Book by Manuel Heras Escribano
This book is the first monograph fully devoted to analyzing the philosophical aspects of affordan... more This book is the first monograph fully devoted to analyzing the philosophical aspects of affordances. The concept of affordance, coined and developed in the field of ecological psychology, describes the possibilities for action available in the environment. This work offers a systematic approach to the key philosophical features of affordances, such as their ontological characterization, their relation to normative practices, and the idea of agency that follows from viewing affordances as key objects of perception, while also proposing an innovative philosophical characterization of affordances as dispositional properties.
The Philosophy of Affordances analyzes the implications that a proper understanding of affordances has for the philosophy of mind and the cognitive sciences, and aims to intensify the dialogue between philosophy and ecological psychology in which each discipline benefits from the tools and insights of the other.
Papers by Manuel Heras Escribano
Teaching Philosophy
In this paper, I offer a skillful performance approach to teaching philosophy based on the ideas ... more In this paper, I offer a skillful performance approach to teaching philosophy based on the ideas of late phenomenologist Hubert L. Dreyfus. For this, I reconstruct the main contributions of Dreyfus's phenomenological approach to skillful action as a reaction against the cognitivist view of perception and cognition, and I apply these ideas to the issue of teaching philosophy. I conclude that the Dreyfusian approach to teaching philosophy is based on two main ideas: first, that teaching is a skillful action in which the teacher engages with students in a feedback loop relation so that the teacher aims to achieve what I call the maximal teaching grip; second, that this maximal teaching grip is accompanied by a particular experiential state that Hubert L. Dreyfus and Sean D. Kelly named "aliveness," and that can be traced back to the Heideggerian idea of Augenblick.
Philosophies, 2024
Radical enactivism supports radical embodied cognition (REC), which is the idea that basic or fun... more Radical enactivism supports radical embodied cognition (REC), which is the idea that basic or fundamental cognition (perception and action) does not need to be understood in representational, contentful terms. REC departs from the idea that the mind can be naturalized through biological functions, but rejects the idea that mental content, which is understood as having a representational nature, can be naturalized. For REC, the natural origins of content (or NOC) is a program based on the following hypothesis: first, we depart from basic cognitive processes that are target-based and guided by an Ur-intentionality or directedness toward the world, and then sociality enters in the picture when language appears into the scene, allowing for establishing full-blown semantic content in which that content is about worldly states of affairs. Here, we are going to focus on the phenomenon of directedness since there are blind spots in this picture: as many authors claim, REC takes Urintentionality as the starting point, but there is simply no explanation to date of how this directedness or Ur-intentionality is established. Therefore, how could we account for Ur-intentionality? How does this kind of intentionality emerge? We believe that we can answer this question if we invoke the best scientific evidence from ecological perceptual learning especially in regard to the role of the environment and the information for perceiving affordances in our learning processes. This allows us to offer an answer to the question of how the most basic form of cognition (Ur-intentionality or directedness) emerges in nature.
The 2019 Conference on Artificial Life, 2019
There has been a revival of the notion of habit in the embodied and situated cognitive sciences. ... more There has been a revival of the notion of habit in the embodied and situated cognitive sciences. A habit can be understood as 'a self-sustaining pattern of sensorimotor coordination that is formed when the stability of a particular mode of sensorimotor engagement is dynamically coupled with the stability of the mechanisms generating it' (Barandiaran, 2008, p. 281). This view has inspired models of biologically-inspired homeostatic agents capable of establishing their own habits (Di Paolo and Iizuka, 2008). Despite recent achievements in this field, there is little written about how social habits can be established from this modelling perspective. We hypothesize that, when the stability of internal behavioural mechanisms is coupled to the stability of a behaviour and other agents are present during this behaviour, a social interdependence of behaviour takes place: a social habit is established. We provide evidence for our hypothesis with an evolutionary robotics simulation model of homeostatic plasticity in a phototactic behaviour. Agents evolved to couple internal homeostasis to behavioural fitness display social interdependencies in their behaviour. The social habit of these agents was not interrupted when blindness to phototactic stimuli was introduced as long as social perception remained active. This did not happen when internal homeostasis was not coupled to the fitness of the agent. The results allow us to propose a possible conjecture about the character of social habits and to offer a potential theoretical framework to understand how habits develop from neurodynamics to the level of social interaction.
