Meaningful affordances

Abstract

It has been argued that affordances are not meaningful and are thus not useful to be applied in contexts where specifically meaningfulness of experience is at stake (e.g. clinical contexts or discussions of autonomous agency). This paper aims to reconceptualize affordances such as to make them relevant and applicable in such contexts. It starts by investigating the ‘ambiguity’ of (possibilities for) action. In both philosophy of action and affordance research, this ambiguity is typically resolved by adhering to the agents intentions and concerns. I discuss some recent accounts of affordances that highlight these concerns but argue that they tend to adopt an ‘atomistic’ approach where there is no acknowledgement of how these concerns are embedded in the agents wider concerns, values, projects and commitments. An holistic approach that does acknowledge this can be found in psychological research on agents having a sense of what they’re doing. I will discuss this research in the second part of the paper and argue that agents can analogously have a sense of what is afforded. This is deemed the entry point for understanding the meaningfulness of affordances. In the final part of the paper I apply this analysis to recent attempts which seek to make sense of authentic and autonomous agency in terms of affordances.

Pain and the field of affordances: an enactive approach to acute and chronic pain

“…Most importantly, though often underappreciated, we consider affordances as providing insights to particular individuals and their experiences in changing contexts. Only recently, this idea has received more attention leading to the assumption of a field of affordances (Bruineberg & Rietveld, 2014;de Haan et al, 2013) constrained by evolution, socio-cultural practice, and ontogenetic development (Gallagher, 2017) as well as an individual's current skills, interests, needs, preferences, or intentions (Dings, 2018). The field of affordances includes soliciting affordances understood as action possibilities that are relevant in a particular situation from the perspective of a particular person.…”

“…Rietveld & Kiverstein, 2014). 3 However, if one aims to account for the lived experience of individual human agents and the manner in which they meaningfully construct their world and themselves, as we aim to do, it seems required to focus on the variant field of affordances and its dynamic transformation over time (Dings, 2020).…”

“…Before we can apply the enactive framework to the particular phenomenon of pain, we need a better understanding of the dimensions that determine the field of affordances (de Haan et al, 2013;Dings, 2018;Gallagher, 2018;Rietveld et al, 2019). 4 For present purposes, the following four dimensions appear most important: salience, valence, mineness, and temporal horizon.…”

“…First, the affordances that the field incorporates can differ in salience (Rietveld et al, 2019;Rietveld & Kiverstein, 2014). Some affordances appear or are experienced as more or less relevant while subjects are more likely to respond to those affordances that are of higher salience as they exert a stronger invitation or force to act (Dings, 2018;Withagen et al, 2012). Thus, the field of affordances might dynamically shrink or expand depending on which action possibilities possess relevance for the concerned subject.…”

“…Second, affordances differ in valence depending on whether the subject's concerns are positive or negative (Dings, 2018). Affordances can appear or be experienced as more or less relevant either because of attraction or aversion (de Haan et al, 2013, fn.…”