Abstract
In this paper we secure the explanatory value of affordances by treating them as relational properties and as inherently linked to unintentional movements and possible intentional actions. We distinguish between Basic affordances, which are related to unintentional movements, and Complex affordances, which are subjective (related to motor intentions) and executively controlled by individuals. The linkage between affordances and motor intentions allows for accounting for the infinite number of affordances that any given object potentially has. Appealing to objective systematic contingencies that provide the actor with information about the effects of her actions, allows for accounting for perception of affordances and for securing their explanatory value.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
Note that both Turvey and Scarantino exclude non-basic, higher-order, emerging properties from their analyses. Both refer to the properties they focus on as ‘intrinsic properties’, which we call ‘basic physical properties’.
Apart from this epistemological notion of ‘objective’ there are also different ones, e.g. ontological (meaning that the existence of the entity does not depend on the existence of a subject), and so forth.
We discuss the notion of direct perception in detail later. For now, it is worth clarifying that, unlike Gibson, we regard the question whether representations are involved in perception or not to be independent of the question whether perception is direct or not. In our view, perception is nothing but having representations, while representations are not mediating perception – they rather constitute it. Perception can then still be direct in the sense that no inferences (or even any further representations) are involved.
The fact that properties are ascribed to objects does not exclude that these properties exist independently of the ascription. What is key here is that they are ascribed to objects rather than to subjects, i.e. we use them to classify objects, e.g. as sit-on-able.
Turvey construes affordances as “objective properties”, in the broad sense of the term – properties that exist independently of our minds. However, given that “objective properties” in this paper designate objectively or universally perceived properties, and in the interest of clarity, we do not use this characterization here. It is also worth clarifying that the claim that affordances are a distinct ontological category should be understood against the classical distinction between primary qualities (shape, solidity, etc.) and secondary qualities (color, smell, etc.) (cf. Locke, (1690/1975). Specifically, ecological psychologists construe affordances as a third category of properties – ones that concern possibilities for bodily interactions. Moreover, these possibilities are said to be ‘real’ possibilities as opposed to being merely “epistemic possibilities”, e.g. “conceptual possibility or uncertainty” (Turvey 1992: 174).
In fact, we claim that any perceived property that directly triggers a movement (including reflexes) has to be analyzed as a subjective property, in the aforementioned sense. They are implicitly related to the perceiver. For example, an object moving within my visual field might directly trigger a head movement. However, it is not the objectively perceptible movement per se that triggers my movement, but the specific implicit relation to me, i.e. not only the position of the moving object within my visual field but also the object’s proximity to me, that perhaps I perceive it suddenly and so forth.
Scarantino distinguishes between ‘doings’ and ‘happenings’. In the interest of simplicity we adopt the established distinction between doings and actions.
Note that Chemero allows for both predicational (this apple affords eat-ability or to be eaten) and non-predicational affordances (it’s raining or (being outside) affords getting wet) (2001:115).
For a critical discussion of the non-reductive, yet systematic relations between higher-order and lower-order properties called “emergent”, see Kim (2006).
It is on the grounds of direct perceptibility that Stoffregen rejects Turvey’s analysis.
But see, amongst others, Horowitz and Wolfe (e.g. 1998).
Note that direct perceptibility does not entail infallibility. For under the least favorable circumstances, one might fail to perceive the brown color as such. However, even under the most favorable circumstances one might perceive an affordance, which is not there – this seems to exclude colors.
See Fodor and Pylyshyn (1981) for a similar argument.
Recall at this point that our use of the words “learning” and “memory” is very broad, comprising the implicit, more association-like learning of artificial neural nets.
A similar point regards acquiring concepts by deference – consider for instance concepts like dinosaur, tiger, electron, and so forth (cf. Fodor 1994).
Here we appeal to the notion of motor intention as Butterfil and Sinigaglia (2014) define it. In particular, our aim is to emphasize the distinction between propositional intentional states involved in conceptual reasoning and motor-related intentional states involved in purposeful action.
Indeed, in addition to the sensory input we have to assume that the baby assigns some “utility” to certain sensations. Although we do not share the non-representationalist remarks, we refer the reader to the detailed mathematical model in Maye and Engels (2013) as an example of how such sensorimotor contingencies might be learned and exploited for action.
Despite doing so in light of experiences with instances of a given kind, our concepts refer to categories as a whole (cf _______[author’s paper, reference omitted for anonymous reviewing]).
Similarily, Withagen and Chemero (2012) claim that directly visible features do not dependably specify non-visible physical features (like solidness), which ground basic affordances (like supportability).
This containment-relation might not be mereological in the sense that unintentional movements are proper parts of actions. Still, one aspect of an intentional action is that it involves movements that can be described (and apprehended by the subject) without intentions.
