Erik Rietveld

A Rich Landscape of Affordances

How broad is the class of affordances we can perceive? Affordances (Gibson, 1979/1986) are possibilities for action provided to an animal by the environment—by the substances, surfaces, objects, and other living creatures that surround it. A widespread assumption has been that affordances primarily relate to motor action—to locomotion and manual behaviors such as reaching and grasping. We propose an account of affordances according to which the concept of affordances has a much broader application than has hitherto been supposed. We argue that the affordances an environment offers to an animal are dependent on the skills the animal possesses. By virtue of our many abilities, the landscape of affordances we inhabit as humans is very rich and resourceful.

Self-organization, free energy minimization, and optimal grip on a field of affordances.

In this paper, we set out to develop a theoretical and conceptual framework for the new field of Radical Embodied Cognitive Neuroscience. This framework should be able to integrate insights from several relevant disciplines: theory on embodied cognition, ecological psychology, phenomenology, dynamical systems theory, and neurodynamics. We suggest that the main task of Radical Embodied Cognitive Neuroscience is to investigate the phenomenon of skilled intentionality from the perspective of the self-organization of the brain-body-environment system, while doing justice to the phenomenology of skilled action. In previous work, we have characterized skilled intentionality as the organisms tendency toward an optimal grip on multiple relevant affordances simultaneously. Affordances are possibilities for action provided by the environment. In the first part of this paper, we introduce the notion of skilled intentionality and the phenomenon of responsiveness to a field of relevant affordances. Second, we use Fristons work on neurodynamics, but embed a very minimal version of his Free Energy Principle in the ecological niche of the animal. Thus amended, this principle is helpful for understanding the embeddedness of neurodynamics within the dynamics of the system “brain-body-landscape of affordances.” Next, we show how we can use this adjusted principle to understand the neurodynamics of selective openness to the environment: interacting action-readiness patterns at multiple timescales contribute to the organisms selective openness to relevant affordances. In the final part of the paper, we emphasize the important role of metastable dynamics in both the brain and the brain-body-environment system for adequate affordance-responsiveness. We exemplify our integrative approach by presenting research on the impact of Deep Brain Stimulation on affordance responsiveness of OCD patients.

The anticipating brain is not a scientist: the free-energy principle from an ecological-enactive perspective

In this paper, we argue for a theoretical separation of the free-energy principle from Helmholtzian accounts of the predictive brain. The free-energy principle is a theoretical framework capturing the imperative for biological self-organization in information-theoretic terms. The free-energy principle has typically been connected with a Bayesian theory of predictive coding, and the latter is often taken to support a Helmholtzian theory of perception as unconscious inference. If our interpretation is right, however, a Helmholtzian view of perception is incompatible with Bayesian predictive coding under the free-energy principle. We argue that the free energy principle and the ecological and enactive approach to mind and life make for a much happier marriage of ideas. We make our argument based on three points. First we argue that the free energy principle applies to the whole animal–environment system, and not only to the brain. Second, we show that active inference, as understood by the free-energy principle, is incompatible with unconscious inference understood as analagous to scientific hypothesis-testing, the main tenet of a Helmholtzian view of perception. Third, we argue that the notion of inference at work in Bayesian predictive coding under the free-energy principle is too weak to support a Helmholtzian theory of perception. Taken together these points imply that the free energy principle is best understood in ecological and enactive terms set out in this paper.

Effects of Deep Brain Stimulation on the Lived Experience of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder Patients : In-Depth Interviews with 18 Patients

Deep Brain Stimulation (DBS) is a relatively new, experimental treatment for patients suffering from treatment-refractory Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD). The effects of treatment are typically assessed with psychopathological scales that measure the amount of symptoms. However, clinical experience indicates that the effects of DBS are not limited to symptoms only: patients for instance report changes in perception, feeling stronger and more confident, and doing things unreflectively. Our aim is to get a better overview of the whole variety of changes that OCD patients experience during DBS treatment. For that purpose we conducted in-depth, semi-structured interviews with 18 OCD patients. In this paper, we present the results from this qualitative study. We list the changes grouped in four domains: with regard to (a) person, (b) (social) world, (c) characteristics of person-world interactions, and (d) existential stance. We subsequently provide an interpretation of these results. In particular, we suggest that many of these changes can be seen as different expressions of the same process; namely that the experience of anxiety and tension gives way to an increased basic trust and increased reliance on one’s abilities. We then discuss the clinical implications of our findings, especially with regard to properly informing patients of what they can expect from treatment, the usefulness of including CBT in treatment, and the limitations of current measures of treatment success. We end by making several concrete suggestions for further research.

