Veridical Perception (In Verse)

 The APA Journal History of Psychology started a News an Notes section a few years ago, including a "Poetry Corner." Most contributions are archival finds of poems by historically-eminent psychologists, but they also invited poems about the history of psychology. So far as I know, I am the only person to take them up on the latter offer. This was my first contribution:

Veridical Perception

Debate about whether perception can ever be veridical – true to reality, accurate with respect to the world – holds an important place in the history of psychology, driving both theory and research. Due to Descartes’s legacy, most early psychologists took for granted that perception was always indirect, and therefore inherently inaccurate. An alternative tradition began maturing in the final phase of William James’s career, but it’s implications for perception were not developed significantly until nearly half-a-century later, when James J. Gibson developed his system that showed how direct perception was possible. This re-enlivened the debate for several decades, though Gibson’s key points in the debate, the key features of the resulting research programs, and much of the crucial terminology, remains poorly understood. Nevertheless, the work of James and Eleanor Gibson inspired a field, Ecological Psychology, which endures, focusing on perception-action cycles, particularly in situations where veridical perception can be, and often is, achieved. Harry Heft, Ed Reed, Alan Costall,  Robert Shaw, and Joel Michell are among the psychologists who have explored the history of this work.

A. A. Milne is now best known as the author of the Winnie the Pooh book, but was quite well reputed before that for his plays and his poetry, including collections such as “When We Were Very Young.” The style of “Veridical Perception” will be familiar to any who have read his work.

 

Veridical Perception

Passive sensations, from watching or hearing,

Sensations of those types are often quite strange,

But active perception, like looking or feeling,

Perceptions of those types one might well explain.

 

For all is,

Uncertain,

When sitting back,

Passively,

Sight is,

Uncertain,

When cast to a plain.

The world,

Impinges,

(Impinges, impinges).

“The world,

Impinges,”

The dualist exclaims.

 

Darwin, he changed this, with his focus on function,

A focus on function, James would soon mend,

The field, Psychology, from backwater drudgery,

But Watson derailed it, ‘fore his Hopkins upend.

 

James,

Had inspired,

As Radical,

Empiricist,

New Realists,

Who emerged,

And captured the stage.

But only,

In philosophy,

(Philosophy, philosophy).

Some stayed,

At Harvard,

Holt retired to Maine.

 

Holt was self-exiled, when Langfeld retrieved him,

To a decade at Princeton, where little was said.

But Gibson, his student, was there much inspired.

And therefore the realism continued to spread.

 

Gibson,

Studied prisms,

Which flipped,

Around visions.

His reputation,

Hinged,

On the curving of lines.

Then war came,

And flying,

(By pilots, in airplanes),

Took him,

To question,

Psychophysic’s hard line.

 

Just-noticed differences, had little merit,

When trying to determine who could land a plane.

Movement and motion resolved ambiguity,

And all this transpired outside of the brain.

 

Meanwhile,

Jackie,

At Yale,

Rejected,

by Yerkes.

For “there are,

No women in my lab.”

Finds Hull,

Grand planning,

(With symbol, equations).

Discrim-ination,

Becomes hers to divine.

 

Discrimination, perceptual learning,

Distinguishing things, out there and in hand,

Humans with flash cards, but no reinforcement,

Still there’s improvement, Law-of-Effect be damned.

 

Improving,

Responses,

To “out there”,

Reality.

Requires,

Responding,

‘T out there - not ‘n mind.

But what of,

Reality?

(Reality, reality)

Di-rect,

Perception,

Still sounds like,

a line.

 

Back at Smith college, Jimmy and Jackie,

Restless, but not, too eager to leave,

Hoping for Cor-nell, which soon comes a calling,

And the Seer of Ithaca’s, sabbatical reprieve.

 

Deeply,

Rethinking,

Fundamental,

Assumptions.

Retinal flow,

Not enough,

With evolution in mind.

Adaptation,

To the world,

(Ecology, Ecology).

A brand new,

Ecology,

Must now be defined.

 

Ecological optics, the light that surrounds us,

Converging at points, where our eyes can reside,

Then even the insects, and primitive crustacea,

Adapt ‘t the same structure, with quite different eyes.

 

The Senses,

Considered,

As Perceptual,

Systems.

Eyes in head,

In a body,

Exploring to find,

Higher-order,

invariants

(invariants, invariants).

Lawful,

Relations,

Which can specify!

 

Systems designed through evolution and developed,

Embodied and enactive, and fully alive.

Attuned to possibility, opportunity, of behavior.

Attuned to affordances, so the animal can thrive.

