the Perception of Religious Meaning and Value: An Ecological Approach

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Religion, Brain & Behavior

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The perception of religious meaning and value: anecological approach

Nathaniel F. Barrett

To cite this article:Nathaniel F. Barrett (2014) The perception of religious meaning

and value: an ecological approach, Religion, Brain & Behavior, 4:2, 127-146, DOI:10.1080/2153599X.2013.816339

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/2153599X.2013.816339

Published online: 16 Aug 2013.

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TARGET ARTICLE

The perception of religious meaning and value: an ecological approach

Nathaniel F. Barrett*

Institute for Culture and Society, University of Navarra, Pamplona, Spain

The perception of value is one of the most important dimensions of religiousexperience, and yet the cognitive science of religion has so far had little to sayabout it. This neglect may be the result of a widespread assumption that value isconstructed, that is, a special quality added to sensory input by the mind.However, such a view not only divorces value from meaning, but it also cannotregister the ways in which value is discovered and enriched through skillfulengagement. Accordingly, it is proposed that the experience of value is betterunderstood in ecological terms, as the richness of meaningful interaction betweena skilled perceiver and a suitably complex environment. An ecological approachopens up new opportunities for the investigation of the environmental conditionsof value-rich religious experience. For example, it may be possible to determinehow the experience of divine presence is supported by the structural features ofmusic used in religious settings.

Keywords: ecological psychology; James Gibson; perception; religious experience;value

1. IntroductionThe meaningfulness of the religious life is perhaps its main attraction and support,

and yet no other aspect of religiosity is so poorly understood, especially by outsiders.

As a result, meaning is at risk of becoming encapsulated as the black box of

religiosity: a special quality of experience that is presumed to account for religious

beliefs and behaviors that are otherwise hard to explain. For instance, the

philosopher Tim Crane (2010, para. 19) recently suggested that religious belief is

sustained even in the face of contrary evidence, because what is central is the

commitment to the meaningfulness (and therefore the mystery) of the world. Crane

may be on the right track here, but by linking religious meaning with mystery, he

leaves the former completely undefined and seemingly out of reach. What sustainsbelief is not just an abstract idea of meaningfulness, but rather something more direct

and experiential. If so, how does religious belief or practice provide access to

experiences of meaning? Moreover, how can outsiders come to understand such

experiences?

To clarify the issue at hand, let us distinguish two dimensions of religious

meaning. The more accessible dimension is the content of religious belief and

experience that can be articulated and reported to outsiders. Important as it may be,

this content is still fairly abstract: it does not capture the more richly textured and

dynamic dimension of religious meaning that emerges when it is really felt; that is,

*Email:[email protected]

Religion, Brain & Behavior, 2014

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when religious meaning comes alive for the insider during specific acts of religious

practice such as prayer or worship. The elusiveness of this second dimension*not

just for outsiders but for insiders as well*has been termed the problem of

presence (see Engelke,2007; Luhrmann,2012, p. 15).

No doubt, yearning for the felt presence of the object of religious belief is

widespread among religious persons and motivated in large part by the desire to

confirm belief. However, I propose that an even deeper motivation is the search for

value. The experience of rich and abiding value, impervious to hardship and

misfortune, is ultimately what sustains religious belief and the religious life as worthy

of commitment. Accordingly, what makes the feeling of presence so important to

religious practitioners is not just the confirmation of belief, but also the value that is

discovered in religious practice when its meanings come to life*that is, when the

meanings of religious practice are perceived. In other words, I propose that value is

an essential aspect of what distinguishes the religious insiders experience of meaning

as a perceptual experience.

With this distinction in hand, it seems that religious meaning can be accessed andappreciated by outsiders in all respects except for the value that is carried by

perceptual experience. At least this much is clear: if the difference is really

experiential, then theories that invoke belief to explain experiential differences are

simply begging the question. For even if we accept that belief is a condition for the

full experience of religious meaning, we still need a testable theory of how the

experience of meaning changes under this and other conditions so as to provide

access to value.

In what follows I present the outlines of an ecological approach to the perception

of religious meaning and value. Generally speaking, an ecological approach adopts

the basic theoretical orientation of the psychologist James J. Gibson (190479),especially his insistence on the essentially interactive nature of perceptual experience.

The kinds of investigations I have in mind for the ecological approach would focus

on the perceptual experiences of seasoned practitioners engaged in highly structured

and overtly religious activities such as rituals, ceremonies, festivals and the like. Such

studies would then constitute a basis from which the ecological approach could be

extended to a wider range of activities, perhaps even the religious life as a whole.

At the heart of this approach is the thesis that value-rich experience requires

skillful engagement with a suitably complex and meaningful environment. However,

to fully explain what I mean by an ecological approach, I will have to articulate a

host of theoretical commitments that distinguish it from constructivist theories of

perception, a large and diverse family that includes most computational theories of

mainstream cognitive science (e.g., Marr, 1982). Among these commitments are the

following claims: (1) perception and perceptual learning are primarily processes of

discrimination rather than construction; (2) perceptual discriminations selectively

engage an inexhaustible wealth of meanings embedded in dynamic patterns or

flows of stimulation made available by the organisms active search for meaning;

(3) as a form of direct, interactive engagement, perception cannot be modeled as a

serial, hierarchical process that builds from simple to complex meanings; and (4) a

complete understanding of perception requires careful investigation of the environ-

mental structures that specify important meanings for a given species, community, or

individual.Admittedly, the following argument carries a heavy burden insofar as it involves a

basic reorientation of thought about perception in general. Why return to the

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drawing board when cognitive theories of religion are just now gaining steam? The

turn from mainstream cognitive and perceptual theory to a radical alternative

(Chemero, 2009) is motivated here by the conviction that our experience of value

cannot be understood as something manufactured by the mind, as presumed

by constructivist theories. Thus the ecological approach couches a theory of the

perception of religious meaning and value within a broader theory of meaning and

value in general. This broader theory can be sketched as follows.

2. Meaning and value in ecological perspective1

In contrast to constructivist theories that view meaning as something added by the

organism to environmental input, the ecological approach views meaning as a basic

property of the interactive relationship between an organism and its environment. Any

feature of the environment has meaning if it can be registered by the organism as a

significant contrasta discrimination of difference that has some potential consequence

for the regulation of organism behavior. In other words, a significant contrast is thedetermination of what Gregory Bateson would call a difference that makes a

difference (as cited in Bateson,1972, p. 453). A significant contrast is a relational

event, as it signifies by determining organism behavior in relation to some feature of the

environment.2 Moreover, this relational character is irreducible by virtue of the fact that

the determination of contrast is a circular process: through the discrimination of

contrast, an organism determines how it is determined by its environment.

Value can also be understood in terms of contrast, and thus as being closely

related to meaning. In the most basic sense, value is the importancethat a significant

contrast has for the organism. Take, for example, a bacterium: the bacteriums

discrimination of a glucose gradient constitutes a simple but important contrast. Bydetermining this contrast, the bacterium not only discriminates but also values some

particular difference as being important for the regulation of its behavior (see

Kauffman, 2000, p. 111). Every determination of contrast*and thus every

determination of meaning*is an implicit valuing of difference. Value defined in

this way is clearly value for the organism in the sense of what matters to its way of

life.3 Indeed, one could say that its way of life is defined by the environmental

differences that it values as contrasts of primary importance. These fundamental

contrasts can be termed primary values.

