The Book! (And some thoughts on fiction and non-fiction)

I know I haven't been very active here.... but I have been writing! 

I just finished a full draft of the book on Natural Design that has been in progress for far too long. It is just over 90,000 words, or 330 manuscript pages. About 3 months ago I went from thinking "Man, this is good writing, I'd like to get it out there" to "Wow, this is a book, and I need to get it published," which was quite an interesting mental transition. 

The concept of Natural Design supplements Natural Selection in crucial ways. Just as Darwin showed that there can be selection without a selector, we show that there can be design without a designer. "Design" is a matching of form to function, and that pattern can arise in various ways. The presence of design is not merely subjective; it is a feature of the world that can be revealed (where it exists) by appropriate investigation. The first half of the book uses that insight to fix conceptual issues in evolutionary biology, and the second half uses it to fix conceptual issues in psychology. Especially when dealing with psychology, this approach has significant implications for our interactions with other people, including offering protection against various ways people try to manipulate us with psychological language. 

We argue that psychological terms often, perhaps always, refer to patterns of behavior across circumstances. This isn't just an abstract academic claim, it also — despite our knee jerk reactions to the contrary — matches most of our normal, everyday uses of those terms. The Natural Design perspective is a type of "descriptive mentalism." A hundred years ago it might have been called "molar behaviorism," but that label is misleading, as it is not the boogeyman reductive behaviorism that haunts intro psychology textbooks. Instead, our approach is part of the broad legacy of Pragmatist philosophy, and it pulls together insights from historic figures like James J. Gibson, E.C. Tolman, E.B. Holt, and Niko Tinbergen, as well as modern figures such as Tony Chemero, Dan Hutto, and Louise Barrett. 

I sent drafts out to a few readers for feedback, and am going to start looking for a literary agent. I have tried to write the book for a popular audience, rather than a purely academic audience, as I think the ideas are important and have implications that extend well beyond discussions of science history and philosophy. Plus, I enjoy learning things, like how the publishing industry, including the book-agent profession, works more broadly. 

One thing I have realized, however, is that the categories used in publishing are symptomatic of some of the broader problems in society. The category of nonfiction and the interests of agents specializing in nonfiction are incredibly broad, and most have nothing to do with the book I have written. This is not inherently problematic, just the realities of life. Many agents with nonfiction interests, for example, focus on true-crime stories or travel guides, business advice or self-improvement books, memoirs of immigrant or minority experiences, or narrative retellings of important historic events. Even in the context of those squarely interested in science, there is often a desire for books focused on clearly demarcated events and salacious aspects, such as the debates in physics between Mach and Boltzmann and the latter's eventual suicide. As many of those topics also interest me, I fully understand, and don't begrudge them one bit! 

Trying to find agents interested in science-focused Idea books is hard, but they are out there. I have a growing list of agencies and agents that I might reach out to once my query letter is ready... and any suggestions are more than welcome. 

What within this process has started to seem problematic? Well....

While all the interests mentioned above are solid examples of non-fiction, I have also seen a lot of interest lists that are not so solid. I see a lot of agents "interested in nonfiction topics" with a focus on astrology, psychic powers, paranormal encounters, or spiritual transcendence. For example, the "nonfiction" book Embody Your Magic: Create the Life of your Dreams Through Astrology, Numerology, Mediumship, Metaphysics, and Human Design. And I'm not even saying many people might not find such a book helpful, I expect that the book has helped people. But only in the same ways that the Hunger Games or Lord of the Rings helped many people. Fantasy can be very helpful. But we are now at a point where you could find a book on the ground in Barnes and Nobel titled Moon Magick, and until you read the back cover you might not know if you should return it to the fantasy shelf or the nonfiction shelf. 

Of course, there has to be a line somewhere. I am not sure exactly where it is, and I am glad I don't have to be the arbiter. That said: At this point I have probably skimmed a thousand agents' wish lists, across a hundred literary agencies, and the size of the gray area between fiction from non-fiction in the publishing world has been bugging me. 

Abduction and the myth of introspection

• The Book: Abduction in Cognition and Action, Edited by John R. Shook and Sami Paavola
• • The Article: 
  Abductive Inference, Self-Knowledge, and the Myth of Introspection, by Eric Phillip Charles and Nicholas S. Thompson

First question from most people: What the heck is abduction? 

There are many answers to that question. 

My preferred (at the moment): Abduction is that it's that thing scientists do that definitely isn't deduction or induction, but which has been mindbogglingly successful over the last few hundred years.

Nick's preferred answer, and figure 1 in the paper: 

That's a teaser, and here is the abstract: 

Much of the history of psychology can be understood as a debate over what we do when we attribute psychological states to ourselves and to others. In the classic Cartesian view, those activities are quite distinct: We engage an infallible ability—introspection—when examining our own psychological states, but merely speculate when trying to identify the psychological states of others. The American Philosopher, Charles Sanders Peirce dedicated several early papers to a critique of the Cartesian approach. He concluded that attempts at self-knowledge require the same inferential processes that we use when attributing mental states to others, and therefore incur the same logical risks. By pursing these ideas further, we intend to show that self-knowledge results from a special kind of abduction; the inference of behavior states from particular observed behaviors. Such inferences allow us to anticipate yet-unseen patterns of behavior in yet-to-be-manifested circumstances.

Full text available on ResearchGate: (PDF) Abductive Inference, Self-Knowledge, and the Myth of Introspection (researchgate.net)

Deep thoughts: P Zombie Couches

 

I wrote several years ago about the classic "Stomach in a Jar" problem that has vexed philosophers for decades. I write today about the equally complex Philosophical Zombie Couch problem, which has fascinated philosophers since Keith Campbell and Robert Kirk introduced the idea in the early 1970s, and David Chalmers popularized it in the mid 1990s. Many of you will not be familiar with the problem, so let me lay it out simply to start out with. 

You could summarize the argument with a single premise: We can all imagine an object with all the properties of a couch, but which does not contain couchishness. 

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.

How we got to the muddle of "The Hard Problem" in psychology

Once upon a time we knew almost nothing about how vision worked, then, at just about the same time, all of the following happened:

1. Artists figured out perspectival drawing, and people went nuts over it.
2. It was discovered that they eye of a bull could act like a “camera obscura.” Camera obscuras were small dark rooms in the middle of a garden, built so that they cast an inverted view of the garden in one wall, by virtue of a pinhole in the opposite wall. Those were all the rage, because rich creepers could jerk off in them while spying on the ladies walking the garden. At that point, everyone assumed that vision was this passive thing that started with a still image in the back of the eye, and involved the opposite of whatever intellectual activity artists engaged in when creating a flat picture.