Ecological Psychology

A tout instant, quoi que nous fassions, nous sommes environnés par des corps qui réduisent l’espace et opposent de la résistance. Que sont ces corps qui saturent notre quotidien et avec lesquels il nous faut constamment négocier l’espace ? Plus radicalement, pourquoi y a-t-il des corps ? Je soutiens dans cet ouvrage que la psychologie et la physique ne disposent plus des moyens de répondre à cette question. La désubstantialisation du réel amorcée par la révolution quantique sape les fondements de l’explication objectiviste de la perception privilégiée par la première, et elle évide de sa portée ontologique le discours de la seconde.
Expliquer pourquoi la réalité se présente sous la forme d’un agencement de corps exige en premier lieu de comprendre le rôle que remplit l’anticipation du possible dans la perception. Dans le toucher comme dans la vision, poser l’existence d’un corps implique d’anticiper les contraintes que ce corps exerce sur notre champ de possibilités pratiques, accréditer de manière présomptive la disponibilité ou l’indisponibilité de certaines possibilités d’action. C’est donc uniquement parce que notre subjectivité donne sens à ce qui est en le référant à ce qui peut être que la réalité macroscopique à laquelle nous introduit la perception consiste en un monde solide.
Pour développer cette idée, l’ouvrage dresse une critique de la conception actualiste du phénomène de corps, qui subordonne celui-ci à l’expérience en acte d’une résistance, et il déconstruit l’approche physicaliste et objectiviste, qui prétend dériver les propriétés des corps que nous percevons des propriétés de structures physiques qui leur seraient antécédentes ontologiquement. Si la sémantique des corps présuppose l’épaisseur du temps humain et une perspective foncièrement pragmatique sur l’environnement, il n’est plus question d’assimiler sans autre forme de procès le corps à une « structure physique », quelle qu’en soit la teneur. Les corps sont un produit de l’activité constructrice de notre subjectivité, et seule une incursion profonde dans les mécanismes et principes qui régissent cette activité pourra permettre d’accéder à leur vérité.

COVID-19 infects cities, here grasped as quasi-living functioning systems, and the changes inflicted can poetically open us to certain things. Drawing on ecological psychology, we maintain that this brings people into contact with different realities depending on their overall wellbeing, arguing that the aesthetic experience of cities accordingly varies. We then consider iterations of these ideas in dystopian cinema, which portrays global threats altering human relations with technology, art, and the world.

Contemporary societies are confronted with a socio-ecological crisis. Thus, humans are facing a moral challenge, one where they have to adopt a new lifestyle in order to survive on a planet that no longer seems to be able to sustain itself for much longer.
So when something new is required of humankind, something new is required of religion…
This paper aims to explore other  possibilities on how ecological issues affect one's spirituality.

""This chapter presents an analysis of ecological empowerment as a theme in digital game narratives. Since game mechanics often are designed so that players gain more powerful ways of interacting with a game environment (improved abilities) it is argued games are particularly good at telling stories about characters who can perceive and utilize spectacular affordances. Games do not only tell the story of ecological empowerment, they do in fact empower the player in the
game world. This analysis thus shows that games can be seen as a specific context for storytelling and thus explain why some themes and narrative elements seem to be overrepresented in games.""

What do we see, hear or sense? Do we experience the world around us as structured and rich with meaning or do we perceive it thinly in basic sensorial properties that are grasped and interpreted non-perceptually? Questions of this kind are in the center of the debate about the contents of perceptual experience. This begs a very fundamental yet surprisingly difficult question. What is perceptual experience? How it is to be described? How do these aspects of our experience relate to cognitive processes of our mind? Where is the line drawn between these, or more generally: is there a clear line to be drawn at all?

COVID-19 infects cities, here grasped as quasi-living functioning systems, and the changes inflicted can poetically open us to certain things. Drawing on ecological psychology, we maintain that this brings people into contact with different realities depending on their overall wellbeing, arguing that the aesthetic experience of cities accordingly varies. We then consider iterations of these ideas in dystopian cinema, which portrays global threats altering human relations with technology, art, and the world.

