tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9192597712746432631.post3727827636328531499..comments2024-03-09T09:06:35.288+00:00Comments on Notes from Two Scientific Psychologists: Relational Theories of Affordances are Functional, Not Mechanistic (A Purple Peril)Andrewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16732977871048876430noreply@blogger.comBlogger6125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9192597712746432631.post-86569552476451326312016-11-06T10:30:58.980+00:002016-11-06T10:30:58.980+00:00Reply by Rietveld & Kiverstein, Part 3:
Finall...Reply by Rietveld & Kiverstein, Part 3:<br />Finally, Andrew Wilson suggests that relational affordance-based accounts will have problems giving mechanistic explanations. While we have no problem with mechanistic styles of explanation we doubt that it makes sense to try to fit all ecological and dynamical styles of explanation into this box. Mechanistic explanation has its limitations when it comes to accounting for systems that resist compositional analysis which is often the case with self-organizing systems that exhibit non-linear causal behaviors. We therefore think it is important to seek methodologies that complement mechanistic explanations and we are certainly not afraid of causal explanations. <br /><br />The Frontiers and Synthese articles just mentioned sketche a framework for developing causal explanations as we see them: multiple simultaneous relevant affordance-related states of action readiness that constrain each other. This kind of dynamical explanation can do justice to nestedness of affordances in the ecological niche –something Wilson and Golonka ignore- as well as to the fact that we respond not just to one affordances at a time (!) but to a whole field of relevant affordances, which includes affordances for so-called 'higher' cognition (see also Kivertein & Rietveld, 2015, Philosophia). Moreover, we have also investigated the causal impact of Deep Brain Stimulation empirically in order to relate our affordance-based account to data on the way Deep Brain Stimulation around the nucleus accumbens impacts the behavior and experience of patients with OCD, which includes changes in certain kinds of higher cognition (Rietveld, de Haan & Denys, BBS; de Haan, Rietveld, Stokhof & Denys, 2013 Frontiers in Human Neuroscience; 2015 PLOS ONE).<br /><br />Erik Rietveld & Julian Kiverstein<br /><br />Email: d.w.rietveld@amc.uva.nl<br /><br /><br />References:<br />Bruineberg, J., Kiverstein, J.D. & Rietveld, E. (2016) The anticipating brain is not a scientist: The free-energy principle from an ecological-enactive perspective. Synthese. doi:10.1007/s11229-016-1239-1<br /><br />Rietveld, E. (2016) Situating the embodied mind in landscape of standing affordances for living without chairs: Materializing a philosophical worldview. Journal of Sports Medicine. doi: 1007/s40279-016-0520-2<br /><br />Rietveld, E. & Brouwers, A.A. (2016) Optimal grip on affordances in architectural design practices: An ethnography. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, doi: 10.1007/s11097-016-9475-x<br /><br />De Haan, S., Rietveld, E., Stokhof, M. & Denys, D. (2015) Effects of Deep Brain Stimulation on the lived experience of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder patients: In-depth interviews with 18 patients. PLoS ONE 10(8), pp. 1-29. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0135524.<br /><br />Kiverstein, J. & Rietveld, E. (2015) The Primacy of Skilled Intentionality: On Hutto & Satne’s The Natural Origins of Content. Philosophia 43 (3), pp. 701-721<br /><br />Rietveld, E. & Kiverstein, J. (2014) A rich landscape of affordances. Ecological Psychology 26 (4), pp. 325-352.<br /><br />Bruineberg, J. & Rietveld, E. (2014) Self-organization, free energy minimization, and optimal grip on a field of affordances. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience 8 (599), pp. 1-14.<br /><br />De Haan, S., Rietveld, E., Stokhof, M., & Denys, D. (2013). The phenomenology of deep brain stimulation-induced changes in OCD: an enactive affordance-based model. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 7 (653), pp. 1-14. <br /><br />Rietveld, E., De Haan, S. & Denys, D (2013), Social affordances in context: What is it that we are bodily responsive to? Invited commentary article on Leo Schilbach et al. BBS, Behavioral and Brain Sciences, p. 436.<br /><br />Erik Rietveldhttps://erikrietveld.com/noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9192597712746432631.post-91982286481758540792016-11-06T10:28:21.258+00:002016-11-06T10:28:21.258+00:00Reply by Rietveld & Kiverstein, Part 2.