All forms of life are oriented by primary values, but only animals with complex

nervous systems seek out values of a higher order through sensorimotor activity.

These secondary values are more or less optimal ways of engaging the environment,

and the value they have is largely cognitive. Although secondary values encompass

the entire range of perceptual phenomena, they differ from primary values only in

their degree of complexity and variability. What distinguishes secondary values is

their role in fine-tuned adjustments of behavior: they are complex contrasts that

integrate diverse features, structuring engagement in a particular way. For example,

the ability to register the difference between play fighting and genuine aggression

requires a complex contrast that integrates diverse behavioral and situational

meanings. The value of such a complex contrast is a function of both its basic

importance*its primary value*and the skill that it affords as a way of dealing with

this primary value.Humans, and perhaps a few other species, enjoy experiences marked by

extraordinarily vivid and richly textured contrasts. These experiences are marked

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by their depth, that is, their ready access to multiple levels of meaning, each

constituting a complex contrast. I propose that whatever cognitive value such

experiences might have, their richness and depth of meaning can also be enjoyed as

an intrinsic value, as an end in itself. The exceptional richness of contrast or value-

character that manifests intrinsic value is a kind of tertiary value.4 Like secondary

values, tertiary values are achievements of perceptual skill, but they may not have

much importance in the way of primary value (i.e., they may be merely aesthetic).

In principle, tertiary values can be enjoyed in an unlimited range of situations, but in

practice they seem to require environments of suitable complexity. This requirement

is due to the fact that, even more than primary and secondary values, tertiary values

are experienced through intricate forms of interactive involvement.

The preceding distinctions of primary, secondary, and tertiary values are

intended only as rough markers within a continuum and will not be used hereafter.

Indeed, my point has been to show that value-rich experience is not clearly marked

off from other kinds of experience. On the contrary, the experience of value is rooted

in perception and even more deeply in the basic processes by which an organism isconstituted in relation to its environment. Perceptual activity is a specialized form of

engagement*that is, a structured form of interaction through which an organism

seeks optimal attunement with important and meaningful regularities of its

environment*and as such it seeks to maximize the value that it carries (see Neville,

1981; Reed, 1996). However, intrinsic value emerges as a prominent factor in

experience only when engagement is highly skilled, which is when perceptual

discriminations are finely attuned to especially rich sources of meaning.

When defined in this way, the experience of intrinsic value does not require the

addition of any special, inherently value-bearing quality to perception. In fact,

because the experience of intrinsic value is dependent on a coherent stream ofcomplexly meaningful contrasts, there is no such thing as a simple, value-bearing but

otherwise meaningless quality in experience. Rather than ascribing value to certain

distinct meanings, spheres, or levels of perception, the ecological approach views

value as a generic trait of perceptual experience. As discriminations become more

richly and vividly textured, perceptual experience moves along a continuum toward

especially value-rich experiences that we treasure for their own sake. Vividness and

richness of texture are intended here to convey not just increased diversity of contrast

but also increased intensity, insofar as intensity can be combined with diversity (see

Neville,1981; Whitehead, 1929/1979).

In most cases, the experience of intrinsic value depends on skilled interaction

with a suitably complex environment, which, as I have already noted, is the kind of

environment that supports intricacy and depth of meaningful engagement. It follows

that the experience of value cannot be triggered by simple stimuli, and it cannot be

had all at once. Emphasis on the continuous, interactive, cumulative, and above all

temporal character of value-rich experience is a large part of what distinguishes the

present approach as ecological. It marks a metaphysical turn from theories of

perception based on the ideas of atomistic sense-data (Heft, 2001) and an empirical

turn from the cognitivist preoccupation with mechanisms inside the head.

When described in ecological terms, the importance of value-character cannot be

overestimated. In human experience, a marked degree of value-character is arguably

an essential ingredient in the feeling of concrete reality. In other words, because of itsdependence on the intricate, mutual involvement of body and environment, value-

character signifies the presence of something encountered rather than imagined or

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remembered. Value is therefore essential to how the world shows up in experience.

Accordingly, while there is no need to insist on a clear distinction between

imagination and perception, insofar as religious experience is perceptual, it takes

on value-character.

The preceding statements are highly vague and as such are not directly testable, at

least not in any simple way. The purpose of the following argument is to articulate

the main features of the ecological approach*often by means of contrasts with

constructivism*while drawing out theoretical and methodological implications

relevant to the perception of religious meaning and value. Perhaps the most

important of these is the proposal that sources of religious meaning and value can

be located outside the head; namely in the environment of the practitioner,

instantiated by natural properties, and thus accessible to outsiders. The distinctive

empirical orientation of the ecological approach can thus be used to design new

forms of ethnographic research, perhaps opening up new inroads into the subtleties

of religious experience.

Some of these opportunities are pointed out in Section 6 below. But first sections3, 4, and 5 articulate the distinctive features of the ecological approach, including

phenomenological claims about the perception of meaning and value, and also

psychological claims about its neural and environmental conditions. Finally, to show

how the ecological approach might be applied even to apparently non-ecological

kinds of religious experience, in Section 7 I consider the evangelical experiences

described by T.H. Luhrmann (2012) in her recent work entitled When God Talks

Back.

3. Comparison with Anne Taves building-block approach

Some of the preceding claims can be sharpened by briefly comparing them to a

particularly sophisticated and noteworthy constructivist approach to the perception

of religious meaning: the building-block approach of Anne Taves (2009). Taves

would not likely call her own theory constructivist because, like many scholars of

religion, she uses that term to distinguish a family of theories that emphasize the

cultural determination of religious experience. However, insofar as Taves subscribes

to the more general thesis that both meaning and value are added to sense data, her

building-block approach belongs to the larger family of constructivist perceptual

theory, broadly defined (Epstein,1993).

Like the present approach, Taves theory is designed to improve third-person

access to the elusive value-dimension of religiosity. Taves is similarly dissatisfied with

theories that explain this dimension as if it were determined solely by belief; she

argues that we should abandon the constructivist axiom that beliefs and attitudes

are always formative of, rather than consequent to, experience in any very strong

sense (Taves, 2009, p. 93). An important reason for her dissatisfaction is

phenomenological: what she calls constructivist theories*those that emphasize

cultural determination*cannot register the way in which religious practitioners

experience value as something discovered (Taves,2009, pp. 4041, 100). But without

calling into question the more general premise of constructivism that meaning and

value are added to experience*how can Taves account for this experience of

discovery?What Taves proposes is a hierarchical, two-tier model of experience divided

between highly culturally sensitive experiences involving extensive top-down



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processing and relatively culturally insensitive experiences processed largely from

the bottom up (Taves,2009, p. 98). This model accounts for the feeling of discovery

by positing a lower layer of unconscious neural mechanisms that are responsible

for manufacturing the basic qualities of experience, including whatever qualities

distinguish religious experiences as special. Because the bottom-up processes

that give rise to these qualities are beyond our awareness and control, special

qualities of religious experience can have the appearanceof being discovered when in

fact they are ascribed (Taves,2009, pp. 4041).