Scarantino (2003) also introduces a distinction between different kinds of affordances. In our view, all of his three kinds of affordances are complex affordances.
This direct link between action and perception does not, however, imply that affordances are directly, in the aforementioned sense, perceptible. In fact, we argue that the resulting systematic contingencies between directly visible features and possible actions (which are reflected in the direct links between motor and sensory brain areas) ground perception of complex affordances, which are always indirectly perceived.
These experimental conditions are notably similar to the case of the aforementioned ‘paper chair’.
At this point we appeal to a view inspired by Searle’s (1983, pp. 83–98) distinction between “prior intentions” and “intentions in action”. Specifically, we treat intentions as “prior intentions”. Briefly, a prior intention has as its object an action, e.g. On Friday afternoon a subject thinks to herself ‘reply to this email by Monday morning’. In contrast, an intention in action, generated by the prior intention say on Monday morning, has as its object not the action that the subject is embarking on, i.e. replying to that email, but what Searle takes to be a component of it – actually moving her fingers to press keys on a computer keyboard.
References
Barsalou, L.W. 1999. Perceptual symbol systems. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 22: 577–609.
Bartoli, E., L. Maffongelli, M. Jacono, and A. D’Ausilio. 2014. Representing tools as hand movements: early and somatotopic visuomotor transformations. Neuropsychologia. doi:10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2014.06.025.
Buccino, G.S., L. Cattaneo, F. Rodà, and L. Riggio. 2009. Broken affordances, broken objects: a TMS study. Neuropsychologia 47: 3074–3078.
Butterfill, S., and C. Sinigaglia. 2014. Intention and motor representation in purposive action. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 88(1): 119–145.
Cardellicchio, P., C. Sinigaglia, and M. Costantini. 2011. The space of affordances: a TMS study. Neuropsychologia 49(5): 1369–1372.
Chang C.-H., M.G. Wade, and T.A. Stoffregen. 2009. Perceiving affordances for aperture passage in an environment-person-person system. Journal of Motor Behavior 41: 495–500.
Chao, L.L., and A. Martin. 2000. Representation of manipulable man-made objects in the dorsal stream. NeuroImage 12: 478–484.
Chemero, A. 2001. What we perceive when we perceive affordances: commentary on Michael’s information, perception, and action. Ecological Psychology 13(2): 111–116.
Chemero, A. 2003. An outline of a theory of affordances. Ecological Psychology 15(2): 181–195.
Costantini, M., E. Ambrosini, G. Tieri, C. Sinigaglia, and G. Committeri. 2010. Where does an object trigger an action? An investigation about affordance in space. Experimental Brain Research 207: 95–103.
Fodor, J. 1994. The elm and the expert. Mentalese and its semantics. Cambridge: MIT Press.
Fodor, J.A., and Z.W. Pylyshyn. 1981. How direct is visual perception?: some reflections on Gibson’s ‘ecological approach’. Cognition 9: 139–196.
Franca, M., L. Turella, R. Canto, N. Brunelli, L. Allione, N. Golfré Andreasi, M. Desantis, D. Marzoli, and L. Fadiga. 2012. Corticospinal facilitation during observation of graspable objects: a transcranial magnetic stimulation study. Plos One 7: 11.
Gallese, V., and C. Sinigaglia. 2011. What is so special with embodied simulation. Trends in Cognitive Sciences 15(11): 512–519.
Garrido-Vásquez, P., and A. Schubö. 2014. Modulation of visual attention by object affordance. Frontiers in Psychology. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2014.00059.
Gibson, J. J. (1979) The ecological approach to visual perception. Houghton-Mifflin.
Grafton, S., L. Fadiga, M. Arbib, and G. Rizzolatti. 1997. Premotor cortex activation during observation and naming of familiar tools. NeuroImage 6: 231–236.
Grezes, J., and J. Decety. 2002. Does visual perception of object afford action? Evidence from a neuroimaging study. Neuropsychologia 40: 212–222.
Grezes, J., M. Tucker, J. Armony, R. Ellis, and R.E. Passingham. 2003. Objects automatically potentiate action: an fMRI study of implicit processing. European Journal of Neuroscience 17: 2735–2740.
Heft, H. 1989. Affordances and the body: an intentional analysis of Gibson’s ecological approach to visual perception. Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour 19(1): 1–30.
Horowitz, T.S., and J.M. Wolfe. 1998. Visual search has no memory. Nature 394: 575–577.
Jacob, P. 2006. Why visual experience is likely to resist being enacted. Psyche 12: 1–12.
Janian, A., and G.V. Slavcheva. 2012. When left feels right: asymmetry in the affordance effect. Cognitive Processing 13(1): 199–202.
Kim, J. 2006. Emergence: core ideas and issues. Synthese 151: 547–559. doi:10.1007/s11229-006-9025-0.