Cruci...Reply by Rietveld & Kiverstein, Part 2.<br /><br />Crucially, the papers by Wilson and Golonka presuppose the solution to one of the main problems in cognitive science: the origin of relevance in the concrete situation. It does so by presupposing “tasks” rather than explaining why one cares about one task rather than another in the particular situation. In other words, it is presupposed that people care about certain affordances, for example an obstacle to avoid, like a pole with a stop sign one navigates around (p243 in Golonka 2015). But note that someone in a tank would not care at all about a certain pole with a sign, so this aspect of the environment would not invite avoiding to him or her. We think what matters are relevant action possibilities: affordances for which the individual has some readiness to act, and that influence the self-organization of what we call the field of relevant affordances (Bruineberg & Rietveld, 2014). Another key difference between Wilson & Golonka and us is their divide between affordances and ecological information. Our relational account of affordances defines affordances relative to a form of life/ecological niche. In the human form of life, the landscape of affordances is very rich and includes possibilities for what people have typically characterized as forms of ‘higher’ cognition, and this includes for example the affordances of language. For us perceiving is “relevant affordance related action-readiness”, there is therefore no need to restrict affordances to information that is specifying and lawlike. Instead the concept of affordances can apply to everything in the (sociomaterial) environment that people can skillfully engage with.<br /><br />For now it is perhaps also good to know that with our Skilled Intentionality Framework (SIF) for 'higher' cognition we try not just to do justice to Gibson (see Rietveld & Kiverstein, 2014, Ecological Psycholog; Rietveld, 2016, Sports Medicine), but also to complementary insights from Merleau-Ponty in phenomenology (hence the emphasis on the solicitations of relevant affordances as well as responsiveness to multiple relevant affordances simultaneously, i.e. to a whole field of relevant affordances), our Wittgensteinian philosophical work on situated normativity in embodied cognition (Rietveld, 2008, Mind,), and the field of neurodynamics, including Karl Friston’s work on free energy minimization (see Bruineberg, Kiverstein & Rietveld, 2016 in Synthese, and Bruineberg & Rietveld, 2014, on the self-organization of multiple simultaneous states of action readiness in the Frontiers in Human Neuroscience special issue on Radical Embodied Cognitive Neuroscience, edited by Wilson, Golonka and Barrett). <br />Erik Rietveldhttps://erikrietveld.com/noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9192597712746432631.post-71609907679277047052016-11-06T10:21:36.475+00:002016-11-06T10:21:36.475+00:00This is a long reply which we will split up in thr...This is a long reply which we will split up in three parts. <br />1. We have been excited to follow the research by Andrew Wilson and Sabrina Golonka exploring how to explain higher cognition from within ecological psychology and had an interesting discussion on some of the challenges such a project faces with Andrew at the EWEP conference in Groningen this summer. We agree with Wilson & Golonka about the crucial research program for Ecological Psychology: it needs to expand into higher cognition and there are difficult issues that need to be addressed in order to make this possible. We have started dealing with these in a paper that discusses affordances for higher cognition (Rietveld & Kiverstein, 2014, Ecological Psychology) and a paper that proposes to think of the dynamics of the brain and body in terms states of action readiness that attune to the dynamics of the sociomaterial environment and the relevant action possibilities if offers (Bruineberg & Rietveld, 2014, Frontiers in Human Neuroscience; Bruineberg, Kiverstein & Rietveld, 2016, Synthese). <br /><br />We agree however that there are interesting points of disagreement and welcome this opportunity to exchange some thoughts on these issues. Contrary to what Andrew Wilson writes in his blogpost, on our account it is not the case that affordances do not exist before they are perceived. Affordances on our definition are relations between aspects of the (socio)material environment and abilities available in a form of life. So they are defined independently of any particular individual but not independently of the abilities available in the (socio-cultural) practices that make up the form of life. When an individual dies or is born, (almost) nothing changes to the affordances available in the practice. But when a practice changes or dies out, this does change the affordances