Emergence and Embodiment: Affordances

Description

Emerging in the 1940s, the first cybernetics—the study of communication and control systems—was mainstreamed under the names artificial intelligence and computer science and taken up by the social sciences, the humanities, and the creative arts. In Emergence and Embodiment, Bruce Clarke and Mark B. N. Hansen focus on cybernetic developments that stem from the second-order turn in the 1970s, when the cyberneticist Heinz von Foerster catalyzed new thinking about the cognitive implications of self-referential systems. The crucial shift he inspired was from first-order cybernetics’ attention to homeostasis as a mode of autonomous self-regulation in mechanical and informatic systems, to second-order concepts of self-organization and autopoiesis in embodied and metabiotic systems. The collection opens with an interview with von Foerster and then traces the lines of neocybernetic thought that have followed from his work.

In response to the apparent dissolution of boundaries at work in the contemporary technosciences of emergence, neocybernetics observes that cognitive systems are operationally bounded, semi-autonomous entities coupled with their environments and other systems. Second-order systems theory stresses the recursive complexities of observation, mediation, and communication. Focused on the neocybernetic contributions of von Foerster, Francisco Varela, and Niklas Luhmann, this collection advances theoretical debates about the cultural, philosophical, and literary uses of their ideas. In addition to the interview with von Foerster, Emergence and Embodiment includes essays by Varela and Luhmann. It engages with Humberto Maturana’s and Varela’s creation of the concept of autopoiesis, Varela’s later work on neurophenomenology, and Luhmann’s adaptations of autopoiesis to social systems theory. Taken together, these essays illuminate the shared commitments uniting the broader discourse of neocybernetics.

Emergence and Embodiment: New Essays on Second-Order Systems Theory

Editor(s): Bruce Clarke, Mark B. N. Hansen

omparison of two theories to perception: 1. Mental processes to pick up information or not The constructivists see the stimulation reaching our senses as inherently insufficient necessitating an “intelligent” perceptual system that relies on inferential types of mechanisms to overcome this inherent equivocality of stimulation. The ecologically oriented theorists argue that the information in the ambient environment suffices and is not equivocal and thus no “mental processes” are needed to enable the pick up of the relevant information. 2. Direct or indirect perception The constructivists see perception as multistage with mediational processesintervening between stimulation and percept, i.e., perception is indirect. The ecological theorists see perception as a single-stage process, i.e., it is direct and immediate. 3. Relying on stored information For the constructivists, memory, stored schemata, and past experience play an important role in perception. The ecologically oriented approach sees no role for memory and related phenomena in perception. 4. Process versus stimulation The constructivists excel at analyzing the processes and mechanisms underlying perception.The ecological approach excels at the analysis of the stimulation reaching the observer.

Ecological approach Dorsal system: utilization of visual information for the guidance of behavior in one’s environment - seeing motion - utilize egocentric frame of reference (i grasp an apple) Canonical neurons: seem to be coding the affordance of an object, the pragmatic aspect of how-to-grab-that-thing, rather than its semantic content Constructivist approach Ventral system:utilization of visual information for “knowing” one’s environment, i.e., identifying and recognizing items previously encountered and storing new visual information for later encounters - seeing fine details - recognition and identification of the visual input Mirror neurons: fire at the sight of a whole act Joel Norman:Two Visual Systems and Two Theories of Perception: An Attempt to Reconcile the Constructivist and Ecological Approaches Norman, J. (2002). Two Visual Systems and Two Theories of Perception: An Attempt to Reconcile the Constructivist and Ecological Approaches
. Behavioral and Brain Sciences (2002), 25:1:73-96 Cambridge University Press. http://tihane.wordpress.com/2007/10/16/two-theories-of-perception-and-affordances/