Taves approach presents a sophisticated strategy for finessing the gap between

insider and outsider experiences of religious meaning and value, and the kinds of

investigations she proposes are well worth undertaking. As with most constructivist

theories, however, Taves approach aims mostly at processes that, at least in theory,

can be located inside the head.5 While this brain-centered approach fits well with

mainstream cognitive science, it also has limitations. Here I focus on the premise that

value is, at bottom, a simple quality of specialness that is ascribed to certain things.

The advantage of this approach is that it circumvents religious interpretations inorder to get to the experiential raw material of religious experience. The drawback

is that it gains this access by the dubious notion of experiential building blocks.

In the introduction above, I described meaning and value as closely related, such

that there can be no experience of value without meaningful contrast. For Taves,

meaning seems to drop out of her analysis of specialness at the most basic level,

leaving behind a highly abstract quality whose unconscious ascription is allegedly

responsible for the singularization of something as a bearer of special value (Taves,

2009, pp. 4849). However, to construe specialness as a quality whose ascription is

triggered apart from complex discriminations of meaning seems to entail the

phenomenological claim that it can show up without relation to the manner in whichexperience unfolds in time. In principle, this special quality can show up all at once,

at any time or place. As a result, Taves theory directs attention away from the

ecological conditions of religious experience: environmental properties are con-

spicuously absent from the various kinds of data that Taves (2009, p. 69) lists as

relevant to studies of religious experience.6

In contrast, the meaning and value of perceptual experiences for the ecological

approach are neither ascribed nor attributed to things. Instead, they are specified by

processes of interaction that depend on both perceptual skills and environmental

structures.7 The specialness that sets apart experiences of intrinsic value is a function

of the intricacy and depth of our involvement with certain objects or events. For the

ecological approach, then, value-rich experiences cannot be accounted for by any

simple quality that can show up all at once. Objects and events of intrinsic value must

be minimally complex in a dynamic, temporally extended, and coherently meaningful

sense: they must be richly determinable in a way that is revealed only through

interaction. Because they have depths of meaning that cannot be grasped all at once,

value-rich experiences are entered into and explored, rather than simply had.

I propose that this abundance of meaning, always exceeding what is grasped, is

essential to the experience of value as something discovered.

Of course, these phenomenological claims must be verified from a first-person

standpoint. However, they also have neurological implications: the determinable

character of value-rich experience strongly detracts from the picture of perception asa serial hierarchical process. But perhaps most importantly, these claims suggest new

opportunities for investigating the environmental conditions of religious experience.

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This is because the kinds of involvement that are regularly singled out by insiders as

religiously meaningful likely depend, in most cases, on the availability of a minimally

complex environment, the structures of which can be engaged (albeit differently) by

outsiders.

4. Perceptual learning: differentiation or enrichment?

How do insiders gain access to religious experience? The ecological approach

elaborated here strongly resonates with Luhrmanns (2012) recent claim that the

perception of religious meaning and value is a skill that can be learned. But where

things get interesting is at the level that specifies howperceptual learning occurs. In the

terms to be developed in this section, it is not clear to what extent Luhrmann thinks of

perceptual learning as differentiation rather than enrichment. It is likely that she finds

evidence for both in her subjects reports. Still, it is helpful at least to consider the

distinction: Is perception a creative process or is it a discriminative process? Is

learning a matter of enriching previously meager sensations or is it a matter ofdifferentiating previously vague impressions? (Gibson & Gibson,1955, p. 34).8 Here,

I focus on parts of Luhrmanns research that suggest that a process of differentiation is

at work among her evangelical subjects. In this regard, her observation that learning to

feel Gods presence is comparable to learning how to appreciate wine is especially

telling. This comparison seems to have been suggested by the reports of subjects, who

claim that they learn to pick out signs of Gods presence from what they had

previously experienced as a fuzzy mental blur (Luhrmann, 2012, p. 82). The

description of a transition from vagueness to specificity, or indistinctness to sharp

contrast, indicates a process of differentiation. Here is Luhrmanns own description of

differential perceptual learning in the case of wine tasting:

I remember the first time I made a distinction between kinds of wine. I knew, of course,that some wines are better than other wines, and that there are different kinds of wines,but this was pretty abstract knowledge . . .Then I was invited to a wine tasting and drankwines against each other, and for the first time I could really taste the peppery spice ofsyrah. I still remember the moment, the sudden recognition of difference. When youbegin to learn about wine, you learn to distinguish the taste of the grapes. You learn torecognize the fruit, the spice, and the vanillins created when the wine is aged in oakbarrels . . .Learning to taste wine is all about training perception . . .Most people, givenenough training, get good enough to identify the grape. They do so by developing adiscrimination system that allows them to draw contrasts between tastes: peppery versus

smooth, cherry versus peach, flabby versus taut. Each experts system is different. Onetasters angular is anothers masculine. . . .But the categories work. (Luhrmann,2012, p. 82)

This description is intended to exhibit a number of suggestive parallels with the

process by which religious practitioners*or at least some of them*learn to perceive

religious meaning. Principal among these, and the focus of this section, is the

emphasis on discrimination or discernment (Luhrmann, 2012, p. 83). While

discrimination may be a highly selective and interpretive process, it is not

constructive in the sense of adding meaning to sensory data, nor is it receptive in

the sense of gaining access to new kinds of data. Perception as discrimination does

away with the idea of simple sense data altogether.This may seem like a rather fine point, but it has implications that bear upon

theories of religious perception. For example, William Alstons (1991) much



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discussed theory of religious perception, which is based on his more general theory

of appearing (Alston, 1993), proposes that the presence of God is marked by

positive feelings that uniquely correspond to their object*that is, by the intrinsic

qualitative distinctiveness of a way of appearing (Alston,1991, p. 44). Accordingly,

the experience of a person who perceives Gods presence includes the appearance of

some intrinsically distinct quality*a God percept*that is entirely unavailable to

someone who does not perceive Gods presence (see also Barrett & Wildman, 2009).

In contrast, for the ecological approach, differences of perception are not a

matter of certain discrete qualities being available to some people and not to others.

Rather, some people discriminate qualities better, or at least differently, than others.

This position accords better with what Luhrmann says about her subjects

experiences of Gods presence: none of them claim that Gods presence is announced

by new feelings. On the contrary, Luhrmann (2012, p. 114) stresses that her subjects

learned to pick out Gods presence from everyday experience: Gods voice is like a

fuzzy radio station . . . that needs more tuning. Youre picking up the song, and its

not so clear sometimes.

While this understanding of perception as discrimination is not unique to the

ecological approach, it is crucial to the ecological turn from processes inside the

head to interactions with the environment. In a seminal paper, Gibson and Gibson

(1955) define their emerging viewpoint on perceptual learning in sharp contrast with

a widely accepted premise of modern perceptual theory:

It seems to us that all extant theories of the perceptual process . . .have at least thisfeature in common: they take for granted a discrepancy between the sensory input andthe finished percept and they aim to explain the difference. They assume that somehow

we get more information about the environment than can be transmitted through thereceptor system. In other words, they accept the distinction between sensation andperception. The development of perception must then necessarily be one of supplement-ing or interpreting or organizing. (Gibson & Gibson, 1955, p. 33)

As a result, the constructivist theory regards perceptual learning as something that

develops indecreasing correspondence with stimulation . . . . Perceptual learning, thus

conceived, necessarily consists of experience becoming more imaginary, more

assumptive, or more inferential (Gibson & Gibson, 1955, p. 34, original emphasis).

