| | Background (direct perception)
Because of the difficulty preempting basic criticism of direct perception (with my paragraph-long explanation of what perception is), I've decided to add to this thread a repertoire of key insights from Gibson--to prevent any further, rationally-unnecessary basic criticisms of direct perception.
Ecological Theory of Direct Perception (excerpts):
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Highlights from:
http://tip.psychology.org/gibson.html ...
"The theory of information pickup suggests that perception depends entirely upon information in the "stimulus array" rather than sensations ..."
" ... the ambient array includes invariants such as shadows, texture, color, convergence, symmetry and layout that determine what is perceived."
"All perceptions are made in reference to body position and functions (proprioception). Awareness of the environment derives from how it reacts to our movements."
"The critical concept is that pilots orient themselves according to characteristics of the ground surface rather than through vestibular/kinesthetic senses.
"In other words, it is the invariants of terrain and sky that determine perception while flying, not sensory processing per se."
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Highlights from:
http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~philos/MindDict/gibsonj.html
"Gibson formulated the concept of ‘stimulus ecology,’ referring to the stimuli that surround a person."
"He believed in ‘invariance’ of perception, whereby the environment provides an active organism with a continuous and stable flow of information to which it can respond."
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Highlights from:
http://www.huwi.org/gibson/intro.php
"But a direct explanation of the perception of the properties of the visible environment may be possible if these properties are taken from concepts of ecology instead of from mathematics and physics. (Perhaps they are ultimately "reducible" to the latter, but the psychologist cannot wait on such a reduction.)"
"Spatial Properties (We do not visually perceive "space," but we do perceive the following persisting, i.e., relatively invariant, properties of the world.) ... Surface layout ... Substance or composition ... Lighting or illumination"
"Spatio-Temporal Properties (We do not perceive "time" as such, but we do perceive changes or varying properties of the world, which are spatio-temporal."
"Proprioception accompanies perception; we proprioceive visually as well as perceive visually, and this kind of detection is also spatio-temporal."
"Note that the term perception is reserved for the environment, and detection or registration is applied to the self."
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Highlights from:
http://www.huwi.org/gibson/prelim.php
"VI. The detecting of affordances by young animals
"The human young must learn to perceive these affordances, in some degree at least, but the young of some animals do not have time to learn the ones that are crucial for survival. Ethologists therefore are interested in what they call "sign-stimuli" and "releasers." If the foregoing is correct, however, the behavior in question should be reconsidered in terms of stimulus information, not of stimuli."
"There has been a great gulf in psychological thought between the perception of space and objects on one hand and the perception of meaning on the other. But when space and objects are defined in terms of t he opaque solid geometry of surface layout, and when meaning is defined in terms of the affordances of places, substances, surfaces and objects (hereafter termed "things"), these problems are seen to be linked. For example, what anything affords an organism depends in some degree on its shape or the features of its shape (solid shape, of course, not pictorial form). Hence it is that the shape of something is especially meaningful. The meaning or value of a thing consists of what it affords. Note the implications of this proposed definition. What a thing affords a particular observer (or species of observer) points to the organism, the subject. The shape and size and composition and rigidity of a thing, however, point to its physical existence, the object. But these determine what it affords the observer. The affordance points both ways. What a thing is and what it means are not separate, the former being physical and the latter mental as we are accustomed to believe."
"The perception of what a thing is and the perception of what it means are not separate, either. To perceive that a surface is level and solid is also to perceive that it is walk-on-able."
Highlights from:
http://www.kyb.tuebingen.mpg.de/bu/people/astros/gibson.htm
" ... humans perceive objects against backgrounds in the real world by perceiving invariant relationships among the features of the figure and ground."
" ... an event is specified by a local change in the ambient array, while locomotion is specified by a global change of the ambient array."
"The essential feature of learning is the resonating of the nervous system to the invariant properties of the stimulus flux over objective time."
"The crux of the theory . . . is the existence of certain types of permanence and underlying charge. These invariants are in the stimuli at least potentially."
[My "take" on perception--Direct pickup of contrasts and variants (and therefore, of invariants) within the organismo-environmental complex; through time]
Ed
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