ABSTRACT Upon the occasion of my retirement as editor of this journal, Ecological Psychology, I p... more ABSTRACT Upon the occasion of my retirement as editor of this journal, Ecological Psychology, I provide a short history of its founding and development—from the glimmer of an idea in 1981 to the current 28th volume.
The purpose of this paper is to help an audience attracted to environmental philosophy get to the... more The purpose of this paper is to help an audience attracted to environmental philosophy get to the core of Gibson's system in a compact form and to appreciate the necessity for an account of the environment in epistemology. I hope to show that Gibson's is a consistent and scientifically progressive account of knowing that gives the environment its due and that this is not a simple matter of fiat but a call to extended scientific investigation. I want to stress that Gibson's work is scientifically progressive in the sense that it has consistently opened new avenues for research. If one could be assured tomorrow that Gibson was correct and his critics wrong, the ecological psychology enterprise would not have to be shut down with nothing left to do. The goal of the enterprise, certainly for Gibson, was not to be declared a winner but to open doors for discovery. Because Gibson has developed a theory of perceiving the environment, it would be worth exploring as an important topic for environmental philosophers covering a wide range of issues. It offers an intriguing, environmentally based, grounding for epistemology; it offers ways to deal
Whether or not the correspondence of dorsal stream functions to Gibsonian ecological psychology a... more Whether or not the correspondence of dorsal stream functions to Gibsonian ecological psychology and the ventral stream functions to "constructivism" hold up, the overall goal of capturing a pragmatic realism should not be forgotten.
The purpose of this paper is to help an audience attracted to environmental philosophy get to the... more The purpose of this paper is to help an audience attracted to environmental philosophy get to the core of Gibson's system in a compact form and to appreciate the necessity for an account of the environment in epistemology. I hope to show that Gibson's is a consistent and ...
This is the third volume in the series History of Psychological Ideas from Transaction Publishers... more This is the third volume in the series History of Psychological Ideas from Transaction Publishers. Jaan Valsiner contributed the Foreword. Cornelis de Waal, a Peirce scholar and editor of a collection of New Realist writings, wrote the Preface. Eric Charles edited the volume and wrote the extensive Introduction. For most readers of this review, the first questions will be, “Who was E. B. Holt?” and “Why should we be interested in him?” The short answer is that Holt was one of the most able students of William James and Hugo Münsterberg. He remained at Harvard after his Ph.D. in what was arguably the best Philosophy Department in the world (Kuklick, 1977). As a psychologist, Holt conducted research inspired by Münsterberg and developed a motor theory of vision. He insisted on the importance of behavior and was known as one of the early behaviorists, albeit a sophisticated one, as opposed to John B. Watson. As a philosopher, he was at the forefront of the New Realism that is highlighted in this book. Holt was present at the famous Clark University meetings of 1909 when Freud was introduced to U.S. academic psychology. In The Freudian Wish and its Place in Ethics (1915; humorously referred to as the “Holtian Wish” by James Gibson in his letter at the end of the Charles volume), Holt presented some of his ideas as behavior-oriented interpretations of Freud—well before Dollard and Miller (1950). His book, The Concept of Consciousness (Holt, 1914), presents his argument for consciousness being “out there,” and his Animal Drive and the Learning Processes (Holt, 1931) nicely anticipates modern developmental systems theory while staking its claim as rooted in William James’ Radical Empiricism. Holt was the teacher of Edward C. Tolman and James Gibson, and a major influence on Floyd Allport’s approach to social psychology. Because Holt’s sophisticated behaviorism was both molar and purposive, and these are notable properties of Tolman’s system, it can be argued that Holt was an important precursor of modern cognitive psychology—to the extent that Tolman is credited with making that subdiscipline possible. These tidbits should be enough to pique the interest of many and to explain why Eric Charles has compiled this volume on Holt. In 1910, six philosophers, led by Holt, published their first declaration about their intentions to develop ideas along realist lines. They recognized that there were many differences among members of the group but argued that future collaboration would lead to 526650 TAP0010.1177/0959354314526650Theory & PsychologyReview research-article2014
