And here is our introduction to the collection, which includes an overview of radical embodied cognitive science as a research program

@segundo-ortin.bsky.social @guicogsci.bsky.social @diovicen.bsky.social

link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Right. I was a reviewer for this paper of his that makes the same distinctions. I found the distinctions a bit unclear there, as I remember. www.frontiersin.org/journals/psy...

I haven't read that one. Looks ambitious. Why do you ask?

This is not necessarily an obstacle to applying ecological psychology to animal psychology or to sports, but it is an obstacle to applying it to human social psychology, which is what I've always been interested in.

The issue with collapsing the environment of the individual and the environment of the species is that it implies some standard or average body that is representative of the whole species. Whose body?

I've never experienced what the world looks like from a woman's body but I am persuaded that it would not be exactly the same as what I experience. I've never had to rely on a wheelchair to get around but if I ever do I imagine I will notice things I hadn't noticed before.

Alternatively, the environment didn't change, only my body did. But then in what sense are the two terms codefining?

As a child I used to like climbing ropes and crawling under tables. Now I don't like bending down. Did my environment change? If the environment is codefined by my body then it must be the case that my environment changed.

Gibson also says animal and environment are codefining terms, which is profound and challenging. What he glosses over is that our bodies change over time, and other people's bodies are different from ours.

"It's important for Gibson that the environment of the species and the environment of the individual actually just be two ways to talking about the same actual thing." Agreed, that's definitely important for Gibson. His solution, though, is cakeist. He simply declares them to be the same thing.

It's about why we Gibonians can't seem to agree on our definitions for basic and supposedly central concepts. I still think Gibson's ambiguity about the environment explains much of our subsequent confusion.

I agree with much of this. Would love to read your further thoughts on the chapter.

Personally I gave up on the umwelt term and I'm skeptical about the project of unifying ecological psychology and enactivism.

The Third sense of environment chapter isn't about enactivism, though.