Foregrounding Sociomaterial Practice in Our Understanding of Affordances: The Skilled Intentionality Framework

Social coordination and affordance perception always take part in concrete situations in real life. Nonetheless, the different fields of ecological psychology studying these phenomena do not seem to make this situated nature an object of study. To integrate both fields and extend the reach of the ecological approach, we introduce the Skilled Intentionality Framework that situates both social coordination and affordance perception within the human form of life and its rich landscape of affordances. We argue that in the human form of life the social and the material are intertwined and best understood as sociomateriality. Taking the form of life as our starting point foregrounds sociomateriality in each perspective we take on engaging with affordances. Using ethnographical examples we show how sociomateriality shows up from three different perspectives we take on affordances in a real-life situation. One perspective shows us a landscape of affordances that the sociomaterial environment offers. Zooming in on this landscape to the perspective of a local observer, we can focus on an individual coordinating with affordances offered by things and other people situated in this landscape. Finally, viewed from within this unfolding activity, we arrive at the person’s lived perspective: a field of relevant affordances solicits activity. The Skilled Intentionality Framework offers a way of integrating social coordination and affordance theory by drawing attention to these complementary perspectives. We end by showing a real-life example from the practice of architecture that suggests how this situated view that foregrounds sociomateriality can extend the scope of ecological psychology to forms of so-called “higher” cognition.

The Primacy of Skilled Intentionality: on Hutto & Satne’s the Natural Origins of Content

Following a brief reconstruction of Hutto & Satne’s paper we focus our critical comments on two issues. First we take up H&S’s claim that a non-representational form of ur-intentionality exists that performs essential work in setting the scene for content-involving forms of intentionality. We will take issue with the characterisation that H&S give of this non-representational form of intentionality. Part of our commentary will therefore be aimed at motivating an alternative account of how there can be intentionality without mental content, which we have called skilled intentionality. Skilled intentionality is the individual’s selective openness and responsiveness to a rich landscape of affordances.A second issue we take up concerns the distinction between ur-intentionality and content-involving intentionality. We will argue that our notion of skilled intentionality as it is found in humans cuts across these two categories. Instead of distinguishing between different forms of intentionality we recommend focusing on how skilled intentionality takes different forms in different forms of life.

Social affordances in context: what is it that we are bodily responsive to?

We propose to understand social affordances in the broader context of responsiveness to a field of relevant affordances in general. This perspective clarifies our everyday ability to unreflectively switch between social and other affordances. Moreover, based on our experience with Deep Brain Stimulation for treating obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) patients, we suggest that psychiatric disorders may affect skilled intentionality, including responsiveness to social affordances.

Becoming more oneself? Changes in personality following DBS treatment for psychiatric disorders: Experiences of OCD patients and general considerations

Does DBS change a patient’s personality? This is one of the central questions in the debate on the ethics of treatment with Deep Brain Stimulation (DBS). At the moment, however, this important debate is hampered by the fact that there is relatively little data available concerning what patients actually experience following DBS treatment. There are a few qualitative studies with patients with Parkinson’s disease and Primary Dystonia and some case reports, but there has been no qualitative study yet with patients suffering from psychiatric disorders. In this paper, we present the experiences of 18 patients with Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD) who are undergoing treatment with DBS. We will also discuss the inherent difficulties of how to define and assess changes in personality, in particular for patients with psychiatric disorders. We end with a discussion of the data and how these shed new light on the conceptual debate about how to define personality.

Impulsive action: emotional impulses and their control

This paper presents a novel theoretical view on impulsive action, integrating thus far separate perspectives on non-reflective action, motivation, emotion regulation, and impulse control. We frame impulsive action in terms of directedness of the individual organism toward, away, or against other givens – toward future states and away from one’s present state. First, appraisal of a perceived or thought-of event or object on occasion, rapidly and without premonition or conscious deliberation, triggers a motive to modify one’s relation to that event or object. Situational specifics of the event as perceived and appraised motivate and guide selection of readiness for a particular kind of purposive action. Second, perception of complex situations can give rise to multiple appraisals, multiple motives, and multiple simultaneous changes in action readiness. Multiple states of action readiness may interact in generating action, by reinforcing or attenuating each other, thereby yielding impulse control. We show how emotion control can itself result from a motive state or state of action readiness. Our view links impulsive action mechanistically to states of action readiness, which is the central feature of what distinguishes one kind of emotion from another. It thus provides a novel theoretical perspective to the somewhat fragmented literature on impulsive action.