The three papers in this issue are based on presentations at a symposium organized by Reuben Baro... more The three papers in this issue are based on presentations at a symposium organized by Reuben Baron for the Fourteenth International Conference on Perception and Action (ICPA 14, July 1–6, 2007) in Yokohama, Japan. Endre Kadar is an ecological psychologist with a strong background in mathematics, philosophy, and economics. Reuben Baron is an ecologically oriented social psychologist who also curates art shows and writes art criticism. Jondi Keane is a performance artist and fine arts teacher and scholar. The thrust of these papers, as well as the presentations of the accomplished designers Naoto Fukusawa and Ayumi Han (references found through common search engines) at the conference, was to extend the association of the phrase “psychology of art” well beyond pictures. A step in this direction (beyond pictures) was first made at the founding ICPA conference in the work of the architect Michael Benedikt (Benedikt & Burnham, 1985). Kadar discusses paintings by Cézanne and Hokusai. Baron continues the use of a painting example in the work of Pollock but then moves outside of painting to the more architectural sculpture of Serra and finally to architecture per se in works by Arakawa and Gins. In the third paper, Keane takes up the Arakawa and Gins work in detail. All of the authors are interested in exploration and
... Here he contributed to therapy and research with people having traumatic brain damage. By the... more ... Here he contributed to therapy and research with people having traumatic brain damage. By the end of the 1980s, Becky had turned from psychology to medicine and was finishing medical school at the University of Pennsylvania. ... Kelso, JAS, & Reed, E. S. (1981). ...
Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, Feb 1, 1983
This article describes a new organization, the International Society of Ecological Psychology, an... more This article describes a new organization, the International Society of Ecological Psychology, and summarizes presentations from a May 1982 meeting. This organization primarily consists of experimental psychologists who study perceiving and acting (each broadly construed) with reference to one another and to the environment in which these activities have evolved. The organization is meant to be a forum denned by the issues and not denned by preferred solutions. Consequently, people from a variety of disciplines outside of psychology and subdisciplines within psychology are welcomed as important contributors. As an interdisciplinary group, the Society may be viewed as roughly complementary to cognitive science, since biology and physics are appealed to more frequently as allied disciplines than are computer science and linguistics. The seven talks presented here are concerned with visual perceiving of action (lifting weights), visual perceiving^or action (climbing stairs), theoretical challenges posed by the findings in the first two reports, lessons from studies, of visual and auditory imprinting, facial features of victims of child abuse, differences between "armchair" imagery and parallel tasks in a real environment, and differences between metaphor comprehension in isolation and in paragraph contexts. The third conference associated with the newly organized International Society of Ecological Psychology was held at Adelphi University on May 15, 1982.' Seven presentations were given and about 80 people attended. Orientation of the Society The Society primarily consists of experimental psychologists from several subfields who recognize that their work displays an ecological orientation. In keeping with the best traditions of psychology, the Society is a loosely federated group whose full scope and definition will emerge more by evolution than by design. The Society is not a monolithic movement but a forum for people who believe that they would benefit from sharing their knowledge with one another. Most people pri-, raarily identify with other subspecialties where their research fits in perfectly well. Despite a fair Robert Hoffman, Edward Cochran, David Gorfein, and their graduate students at Adelphi were responsible for arranging the meeting and are among those who took the first initiatives to organize the Society. Adelphi University provided the funds for the meeting. I thank Robert Shaw and Michael Turvey for paying careful attention to parts of a previous draft of this article and for offering helpful suggestions. Requests for reprints should be sent to
I briefly trace the topics presented in the 4 symposium papers in a cyclic order. Sheena Rogers' ... more I briefly trace the topics presented in the 4 symposium papers in a cyclic order. Sheena Rogers' (this issue) paper discussing an example of J. J. Gibson's sense of 'information' (the horizon ratio) and Eleanor J. Gibson's (this issue) paper discussing affordance learning bring together the 2 core concepts of ecological psychology (information and affordance). Robert Lickliter (this issue) and Gene C. Goldfield (this issue), along with E. J. Gibson, discuss skill development in context utilizing comparative psychology and human infant research. For the recent history that holds these topics together, the early contributions of E. B. Holt and J. J. Gibson are emphasized. As stated in the introduction by Rogers (this issue), the purpose of assembling these short reviews of empirical research was to illustrate the breadth and growth of the field of ecological psychology. Ed Reed organized the symposium but died before it was held (Mace, 1997). Sheena Rogers carried on with the plans so that the symposium could be held at the 1997 meeting of the Eastern Psychological Association and then the papers printed here in revised form. To further illustrate the emergence of ecological psychology, I cite some noteworthy collections of articles presented in this journal. These include sets on (a) ergonomics or human factors psychology, organized by John Flach (1990); (b) comparative psychology, introduced by Owings and Coss (1991); (c) situating action (Costall & Leudar, 1996); (d) a diverse set from the third European workshop on ecological psychology (Guski & Heine, 1995); and (e) the special issue on visually controlled locomotion (Warren, 1998).
