We've finally reached Gibson! In Chapter 3, Heft explores some broad ideas about animal-environment relations that are shared between James, Holt, and Gibson. These include the mutuality between animal and environment, phenomenological experience, affordances, and self-perception. This post focuses on the first two ideas, while the latter two will be covered in a future post.
Animal-environment mutuality
Ecological psychology was formally introduced in James Gibson's The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception (1979), where Gibson emphasised the importance of the mutual and reciprocal relationship between animal and environment. Rather than viewing the physical environment and within-organism psychological processes as separate (like in traditional Descartes-rooted psychology), Gibson argued that no animal could exist without a surrounding environment, while no environment could exist without an animal to surround. In other words, the animal and the environment make an inseparable and reciprocal pair, with each existing in relation to the other.
For those who argue that environments can exist without an animal, consider Gibson's description of the Earth before the development of life as a physical reality and a potential environment. To Heft, this distinction between a physical reality and an environment reflects the multiple levels of analysis that psychological explanations can adopt. When looking at more physical descriptions (i.e., physical reality), the level of analysis adopted is at the substantial level, where explanations are built on the basis of what something is made of. Meanwhile, Gibson's definition of an environment takes a more functional flavour, where explanations are developed with respect to the purpose or function of that which is explained. This has direct links to Holt's molar behaviourism explored in Chapter 2. When behaviour is reduced to simpler, lower-level components (i.e., what the behaviour is 'made of', or its substance), explanations of behaviour tend to be proximal and further removed from the actual behavioural cause. On the other hand, studying the behaviour in its integrated and complex form allows for the recession of the stimulus and the discovery of functional properties (i.e., the purpose the behaviour is directed to). By emphasising the ecological level of analysis, Gibson adopts Holt's molar behaviourism and retains the functional relations between animal and environment in his psychological explanations.
To further drive home the relational and mutual nature of the animal-environment connection, Heft provides two examples of commonly executed actions, namely reaching and grasping. While actions are typically studied in isolation and with a focus on that which is making the action, Heft argues that actions inadvertently imply environment referents, or that which the action is directed towards. For example, we don't reach for the sake of reaching. Rather, we are always reaching towards something (i.e., the environment) that varies in shape or location. Similarly, how we grasp is co-determined by our physical capabilities as well as the size, shape, and texture of the object. With these two simple examples, Heft demonstrates how studying even the simplest of tasks doesn't permit the scientist to separate animal from environment. To study perception and action is to study an animal in context. In other words, they must be studied on the ecological level of analysis.
Phenomenology
In simple terms, phenomenology is the study of first-person experiences that are directly perceived. Recalling Holt's molar behaviourism, a primary aim of this was to figure out what the organism was doing (i.e., what is its behaviour, what is it experiencing etc). While not a self-proclaimed phenomenologist, phenomenological analysis served as a crucial first step for Gibson in identifying and describing meaningful psychological phenomena to be later studied under more rigorous psychological experimentation.
The importance of phenomenology as a tool goes back to William James, who used the term introspection instead. Equipped with his philosophy of radical empiricism that emphasised the primacy of pure experience, it was essential for James to provide a rich and thorough description of immediate experience in its most naive form. Unfortunately, James identified a flaw in much of the experimental work of his day, which he termed the psychologist's fallacy, where psychologists confused their analytical viewpoint with the experience itself. To James, this was akin to conflating concepts (i.e, abstractions of immediate experience) with percepts (i.e., immediate experience). Throughout the book, Heft points out many instances where the psychologist's fallacy persists even today, such as in the cognitivist view that the raw material of perception is found in the minuscule elements of sensation that are, through computational processes, put into proper relations with each other to provide veridical experience.
Similar to James, Gibson also saw the importance of direct experience as the basis of psychological phenomena. This likely led to the idea of affordances, which are directly perceivable action possibilities of the environment. For Heft, Gibson's affordances represent a phenomenologically-inspired description of William's pure experiences. The genius of Gibson was in identifying and articulating this fundamental property of experience, and showing how the perception of affordances reflects the reciprocal nature of the animal-environment relationship.
Concluding thoughts
The concept of affordances will be further explored in a subsequent post, but just a few thoughts for now. While affordances are a crucial part of experience, I don't think it paints the full picture. I've heard some views describing affordances as the only thing that's perceived, but this doesn't make much sense to me. For example, event perception is a thriving research programme (e.g., see this post), and it doesn't require the perception of affordances. Besides, even Gibson himself described affordances as the primary (not only) object of perception!
Furthermore, there's much debate about affordances being a dispositional vs. relational property. The next post will address this, but for now, my view is that, metaphysically, affordances exist as dispositional properties, whereas epistemologically, the perception of affordances is relational.
And as a final, unrelated point (and a reminder to myself to revisit this section of the book), Heft describes other phenomenologically-inspired discoveries by Gibson, including optic flow, egomotion, and occluding edges. So much to explore and learn!
References
Gibson, J. J. (1979). The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception. Psychology Press.
Heft, H. (2001). Ecological Psychology in Context: James Gibson, Roger Barker, and the Legacy of William James’s Radical Empiricism. Psychology Press.
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