Vicente Raja
Western University Canada, Rotman Institute of Philosophy, Department Member
- University of Murcia, MINT Lab, Department Memberadd
- My main field of interest is cognitive science, its scope, and its interaction with scientific development and new te... moreMy main field of interest is cognitive science, its scope, and its interaction with scientific development and new technologies. Currently, I am focused both on ecological psychology and on different approaches to non-human cognition. Concerning ecological psychology, I am interested in concepts such as perceptual information or resonance. Also, I work on the dynamic systems approach to cognitive science. Within the field of non-human cognition I am working on the history and philosophy of cognitive ethology and plant signaling and behavior.edit
The free energy principle (FEP) has been presented as a unified brain theory, as a general principle for the self-organization of biological systems, and most recently as a principle for a theory of every thing. Additionally, active... more
The free energy principle (FEP) has been presented as a unified brain theory, as a general principle for the self-organization of biological systems, and most recently as a principle for a theory of every thing. Additionally, active inference has been proposed as the process theory entailed by FEP that is able to model the full range of biological and cognitive events. In this paper, we challenge these two claims. We argue that FEP is not the general principle it is claimed to be, and that active inference is not the all-encompassing process theory it is purported to be either. The core aspects of our argumentation are that (i) FEP is just a way to generalize Bayesian inference to all domains by the use of a Markov blanket formalism, a generalization we call the Markov blanket trick; and that (ii) active inference presupposes successful perception and action instead of explaining them.
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In this article we advance a cutting-edge methodology for the study of the dynamics of plant movements of nutation. Our approach, unlike customary kinematic analyses of shape, period, or amplitude, is based on three typical signatures of... more
In this article we advance a cutting-edge methodology for the study of the dynamics of plant movements of nutation. Our approach, unlike customary kinematic analyses of shape, period, or amplitude, is based on three typical signatures of adaptively controlled processes and motions, as reported in the biological and behavioral dynamics literature: harmonicity, predictability, and complexity. We illustrate the application of a dynamical methodology to the bending movements of shoots of common beans (Phaseolus vulgaris L.) in two conditions: with and without a support to climb onto. The results herewith reported support the hypothesis that patterns of nutation are influenced by the presence of a support to climb in their vicinity. The methodology is in principle applicable to a whole range of plant movements.
> Abstract • Heras-Escribano argues against the normative character of af-fordances from a framework that relies on (a) a Wittgensteinian notion of nor-mativity and (b) the incompatibility of direct perception, as it is described in... more
> Abstract • Heras-Escribano argues against the normative character of af-fordances from a framework that relies on (a) a Wittgensteinian notion of nor-mativity and (b) the incompatibility of direct perception, as it is described in ecological psychology, and perceptual error. We argue against this position and provide a pluralistic notion of nor-mativity that is able to accommodate the normative character of affordances. Handling Editor • Alexander Riegler
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One big challenge faced by cognitive science is the development of a unified theory that integrates disparate scales of analysis of cognitive phenomena. In this paper, I offer a unified framework that provides a way to integrate neural... more
One big challenge faced by cognitive science is the development of a unified theory that integrates disparate scales of analysis of cognitive phenomena. In this paper, I offer a unified framework that provides a way to integrate neural and behavioral scales of analysis of cognitive phenomena-typically addressed by neuroscience and experimental psychology, respectively. The framework is based on the concept of resonance originated in ecological psychology and aims to be the foundation for a unified theory for radical embodiment; that is, a unified theory for that dissident part of cognitive science that shares a methodological commitment to dynamic systems theory and remains skeptical about the adequacy of mechanism and representationalism as the guiding ideas in the field. In the course of my presentation, I analyze different issues regarding the requirements and constraints unification poses to radical embodiment.
