Prefatory Notes to Kiverstein, van Dijk and Reitveld (2019) The field and landscape of affordance: Koffka’s two environments revisited (original) (raw)
Related papers
The field and landscape of affordances: Koffka's two environments revisited
Synthese, 2019
The smooth integration of the natural sciences with everyday lived experience is an important ambition of radical embodied cognitive science. In this paper we start from Koffka's recommendation in his Principles of Gestalt Psychology that to realize this ambition psychology should be a "science of molar behaviour". Molar behavior refers to the purposeful behaviour of the whole organism directed at an environment that is meaningfully structured for the animal. Koffka made a sharp distinction between the "behavioural environment" and the "geographical environment". We show how this distinction picks out the difference between the environment as perceived by an individual organism, and the shared publicly available environment. The ecological psychologist James Gibson was later critical of Koffka for inserting a private phenomenal reality in between animals and the shared environment. Gibson tried to make do Our thanks to 123 Synthese with just the concept of affordances in his explanation of molar behaviour. We argue however that psychology as a science of molar behaviour will need to make appeal both to the concepts of shared publicly available affordances, and of the multiplicity of relevant affordances that invite an individual to act. A version of Koffka's distinction between the two environments remains alive today in a distinction we have made between the field and landscape of affordances. Having distinguished the two environments , we go on to provide an account of how the two environments are related. Koffka suggested that the behavioural environment forms out of the causal interaction of the individual with a pre-existing, ready-made geographical environment. We argue that such an account of the relation between the two environments fails to do justice to the complex entanglement of the social with the material aspects of the geographical environment. To better account for this sociomaterial reality of the geographical environment, we propose a process-perspective on our distinction between the landscape and field of affordances. While the two environments can be conceptually distinguished, we argue they should also be viewed as standing in a relation of reciprocal and mutual dependence.
2014
Habitat, the environment where people dwell and have their everyday life and activities, has characteristics and features that afford opportunities for social practices and actions, and that communicate meanings. Individuals and collectives, through these social practices and activities, assign meanings to habitat. The relationship between habitat and individuals is thus mutual. But there is no consensus as to how the fit between environments and individuals works. In other words, what is the congruence between people and habitats made of and how can it be studied, and what happens when features of the environment and/or characteristics of people are shaped or changed? This paper proposes a conceptual framework using Barker’s concept of behavior setting and Gibson’s notion of affordance for the study of habitat and its meanings. Habitat can be conceptualized as consisting of several behavior settings (BS). A BS is a higher order environmental structure which is suited to certain beh...
Affordance and behavior setting: a multi-level ecological perspective in the study of habitat
Habitat, the environment where people dwell and have their everyday life and activities, has characteristics and features that afford opportunities for social practices and actions, and that communicate meanings. Individuals and collectives, through these social practices and activities, assign meanings to habitat. The relationship between habitat and individuals is thus mutual. But there is no consensus as to how the fit between environments and individuals works. In other words, what is the congruence between people and habitats made of and how can it be studied, and what happens when features of the environment and/or characteristics of people are shaped or changed? This paper proposes a conceptual framework using Barker's concept of behavior setting and Gibson's notion of affordance for the study of habitat and its meanings. Habitat can be conceptualized as consisting of several behavior settings (BS). A BS is a higher order environmental structure which is suited to cer...
A. Chemero, “An Outline of a Theory of Affordances”, Ecological Psychology, 15, 2, 181-195, 2003.
A theory of affordances is outlined according to which affordances are relations between the abilities of animals and features of the environment. As relations, affordances are both real and perceivable but are not properties of either the environment or the animal. I argue that this theory has advantages over extant theories of affordances and briefly discuss the relations among affordances and niches, perceivers, and events.
The Spaces of Human and Animal Perception
This thesis is a discussion of the nature of perception with the debate between Hubert Dreyfus and John McDowell as a springboard into an investigation of the perceptual similarities, and differences, between human and animal perception. I criticize Dreyfus’ lack of commitment to the idea that humans and animals share a “space of motivations” through what I call the theory of “cultural penetration.” It is my claim that when it comes to the nature of human perception, Dreyfus is committed to a Heideggerian holism that deepens the perceptual divide between us and other animals. I then bring in J.J. Gibson, who through his ecological approach comes closer to conceiving of the similarities of human and animal perception through his concept of “affordances” – a concept that both Dreyfus and McDowell uses, albeit with a different focus than Gibson. However, it turns out that Gibson’s theory has drawbacks of its own, as the generality of “affordances” in Gibson’s conceptual scheme renders them ambiguous. as “affordances” are ambiguous in Gibson’s conceptual scheme through their generality. The fact that “affordances” are shared between species can, on Gibson’s’ view render the similarities between us and other animals trivial. A philosopher I claim helps open up a discussion of the fundamental similarities, while retaining inherent differences between humans and animals by bringing in much needed animal examples is Alasdair McIntyre, whose views I will discuss at the end of the thesis.
Philosophy of Science, 2003
I examine the central theoretical construct of ecological psychology, the concept of an affordance. In the first part of the paper, I illustrate the role affordances play in Gibson's theory of perception. In the second part, I argue that affordances are to be understood as dispositional properties, and explain what I take to be their characteristic background circumstances, triggering circumstances and manifestations. The main purpose of my analysis is to give affordances a theoretical identity enriched by Gibson's visionary insight, but independent of the most controversial claims of the Gibsonian movement.
In this paper we reject the nature-culture dichotomy by means of the idea of affordance or possibility for action, which has important implications for landscape theory. Our hypothesis is that, just as the idea of affordance can serve to overcome the subjective-objective dichotomy, the ideas of landscape and ecological niche, properly defined, would allow us to also transcend the nature-culture dichotomy. First, we introduce an overview of landscape theory, emphasizing processual landscape theory as the most suitable approach for satisfying both cultural and naturalist approaches. After that, we introduce the idea of affordance and we analyse a tension between sociocultural and transcultural affordances (affordances that depend on cultural conventions and affordances that depend on lawful information and bodily aspects of agents). This tension has various implications for landscape theory and ecological niches. Our proposal is that sociocultural and transcultural aspects of affordances could be systematically accommodated if we apply niche construction theory (the theory that explains the process by which organisms modify their selective environments) as a methodological framework for explaining the emergence of ecological niches. This approach will lead us to an integrative explanation of landscapes as the products of the interaction between human and environmental elements, making it a clear example of a concept that transcends the nature-culture dichotomy.
In her article "Information, Perception, and Action: What Should Ecological Psychologists Learn From Milner and Goodale (1995)?" Michaels (2000) reached 2 conclusions that run very much against the grain of ecological psychology. First, she claimed that affordances are not perceived but simply acted on; second, because of this, perception and action ought to be conceived separately. These conclusions are based on a misinterpretation of empirical evidence that is, in turn, based on a conflation of 2 proper objects of perception: objectively specified objects with properties and affordances.
An Outline of a Theory of Affordances
Ecological Psychology, 2003
A theory of affordances is outlined according to which affordances are relations between the abilities of animals and features of the environment. As relations, affordances are both real and perceivable but are not properties of either the environment or the animal. I argue that this theory has advantages over extant theories of affordances and briefly discuss the relations among affordances and niches, perceivers, and events.