 

But we,

Most surely,

Are not,

Always perfect.

Not long,

Without error,

The critics complained.

But focus,

On success,

(In action, in action).

Accuracy,

Is the thing,

Perception explains. 

 

Speci-fication, is the crux of the argument.

How’s an organism accurate, in the best of times?

Perceptual attunement, makes action a function,

Of invariants that specify, the world’s confines.

 

With error,

It matters,

What kind,

Of a system,

Has failed,

In pursing,

That towards which it strives.

Not coherence, nor

Cor’spondence,

(from world, to ideas).

A Convergence system

Finds truth,

Given time.

 

Peirce’s legacy stretches, to James and Holt realism,

Nothing is added, by mental design.

Behavior’s a function, of out-there, world-happenings,

And part of the “out there”, James Gibson defined.

 

Veridical,

Perception,

Accurate,

Functional.

No magic,

No ghost soul,

No dualist’s,

refrain.

The truth of,

The matter

(The matter, the matter)

The truth of the matter can really be plain.

------------------------

 Charles, E. P. (2018) Veridical Perception. History of Psychology 21, 172-175.

 

Defining key terms in Ecological Psychology

Andrew Wilson and I had a tiff on twitter about whether "Affordances" are by-definition "perceivable". Well... backing up... it was a tiff about whether it is fair for a researcher to start talking about something as an example of an affordance, when they have not bothering to demonstrate that the thing in question is perceived. This actually has deep implications for all the key terms in Ecological Psychology. As it is the type of thing you can't really discuss in 240 characters, we decided to return to the blogosphere. Who knows, maybe we can crank out a second blog-driven co-publication when this is done!*

I am extremely sensitive to the problems that occur in a theory when terms start to get mutually inter-defined. You quickly end up with tautologies, and tautologies stop your theory from being a theory in any proper sense. My post-doc advisor and occasional co-author Nick Thompson wrote about this problem extensively in the context of learning theory and evolutionary theory and other contexts in psychology. I don't think any prominent members of the Eco Psych community have such a problem when they are doing research. However, when they start writing theory, the problem pops up fairly often, and it is behind many of the long-term disputes in the literature. The temptation to inter-define terms is strong, because when terms are mutually defined, deduction is easier, and that makes the theory feel intellectually safe and well-founded. However, that feeling is misleading in a scientific context. you can't test things that are deducible from each other, so if you find yourself just stating things that are true by definition, you don't have a theory anymore, because the exact part this is supposed to be testable can't be tested. The way out of this is to rigorously ensure that your terms point to things that can be verified independently of each other, leaving it open for testing whether the things in question relate in the manner proposed. 

The Ecological Revolution: The Senses Considered as Perceptual Systems, 50 Years Later

In 1997, the journal Ecological Psychology published two issues in tribute to James Gibson's The Senses Considered as Perceptual Systems, which was published in 1966. I am creating this page as a landing pad for my posts regarding the articles in those issues. I will also add links, as I find them, to other places on the internet where these issues are discussed (suggestions in the comments are strongly encouraged). I reviewed a few of the articles when they first came out, but recently found the issues again and realized how negligent I have been in covering more of them. One special treat about those issues is that they feature articles by several of my favorite contributors to the field, and the quality of the articles is very high.

Perceiving sociocultural phenomena

This is the third in a series of posts examining the Special Issues of the journal “Ecological Psychology” commemorating the 50^th anniversary of “The Senses Considered As Perceptual Systems.”

Harry Heft brings his unique insights regarding the history of psychology to bear, with a focus on the relatively-understudied implications of Gibson’s work for understanding culture. Recall that part of Gibson’s challenge to the field (see Shaw 2002) was to see how much could be covered by perceptual processes, and avoid the temptation to start hand waving at higher-level processes whenever the going got tough. One aspect of Gibson’s work, comparatively neglected by both his proponents and his critics, is his attempt to see how far he could push perceptual theory towards explaining the interaction of people in situations where cultural practice plays a strong role in determining what the world affords. As usual, Heft’s writing is clear and keen. If you haven’t read any of his work before, I suspect you will find this article deeply insightful, and that it will lead you to seek out more of his work.

50 Years of Research into Haptic Perception

Gibson’s 1966 book The Senses Considered as Perceptual Systems recently turned 50. Two issues of the journal Ecological Psychology commemorated that event (here, and here). This is the third in a series of posts reviewing those contributions. It covers Carello & Turvey's Useful Dimensions of Haptic Perception: 50 Years After The Senses Considered as Perceptual Systems.

