Ecological Psychology and Locke(d) Doors

A point of entry in the free will debate concerns Locke's example (no reference I'm afraid, I've lost it) of a person entering a room, closing the door behind hier [ɪə]. In situation A hie [i:] just makes a decision to stay or leave, in situation B hie is unaware of the door locking behind hier. Now, my own take on this example is that it neatly shows subjective and objective 'knowledge' [and its impact on considering free will existent or not]. Hie makes a decision based on free will in the first case and hie only believes hie does in the second. From a subjective perspective there is free will, from an objective there isn't.

Ecological Psychology does not like this at all. EcoPsy would probably decide that in both cases there is free will because perception, belonging to the observer, does not include the information that the door is locked. Or? EcoPsy is positioned with embodied, embedded and often extended cognition, including dynamicism. This would entail that movement and active exploration is an important aspect of being human. Therefore, the decision to stay in the room can either be classified as free will in both cases or defined a non-decision. The reason for the latter would be that, at that point in time, the perceiver has not actively explored the environment enough to be able to make the decision to begin with. Even a half-arsed exploration of hies [i:z] environment allows perception of which options are available. As I see it, the original example assumes naivité and passivity on part of the observer, and this is unfair.

The most important point however is that the original example also defines decision-making in a strict computational manner; at one point in time, without temporal perspective, in a very strict fashion. It does not take into consideration how we explore, find out and perceive in the real world -how decisions unfold over time and do not boil down to single points in time. In my perspective, there are several more philosophical examples that are conundrums simply because of the distinct connectionist/computationalist ignorance of temporal flow.

Retraction of exemplification of 'virtual affordances' in "Cognitive Psychology in Crisis" (2/2)

This reminded me of something that I have been struggling with in psychology in general for a very long time.

The issue I have is that, in my previous blog post, the exemplification by League of Legends (LoL) specifics (p. 37-38), can be used as conceptually equal to the definition of virtual affordances. This is why I didn't spot the fallacy to begin with.

On a conceptual level, LoL does indeed contain virtual affordances, but, ontologically, the programming is too weak for it to be anything else -it is not ontologically equal. Another distinction is needed here; of course virtual affordances will not be defined exactly the same as affordances ontologically, they consist of different matter. However, in the realm of virtual environments -the ontological definition comes down to programming, 010101011s and eventually computer chips and electricity. As an abundance of philosophers argue, it is not down to the hardware (and I will refrain from getting into this argument here, worthy of books and hours of deliberating). This may sound representationalist also by the way. I assure you it is not. The point is; the programming code, the 010111s and so on is the environment in the sense that it is what it reduces down to, but, it is not when considering virtual agents/objects/environments interactivity (the epistemological stuffs). This is so for the exact same reason Gibson defines the ecological level for most organisms, and not the physics or astronomical levels.

That said, should each programmed virtual environment be treated as a "full" virtual environment, and that, virtual affordances are to be defined depending on the perspective from each virtual environment? Or should the virtual environments all be defined as "weaker" or "stronger" programmed when compared to the environment, essentially, defining the environment as the strict criteria to which virtual environments are to be judged?

As for psychology in general, it seems to me that they lack a connection between epistemology and ontology, but EcoPsy doesn't. As usual, correct me if I am wrong.

Retraction of exemplification of 'virtual affordances' in "Cognitive Psychology in Crisis" (1/2)

I must admit a mistake. Virtual affordances, as defined in "Cognitive Psychology in Crisis: Ameliorating the Shortcomings of Representationalism" reads "invariants programmed in environment, objects and agents, allowing, limiting or disallowing virtual behaviours, interactions and coupled systems between those environments, objects and agents" (p. 37). By this definition, the examples used; League of Legends specifics, do not strictly hold up to this definition.

As one example, abilities usable by buttons lack one, very important, aspect of the traditional definition of affordances. Reciprocality. Abilities in LoL do not essentially display virtual agent interaction with virtual object/environment such as throwing corresponds to organism interaction with object/environment. An example of one that would count belongs to two characters named Volibear and Singed, who can run up to an enemy and toss over their shoulders. But even then, it is a stretch to count this as a virtual affordance. Since there are no universal laws of physics programmed into the game, even this activity does not strictly live up to the definition; it is simply a virtual behaviour visualised to mimic what would be an affordance had it been enacted in the environment.

There are better examples from even the earliest FPS-games such as Quake, where you can aim your rocket launcher towards the floor and fire (called rocketjumping) to overcome gravity and reach high altitude plateaus not otherwise reachable. Here, however, there would be debate about how much the virtual agent actually is a virtual agent or not, details, details...

In sum, Human Computer Interface type stuff, still involves human organisms and what they are able and not depending on what is depicted on a screen (which is what my thesis experiment would come closer to). Virtual agents in virtual environments however, requires more from programming than is currently displayed (in general) for me to feel comfortable calling them virtual affordances.