Ecological Psychology in Context: James Gibson, Roger Barker, and the Legacy of William James's Radical Empiricism (Volume in the Resources for Ecological Psychology Series)

In this book Harry Heft examines the historical and theoretical foundations of James J. Gibson's ecological psychology in 20th century thought, and in turn, integrates ecological psychology and analyses of sociocultural processes. A thesis of the book is that knowing is rooted in the direct experience of meaningful environmental objects and events present in individual-environment processes and at the level of collective, social settings. Ecological Psychology in Context: \*traces the primary lineage of Gibson's ecological approach to William James's philosophy of radical empiricism; \*illuminates how the work of James's student and Gibson's mentor, E.B. Holt, served as a catalyst for the development of Gibson's framework and as a bridge to James's work; \*reveals how ecological psychology reciprocally can advance Jamesian studies by resolving some of the theoretical difficulties that kept James from fully realizing a realist philosophy; \*broadens the scope of Gibson's framework by proposing a synthesis between it and the ecological program of Roger Barker, who discovered complex systems operating at the level of collective, social processes; \*demonstrates ways in which the psychological domain can be extended to properties of the environment rendering its features meaningful, publicly accessible, and distributed across person-environment processes; and \*shows how Gibson's work points the way toward overcoming the gap between experimental psychology and the humanities. Intended for scholars and students in the areas of ecological and environmental psychology, theoretical and historical psychology, cognitive science, developmental psychology, anthropology, and philosophy. Contents......Page 11 Foreword......Page 17 Preface......Page 19 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS......Page 22 Introduction......Page 27 RETRIEVING ECOLOGICAL PSYCHOLOGY FROM THE MARGINS......Page 32 OVERVIEW AND PLAN OF THE BOOK......Page 41 THREE GOALS OF THE PROJECT......Page 36 I Ecological Theory and Philosophical Realism......Page 52 Prologue: Intimations of an EcologicalPsychology......Page 54 CONCEPTUALIZING THE ENVIRONMENT AND THE PERSON......Page 55 COLLECTING THE THREADS OF ECOLOGICAL PSYCHOLOGY......Page 60 1 William James's RadicalEmpiricism: A Foundationfor Ecological Psychology......Page 66 A PSYCHOLOGY OF ADAPTATION......Page 68 A Reluctant Dualist of the 1890s......Page 70 Behaviorism and Dualism......Page 77 A WORLD OF EXPERIENCE......Page 82 THE HISTORICAL CONTEXT FOR RADICAL EMPIRICISM......Page 91 COGNITION FROM A RADICAL EMPIRICIST PERSPECTIVE......Page 99 Percepts and Concepts......Page 100 Pragmatism and Knowing......Page 105 The Material World as a Conceptual Order......Page 109 The Coalescence of Percepts and Concepts......Page 113 Duration and Context......Page 117 Selectivity and the Body......Page 119 2 Edwin B. Holtand Philosophical Behaviorism......Page 125 A Chronology of Life Events......Page 128 Holt's Withdrawal from Academic Life......Page 131 The Principal Phases of Holt's Scholarship......Page 135 A Hierarchy of Universes of Discourse......Page 139 The Failings of Holt's Early Framework......Page 142 THE PROGRAM OF THE NEW REALISTS......Page 146 Perceiving and Remembering from a New Realist Perspective......Page 148 Illusory Experience from a Realist Perspective......Page 152 COGNITION AND THE ENVIRONMENT......Page 156 Molar Behaviorism and the Integrated Act......Page 158 