Affordances as Properties of the Animal-Environment System

In this article, I argue that affordances are properties of the animal-environment system, that is, that they are emergent properties that do not inhere in either the environment or the animal. I critique and review the formal definition of affordance offered by Turvey (1992). Turvey defined affordances as properties of the environment; I discuss some consequences of this and argue that Turvey's strategy of grounding the definition of affordance in terms of dispositional properties is problematic. I also suggest that Turvey's definition of affordance may lead to problems for the specification and direct perception of affordances. Motivated by these problems, I propose a new definition of affordance, in which affordances are properties of the animal-environment system. This definition does not rely on the concept of dispositional properties and is consistent with direct perception.     

My body as an object: self-distance and social experience

In phenomenology the body is often referred to as the lived body which makes the world familiar to me. In this paper, however, I discuss bodily self-consciousness in terms of self-distance. Self-distance is the suggestion that bodily self-consciousness consist in a reflective stance where you conceive of your body as a physical thing, an object in the world as well as the subject of bodily experiences. I argue that we are bodily self-conscious because we experience our own body in more than one way and that these ways are not derivative of one another or hierarchically ordered. This latter claim conflicts with certain phenomenological readings of how the body is experienced, one of which I will refer to and discuss as the Familiarity Objection to my idea of self-distance. I end the paper with a discussion of why we need the conception of experienced objectification that is entailed in the notion of self-distance to account for both pathological and non-pathological bodily self-experiences. The notion of self-distance improves our understanding of how the body plays a central role in psychosis for the experience of distorted inter-subjective relations.     

动允直接知觉的共鸣原理

传统认知理论认为我们只能间接知觉动允,而生态认知心理学则认为对动允的知觉是个体与环境信息直接共鸣的过程。生态认知心理学首先判定动允并不是存在于我们头脑中的认识,而是实际存在于个体-环境系统中的事实,对动允的直接知觉就是对动允的检测而非推测,是对动允信息的拾取而非对记忆内容的提取。这种直接知觉表现为身体的相关动作机制（动作神经元、肌肉组织等）与环境中动允信息的共鸣。进化与学习在共鸣的形成与发展中具有重要作用。     

Is transcendental idealism coherent?

I argue that transcendental idealism can be understood as a coherent and plausible account of experience. I begin by proposing an interpretation of the claim that we know only appearances that does not imply that the objects of experience are anything other than independently real objects. As I understand it, the claim here is abouthow objects appear to us, and not aboutwhat objects appear to us. After this, I offer a version of a correspondence account of veridical experience, in virtue of which these independent entities can satisfy the contents of our experiences. Specifically, I claim that veridical experience can be construed as a kind of map of reality in itself, and that these independent entities satisfy the contents of our experiences when they are, given the proper method of projection, the objects mapped by those experiences.     

Must naive realists be relationalists?

Relationalism maintains that perceptual experience involves, as part of its nature, a distinctive kind of conscious perceptual relation between a subject of experience and an object of experience. Together with the claim that perceptual experience is presentational, relationalism is widely believed to be a core aspect of the naive realist outlook on perception. This is a mistake. I argue that naive realism about perception can be upheld without a commitment to relationalism.     

The Competitive Perception

This paper aims to define what competitive perception is. Using Dufrenne's phenomenological analysis of the art spectator's experience, namely the concept of aesthetic perception, I will claim that it is useful to apply this phenomenological approach to the experience of watching sport events. I will argue that the concepts of uncertainty and auto teleology, being two main features in sport competition, are helpful to define competitive perception.     

How the World Is Measured Up in Size Experience

I develop a Russellian representationalist account of size experience that draws importantly from contemporary vision science research on size perception. The core view is that size is experienced in ‘body‐scaled’ units. So, an object might, say, be experienced as two eye‐level units high. The view is sharpened in response to Thompson’s (forthcoming) Doubled Earth example. This example is presented by Thompson as part of an argument for a Fregean view of size experience. But I argue that the Russellian view I develop handles the Doubled Earth example in a natural and illuminating way, thereby avoiding the need to posit irreducible experiential ‘modes of presentation’. I also address a kind of neo‐Fregean ‘reference‐fixing’ view of size experience, that shares features with the Russellian view developed. I give reasons for favoring the latter. Finally, I argue that Peacocke’s claim that spatial experience is ‘unit free’ is not persuasive.     

Potentiation of action by undetected affordant objects

The physical attributes of objects that are relevant to motor behaviour, or action, are referred to as affordances (Gibson, 1979). Recent evidence has shown that an object's affordance can potentiate an unrelated motor response even when there is no intention to respond to it (e.g., Tucker & Ellis, 1998). In the five experiments, we examined whether conscious perception of an affordance is necessary to produce motor priming by presenting images of affordant objects (e.g., hammer) under conditions which cause them to be undetectable: Brief masked exposure (BME) and attentional blink (AB). We successfully demonstrated that conscious perception is not necessary for an object's affordance to produce motor priming. Since these findings are consistent with the abilities/disabilities of patients with blindsight and visual form agnosia, it is possible that processing accomplished by the dorsal stream produced this effect, though more research is needed to confirm this assertion.     

