Defining the Environment in Organism-Environment Systems.

Enactivism and ecological psychology both emphasize that perceiving organisms actively shape their relationship with the environment rather than passively receiving stimuli. However, neither approach specifies the structure of the environment beyond its contingent links to species-typical sensorimotor capacities. This leaves a gap in understanding how organisms are organized as coupled with their environments. Drawing on developmental systems theory, the environment can be defined as a developmental niche that both shapes and is shaped by individual organisms over developmental and evolutionary time. Specifying the environment as a developmental niche clarifies how and why certain contingencies arise, strengthening the joint appeal to enactivism and ecological psychology as complementary theories of organism–environment coupling.

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Abstract

Enactivism and ecological psychology converge on the relevance of the environment in understanding perception and action. On both views, perceiving organisms are not merely passive receivers of environmental stimuli, but rather form a dynamic relationship with their environments in such a way that shapes how they interact with the world. In this paper, I suggest that while enactivism and ecological psychology enjoy a shared specification of the environment as the cognitive domain, on both accounts, the structure of the environment, itself, is unspecified beyond that of contingent relations with the species-typical sensorimotor capacities of perceiving organisms. This lack of specification creates a considerable gap in theory regarding the organization of organisms as coupled with their environments. I argue that this gap can be filled by drawing from resources in developmental systems theory, namely, specifying the environmental state-space as a developmental niche that shapes and is shaped by individual organisms over developmental and, on a population scale, evolutionary time. Defining the environment as an organism's developmental niche makes it clearer how and why certain contingencies have arisen, in turn, strengthening a joint appeal to both enactivism and ecological psychology as theories asserting complementarity between organisms and their environments.