Something has meaning when it has the property of "information about" some part of the world with respect to an end or ends of some intentional system or agent.  Intentional systems are end-directed systems, but not all end-directed systems are intentional.  Not all end-directed systems require information about or meaning to determine their actions towards their ends. We need not invoke intenionality or meaning, for example, to explain the flow of a river down a slope, or the flow of heat down a temperature gradient from a hotter to a cooler region because these processes are explicable in terms of local physical potentials and laws.  MORE...

In adopting new theoretical advancements within linguistics and ecological psychology, this paper investigates humor from an ecological perspective in naturally occurring social interaction. In doing so, it is claimed that the notions of language as coordination and values-realizing can provide a new understanding of humor as it appears in human interaction. This argument will be unfolded as a rethinking of Wallace Chafe's notion of nonseriousness (Chafe, 2007) that re-conceptualizes Chafe's idea of a 'mental state' of nonseriousness in terms of interactional affordances and values realizing. This perspective is laid out in in-depth analyses of video recordings of two real-life examples from different settings: two siblings playing and a sequence from a couple-therapy session. It is claimed that both examples of interactional humor can be explained by re-conceptualizing humor as a distinct way of being together. Thus, the emergence of humor is enabled by a shift in the coordinative dynamics rather than by a transfer of semantic 'content' from a speaker to a hearer. Finally, humor is investigated as a temporal phenomenon integrating immediate 'here-and-now' environmental features with socio-cultural expectations on a longer timescale. In this way humor is viewed as a particular type of values-realizing activity that constrains our actions, redirects our attention, and thereby enables us to act in a more playful and joyous manner.

Previous research suggests that consumers can be encouraged to purchase environmentally friendly groceries by means of persuasive messages. The present intervention study investigated whether providing information about how consumers can help mitigate environmental and social problems through everyday purchasing decisions can (a) strengthen consumers' intentions to purchase sustainable groceries (e.g., ecological and fair trade foods), (b) promote actual purchases of sustainable groceries, and (c) strengthen self-efficacy beliefs in the domain of sustainable development (the assumed determinant of sustainable consumption). The results suggest that the intervention strengthened consumers' intentions to purchase domestic, seasonal, and certified ecological products. In addition, the intervention promoted the actual purchasing of certified ecological and fair trade products. Effects of the intervention on self-efficacy beliefs were, however, nonsignificant. We discuss whether increased knowledge and consciousness might have accounted for some of the observed effects on purchasing intentions and actual purchases of sustainable groceries.

ABSTRACT
The paper aims to examine the ways in which ecological psychology can offer a useful theoretical framework for the analysis of child-centered museum environments, such as children’s museums or children’s galleries located within museums for the general public.
The ecological approach is a systemic approach, in which central is the concept of reciprocal interaction and dynamic interdependence of an organism and its environment. Instead of focusing on morphological data, such as the existence of
showcases, free-standing objects, interactive exhibits etc., the description of a childcentered museum environment in ecological psychology’s terms emphasizes on the agency of the individual and on the characteristics of the environment that are functional with respect to the characteristics, the individual and social needs, as well as the intentions of the person who acts. This is valuable not only because it allows detecting the psychologically significant qualities of a museum environment for children, but also because children themselves evaluate the places they use in terms of the meaning they ascribe as a result of their actions. The presentation of the methodological design and of the basic findings of a research conducted in two typical cases of child-centered museum spaces in Greece provides a concrete example of the ways in which ecological psychology can offer a coherent theoretical framework and rich and innovative tools for the description and analysis of museum environments that are designed for children, either autonomously or complementary with other approaches.