Late in their paper on hypersets, Chemero and Turvey characterize affordances as "quicksilvery," ... more Late in their paper on hypersets, Chemero and Turvey characterize affordances as "quicksilvery," prone to rapid appearance and disappearance. We contrast this view with Gibson's emphasis on the stability of affordances. We argue that this apparent discrepancy can be resolved by appeal to the distinction between affordances as indefinite abstract types and definite affordance tokens (instances of the type that share the resemblance relation). These issues will be discussed in the context of their consistency with ecological realism, where Platonic idealism is eschewed in favor of a more Aristotelian process theory. These ideas will be examined in the broader context of the domain ontology to ensure that Gibson's seminal affordance concept has its greatest theoretical utility. Finally, we develop a process theory of ontological descent by which indefinite affordance possibilities become more definite affordance potentialities and these eventuate in the most definite affordance actualizing actions. Gibson (1979/1986) believed that the long-term stability of affordances was necessary to the successful evolution of all species: All these offerings of nature, these possibilities or opportunities, these affordances as I will call them, are invariant. They have been strikingly constant throughout the whole evolution of animal life. (p. 19). The affordance of something does not change as the need of the observer changes. The observer may or may not perceive or attend to the affordance, according to his needs, but the affordance, being invariant, is always there to be perceived. (p. 139) Chemero and Turvey (2007) disagree: Affordances are exquisitely context-dependent and "quicksilvery": they emerge and dissolve very rapidly, due to small changes in the animal, environment or both … In fact, the presence or absence of particular affordances depends upon a spell binding variety of conditions, one or more of which can change in an instant. (p. 33)
ABSTRACT Upon the occasion of my retirement as editor of this journal, Ecological Psychology, I p... more ABSTRACT Upon the occasion of my retirement as editor of this journal, Ecological Psychology, I provide a short history of its founding and development—from the glimmer of an idea in 1981 to the current 28th volume.
The purpose of this paper is to help an audience attracted to environmental philosophy get to the... more The purpose of this paper is to help an audience attracted to environmental philosophy get to the core of Gibson's system in a compact form and to appreciate the necessity for an account of the environment in epistemology. I hope to show that Gibson's is a consistent and scientifically progressive account of knowing that gives the environment its due and that this is not a simple matter of fiat but a call to extended scientific investigation. I want to stress that Gibson's work is scientifically progressive in the sense that it has consistently opened new avenues for research. If one could be assured tomorrow that Gibson was correct and his critics wrong, the ecological psychology enterprise would not have to be shut down with nothing left to do. The goal of the enterprise, certainly for Gibson, was not to be declared a winner but to open doors for discovery. Because Gibson has developed a theory of perceiving the environment, it would be worth exploring as an important topic for environmental philosophers covering a wide range of issues. It offers an intriguing, environmentally based, grounding for epistemology; it offers ways to deal
Whether or not the correspondence of dorsal stream functions to Gibsonian ecological psychology a... more Whether or not the correspondence of dorsal stream functions to Gibsonian ecological psychology and the ventral stream functions to "constructivism" hold up, the overall goal of capturing a pragmatic realism should not be forgotten.
The purpose of this paper is to help an audience attracted to environmental philosophy get to the... more The purpose of this paper is to help an audience attracted to environmental philosophy get to the core of Gibson's system in a compact form and to appreciate the necessity for an account of the environment in epistemology. I hope to show that Gibson's is a consistent and ...
