Much of human social behaviour is regulated by normative expectations that originate in social and cultural life, and that people go along with without giving the matter any thought. Veissière and colleagues call these normative expectations “doxa” as contrasted with “dogma” (Bourdieu Reference Bourdieu1977). Doxa derives from regular ways of doing things held in common in a social group, and taken for granted by its members. How could doxa be learned if it is not transmitted as dogma is, through explicit instruction? The model Veissière and colleagues propose has on the face of it a strongly individualist, and internalist flavour. It is only by thinking through other minds and by forming expectations about what others expect of the world that we learn what others in our community expect of us. However, the authors suggest their account is also able to do justice to the arguments of externalists. They convincingly show how social expectations could take the form of statistical patterns that owe their existence to processes of developmental niche construction. An example of this statistical structure from the work of our own group is that of a desire path such as a well-trodden path through a park (Bruineberg et al. Reference Bruineberg, Rietveld, Parr, van Maanen and Friston2018b). The path has been set up over time by the repeated actions of others. The habits that come to guide our own walking behaviour can be thought of as the result of following a path already laid down by others before us.
We think the author's valiant attempt to forge a middle way between internalism and externalism fails. The failure stems from the overly individualistic understanding of the perception of cultural affordances the authors operate with, or so we shall argue. The target article shows how individuals learn the doxa of their community by having their attention tuned to cultural affordances. Veissière and colleagues characterize affordances as relationships between the abilities of an individual agent and the physical properties of things in the world. The perception of affordances they claim depends on the individual harbouring beliefs or expectations. An affordance just turns out to be a good bet – a highly probable belief – about what the agent can do with the world. Thus, when Veissière and colleagues ask how do people acquire or learn cultural affordances (sect. 2.3) what they really seem to mean is how do people learn the beliefs or expectations that are necessary for gaining perceptual access to cultural affordances. However, once we think of the perception of affordances as in this way dependent on the learning of beliefs, we cannot see what there is left for the environment to do that could not simply be done by the agent's beliefs. In what sense can the author's account be said to be externalist? The developmental niche only gets to make a contribution to the actions of individuals when they think through the minds of others, and learn what others expect of the world. The resulting model of social behaviour seems to us far removed from a theory in which the socially and culturally structured environment directly guides behaviour through an individual's responsiveness to its affordances.
We suggest two correctives to the account Veissière and colleagues propose of how doxa is learned. First, we suggest the distinction Veissière and colleagues make between sensorimotor and conventional affordances is an artificial distinction, and one that will end up doing more harm than good in an account of doxa. The distinction between natural and conventional affordances misses the way in which the so-called natural affordances of the human environment grow out of practices that are always both social and material (Rietveld & Kiverstein Reference Rietveld and Kiverstein2014; Van Dijk & Rietveld Reference Van Dijk and Rietveld2017). Affordances do not belong to an environment conceived of in the terms of physics and geometry as the authors suggest (sect. 2.2, para. 2). The availability of affordances in an econiche is dependent on the history of past activity of the creatures that inhabit this niche, just like the path through the park we began by discussing. The affordances of the human niche owe their existence not to the physics and geometry of things, but to the regular ways of doing things in our many forms of life (Rietveld & Kiverstein Reference Rietveld and Kiverstein2014). The physical structure of an econiche is entangled with and inseparable from the normatively regulated activities of the individuals that live in a given niche.
Second, Veissière and colleagues miss a distinction we will argue is crucial for understanding social learning and how individuals acquire the abilities and skills for coordinating with each other in everyday life. We distinguish the rich landscape of affordances that is available in our human ecological niche by virtue of the skills and abilities in sociomaterial practices, and “solicitations” or relevant inviting affordances. Individuals acquire abilities through a process of the education of attention by other members of the sociomaterial practices. Based on the abilities and sensitivities they develop through the education of the attention (Gibson Reference Gibson1979; Rietveld & Kiverstein Reference Rietveld and Kiverstein2014), affordances come to stand out as soliciting or inviting action in particular concrete situations of action.
We certainly do not mean to dispute the key idea behind the free-energy principle that a complex adaptive system must minimize free energy if it is to preserve its organization for a prolonged period of time in a dynamic environment. In contrast, we think living beings are sensitive to the rise and fall in free energy over time (Kiverstein et al. Reference Kiverstein, Miller and Rietveld2019). It is on the basis of this sensitivity that affordances stand out from the landscape as relevant. Free energy we understand as the disattunement in an agent–environment system which the individual acts to keep to a minimum. Nor do we dispute that other people can serve as epistemic resources that help us to act in ways that ensure that we keep expected free energy to a minimum. We suggest, however, that to do adequate justice to these ideas the role of the econiche in constraining and structuring an individual's behaviour must be recognized. We dispute that to know how to go on in the same way as others do in a practice, we must first think through the minds of others. We learn what to do in a practice through having our attention educated to the affordances of our niche.
