Reading Group - The Problem of Time (Heft, 2000)

How big is the present? Classic theories of perception all essentially assume that 'now' is some instantaneous slice of time, and that the task of perception is to reconstruct the flow of experience from the snapshots provided by, for example, the eye. But phenomenologically, our experience clearly occurs over time, and it is not clear how you can reinsert time into a perceptual system that detects static slices (in the same way it is not clear how you can uniquely recover the third spatial dimension from a 2D retinal image). In other words, perceptual experience is 4 dimensional - three spatial and one temporal - and we are supposedly creating this from a series of two (spatial) dimensional snapshots.

 

Reading Group - The Problem of Two Minds (Heft, 2001, Chap 4)

I left this part of Chapter 4 as a separate post because the end discusses a problem, the problem of two minds, in some detail and it made sense to split it out. This section ties Gibson to James again by highlighting how his ecological optics can solve a problem within radical empiricism, demonstrating that they are, indeed, connected in interesting ways. This will also segue a little back into dispositions, although only briefly; I've been doing some digging and, as I suspected, the philosophical discussion of what dispositions are has moved on since Turvey (1992). Over the next little while I'll be attempting to read some of the philosophy literature, with the help of a philosopher friend of mine, with the goal of producing some papers for the philosophical and eco-psych communities.

Reading Group - Heft (2001) on Gibson (Pt IIa)

Time for a break on affordances, and a quick check in with Heft. In the last chapter Heft laid out the key contributions Gibson made to the radical empiricist programme. In Chapter 4, Heft focuses on the specific consequences for Gibson of being a realist about relations, and continues to tie this to James via Holt. This post will cover the first half of that chapter.

Chapter 3 discussed Gibson's notion of the "mutuality between the knower and the thing known" (p.143). Chapter 4 now turns to "the context within which knowing processes transpire", i.e. the metaphysical landscape that serves as the basis for the act of perceiving. Simply put, this landscape is the rich web of relations between objects and events, which are real and perceivable. This web is the basis for the dynamic stability described by James and required for flexible but reliable behaviour.

Reading Group - Heft (2001) on Gibson

Part II of Heft moves on from James and Holt and into Gibson's ecological approach. The point of Part I, as I've discussed, was to establish the roots of Gibson in the radical empiricism of James, conveyed via the molar behaviourism of Holt. Part II is a detailed discussion of the ecological approach, specifically that laid out in Gibson (1979). I'm therefore going to leave the details of the exposition to the other reading group posts, and focus on the higher level connections and points Heft makes. I'm also going to handle Chapter 3 in two posts: this one will be a brief summary of some key points, and later this week I'll reveal how I've been mistaken about affordances for quite a while.

A Note on Holt on Visual Illusions (Heft, 2001)

This is a visual illusion. When you look at it, there appears to be a great deal of motion as things rotate in various directions. But there's no actual motion; this isn't an animated display and you can verify this by fixating the centre or touching your computer screen - no motion. I just fooled your visual system.

But Andrew, you say, you've been talking all this time about how great perception is! It's direct, functional, reflects experience, and lawful: if perception is all these things, how can it be fooled so easily by some pixels? Direct realism surely cannot handle this: perception is flawed, and readily shown not to correspond to the way things really are. Clearly this James Gibson is a mad man and we can go back to 'knowing' that perception is clearly mediated by pretty good but fallible representations.

Reading Group - Heft (2001) on EB Holt

In Chapter 2, Heft examines the life and work of James student EB Holt, who links Gibson to James by being the student of the latter and the graduate advisor of the former. Heft discusses Holt's work and frames the discussion to show how the key ideas from radical empiricism come through to feature so heavily in Gibson's psychology.

A lot of the fundamentals should now be familiar: Holt follows James in denying any type of dualism and in considering cognition to be a completely natural phenomenon. Holt is a realist, considers relations to be real and where the action is, and (eventually) considers all psychological phenomena to be the result of dynamic, time extended interactions between an active organism and a structured environment.  It's no coincidence that Gibson described himself as a 'Holtian philosophical behaviourist'!

Reading Group - Heft (2001) William James and Radical Empircism

This book got heavy, fast! The first full chapter discusses the metaphysics of William James (pictured in his younger, cooler days) and how it is the philosophical groundwork for Gibson. Assuming Heft's analysis of James is right, this is precisely what it is.

I won't review all the detailed argument because there is a lot of material in this chapter. What I will do is summarise the key points.

The goal of James' metaphysics (theory of the way the universe is composed) is to replace the dualism he and others like Dewey knew was (and still is) lurking at the heart of psychology. Metaphysical dualism is the assumption that there are two kinds of stuff in the universe - for Descartes it was soul and world, for psychology it was mind and body. Dualism is a major problem, if true, because of one important point - if there are indeed two types of thing in the universe, how can something of one type (e.g. a mental state) come to have knowledge about something of another type (e.g. an event in the world?). It is, in fact, impossible by definition, and for this reason any line of reasoning that entails a dualism is generally frowned upon in philosophy.

Reading Group - Heft (2001) Intro + Prologue

This is the first post on the readings I'm doing at the moment. I'm going to be focusing on Heft (2001) while Sabrina is going to work on Gibson (1979).

Heft is a psychologist, and the goal of this book is to 'examine the historical and theoretical foundations' of Gibson. This is an excellent idea: as Heft points out, a lot of modern psychologists reject Gibson as being 'out there' and 'from out of the blue' when in actual fact his basic approach is firmly rooted in the work of William James and Edwin B Holt, Gibson's graduate advisor.

Reading Group: Gibson (1979) and Heft (2001)

I'm going to take advantage of the fact I'm doing this blog to re-read Gibson 1979 and take notes. I'm going to post these chapter by chapter as I go, I also found a copy of Harry Heft's book in the library and I've been meaning to read it too, so I'm going to do the same for that. Posts about the books will have 'Reading Group' in the title. Feel free to read along :)

Gibson, J.J. (1979). The ecological approach to visual perception. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. Amazon.co.uk

Heft, H. (2001). Ecological Psychology in Context: James Gibson, Roger Barker and the Legacy of William James's Radical Empiricism. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Amazon.co.uk