Comment on Reed

Abstract

Ecological epistemology has a strong affinity to phenomenology, particularly the version of Merleau-Ponty (as Reed, 1983, points out). There is a common emphasis upon the richness of experience, the irreducibility of perception to sensation, the importance of proprioception, and the inseparability of valuations from presentations. Ecological epistemology, however, is more dedicated than phenomenology to a controlled, experimental study of perception, and pays closer attention to the physics of the interplay between the perceiving subject and the environment. James Gibson’s demonstration of the intricacy of this interplay constitutes a permanent contribution to experimental psychology, even if he was not as successful and as revolutionary in solving traditional epistemological problems as Reed has claimed.