On what we can see

Author(s): Coulter, J.

Journal/Book: Theor Psychol. 1998; 8: 2455 Teller Rd, Thousand Oaks, CA 91320. Sage Publications Inc. 147-164.

Abstract: The work of James J. Gibson is widely acclaimed to be among the most important contributions to the critique of cognitivist approaches to the study of human visual preception. In this paper, we question this assessment of Gibson. While we acknowledge his bold attempt to break away from the central tenets of the cognitivist paradigm (especially his rejection of all accounts of vision cast in terms of sinner representations'), we nonetheless detect various residua of a cognitivist kind in his work, residua which, we argue, are entirely eliminable from the analysis of human visual activities and achievements. We consider in some detail his theoretical claims about the role of 'affordances' and their availability as perceptual phenomena, taking up for scrutiny his related views about the extraction of 'information' and its 'specification' of ecological structure. It is our contention that the problems which Gibson confronts succumb to conceptual resolutions, and do not require the sort of theoretical apparatus which Gibson land his successors) counterpose to his cognitivist adversaries in the field.

Note: Article Sharrock W, Univ Manchester, Dept Sociol, Coupland 2 Bldg, Manchester M13 9PL, Lancs, ENGLAND

Keyword(s): affordance; cognitivism; information; intelligibility; vision; INFORMATION; PERCEPTION

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