On the Perception of Structure

Many of the objects that we perceive have an important characteristic: When they move, they change shape. For instance, when you watch a person walk across a room, her body constantly deforms. I suggest that we exercise a type of perceptual constancy in response to changes of this sort, which I call structure constancy. In this paper I offer an account of structure constancy. I introduce the notion of compositional structure, and propose that structure constancy involves perceptually representing an object as retaining its compositional structure over time. I argue that compositional structure is represented in visual phenomenology, and I also assemble empirical evidence in support of the claim that compositional structure is recovered by the visual system. Finally, I draw out consequences of this account. I argue that structure constancy has implications for the predictive capacities of perception, and that the phenomenon places important constraints on viable accounts of both the format and reference frame of visual experience.     

Choreographing Empathy

The paper builds an argument about empathy, kinesthesia, choreography, and power as they were constituted in early eighteenth century France. It examines the conditions under which one body could claim to know what another body was feeling, using two sets of documents – philosophical examinations of perception and kinesthesia by Condillac and notations of dances published by Feuillet. Reading these documents intertextually, I postulate a kind of corporeal episteme that grounds how the body is constructed. And I endeavor to situate this body within the colonial and expansionist politics of its historical moment.     

Is Perception the Canonical Route to Aesthetic Judgment?

It is commonplace amongst philosophers of art to make claims that postulate important links between aesthetics and perception. In this paper, I focus on one such claim—that perception is the canonical route to aesthetic judgment. I consider a range of prima facie plausible interpretations of this claim, and argue that each fails to identify any important link between aesthetic judgment and perception. Given this, I conclude that we have good reason to be sceptical of the claim that perception is in any way privileged as a source of aesthetic judgment.     

Extending the notion of affordance

Post-Gibson attempts to set out a definition of affordance generally agree that this notion can be understood as a property of the environment with salience for an organism’s behavior. According to this view, some scholars advocate the idea that affordances are dispositional properties of physical objects that, given suitable circumstances, necessarily actualize related actions. This paper aims at assessing this statement in light of a theory of affordance perception. After years of discontinuity between strands of empirical and theoretical research, the time is ripe for addressing the question of whether the dispositional interpretation of affordance is in accordance with some recent evidence from cognitive science and neuroscience. Following this line, I clarify that there are some cases of affordance-related effects that neither require the actualization of an action, nor the presence of an action-related property bearer in the environment, and that the identification of affordance with physical properties provides only a partial explanation of the wide range of affordance-related effects. Accordingly, I argue in favor of a more general account of affordance perception based on the ability to directly detect perceptual patterns in the environment.     

Experience Influences Affordance Perception for Low Crawling Under Barriers With Altered Body Dimensions

Abstract

We examined the role of experience in affordance perception for low crawling with altered body dimensions under barriers of different heights. Adults decided which of five backpacks (10–30?cm thick) they would be able to wear while low crawling under barriers. Participants were assigned to one of three experience conditions. Participants in the Pre/Post-choice experience condition crawled under the barrier before and after picking a backpack, participants in the Feedback condition crawled under the barrier after picking a backpack, but participants in the No Experience condition received no low-crawling experience. Past research suggests that pre-choice experience with low crawling under the barrier would lead to more accurate responses. Overall, participants in all three conditions scaled the height of the backpack to the barrier height. Pre-choice low-crawling experience strongly influenced backpack choices such that participants in the Pre/Post condition picked significantly smaller backpacks and produced fewer failures than participants in the other conditions. The results provide evidence that brief practice, in an unfamiliar posture, can lead to improvements in affordance perception.     

Inductive parsimony and the Methodological Argument

Studies on so-called Change Blindness and Inattentional Blindness have been taken to establish the claim that conscious perception of a stimulus requires the attentional processing of that stimulus. One might contend, against this claim, that the evidence only shows attention to be necessary for the subject to have access to the contents of conscious perception and not for conscious perception itself. This "Methodological Argument" is gaining ground among philosophers who work on attention and consciousness, such as Christopher Mole. I find that, without the supporting evidence of inaccessible consciousness, this argument collapses into an indefensible form of inductive parsimony. The Methodological Argument is thus shown to be unsuccessful when used against the claim that attention is required for conscious perception, though I suggest that it may be successful against the more ambitious claim that attention is necessary for all conscious experience.     

The Entropic Body: Primitive Anxieties and Secondary Skin Formation in Anorexia Nervosa

This paper develops a metapsychological view of anorexia nervosa, including not only its symptomatic presentation but also its etiology and characteristic psychic and relational styles. Because patients with anorexia are understood as not having internalized maternal comforting functions in the period of separation-individuation, they are unable to digest trauma experiences of infancy. I argue that the anorexic patient’s disturbed relationship with food reflects distortions in transitional object usage. Lacking the ability to contain intense anxieties about disintegration and falling apart, patients with anorexia must find other ways to hold themselves together. The fear of getting fat expressed by these patients is one way that this fear of disintegration is expressed. Furthermore, the almost addictive experience of emaciation holds the personality together. Elaborating this idea, I develop the notion of the entropic body, a particular version of the false body (Goldberg, 2004) employed by patients with anorexia nervosa in an attempt to compensate for absent maternal comforting functions. This body-state (Petrucelli, 2014), which develops against a background of profound early trauma, eschews hunger and dependence in favor of omnipotently controlled protection.     