Gibson and Gibson propose a radically different premise, namely, that all the

information needed for perception is available, or at least can be made available, in

the flux of sensory stimulation. Indeed, for the ecological approach, the informationavailable in the sensory array is inexhaustible (Gibson,1979, p. 243). Learning is

therefore a process of selectively differentiatingvariables and regularities of interest

from this over-abundant supply. For the differentiation or specificity theory:

perception gets richer in differential responses, not in images. It is progressively ingreater correspondence with stimulation, not in less. Instead of becoming moreimaginary, it becomes more discriminating. Perceptual learning, then, consists ofresponding to variables of physical stimulation not previously responded to. (Gibson &Gibson,1955, p. 34)

Thus, Gibson and Gibson claim that all meanings of perceptual experience arecarried by stimulus information (although not all at once). What changes during

perceptual learning is our ability to pick out or differentiate this or that meaning as a

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significant contrast. Like Luhrmann, they use wine tasting to illustrate perceptual

learning by differentiation: the connoisseur tastes more than the novice because he

or she discriminates more of the variables of chemical stimulation (Gibson &

Gibson,1955, p. 35).

However, if we apply this approach to all kinds of perception, including the

perception of religious meaning, do we not need to hold conclusions about the

veridicality of perception in check? To say, as Gibson and Gibson do, that when a

person perceives more, he or she discriminates more, seems to guarantee that all

perception is successful*it seems to presume that all perceptual learning is a process

of gaining greater correspondence with the stimulus array, and by implication, the

world.

Gibsons embrace of some version of direct realism remains one of the most

philosophically challenging and controversial features of the ecological approach

(Chemero, 2009). Although I cannot hope to settle the issue here, I will discuss in a

later section how the ecological approach bears on questions of religious truth. Here,

I present several brief qualifications to indicate how the ecological approach mightaccount for perceptual errors and the role of past experience in perception.

The first qualification is to point out that the specification of meaning is never

unequivocal. Rather, meanings are more or less reliably specified*or better yet,

constrained*by patterns and variables of stimulation that are more or less regular,

but never perfectly law-like (Chemero,2009, pp. 119120). The second qualification

is that the process of perceptual differentiation is always highly selective and

evaluative, as argued above. The move from undifferentiated to differentiated

stimulus can take as many paths as there are variables available to discriminate,

and these paths are not equivalent for all interests and purposes. Perceptual success is

a matter of making the right discriminations for the situation at hand, and is thusdefined in relation to a wider context of purposeful activity. Third, it is important to

acknowledge that self-organized neural dynamics play a much greater role in

perception than Gibson and Gibson were ready to admit (e.g., see Freeman, 1999;

Kelso,1995).

This last qualification softens the distinction between enrichment and differ-

entiation, and thus between constructivist and ecological approaches, but it does not

do away with it altogether. In fact, a variety of neurodynamical theories of

perception (e.g., Cosmelli, Lachaux, & Thompson,2007) are crucial to the long-term

viability of the ecological approach, as they support its implicit denial that the

perception of meaning is a serial, hierarchical process (see Noe,2009, pp. 149169).

Moreover, these theories suggest how it might be possible to explain the role of past

experience and culture in the perception of meaning without conceding to

constructivism.

Dynamically speaking, past experience informs perception by shaping the

intrinsic patterns of perceptual dynamics (Kelso, 1995). These intrinsic patterns do

not determine perceptual meaning, but rather how perceptual meaning is determined

by the environment. In other words, the actual trajectory of perceptual dynamics is

determined by the coupling of endogenous neural dynamics with the exogenous

dynamics of environmental perturbations. Moreover, it is important to realize that

dynamical patterns of environmental perturbation can be engaged only by a system

of equivalent complexity (Sporns,2011, pp. 255256). Thus, neurologically speaking,what distinguishes interactive perceptual theory from constructivism is not neural

complexity per se but howthat complexity is used to perceive: when combined with



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neurodynamical theory, the ecological approach claims that intrinsic dynamics are

coupled with extrinsic dynamics of commensurate complexity.9

To put this point in terms of perceptual meaning, past experience supplies the

organism with a vague network of possible meanings that are newly specified (and

modified) by each perceptual encounter. Accordingly, although the ecological

approach is usually characterized by its emphasis on what is there to be perceived

(Gibson, 1979, p. 239), it also entails the radical claim that animals perceive with

more than just their sense organs: they perceive with their entire embodied history of

past experience.

5. The environmental conditions of perception

Notwithstanding the importance of this last point, what distinguishes an ecological

approach to the study of religious perception is its focus on environmental

conditions. However, while the interactive mutuality of the ecological approachdirects our attention to the environment, it also makes it difficult to tease apart the

environmental conditions of especially complex perceptual experiences so that they

can be independently verified. To separate environmental structures from their

involvement in highly culturally specific (not to mention personal) forms of

perception, as if to describe them in purely objective terms, would seem to violate

the relational tenet of interaction that gives the ecological approach its name.

Thus, the mutuality of the ecological approach poses special challenges that

threaten to undermine its value for studies of religious practice. Simply put, if the

value of a religious practice is relationally constituted (which is not to say merely

relative), it would seem to be inaccessible to outsiders who cannot relate to it in thesame way. I believe, however, that this obstacle can be overcome: insofar as

environmental structures permit more than one kind of interaction, they can be

investigated without developing the perceptual skills of the subject for which they are

sources of special value.

To clarify this point, let us examine what is meant by perceptual interaction.

The ways in which the organism acts in order to perceive and perceives in order

to act are a well-known focus of the ecological approach. Indeed, insofar as

interactive describes the basic stance of the ecological approach, its roots can be

traced to John Deweys famous argument against the reflex arc or S-R model of

cognition and perception:

Upon analysis, we find that we begin not with a sensory stimulus, but with a sensori-motor co-ordination . . .and that in a certain sense it is the movement which is primary,and the sensation which is secondary, the movement of body, head and eye musclesdetermining the quality of what is experienced. In other words, the real beginning is withthe act of seeing; it is looking, and not a sensation of light. (Dewey, 1896/1972, p. 97)

Consider how we perceive a surface through tactile interaction. A momentary touch

is not enough: it is the dynamic pattern of a surfaces response to our touch that

specifies its texture and shape. But we are missing a crucial point if we think that

shape and texture are constructed out of a sequence of discrete touches. Making aclean break with the traditional sense-data picture of stimulation, Gibson argued

that interaction producesflows of stimulation, the dynamic patterns of which specify

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a wealth of meanings that are not easily found in assemblages of discrete stimuli

(Reed & Jones, 1982, pp. 333349, 376378).

