Gibson and Gestalt: (re)presentation, processing, and construction

Abstract

Seeking to avoid the typical binary choices between symbolic representations and no representations, or between functionally decomposable psychological processes and no psychological processes, or between direct perception of mind-independent physical properties and indirect perception of sense data, this article proposes that even a clear-thinking friend of Gibson can accept that perception of the environment is mediated by appearances and that such appearances are produced by functionally decomposable, rule-instantiating psychological processes. In so doing, it avoids both hyper-intellectualization of the perceptual process and the positing of sense data as immediate objects of perception. It considers notions of perceptual mediation from classical Gestalt psychology, while referencing recent phenomenological arguments showing that perception does not simply conform to mind-independent physical properties. Perception presents objects and scenes under a phenomenal aspect, in a manner suitable to be (and evaluable as) action-guiding. Finally, it examines neuroscientific decompositions of Gibsonian information pickup mechanisms, finding that such mechanisms are reasonably described as effecting processes of construction (on a not-necessarily-cognitivist conception of construction). As a separate point, such mechanisms are usefully described as including subpersonal, non-symbolic representations and processes of information integration.