An Outline of a Theory of Affordances

Abstract

A theory of affordances is outlined according to which affordances are relations be-tween the abilities of animals and features of the environment. As relations, affordances are both real and perceivable but are not properties of either the environ-ment 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 primary difference between direct and inferential theories of perception con-cerns the location of perceptual content, the meaning of our perceptions. In infer-ential theories of perception, these meanings arise inside animals, based on their interactions with the physical environment. Light, for example, bumps into recep-tors, causing a sensation. The animal (or its brain) performs inferences on the sen-sation, yielding a meaningful perception. In direct theories of perception, on the other hand, meaning is in the environment, and perception does not depend on meaning-conferring inferences; instead, the animal simply gathers information from a meaning-laden environment. However, if the environment contains mean-ings, then it cannot be merely physical. This places a heavy theoretical burden on direct theories of perception, a burden so severe that it may outweigh all the advan-tages to conceiving perception as direct.1 This is because direct theories of percep-tion require a new ontology, one that is at odds with today’s physicalist, reductionist consensus that says the world just is the physical world, full stop.