Affordances: Definitions
From special issue of Ecological Psychology 15.2 (2003): “How Shall Affordances Be Refined? Four Perspectives” [pdf on laptop]
1) From Keith S. Jones (ed.), “What Is an Affordance?” (pp. 107-13)
“An affordance concerns personal and environmental properties taken in reference to each other.” (p. 109)
“an affordance implies something about how animals and environments complement one another.” (p. 112)
Citing Gibson:
“When the constant properties of constant objects are perceived … the observer can detect their affordances. I have coined this word as a substitute for values, a term which carries an old burden of philosophical meaning. I mean simply what things furnish, for good or ill. What they afford the observer, after all, depends on their properties.”“ (p. 111)
2) From Thomas A. Stoffregen, “Affordances as Properties of the Animal-Environment System” (115-134)
“Affordances are emergent properties of the animal-environment system.” (p. 116)
“Affordances are what one can do, not what one must do.” (p. 119)
“Affordances are properties of the animal-environment system, and they exist only at the level of the animal-environment system.” (p. 124)
“Affordances are opportunities for action.” (p. 124)
“Because they arise from relations between animals and environment, affordances are emergent properties of the animal-environment system.” (124)
3) Claire F. Michaels, “Affordances: Four Points of Debate” (pp. 135-47)
Affordances = “what the environment offers to animals” (p. 135)
Affordances are “action-referential properties of the environment that may or may not be perceived.” (p. 137)
“The theory of affordances is the theory of meaning in ecological psychology.” (138)
Affordances = “the actions that can be performed, with respect to some object or event in the environment.” (p. 143)
4) Harry Heft, “Affordances, Dynamic Experience, and the Challenge of Reification” (pp. 149-80) (this essay takes a phenomenological approach to affordances, with many references to William James)
“At a basic, prereflective level of awareness, prior to the abstractions … all humans so readily perform on immediate experience, we perceive our everyday environment as a place of functionally meaningful objects and events.” “aboriginal mode of awareness” (p. 151)
Following from William James:
“Affordances are percepts … Affordances have the unreflective, immediate qualities that make them sources of knowledge of acquaintance.” (James distinguishes “knowledge of acquaintance” and “knowledge-about.”) (p. 155)
“Affective and motivational qualities are intrinsic to affordances. Awareness of affordances typically is an intertwining of knowing, feeling, and acting.” (155)
“Affordances are perceived in the course of action; they are part of a flow of activity and awareness. ... In contrast, concepts (conceptual experience) are apparent ‘pauses’ in the flow of action.” (p. 155)
“what cannot be rejected is the reality of affordances.“ (p. 156)
Citing Gibson: “‘Perceiving is …. a keeping-in-touch with the world, an experiencing of things.’” (p. 156)
An affordance is “a dynamic functional relation embedded in on-going person and environment processes” (p. 173)
“Affordances are multidimensional.” (p. 157)
“... with affordances we do enter indeed the world of ‘oughts’ — that is, the world of values.” (p. 157)
“If we take the long view offered by a socio-cultural perspective, and recognize that the environments in which we live are mostly constructed and sustained through human activities, affordances can be seen as embedded in ongoing collective social activities. The products of collective processes over time constitute the context for subsequent human actions, and so on in a continuous manner. In this way, some of the affordance possibilities that exist at any particular time reflect earlier sociohistorical actions and choices, and they serve as a platform for future endeavors.” (p. 177)
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