Haptic perception is extremely neglected relative to visual and auditory perception. The term could refer simply to feeling things by touch, but in the context of EcoPsych is more likely to refer to perception as the result of manipulating objects, i.e., picking things up and moving them around. The Senses Considered included chapters about the haptic system, but offered only a cursorily outline of what an improved study of the haptic system would look like. Some the first wave of Gibson-inspired researchers latched onto those chapters, and created some of the more notable research triumphs of the field. Carello and Turvey performed, or supervised people who were performing, much of that work. Given that several good summaries of the research exist, they choose to focus instead on showing how the haptic research has been a uniquely suited context for exploring the novel implications of an ecological approach to perception.

Modularity and the study of visual perception - Marr and Gibson

Gibson’s 1966 book The Senses Considered as Perceptual Systems recently turned 50. Two issues of the journal Ecological Psychology commemorated that event (here, and here). This is the second in a series of posts reviewing those contributions.

Vision research was impacted tremendously by the short career of David Marr. Marr was tremendously impacted by James J. Gibson, though mostly by Gibson's earlier work on optic flow, and not by his later works that birthed Ecological Psychology. Marr was incredibly influential in the move towards thinking of vision (and neuroscience in general) as "modular", while most of Gibson's work would lead one away from modular thinking. It is this tension that motivates Sedgwick and Gillam's article "A Non-Modular Approach to Visual Space Perception."

The senses re-considered as perceptual systems - Introduction to the Special Isuses

Gibson’s 1966 book The Senses Considered as Perceptual Systems recently turned 50. Two issues of the journal Ecological Psychology commemorated that event (here, and here). This is the first in a series of posts reviewing those contributions.

These special issues were organized by Covarrubias, Jiménez, and Cabrera, from the University of Guadalajara, and Costall from the University of Porsmouth, and they provided an introduction to both issues. Putting together these issues is a tremendous service to the field, and I hope that the articles contained therein will help shape the field’s future. It is worth starting with some highlights from the intros themselves, and the next post will start with the looking at the contributed articles. 

Ecological and Social Psychology - Is it Holt or Nothing?!?

My initial article connecting Holt and Ecological Psychology (see discussion here) generated two comments. The comments covered many points, but the most consistent thread was that Ecological Psychology had studied social behavior and had not needed to turn to Holt to do so. The journal (Integrative Psychological and Behavioral Science, IPBS) invited me to respond. Taking the strongest tact I could, the title of the reply focused on the main bone of contention: "Ecological Psychology and Social Psychology: It is Holt,or Nothing!" (full text available here). While that might have been a bit extreme, seven years later I still believe that if it overstepped, it was not by much. The central problem is that Ecological Psychology is fundamentally a theory of perception, while Social Psychology is fundamentally about how congregations of things with minds are different than collections of things without minds; for Ecological Psychology to truly contribute to Social Psychology, the assertion must be made, at some level, that we can perceive the things that make the interactions of things with minds interesting... we must, at some level, be able to perceive minds. As I set up in the text:

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):

Bead Theory and the Problem of Consciousness - Continued

Continuing to unravel the problem of contrasting consciousness and behavior discussed in the prior post, Holt (1915). The influence on people like J.J. Gibson and Skinner continues to be evident, in the search for functional relations. This also connects to my assertion that the goal of William James's later work - and hence Holt's work - was to try to layout the foundational conditions for a science of psychology:

An exact definition of behavior will reveal this. Let us go about this definition. Behavior is, firstly, a process of release. The energy with which plants and animals move ('behave')  is not derived from the stimulus, but is physiologically stored energy previously accumulated by processes of assimilation. The stimulus simply touches off this energy.

Secondly, behavior is not a function of the immediate stimulus. There are cases, it is true, in which behavior is a function, though even here not a very simple function, of the stimulus. These are cases of behavior in its lower stages of development, where it is just emerging from the direct reflex process. They demonstrate the continuity of evolution at this point—a most important fact. But as behavior evolves, any correlation between it and the stimuli which are immediately affecting the organism becomes increasingly remote, so that even in fairly simple cases it can no longer be demonstrated.

Could Affordances Structure Light?

This post should have a subtitle. It should read: Could Affordances Structure Light? Ken Aizawa gets a 10-month-delayed response

Last April I started blogging about my (now-submitted) attempt to update Cutting's paper distinguishing between Gibson's approach on ecological psychology and the emerging Connecticut approach. The first post generated many comments, and I promised to follow up on some of them soon. Well... in publishing time this is still "soon", even though in blogging time it is ages. In particular Ken Aizawa hit me with a few hard questions including the perennial stickler, "Can affordances structure light?"

