Ecological and Social Psychology - Starting to look back

I have a paper coming out in the next issue of Ecological Psychology. It is an article written for the 50th anniversary of Gibson's The Senses Considered as Perceptual Systems. The article lays out the foundation of Ecological Psychology, as I see it, the core insights of the field connected to Gibson's prescient insight regarding what an evolutionary theory of perception must look like. This logic was most well developed in the 1966 book, and because Gibson was not keen on repeating himself, those ideas were not drawn out to nearly the same extent in his later works. Finalizing that article has me thinking again about the relationship between ecological and social psychology.


A decade ago I started a dialog in Integrative Physiological and Behavioral Science about the relationship between Ecological Psychology and Social Psychology. It started as my first formal foray into connecting the work of E. B. Holt and J. J. Gibson, and ended up with three articles written by myself, three official comments, and a several articles (both in IPBS and in other venues) that referenced the discussion. My first article was very broad, but the replies focused the exchange on the more radical possibilities of an ecological-social psychology. The start of it al, the lead in for the first paper, was Holt's marvelous metaphor between a coral reef and the peril's of psychological reductionism (especially "bead-theory" approaches to psychology):

Libertarianism and American Philosophy II

Why the politics all of a sudden? Aside from a long time interest, I will be doing an interview this Monday at 8 pm for John Shook's "Humanist Matters." John has great knowledge of American Philosophy (he runs pragmatism.org, edits Contemporary Pragmatism and has numerous books and articles), he is also a prominent atheist (e.g., The God Debates), and a prominent humanist. We have a lot to talk about, but an ongoing discussion we have had is whether my libertarian leanings are compatible with my other beliefs. As I said in the last post, I think it is possible to provide a grounding for libertarian ideas within the context of philosophers such as Peirce, James, Dewey, and Holt, and I think it is worth the effort to see where this leads. In this post, I want to talk about honesty regarding psychology, in relation to politics.

Libertarianism and American Philosophy

Over the course of the past decade, I have come to realize that I lean strongly towards “libertarian” political ideas. However, I did not arrive at this position through one of the seemingly standard methods, such as falling in love with Ayn Rand, worshiping rich people, or trying to find some justification for being a jerk.* Rather, I have come to realize, my libertarian ideas are connected strongly with aspects of American Philosophy, a philosophy most people see as more strongly connected with Progressive Era of US politics than with Libertarian ideas of today. For some time I have been wanting to produce something serious about the connection between the philosophy I have been writing about, and my preferred approach to politics. At the moment, however, all I can offer is a rough sketch:

* Edit: I know this lead in is a bit hyperbolic. There are certainly other ways to become a libertarian.