Cognition: The view from ecological realism

Cognition, 10 (1081) 313-321 @ Elsevier Sequoia S.A., Lausanne - Printed in The Netherlands

Cognition: The view from ecological

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M. T. TURVEY* University of Connecticut and Hask, :” L id”, 3ra tories CLAUDIA

CARELLO

University of Connecticut

The term ‘cognition’ is taken, very generally, to refer to the cocxdination of any organism (as an epistemic agent) and its environment (as the support for its acts). The task of cognitive theory is to explain this epistemic, intentional coordination of organism and environment. Orthodoxy subscribes to the Lockean view that the coordination is achieved through, and explained by, a special class of things. Locke called these things that interface organism and environment ‘ideas. ; contemporary cognitive theorists lean toward ‘representaticns’, ‘programs’, ‘reference signals’, ‘schemata’, etc. Each of these coordinating things is an entity presumed to be endowed with properties that are (sometimes loosely, often d-ictlyj isomorphic with those properties of the state of affairs for which the coordinator is said to be causally responsible. Moreover, it is also presumed that a coordinating thing is of the same logical t:?rpe as the organism, snvironment state of affairs that it putatively explains- each ir an instance of intelligence (or knowing, or rationality, or goal-directedness). For the orthodox theorist, an appropriate candidate to play the role of coordiriating thing in a given situation is arrived at by inference: Those properties and that organization that are sufficient to describe .the observed phenomenon must be identified. The assumption is that actual coordinating things are determined similarly, that is, that these instances of i:ntelligence are arrived at intelligently. This view is troublesome on two counts, neither of which seems to bother establishment theorists. First, orthodox cognitive theory is not distressed by the large loans of intelligence that its program demands. Given that coordinating things are rational entities arrived at by rational means, how does orthodox theory account for the ultimate origin of all this rationality? Second, the orthodox view is similarly unconcerned with the skepticism engendered by the assumption that perception is a relation of an organism to an internal representation of its environment. Given that inference can fail, and that the cm*This paper was written while the first author was a Fellow zt the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences. Support from NSF Grant BNS 76 22943 is gratefully ‘acknowledged. Reprint requests should be sent to: M. Turvey, Department of Psychology, University of Connecticut, Storrs, Connecticut, 06268, U.S.A.

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sequences of inferences unfettered by real constraints are vacuous, how does orthodox theory insure that an inference-determined representation represents an actual state of affairs, that is, that perception is not of fictions but of the real environmental ,things (types of substance, surface, place, object ,and event) with respect to which acts are conducted? The second concern-skepticismcan be alleviated in the orthodox perspective, but only by exacerbating the first---taking out further loans of intelligence. Investing an organism with detailed foreknowledge of the conditions of its ecosystem might build into orthodox theory sufficient constraint to guarantee that the organisn’s inferences are realistic. However, to presuppose the very thing that is to be explained is a move that no serious science of cognition can abide. It seems, therefore, that the orthadox approach to cognition is seriously infirmed 6;ld that the foundations of cognitive theory demand a radical rethinking of the kind initiated by Gibson (1950, 1966,1979). The heterodox, ecological approach explicitly recognizes ‘knowing’ as a natural phenomenon at a particular scale of magnitude, viz., the ecological scale of living things and their niches. It requires that ontology and epistemology-and the scientific theory and method that they shape-be tailored to the ecological scale ‘(Gibson, 1979 ; Michaels and Carello, 198 1). It rejects any strategy that inputes coordinating things to explain cognition and embraces, instead, a strategy that searches for natural laws at the ecological scale (fashioned by scale-independent principles) that coordinate organism and environment (Turvey, Shaw, Reed and Mace, 1981). The ecological strategy observes two rules of thumb: (1) resist taking out loans of intelligence; and (2) regard with skepticism, and be prepared to jettison, any assumption, concept, interpretation, fact, theory, strategy, etc., that undercuts or threatens to undercut the principle of ecological realism. This principle can be sketched roughly as follows. An activity of an organism is a nesting of behavioral adjustments to a nesting of environmental properties. (For exampr_e, a-bird searching for insects is oriented at a fine spatiotemporal scale to the.crevice at which it directs its beak, at a less fine spatiotempora! scale to the branch on which it stands, and at a much coarser spatiotemporal scale to the sky-earth light differential). To control its activity, the organism must perceive both the nested environmental properties and its own nesf4 behaviors. The principle of ecological realism is the assertion that the nested pro.perties of organism and environment are objective states of affairs of the organism-niche system (that is, their existence is independent of whether ~1 not the organism experiences them) and it is these states of affairs, and ody these, that are the ‘objects’ of perception (Gibson, 1979; Shaw, Turvey and Mace, in press; Turvey and Shaw, 1979). Any move that will inevitably replace the aforementioned ‘objects’ of perception with some others (pop-