I think it is important for ecological psychology that they do, and I think they do. However, my position (which I associate with Gibson's thinking) is less extreme that that promoted by the Connecticut approach (e.g., Turvey, Shaw, Mace, and the young Reed). I also think it is pretty darn simple to support:

A Reply to Fodor and Phylshyn - Part 2

Continuing the reply that I think should have been made to Fodor and Pylyshyn's 1981 attack on Ecological Psychology. In F&P's article, the key elements of which are summarized here. They assert a very traditional, dualistic view of perception - as a process requiring sensory information to be supplemented by other cognitive processes in order to create an representational mental model of the world. They then point out (rightly) that some of Gibson's insights can be integrated into the traditional view and further assert (wrongly) that Gibson is thus offering nothing new. In so doing, I want to avoid as much as possible taking any bait offered by F&P which risk reeling us into to covert dualistic assumptions. I suggest that the best way to avoid such missteps is to stay firmly rooted in the line of thinking descended from pragmatism. Part 1 of my reply covered the meaning of "perception", "specification", and "direct perception", and the importance of remembering that if two things have all the same consequences, then they are the same thing (one crucial way of avoiding false distinctions). In this part I will continue to explain Gibson's approach by elucidating problems in F&P's critique.

A Reply to Fodor and Phylshyn - Part 1

In a prior post, I hummed a few bars of “Ecological Psychology needs to be evaluated within the context of AmericanPhilosophy.” I then started wading into one of the pivotal debates in the history of Ecological Psychology, the 1981 debate that pitted Fodor and Pylyshyn against Turvey, Shaw, and Mace. F&P’s criticism was published in Cognition, shortly after Gibson’s death, and TSM’s reply established the new direction for the field. In the last post, I summarized F&P’s arguments, and interspersed brief notes about when they did, or did not, seem to be giving Gibson a fair shake. In this post, I want to try to avoid nit-picky details about where F&P went wrong. Instead, I want to outline a broader reply to F&P’s criticism. 

The overall problem, it seems to me, is that Gibson is playing an American Philosophy game, working within the intellectual lineage of Peirce, James, etc., while F&P want to play a Continental Philosophy game. I don’t want to go into too much details about the historic differences between the two approaches, or how they arose. My more meager goal is to defend ecological psychology in a way that stays true to its roots. American philosophy, in general, is concerned with earthly particulars, is suspicious about intellectual distinctions, and does not privilege a first-person point of view. While F&P want solutions to the traditional problems of perception to happen on an intellectual level, Gibson proposes that the supposed problems are typically solved in the grit of everyday interactions.

Specification and Perception - Fodor and Pylyshyn (1981)

After doing a mediocre job suggesting a that Gibson's needs to be defended from within the Pragmatism-lineage (as opposed to, say Descartes's lineage or Kant's), something more blunt and obvious might be in order. I have argued that much confusion was created in the past debates over ecological psychology because its critics were not treating it as part of the pragmatic lineage, and its defenders met the attack on the critics’ terms. This lead, I think, to the defenders formalizing ecological psychology in a way that loses some of the unique potential of the approach. The trouble seems to have originated, largely, in the 1981 criticism by Fodor and Pylyshyn, which was replied to in the same year by Turvey, Shaw, and Mace. While the resulting "TSM" model of ecological psychology has led to much success, I won't deny that for a minute, I think that much of the current confusion within the field of ecological psychology traces back to this exchange. Below I will go back through Fodor and Pylyshyn's paper, to point out where I think they unfairly set out their challenge, i.e., where they tried to judge ecological psychology based on premises the pragmatic tradition rejects. In the next post, I will sketch what I think the reply to Fodor and Pylyshyn should have been. In a later post, I will go through Turvey, Shaw, and Mace's paper, to show how the acceptance of Fodor and Pylyshyn's premises lead them to conclusions at the heart of current debates in the field.

Specification and Perception - American Philosophy Perspective

Over on the PsychScientists blog, Andrew is trying to work through the importance of a theory of specification for a theory of perception. (So far, here, and here.) Specification, in this context, refers to the relationship between the many energy arrays we are constantly surrounded by... but for the sake of simplicity we usually just talk about how an object or event shapes ambient light. The topic is worthy of a lot of thought because, traditionally, one of the most important arguments for modern dualism is the argument that there is no specification capable of supporting perception - because, the argument goes, there is much ambiguity in the environmental support of perception, some additional process is needed to explain how we know the world. But if there is specification, then perception could take advantage of it, and there are all sorts of cool ripple effects this has through any theory of psychology. Basically, if there is specification, and if organisms do engage with these specifying patterns, then perception can explain an awful lot without need to reference other psychological processes. The possibility of this type of specification, therefore, should certainly be in the top 5 list of important things for psychologists to figure out... because it could rewrite the whole game.