ΠΕΡΙΛΗΨΗ
Σκοπός του άρθρου είναι να αναδείξει τρόπους με τους οποίους η οικολογική ψυχολογία μπορεί να λειτουργήσει ως ένα χρήσιμο θεωρητικό πλαίσιο για την ανάλυση του
παιδοκεντρικού μουσειακού περιβάλλοντος, όπως είναι αυτό των παιδικών μουσείων ή των παιδικών αιθουσών που βρίσκονται μέσα σε μουσεία γενικού κοινού.
Η οικολογική προσέγγιση είναι μια συστημική θεώρηση, στην οποία κεντρική θέση κατέχει η έννοια της αμοιβαίας αλληλεπίδρασης και δυναμικής συνεξάρτησης του
οργανισμού και του περιβάλλοντός του. Η περιγραφή του παιδοκεντρικού μουσειακού περιβάλλοντος με όρους της οικολογικής ψυχολογίας δεν εστιάζει σε μορφολογικά
στοιχεία, όπως η ύπαρξη προθηκών, ελεύθερων αντικειμένων, διαδραστικών εκθεμάτων κτλ., αλλά δίνει έμφαση στην επενέργεια του υποκειμένου και στα χαρακτηριστικά του περιβάλλοντος που είναι λειτουργικά σε σχέση με τα χαρακτηριστικά, τις ατομικές και κοινωνικές ανάγκες και τις προθέσεις του ατόμου που δρα. Κάτι τέτοιο είναι πολύτιμο όχι μόνο γιατί επιτρέπει να ανιχνευθούν οι ψυχολογικά σημαντικές ποιότητες του μουσειακού περιβάλλοντος για τα παιδιά, αλλά και γιατί τα ίδια τα παιδιά αξιολογούν τους τόπους που χρησιμοποιούν μέσα από το νόημα που προκύπτει ως αποτέλεσμα των δράσεων τους.
Η παρουσίαση του μεθοδολογικού σχεδιασμού και των βασικών ευρημάτων της έρευνας που διενεργήθηκε σε δύο χαρακτηριστικές περιπτώσεις παιδοκεντρικών μουσειακών
χώρων της Ελλάδας παρέχει ένα απτό παράδειγμα για τους τρόπους που η οικολογική ψυχολογία μπορεί να προσφέρει ένα συνεκτικό θεωρητικό πλαίσιο και μια πλούσια και
πρωτότυπη εργαλειακή φαρέτρα για την περιγραφή και ανάλυση των μουσειακών περιβαλλόντων που σχεδιάζονται για το παιδί, αυτόνομα ή και συμπληρωματικά με άλλες προσεγγίσεις.

This article focuses on situations and emotional perception.  To this end, I start with the Kuleshov effect wherein identical shots of performers manifest different expressions when cut to different contexts.  However, I conducted experiments with a twist, using Darth Vader and non-primates, and even here expressions varied with contexts.  Building on historically and conceptually linked Gibsonian, Gestalt, phenomenological and pragmatic schools, along with consonant experimental work, I extrapolate these results to defend three interconnected points. First, I argue that while perceiving expression is sometimes about reading minds, it is more squarely about perceiving solicitations or closures for action.  Second, I frame expressions as a subcategory of Gibson’s affordances.  This includes those showing up through context, in turn suggesting Kuleshov-like scenarios are not mere perceptual tricks.  Third, I maintain that situations—with or without other human beings—have action-motivating expressive qualities or what Gestalt theorists called physiognomic characters, following Werner.  These likewise emerge through ecological relations, and are very much like affordances and in the world as much as them.  With resemblance theories, my account agrees that we perceive expression in the world. However, it indicates a broad range of cases in which expression shows up as consequences of overall situations that solicit or close actions, as opposed to mere resemblance between entities and human expressions.

My main objective in this article will be to compare Heidegger's description of the way we perceive our environment in everyday coping -- which is based on the concept of equipment (Zeug) -- and James Gibson's theory of affordance perception. More precisely, I will discuss whether equipment and affordance can be equated. In contrast to some interpretations, I will defend that they cannot: equipment and affordances refer to different ontological kinds and the perceptual or cognitive processes that are implied in each case have nothing in common. In addition, I will defend that distinguishing equipment and affordances is a key step towards a more comprehensive account of the way we perceive and deal with the possibilities offered by our environment, and that Heidegger's and Gibson's accounts, far from being mutually exclusive, complement each other. Some work has however to be done in order to articulate them in a coherent theoretical framework.

