Abstract
In this article, we investigate the foundations for a Gibsonian neuroscience. There is an increasingly influential current in neuroscience based on pragmatic and selectionist principles, which we think can contribute to ecological psychology. Starting from ecological psychology, we identify three basic constraints any Gibsonian neuroscience needs to adhere to: nonreconstructive perception, vicarious functioning, and selectionist self-organization. We discuss two previous attempts to integrate affordances with neuroscience: Reed’s ecological rendering of Edelman’s selectionism as well as Dreyfus’ phenomenological interpretation of Freeman’s neurodynamics. Reed and Dreyfus face the problem of how to account for “value.” We then show how the free-energy principle, an increasingly dominant framework in theoretical neuroscience, is rooted in both Freeman’s neurodynamics and Edelman’s selectionism. The free-energy principle accounts for value in terms of selective anticipation. The selection pressures at work on the agent shape its selective sensitivity to the relevant affordances in the environment. By being responsive to the relevant affordances in the environment, an agent comes to have grip on its interactions with the environment and can thrive in its ecological niche.
Highlights
For Gibson, one cannot realistically expect to synthesize a general theory of perception from patching together a theory of the physical world constructed by physicists who are primarily interested in the imperceptible microstructure of matter with a theory of optics developed for lens makers, astronomers and microscopists with a theory of image recording developed for painters and geometers with a theory of neural functioning developed for communication engineers so as to yield a unified theory of adaptive perception for ecologically minded psychologists. — Mace (1977, p. 47)The relationship between ecological psychology and cognitive neuroscience has been a difficult one
Can cognitive neuroscience be put more in line with ecological psychology? In other words: Is a Gibsonian neuroscience feasible?
Taken from Mace’s (1977) seminal publication, one reason why the successful marriage between ecological psychology and cognitive neuroscience is still forthcoming is because the root-metaphors and conceptualizations are taken from different disciplines—for example, the appeal to the reconstruction of an image and the transmission or broadcasting of a message
Summary
ISSN: 1040-7413 (Print) 1532-6969 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/heco. Jelle Bruineberga,b and Erik Rietvelda,b,c,d aDepartment of Philosophy, Institute for Logic, Language and Computation, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands; bAmsterdam Brain and Cognition Centre, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands; cAmsterdam University Medical Center, Department of Psychiatry, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands; dDepartment of Philosophy, University of Twente, Enschede, The Netherlands
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