Laws and Conventions in Language-Related Behaviors

Golonka, Sabrina

doi:10.1080/10407413.2015.1068654

Cited by 30 publications

(36 citation statements)

References 25 publications

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“…The critical question (as Gibson himself emphasized) is actually about whether and how these properties are informationally specified, and, despite some efforts (Bruineberg, Chemero & Rietveld, 2018) there is currently no good account for that, nor is one likely (Wilson, 2018b). We have argued recently (Golonka, 2015) that any extension of the ecological approach into so-called higher-order, 'representation-hungry' cognition therefore requires extending our understanding of the form, content and use of information, which is what we have continued here. If a broader ecological cognitive science and neuroscience is to become a reality, this is the path we need to take.…”

Section: Is This Analysis Representational? Does It Have To Be?mentioning

confidence: 79%

“…Unfortunately, these theories lack a mechanism by which these relational affordances might be perceived. If an organism cannot come into psychological contact with such relational affordances, then they are not a suitable basis for a theory of cognition (Golonka, 2015;Wilson, 2018b). For this reason, we argue that any attempt to scale up ecological psychology must begin with the ecological information organisms are in contact with, and how organisms can use information in the selection and control of increasingly complex and abstract behaviors.…”

Section: Affordance-based Approachesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…But while all ecological information is lawfully related to the properties of objects or events in the world that create the information, organisms are not law-bound to use that information in a particular way (Wilson 2018b). Following Golonka (2015), when the behavioral consequences of information are not related to the object or event that caused the information, we say information has had a conventional (as opposed to law-based) effect on behavior. 7 by a door.…”

Section: Action Control Action Selection Neural Representationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Ecological Representations

Golonka¹,

Wilson²

2016

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Mainstream cognitive science and neuroscience both rely heavily on the notion of representation in order to explain the full range of our behavioral repertoire. The relevant feature of representation is its ability to designate (stand in for) spatially or temporally distant properties, When we organize our behavior with respect to mental or neural representations, we are (in principle) organizing our behavior with respect to the property it designates. While representational theories are a potentially a powerful foundation for a good cognitive theory, problems such as grounding and systemdetectable error remain unsolved. For these and other reasons, ecological explanations reject the need for representations and do not treat the nervous system as doing any mediating work.However, this has left us without a straight-forward vocabulary to engage with so-called 'representation-hungry' problems or the role of the nervous system in cognition.In an effort to develop such a vocabulary, here we show that James J Gibson's ecological information functions to designate the ecologically-scaled dynamical world to an organism. We then show that this designation analysis of information leads to an ecological conceptualization of the neural activity caused by information, which in turn we argue can together support intentional behavior with respect to spatially and temporally distal properties. Problems such as grounding and error detection are solved via law-based specification. This analysis extends the ecological framework into the realm of 'representation-hungry' problems, making it as powerful a potential basis for theories of behavior as traditional cognitive approaches. The resulting analysis does, according to some definitions, allow information and the neural activity to be conceptualized as representations; however, the key work is done by information and the analysis remains true to Gibson's ecological ontology.Mainstream accounts of cognition, and the role of the brain in cognition, are predicated on theories of (computational) mental and neural representation. These cognitive representations are not invoked on a whim; they take the forms they do because they are meant to enable three important features of cognition, 1) flexibility / intentionality, 2) successful perception, 3) higher order cognition. However, a number of issues with cognitive representations remain; the neural code by which they are instantiated in the brain is unknown, there is no broad agreement on their structure and format, and they may be fatally ungrounded (e.g. Harnad, 1990) and shut off from system detectable error (Bickhard, 2009). As long as cognitive neuroscience relies on cognitive representational theories, it inherits these problems. In the absence of alternatives, this might be an acceptable risk. If, on the other hand, a framework existed that could explain the key features of cognition while avoiding the problems that saddle cognitive representations, then neuroscience would be on firmer footing by adopting this theoretical basis in...