Philosophical Psychology, 2023
In the last years, we have attended to different attempts to extend the notion of affordance to i... more In the last years, we have attended to different attempts to extend the notion of affordance to include mental or cognitive actions. In short, the idea is that our capacity to perform some cognitive functions such as counting, imagining, mathematical reasoning, and so on, is preceded by our awareness of cognitive or mental affordances. In this paper, we analyze two of these attempts, Mental Affordance Hypothesis, and cognitive horizons, and conclude that they fail to deliver their promise. Our argument is twofold. First, we show that both proposals lack an explanation for how these affordances can be perceived or experienced by the individuals. Second, we argue, focusing on the examples provided by the authors, that the introduction of cognitive affordances is not justified on explanatory grounds. In other words, neither of these proposals offers a compelling justification for thinking that performing said "mental acts" requires the perception of mental or cognitive affordances. Hence, the existence of mental or cognitive affordances remains both scientifically mysterious and explanatorily unjustified.
Biology and Philosophy, 2023
In this paper, we bring together the concepts of affordance from ecological psychology and functi... more In this paper, we bring together the concepts of affordance from ecological psychology and function from the organizational approach to philosophy of biology into a single integrative framework. This integration allows us to account for the biological basis of the notion of affordance, offering theoretical tools to address the normative interrelations between organisms and their environments.
Synthese, 2021
A widely shared assumption in the literature about skilled motor behavior is that any action that... more A widely shared assumption in the literature about skilled motor behavior is that any action that is not blindly automatic and mechanical must be the product of computational processes upon mental representations. To counter this assumption, in this paper we offer a radical embodied (non-representational) account of skilled action that combines ecological psychology and the Deweyan theory of habits. According to our proposal, skilful performance can be understood as composed of sequences of mutually coherent, task-specific perceptual-motor habits. Such habits play a crucial role in simplifying both our exploration of the perceptual environment and our decision-making. However, we argue that what keeps habits situated, precluding them from becoming rote and automatic, are not mental representations but the agent's conscious attention to the affordances of the environment. It is because the agent is not acting on autopilot but constantly searching for new information for affordances that she can control her behavior, adapting previously learned habits to the current circumstances. We defend that our account provides the resources needed to understand how skilled action can be intelligent (flexible, adaptive, context-sensitive) without having any representational cognitive processes built into them.
Límite. Revista Interdisciplinaria de Filosofía y Psicología, 2020
In this paper, we present the main contributions that are part of the special issue "Cognition an... more In this paper, we present the main contributions that are part of the special issue "Cognition and technology: A 4E perspective". 4E cognition or the embodied and embedded cognitive sciences aim to make sense of the mind as constituted by bodily and environmental aspects. This approach to the mind offers some challenges to our current understanding of technology, and this special issue includes an analysis of key epistemic, ontological, and methodological aspects of 4E cognition in relation to the use of technology.
Frontiers in Psychology, 2020
Constructivist Foundations, 2020
I offer a response to some criticisms raised by the commentators on the basis of the following cl... more I offer a response to some criticisms raised by the commentators on the basis of the following claims:
(a) Disagreements and publicness are not counterexamples to my view on normativity, but cases that are explained by appealing to its social basis.
(b) It is possible to offer a general view of experience from a situated and embodied approach based on the concept of affordance but without perverting its scientifc basis.
(c) The Rylean-inspired dispositionalism that I offer can explain why the concept of affordance is based on the organism-environment complementarity explained in nomological or causal terms without committing to substance ontology. I also try to fnd a common ground that could work for establishing the conceptual basis of a post-cognitivist, affordance-based approach to the mind.