Обсуждается предмет, цели и задачи охраны природы как научно-практической дисциплины. Её значение для экологической теории определяется:
1) пониманием сообществ как мозаики нарушений на разных стадиях зарастания, и устойчивости экосистем как динамического баланса между нарушением и восстановлением растительности (фауна соответствующих территорий играет ключевую роль в обоих процессах);
2) исследованием механизмов устойчивости и жизнеспособности популяций в нарушенных и фрагментируемых местообитаниях, достигающейся вопреки ресурсной, средовой и демографической стохастичности. Включая наш собственный вид, Homo sapiens, с его производством и потреблением, «дробящим» и фрагментирующим природные ландшафты.
Наиболее общие причины экологического кризиса:
а) выгодность умеренных нарушений для хозяйства и природы одновременно,
б) экономические стимулы и другие социальные факторы, постоянно подталкивающие выйти за оптимум антропогенной нагрузки, промысла биоресурсов и пр. параметров трансформации экосистем,
в) «контуров разрушения» - положительных обратных связей, запускающихся, когда нарушение перейдёт допустимый предел и способствующих ещё большему нарушению.
Охарактеризованы факторы а) – в) для современной эпохи, определяющиеся глобальный характер экологического кризиса при современном капитализме. Ведущим фактором развития кризиса оказывается потребительское давление, а не «демографический взрыв» – по мере развития промышленной и урбанистической инфраструктуры человечества второй тормозит, первый, наоборот, набирает скорость.
Обсуждаются пределы роста мирового хозяйства, выход за которые в 1980-е годы вызвал нынешний кризис, возможности экологически устойчивого развития. Показано, что последнее недостижимо количественным ограничением роста мировой экономики, но качественными изменением её структуры:
1) последовательным ограничением свободы предпринимательства, всё более полной компенсацией экологических и социальных рисков, «производимых» одновременно с товарами, что делает выгодным переход от рыночной стихии к плановому хозяйству.
2) Смена ориентиров поведения хозяйствующих субъектов и потребителей от краткосрочного выигрыша к долгосрочному, от максимизации прибыльности вложений к долгосрочной устойчивости существования. Необходимые условия этого созданы процессом 1; что позволяет «вместить» мировое хозяйство в условия устойчивости Германа Дейли.
3) Сопряжённо с изменением структуры производства меняется потребление: от решения проблемы частными средствами, когда ты конкурируешь с множеством делающих то же самое, к вложениям в развитие общественной инфраструктуры, работа которой предоставляет те же возможности всем и на равных. Устранение конкуренции, кроме большей эффективности использования, определяет (при прочих равных) меньшую затрату ресурсов и меньший экологический ущерб.
4) Улучшение качества среды обитания достигается преимущественно восстановлением природных сообществ или их техногенных аналогов (рукотворных ландшафтов), а не техническими средствами. Первое лучше и дешевле второго (во всех случаях кондиционирования среды обитания, где возможно сопоставление). Фактически это проявление общего принципа оптимизации, известного как «совмещение нескольких функций в одном конструктивном элементе», где одна функция – экологическая. А «элемент» представляет собой экосистемы, способные к самоподдержанию, или включают их.
Описаны знаменитые модели «пределов роста» Денниса и Донеллы Медоуз, исходя из которых предсказан глобальный экономический кризис. Показана состоятельность модели, соответствие предсказанных в ней тенденций динамики реальному ходу событий. Описано рождение термина «устойчивое развитие», связанные с ним надежды и причины, по которым они остались пустыми.
Описаны принципы моделирования и структура модели. Анализируется кибернетический механизм развития экологического кризиса, на его основе показано, почему в рамках сценария «бизнес как всегда» обычные регуляторы – рынок и технологии – не просто включаются с запозданием, но, включившись, ухудшают ситуацию. Описаны системные преимущества плановой экономики по переходу к экологически устойчивому развитию.