available. Learning takes then place via a process of education of attention to the affordances that are already available in the ecological niche. This learning is typically scaffolded by more established practitioners. <br /><br />We disagree mostly with the attempt by Wilson and Golonka to introduce representations in ecological psychology. In particular the neural representations seem to generate more questions than they solve. Whereas Wilson & Golonka try to deal with representation hungry problems in the end in terms of neural representations, we try to stick to the ecological adagio formulated by Mace: don’t ask what is inside the head but what the head is inside of. More precisely, we suggest, don’t only ask what is inside the head, because what is in the head are states of action readiness that are driven by the relevant affordances that an individual encounters in its tendency towards grip on the situation (see the Conclusion of our recent Synthese paper (2016)). <br />Erik Rietveldhttps://erikrietveld.com/noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9192597712746432631.post-28106636960956496362016-10-15T16:03:23.685+01:002016-10-15T16:03:23.685+01:00Dispositional properties come in pairs, so for exa...Dispositional properties come in pairs, so for example salt has the property of being soluble in water and water has the complementary property of being able to dissolve salts. <br /><br />Both these properties exist independently of each other, because they arise from features of the salt and water, respectively. Salt would still be disposed to dissolve in something like water even if there was no water because of what a salt is and how it's made.<br /><br />Affordances have a complement in effectivities. But as above, affordances and effectivities exist independent of each other because they come about because of how each thing is made. <br /><br />The disposition is then effected if the complementary pairs come into contact. The affordance is effected when an organism with the relevant effectivities perceives and acts on it. Andrewhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16732977871048876430noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9192597712746432631.post-37669861126616706102016-10-13T21:34:01.473+01:002016-10-13T21:34:01.473+01:00Nice post. However, I'm not sure I understand ...Nice post. However, I'm not sure I understand what you mean by "dispositions have the additional advantage of existing prior to a particular individual coming into contact with it." I did read the salt analogy in your earlier blog post, and also the example of the chair and "sit-on-ability" as having existed before the human and the chair came in contact with each other. All of these are nice analogies but what is a concrete example of such a disposition in cognition (i.e., something that just exists in a vacuum and pre-experience)? IF experience is a pre-requisite for establishing these so-called dispositions, then that automatically argues against the existence of dispositions prior to the organism coming in contact with its environment. <br /><br />What am I missing here? <br /><br />liszt85https://www.blogger.com/profile/06915836799539783815noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9192597712746432631.post-64608296589155482172016-07-26T22:17:36.997+01:002016-07-26T22:17:36.997+01:00Rodolfo Llinas, in his book, I of the Vortex, touc...Rodolfo Llinas, in his book, I of the Vortex, touches on some ideas that may relate to affordances. He points out that, as we learn to interact with various objects in our environment (climb stairs, pick up a mug of hot coffee and take a sip, shoot a basketball, ride a bike, etc.) these behaviors at first require attention but, over time are automated. The area of the brain crucial to “storing” these automated behaviors (basal ganglia) is largely inhibitory in nature. This can readily seen in such diseases as Parkinsons and Tourettes. In Tourettes, inhibition is lost. We are “primed” to act at all times and can do so in a split second if warranted. So long as the environment contains what we expect it to contain, we inhibit action unless directed by attentive behavior or are startled (think spotting a snake on a trail in the woods).<br /><br />An interesting point touched on by Llinas in his book is that speech, too, is comprised of learned, automated muscle movements in a way that is no different from skipping rope and that it is controlled by much of the same brain areas. We are inhibited from speaking, but primed to hear and recognize and understand words as they are spoken. Even when we think sub-vocally, we are still using muscles associated with speech. The is also true for reading. We only need to see a word and it's meaning is cascaded from memory.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com