Defining the Environment in Organism–Environment Systems

Abstract

Enactivism and ecological psychology converge on the relevance of the environment in understanding perception and action. On both views, perceiving organisms are not merely passive receivers of environmental stimuli, but rather form a dynamic relationship with their environments in such a way that shapes how they interact with the world. In this paper, I suggest that while enactivism and ecological psychology enjoy a shared specification of the environment as the cognitive domain, on both accounts, the structure of the environment, itself, is unspecified beyond that of contingent relations with the species-typical sensorimotor capacities of perceiving organisms. This lack of specification creates a considerable gap in theory regarding the organization of organisms as coupled with their environments. I argue that this gap can be filled by drawing from resources in developmental systems theory, namely, specifying the environmental state-space as a developmental niche that shapes and is shaped by individual organisms over developmental and, on a population scale, evolutionary time. Defining the environment as an organism's developmental niche makes it clearer how and why certain contingencies have arisen, in turn, strengthening a joint appeal to both enactivism and ecological psychology as theories asserting complementarity between organisms and their environments.

Exposure to COVID-19 and aggression: the mediating role of anxiety and the moderating role of rumination

“…An important and intriguing question relevant to moderating mechanisms has been raised (Igartua, J. J., & Hayes, A. F., 2021 ): does an individual’s negative psychological quality exacerbate the adverse effects of ecological risk factors (e.g., whether individuals with high rumination in this study have higher levels of aggression and anxiety or not)? It is of great theoretical significance to answer this question accurately, which helps to test the “Organism-Environment Interaction Model” and is directly related to the formulation of social policy and the development of corresponding practical work (Corris, 2020 ). In other words, when the risk of the environment is too high, focusing more on improving the environment for growth (e.g., reducing an individual’s risk of infection) than only on the psychological qualities of individuals (like rumination, etc.)…”

Anthropocentrism, Natural Harmony, Sentience and Animal Rights: Are We Allowed to Use Animals for Our Own Purposes?

“…I will therefore analyse the concepts of “perception”, “consciousness”, “awareness”, and “ability to elaborate mental representations”. All living organisms are perceptive, in the sense that they receive physical or chemical signals from the surrounding environment, perceived by capturing them with suitable sensors, feeling them, in the sense that they are processed through biochemical and biophysical pathways, and react appropriately to them [ 31 ]. Many animals are conscious, that is they respond to external stimuli, as perceptive beings, through a mental project aimed at optimising actions and reactions designed towards the perpetuation of the species (Darwin docet) [ 32 ].…”

Affordances and their ontological core

“…Other environment-related terms are also of growing importance in formal ontology and other domains. Examples of such terms include "niche" (Smith & Varzi, 1999;Keet, 2006;Corris, 2020), "habitat" (Bennett, 2010), "Umwelt" (Ortmann & Michels, 2011), "place" (Jordan et al, 1998;Scheider & Janowicz, 2014), and "locality" (Garbacz et al, 2018(Garbacz et al, , 2020.…”