The Recession of the Stimulus......Page 160 Molar Behaviorism and Selectivity......Page 162 HOLT'S PSYCHOLOGY OF LEARNING AND DEVELOPMENT......Page 165 The Reflex-Circle and the Adient Response......Page 166 The Locus of Freedom......Page 171 Toward a Psychology of Cognition......Page 175 A RETURN TO A PHILOSOPHICAL PSYCHOLOGY......Page 177 A FORGOTTEN PSYCHOLOGIST OF "THE OLD DAYS"......Page 178 II The Ecological Approachand Radical Empiricism......Page 182 Prologue: Three Generationsof Psychologists......Page 184 Psychological Functioning as a Relational Process......Page 189 The Psychological-Physical Distinction in Radical Empiricism......Page 193 Phenomenology in William James......Page 195 Gibson and Phenomenology......Page 197 PERCEIVING AFFORDANCES......Page 208 The Relational Nature of Affordances......Page 209 Affordances and Radical Empiricism......Page 211 Affordances as “Percepts”......Page 216 The Apparently Contradictory Character of Affordances......Page 221 THE EXPERIENCE OF THE BODY IN PERCEPTION......Page 224 Self-Perception and Radical Empiricism......Page 226 Holt’s Concept of Adience and the Body......Page 227 Adience and Perceptual Systems......Page 228 4 Relations and Direct Perception......Page 234 RELATIONS IN PURE EXPERIENCE AND IN THE AMBIENT ARRAY......Page 235 What Is There to Be Perceived?......Page 237 Ecological Optics......Page 238 Ecological Optics and the Recession of the Stimulus......Page 247 DIRECT PERCEPTION......Page 248 Sensation and Perception According to William James......Page 251 Directly Perceiving Distance......Page 254 THE ECOLOGICAL SOLUTION TO JAMES’S “TWO MINDS” PROBLEM......Page 258 Must Radical Empiricism Capitulate to Idealism?......Page 259 The Ambient Optic Array and the Problem of Two Minds......Page 264 The Concepts of the Ambient Array and Information......Page 268 5The Stream of Experienceand Possible Knowledge......Page 273 PERCEPTUAL SYSTEMS AND THE DETECTION OF INFORMATION OVERTIME......Page 274 The Picture Theory of Vision......Page 275 Perceiving as a Mode of Activity......Page 276 Looking Ahead and Looking Back: The Problem of Temporality4......Page 280 Navigation and Event Structure......Page 288 AN ECOLOGICAL APPROACH TO THE PROBLEM OF POSSIBLEKNOWLEDGE......Page 301 Possible Knowledge and Radical Empiricism......Page 302 Possible Knowledge in Ecological Optics......Page 304 The Discovery of Structure......Page 306 Unlimited Knowing......Page 309 III Ecological Psychologyand the Psychological Field......Page 311 Prologue: Field Theory and CollectiveSocial Processes......Page 313 6 Gestalt Psychologyand the Ecological Approach......Page 321 WILLIAM JAMES, GESTALT PSYCHOLOGY, AND THE ORIGINSOF ECOLOGICAL PSYCHOLOGY......Page 322 GIBSON’S EARLY EXCURSION INTO FIELD THEORY......Page 323 THE GEOGRAPHICAL AND THE BEHAVIORAL ENVIRONMENT......Page 327 The Behavioral Environment as a Mediator......Page 328 Two Environments or One?......Page 331 PERCEIVED MEANING......Page 334 Aufforderungscharakter......Page 336 Affordances and Ecological Optics......Page 340 THING AND MEDIUM......Page 344 The Perceiving Function......Page 347 Differing Views Concerning the Nature of the Medium......Page 348 CONCLUSION: GESTALT PSYCHOLOGY AND ECOLOGICAL PSYCHOLOGY......Page 353 7 Ecobehavioral Science:The Ecological Approachof Roger Barker......Page 356 Locating Nature's Joints......Page 358 Between-Level Influences from a Psychological Perspective......Page 365 THE NEED FOR AN ECOBEHAVIORAL SCIENCE......Page 369 The Beginnings of Ecobehavioral Science......Page 373 The Structure of the Behavior Stream......Page 380 BEHAVIOR SETTINGS: