3. Conceptions about organizations transcending individual organism

Now I am going to present scientific essays at conceiving functional organizations that transcend individual organism and may be referred to mental phenomena.

4. The theory of an object-oriented activity.

The Anokhin's description of the functional system relies, after all, exclusively on structures within the body; environmental structures are considered only as sources of afferentation and reafferentation.

The activity theory of Leont'iev, Luria, Zaporozhets and others transcends this model. It considers functions whose organ is composed not only of the sections of the central nervous system but also of the most various (nervous, somatic, vegetative) structures of the entire individual body; and inasmuch as psychic functions are concerned the individual's object-oriented activity is considered that must be organized by its tools. Since this theory (as a Vygotskian one) has claimed that those tools are, at the same time, signs, i.e. entities historically produced by a culture, this conception enables the theory to refer the human mind to two frames simultaneously: by considering it as one produced by the functionning of both individual brain structures and inter-individual cultural structures.

But if we have a theory about the same functionning of, on one hand, internal and, on the other, external structures, it implies a theory about a functionning of the same superstructure composed of both structures inside of an individual organism and the ones outside of it, inside of its environment. According to such a theory when the function organizing its organ is an object-oriented activity, the structure thus produced does transcend the individual organism.^xvi

W

5. Gibson's ecological perception theory.

hen comparing this theory with his earlier position, Gibson describes the change in his view this way: “[...] at the time, I based my explanation of vision on the retinal image; now, on the other hand, my starting point is what I call an ambient optic array. My present conviction is that we must approach the problem of perception in an ecological way.”^xvii This change was brought about because he realized that vision could not be explained by the manner in which proximate stimuli affect the retina, since perception could remain constant even if the stimuli change. Gibson analyzes four instances in which perception remains unchanged in spite of varying stimuli: (1) change in lighting, (2) relocation on the part of observer, (3) changes in the sampling of the ambient optic array, and (4) a permanence prevailing in the face of local changes.^xviii”

The Gibson school do not accept either the explanation offered by the Gestalt psychology, since that theory holds out (as an alternative to the retinal image changing in response to the environment's proximate stimuli) a form appearing on a frontal flat surface (a wallboard, screen, or sheet of paper placed opposite the observer), which an individual corrects in accordance with innate pregnant patterns. Gibson does make the difference between such an abstract geometric space in which alone do such forms exist and a natural environment in which representatives of a given species find themselves nestled.

Gibson's conclusion is that one is not able to explain the meaningful perception by an animal of its environment if considering only how (e.g., nervous system) structures given within that animal's individual body effect that psychic performance without taking into consideration how the structures of the environment afford that performance. Any psychic performance is determined by the mutual compatibility between affordances and effectivities. According to the definition by Gibson, “the affordance of anything is a specific combination of the properties of its substance and its surfaces taken with reference to an animal”^xix. This definition got completed with the one given by Turvey & Shaw to what they consider as a twin concept within the Gibsonian theory: “The effectivity of any living thing is a specific combination of the functions of its tissues and organs taken with reference to an environment”^xx

The authors add to these twin definitions that animal with its effectivity structure and environment with its affordance structure are totally symmetrical factors of psychic performances: “By this conception an [...] environment is defined as a set of affordances or an affordance structure [... and] an animal is defined as a set of effectivities or an effectivity structure [...]. An econiche is an affordance description of Environment in reference to a particular species; a species is an effectivity description of Life in reference to a particular econiche. And we may schematize the affordance and effectivity conceptions in the following way, in accordance with the compatibility logic:

An environmental event or situation X affords an activity Y to an animal Z if and only if certain mutual compatibility relations between X and Z obtain [...].

An animal Z can effect an activity Y on an environmental event or situation X if and only if certain mutual compatibility relations between X and Z obtain [...].”^xxi