Persons and Affordances

Abstract

Interdisciplinary interest in affordances is increasing. This paper is a philosophical contribution. The question is: Do persons offer affordances? Analysis of the concepts 'person' and 'affordance' supports an affirmative answer. On a widely accepted understanding of what persons are, persons exhibit many of the features typical of socionormative affordances. However, to understand persons as offering affordances requires, on the face of it, stretching traditional understandings of the concept of affordance: persons, in contrast to the organisms that partially constitute persons, do not seem to be available to perception. This and similar worries are responded to. The environment for an individual is filled with animate features, and prominent among them are persons. That being the case, a full accounting of environmental perception would by necessity include consideration of the information and the processes underlying person perception.-Heft, 2007, p. 86 (emphases added). Two great theorists of the mid 20 th century help us think of persons as offering affordances for socionormative interaction. They are James J. Gibson and Wilfrid Sellars. To my knowledge, few have considered the possibility that two theorist, as opposed in interests as these, have a common lesson to tell. J. J. Gibson is a de-mentalizer of intelligence and perceptuomotor capacities. On his approach to capacities for intelligent environmental engagements, mediating inferences are taken out of the picture (e.g., 1979, p. 127; Lobo et al., 2018, p. 2). Sellars, in contrast, is a denier of direct perceptual (or empirical) givenness. Knowing and agency is for him necessarily inferential. Indeed, he spent large parts of his opus classicus (1956) to bury the "Myth of the Given." The myth as he conceived it is the possibility of direct non-inferential knowledge. Thus it seems that Gibsonian ecological psychology cannot account for knowledge or agency from Sellars's inferentialist point of view. Whether this is an apparent or real opposition is discussed in the concluding section (see also footnote 1). Adverse as J. J. Gibson and Sellars seemthe first, a radical empiricist (1967), advocating non-inferential direct perception and agency, the latter attacking radical

Emotions and movement in the inter(trans)disciplinary study of human behavior from within

“…Se ha discutido, entre otras cuestiones, cómo las personas pueden constituirse en affordances. (34) Considerando que una de las características centrales del concepto de affordance es su posibilidad de percepción, Lo Presti (34) plantea que percibimos un organismo a partir del cual inducimos su condición de persona, con lo cual la persona no sería directamente perceptible como la idea de affordance sugiere, pero podría constituirse en affordance a partir de procesos mediados por la cognición. Bacigalupe MdlA Brancazio (31) sugiere que percibir a la persona como agente y como un yo incorporado (embodied self) da lugar a la diferencia entre una affordance ambiental y las affordances sociales.…”

The motivational role of affect in an ecological model

“…Nonverbal expressions of others thus provide a signal, a social appraisal that has an effect on one's own emotional state (Manstead & Fischer, 2001). Calibration of one's body image, and thus its effectivities, is highly dependent on elements like body percept, body concept, and body affect gleaned from interaction with others and the environment (Cacioppo et al, 2018;Lo Presti, 2020). Entrainment of the body and emotional reactions occurs during conversation as a form of participatory co-ordinated social sense making (de Jaegher & di Paolo, 2007;Wilson & Wilson, 2005).…”

“…Whereas such lawlike information as environmental invariants plays a role in the continuous control of behavior, we need to understand how conventions that arise from culture and accident play a role in creating biases in the process of action selection. Part of the project of expanding ecological psychology into sociocultural and landscape domains, including conspecifics as opportunities for affordances, leaves some unresolved issues concerning how to best incorporate normativity and cultural differences, for example in the case of manners (Lo Presti, 2020).…”

Caring as the Default of Empathic Direct Perception

“… 6. The transition from visually perceiving objects in the environment to social perception isn’t self-explanatory, and Gibson himself was unclear about it; although he did suppose its possibility and accord it great importance, especially in his later work (de Carvalho, 2020; Fiebich, 2014; Presti, 2020). …”