Ecological Analytic Philosophy

Despite my fear of being the person inappropriately dressed for the party (metaphorically speaking), I will attempt to relate ecological psychology to the analytic philosophical tradition (Adam, go easy on me).  After all, Harry Heft's description of the ecological approach (particularly that of Gibson) inspired within me a flashback to my last semester, not only within the continental camp (e.g. Merleau-Ponty, who was cited several times in the paper, not to mention concepts of the 'lived body' and apperception described by Husserl), but also within analytic attempts at demystifying perception (if one can call it that).  Specifically, I was reminded of the sense-data debate, with Bertrand Russell in one corner and Wilfrid STALKER Sellars in the other.  Ding, ding!  Round one!




I suppose I should begin by describing the idea of sense-data.  To be sure, there are many varieties of sense-data theories, and Bertrand Russell is not unique in his utilization of the term, though I believe he coined it, and perhaps not so coincidentally, is able to provide a clear definition of sense-data: "things that are immediately known in sensation: such things as colours, sounds, smells, hardness, roughnesses, and so on," which is distinct from one's "experience of being immediately aware of these things" or act of 'sensation' (Russell, 2011, p. 4).

Enter Sellars, who begins his Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind (EPM) (1991) by questioning the epistemological significance of sensing sense-data.  The first section includes Sellars' famous 'inconsistent triad' in which he expounds a problem in sense-data thought (the photo for this blog post is another kind of inconsistent triad).  However, leading up to this, he explains:

"[Sense-data theorists] have taken givenness to be a fact which presupposes no learning,

no forming of associations, no setting up of stimulus-response connections. In

short, they have tended to equate sensing sense contents with being conscious,

as a person who has been hit on the head is not conscious, whereas a new-born

babe, alive and kicking, is conscious. They would admit, of course, that the

ability to know that a person, namely oneself, is now, at a certain time, feeling

a pain, is acquired and does presuppose a (complicated) process of concept

formation. But, they would insist, to suppose that the simple ability to feel a

pain or see a color, in short, to sense sense contents, is acquired and involves a

process of concept formation, would be very odd indeed.

     But if a sense-datum philosopher takes the ability to sense sense contents to

be unacquired, he is clearly precluded from offering an analysis of x senses a

sense content which presupposes acquired abilities. It follows that he could

analyze x senses red sense content s as x non-inferentially knows that s is red

only if he is prepared to admit that the ability to have such non-inferential

knowledge as that, for example, a red sense content is red, is itself unacquired.

And this brings us face to face with the fact that most empirically minded

philosophers are strongly inclined to think all classificatory consciousness, all

knowledge that something is thus-and-so, or, in logicians' jargon, all

subsumption of particulars under universals, involves learning, concept

formation, even the use of symbols" (Sellars, 1991, p. 131).

Now perhaps it is clear why I made the jump from ecological psychology to a discussion of the analytical debate over sense-data.  It seems to me that what the sense-data theorists propose stands in stark contrast to the method by which Gibson and, consequently, Heft describe perception.  Furthermore, the concerns Sellars describes in his attack on the 'given' is perhaps relevant to the concerns expressed by the relational, ecological approach.  However, I wonder to what extent the ecological approach claims to provide not only a phenomenological method, but also an ontological and epistemological perspective, as they all seem very related (as demonstrated through Sellars' EPM).  In other words, to what extent are the 'objective' and 'subjective' qualities of affordances or this relational aspect constitutive?

Continuing with EPM, the second section is pretty much a re-hashing of Wittgensteinian ideas regarding language and usage.  The third section then gets interesting because Sellars complicates matters by developing thoughts on something "looking" (and "seeming") a certain way.  I would very much suggest taking a look at this discussion because it reveals just how difficult conceptualizations of one's experience can be:

"Indeed, at first sight the

situation is quite disquieting, for if the ability to recognize that x looks green

presupposes the concept of being green, and if this in turn involves knowing in

what circumstances to view an object to ascertain its color, then, since one can

scarcely determine what the circumstances are without noticing that certain

objects have certain perceptible characteristics -- including colors -- it would

seem that one couldn't form the concept of being green, and, by parity of

reasoning, of the other colors, unless he already had them" (Sellars, 1991, p. 147).

And then later:

"...one can have the concept of green only by having a

whole battery of concepts of which it is one element. It implies that while

the process of acquiring the concept of green may -- indeed does -- involve

a long history of acquiring piecemeal habits of response to various objects

in various circumstances, there is an important sense in which one has no

 concept pertaining to the observable properties of physical objects in Space

and Time unless one has them all -- and, indeed, as we shall see, a great

deal more besides" (Sellars, 1991, p. 148).

The sixth section is worth a read because he draws on other thinkers (Berkeley, Locke, Hume) to define his ideas (or rather, counter-ideas).  He also outlines the problems of the 'myth of the given' to be: 1) "How do we become aware of an immediate experience as of one sort, and of a simultaneous immediate experience as of another sort?" and 2) "How can I know that the labels I attach to the sorts to which my immediate experiences belong, are attached by you to the same sorts?  May not the sort I call 'red' be the sort you call 'green' - and so on systematically throughout the spectrum?" (Sellars, 1991, p. 157).

Sellars then goes on to discuss perception in terms of the acquisition of empirical information as contrasted with attempts at a foundational epistemology through sensations (akin to the former discussion).

It is with this that I will end this blog post (congratulations if you're still conscious, in any sense of the term).  There really is a lot to be found in EPM.  My only point, I suppose, was to draw a very delicate line between what Sellars did in rejecting sense-data theories and what Gibson and Heft were up to when dismantling traditional dualistic, mechanistic conceptualizations of perception.  Please note that I do not believe they have the same goals nor address the same problems in anything but a vague sense.  Indeed, Sellars' debate quickly takes a semantical turn and becomes lost in language and claims of knowledge (which is precisely his point).  However, both seem to highlight that one's experience of the world is not an independent 'given' occurrence, but rather, is necessarily situated in some way, whether it be a relational affordance or conceptually-based, intricate interactions between perception, language, and knowledge.

Russell, B. (2011). The Problems of Philsosophy, Oxford: Oxford University Press. (Original work published 1912).

Sellars, W. (1991). Science, Perception and Reality. Atascadero: Ridgeview Publishing              Company. (Original work published 1963).

For anyone who would like a guide to Sellars' EPM, here is Brandom's guide.