“Animal” and “environment”
the words animal and environment make an inseparable pair. Each term implies the other. No animal could exist without an environment surrounding it. Equally, although not so obvious, an environment implies an animal (or at least an organism) to be surrounded. This means that the surface of the earth, millions of years before life developed on it, was not an environment, properly speaking. (Gibson, J. J., 1979: The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception, p. 8 [“The Mutuality of Animal and Environment”])
This is not a fussy semantic quibble, but a subtle observation about levels and units of intelligibility. We can only understand animals as perceivers if we consider them as inseparably related to an environment, which is itself understood in terms appropriate to that animal.
—Haugeland, J., 2000: Mind Embodied and Embedded, p. 15. Chapter 9 in Haugeland, J., 2000: Having Thought: Essays in the Metaphysics of Mind. Harvard University Press.
author:gibson-james book:gibson-ecological-approach-to-visual-perception author:haugeland-john book:haugeland-having-thought paper:haugeland-mind-embodied-and-embedded snip:animal-and-environment animal environment definition interaction intimacy ecology list:mind-body-world
