Nice try David, but you missed the mark. I happen to be in complete agreement with your thoughts. Sorry to disappoint you. On Wed, May 16, 2018 at 7:29 PM, David Sless <[log in to unmask]> wrote: > >> This may or may not help: > The difference between you and Gibson, as I see it, are profoundly > philosophical. To use the vernacular of professional philosophers: you view > the world through the lense of empiricism, Gibson, in his latter work, > viewed the world through the lense of realism. Put VERY simply, you look to > empirical evidence for the proof of whether or not something exists. Gibson > looks to what he regards as the reality of the environment in which we live > to define what exists. > These are not incompatible views. > > I will add just a small bit. Instead of seeeing us as independent from our > environment, Gibson sees us as creatures of our environemnt, evolved over > time to deal with the enevironment in which we move, avoid harm, collect > food, make things etc. To do these things as succesfully and as > economically as possible our ancestors, back to single cell organisms, > progressively internalised the consistent characteristics of the > environment through which we moved in such a way that we did not need to > constantly anaslyse the environment, but rather internalised its > characteristics. To use a modern metaphor, the charcteristics of our > environment (affordances) are hard wired into us, but not at the plastic > neurological level, but at the biological structural level. Our eyes, as an > example, are the way they are and where they are in our anatomy not because > of neurological features, but because of the way they have evolved in a > REAL environemnt to deal with that environment. Gibson thus moved from > Empiricism to Realism. > I firmly agree with and believe the words you give to Gibson: it is what i believe as well. > > This marks out a significant and radical difference between what I surmise > is your way of thinking and that of Gibson. You seem to be asking for a > 'mechanism' such as information processing to explain how we percieve. > Gibson is saying, there is no mechanism, it's just the way we are because > we have been formed by our environment: look to the environment for an > explanation, not into our brains. > Once again, I see no contradiction here. We evolved to intgeract with our environment (which includes other organisms). I agree with you. However, I now want to know what brain structures do and how they work -- they are a result of evo0lution, but still, they must be qccomplishing some funcgtion -- Iwangt to know what those are. (And sciewnce is making huge progress) > > Of course, the weekness of Gibson's view is that you stll have to explain > how you 'look to the environment'. > yup. my point precisely. > > I don't know if Gibson was familier with Heidegger or Wittgenstein which > might have helped him push the argument further, but his views are > predicated on the theory of evolution which provides pretty powerful > grounds for his argument. > I don't know either, but i can assure you i am familiar with them (and other philosophers) > > I hope this helps. It does, at least help me explain to me why you and > Gibson could not agree. > We actually agreed more than any one of us wanted to admit to the other. Gibson once said that -- and his wife, Eleanor (also a famous psychologist) scolded him. Don Don Norman Prof. and Director, DesignLab, UC San Diego ----------------------------------------------------------------- PhD-Design mailing list <[log in to unmask]> Discussion of PhD studies and related research in Design Subscribe or Unsubscribe at https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/phd-design -----------------------------------------------------------------