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ularly, neural states and/or mental states) undercuts the principle and, therefore, is not allowed. The commitment to the principle of ecological realism expressed in rule (2) she. Id not be undervalued. In our view, that commitment directs the ecological program and makes it cohere. A renunciation of realism would make a mockery of what scientists do qua scientists (Bunge, 1973; d’Espagnat, 1979) and a renunciation of the principle of ecological realism would make a mockery of what scientists do qua organisms (and what organisms do in general). Without the principle, the adaptive relation of organism and niche would be in the style of the cartoon character Mr. Magoo who never sees what behaviors the environment actually permits nor what behaviors are actually performed but who survives nevertheless through the benevolence of the animator. The adaptive relation of organism and niche over the short term (popularly referred to as perceptuo-motor coordination) requires the principle of ecological realism, as do the adaptive relations over the medium t\;lm (learning), and the long term (evolution) (see Johnston and Turvey, 1980). The principle of ecological realism, therefore, is taken to be the fundamental principle of a science of cognition. In our view, while types of inquiry other than scientific may not be obliged to preserve the principle at all costs, science is obliged. For a science of cognition, however, it is an obligation that is not met easily-cognitive theory feeds on various disciplines that, themselves, not only contain many(entrenched) conceptions and methodologies that deny the principle but also lack other conceptions and methodologies needed to sustain it. The principle’s ultimate significance is that,for any discipline,it picks out concepts, assumptions, interpretations, etc. that are unacceptable and it points to those concepts, etc. that are required, whether they be currently available or not. The ecological approach has identified a number of such conceptions, etc. Some of athe major ones are listed below,. togeth.er with a brief descriptiort (most have been advanced in some detail elsewhere). Collectively, these conceptions define a framework in which to investigate cognition.

1. Organisrn-environmcat relation Perhaps fFe fundamental conception of ecological realism concerns the logical dependence of organism and environment (Gibson, 1979; Turvey .and Shaw, 1979). Organism-environment synergy does not suggest merely that an organism implies the existence of some environment (or vice versa) but, more strongly, that each component of an organism-niche system logically conditions the very nature of the other component (Patten, 1979; Shaw and Turvey, 198 1). Such a claim demands that organism-niche systems be the

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irreducible units of analysis for understanding the phenomena of knowing (Michaels and Carello, 198 1; Shaw, et al., in press). 2, Description of the environment In order to be consistent with the principle of ecological realism, a useful description of the environment must reflect an environment’s mutually constraining relationship to the organism. Such an organism-referential descrip tion is provided in Gibson’s concept of affordance, a tiescription that captures the nature of a given niche as the environmental support for a particular animal’s activities (Gibson, 1979). The behavioral concerns motivated by the principle of ecological realism are currently being brought to bear on the concept of niche in zoology and ecology (Alley, 1981), where it has been conceded that traditional treatments of physical and biological needs alone are incomplete (Whittaker, Levin and Root, 1973). In highlighting the mutuality between an organism’s activities and the niche in which that organism evolved and with respect to which those activities are adaptive, the efficacy of borrowing organism-neutral phlysical taxonomies and simplistic biological taxonomies is denied (Runeson, 1977; Turvcy and Shaw, 1979; Turvey et al., 1981 j. Appropriate physical and biological taxonomies have yet to be determined but it is contended that the principle of ecological realism will be a necessary constraint on their ultimate formulations (Shaw and Cutting, 1980). 3*ll&ormation Neither classical information theory nor the currently popular quasilinguistic view of information is acceptable (Gibsor, 1966; Kugler, Kelso and Turvey, in press). The ecological approach asserts that the concept of information cannot be developed systematically apart from considerations of activity. In scientific discourse, ‘information is used in many contexts, but it is in the contexts of coordinating and controlling activity (more generally, dynamics) that its use is most pronounced and its nature most elusive. Ecological realism imposes severe demands on the concept: Information must be unique and specific to the facts about which it informs (Gibson, 1979 ; Mace 1977 ; Reed and .Iones, 1978; Turvey and Shaw, 19791, meaningful to the coordination and control requirements of the activity (what can be done, how it can be donr+ and when it can be dQne) (Gibson, 1979; Lee, 1980; Michaels and Carello, 1981; Fowler and Turvey, 1978), and continuously scaled to the dimensions of the system over which the activity is defmed (Kugler, et aT., in press).

