Investigating the Factors Influencing the Enhancement of Social Environment Affordances Introduction (original) (raw)
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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...
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...
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.
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.
Dispensing with the theory (and philosophy) of affordances
Theory & Psychology, 2020
This article will contest the claim made by many ecological psychologists that affordances are invariantly the objects of perception. First of all, the lack of agreement concerning what affordances actually are, what their true nature is, is considerable. Second, the metaphysico-ontological debate has obscured the important misunderstanding consisting in conceiving of affordances as ecological objects or entities of any kind. Third, an appropriate analysis of the notion of affordance will show that this concept is not primarily devoted to perception, and believing that it is has unnecessarily impoverished what we (can) see in our environment. From a Wittgensteinian and an ethnomethodological approach, to make sense of the relation between ourselves and our environments we should use only those concepts available to us, and the internal relation between our everyday concepts and the way we invoke them in practice will be shown. No theory of meaning is needed here.
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.
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.
Affordances can invite behavior: Reconsidering the relationship between affordances and agency
The concept of agency has been central to ecological approaches to psychology. Gibson, one of the founders of this movement, made room for this concept by arguing against the mechanistic conceptions in psychology. In his view, the environment is not a collection of causes that pushes the animal around, but consist of action possibilities, which he coined affordances. In making their way in the world, animals regulate their behavior with respect to these possibilities. Reed later developed this ecological conception of agency, following Gibson in conceiving of affordances as action possibilities. However, drawing upon industrial design, architecture, and phenomenology, we argue that affordances are not mere action possibilities but that they can also invite behavior. We suggest a mutualist perspective on invitations, suggesting that they depend on the animal–environment relationship in multiple dimensions. The implications of this new conception of affor- dances for the ecological account of agency are explored.
Bagh-e Nazar, 2020
Problem statement: Some natural or collective urban landscapes and their behavioral settings, due to the interferences and abnormal human changes in the configuration of their bodies, face a decline in environmental affordances or an imbalance in the utilization ratio among citizens. In some cases, environmental changes, in addition to reducing the quality of location, are associated with the decline of the natural landscape and the body. Therefore, recognizing the damages and creating maximum compatibility between citizens’ mental and behavioral patterns with environmental stimuli and the physical configuration of the work is essential in the qualitative changes of the environment. “Koohrig” in Mehriz of Yazd province is among the natural landscapes that its physical changes have damaged and weakened the quality and affordance of the environment in this behavioral setting, especially for women, whereas in the past it was the dominant territory of this group. Research objective: This article tries to investigate the causes and factors that reduce the environmental affordance, enjoyment, and contradictions between Koohrig’s behavioral setting and the institutional behavior of citizens and presents solutions. To supply maximum compatibility between behavioral patterns contradictory to the environmental nature, and to reduce its physical and qualitative damages. Research Method: The present research has been conducted via a descriptive-analytical and phenomenological method. Conclusion: Factors such as environmental fragmentation formed by improper actions, separation and abrupt differentiations of spaces, and the creation of edges in Koohrig, which are in conditions different from the introvert mental and behavioral space of citizens and even the previous pristine landscape, have weakened the affordance of environment and its landscape. Abnormal environmental changes cause the pause and the entrance of people, especially women, to mental privacies and intensify the institutionalized mental meanings (such as introversion, privacy, invisibility, and so on) and the emergence of behaviors corresponding with it. For this purpose, it is necessary to avoid changes inconsistent with the context nature, to remove environmental fragmentations and to change the environmental changes gradually as a soft attraction in the direction of the different nature of mass extroversion.