[Xmca-l] Re: Habits (Greek: ethos)

[Annalisa Aguilar]

Hi Chris,


Some really great stuff you have here! Jumping in anywhere you wish is most appreciated.


As far as attaching texts, I believe that because we are an academic forum, it is possible to attach texts because this is within fair use. However, please, if anyone has any further information on the codes of conduct, please post? I looked on the XMCA homepage, and didn't see anything about it.


Whatever the case, I would not mind having these texts sent to me Chris, directly. Thanks.


This trend of "Aristotelian development of ethics" in psychology is extremely interesting, and I myself would like to know more, if this isn't taking the thread too far afield. In particular, I would be interested how this investigation compares to and is similar to cultural-historical developments.


Would you mind to send links to those entries at the book forum at Journal of Value Inquiry you mention, or must we be members to see that?


I looked up Neisser's entry on the wiki, as it's been a while since I read up on him. Apparently, he was younger than Gibson. Neisser considered the need to integrate affordances as Gibson saw them, so the original concept of affordance does comes from Gibson, not Neisser.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ulrich_Neisser#Work_and_career


I'd like to comment that I noticed that the entry there might be a mistaken definition of affordance; the division of the notion of affordance as "the theory of direct perception and information pickup," seems wrong to me, because the affordance is not supposed to be divided at all, but unified in its interaction in time and space. That is the entire reason he coined the word affordance, just so it wasn't divided as "input/output." The affordance (as a noun) was an attempt to move away from stimulus and response. When this is divided into "direct perception and information pickup" it seems to echo behaviorism's model, doesn't it?


Also, when I looked at the wiki entry for Gibson there is no description like this.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._J._Gibson#Affordances


Additionally, there is mention at the above link that he extended of the theory to include "social affordances," and from reading that entry of "social affordance" its possible to understand why game theory could come into the mix (bringing us back to the beginning with Andy's mention of utilitarianism). Also Gibson's wife, Eleanor, used the theory for child development.


See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affordance


Somehow all this appears to be relevant to our discussion.


In a way, the affordance is sort of like Vygotsky's word-meaning, it isn't supposed to be word and meaning as separated then joined, but something unified as a unit. Isn't this right?


I think Gibson was attempting to do something similarly, but in terms of perception and action (rather than information, which seems to be an infiltration of artificial intelligence, if you ask me). The notion of affordance was derived in work he did in the Army, during WW II, to understand with how aircraft pilots perceive the lengths of runways, particularly in places where there were no established runways, as in the case of emergency landings, I'd imagine.


Kind regards,


Annalisa