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4. Natural law The interpretation of natural law as a relation between classes of things (more formally, an intensional relation between extensions) denies specification in the sense of one property lawfully related to another, for example, an activityrelevant property of the environment lawfully related to a property of ambient light (Fodor and Pylyshyn, 1981; Turvey et al, 1981). As noted in (3), ecolsgical realism mandates specification. The ecological approach requires, therefore, that a natural law be a relation between properties (more formally, an extentional relation between intensions) rather than a relation between classes (Reed, 1979; Turvey, etal., 1981). 5. Units or scales of measure Given that extrinsic units of measure sustain animal-environment dualism and, therefore, undermine ecological realism, they are not tolerated. Very roughly, given that extrinsic units (meters, grams, etc.) are arbitrarily imposed on an environment, they require that the organism perform a complicated conversion in order to derive units appropriate for activity. Units that are intrinsic to an organism-niche system, on the other hand, share common bases in the organism and niche (.;;lhawand Cutting, 1980) such that certain parts and processes of the ;ysPem define the units in which other parts and processes are measured (see, for example, Lee, 1980; Sedgwick, 1973). The task of systematically determining intrinsic measures may be facilitated by the identification of constraints that make the coordination and cciltrol of movement possible. For example, a measurement system appropriate to the activ’~:ds of a living thing should consist of three coimplicative metrics-an intrinsic temporal metric, an i.ntrinsic spatial metric, and an intrinsic power metric-such that fixing the value of any two of them on any given occasion will naturally constrain the third (Kugler, personal communication). A paradigmatic instance is a tennis player who requires information appropriate to her dimensions for where to contact the ball, when contact is to be made, and how much power is required in ordry to arrive at the appropriate place at the, appropriate time.

6, Semantics Oirthodox semantics is rooted in (i) the analysis of formal mathematical languages, with its notions of meaning as a fixed property of an expression and an unrestricted universe as the ground for interpreting sentences, and (ii) a

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tradition that identifies the intentionalit:l of everyday language with a commitment to concepts or mental represer .ations, which can be representations of ‘inexistent’ things. From the ecorogical perspective, however, semantics begins with a commitment to the view that language is intentional because it reports on the relations of the user to the propertied things that make up the language user’s environment (e.g., BarsAse, in press; Barwise and Perry, 198 1) and not because it reports on concepts, ideas, etc., as is the orthodox claim. The interpretation of expressions, therefore, must be in terms of the propertied things and the relations that compose ihe speaker-environment system. And the context-free meaning of e\:,*yessions assumed in orthodox semantics must give way tc the ecological fact that the linguistic expressions that intimately link human and environment (such as ‘this’, ‘that’, ‘today’) assume different designations, that is, pick out different propertied things and relations, as a function of the user, event, and place (Barwise, in press; Barwise and Perry, 1981). 7. Physical theory

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Until recently, physical theories have sought, by and large, to give causal accounts of transitions between states of the same order of complexity (mechanics) and have addressed, to only a limited degree, the question of how various orders of complexity might arise (equilibrium, reversible thermodynamics). The orthodox approach to cognition couples a tendency to assume that physical theory is complete with the supposition thitt the kinds of orders that characterize cognition are largely outside physics’ explanatory power. This coupling leads to the promotion of a special explanatory vocabulary, that of representation and computation. But, as implied above, coordinating things are prescriptions for states of affairs and come very close to embodying the very order that they are meant to explain; and a discrete, symbolic mode yields a vocabulary that is proprietary only for explaining an ideal system existing in an ideal universe in which space, tinlti, matter, and energy make no contribution (Pattee, 1974; Shaw and Rlclntyre, 1974). Commitment to the principle of ecologizaI realism cautions against as suming that physics is complete and, instead, advocates patience with regard to physics’ eventual contribution to cognition. It underscrores the need to ground cognitive theory in a physical system that is real rather than ideal. Given that the principle requires that epistemic, intentional states of an organism-niche system be a ‘posteriori facts, not a priori prescriptions (i.e., states that arise from the design of the organism-niche system rather than states that are imposed by a model of the organism-niche system) (Kugler, et al., 1980;

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Turvey, et al., 198 l), the charge to physical theory is an acccclnt of the physical principles of design that govern the evolution of different orders of complexity in a contirluous dynamical system. This charge is being met by physical theories that couple statistical mechanics and nonequ?brium irreversible thermodynamics (e.g., Iberall, 1972, 1977; Morowitz, 1978; Prigogine, 1978; Yates, 1980). This curious feature of an ecological approach-that the conceptions, etc. of the various branches of knowledge must be consistent with the principle of ecological realism- marks the ecological approach as an eccentric way of doing science. It asserts that, at the ecological scale, a certain principle must hold for the phenomena characteristic of that scale to be manifest, and it uses this principle- encouraged by a belief in the mutual compatibility of natural phenomena (Shaw and McIntyre, 1974; Shaw and Turvey, 198 1; Turvey and Shaw, 1979)-as a benchmark for evaluating statements about st;ltes of affairs at all scales of magnitude. Happily, this eccentricity is not limited to proponents of the ecological view. It is intuited in other circles, for example, that the basic features of the universe are understandable in terms of a few physical constants together with the constraint that the order ->fmagnitude of these constants be consistent with the fact of living things (Carter, 1974; Carr and Rees, 1979). The ecological approach expresses a similar intuition but one that we suspect is more far-reaching: A thoroughgoing explanation of perception in the service of activity, consistent with the principle of ecological realism, will impose powerful constraints not only on cognitive theory but on physical and biological theory as well.

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