Epistemic status: a tale, a collection of archetypes

The tree.

From my fourth-floor window, I can see the branches of an oak tree moving in the wind. However, these movements are radically different from the movements of an animal. They are a pure reaction to the environment; they come from outside the organism.

Though a tree is alive, it is an active being that is sensing its environment and adapts. It doesn’t change its movements; it changes its shape—this is what its movement looks like. This shape is carefully designed such that when an external element comes in contact with its body, the movement that results will work well. The branches are flexible enough to bend without breaking, the weight of the crown is balanced, the trunk is straight to resist gravity.

Of course, as humans, we are fascinated when trees or other plants operate at our timescales. When sunflowers follow the sun, when carnivorous plants suddenly close their jaws on a fly, when the acacia folds its leaves during the night. But these are the exception rather than the rule. This is the plant world seen through the lenses of the busy human addicted to movement. The bread and butter of the plant kingdom is growth, a slow and long game—crafting the shape that will move in response to the elements, not crafting the movements themselves.

If you swap a tree for a human, you get a symbol of grief, resignation, and perseverance. There is no room for a tree to be angry or to hold on to the world being a certain way, because it has no means to change the world. It has to do with what it has; no matter the harshness of drought, the pollution in the soil, the rocks that resist its roots. There is no other way than to adapt, to keep growing, despite everything.

The fly.

Where I see a glass of water, a fly sees a range of transparent smooth cliffs with a little lake trapped inside. It is not an object it can influence in any way.

When I see a glass of water, I unconsciously notice whether it is filled, whether I should fill it up. I don’t see the shape of the glass as it is; I see where my fingers will land if I decide to grab it. In this sense, a glass of water is very different from a static piece of environment like a streetlight. It is a bundle of potential actions that percolate into my perceptions; it is full of affordances.

The fly only has a few ways to interact with the environment. Its main action is to move—flying or walking to reach a target, or to explore. The fly doesn’t change the environment. It doesn’t move any object; it doesn’t add nor remove matter beyond the food it eats and the excrement and eggs it creates.

From its senses, it perceives the shapes, the colors, the air currents, the sounds. And on top of that, its affordances are made of food opportunities, flags for potential dangers of a large flat surface crushing it, chemical gradients pointing towards potential sexual partners or candidate spots to lay eggs. But most of its world is obstacles to fly around or spots where it can land.

There is likely no complex world model, no decomposition into objects that can be combined to reach a certain state. Despite its ability to move, a fly is still very close to the tree. The environment is a given, and it selects from it, adapts to find what it needs for life.

The dog.

Contrary to the fly, the dog can change the world. It doesn’t see the glass of water with all the affordances I see (it has no fingers to manipulate it precisely), but it can at least make it fall. Objects are perceive with their physical properties: their weight, their balance, how the dog’s jaws can hold them.

The dog’s life is bound to the present. It goes through emotions without considering their consequences. It feels the raw excitement when it wants to go out, the distress when its owner leaves for the holidays that it perceives like an abandonment, the joy when they finally come back.

The dog can follow a daily routine, like picking up the newspaper from the mailbox every morning. It can also learn to solve puzzles and tricks. But they involve learning routines where each decision is taken by reacting to the state of its observation here and now, without planning ahead.

It doesn’t imagine what it will eat tomorrow. It doesn’t move pieces in its head, doesn’t combine its actions in a long sequence like how a human could plan for a cooking recipe.

The ant.

The ant is an interesting middle ground between the dog and the fly. It has mandibles, appendages that allow it to manipulate pieces of the world precisely. But it lives at the same scale as the fly, in the minuscule world where little persists, where a gust of wind can teleport you into a totally different universe in the blink of an antenna.

Because of its ability to manipulate objects, it must have a rich world of affordances. Many objects that are just “landing spots” for the fly are potential grabbing targets for the ants to bring back food or other materials to the colony. Here is a tiny stick that would fit for the roof of the nest, this insect can be grabbed from this side of its leg, etc. But because of the chaotic dynamics of this scale, better be robust than complex, hence each object is seen in isolation.

Another interesting aspect of the ant is the collective aspect. Certain species of ants can create collective bridges to connect a gap that is too wide for a single insect to cross by making chains of bodies, attached to their neighbors with their mandibles. This allows the rest of the group to cross the gap.

In this situation, where is the affordance perceived? The first ant must see the large gap and decide to start holding on the edge of this leaf like its life depends on it. And the next ones will continue, holding on the edge of the half-built living bridge until it is complete.

These individual affordances only make sense from a collective point of view. Could we say that the collective itself perceives an affordance?

The farmer. (intended here to represent a farmer from the 18th century in a rural area of Europe.)

The farmer is able to untie himself from the present. He can explicitly unfold a succession of tasks. He projects in his head how to go about building this new farm with his neighbors, or how to dry the harvest after the rain dampens them.

Over the course of a year, his action unfolds following a cycle. He doesn’t think for long about whether to go to work in the morning, or which activities the day will be filled with. There is the natural calendar, the succession of the seasons to follow.

In this regard, the farmer’s view of the world looks like the worldview of the dog. He follows rhythms, habits, and cycles, though of longer timescales, and he can mobilize more creativity to solve problems on the way.

The businessman.

The businessman breaks the cycles. He opens the loop of time and straightens it into a line that gets lost in infinity. There is no routine to follow anymore. The day is filled with deliberation on how to pick the best course of action, what should be read, who should be contacted. At its root, there is a striving to become better, of accumulating more recognition, status. The potentialities are unlimited, and every path is considered to get more, to become more. More options; futures open even more broadly.

This is why he is pursuing the affordance that replaces all affordances: money. He invented the ultimate philosopher’s stone that turns paper into anything you wish. The numbers can range several powers of ten without losing the hunger, never feeling satisfied.

The world, people included, becomes play-dough that can be molded to his ambition. If you don’t make others play your game, then you are playing their game. The calendar becomes a resource to mine; timeslots become battlefields.

The farmer’s manipulation of objects is out of the picture. He still takes action through his biological appendages, but through tools that allow for a higher bandwidth. He puts his human mandibles in contact with keyboards, mice, or tactile screens. He speaks on the phone to give orders to other humans acting on his behalf.

All of his environment has been crafted for actions to emanate from him, so that the smallest though can take effect in the world ASAP.

The whole society slowly becomes filled with businessmen. Everyone ought to have personal ambition, aiming at becoming more. There is no cycle to follow. The future becomes an empty place you have to build for yourself. But what is worth wishing for if there is nowhere to come back to?