This is the third volume in the series History of Psychological Ideas from Transaction Publishers... more This is the third volume in the series History of Psychological Ideas from Transaction Publishers. Jaan Valsiner contributed the Foreword. Cornelis de Waal, a Peirce scholar and editor of a collection of New Realist writings, wrote the Preface. Eric Charles edited the volume and wrote the extensive Introduction. For most readers of this review, the first questions will be, “Who was E. B. Holt?” and “Why should we be interested in him?” The short answer is that Holt was one of the most able students of William James and Hugo Münsterberg. He remained at Harvard after his Ph.D. in what was arguably the best Philosophy Department in the world (Kuklick, 1977). As a psychologist, Holt conducted research inspired by Münsterberg and developed a motor theory of vision. He insisted on the importance of behavior and was known as one of the early behaviorists, albeit a sophisticated one, as opposed to John B. Watson. As a philosopher, he was at the forefront of the New Realism that is highlighted in this book. Holt was present at the famous Clark University meetings of 1909 when Freud was introduced to U.S. academic psychology. In The Freudian Wish and its Place in Ethics (1915; humorously referred to as the “Holtian Wish” by James Gibson in his letter at the end of the Charles volume), Holt presented some of his ideas as behavior-oriented interpretations of Freud—well before Dollard and Miller (1950). His book, The Concept of Consciousness (Holt, 1914), presents his argument for consciousness being “out there,” and his Animal Drive and the Learning Processes (Holt, 1931) nicely anticipates modern developmental systems theory while staking its claim as rooted in William James’ Radical Empiricism. Holt was the teacher of Edward C. Tolman and James Gibson, and a major influence on Floyd Allport’s approach to social psychology. Because Holt’s sophisticated behaviorism was both molar and purposive, and these are notable properties of Tolman’s system, it can be argued that Holt was an important precursor of modern cognitive psychology—to the extent that Tolman is credited with making that subdiscipline possible. These tidbits should be enough to pique the interest of many and to explain why Eric Charles has compiled this volume on Holt. In 1910, six philosophers, led by Holt, published their first declaration about their intentions to develop ideas along realist lines. They recognized that there were many differences among members of the group but argued that future collaboration would lead to 526650 TAP0010.1177/0959354314526650Theory & PsychologyReview research-article2014
The three papers in this issue are based on presentations at a symposium organized by Reuben Baro... more The three papers in this issue are based on presentations at a symposium organized by Reuben Baron for the Fourteenth International Conference on Perception and Action (ICPA 14, July 1–6, 2007) in Yokohama, Japan. Endre Kadar is an ecological psychologist with a strong background in mathematics, philosophy, and economics. Reuben Baron is an ecologically oriented social psychologist who also curates art shows and writes art criticism. Jondi Keane is a performance artist and fine arts teacher and scholar. The thrust of these papers, as well as the presentations of the accomplished designers Naoto Fukusawa and Ayumi Han (references found through common search engines) at the conference, was to extend the association of the phrase “psychology of art” well beyond pictures. A step in this direction (beyond pictures) was first made at the founding ICPA conference in the work of the architect Michael Benedikt (Benedikt & Burnham, 1985). Kadar discusses paintings by Cézanne and Hokusai. Baron continues the use of a painting example in the work of Pollock but then moves outside of painting to the more architectural sculpture of Serra and finally to architecture per se in works by Arakawa and Gins. In the third paper, Keane takes up the Arakawa and Gins work in detail. All of the authors are interested in exploration and
... Here he contributed to therapy and research with people having traumatic brain damage. By the... more ... Here he contributed to therapy and research with people having traumatic brain damage. By the end of the 1980s, Becky had turned from psychology to medicine and was finishing medical school at the University of Pennsylvania. ... Kelso, JAS, & Reed, E. S. (1981). ...
Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, Feb 1, 1983
This article describes a new organization, the International Society of Ecological Psychology, an... more This article describes a new organization, the International Society of Ecological Psychology, and summarizes presentations from a May 1982 meeting. This organization primarily consists of experimental psychologists who study perceiving and acting (each broadly construed) with reference to one another and to the environment in which these activities have evolved. The organization is meant to be a forum denned by the issues and not denned by preferred solutions. Consequently, people from a variety of disciplines outside of psychology and subdisciplines within psychology are welcomed as important contributors. As an interdisciplinary group, the Society may be viewed as roughly complementary to cognitive science, since biology and physics are appealed to more frequently as allied disciplines than are computer science and linguistics. The seven talks presented here are concerned with visual perceiving of action (lifting weights), visual perceiving^or action (climbing stairs), theoretical challenges posed by the findings in the first two reports, lessons from studies, of visual and auditory imprinting, facial features of victims of child abuse, differences between "armchair" imagery and parallel tasks in a real environment, and differences between metaphor comprehension in isolation and in paragraph contexts. The third conference associated with the newly organized International Society of Ecological Psychology was held at Adelphi University on May 15, 1982.' Seven presentations were given and about 80 people attended. Orientation of the Society The Society primarily consists of experimental psychologists from several subfields who recognize that their work displays an ecological orientation. In keeping with the best traditions of psychology, the Society is a loosely federated group whose full scope and definition will emerge more by evolution than by design. The Society is not a monolithic movement but a forum for people who believe that they would benefit from sharing their knowledge with one another. Most people pri-, raarily identify with other subspecialties where their research fits in perfectly well. Despite a fair Robert Hoffman, Edward Cochran, David Gorfein, and their graduate students at Adelphi were responsible for arranging the meeting and are among those who took the first initiatives to organize the Society. Adelphi University provided the funds for the meeting. I thank Robert Shaw and Michael Turvey for paying careful attention to parts of a previous draft of this article and for offering helpful suggestions. Requests for reprints should be sent to
I briefly trace the topics presented in the 4 symposium papers in a cyclic order. Sheena Rogers' ... more I briefly trace the topics presented in the 4 symposium papers in a cyclic order. Sheena Rogers' (this issue) paper discussing an example of J. J. Gibson's sense of 'information' (the horizon ratio) and Eleanor J. Gibson's (this issue) paper discussing affordance learning bring together the 2 core concepts of ecological psychology (information and affordance). Robert Lickliter (this issue) and Gene C. Goldfield (this issue), along with E. J. Gibson, discuss skill development in context utilizing comparative psychology and human infant research. For the recent history that holds these topics together, the early contributions of E. B. Holt and J. J. Gibson are emphasized. As stated in the introduction by Rogers (this issue), the purpose of assembling these short reviews of empirical research was to illustrate the breadth and growth of the field of ecological psychology. Ed Reed organized the symposium but died before it was held (Mace, 1997). Sheena Rogers carried on with the plans so that the symposium could be held at the 1997 meeting of the Eastern Psychological Association and then the papers printed here in revised form. To further illustrate the emergence of ecological psychology, I cite some noteworthy collections of articles presented in this journal. These include sets on (a) ergonomics or human factors psychology, organized by John Flach (1990); (b) comparative psychology, introduced by Owings and Coss (1991); (c) situating action (Costall & Leudar, 1996); (d) a diverse set from the third European workshop on ecological psychology (Guski & Heine, 1995); and (e) the special issue on visually controlled locomotion (Warren, 1998).
Late in their paper on hypersets, Chemero and Turvey characterize affordances as "quicksilvery," ... more Late in their paper on hypersets, Chemero and Turvey characterize affordances as "quicksilvery," prone to rapid appearance and disappearance. We contrast this view with Gibson's emphasis on the stability of affordances. We argue that this apparent discrepancy can be resolved by appeal to the distinction between affordances as indefinite abstract types and definite affordance tokens (instances of the type that share the resemblance relation). These issues will be discussed in the context of their consistency with ecological realism, where Platonic idealism is eschewed in favor of a more Aristotelian process theory. These ideas will be examined in the broader context of the domain ontology to ensure that Gibson's seminal affordance concept has its greatest theoretical utility. Finally, we develop a process theory of ontological descent by which indefinite affordance possibilities become more definite affordance potentialities and these eventuate in the most definite affordance actualizing actions. Gibson (1979/1986) believed that the long-term stability of affordances was necessary to the successful evolution of all species: All these offerings of nature, these possibilities or opportunities, these affordances as I will call them, are invariant. They have been strikingly constant throughout the whole evolution of animal life. (p. 19). The affordance of something does not change as the need of the observer changes. The observer may or may not perceive or attend to the affordance, according to his needs, but the affordance, being invariant, is always there to be perceived. (p. 139) Chemero and Turvey (2007) disagree: Affordances are exquisitely context-dependent and "quicksilvery": they emerge and dissolve very rapidly, due to small changes in the animal, environment or both … In fact, the presence or absence of particular affordances depends upon a spell binding variety of conditions, one or more of which can change in an instant. (p. 33)
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Papers by Bill Mace