Publication
Title
Reasons for pragmatism: affording epistemic contact in a shared environment
Author
Abstract
Theorizing about perception is often motivated by a belief that without a way of ensuring that our perceptual experience correctly reflects the external world we cannot be sure that we perceive the world at all. Historically, coming up with a way of securing such epistemic contact has been a foundational issue in psychology. Recent ecological and enactive approaches challenge the requirement for perception to attain epistemic contact. This article aims to explicate this pragmatic starting point and the new direction of inquiry that this opens up for psychology. It does so by detailing the development of James J. Gibsons ecological psychology. Securing epistemic contact has been a leitmotiv in Gibsons early work, but subsequent developments in Gibsons works can teach us what it takes to adopt a pragmatic approach to psychology. We propose a reading of the developments in Gibsons original works that shows that, since perception is a mode of acting, perception aims for pragmatic contact before allowing for epistemic contact. Amplifying these pragmatist lines of thought in Gibsons works we end by considering situations where an individual is adapted to the intricacies of specific social practices. These situations show how pragmatic contact can also afford attaining epistemic contact.
Language
English
Source (journal)
Phenomenology and the cognitive sciences. - Dordrecht, 2002, currens
Publication
Dordrecht : 2019
ISSN
1568-7759 [print]
1572-8676 [online]
DOI
10.1007/S11097-018-9595-6
Volume/pages
18 :5 (2019) , p. 973-997
ISI
000501448300011
Full text (Publisher's DOI)
Full text (open access)
Full text (publisher's version - intranet only)
UAntwerpen
Faculty/Department
Research group
Project info
Perceiving affordances in natural, social and moral environments. A study of the concept of affordance, and its explanatory value.
Publication type
Subject
Affiliation
Publications with a UAntwerp address
External links
Web of Science
Record
Identifier
Creation 10.10.2018
Last edited 09.10.2023
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