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Section: Is This Analysis Representational? Does It Have To Be?mentioning

confidence: 79%

Section: Affordance-based Approachesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Action Control Action Selection Neural Representationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Ecological Representations

Golonka¹,

Wilson²

2016

Preprint

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“…We argue that the kind of information that EP invokes does not include such features. 4 The phenomenon of all reflections and refractions of light on the surfaces of the environment generates what Gibson dubs the "ambient optic array" (see Gibson, 1979/2015. 5 Hutto and Myin (2013, p. 66) borrow this example from Jacob (1997, p. 45), and present it as a genuine instance of covariant information (for subsequent uses of this example see Hutto & Myin, 2017, p. 30).…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…To illustrate this distinction, Gibson offers the following example (1979/2015Chemero, 2009, pp. 107-108).…”

Section: Information At the Ecological Scalementioning

confidence: 99%

Ecological psychology is radical enough: A reply to radical enactivists

Segundo-Ortin

Heras–Escribano

Raja

2019

Philosophical Psychology

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Ecological psychology is one of the most influential theories of perception in the embodied, antirepresentational, and situated cognitive sciences. However, radical enactivists claim that Gibsonians tend to describe ecological information and its 'pick up' in ways that make ecological psychology close to representational theories of perception and cognition. Motivated by worries about the tenability of classical views of informational content and its processing, these authors claim that ecological psychology needs to be "RECtified" so as to explicitly resist representational readings. In this paper, we argue against this call for RECtification. To do so, we offer a detailed analysis of the notion of perceptual information and other related notions such as specificity and meaning, as they are presented in the specialized ecological literature. We defend that these notions, if properly understood, remain free of any representational commitment. Ecological psychology, we conclude, does not need to be RECtified. Abbreviations: EP = Ecological Psychology REC = Radical Enactivism.Ecological psychology is one of the most influential theories of perception in the embodied, anti-representational, and situated cognitive sciences. However, radical enactivists claim that Gibsonians tend to describe ecological information and its 'pick up' in ways that make ecological psychology close to representational theories of perception and cognition. Motivated by worries about the tenability of classical views of informational content and its processing, these authors claim that ecological psychology needs to be "RECtified" so as to explicitly resist representational readings. In this paper, we argue against this call for RECtification. To do so, we offer a detailed analysis of the notion of perceptual information and other related notions such as specificity and meaning, as they are presented in the specialized ecological literature. We defend that these notions, if properly understood, remain free of any representational commitment. Ecological psychology, we conclude, does not need to be RECtified.

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Horizons of the word: Words and tools in perception and action

Kee

2020

Phenom Cogn Sci

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In this paper I develop a novel account of the phenomenality of language by focusing on characteristics of perceived speech. I explore the extent to which the spoken word can be said to have a horizonal structure similar to that of spatiotemporal objects: our perception of each is informed by habitual associations and expectations formed through past experiences of the object or word and other associated objects and experiences. Specifically, the horizonal structure of speech in use can fruitfully be compared to that of a tool in use. The comparison suggests an account of our linguistic faculty as continuous with more foundational faculties of perception and action. I provide empirical corroboration of this account by drawing on recent neuroimaging studies of the multimodal, sensorimotor bases of speech comprehension. I then discuss how such an understanding of our linguistic ability helps advocates of embodied, nonrepresentationalist accounts of cognition respond to a common objection. Critics grant that embodied approaches may be adequate to account for lower-level, online modes of cognition, such as perception and action, which directly engage their object. But they question whether such approaches can "scale up" to higher modes of cognition, such as imagination, memory, thought, and language, which can entertain absent, non-existent, or abstract objects. By providing a plausible account of the continuity of lower cognition and language-involving cognition, my approach responds to this objection, at least where language is concerned.Keywords Horizons . Phenomenology of language . 4e cognitive science . Scaling-up problem . Affordances A name is a certain kind of tool meant for teaching and for the disentangling of being. -Plato 1

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Laws and Conventions in Language-Related Behaviors

Cited by 30 publications

References 25 publications

Ecological Representations

Ecological Representations

Ecological psychology is radical enough: A reply to radical enactivists

Horizons of the word: Words and tools in perception and action

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