"meaningful affordances" "bio-mechanical affordances" "mental affordances" "non-representational affordances" Please stop. Stop with the adjectives. It makes no sense. Thank you.

I've been talking about ecological neuroscience and other topics with @braininspired.bsky.social on the Brain Inspired podcast. You can check it out here 👇 youtu.be/Aj3LyStBgpg

What is plant nutation? What is a motif in science? What lessons does ecological psychology have for neuroscience? How does Vicente @diovicen.bsky.social enjoy the band Judas Priest yet still do good philosophy and science? Here are the answers: braininspired.co/podcast/223/

Some friends and I submitted a commentary Preprint here: doi.org/10.31234/osf... @guicogsci.bsky.social @segundo-ortin.bsky.social @diovicen.bsky.social @tonychemero.bsky.social

Is ecological neuroscience a feasible enterprise? After some theoretical work on ecological resonance, we've engaged on experimental research to test some of the hypotheses that follow from it. These are the first results of (hopefully) many more to come! It's open access 👇 doi.org/10.1111/psyp...

Want to make sure @mljanderson.bsky.social and @diovicen.bsky.social are seeing this.

"Although neuroscience has developed powerful tools for measuring brain activity, its behavioral measures are far more primitive, as it lacks a coherent conceptual framework for analyzing and interpreting behavior." True! Happy to see this idea is growing. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

It never ceases to amaze me how angry some people in mainstream cognitive science get when one talks about non-representation/non-computation while they completely refuse to at least read something about it so they can have an actual reason to be angry that is not just "hey, normal science, bro".

@segundo-ortin.bsky.social and I were talking about ecological psychology with @thedissenteryt.bsky.social: youtu.be/s6EwRYqmP64 www.thedissenter.net

My impression is we’ve lost this kind of thinking in contemporary neuroscience: that we need good theories of the brain and *behavior* to explain stuff. James, Lashley, Hebb, Tolman, Skinner, Gibson… They all agreed on that.

David Lee just died. He formulated tau/time-to-contact, the most famous bit of ecological information. He is one of the main reasons why ecological psychology is still alive. We all are indebted to him. I met him once and ended up having dinner at his place. Very cool guy! RIP

Affordances are motifs. Representations are motifs. A sentence with both words can mean anything! 😱

No os lo vais a creer, pero en el otro lado hay un grupo de filo-bros discutiendo durante días sobre si hay ideología en la ciencia. Al quinto día empiezan a apelar a Popper. Hay que quererlos.

I work (mostly) on ecological psychology and (often) on plant intelligence. And you can’t imagine the amount of ideological reviews I get. Really bad scholarship, if you ask me. Is this also the case for people working on more mainstream frameworks?

The best of all left 15 years ago. #longlivedio www.youtube.com/watch?v=3RiJ...

¡NEW PUBLICATION ALERT! "A World of Minds: Ecological Psychology as a Framework for Comparative Cognition" Authors: Miguel Segundo-Ortin, Paco Calvo, & Louise Barrett You can download it from here: miguelsegundoortinphd.com/publications

This might be the best BlueSky thread to date. Don't be like Vinny.

In an alternative universe, cog. scientists *read* eco. psych. and find out that... 1. The foundational texts of eco. psych. (Gibson 1966, 1979) don't talk about representations. 2. Affordances aren't what they think they are. 3. The core is ecological information. 4. 50 years+ of experimental work.

I'm happy & sad. Happy part: the word "ecological" becomes usual in neuroscience. Sad part: "affordances", yes, but the aim is to find how they are encoded in the brain. Some eco. psychs. in the project would've made it radical but perhaps more interesting? Something like: doi.org/10.1111/ejn....

I should probably know this, but there's any ecological psychologist in the Toronto area (maybe Southern Ontario in general)?

What do you think is the statement most often (uncritically) repeated in cognitive science, biology, and their philosophy that is nevertheless quite obviously false? In my opinion, it is: "Organisms face an uncertain, ever-changing environment."

Abstract acceptances have gone out (finally, sorry for the delay :) Still some spaces if anyone would still like to present! Drop me an email if you are interested Registration is now open at the website - early registration runs till the end of this month

We just talked very briefly about causal cognition in the wild - w/ @annafinke.bsky.social www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

First blog post for our forest intelligence project! www.um.es/mintlab/inde... @diovicen.bsky.social #plantintelligence

I guess Descartes ended up with the famous "cogito ergo sum" because he locked himself up to think and only think (at least from his point of view). If, instead of that, he had been running, maybe he would have ended up with "curro ergo sum", which is specially cool in Spanish.

Beren - El Afilador (Los Suaves Cover) youtu.be/CwT32BYccKc

The more (usually plant) biology I read, the more I see (plant) biologists treating psychologists in the same way they complain they're treated by physicists. I don't know who needs to read this, but respecting the knowledge from other fields is usually a good strategy for scientific collaboration.

