensorimotor adaptation, visual “filling in,” visual stability despite eye movements, change blindness, sensory substitution, and color perception. (shrink)

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 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. (shrink)

Context: The dominant approach to the study of perception is representational/computational, with an emphasis on the achievements of the brain and the nervous system, which are taken to construct internal models of the world. Alternatives include ecological, embedded, embodied, and enactivist approaches, all of which emphasize the centrality of action in understanding perception. Problem: Despite sharing many theoretical commitments that lead to a rejection of the classical approach, the alternatives are characterized by important contrasts and points of divergence. Here we (...) focus on the enactive and ecological approaches, in particular, on how they construe the status of the environment and the content of perception. Method: We begin with a review of James Gibson’s ecological psychology, highlighting it as a psychology for all organisms not just humans. Against this backdrop, we consider enactivist arguments against direct perception - a central assertion of the ecological approach - and in favor of interpreting the activity of perceptual agents as a kind of construction of a perceptually meaningful world. Results: We assess the merits of this interpretation and we conclude that it cannot be grounded on fundamental principles such as thermodynamics and organism-environment mutuality. Implications: As a consequence, enactivism remains close to representationalism and entails a form of dualism. Constructivist content: We advance a criticism of the constructivist foundations of the enactive approach to perception. Perception-action mutuality at the heart of enactivism does not require mental construction; indeed, perception-action mutuality obviates construction. (shrink)

The primary difference between direct and inferential theories of perception concerns the location of perceptual content, the meaning of our perceptions. In inferential theories of perception, these meanings arise inside animals, based upon their interactions with the physical environment. Light, for example, bumps into receptors causing a sensation. The animal (or its brain) performs inferences on the sensation, yielding a meaningful perception. In direct theories of perception, on the other hand, meaning is in the environment, and perception does not depend (...) upon meaning- conferring inferences. Instead the animal simply gathers information from a meaning- laden environment. But if the environment contains meanings, then it cannot be merely physical. This places a heavy theoretical burden on direct theories of perception, a burden so severe that it may outweigh all the advantages to conceiving perception as. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:James J. Gibson's Ecological Approach:Perceiving What ExistsWilliam M. Mace (bio)Environmental Philosophy and EpistemologyThe purpose of this paper is to help an audience attracted to environmental philosophy get to the core of Gibson's system in a compact form and to appreciate the necessity for an account of the environment in epistemology. I hope to show that Gibson's is a consistent and scientifically progressive account of knowing that gives the environment (...) its due and that this is not a simple matter of fiat but a call to extended scientific investigation. I want to stress that Gibson's work is scientifically progressive in the sense that it has consistently opened new avenues for research. If one could be assured tomorrow that Gibson was correct and his critics wrong, the ecological psychology enterprise would not have to be shut down with nothing left to do. The goal of the enterprise, certainly for Gibson, was not to be declared a winner but to open doors for discovery. Because Gibson has developed a theory of perceiving the environment, it would be worth exploring as an important topic for environmental philosophers covering a wide range of issues. It offers an intriguing, environmentally based, grounding for epistemology; it offers ways to deal [End Page 195] with practical issues within "pure science"; and it is open to reorganizing ways to conceptualize problems beyond epistemology.Gibson developed a richly articulated system that grew steadily over a period of 50 years, 1929 to 1979, which he devoted to "puzzling over" the "perplexities" of vision (1979, xiii). From Gibson's standpoint, knowledge begins with perception, and perception is perceiving the environment. The environment, for Gibson, is at least as essential as the brain to the existence and exercise of "the mind."As an empiricist, knowledge is based on perception for Gibson. But perception, at root, turns out to be perception of the environment. Entities like sense data and representations become "after the fact" curiosities for Gibson, and have no role to play in the foundations of perceptual experience and, a fortiori, knowledge. If Gibson is correct, then scientific accounts of perception must converge on environmental perception. A philosopher whose primary focus is epistemology, and who works within Gibson's system, would perforce be an environmental philosopher—not (first) because of a special concern for the environment, but because an adequate appreciation of relevant facts requires it. Of great importance to environmental philosophers is that Gibson not only provides an account of perceiving grounded in access to environmental properties, but he establishes a basis for perceiving this particular world as a specific arrangement of surfaces. The world we perceive, according to Gibson, is a connected, public world that we share. It is, again, the world, the logical individual world and not an abstraction. This is not an account of the experience of abstract shapes, distances, and motions. It is a system in which travelers can visit the pyramids and in which I can trip over your garbage.Is there a symmetric direction of influence? Just as a commitment to understanding knowledge scientifically and philosophically can lead one to focal considerations of the environment, could a deep concern for the environment as a value lead to the serious study of perception and, more broadly, epistemology? It seems entirely plausible. Gibson's is a "yin and yang" system of scientific complementarities beginning with animal and environment and extending to knowledge and value (in his concept of affordance). In each complementarity, the terms are differentiable but not entirely independent. Animals and their environments are different entities and should not be confused with one another, but they also are so [End Page 196] mutually dependent that one should not imagine a thorough account of one without the other. In like manner, objects and value (first through use) are not independently comprehensible in Gibson's system. This is a theme worthy of careful examination of detailed examples. I am not doing that in this paper, but hope that enough of the flavor of Gibson's work will come through to allow a reader to understand how one might be steered to epistemology from an initial concern with environment and values and... (shrink)

Theorizing about perception is often motivated by a belief that without a way of ensuring that our perceptual experience correctly reflects the external world we cannot be sure that we perceive the world at all. Historically, coming up with a way of securing such epistemic contact has been a foundational issue in psychology. Recent ecological and enactive approaches challenge the requirement for perception to attain epistemic contact. This article aims to explicate this pragmatic starting point and the new direction of (...) inquiry that this opens up for psychology. It does so by detailing the development of James J. Gibson’s ecological psychology. Securing epistemic contact has been a leitmotiv in Gibson’s early work, but subsequent developments in Gibson’s works can teach us what it takes to adopt a pragmatic approach to psychology. We propose a reading of the developments in Gibson’s original works that shows that, since perception is a mode of acting, perception aims for pragmatic contact before allowing for epistemic contact. Amplifying these pragmatist lines of thought in Gibson’s works we end by considering situations where an individual is adapted to the intricacies of specific social practices. These situations show how pragmatic contact can also afford attaining epistemic contact. (shrink)