Körner, C., and I.D. Gilchrist. 2008. Memory processes in multiple-target visual search. Psychological Research 72: 99–105.
Locke, J. (1690/1975) An essay concerning human understanding. New York: Oxford University Press.
Lopresti-Goodman, S.M., M.T. Turvey, and T.D. Frank. 2011. Behavioral dynamics of the affordance “graspable”. Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics 73(6): 1–18.
Lopresti-Goodman, S.M., M.T. Turvey, and T.D. Frank. 2013. Negative hysteresis in the behavioral dynamics of the affordance “graspable”. Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics 75: 1075–1091.
Macpherson, F. 2015. Cognitive penetration and nonconceptual content. In The cognitive penetrability of perception: new philosophical perspectives, ed. J. Zeimbekis and A. Raftopoulos. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Marr, D. 1982. Vision: a computational investigation into the human representation and processing of visual information. San Francisco: W. H. Freeman.
Maye, A., and A.K. Engel. 2013. Extending sensorimotor contingency theory: prediction, planning and action generation. Adaptive Behavior 21: 423–436.
Merleau-Ponty, M. 1963. The phenomenology of perception. (C. Smith, Trans.). London: Routledge and Kegan Paul (Original work published in 1945).
Millikan, R. 2000. On clear and confused ideas. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Mumford, S. 1998. Dispositions. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Murata, A., L. Fadiga, L. Fogassi, V. Gallese, V. Raos, and G. Rizzolatti. 1997. Object representation in the ventral premotor cortex (area F5) of the monkey. Journal of Neurophysiology 78: 2226–2230.
O’Regan, J.K., and A. Noë. 2001. A sensorimotor account of vision and visual consciousness. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 22: 939–973.
Perry, J. 1979. The Problem of the Essential Indexical. Noûs 13: 3–21.
Proverbio, A.M., R. Adorni, and G.E. D’Aniello. 2011. 250 ms to code for action affordanceduring observation of manipulable objects. Neuropsychologia 49(9): 2711–2717.
Proverbio, A.M., R. Azzri, and R. Adorni. 2013. Is there a left hemispheric asymmetry for tool affordance processing? Neuropsychologia 51(13): 2690–2701.
Rizzolatti, G., and G. Luppino. 2001. The cortical motor system. Neuron 31: 889–901.
Rizzolatti, G., and M. Matelli. 2003. Two different streams form the dorsal visual system: anatomy and functions. Experimental Brain Research 153: 146–157.
Rizzolatti, G., R. Camarda, L. Fogassi, M. Gentilucci, G. Luppino, and M. Matelli. 1988. Functional organization of inferior area 6 in the macaque monkey. II. Area F5 and the control of distal movements. Experimental Brain Research 71: 491–507.
Scarantino, A. 2003. Affordances explained. Philosophy of Science 70: 949–961.
Schlicht, T., and U. Pompe. 2007. Rezension von Alva Noë: action in perception. Zeitschrift für Philosophische Forschung 61: 250–254.
Searle, J. 1983. Intentionality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Shikata, E., F. Hamzei, V. Glauche, M. Koch, C. Weiller, F. Binkofski, and C. Büchel. 2003. Functional properties and interaction of the anterior and posterior intraparietal areas in humans. European Journal of Neuroscience 17: 1105–1110.
Siegel, S. 2010. The contents of visual experience. New York: Oxford University Press.
Stoffregen, T.A. 2003. Affordances as properties of the animal-environment system. Ecological Psychology 15: 115–134.
Toribio, J. 2009. Does seeing red require thinking about red things? Think 8(22): 29–39.
Turvey, M. 1992. Affordances and prospective control: an outline of the ontology. Ecological Psychology 4(3): 173–187.
Valyear, K.F., J.P. Gallivan, A. McLean, and J.C. Culham. 2012. fMRI repetition suppression for familiar but not arbitrary actions with tools. The Journal of Neuroscience 32(12): 4247–4259.
van Riel, R. 2008. On how we perceive the social world. Criticizing Gallagher’s view on direct perception and outlining an alternative. Consciousness and Cognition 17: 544–552.
Warren, W. 1984. Perceiving affordances: visual guidance of stair-climbing. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance 10: 683–703.
Warren, W. 2005. Direct perception: the view from here. Philosophical Topics 33: 335–361.
Withagen, R., and A. Chemero. 2012. Affordances and classification: on the significance of a sidebar in James Gibson’s last book. Philosophical Psychology 25(4): 521–537.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Tillas, A., Vosgerau, G., Seuchter, T. et al. Can Affordances Explain Behavior?. Rev.Phil.Psych. 8, 295–315 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13164-016-0310-7
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13164-016-0310-7