HIGHER ORDER ECOLOGICAL UNITS......Page 382 Defining Behavior Settings......Page 384 An Example of a Behavior Setting......Page 386 Behavior Settings as Ecobehavioral Resources......Page 388 Behavior Settings and Heider’s Analysis of Thing and Medium......Page 391 THE REALIZATION OF ECOBEHAVIORAL SCIENCE......Page 395 The Individual in an Ecobehavioral Science.......Page 397 The Individual in the Behavior Setting: One Proposal......Page 399 ENVIRONMENTAL STRUCTURE OR SCRIPTS?......Page 405 8 Ecological Psychologyand Ecobehavioral Science:Toward a Synthesis......Page 410 Aristotelian Causality......Page 411 Causal Theories of Perception......Page 416 Formal Cause and the Distinction between Things and Media......Page 420 Ecological Theories and Formal Cause......Page 421 ENVIRONMENTAL MEANING AND ECOLOGICAL THEORY......Page 424 The Vicissitudes of Mechanistic Approaches......Page 425 Formal Cause and Ecological Meaning: Affordancesand Behavior-Milieu Synomorphs......Page 429 Selecting, Discovering, and Creating Environmental Meaning......Page 435 Sources of Affordances and Behavior Settings......Page 440 Specifying the Milieu from an Affordance Perspective......Page 442 Affordances as Components of a Behavior Setting......Page 444 Affordances of Places for an Individual......Page 445 Summary......Page 446 Conclusion: Should a Distinction Between the Two EcologicalPrograms Be Maintained?......Page 447 THE FOUNDATIONAL ROLE OF ECOLOGICAL PSYCHOLOGYIN ECOBEHAVIORAL SCIENCE......Page 449 The Ecological Environment and the Psychological Environment......Page 450 Ecological Psychology and the E-O-E Arc......Page 451 Behavior Settings, Ecological Optics, and Radical Empiricism......Page 454 THE STRUCTURE OF THE ENVIRONMENT AND DYNAMIC SYSTEMS......Page 460 Plans and the Structure of the Environment......Page 461 Dynamic Systems and Multiple Determination......Page 468 Dynamic Systems and Behavior Settings......Page 475 Common Roots of Behavior Setting Theory and Dynamic Systems Theory......Page 479 Conclusions......Page 481 CODA: THE INTERSECTING CAREER PATHSOF GIBSON, BARKER, AND HEIDER......Page 482 9 Ecological Knowledgeand Sociocultural Processes......Page 485 ECOLOGICAL KNOWLEDGE......Page 486 The Historical Nature of Psychological Development......Page 490 Evolving in the Midst of Culture......Page 493 TOOLS, ARTIFACTS, AND REPRESENTATIONS......Page 504 Found Tools and Artifacts......Page 505 Representations......Page 514 Direct and indirect knowing......Page 520 DISTRIBUTED COGNITION......Page 524 Tools, Artifacts, and the Extension of the Body......Page 528 Socially Distributed Cognition......Page 532 Socially Distributed Networks......Page 536 Adaptive Agency......Page 540 Behavior Settings as Systems of Distributed Cognition......Page 542 SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION......Page 544 IV Conclusion......Page 546 THE RECIPROCAL AND NESTED FOCUS OF ECOLOGICAL PSYCHOLOGY......Page 548 Ecological Psychology in Relation to Other Ecological Sciences......Page 551 Competing Psychological Approaches in Light of Evolutionary Theory......Page 552 RADICAL EMPIRICISM AND ECOLOGICAL PSYCHOLOGY......Page 554 Adience and “The Recession of the Stimulus’’......Page 557 Environmental Information, Meaning, and Sociocultural Processes......Page 560 Some Implications of an Account of Direct Perception......Page 565 A Natural Science Approach to a Human Science......Page 566 Meaning and Value as an Environmental Properly......Page 568 ECOLOGICAL PSYCHOLOGY AND ITS PROSPECTS......Page 575 References......Page 579 Author Index......Page 618 Subject Index......Page 637