Interface Theory vs Gibson: An Ontological Defense of the Ecological Approach

ABSTRACT

Interface theory is the hypothesis that inferential, representational theories of perception entail that fitness, not truth, dictates the evolution of perceptual systems. They show, with simulations, that “veridical” perceptual mappings (ones that preserve at least some of the structure of the world) are routinely out-competed by “non-veridical” interfaces (ones that make no attempt to preserve that structure). They therefore take particular aim at the direct perception, ecological approach to perception and work to show that such a system, even if technically an option, would never be selected for by evolution. This paper defends the ecological approach from this novel, existential attack by showing that the ecological hypothesis is so different in kind to the inferential, representational view of perception that it simply falls outside the scope of interface theory’s critiques; ecological psychology remains a viable scientific endeavor. This analysis will show that, far from being a radical new approach to perception, interface theory is simply a clear and elegant formalization of mainstream representational psychology, and any implications interface theory may have belong solely to that branch of science.

KEYWORDS:

• Interface theory
• ecological psychology
• perception
• representation
• ontology

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Dr Agnes Henson and Dr Sabrina Golonka for their advice and comments on this paper.

Disclosure of potential conflicts of interest

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. I’ve borrowed this phrase from Fodor and Pylyshyn (1981) because it’s a useful collective name for the various mainstream theories of perception, such as interface theory, that implement an inferential, representational approach.

2. A note for interested readers; Putnam (1980) produced a mathematical argument along the same lines as interface theory and ending in the same place. However, in typical Putnam style, he kept thinking about the issue, decided he had made an error and turned instead toward a realist stance, more along the lines of Gibson (Putnam, 1994). I’m focused here on the specific ecological defense, but Putnam’s analyses may be another line of critical analysis of interface theory.

3. There may be reasons to disagree with the following labels; however, I will rely on HS&P’s terminology for the remainder of the paper to keep my rebuttal focused.

4. HS&P also raise two less novel objections. First, they claim that the ecological approach has no way to explain illusions. This is false (Turvey et al., 1981; De Wit et al., 2015) and there are examples of ecological accounts of apparent misperceptions (Runeson, 1988; Zhu & Bingham, 2011; Zhu et al., 2013). Second, they claim that the evidence for information processing accounts of perception is now overwhelming. While there are many papers on this, there is also a strong empirical base for direct perception accounts, both in behavioral work and more recently in neuroscience work (e.g., Van Der Meer et al., 2012, Agyei et al, 2016a, 2016b). In addition, when direct perception and information processing accounts are directly pitted against one another, the former prevails (e.g., Fink, Foo & Warren, 2009; Markkula et al., 2014; Mon-Williams & Bingham, 2008; Zaal & Bootsma, 2011; Zhu & Bingham, 2010). These are common objections to the ecological approach, but they are rooted in misconceptions of what Gibson was claiming and do not reflect the state of the research programme (Costall & Morris, 2015)

5. This is similar to Adams and Aizawa (2008) ‘mark of the cognitive’.

6. Bickhard (2009) also applies his analysis to the major modern players in the representational literature, specifically Millikan, Dretske, Fodor, and Cummins and shows it holds for each of these; see also Ramsey (2007) for related critiques.

7. There remains some debate in the ecological literature about how best to formalize affordances (e.g., Chemero, 2003, 2009; Rietveld & Kiverstein, 2014; Stoffregen, 2003) but the original dispositional analysis is the only one that explains how affordances create information and therefore be perceptible. For this reason the dispositional account remains the most ontologically appropriate (see Wilson, 2021, for details on this argument).

8. See (Barrett, 2011) for a detailed discussion about the importance of this perspective to the analysis of perception

9. This part of the learning process is called the education of attention; see Jacobs & Michaels, 2007 for a detailed analysis

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Andrew D Wilson

Andrew D. Wilson is a Reader in Psychology at Leeds Beckett University. He studies the perceptual control of action and writes extensively on the ecological approach to cognitive science