The temporal character of stimulation flow is of essential importance to the

ecological view. The aforementioned inexhaustible richness of meaning that is

carried by the sensory array depends on the way in which sensory stimulation

constantly changes in relation to the organisms ongoing activity. Moreover, to

embrace a temporal and thus relational picture of perceptual meaning has important

phenomenological and even metaphysical ramifications, as succinctly expressed by

the first tenet of William Jamess philosophy of radical empiricism: the relations

between things, conjunctive as well as disjunctive, are just as much matters of direct

particular experience, neither more so nor less so, than the things themselves(as cited

in McDermott,1977, p. 136). Because we can directly engage structures of relation,

James concluded from this statement of fact that perception need not be

constructive (see Heft, 2001, pp. 3137). In addition, I suggest that the temporal

character of perception is essential to the experience of intrinsic value, insofar as this

character entails cumulative depth and richness of meaning.Let us consider a fairly simple example of how meaning is carried by stimulation

flow. The most discussed example is what is known as optical flow. As we

approach a surface, for instance, we experience a radial expansion of detail in our

field of vision centered on the point where our trajectory meets the surface. This flow

is obviously an interactive phenomenon, as it is generated by movement, and in turn

provides ample information for the regulation of movement (Gibson,1979, pp. 227

229). For example, the rate of expansion of detail specifies time to contact, an

essential piece of information for a wide range of activities (Lee & Reddish, 1981).

Now, let us consider the environmental conditions of optical flow. The dynamic

patterns of optical flow require an environment filled with complexly texturedsurfaces. Without discernible gradients of texture, there is no flow, and without flow,

important information such as time to contact is unavailable. (If you have ever

jumped into the glassy-smooth surface of a lake, you may have experienced the

disorientation of suddenly being unable to perceive how fast you are approaching the

surface.) Clearly, the environmental conditions of optical flow obtain in ways that are

more or less adequate for the specification of certain meanings, like time to contact.

Also, it is easy to imagine alternative ways of encountering, describing, and

measuring these conditions, which do not rely on optical flow (e.g., touch).

From this simple example, we can extrapolate a basic*indeed, obvious*but

important point about environmental conditions in general: while real-world

structural complexity is abundant and ubiquitous, within specialized spheres of

interest, certain environments are evidently structured so that relevant meanings are

more or less readily available to our perceptual systems. Of course, such differences

are always relative to forms of engagement, but that does not make them merely

subjective. Given a set of perceptual skills and interests, some environments are more

readily and deeply engaged than others. This applies to every possible category of

human perceivers: the species as a whole, various cultures, various forms of expertise,

and particular individuals. Moreover, insofar as an environment can be engaged in

multiple ways, its distinctive structures*which are sometimes enacted by the

perceiving subjects themselves*can also be examined and described in multiple

ways. In other words, by holding a form of perceptual engagement constant, we candetect differences of environmental suitability relative to that form, and by

comparing how an environment shows up for different forms of engagement, we



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can develop an objective*in the sense ofintersubjective*account of its distinctive

structures.

As for value, I propose that wherever the enjoyment of value-rich experience is a

priority, as it is in many overtly religious behavior settings, we should expect the

following: not only are perceptual skills adapted to meaningful features of particular

environments, but also environments are adapted to common perceptual abilities,

both species-general and culturally specific, so that opportunities for meaningful and

thus value-rich experience are maximized (Heft, 2001). This optimization of an

environments meaningful complexity is a very high-order characteristic that can be

assessed only through investigations of how structures at various timescales are

meaningfully engaged by particular subjects of interest. But once these structures are

more or less comprehensively described, we should expect to find that environments

that have served historically as rich sources of meaning and value exhibit a common

pattern of structural complexity: they should be more fully packed with meaning.

As we will see in the following section, an ecological approach can be applied to

investigations of classic works of art or music as special sources of perceptualmeaning and value. Analogously, it is possible to pursue an ecological understanding

of time-honored religious practices, events, and settings as classics in their own

right. In both cases, the reported experiences of connoisseurs (in the religious case,

seasoned practitioners) must be relied upon for guidance. Only from these reports is

it possible to develop a fairly comprehensive account of the range and depth of

meanings that a particular classic provides. Then, through some other means of

engagement (e.g., musicological analysis), it may be possible to examine and describe

the distinctive structures that support the classics depth of meaning. In other words,

an ecological approach depends on both insiders and outsiders, or at least multiple

forms of interaction, to determine the environmental conditions of a particular kindof religious experience.

6. Musical sources of meaning and value

The preceding discussion has been highly abstract, and where concrete examples have

been introduced they have not dealt with complex meanings such as those

encountered in religious practice. In this section, using the work of musicologist

Eric F. Clarke (2005), I discuss how the ecological approach can be applied even

to the most complex kinds of musical meaning. This in turn can serve as an

important indication of its promise for investigations of religious meanings of

comparable complexity. Moreover, Clarkes discussion of virtual motion consti-

tutes a fairly concrete example for the investigation of musical sources of religious

meaning.

However, it is first important to clarify the sense in which, for the ecological

approach, musical meanings exist out there in distributed patterns of sound. An

important distinction must be made between structures that specify meaning and

structures that encode meaning. Encoded meanings are pre-specified by their

instantiating structures (together with the rules for their decoding), whereas most

musical meanings are more or less constrained by structures of sound, and are

specified only through a minimally extended process of interaction with a particular

subject. For example, when Clarke (2005, pp. 4861) describes Jimi Hendrixs famousrendition of the Star-Spangled Banner as a rich source of various culturally

specific meanings (e.g., American jingoism, the Vietnam War, etc.), Clarke is not

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saying that the meanings therein are specifically encoded by the performance. Rather,

the various features of the performance could directly specify the meanings for

appropriately attuned listeners of a common cultural background and orientation.

Thus, the ecological approach is sensitive to the variety of perceptual experiences that

different listeners have.

This last caveat*

that certain meanings are available only to listeners of a certain

background and orientation*might seem to constitute a major concession to

constructivist theory. However, the radical nature of the ecological approach re-

emerges when we take seriously Clarkes claim that complex, culturally specific

meanings can be heard in the music, rather than just associated with it. For a

constructivist view, what we actually hear is restricted to the most basic properties of

sound: musical meanings are interpretations or associations prompted by what we

hear. Thus, the variety of ways in which different listeners hear the same piece is

accounted for by a serial process, which proceeds from simpler and more stimulus-

bound properties through to more complex and abstract characteristics that are less

closely tied to the stimulus and are more the expression of general cognitive schemataand cultural conventions (Clarke, 2005, p. 12). In other words, something as

complex as a politically subversive meaning of Hendrixs performance is not carried

by the acoustic stimuli; rather, it is added to the listening experience at a high-level

stage of processing.

In contrast, Clarke argues that the difference between meanings specified by basic

features of pitch or timbre, and meanings specified by more complex features of

melody or musical genre, need not be a matter of directness. Rather, the difference is

the duration and distribution of the relevant patterns of musical sound involved in

the specification of meaning. Remember that the ecological approach asserts that all

(or nearly all) meaning is carried by temporally extended, dynamic patterns. Oncethat premise is accepted, there is no clear upper limit to the duration and complexity

of patterns that can be directly engaged. So, continuing with the Hendrix example,

Hendrixs use of distortion, feedback, and special rotating speakers specifies various

kinds of instability through fairly simple features, while his use of bends, trills, and

breaks of free improvisation specifies instability in a more complexly distributed way.

