Abstract
Gibson defined affordances as action possibilities directly offered to an animal by the environment. Ambitiously, affordances are meant to show the inadequacy of the subjective-objective dichotomy in the study of cognition. Armed with similar concerns, some neo-Gibsonians recently thought of affordances as latent dispositions existing independently of individual organisms or whole species. It is no coincidence that critics had, on several occasions, objected that this theoretical stance dramatically neglects the role of the perceiver in the emergence of affordances. In this paper, we provide a phenomenological characterization of the perceiver’s role in affordance perception. Specifically, we borrow from Husserlian phenomenology to characterize two features of affordance perception that can enrich our understanding of the individual’s engagement with the environment, namely, its affective and temporal aspects. Taking an everyday activity such as rock climbing as a case example, we show that phenomenological investigations, if not be misinterpreted as mere introspection, can represent an ally for ecological psychologists.
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Notes
- 1.
It should be acknowledged that there might be some tension between phenomenology and ecological psychology insofar as the former (especially in its Husserlian version) is explicitly anti-naturalist, whereas the latter “rejects the causal reductionism of other scientific psychologies but without rejecting their emphasis on experiment and empirical explanation” (Reed, 1996, p. 19). It would go beyond the scope of this paper to delve into Husserl’s anti-naturalism and the possibility of integrating phenomenology and ecological psychology. Suffice it to say that, from a Husserlian standpoint, consciousness should be seen as a condition for the natural world to appear, and thus, it would be a category mistake to study consciousness from the perspective of the natural sciences for they assume that the objects they study are in the natural world. We believe, however, that a non-objectivist scientific approach to the mind (such as ecological psychology) and/or a re-conceptualization of the idea of nature could be consistent with phenomenology’s anti-naturalism. For a brief suggestion on how ecological psychology and Husserlian phenomenology could be integrated, see Roy et al. (1999, pp. 68–71). For more on the idea of re-thinking the concept of nature and thus opening the possibility of integrating a new kind of naturalism and phenomenology, see Vörös (2014) and Gallagher (2018).
- 2.
To be sure, affection and temporality are not the only phenomenological characteristics that underpin affordance perception. One should also acknowledge, among other things, the experience of one’s own embodiment, the sedimentation of habits or attunement towards daily sociocultural practices. However, we will focus on affection and temporality alone.
- 3.
The relevance of a phenomenological analysis of affordance perception has already been pointed out by Dreyfus and Kelly (2007), as well as other authors inspired by them. However, most (if not all) those phenomenological approaches to affordance perception have usually drawn to Merleau-Pontian phenomenology, rather than from Husserlian phenomenology as we do.
- 4.
Our phenomenological approach to affordance perception needs thus to be differentiated from the idea that perceivers project or construct a subjectiveenvironment. Instead, we think of agents as actively disclosing their meaningful surroundings. This difference can be furtherly highlighted by comparing ourproposal with the contemporary approaches in biosemiotics that stemmed from the work of Jakob von Uexküll. For him, as much as for his followers (e.g. Kull etal., 2011), agents, through the receptors of their physiological apparatuses, literally create their niches. As von Uexküll puts it, “So in the nervous system thestimulus itself does not really appear but its place is taken by an entirely different process which has nothing to do with events in the outside world. [...] Thestimuli of the outside world are altogether translated into a nervous sign language” (1909/1996, p. 33). As it should be clear at this point, we reject thisconstructivist view in favour of a relational approach to affordances.
- 5.
- 6.
This can be related to Dreyfus and Kelly (2007), who anticipated that, when manifesting, affordances are perceived as solicitations. We suggest that, while more than one affordance can have an inviting character, the subject will tend towards one specific action possibility depending on their affective force.
- 7.
Here affectivity is understood in relation to the possibility of being affected, i.e. to be allured or to undergo a stimulus (“Reiz” in German). This sense of affectivity might seem very different from the one related to affective states such as emotions or moods. We believe, however, that both senses are intrinsically related. For instance, something disgusting may draw one’s attention because of how disgusting it is. Furthermore, Husserl (2006, Nrs. 69–75) himself suggests that affection may be defined by feelings of pleasure or displeasure (lust and unlust) that motivate the ego to react in different ways. In a few words, both senses of affectivity are connected by the idea that something can only affect if there is a lack of indifference towards it (Colombetti, 2014). A full-fledged phenomenological analysis of affordances would have to say much more about the affective nature of affordances.
- 8.
- 9.
We would like to thank two anonymous reviewers for their comments on an earlier version of this paper.
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Bogotá, J.D., Artese, G.F. (2022). A Husserlian Approach to Affectivity and Temporality in Affordance Perception. In: Djebbara, Z. (eds) Affordances in Everyday Life. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-08629-8_17
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