Erik Rietveld (University of Amsterdam)
Erik Rietveld’s research is organized around three main themes: the philosophy of unreflective skilled action, affordance-based design in architecture, and the phenomenology of patients with Deep Brain Stimulation (DBS).
The philosophy of unreflective skillful action investigates activities that we do without deliberation in everyday life, for example riding a bike or moving to an appropriate distance from others in an elevator, as well as in expert performance, e.g. the way architects may intuitively improve a design. It is a young, broad domain with lots of potential because of its importance for cognitive science and fundamental issues in philosophy. The possibilities for action provided to us by the environment, or ‘affordances’, are crucial for understanding unreflective skilled action.
Besides fundamental research in philosophy Erik is also experimenting with what he calls ‘Translational Embodied Cognition’. The aim is first to translate the philosophical insights via in depth collaborations to concrete testable hypotheses for other academic disciplines such as psychology or neuroscience (with Nico Frijda and Richard Ridderinkhof, both University of Amsterdam) as well as to convincing proof-of-concept work for real-world applications in architecture and medical practice. These applications, in turn, function as reality checks of his philosophical framework and generate new input and feedback on it.
Veni and Vidi grants awarded by the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) and the Research Council of the Academic Medical Center (AMC) have allowed Erik Rietveld to initiate a unique collaboration with Damiaan Denys (AMC Psychiatry/KNAW-NIN) on the phenomenology of patients with Deep Brain Stimulation. The PhD-student who works full-time on this project is Sanneke de Haan. Together they are developing an affordance-based framework to understand the changes in phenomenology that the patients experience as a result of the DBS-treatment. Their forthcoming article in BBS (see references) gives a first impression of this novel framework.
Erik Rietveld publishes frequently in international philosophy journals (e.g. Mind, Inquiry, Phenomenology & the Cognitive Sciences) and interdisciplinary journals (e.g. Frontiers, Behavioral & Brain Sciences, BBS).
HyperAffordanceGrip
One of the crucial notions in Merleau-Ponty’s (1942, 1945) early work is the tendency towards an optimal grip (Dreyfus, 2008). This phenomenon is important for understanding our adequate, situated interactions with the material and social environment (Rietveld, 2008). I have argued that function of bodily or, better, skilled intentionality is the tendency towards an optimal grip on the field of affordances (Rietveld, 2012; Rietveld, De Haan & Denys, forthcoming BBS). Affordances are the possibilities for action provided to us by the environment (Gibson, 1979). I will present the results of an ethnographic pilot study at Rietveld Landscape – using the method of participant observation (Brouwers, in preparation) – of expert architects at work in order to develop these ideas. This sheds new light on various aspects of distributed social cognition. The expert architect is selectively and simultaneously responsive to multiple affordances, manifesting what I would like to call ‘HyperAffordanceGrip’.
References:
Brouwers, A., (in preparation) Een etnografische studie naar de ontwerp-praktijk bij ontwerp en onderzoeksbureau Rietveld Landscape.
Dreyfus, H.L. (2008) Why Heideggerian AI failed and how fixing it would require making it more Heideggerian. In Husbands, P., Holland, O. and Wheeler, M., eds. The Mechanical Mind in History. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, pp. 331-71.
Gibson, J.J. (1979) The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception. Boston: Houghton Lifflin.
Merleau-Ponty, M. (1942/1983) The Structure of Behavior (Fisher, A.L., trans.). Pittsburg, PA: Duquesne University Press.
Merleau-Ponty, M. (1945/2002) Phenomenology of Perception (Smith, C., trans.). London: Routledge.
Rietveld, E. (2008) Situated normativity: The normative aspect of embodied cognition in unreflective action. Mind 117 (468), pp. 973-1001.
Rietveld, E. (2012) Bodily intentionality and social affordances in context, in Paglieri, F. (ed.) Consciousness in Interaction. The Role of the Natural and Social Context in Shaping Consciousness. Amsterdam: J. Benjamins, pp. 207-226.
Rietveld, E., De Haan, S. & Denys, D (forthcoming), Social affordances in context: What is it that we are bodily responsive to? Invited commentary article on Schilbach et al., Behavioral and Brain Sciences.