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Research Interests:
Unlike dominant cognitivist theories that take perceptual learning to be a process of enriching sensory stimulation with previous knowledge, ecological psychologists take it to be an enhancement in the detection of already rich perceptual... more
Unlike dominant cognitivist theories that take perceptual learning to be a process of enriching sensory stimulation with previous knowledge, ecological psychologists take it to be an enhancement in the detection of already rich perceptual information. The difference between beginners and experts is that the latter detect better information to support their task goals. While the study of perceptual learning in terms of perceptual information and perceiver-environment interactions is common in the ecological literature, ecological psychology still lacks a story regarding the way perceptual information is detected by perceptual systems and the plasticity of such detection in learning events. In this paper, I propose the ecological notion of resonance-along with biophysical resonance, nonlinear resonance, and metastability-as a plausible foundation to account for the process of detection of perceptual information both in perceptual events and in events of perceptual learning.
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J. J. Gibson spent most part of his career developing his own theory of perception. The culmination of his work was the ecological approach to visual perception, but during more than three decades he had challenged many of the central... more
J. J. Gibson spent most part of his career developing his own theory of perception. The culmination of his work was the ecological approach to visual perception, but during more than three decades he had challenged many of the central concepts of psychology and his own convictions regarding the foundations of perception. In this paper I defend that the driving force of the development of ecological psychology was Gibson's most radical idea: that psychology needs a law-based explanatory strategy at its own scale to be successful. According to Gibson, instead of pursuing explanations based on the patching up of simple stimulus-response events with the postulation of more or less lawful sub-personal mechanisms, psychology needs its own laws at a proper scale to provide legitimate explanations of perception and action.
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The design of Sensory Substitution Devices (SSDs) often relies on the belief that the information supplied by the devices should allow the construction of spatial mental representations on the basis of which routes are planned. This... more
The design of Sensory Substitution Devices (SSDs) often relies on the belief that the information supplied by the devices should allow the construction of spatial mental representations on the basis of which routes are planned. This study, in contrast, illustrates that navigation using an SSD can be conceived as an on-line, dynamic process, without the need for establishing a predefined plan or model of the task prior to its execution. We analyzed route selection performed with a vibrotactile SSD that could detect environmental surfaces only within a short spatial range, limiting the availability of information about remote parts of the environment to be navigated. Sixty sighted participants performed a navigation task that involved the goal of reaching a target destination while avoiding five obstacles (placed in randomly predetermined configurations). Three groups of participants differed in the sensory modality used (restricted visual, acoustic + vibrotactile, and restricted visual + vibrotactile). While participants in the visual condition had fewer obstacle collisions and reached the target location sooner, the groups coincided to a large extent in terms of the routes that they followed. Furthermore, the routes selected by participants in all groups conformed well to routes predicted by a dynamic model of visually-guided locomotion (Fajen and Warren, 2003). These findings show that local, limited information about environmental layout can support route selection equivalent to that seen when information about the full environmental layout is available.
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Ecological psychology is one of the most influential theories of perception in the embodied, anti-representational, and situated cognitive sciences. However, radical enactivists claim that Gibsonians tend to describe ecological... more
Ecological psychology is one of the most influential theories of perception in the embodied, anti-representational, and situated cognitive sciences. However, radical enactivists claim that Gibsonians tend to describe ecological information and its ‘pick up’ in ways that make ecological psychology close to representational theories of perception and cognition (Myin 2016; Hutto 2017; Hutto and Myin 2017; see also van Dijk et al. 2015). Motivated by worries about the tenability of classical views of informational content and its processing, these authors claim that ecological psychology needs to be “RECtified” so as to explicitly resist representational readings. In this paper, we argue against this call for RECtification. To do so, we offer a detailed analysis of the notion of perceptual information, and other related notions such as specificity and meaning, as they are presented in the specialized ecological literature. We defend that these notions, if properly understood, remain free of any representational commitment. Ecological psychology, we conclude, does not need to be RECtified.
