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As crafted by Gibson, the ecological
perspective on perception and behavior is heterodox in three primary
respects. First, it takes the system of organism and its environment
as the proper domain for theory and analysis. Second, it gives short
shrift to explanations in which processes sui generis (typically of
a computational or neural nature) mediate an organism’s contact with
its surroundings. Third, it finds the ontology underwriting
Newtonian physics to be inadequate, even inappropriate. I will
discuss how these heterodox features have shaped ecological theory
and research in the past and I will identify how I expect them to
play out in the future. In particular, I will give emphasis to the
potential significance of (a) strong anticipation, (b)
non-predicative definition, (c) developmental systems theory, and
(d) principles of self-organization. I will also emphasize why
future developments must remain grounded in the ecological
definition of information and the thesis of direct perception. |
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