And yet, all these features, as well as the highly abstract cultural dissonance of

rock music and the national anthem, are equally present in the music and can be

directly perceived (Clarke,2005, pp. 5960).

Still, granted that ecological and constructivist approaches posit very different

kinds of perceptual dynamics, at the level of the actual listening experience they are

difficult to distinguish.10 As stated in Section 4, a fully worked-out version of the

ecological approach registers the wide diversity of listening experiences by its

claim that we listen with our entire embodied history of experience. Thus, one

listener hears a performance differently from others, because the dynamical network

that he or she brings into interaction with the performance registers its structural

features differently. Of course, a standard constructivist model of hierarchical

processing also accounts for this difference, but with less interaction. Outside of

neuroscience, how do these theoretical differences translate into empirically testable

claims?

Clarke (2005, pp. 189204) cautiously advances the claim that common patterns

of musical structure do constrain our listening experiences in objectively detectableways. In the most basic sense, Clarkes claim is fairly uncontroversial: regardless of

cultural background and experience, a musical piece that is usually heard as tranquil



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by one group of listeners is not likely to be heard as agitated by another. However,

what about more subtle and complex meanings? The extent to which musical

experience is regularly constrained by structural patterns is an important empirical

question that an ecological approach is better prepared to investigate.

To that end, I would like to add another hypothesis: detailed investigations of the

structural patterns that specify musical meaning should reveal common higher-order

characteristics of works and performances that are widely regarded as classics. For

the sake of argument, let us again consider Hendrixs performance of the Star-

Spangled Banner as an example. In Clarkes analysis, while the structural features of

Hendrixs performance specify instability or disruption, his main concern is to show

how these meanings are specified by features of varying complexity and duration.

Yet, by the same token, Clarke convincingly shows that Hendrixs performance has a

nested structural complexity that gives it an especially rich texture of meaning.

Indeed, notwithstanding its conveyance of instability and disruption, Hendrixs

performance is remarkably well integrated across multiple timescales and dimensions

of sound. Exactly how this structural complexity is perceived depends on the listener.

Still, perhaps this trait of complexity is a common feature of diverse listening

experiences, and can be detected through ecological investigation as a condition of

value-richness.

Thus, if widely undertaken, ecological investigations might accumulate a body of

evidence from which a number of general conclusions about the perception of

musical meaning and value can be drawn. Again, as stated in the previous section,

these investigations necessarily involve comparisons of perspective: accounts of

listeners experiences (i.e., what meanings are perceived) and analyses of the

structural features of a musical performance (what is there to specify meaning). In

some cases, both perspectives might be obtained through different ways of listening,

while in other cases the analysis of structural features might be obtained by other

empirical methods (see Clarke & Cook, 2004).

For investigations of music as a source of religious meaning, one of the most

promising kinds of musical meaning is what Clarke calls virtual motion and

agency. According to Clarke, many theorists distinguish musical motion from

motion specified by non-musical sounds (e.g., scraping, thumping, knocking, etc.),

because the former is only metaphorical. Of course, this distinction does not hold

up very well when one considers the fact that musical and non-musical sounds are

both produced by physical motion. But what about the more abstract motion of a

melody? For example, consider the famous first and second themes of the firstmovement in Beethovens Fifth Symphony (see Clarke, 2005, p. 64). How should we

understand their characteristic and starkly contrasting movements? And who or

what is moving?

Clarke argues that the motion specified by music (and related meanings of

gesture, agency, space, etc.) should be considered virtualrather than metaphorical.

Virtual movements are not imaginary but rather perceptualphenomena, specified by

patterns of sound in approximately the same way that normal motion is specified.

In other words, music exploits the motion-specifying properties of sound to

create virtual kinds of movement and agency, even virtual environments. This is

not an especially subtle kind of musical meaning: even basic rhythms played on adrum have been found to specify distinctive motions (Gabrielsson, 1973). Thus,

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Clarke (2005, p. 67) argues that motion character is a pervasive and deep-seated

component of listeners responses to even quite simplified materials.

The broader implication is that music affords peculiarly direct insight into a

limitless variety of subjective experiences of motion and embodiment*real and

virtual (Clarke, 2005, p. 90). According to sociologist Tia DeNora (1999, p. 54),

music is a material that actors use to elaborate, to fill out and fill in, to themselves

and to others, modes of aesthetic agency and with it subjective stances and

identities. Other researchers (e.g., Watt & Ash, 1998) have found evidence that

listeners are prone to hear person-like qualities in music, from which they conclude

that musical motion is commonly experienced as an encounter with a virtual

person (as cited in Clarke,2005, p. 89). Perhaps, then, the phenomenon of virtual

motion can help us to understand the various kinds of agency experienced in and

through music in religious settings. Perhaps ecological investigations may reveal

patterns in the way that music is used to cultivate experiences of supernatural

agency (e.g., see Engelke, 2007; Luhrmann, 2012, pp. 2526, 33). The phenomenon

of virtual motion suggests a host of possible investigations into music as a source ofreligious meaning.

These enticing possibilities raise an important question, however: does an

ecological investigation of the environmental conditions of certain religious

experiences necessarily presume that these experiences are not as they are taken to

be*that is, encounters with divine presence? I suggest that one of the special virtues

of the ecological approach is that it leaves room for interpretation in this respect.

Granted, to explain the religious experience of personal presence in terms of virtual

motion does rule out certain positivistic interpretations of this experience qua

supernatural. However, as William James (1902/1982, p. 14) pointed out, to admit

that all religious experiences must have neural conditions does not preclude thepossibility that such experiences are bearers of genuine religious meaning and value.

A similar point can be made with regard to environmental conditions.

Moreover, it is important to recognize the difference between meaning and truth;

here I am concerned only with the former, and its relation to value. The most

sophisticated evaluations regarding the truth of religious experience*especially

pragmatic evaluations (e.g. Neville, 2009)*require careful interpretation in relation

to the wider context of lived religion, a context well beyond the scope of

investigations proposed here. What I have in mind are rather focused studies of

specifically religious and, preferably, highly structured behavior settings (Heft,

2001): a Hindu festival, a Shinto shrine, a Taoist funeral, or a Jewish celebration of

Sukkot. Even if such an investigation were to succeed in delivering a full

understanding of how a particular kind of behavior setting serves as a rich source

of religious meaning and value, this understanding would constitute only a first step

toward a pragmatic evaluation of religious truth.

7. Personal presence as a form of engagement

In this final section, I wish to address a form of religious experience that would seem

especially ill-suited to the ecological approach. This is the experience of religious

reality as personal presence and the use of mental imagery as the primary tool

for cultivating such an experience. Although these characteristics are fairly wide-spread in religious history, they are especially important to contemporary American



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neo-Pentecostal evangelicals (see Luhrmann, 2012). The experience of personal

presenceinside the mindwould seem to present a distinctly non-ecological variety of

religious experience: does it constitute an important wedge case that the ecological

approach must concede to constructivism?

Without moving too far into speculations about the psychological basis of

inwardly felt presence, two simple observations can help us make sense of the

phenomenon from an ecological point of view. The first is that the experience of

Gods presence in the feelings and thoughts of evangelical practitioners only

approximates the experience of ordinary personal presence. We know this because

it is extremely rare to experience Gods presence as the presence of an ordinary

person*for instance, when Gods voice is heard coming from a particular location

outside the head*and such experiences are not paradigmatic (Luhrmann,2012, pp.