Constructivist Foundations, 2020
Context • Affordances are gaining momentum as a key object of study in the cognitive sciences and ... more Context • Affordances are gaining momentum as a key object of study in the cognitive sciences and the philosophy of mind. In The Philosophy of Affordances I propose a new way to understand affordances that avoids some philosophical problems that have been overlooked in the literature. > Problem • I summarize two of the problems and discussions that are analyzed in the book: frst, the ontological characterization of affordances; second, the alleged normative character of affordances. > Method • I apply a conceptual analysis of the main philosophical implications that result from understanding affordances as grounded on the principles of the ecological approach. > Results • I propose a dispositional approach to affordances based on a Rylean, non-reductive perspective that avoids both the hidden Platonic commitment of dispositionalism and the alleged normative character attributed to affordances. > Implications • Affordances can be understood as dispositional properties from a non-reductive or Rylean perspective, which helps preclude some key problems related to the ontological status of these scientifc entities. > Constructivist content • Affordances do not imply mental construction; they refer to a new way in which we can describe the reciprocity between organism and environment while avoiding dualizing terms. > Keywords • Affordance, agency, ecological information, enactivism, disposition, James J. Gibson, normativity, phenomenology, Gilbert Ryle.
Biology & Philosophy, 2020
This paper aims to examine the evolutionary role of affordances, that is, the possibilities for a... more This paper aims to examine the evolutionary role of affordances, that is, the possibilities for action available in our environments. There are two allegedly competing views for explaining the evolutionary role of affordances: the first is based on natural selection; the second is based on niche construction. According to the first, affordances are resources that exert selection pressure. The second view claims that affordances are ecological inheritances in the organism's niche that are the product of a previous alteration of the environment. While there seems to be a mutually exclusive definition of affordances in each of these views, I argue in this paper that the views are not competing but, rather, complementary. In this sense, affordances play the role of either resources or ecological inheritances depending on the temporal stage of the evolutionary process. I make this argument by analyzing how natural selection and niche construction affect each other even when they function independently from each other. In this light, if these two evolutionary mechanisms exert their power in parallel but at two different stages in the evolutionary history of a given econiche, then there is room to claim that affordances can be understood as both resources and ecological inheritances. This dual aspect of affordances shows their evolutionary role.
Res Philosophica, 2019
The expressivist account of knowledge attributions, while claiming that these attributions are no... more The expressivist account of knowledge attributions, while claiming that these attributions are nonfactual, also typically holds that they retain a factual component. This factual component involves the attribution of a belief. The aim of this work is to show that considerations analogous to those motivating an expressivist account of knowledge attributions can be applied to belief attributions. As a consequence, we claim that expressivists should not treat the so-called factual component as such. The phenomenon we focus on to claim that belief attributions are non-factual is that of normative doxastic disagreement. We show through several examples that this kind of disagreement is analogous to that of the epistemic kind. The result will be a doxastic expressivism. Finally, we answer some objections that our doxastic expressivism could seem to face.
Acta Analytica
The main aim of this paper is to introduce an approach for understanding social cognition that we... more The main aim of this paper is to introduce an approach for understanding social cognition that we call the normative approach to social cognition. Such an approach, which results from a systematization of previous arguments and ideas from authors such as Ryle, Dewey, or Wittgenstein, is an alternative to the classic model (by which we infer others’ mental states via sub-personal mechanisms) and the direct social perception model (by which we directly perceive others’ mental states). In section 2, we evaluate the virtues and flaws of these two models. In section 3, we introduce the normative approach, according to which human, socio-cognitive competences rely on a myriad of social norms and routines that mediate our social interactions in such a way that we can make sense of each other without taking into consideration their mental states. In sections 4 and 5, we find some common premises shared by the two prior models and offer some arguments against them. In section 6, we advance some possible arguments against our approach and offer some responses against them.
