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In this article Kirsh tries to re-define the notion of task space, in order to move it away from the classic abstract symbolic notion proposed by Newell & Simon (1972). The whole problem stems from a dualistic perspective that seperates agent from environment.

The first move was through notions external and distributed cognition that extended the notion of cognitive agent outside human skin: so we study the (experimenter+microscope) as a unified perceptual system (Kirsh cites Gibson,1979 here), rather than the experimenter interacting with the laboratory equipment.

So a pragmatic approach to the unit of analysis might be more fruitful. As Kirsh suggests: “It is by now fairly obvious that where we draw the boundary between agent and environment depends on the nature of the explanation we wish to provide and its level or focus of analysis.”

References

• Newell, A., & Simon, H. A. (1972). Human Problem Solving: Englewood Cliffs, NJ.
• Gibson, J. J. (1979). The Ecological Approach to Visual Perceptin. Boston: Houghton-Mifflin.

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