Two Ecological Psychologies - Continued

Continuing on my attempt to update Cutting's 1982 paper... two questions seemed of the most interest to blog readers 1) Why did Cutting write the original article? 2) What consequences of following Gibson's approach vs. the Connecticut approach?

WHY DID CUTTING WRITE IT?

The first question is more difficult. A lot was going on in the field at the time. All I can say for sure is that Cutting thought that Ecological Psychology was being moved away from Gibson's vision, and he thought that some aspects of the emerging approach were problematic (either because they undid desirable novelty of Gibson's approach, or because they resulted in tautology and related logical problems). It is worth noting, however, that regarding most of the differences, Cutting did not claim either approach was superior, only that they were different. He thought these differences would lead, presumably in the near future, to a splintering of the field. While I think most of Cutting's insights about the two emerging approaches were spot on, it has been thirty years, and the field is still together. Explaining why Cutting was wrong in that final prediction requires that we answer reader's second question.

---Off to California soon. I will be responding to comments, but am not sure about new posts over the next month.----

A New Look At New Realism

It is finally out! A New Look at New Realism was officially published two weeks ago, and is now available on Amazon!  This is the first book about the philosophy and psychology of E. B. Holt. It shows convincingly (if Vincent Colapietro's kind words are to be believed) that Holt's work is relevant to contemporary issues, both empirical and theoretical. The book is an edited volume that I began soliciting contributions for 4 years ago, while still a lowly post-doc who could have been gone from the academic scene in a blip. I am still amazed at the quality of the scholars who agreed to contribute, and the quality of the chapters they produced.

To give people an idea of the scope of the book, I am going to paste the chapter summaries from the introduction below. This is quite a bit over the word limit the publisher wants me to give out for free, but as it is just a series of teaser paragraphs, I'm hoping that if they ever notice, they will agree it is fair.

Ecological and Social Psychology - Minds as Perceivable

There is a great team working on a social psychology chapter for the incipient Eco-Psych (Perception-Action) Textbook: Reuben Baron, Bert Hodges, Kerry Marsh, and Ben Meagher. I was especially grateful to have others volunteer to write that section, because my views on the matter are too biased. The textbook should be focused on ideas that are, at least amongst ecological psychologists, not controversial. My views derive from E. B. Holt's attempt to create a behaviorism that could capture the full complexity of William James's work, which lead to an approach that might be labeled "Descriptive Mentalism." Holt was one of Gibson's key mentors in graduate school, Harry Heft and others have noted Holt's sustained influence on Gibson, and I suggested a few years ago that there is plenty more good stuff to be found in Holt.

This suggestion was made in Integrative Psychological and Behavioral Science, or IPBS. The journal was founded in 1965, and the 'P' stood for "Physiological" until Jaan Valsiner became editor about a decade ago. Jaan has been working (successfully) to revitalize the journal by encouraging ongoing dialog, including both comment-legnth and article-legnth responses. A few paragraphs in the initial IPBS article were about Holt's relevance to ecological psychologists interested in social psychology, and responses ensued. The initial attempt was superficial, as it was only one of many points in the paper. A more focused version of the argument (taken from here) is shown below. It is worth noting explicitly that the goal was to explore what an 'ideal' contribution to social psychology would look like: "The type that makes it crucially important that [the contributors] are ecological psychologists; the type of contribution that only someone acting as an ecological psychologist could make. That is, the type of contribution that would allow someone to claim that Ecological Psychology had contributed to Social Psychology, rather than merely claiming that the same people had done both ecological research and social research."

A Brief Introduction to Ecological Psychology

The deep origins of Ecological Psychology lie in the philosophies of Pragmatism, Radical Empiricism, and New Realism. But that is a much longer story...


The first key paper of the modern science is probably a paper on perceptual learning (Gibson and Gibson, 1955), in which it was proposed that perceptual learning involved better discriminating stimuli. That is, this type of learning does not involve gaining more sophisticated mental processes, but rather more sophisticated sensitivity to the details of the world. Discussion generated by this paper, and further related works, were guided by a search for the 'discriminated thing' needed to fill in the perceptual-learning theory. The most obvious candidate would be something like the stimulation created by the retinal image... but the problem with the retinal image were already well known: The retinal image is not specific to the properties of the world, and therefore it cannot provide a firm basis for accurate perception. Gibson's prior work on optic flow was working towards a solution, but something more radical was needed.