Much of human social behaviour is regulated by normative expectations that originate in social and cultural life, and that people go along with without giving the matter any thought. Veissière and colleagues call these normative expectations “doxa” as contrasted with “dogma” (Bourdieu Reference Bourdieu1977). Doxa derives from regular ways of doing things held in common in a social group, and taken for granted by its members. How could doxa be learned if it is not transmitted as dogma is, through explicit instruction? The model Veissière and colleagues propose has on the face of it a strongly individualist, and internalist flavour. It is only by thinking through other minds and by forming expectations about what others expect of the world that we learn what others in our community expect of us. However, the authors suggest their account is also able to do justice to the arguments of externalists. They convincingly show how social expectations could take the form of statistical patterns that owe their existence to processes of developmental niche construction. An example of this statistical structure from the work of our own group is that of a desire path such as a well-trodden path through a park (Bruineberg et al. Reference Bruineberg, Rietveld, Parr, van Maanen and Friston2018b). The path has been set up over time by the repeated actions of others. The habits that come to guide our own walking behaviour can be thought of as the result of following a path already laid down by others before us.
We think the author's valiant attempt to forge a middle way between internalism and externalism fails. The failure stems from the overly individualistic understanding of the perception of cultural affordances the authors operate with, or so we shall argue. The target article shows how individuals learn the doxa of their community by having their attention tuned to cultural affordances. Veissière and colleagues characterize affordances as relationships between the abilities of an individual agent and the physical properties of things in the world. The perception of affordances they claim depends on the individual harbouring beliefs or expectations. An affordance just turns out to be a good bet – a highly probable belief – about what the agent can do with the world. Thus, when Veissière and colleagues ask how do people acquire or learn cultural affordances (sect. 2.3) what they really seem to mean is how do people learn the beliefs or expectations that are necessary for gaining perceptual access to cultural affordances. However, once we think of the perception of affordances as in this way dependent on the learning of beliefs, we cannot see what there is left for the environment to do that could not simply be done by the agent's beliefs. In what sense can the author's account be said to be externalist? The developmental niche only gets to make a contribution to the actions of individuals when they think through the minds of others, and learn what others expect of the world. The resulting model of social behaviour seems to us far removed from a theory in which the socially and culturally structured environment directly guides behaviour through an individual's responsiveness to its affordances.
We suggest two correctives to the account Veissière and colleagues propose of how doxa is learned. First, we suggest the distinction Veissière and colleagues make between sensorimotor and conventional affordances is an artificial distinction, and one that will end up doing more harm than good in an account of doxa. The distinction between natural and conventional affordances misses the way in which the so-called natural affordances of the human environment grow out of practices that are always both social and material (Rietveld & Kiverstein Reference Rietveld and Kiverstein2014; Van Dijk & Rietveld Reference Van Dijk and Rietveld2017). Affordances do not belong to an environment conceived of in the terms of physics and geometry as the authors suggest (sect. 2.2, para. 2). The availability of affordances in an econiche is dependent on the history of past activity of the creatures that inhabit this niche, just like the path through the park we began by discussing. The affordances of the human niche owe their existence not to the physics and geometry of things, but to the regular ways of doing things in our many forms of life (Rietveld & Kiverstein Reference Rietveld and Kiverstein2014). The physical structure of an econiche is entangled with and inseparable from the normatively regulated activities of the individuals that live in a given niche.
Second, Veissière and colleagues miss a distinction we will argue is crucial for understanding social learning and how individuals acquire the abilities and skills for coordinating with each other in everyday life. We distinguish the rich landscape of affordances that is available in our human ecological niche by virtue of the skills and abilities in sociomaterial practices, and “solicitations” or relevant inviting affordances. Individuals acquire abilities through a process of the education of attention by other members of the sociomaterial practices. Based on the abilities and sensitivities they develop through the education of the attention (Gibson Reference Gibson1979; Rietveld & Kiverstein Reference Rietveld and Kiverstein2014), affordances come to stand out as soliciting or inviting action in particular concrete situations of action.
We certainly do not mean to dispute the key idea behind the free-energy principle that a complex adaptive system must minimize free energy if it is to preserve its organization for a prolonged period of time in a dynamic environment. In contrast, we think living beings are sensitive to the rise and fall in free energy over time (Kiverstein et al. Reference Kiverstein, Miller and Rietveld2019). It is on the basis of this sensitivity that affordances stand out from the landscape as relevant. Free energy we understand as the disattunement in an agent–environment system which the individual acts to keep to a minimum. Nor do we dispute that other people can serve as epistemic resources that help us to act in ways that ensure that we keep expected free energy to a minimum. We suggest, however, that to do adequate justice to these ideas the role of the econiche in constraining and structuring an individual's behaviour must be recognized. We dispute that to know how to go on in the same way as others do in a practice, we must first think through the minds of others. We learn what to do in a practice through having our attention educated to the affordances of our niche.
NOTE
Julian Kiverstein and Erik Rietveld are supported by the European Research Council in the form of ERC Starting Grant 679190 (EU Horizon 2020) for the project AFFORDS-HIGHER, the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) in the form of a VIDI-grant awarded to Erik Rietveld, and by a project grant from the Amsterdam Brain and Cognition research group at the University of Amsterdam.