Beren - Oración Beren is just an artisan who makes or interprets music. Everything here is recorded by using one guitar, one voice, one computer, and a couple of free apps. No proper mics, no proper room, no closed door or window... Just music. Raw. Homemade. Hopeful. youtu.be/3E2CtpZybt0

Beren - Wasted Years Beren is an artisan making and/or re-interpreting music. Everything here is recorded by using one guitar, one voice, one computer, and a couple of free apps. No proper mics, no proper room, no closed door or window... Just music. Raw. Homemade. www.youtube.com/watch?v=ThsE...

@segundo-ortin.bsky.social and I were talking about ecological psychology, the ecological handicap, teaching, and learning in the Future Learning Design Podcast. You can check the episode here: www.goodimpactlabs.com/podcast/migu...

The open access version of A Drive to Survive is now available to download for free! direct.mit.edu/books/oa-mon... (If you've already read the preprint, I'd really appreciate a download of the official version... for the *metrics*) - also it has way less typos.

Very excited to share that @apotochnik.bsky.social and my element on Public Engagement with Science is out (+ open-access)) I'm really proud of this work of ours. It puts in writing much of the work + thinking done over the last several years @ucpews.bsky.social... www.cambridge.org/core/element...

Paper about all the things with Taraneh Wilkinson officially out now and open access. “Affordances, phenomenology, pragmatism and the myth of the given” in Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences. link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Come to Denmark!

I had the pleasure of talking to Marianne Davies for an hour about affordances and why we've all been getting them wrong www.buzzsprout.com/1975020/epis...

This interesting thread shows the notion of representation as a motif: a relatively vague concept that shapes a relatively open-ended set of explanatory strategies. In the thread, vagueness is taken to be a problem. I think it's a strength: representations remain precisely because they are vague!

🚨Abstract submission now open for the European Workshop on Ecological Psychology, 15-18 July 2025, in Leeds UK 🚨 Abstracts: due Friday 14th March, 2025 Early Registration: by Wednesday 30 April (open shortly) Please share widely! www.leedsbeckett.ac.uk/events/confe...

New Preprint! 🧐 We explored the ecological idea of resonance using virtual reality and Mobile Brain/Body Imaging (MOBI). It was challenging both technically and in terms of data analysis, but we are quite happy with the results. Check it out! ⬇️ doi.org/10.31234/osf... 1/

This is the most popular position by far (80% of people buy it?). The Q is: why are there people who don't buy into it? I think it has to do w/ (i) the vagueness of computationalism, (ii) its relative detachment from empirical evidence, (iii) & the existence of alternatives: doi.org/10.1111/ejn....

Last summer, we asked some friends what "radical embodiment" is. These are their answers. They are diverse and cool. Check them out! ⬇️ www.youtube.com/watch?v=xwtS... (w/ @tonychemero.bsky.social, @edbaggs.bsky.social, and others).

Still looking for a gift for that weirdly gothic friend of yours, the one insufferably obsessed with animals, or the smug intellectual who nevertheless appreciates a good joke? Here are some reasons why PLAYING POSSUM (published by @princetonupress.bsky.social) may be just what you need:

Control and turbulence in the brain. From Gustavo Deco lab. Some way from the mainstream currently, but imo important frontier for neuroscience. @elisennesh.bsky.social @brianrgordon.bsky.social @earlkmiller.bsky.social We've had chats on topic here and there www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

I was lucky enough to talk about Eleanor Gibson at CogIST. Here's the recording in case you are interested ⬇️ youtu.be/QmV4Iz1jJs8

In which I am stabbed in the back by friends and former student and post-doc.

Ever wondered what is all this hype about affordances? New preprint! ⬇️

We are doing this today at 11.30AM at UNED. If you are in Madrid, you can join us! UNED, Edificio de Humanidades, Sala B blogs.uned.es/metis/semina...

In a few minutes! ⬇️

Remember when we talked about this on the other site instead of facing threads of random blue-checks? We are finally starting to do it here 🥹 By the way, my take is that affordances are "motifs", so the concept is helplessly vague... and that's good! It helps us talk and guides us to good places.

Any European PhDs interested in working with me as a post-doc via the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA) Postdoctoral Fellowships scheme, drop me a line ([email protected] or on here). Happy to chat topics, with a focus on perceptual learning, affordances, etc (please RT :)

🚀 Just under two months left to submit to our special issue of Topoi on Progress in radical embodiment Deadline: January 31, 2025 Word limit: 6,000 words Queries: Feel free to dm/email @diovicen.bsky.social @segundo-ortin.bsky.social @guicogsci.bsky.social CfP: link.springer.com/collections/...