Dealing with Context through Action-Oriented Predictive Processing

Contemporary neuroscience seems to be undergoing an intriguing pragmatist turn (Engel, 2010). Clark’s action-oriented account of the predictive brain offers an original and interesting take on pragmatist neuroscience. The idea that cognition is for action is of course central to the embodied program of research in cognitive science. Clark’s account of the predictive brain provides a promising proposal about how the brain might contribute to embodied cognition. However within the predictive coding framework there is also recognition of the important role played by context in everyday action over multiple time scales (Kiebel et al., 2008). We will argue that the context sensitivity of action-oriented processing is not adequately recognized in Clark’s target article. The ecological notion of a niche (e.g., Gibson, 1979) is for instance central in Friston (2011) account of embodied cognition, but we find it curiously absent in the account Clark gives of action. An animal’s eco-niche is made up of affordances (Gibson, 1979; Chemero, 2003) or possibilities for action provided to the animal by an environment – by the substances, surfaces, objects, and other living creatures that surround it. Importantly, affordances are always perceived in the context of many other affordances available in the niche (cf. Cisek and Kalaska, 2010). The landscape of affordances on offer in a given environment is exceptionally rich (particularly in the case of humans) and is responded to in a way that takes both the broad environmental context (e.g., the current place: restaurant or swimming pool) and the internal state (including for instance metabolic needs) of the individual agent into account. The “behavior setting” (Barker, 1968; Heft, 2001) is an excellent predictor of what action possibilities will show up for a person as relevant: when we are in a restaurant the possibility of calling a waiter is relevant but not when we are in a supermarket. Moreover, affordances can solicit activity because they are bodily potentiating. A relevant affordance can generate bodily “action readiness” (Frijda, 1986, 2007), that is, the readiness of the affordance-related ability (Rietveld, 2008). Just as our hand prepares itself to grasp a cup when we make a reaching movement for a cup, so also can being in a particular behavior setting like a restaurant make certain action possibilities more salient to us. In both cases we find ourselves bodily ready to deal with particular aspects of a familiar environment. Once we recognize the richness of the landscape of affordances in any given context of activity, this generates parsimonious answers to old questions about the relation between mind and world (Rietveld and Kiverstein, under review), but it also opens up a host of difficult questions for cognitive scientists. How is it possible that in any given situation an agent is able to hone in on the action possibilities that are relevant while also remaining sensitive to other action possibilities of potential relevance? In a dynamic environment in which our situation is continuously undergoing change, how do we take new information into account in such a way as to produce actions that fit with the behavior setting in which we are embedded? Action-oriented predictive processing as described by Clark is, we are sure, an important part of the answer to these hard questions (Kiverstein, 2012). Part of the reason why it is well equipped to answer these difficult questions is because it provides us with an account of neural processing on which perception, action, and cognition are as Clark puts it “deeply unified.” A challenge that remains for Clark’s action-oriented theory of the brain is to account for how our skillful unreflective actions involve the integration of the whole system of brain, body, and the landscape of available affordances in which we are situated. The phenomenology of skillful unreflective action in everyday life provides us with a clue here. In a skilled individual’s responsiveness to a field of relevant affordances (Rietveld et al., 2012; BBS) it is not only perception, action, and cognition that are profoundly unified, but also affect and the eco-niche or environment. Thanks to our skill and expertise often we find ourselves in a situation in which affect makes it immediately obvious to us how we should respond. Take the case of responsiveness to social affordances: a friend’s sad face invites comforting behavior, a colleague at a coffee machine affords a conversation, and the extended hand of a visitor solicits a handshake. Affect plays a crucial role in preparing us to act in these cases: it signals which possibilities for action in a situation matter to us in sense of being relevant to us given our interests and needs. Thus it contributes toward an agent’s selective perception of and responsiveness to the action possibilities available in a given situation. Affect can also play a role in keeping us apprised of how well an action is going when we are in the flow of performing an action (see Rietveld, 2008). “The context” is not a static pre-given: What is in the foreground and what is in the background for us constantly shifts, depending both on what happens in the environment, and on our current concerns. In other words, affect contributes to the structuring of the field of relevant affordances in the particular situation. No doubt this can partly be explained in terms of action-oriented predictive processing and the cascades of generative models that are able to successfully predict how to bring about the sensory consequences the agent anticipates. However we would argue that a challenge for Clark remains to integrate this neural level explanation with what the phenomenology of everyday agency tells us. More precisely, we must account for how neural processing is always taking place within a particular situation in which specific possibilities of action stand out from a larger landscape of affordances as soliciting or motivating for the agent.