The Ontology of Mutualism

Abstract

Like ecological psychology, mutualism is a differentiation theory in which changes in perception involve differentiating against a background rather than internal elaborations on sparse inputs. In addition, the social is primary and ontologically distinct, not just the result of unusually elaborate constructions from physical inputs or of extraordinarily complex affordances. We draw our ontology from a broad tradition traced back to William James, which includes James Gibson as well as Husserl, Dewey, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, and Levinas. Other recent ontologies for ecological psychology have drawn on Heidegger (his concept of equipment; Kadar & Effken, 1994) and Merleau-Ponty (Sanders, 1993, 1997). Although both elaborate and clarify important aspects of the tradition, we find limitations in their contributions, especially in the Heideggerian account of the the other and in MerleawPonty's Cartesian attempt to separate the lived body from the body of science. We turn back to Husserl to bring out links with Gibson in their common insight into the importance of kinesthesis, and also of the social (social affordances in Gibson, intersubjectivity in Husserl) as the pivotal aspect of human experience. Neither succeeded in bringing these together in a single ontology. To do justice, for a mutualist ontology, to both kinesthesis and the social, we draw on Levinas's critique of Heidegger and his concept of the face or the face to face and its ethical demands. Levinas seeks a source of direct awareness of such demands prior to intellectual and conceptual activity and independent of rules. This, we argue, can be found in Gibson's concept of information and kinesthesis, but to unite Levinas and Gibson in this way requires anew ontological category, corresponding to Levinas' face-to-face. With this. the other is perceived directly as a source of an ethical demand that cannot be reduced to affordances or equipment.