Information without content: A Gibsonian reply to enactivists’ worries

Dijk, Ludger van; Withagen, Rob; Bongers, Raoul M.

doi:10.1016/j.cognition.2014.10.012

Cited by 53 publications

(37 citation statements)

References 14 publications

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“…Gibson [19] argued that in order for such information to guide action effectively, it needs to be constituted relationally, pointing both ways to agent and their environment. As such, Gibson argued that the perception of information, was the perception of relationally defined affordances [4,19,45]. However, by defining the role perceptual information as being for the specification of the sources and properties of a sound, ecological acoustics approaches (e.g.…”

Section: Bringing Sounds Into Usementioning

confidence: 99%

“…However, despite this large shift in theoretical explanation, cognitive and ecological investigations of auditory perception have remained starkly similar through the implementation of passive judgment style tasks and experiments. In striving for an understanding of "the source event and its properties" ( [30], p. 80), what has been left is a theory of auditory perception that is only well equipped enough to explain how we perceive information about an event [45]. Much less understood is how our perceptions of sound can be used to guide our interactions with the environment, providing information for action [19,45].…”

Section: Auditory Affordancesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Instead, what is important is how this auditory information, in relation to an agent, can provide a more or less desirable state of affairs within their present context [6]. Essentially, what is of concern is the relevant uses that the auditory in-formation provides [45]. Indeed -much as Tim Ingold [2,67] contends in relation to the use of materials when materials in making -we argue the meaning of an auditory event does not always arise from its invariant composition or structure but through the reliable uses and functionalities it provides in relation to the user.…”

Section: Auditory Affordancesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In striving for an understanding of "the source event and its properties" ( [30], p. 80), what has been left is a theory of auditory perception that is only well equipped enough to explain how we perceive information about an event [45]. Much less understood is how our perceptions of sound can be used to guide our interactions with the environment, providing information for action [19,45]. Essentially our argument is that whilst our perceptions need to be reliably informative of everyday events, they also need to be useful in this regard, providing information of the possible opportunities for action that are available.…”

Section: Auditory Affordancesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The latent content of a sound (i.e. its causes or "aboutness") holds no utility in and of itself [45]. Instead, what is important is how this auditory information, in relation to an agent, can provide a more or less desirable state of affairs within their present context [6].…”

Section: Auditory Affordancesmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Bringing Sounds into Use: Thinking of Sounds as Materials and a Sketch of Auditory Affordances

Steenson¹,

Rodger²

2015

TOPSYJ

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Abstract:We live in a richly structured auditory environment. From the sounds of cars charging towards us on the street to the sounds of music filling a dancehall, sounds like these are generally seen as being instances of things we hear but can also be understood as opportunities for action. In some circumstances, the sound of a car approaching towards us can provide critical information for the avoidance of harm. In the context of a concert venue, sociocultural practices like music can equally afford coordinated activities of movement, such as dancing or music making. Despite how evident the behavioral effects of sound are in our everyday experience, they have been sparsely accounted for within the field of psychology. Instead, most theories of auditory perception have been more concerned with understanding how sounds are passively processed and represented and how they convey information of the world, neglecting than how this information can be used for anything. Here, we argue against these previous rationalizations, suggesting instead that information is instantiated through use and, therefore, is an emergent effect of a perceiver's interaction with their environment. Drawing on theory from psychology, philosophy and anthropology, we contend that by thinking of sounds as materials, theorists and researchers alike can get to grips with the vast array of auditory affordances that we purposefully bring into use when interacting with the environment.Keywords: Affordances, auditory perception, dance, ecological psychology, music, sensorimotor coordination. TAKING SOUNDS OUT OF THE HEADUnderstanding the perception of sound and how we interact with auditory information is not an easy task. It is difficult to conceive an objective way of explaining auditory experiences when our perceptions of sound and our intentions surrounding these perceptions, by definition, are subjective mental phenomena. This distinction between the objective and the subjective, the mental and physical, is a problem that has dogged psychology generally over its short lifespan. Different approaches have been developed to explain these dichotomies, which have left far reaching implications on how researchers have approached more specialist areas, such as auditory perception. The dominant approaches to psychology, such as cognitive-and information processing-based approaches, explain auditory perception as the transformation of objective input (energy stimulating receptors) into subjective output (declarative descriptions of, or, responses to received input). This process of input-cognitionoutput, we argue, falls short of adequately accounting for the phenomenology of our experiences with the auditory environment.In this paper, we instead propose an alternative view to auditory perception that can account for the various creative ways we can meaningfully use and interact with sounds. Drawing on ideas from ecological psychology, this approach takes a different form of discourse to conventional cognitive *Address correspondence to this author at ...

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Section: Bringing Sounds Into Usementioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Auditory Affordancesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Auditory Affordancesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Auditory Affordancesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Auditory Affordancesmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Bringing Sounds into Use: Thinking of Sounds as Materials and a Sketch of Auditory Affordances

Steenson¹,

Rodger²

2015

TOPSYJ

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A Multi-scale View of the Emergent Complexity of Life: A Free-Energy Proposal

Hesp

Ramstead

Constant

et al. 2019

Evolution, Development and Complexity

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We review some of the main implications of the free-energy principle (FEP) for the study of the self-organization of living systemsand how the FEP can help us to understand (and model) biotic self-organization across the many temporal and spatial scales over which life exists. In order to maintain its integrity as a bounded system, any biological system-from single cells to complex organisms and societies-has to limit the disorder or dispersion (i.e., the long-run entropy) of its constituent states. We review how this can be achieved by living systems that minimize their variational free energy. Variational free energy is an information theoretic construct, originally introduced into theoretical neuroscience and biology to explain perception, action, and learning. It has since been extended to explain the evolution, development, form, and function of entire organisms, providing a principled model of biotic self-organization and autopoiesis. It has provided insights into biological systems across spatiotemporal scales, ranging from microscales (e.g., sub-and multicellular dynamics), to intermediate scales (e.g., groups of interacting animals and culture), through to macroscale phenomena (the evolution of entire species). A crucial corollary of the FEP is that an organism just is (i.e., embodies or entails) an implicit model of its environment. As such, organisms come to embody causal relationships of their ecological niche, which, in turn, is influenced by their resulting behaviors. Crucially, free-energy minimization can be shown to be equivalent to the maximization of Bayesian model evidence. This allows us to cast evolution (i.e. natural selection) in terms of Bayesian model selection, providing a robust theoretical account of how organisms come to match or accommodate the spatiotemporal complexity of their surrounding niche. In line with the theme of this volume; namely, biological complexity and self-organization, this chapter will examine a variational approach to self-organization across multiple dynamical scales.

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Embodied Cognition and the Archaeology of Mind: A Radical Reassessment

Garofoli

2019

Handbook of Evolutionary Research in Archaeology

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Information without content: A Gibsonian reply to enactivists’ worries

Cited by 53 publications

References 14 publications

Bringing Sounds into Use: Thinking of Sounds as Materials and a Sketch of Auditory Affordances

Bringing Sounds into Use: Thinking of Sounds as Materials and a Sketch of Auditory Affordances

A Multi-scale View of the Emergent Complexity of Life: A Free-Energy Proposal

Embodied Cognition and the Archaeology of Mind: A Radical Reassessment

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