Do Trompe l'oeils Look Right When Viewed from the Wrong Place?

Picture perception and ordinary perception of real objects differ in several respects. Two of their main differences are: (1) Depicted objects are not perceived as present and (2) We cannot perceive significant spatial shifts as we move with respect to them. Some special illusory pictures escape these visual effects obtained in usual picture perception. First, trompe l'oeil paintings violate (1): the depicted object looks, even momentarily, like a present object. Second, anamorphic paintings violate (2): they lead to appreciate spatial shifts resulting from movement. However, anamorphic paintings do not violate (1): they are still perceived as clearly pictorial, that is, nonpresent. What about the relation between trompe l'oeil paintings and (2)? Do trompe l'oeils allow us to perceive spatial shifts? Nobody has ever focused on this aspect of trompe l'oeil perception. I offer the first speculation about this question. I suggest that, if we follow our most recent theories in philosophy and vision science about the mechanisms of picture perception, then, the only plausible answer, in line with phenomenological intuitions, is that, differently from nonillusory, usual picture perception, and similarly to ordinary perception, trompe l'oeil perception does allow us to perceive spatial shifts resulting from movement. I also discuss the philosophical implications of this claim.     

Are Events and Affordances Commensurate Terms?

In this article, I argue that the dichotomy between events and affordances as Stoffregen (target article, this issue) devises is unwarranted and potentially misleading. I challenge the notion that the role of the actor distinguishes events from affordances in any useful way. The research labeled event perception is neither less ecological nor qualitatively different from research on affordances. Instead, the main distinction is constituted by affordance being a perceptual property, whereas event pertains to a different semantic category. Nonetheless, the contemplation of these concepts, in particular an elaboration of the concept of affordance, is desperately needed.     

Neo-pragmatic intentionality and enactive perception: a compromise between extended and enactive minds

The general idea of enactive perception is that actual and potential embodied activities determine perceptual experience. Some extended mind theorists, such as Andy Clark, refute this claim despite their general emphasis on the importance of the body. I propose a compromise to this opposition. The extended mind thesis is allegedly a consequence of our commonsense understanding of the mind. Furthermore, extended mind theorists assume the existence of non-human minds. I explore the precise nature of the commonsense understanding of the mind, which accepts both extended minds and non-human minds. In the area of philosophy of mind, there are two theories of intentionality based on such commonsense understandings: neo-behaviorism defended, e.g., by Daniel Dennett, and neo-pragmatism advocated, e.g., by Robert Brandom. Neither account is in full agreement with how people ordinarily use their commonsense understanding. Neo-pragmatism, however, can overcome its problem—its inability to explain why people routinely find intentionality in non-humans—by incorporating the phenomenological suggestion that interactional bodily skills determine how we perceive others’ intentionality. I call this integrative position embodied neo-pragmatism. I conclude that the extended view of the mind makes sense, without denying the existence of non-human minds, only by assuming embodied neo-pragmatism and hence the general idea of enactive perception.     

Exploratory behaviors and recalibration: What processes are shared between functionally similar affordances?

Recalibration of affordance perception allows observers to adapt to changes in the body’s size or abilities that alter possibilities for action. Of key interest is understanding how exploratory behaviors lead to successful recalibration. The present study was designed to test a novel hypothesis—that the same processes of exploration and recalibration should generalize between affordances that share a similar function. Most affordances for fitting the body through openings are recalibrated without feedback from practicing the action; locomotion exploration is sufficient. The present study used a different fitting task, squeezing through doorways, to determine whether locomotor experience was sufficient for recalibrating to changes in body size that altered affordances. Participants were unable to recalibrate from locomotor experience, demonstrating that exploratory behaviors do not necessarily generalize between functionally similar affordances. Participants only recalibrated following action practice or after receiving feedback about judgment accuracy, suggesting that the informational requirements of the squeezing task may differ from those of other fitting tasks. Implications for affordance theory are discussed.     

Naïve Realism,Hallucination, and Causation: A New Response to the Screening Off Problem

This paper sets out a novel response to the ‘screening off’ problem for naïve realism. The aim is to resist the claim (which many naïve realists accept) that the kind of experience involved in hallucinating also occurs during perception, by arguing that there are causal constraints that must be met if an hallucinatory experience is to occur, ones that are never met in perceptual cases. Notably, given this response, it turns out that, contra current orthodoxy, naïve realists need not adopt any particular view about the psychological nature of hallucinatory experience to handle the screening off problem. Consequently, room opens up for naïve realists to endorse whatever theory of hallucinatory experience seems to best capture the distinctive nature of such episodes.