Synthese, 2019
This paper argues that it is possible to combine enactivism and ecological psychology in a single... more This paper argues that it is possible to combine enactivism and ecological psychology in a single post-cognitivist research framework if we highlight the common pragmatist assumptions of both approaches. These pragmatist assumptions or starting points are shared by ecological psychology and the enactive approach independently of being historically related to pragmatism, and they are based on the idea of organic coordination, which states that the evolution and development of the cognitive abilities of an organism are explained by appealing to the history of interactions of that organism with its environment. It is argued that the idea of behavioral or organic coordination within the enactive approach gives rise to the sensorimotor abilities of the organism, while the ecological approach emphasizes the coordination at a higher-level between organism and environment through the agent’s exploratory behavior for perceiving affordances. As such, these two different processes of organic coordination can be integrated in a postcognitivist research framework, which will be based on two levels of analysis: the subpersonal one (the neural dynamics of the sensorimotor contingencies and the emergence of enactive agency) and the personal one (the dynamics that emerges from the organism-environment interaction in ecological terms). If this proposal is on the right track, this may be a promising first step for offering a systematized and consistent postcognitivist approach to cognition that retain the full potential of both enactivism and ecological psychology.
Philosophical Psychology, 2019
Ecological psychology is one of the most influential theories of perception in the embodied, anti... more Ecological psychology is one of the most influential theories of perception in the embodied, anti-representational, and situated cognitive sciences. However, radical enactivists claim that Gibsonians tend to describe ecological information and its ‘pick up’ in ways that make ecological psychology close to representational theories of perception and cognition (Myin 2016; Hutto 2017; Hutto and Myin 2017; see also van Dijk et al. 2015). Motivated by worries about the tenability of classical views of informational content and its processing, these authors claim that ecological psychology needs to be “RECtified” so as to explicitly resist representational readings. In this paper, we argue against this call for RECtification. To do so, we offer a detailed analysis of the notion of perceptual information, and other related notions such as specificity and meaning, as they are presented in the specialized ecological literature. We defend that these notions, if properly understood, remain free of any representational commitment. Ecological psychology, we conclude, does not need to be RECtified.
Frontiers in Psychology
Ecological Psychology is an embodied, situated, and non-representational approach pioneered by J.... more Ecological Psychology is an embodied, situated, and non-representational approach pioneered by J. J. Gibson and E. J. Gibson. This theory aims to offer a third way beyond cognitivism and behaviorism for understanding cognition. The theory started with the rejection of the premise of the poverty of the stimulus, the physicalist conception of the stimulus, and the passive character of the perceiver of mainstream theories of perception. On the contrary, the main principles of ecological psychology are the continuity of perception and action, the organism-environment system as unit of analysis, the study of affordances as the objects of perception, combined with an emphasis on perceptual learning and development. In this paper, first, we analyze the philosophical and psychological influences of ecological psychology: pragmatism, behaviorism, phenomenology, and Gestalt psychology. Second, we summarize the main concepts of the approach and their historical development following the academic biographies of the proponents. Finally, we highlight the most significant developments of this psychological tradition. We conclude that ecological psychology is one of the most innovative approaches in the psychological field, as it is reflected in its current influence in the contemporary embodied and situated cognitive sciences, where the notion of affordance and the work of E. J. Gibson and J. J. Gibson is considered as a historical antecedent.
Biosemiotics
This paper argues that the Extended Synthesis, ecological information, and biosemiotics are compl... more This paper argues that the Extended Synthesis, ecological information, and biosemiotics are complementary approaches whose engagement will help us explain the organism-environment interaction at the cognitive level. The Extended Synthesis, through niche construction theory, can explain the organism-environment interaction at an evolutionary level because niche construction is a process guided by information. We believe that the best account that defines information at this level is the one offered by biosemiotics and, within all kinds of biosemiotic information available, we believe that ecological information (information for affordances) is the best candidate for making sense of the organism-environment relation at the cognitive level. This entanglement of biosemiotics, ecological information and the Extended Synthesis is promising for understanding the multidimensional character of the organism-environment reciprocity as well as the relation between evolution, cognition, and meaning.
