Pink Monkey Farm: The Blog

Abstraction and concreteness, complexity and simplicity

In a now classic article from 1977, Sverker Runeson observed that variables which we scientists consider to be basic, such as length, duration, etc, may or may not be basic from the point of view of opportunistic, evolved perceptual systems.  He suggests that perception may consist of “smart mechanism” which directly register complex variables of ecological significance to an organism.  Here’s a scan of the article, with some messy markup.  Articles from 1977 are not the easiest to find.

Sverker Runeson: On the possibility of “smart” perceptual mechanisms

Anyhow, here is a recent neuroscientific finding that seems to accord well with this, and to tie in especially with the Gibsonian notion of affordance.  In Scientific American, July 07, “The Memory Code”, Joe Z. Tsien, research is presented which suggests the existence of nerve cells which are sensitive to anything which affords nesting:

..we accidentally discovered a small number of hippocampal neurons that appear to respond to the abstract concept of “nest.” These cells react vigorously to all types of nests, regardless of whether they are round or square or triangular or made of cotton or plastic or wood.

So far so good: we expect nervous systems to detect affordances (and little else). But hidden there is the notion of an “abstract concept”. And again in the sidebar:

…some neural cliques in the hippocampus indeed encode abstract concepts.

What is abstract about an affordance? Does it come less abstract than this?  Surely, a nest is very concrete and directly meaningful to a rodent.  They seem to be unaware of the subtleties of Runeson’s beautiful argument.