This paper discusses the subject matter, goals and aims of environmental protection as an academic and practical discipline. Its significance for ecological theory is defined by: 1) the under¬standing of a coenosis as a mosaic of disturbances (or gaps) in various stages of healing and of the persistence of ecological sys¬tems as a dynamic equilibrium between disruption and restoration of vegetation (in both these processes local fauna plays a key part); 2) the study of mechanisms by which populations in dis¬rupted and fragmented habitats achieve sustainability and survivability despite the stochastic properties of resources, environment and demographics, including our own species, the Homo sapiens, with its production and consumption that fragment and fracture natural landscapes.
The generalized causes of the present ecological crisis are:
a. the profitability of moderate disturbances both for industry and nature
b. the economic stimuli and other social fac¬tors that constantly promote going beyond the anthro¬pogenic pressure optimum, the limits of biological re¬source exploitation and other ecosystem transformation parameters.
c. the destructive feedback patterns - positive feedback loops that start when a disturbance crosses a cer¬tain threshold and compound this disturbance further.
Factors a) to c) are described for the modern period as de¬fined by the global scale of the ecological crisis in modern capitalism. The leading factor in this crisis’ development turns out to be consumption impact instead of a population boom: as industrial and urban infrastructure of human civilization develops, the for¬mer increases while the latter decreases.
Also on topic are the limits to growth of the global economy the surpassing of which during the 1980s has caused the present crisis, and the possibilities of sustainable development. The latter is shown to be impossible to achieve by quantitative limits on global economic growth alone, only with a qualitative transformation of the whole structure of the global economy, including:
1) consecutive steps to limit the freedom of private enter¬prise and increase compensation for environmental and social risks “produced” along with the goods and services, which makes transition from the chaotic free market to a planned economy vi¬able.
2) a complete change of milestones and reference points guiding consumers and economic entities from short-term profits to long-term gains and from maximizing the profitability of in¬vestments to long-term sustainability of the economy. The neces¬sary conditions for such a change are provided by step 1 which al¬lows to “fit” the global economy into the sustainability conditions as defined by H. Daly.
3) a radical change in consumption patterns alongside the structure of production: from solving a problem by private means while competing with others doing the same thing, to investment in development of a common infrastructure that affords the same possibilities to everyone equally. Removing competition, apart from increasing effectiveness, also leads (under the same condi¬tions) to less environmental damage and resource consumption.
4) improving the environment by restoring natural habitats or building their technological analogues (man-made landscapes) instead of using purely technological means, since the former is cheaper and better than the latter in all cases of environmental conditioning where comparison is possible. In fact this is a minor case of a larger optimization principle called the “combination of several functions in one structural element”, where one of the function is ecological, and the element is represented by self-sus¬taining ecosystems or includes them.
The paper also reviews and comments on the famous “lim¬its to growth” models made by Dennis and Donella Meadows that predict the global environmental and economic crisis. The model is shown to be valid and the dynamics and trends outlined by it coincide with the actual course of events. The term “sustainable development” and its origins are discussed along with the expectations that it had provoked and the reasons why said expectations remained unfulfilled.
The principles of modeling and the structure of the model itself are outlined in the later part of the paper, with the analysis of the developmental mechanism of the development of the environ¬mental crisis, and based upon this analysis the paper shows why in the basic “business as usual” scenario the usual regulators - namely, the free market and technology - not only fail to activate in time, but also confound and aggravate the situation further. The systemic advantages of a planned economy in transition to a sus¬tainable type of development are described in the conclusion