This paper argues that the normative character of our unreflective situated behaviour is not fact... more This paper argues that the normative character of our unreflective situated behaviour is not factual. We highlight a problematic assumption shared by the two most influential trends in contemporary philosophy of cognitive science, reductionism and enactivism. Our intentional, normative explanations are referential, descriptive or factual. Underneath this assumption lies the idea that only facts can make true or false
our attributions of cognitive, mental and agential abilities. We will argue against this view by describing the main features and problems of reductionism and enactivism and then we will offer two arguments against this shared factualist assumption: (1) normative vocabulary is ineliminable if we want a complete explanation of our situated practices; and (2) the factualist assumption is a species of the is-ought fallacy.
Finally, we will claim that a folk psychological explanation of our normative practices is fully compatible with ontological naturalism when such descriptivist or factualist assumption is rejected.
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Book by Manuel Heras Escribano
The Philosophy of Affordances analyzes the implications that a proper understanding of affordances has for the philosophy of mind and the cognitive sciences, and aims to intensify the dialogue between philosophy and ecological psychology in which each discipline benefits from the tools and insights of the other.
Papers by Manuel Heras Escribano
(a) Disagreements and publicness are not counterexamples to my view on normativity, but cases that are explained by appealing to its social basis.
(b) It is possible to offer a general view of experience from a situated and embodied approach based on the concept of affordance but without perverting its scientifc basis.
(c) The Rylean-inspired dispositionalism that I offer can explain why the concept of affordance is based on the organism-environment complementarity explained in nomological or causal terms without committing to substance ontology. I also try to fnd a common ground that could work for establishing the conceptual basis of a post-cognitivist, affordance-based approach to the mind.
our attributions of cognitive, mental and agential abilities. We will argue against this view by describing the main features and problems of reductionism and enactivism and then we will offer two arguments against this shared factualist assumption: (1) normative vocabulary is ineliminable if we want a complete explanation of our situated practices; and (2) the factualist assumption is a species of the is-ought fallacy.
Finally, we will claim that a folk psychological explanation of our normative practices is fully compatible with ontological naturalism when such descriptivist or factualist assumption is rejected.
The Philosophy of Affordances analyzes the implications that a proper understanding of affordances has for the philosophy of mind and the cognitive sciences, and aims to intensify the dialogue between philosophy and ecological psychology in which each discipline benefits from the tools and insights of the other.
(a) Disagreements and publicness are not counterexamples to my view on normativity, but cases that are explained by appealing to its social basis.
(b) It is possible to offer a general view of experience from a situated and embodied approach based on the concept of affordance but without perverting its scientifc basis.
(c) The Rylean-inspired dispositionalism that I offer can explain why the concept of affordance is based on the organism-environment complementarity explained in nomological or causal terms without committing to substance ontology. I also try to fnd a common ground that could work for establishing the conceptual basis of a post-cognitivist, affordance-based approach to the mind.
our attributions of cognitive, mental and agential abilities. We will argue against this view by describing the main features and problems of reductionism and enactivism and then we will offer two arguments against this shared factualist assumption: (1) normative vocabulary is ineliminable if we want a complete explanation of our situated practices; and (2) the factualist assumption is a species of the is-ought fallacy.
Finally, we will claim that a folk psychological explanation of our normative practices is fully compatible with ontological naturalism when such descriptivist or factualist assumption is rejected.
Containing 12 chapters written by leading experts from philosophy and psychology, this text critically examines, questions, and expands on crucial ideas from Heft concerning the nature of cognition, its relationship to the body and the environment (including the social and cultural environment), and the main philosophical assumptions underlying the scientific study of psychological functions. It elaborates on the notion of affordance, and its connection to social, cultural and developmental psychology, as well as on the application of Roger Barker’s eco-behavioral program for current psychology and cognitive science. The book includes an extensive interview with Heft, where he reflects about the history, challenges and future of ecological psychology. Finally, it presents a chapter written by Heft, that offers a systematic response to the critical feedback.
Given the increasing popularity of ecological psychology and the highly influential work of Harry Heft in related areas such as developmental, social and cultural psychology, and philosophy, this book will appeal to all those interested in the cognitive sciences from a scientific and philosophical perspective. It is also a must read for students of psychology, philosophy, and cognitive science departments.