General ecological information for higher cognition
Non-lawful regularities in a form of life support skilled engagement with distant, socio-cultural affordances.
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General ecological information supports engagement with affordances for 'higher' cognition
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General ecological information for higher cognition
These passages occur verbatim in the stored paper text. They support the points listed below; they do not verify every statement in the explanation.
What are ecological psychology's main concepts here?
The main theoretical concepts of ecological psychology are affordance and ecological information (Gibson ). Affordances are possibilities for action
How is skilled intentionality defined?
Skilled intentionality is defined as the selective engagement with multiple affordances simultaneously. Some of the affordances we encounter in a
What they did
Within the Skilled Intentionality Framework they reconceive ecological information so that conventions, habits, and other constraints—not only lawful optical specification—can support affordance engagement, including activities tagged as 'higher' cognition.
What they found
General ecological information is any niche regularity such that aspect x makes aspect y likely; lawful information is a special case. Imagination is anticipatory skilled engagement with multiple affordances, not a mandatory inner representation.
The limits
What it doesn't show
It does not empirically measure attunement to particular constraints, and it does not fully analyse every 'higher' practice (they flag science-fiction writing as unfinished).
Key terms
- Affordance
- Action possibility: a relation between environmental aspects and abilities in a form of life.
- Solicitation
- An affordance that stands out as relevant for a particular agent given action-readiness.
- General ecological information
- A regularity in the niche such that the occurrence of x makes y likely.
- Lawful ecological information
- Special case of general information based on law-like specification (e.g. optics).
- Skilled intentionality
- Selective engagement with multiple affordances simultaneously, tending toward an optimal grip.
- Form of life
- Relatively stable patterns of doing that constitute an ecological niche, including socio-cultural practices.
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General ecological information is defined as
Common questions
How does general ecological information differ from Turvey-style lawful information?
Lawful specification is a special case; general information includes conventions, habits, and other non-lawful regularities.
Affordances versus solicitations?
Affordances exist at the form-of-life level even without a local observer; solicitations are the relevant ones for an individual's current action-readiness.
Do they explain imagination with mental representations?
No. They treat it as anticipatory engagement with affordances supported by regularities at several spatiotemporal scales.
Is 'higher' cognition a hard natural kind here?
They keep scare quotes: dealing with the absent and with sociocultural norms is continuous with skilled action, not a separate inner computer.
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