TY - JOUR

T1 - What’s Inside Your Head Once You’ve Figured Out What Your Head’s Inside Of

AU - Bruineberg, Jelle

AU - Rietveld, Erik

N1 - Funding Information: We thank Ludger van Dijk, Julian Kiverstein, Martin Stokhof, Leendert van Maanen, Duarte Araujo, and Matt Dicks for discussions and feedback on earlier versions of this paper. Special thanks to Rob Withagen and Matthieu de Wit, the editors of this special issue on Gibsonian Neuroscience for Ecological Psychology. Jelle Bruineberg was funded by an ABC-Talent Grant (Amsterdam Brain & Cognition Center, University of Amsterdam). Erik Rietveld was funded by ERC Starting Grant 679190 (EU Horizon 2020) for his project AFFORDS-HIGHER. Publisher Copyright: © 2018, © 2018 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

PY - 2019

Y1 - 2019

N2 - In this article, we investigate the foundations for a Gibsonian neuroscience. There is an increasingly influential current in neuroscience based on pragmatic and selectionist principles, which we think can contribute to ecological psychology. Starting from ecological psychology, we identify three basic constraints any Gibsonian neuroscience needs to adhere to: nonreconstructive perception, vicarious functioning, and selectionist self-organization. We discuss two previous attempts to integrate affordances with neuroscience: Reed’s ecological rendering of Edelman’s selectionism as well as Dreyfus’ phenomenological interpretation of Freeman’s neurodynamics. Reed and Dreyfus face the problem of how to account for “value.” We then show how the free-energy principle, an increasingly dominant framework in theoretical neuroscience, is rooted in both Freeman’s neurodynamics and Edelman’s selectionism. The free-energy principle accounts for value in terms of selective anticipation. The selection pressures at work on the agent shape its selective sensitivity to the relevant affordances in the environment. By being responsive to the relevant affordances in the environment, an agent comes to have grip on its interactions with the environment and can thrive in its ecological niche.

AB - In this article, we investigate the foundations for a Gibsonian neuroscience. There is an increasingly influential current in neuroscience based on pragmatic and selectionist principles, which we think can contribute to ecological psychology. Starting from ecological psychology, we identify three basic constraints any Gibsonian neuroscience needs to adhere to: nonreconstructive perception, vicarious functioning, and selectionist self-organization. We discuss two previous attempts to integrate affordances with neuroscience: Reed’s ecological rendering of Edelman’s selectionism as well as Dreyfus’ phenomenological interpretation of Freeman’s neurodynamics. Reed and Dreyfus face the problem of how to account for “value.” We then show how the free-energy principle, an increasingly dominant framework in theoretical neuroscience, is rooted in both Freeman’s neurodynamics and Edelman’s selectionism. The free-energy principle accounts for value in terms of selective anticipation. The selection pressures at work on the agent shape its selective sensitivity to the relevant affordances in the environment. By being responsive to the relevant affordances in the environment, an agent comes to have grip on its interactions with the environment and can thrive in its ecological niche.

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85068913911&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1080/10407413.2019.1615204

DO - 10.1080/10407413.2019.1615204

M3 - Journal article

AN - SCOPUS:85068913911

VL - 31

SP - 198

EP - 217

JO - Ecological Psychology

JF - Ecological Psychology

SN - 1040-7413

IS - 3

ER -