Ecological Empiricism

Abstract

AbstractBoth metaphysics and cognitive science raise the question of what natural concepts or properties are. A link between the two is notoriously hard to establish. I propose to take natural concepts or properties to be those that are revealed in interaction. The concept of affordances is refined and naturalized to spell out how interacting with objects grounds concepts. I will call this account “Ecological Empiricism”. I argue that the notion of naturalness within this framework turns out to be a gradable – there are more or less natural properties – and dependent on the perspective taken – metaphysically natural properties are different from cognitive natural properties. From a metaphysical point of view, perfect correlations between actions and sensory input are relevant, which are best approximated by scientific measurement. For cognition, simple or basic actions are relevant. Although metaphysical and cognitive naturalness does not coincide according to Ecological Empiricism, it presents a common framework with a uniform conception of naturalness.