173, 263). Most of the experiences of Gods presence that Luhrmann describes are

somewhat ambiguous with respect to the boundaries of self and other. The inwardly

felt presence of God is thus noticeably distinct from the presence of things and

persons encountered in the world.The second observation is that although Luhrmann is not always consistent

about the perceptual character of these experiences,11 much of the evidence she

provides suggests that, insofar as these experiences are perceptual, they are

characterized by a significant degree of interaction, even flow (Luhrmann, 2012,

pp. 146, 157158, 160, 200, 298). This interaction may not be as detailed, deep, or

coherent as that which is afforded by the environment. Nevertheless, insofar as the

inwardly felt presence of God is an interactive presence, perhaps it constitutes the

exception that proves the rule of ecological theory: perceptual experience is

constituted as such by the ecological conditions of interaction, however these

conditions are achieved.In the case of evangelicals who are capable of intense absorption and highly

practiced in the use of mental imagery during prayer, some region of the subjects

own experience seems to function as a kind of virtual environment, supporting a

kind of internal interaction that approximates a direct personal encounter.

Considering our capacity to indulge in extended inner dialogue, this is not such a

stretch. What makes these experiences exceptional is their especially vivid sense of

otherness. I have claimed that an important mark of otherness*what marks

perceptual experience as such*is value-character. Moreover, it seems that my

account of value-character fits well with Luhrmanns (2012, p. 239) observation that

experiences of presence are marked by effortless, even spontaneous, access to a high

degree of detail. What the ecological approach adds is the further claim that value-

character is dependent on extended interaction; it cannot be constructed. How such

an interaction could be achieved apart from engagement with the environment is a

matter for neurological investigation.

What about the special value that such experiences have? This is a question that

the ecological approach is better prepared to answer. I suggest that religious

experiences of personal presence should be considered in light of the wider

phenomenon of personification as a form of engagement. This is the experience of

non-human objects and events as manifesting person-like intentionality, and includes

what goes by the name of animism in many studies of hunter-gatherer cultures. As

argued by the anthropologist Tim Ingold (2000, 2011), animism is not so much abelief system as a set of techniques for skillful interaction with the non-human

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environment (see also Abram,1996). As argued in Section 2, the enrichment of value

and the refinement of skill go hand-in-hand, and in animistic cultures personification

is a crucial technology of the imagination that exemplifies this two-sided

development. Through personification, hunter-gatherer cultures refine their intimate

involvement with a particular habitat, and at the same time cultivate a richly

expressive set of rituals and art forms*

these are not separate developments but

interrelated aspects of a single, tightly integrated form of life (Barrett, forthcoming).

The reasons why personification might be particularly effective in this regard are

not hard to fathom. As Luhrmann (2012, p. 93) observes, ordinary human

interaction is extraordinarily dense*that is, characterized by extraordinarily rich

and multi-layered exchanges of information. Thus, one can readily imagine that

learning to engage non-human aspects of our environment in ways that approximate

interpersonal relations would likely entail, as a general feature, increased density of

interaction. To treat a non-human animal, thing, or occurrence (e.g., bear, river,

weather) as an intentional being is not simply to speculate about its thoughts, but to

regard it as having a distinctive causal personality to which one must carefullyattend and respond.

The point that I wish to emphasize is that the acquisition of this perceptual

skill is marked by increased value-character. Not all personalized interactions

are enjoyed as value-rich, of course. My point is that the more personal our

relations become, the more individuality is realized in and through the relation-

ship; and this realization is a measure of both skill and value-richness. To

personalize a relationship is to make it more finely responsive andto make it more

appreciative at the same time: these enhancements of skill and value are two sides

of the same coin.

The notion of personification as a form of skillful engagement and value-richexperience might seem to be a long way from evangelical spirituality. And yet, by

Luhrmanns (2012, p. 10) account, the yearning of evangelicals for the personal

presence of God is closely intertwined with their desire to experience the world as

good. Indeed, her account suggests that the deepest yearnings for presence have to

do with the search for a life worth living, as one pastor put it (Luhrmann,

2012, p. 338). For these evangelicals, to feel Gods presence is to feel more fully

alive, and to feel themselves and the world as worthy of Gods love (Luhrmann,

2012, p. 342).

Thus, what needs to be appreciated in Luhrmanns account is the way in which

this deeper goal of value-enhancement is realized, albeit fitfully, in and through the

cultivation of perceptual skills, the immediate object of which is the presence of God.

It does not seem to be the case that the presence of God, once perceived, supports an

abstract, intellectual conclusion that the world is good. Nor does it seem that

experiencing Gods presence leads subsequently to the experience of the world as

good. Rather, it seems that perceiving the presence of God is howthe goodness of the

world is made available to evangelicals in experience. The experience of personal

divine presence is a way of experiencing life (Luhrmann, 2012, p. 11), and when it

succeeds, it seems to be an abundant source of value.

Of course, when presented in this way, it is possible to view the imagery of

personal divine presence as a feel-good trick: the value that it provides is merely

decorative and says nothing about the way the world really is. On the other hand, it isalso possible to see the enjoyment of deep and abiding value as confirming evidence



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for religious belief in a personal God. Again, a virtue of the ecological approach is

that it would allow researchers to study religious practices as sources of value while

remaining neutral on larger questions of religious truth. Nevertheless, it should be

recognized that while questions of value and truth should be distinguished (like

meaning and truth), they are not fully separable. Indeed, the evangelical example

shows how closely related they can be, and I would argue that this is the norm in

religious practice. Moreover, the evangelical example suggests that to interpret the

religious truth of personal presence requires careful consideration of its symbolic role

in engagement (Neville, 2009). Accordingly, perhaps a fuller understanding of the

value-richness of religious practices would lead to more sophisticated articulations of

religious truth claims.

8. Conclusion

The cognitive science of religion is sometimes portrayed as a welcome corrective to

studies of religion that prioritize thick description and interpretative under-standing (i.e.,verstehen) over scientific explanation. However, the standard cognitive

approach, which explains religious beliefs and experience in terms of underlying

information-processing mechanisms, necessarily widens the gap between insider and

outsider accounts*even when (or especially when) it aims at qualitative aspects such

as value. To explain the value of certain religious activities or objects in terms of

special qualities or unconscious mechanisms is to invoke a black box of religiosity;

such theories explain at the expense of understanding.

In contrast, the ecological approach depends crucially on detailed ethnographic

studies of religious experience, including participatory accounts. At the same time,

the self-conscious undertaking of an ecological approach should orient these studiesin new ways and require new methods of empirical investigation. One cannot give an

ecological reading to ethnographic data that has already been collected without

attention to the ecological conditions of perception. Thus, an ecological study is not

merely descriptive or interpretive, but rather a specially directed way of interacting

with live religious phenomena. Moreover, an ecological framework can help to bring

greater objectivity*in the sense of intersubjectivity*to ethnographic studies, as it

requires the systematic comparison of at least two ways of interacting with the

meaningful features of a religious environment. But above all, the ecological

approach supports the scientific search for general explanations of religious

experience without discounting the special meaning and value that such experiencescan have.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the two anonymous reviewers for their extraordinarily helpful commentson an earlier draft of this essay.