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Folk psychology takes perception and cognition to be two distinct processes. It seems that when we perceive the world we are engaged in one kind of activity and when we think about it we are engaged in a different one. This conception... more
Folk psychology takes perception and cognition to be two distinct processes. It seems that when we perceive the world we are engaged in one kind of activity and when we think about it we are engaged in a different one. This conception underlies various discussions within the cognitive sciences, such as on the architecture and modularity of the mind, and the cognitive penetrability of perception. But is the distinction justified? This paper looks for an answer in two opposing paradigms in the sciences of the mind: traditional cognitivism and ecological psychology. Even though cognitivism is the dominant paradigm, we argue that it has thus far failed to give a definite account of the relation between perception and cognition, and to support or to deny their separation. Ecological psychology, on the other hand, rejects the distinction and integrates cognition with perception. We discuss previous work within the ecological view and sketch directions for future research.
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This paper presents a blueprint for an ecological cognitive architecture. Ecological psychology, I contend, must be complemented with a story about the role of the CNS in perception, action, and cognition. To arrive at such a story while... more
This paper presents a blueprint for an ecological cognitive architecture. Ecological psychology, I contend, must be complemented with a story about the role of the CNS in perception, action, and cognition. To arrive at such a story while staying true to the tenets of ecological psychology, it will be necessary to flesh out the central metaphor according to which the animal perceives its environment by 'resonating' to information in energy patterns: what is needed is a theory of resonance. I offer here the two main elements of such a theory: a framework (Anderson's neural reuse) and a methodology (multi-scale fractal DST).
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Research Interests:
In this article we present Ecological Augmented Reality (E-AR), an approach that questions the theoretical assumptions of mainstream Augmented Reality (AR). The development of AR systems to date presupposes an information-processing... more
In this article we present Ecological Augmented Reality (E-AR), an approach that questions the theoretical assumptions of mainstream Augmented Reality (AR). The development of AR systems to date presupposes an information-processing theory of perception that hinders the potential of the field. Generally, in AR devices, virtual symbolic information is superimposed upon the environment in such a way that the real and the virtual may be processed, informationally speaking, in tandem. Thus, we find information in reality itself, as well as virtual symbolic information. But by increasing the burden of symbolic crunching, AR devices run the risk of saturating the user of the technology. AR systems developed under the principles of an ecological psychology may contribute to new and better levels of performance and adaptation to the user's perceptual abilities. Our proposal is to develop AR devices such that reality itself is augmented non-symbolically by blending real and virtual layers/information. Although there are seldom AR devices in the market that are designed ecologically, two fields of research may well bring inspiration to AR developers. These are the design and manipulation of real objects, and ecological research in the field of sensory substitution. We consider them both in turn with an eye to putting forward a framework that eschews any type of information-processing regarding the nature of our psychological processes. Ultimately, our aim is to provide some guidelines for the exploration of an ecological trend in AR applications.
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Ecological Augmented Reality (E-AR) devices—designed under neo-Gibsonian principles of ecological psychology—can play a central role in perceptual learning. Perceptual learning, under the ecological lens, is direct insofar as no... more
Ecological Augmented Reality (E-AR) devices—designed under neo-Gibsonian principles of ecological psychology—can play a central role in perceptual learning. Perceptual learning, under the ecological lens, is direct insofar as no intermediate processing stages are needed. Direct learning boils down to the way an organism swaps one ambient energy variable for another in information space. The change that takes place as the organism learns allows it to deal better with environmental contingencies. E-AR devices permit us reshape the informational space in meaningful ways.
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In this report we explore the guidance of circumnutation of climbing bean stems under the light of general rho/tau theory, a theory that aims to explain how living organisms guide goal-directed movements ecologically. We present some... more
In this report we explore the guidance of circumnutation of climbing bean stems under the light of general rho/tau theory, a theory that aims to explain how living organisms guide goal-directed movements ecologically. We present some preliminary results on the control of circumnutation by climbing beans, and explore the possibility that the power of movement in plants, more generally, is controlled under ecological principles.