The increasing visibility of climate change and scientists’ alarming warnings about it are taking a toll on people’s mental well-being. This essay surveys the culturally resonant repertoire of new coinages that have emerged in recent years to name and communicate environmentally induced distress. It pays particular attention to the concept of pre-traumatic stress disorder, which has become the focus of a small but important body of humanistic scholarschip calling for an expanded trauma theory that would be future- as well as past-oriented. Noting trauma theory’s persistent human-centredness, the essay goes on to consider attempts that are being made to reconceptualize trauma in non-anthropocentric terms and to acknowledge the interconnectedness and entanglement of human and non-human traumas. It ends by predicting that cultural trauma research, which has so far shown relatively little interest in environmental issues in general and climate change in particular, will engage more fully with our dire environmental predicament in the years ahead.

Gibson developed the affordance concept to complement his theory of direct perception that stands in sharp contrast with the prevalent inferential theories of perception. A comparison of the two approaches shows that the distinction between them also has an ontological aspect. We trace the history and newer formalizations of the notion of affordance and discuss some competing opinions on its scope. Next, empirical work on the affordance concept is reviewed in brief and the relevance of dynamical systems theory to affordance research is demonstrated. Finally, the striking but often neglected convergence of the ideas of Gibson and those of certain Continental philosophers is discussed.

Linguists tend to view language in terms of forms and their use. For historical reasons, speaking and listening have often often ascribed to knowledge of a language system. Language behavior is thus seen as the production and processing of forms. Others contrast language to man-made codes (see Kravchenko, 2007; Love, 2004). Instead of focusing on forms, language can be conceived of as action and, as such, both dynamic and symbolic (Raczaszek-Leonardi, 2009). History places us in a meshwork where public resources of language, among other things, contribute to games, mashing beans, and watching television. Speaking-while-hearing draws on cultural products (e.g., axes, social roles, pictures, and wordings). As we collaborate, we orient to wordings or repeated (and systematized) aspects of vocalizations that, within our community, carry historically derived information. Pursuing this view, it is argued that hearing “words” is like seeing “things” in pictures. This is described as taking a language stance. To defend the position, it is argued that, first, we learn to hear wordings and, later, to use “what we hear” as ways of constraining our actions. Far from depending on individual knowledge, orienting to wordings makes language irreducibly collective.

The recent shift towards the interdisciplinary study of the human-environment relationship is largely driven by environmental justice debates. This article will distinguish four types of environmental justice and link them to questions of neoliberalism and altruism. First, environmental justice seeks to redress inequitable distribution of environmental burdens to vulnerable groups and economically disadvantaged populations. Second, environmental justice highlights the developed and developing countries’ unequal exposure to environmental risks and benefits.
Third, temporal environmental justice refers to the issues associated with intergenerational justice or concern for future generations of humans. In all three cases, environmental justice entails equitable distribution of burdens and benefits to different nations or social groups. By contrast, ecological justice involves biospheric egalitarianism or justice between species. This article will focus on ecological justice since the rights of non-human species lags behind social justice debates and discuss the implications of including biospheric egalitarianism in environmental justice debates.

Gibson argued that illusory pictorial displays contain "inadequate" information (1966, p. 288) but also that a "very special kind of selective attention" (p. 313) can dispel the illusion—suggesting that adequate perceptual information could in fact be potentially available to observers. The present paper describes Gibson's treatment of geometrical illusions and reviews pertinent empirical evidence. Interestingly, Gibson's insights have been corroborated by recent findings of inter- and intra-observer variability in susceptibility to visual illusions as a function of culture, learning and task. It is argued that these findings require a modification of the general Gibsonian principle of perception as the detection of specifying information. Withagen and Chemero's (2009) evolutionary motivated reconceptualization of perception predicts observers' use of both specifying and non-specifying information and inter- and intra-observer variability therein. Based on this reconceptualization we develop an ecological approach to visual illusions that explains differential illusion effects in terms of the optical variable(s) detected.

Texto introdutório à abordagem ecológica da percepção que será publicado na coletânea Escritos de Filosofia V: Linguagem e Cognição, Grupo Linguagem e Cognição (UFAL/CNPq).

Neste texto, apresento e examino as principais ideias que animam a abordagem ecológica da percepção. Primeiro, na Seção 2, apresento a visão instantânea da percepção, contra a qual Gibson articula e propõe a abordagem ecológica. Em seguida, não Seção 3, apresento e discuto a noção de informação ecológica. Nas seções 4 e 5 articulo a teoria das affordances e discuto a aprendizagem perceptiva. Por fim, na Seção 6, exponho e discuto a possibilidade de estender a teoria das affordances para explicar a cognição social.