Notes

1. This section draws from a number of sources outside ecological psychology, especially

American pragmatism and process philosophy (e.g., Alexander,1985; Dewey, 1929/1958,1934/1980; Whitehead, 1929/1979). A special debt is owed to the axiological metaphysics

144 N.F. Barrett


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of Robert C. Neville (see 1981, 1989, 1995), although no attempt at metaphysicalgenerality is made here. Elsewhere in psychology, Sigmund Koch (1999) is notable for hisdefense of intrinsic value properties, but despite his appreciation for the work ofGibson he remained tied to a constructivist framework (see Koch, 1999, pp. 221223).As an interactive theory of value-rich experience, the well-known flow theory ofMihaly Csikszentmihalyi (see Nakamura & Csikszentmihalyi,2005) is perhaps closer tothe view presented here.

2. Thus the discrimination of contrast exhibits the triadic pattern of semiosis as describedby Charles Peirce: a contrast (or sign) determines a habit of organism behavior (orinterpretant) in relation to some feature of the environment (or object) (see Buchler,1955,pp. 99100).

3. On the other hand, the value of a contrast is objective insofar as the discriminatedfeature really is (or is not) important in the respects signified by the contrast as adeterminant of behavior. An evaluation of this objective value usually requires referenceto a wider context of purposeful activity (e.g., in the case of the bacterium, the search fornourishment).

4. By value-character I mean richness and depth of contrast, which I believe isubiquitous in human perceptual experience and may or may not be enjoyed as valuable,

while experiences of intrinsic value are, by definition, enjoyed as such.5. Taves methodology includes studies of the interactive dimension of religious

experience, but this seems largely confined to social processes of meaning attribution.6. Environmental structures and the like would fit under her second type of data, which

Taves entitles observable data. But she defines this as verbal and other expressivebehavior in real time, that is, in terms of the subjects response (Taves, 2009, p. 69).

7. The attribution of religious meaning is of course an important factor in religiousexperience broadly defined. But it is not a component of perceptual experience as I amdescribing it here.

8. The charismatic evangelical experiences that Luhrmann chose to study are especiallyhard to nail down in this respect because they make such extensive use of mentalimagery. Indeed, because of this internal emphasis, Luhrmanns study poses a special

challenge to the ecological approach that I will take up in a later section.9. As explained in the following section, because of the coupling of perception and action,

the intrinsic and extrinsic dynamics of perception are interdependent.10. Clarke (2005, p. 16) points out some fairly compelling evidence that we directly perceive

complex or high-level features of music such as the way we so readily identify a songor genre from a snippet heard on the radio*but these examples are not conclusive.

11. For instance, when Luhrmann (2012, p. 63) describes the direct experience of God as theability to authentically experience what feels like inner thought as God-generated, sheseems to be wavering between interpretation and something more direct and perceptual.

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146 N.F. Barrett
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/09/05/mystery-and-evidencehttp://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/09/05/mystery-and-evidencehttp://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/09/05/mystery-and-evidencehttp://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/09/05/mystery-and-evidence


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COMMENTARIES

The value of affordances

Luis H. Favela and Anthony Chemero*

Departments of Philosophy and Psychology, University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, OH, USA

Ecological psychology (see Gibson,1979) is generally thought of as comprising two

main claims. The first is that perception is direct insofar as it is not the result of

information added to sensory representations. The second is that perception is

comprised ofaffordances (at least most of the time) or opportunities for action that

exist in the environment. Barrett explores the possibility of giving an objective

account of perceiving religious meaning and value by means of ecological

psychology. The attempt to utilize ecological psychology to account for values is

not without precedent, however. Jayawickreme and Chemero (2008), for instance,

used the ecological concept of affordance to sketch an account of both virtues and

morally relevant situations. Surprisingly, Barrett never mentions this central

ecological concept, choosing instead to focus solely on the directness of perception.

We believe that this constricts his ecological account of religious value. While we

agree with Barrett that the cognitive science of religion treats presence as an insiders

experience, such that religious experience is a black box phenomenon, intractable,

and mysterious, and that ecological theory might provide an account of values, we

are not convinced by his particular attempt at an ecological account of religious

meaning.

Barrett begins by claiming that there are two dimensions to religious meaning.

The first is the accessible dimension, labeled as such because it refers to the aspect of

religious meaning that can be articulated and reported. The second is the inaccessible

dimension, labeled as such because it refers to the aspect of religious meaning that is

first person in nature and is really felt by the practitioner. This dimension can also

be referred to as felt presence. Barrett claims that the motivation for which

religious practitioners want to feel this presence is actually a motivation to search

for religious value. According to Barrett, presence is the perceptual experience of

meaning and religious value comes from presence as a perceptual experience.

Perceptual experiences come in various forms such as participation in religious

ceremonies and rituals. These ceremonies and rituals give rise to religious meaning.

Thus, when a religious practitioner carries out a ritual, meaning emerges from the

interaction of the agent acting in the environment of the ritual itself, and this

experience, in toto, constitutes religious value.

Barretts ecological theory is intended to account for the outsiders perspective of

the religious experience. Ecological theory is readily capable of addressing religious

experience because, as Barrett describes it, the ecological approach views meaning

as a basic property of the interactive relationship between an organism and its

environment. It is the ecological approachs emphasis on meaning as a directly

perceived environmental property, not a private creation of the computational mind,

*Corresponding author.Email:[email protected]

mailto:[email protected]:[email protected]:[email protected]


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that is appealing to Barrett. It also appeals to us. With the ecological approach,

Barrett believes that investigations can quantify interactions to obtain descriptions

of how religious meaning occurs. The objects of investigation are the practitioners in

rituals, ceremonies, and the like. In this way, religious meanings become accessible to

outsiders, that is to say, in the manner that ecological psychologists quantify

meanings in terms of affordances. We will address the issue of affordances below.

However, as Barrett explicitly states, value remains inaccessible because value is a

perceptual experience available only to the participant in the ritual*only to the

believer.

Barretts goal is to utilize ecological theory to give an objective account of the

second dimension of religious experience, that is, the feeling of presence. Barrett is

clear that the second dimension cannot be articulated and is inaccessible to outsiders.

Nonetheless, he claims that ecological theory can give a description of the conditions

that give rise to presence. Yet we contend: how does an investigator know if

conditions give rise to presence, which is a phenomenon that is not reportable? Note,

we utilize reportable here in a broad sense in terms of objectively quantifiable;for instance, an experiment participant verbally reporting or pushing a button, or an

experimenter recording measurements of an activity.

We are not claiming that Barrett cannot apply ecological theory because the

phenomenon he wishes to account for is representation-hungry (see Chemero,

2009; van Rooij, Bongers, & Haselager, 2002). In other words, we are not claiming

that the perceptual, religious experiences discussed by Barrett reveal the limitations

of ecological psychology in accounting for certain cognitive capacities. Rather, what

is at issue is that, in the manner in which Barrett has set up the problem spa

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the Perception of Religious Meaning and Value: An Ecological Approach