Abstract
Affordances are opportunities for action for a given animal (or animals) in a given environment or situation. The concept of affordance has been widely adopted in the behavioral sciences, but important questions remain. We propose a new way of understanding the nature of affordances; in particular, how affordances are related to one another. We claim that many – perhaps most – affordances emerge from non-additive relations among other affordances, such that some affordances are of higher order relative to other affordances. That is, we propose that affordances form a continuous category of perceiveables that differ only in whether and how they relate to other affordances. We argue that: (1) opportunities for behaviors of all kinds can be described as affordances, (2) some affordances emerge from relations between animal and environment, whereas most affordances emerge from relations between other affordances, and (3) all affordances lawfully structure ambient energy arrays and, therefore, can be perceived directly. Our concept of higher order affordances provides a general account of behavioral phenomena that traditionally have been interpreted in terms of cognitive processes (e.g., remembering or imagining) as well as behavioral phenomena that have traditionally been interpreted in terms of cultural rules, such as conventions, or customs.
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Reproduced with permission from Peker et al. (2023, p. 626)
Reproduced with permission from Peker et al. (2023, p. 629)
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Notes
Bruineberg et al. (2019; cf. Chemero, 2006) referred to the fact that social conventions can have different values in terms of contingency, using that term in its statistical or probabilistic sense. We regard this as improper reification: Used in this way, the term presumes the absence (or unknowability) of lawful relations (cf. Sprenger, 2018).
As noted by many authors (e.g., Fajen et al., 2009; J. J. Gibson, 1979; Reed, 1996), as part of the ontology affordances exist independent of perception. That is, affordances exist whether or not they are perceived. Similarly, affordances exist independent of intention; that is, affordances for an action exist whether or not an animal (or animals) care about that action.
The concept of affordance was developed to account for the existence of meaning in animal-environment systems. If, as J. J. Gibson (1979) claimed, affordances are real things that are lawfully specified and which might (therefore) be directly perceived, then we can wonder what motivation there could be, in a Darwinian system, for the perception of anything that is not an affordance (e.g., Stoffregen, 2000, 2004). However, while we regard this question as being important, it is not central to our arguments in this article.
Our concept of higher order affordances resembles the argument of Reed (1996, p. 123): “Our extensive use of tools, transport and modifications of materials, and deployment of complex sequences of resource appropriation (often shared across individuals) put an emphasis on the discovery of relationships among affordances, not just on isolated affordances themselves,” emphasis in the original. From our perspective, “relationships among affordances” are higher order affordances. A similar concept has been proposed by Boschker et al. (2002, p. 34), “Our thesis is that one can perceive affordances of different grains or, in other words, that meaning is directly picked up … as units of information that may vary in scale. Affordances of coarse grain may be regarded as emerging from and constrained by affordances of finer grain, suggesting a nested structure (hierarchy) of perceived action possibilities. One should not assume that the relation between affordances of different grains is deterministic or causal. Presumably, that relation is emergent in nature; that is, higher level affordances emerge from lower ones.”
We recognize that many affordances, both lower and higher order, differ qualitatively, and that the existence of qualitatively differed types of affordances is critical to (for example) many aspects of “higher cognition.” Yet we maintain that all affordances have the same ontological status, and that all affordances are lawfully specified, such that they can be directly perceived. This issue is discussed in later sections.
The emergence of higher order affordances from other, lower order affordances undermines proposals that there can be conflict between distinct affordances (e.g., Kalénine et al. 2016). Affordances that appear to be in conflict may, in fact, relate to each other to form other affordances of higher order.
Our claim is not mentalist (Sperry, 1980). That is, we do not claim that consciousness has any causal influence on mind-brain relations.
Vicente and Rasmussen (1991) argued that the design of human-computer interfaces should be understood in terms of the display of information about hierarchically nested lower order and higher order affordances.
Costall (2012, p. 89) pointed out that affordances for mailing a letter “could not be determined by a stranger to such things by merely peering at them in sublime isolation from other people.” This criticism is valid only if we assume that lawful specification must exist within some arbitrarily brief (and narrow) duration and location of observation. The lower order, physical affordances relating to inserting the letter into the box may be specified for an isolated, novice perceiver, but higher order affordances relating to the postal system will be specified only in patterns in ambient arrays that extend across longer durations of time, geography, interpersonal interactions, and so on.
It has been suggested that the existence of information about affordances is dependent upon the intentionality of the perceiver (e.g., Rietveld et al., 2018). We support an opposing view (e.g., J. J. Gibson, 1979; Reed, 1996; Richardson et al., 2008) in which intentionality does not influence the existence of information but, instead, influences the pick-up of information. An animal’s goals (or intentions) will guide their information pick-up by structuring exploratory activity. For example, a person who wants to know how far they can reach with an unseen handheld rod typically will obtain information about this affordance by actively wielding the rod (e.g., Solomon & Turvey, 1988). Yet information about affordances can also be generated (and picked up) through activity that is outside conscious intentionality, such as standing body sway (e.g., Mark et al., 1990).
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Acknowledgements
We thank Lois Yellowthunder for helping to illuminate theoretical issues, and for introduction to concepts and literature in anthropology. We also thank the late Michael Turvey and the late Eleanor Gibson for several decades of formal and informal mentoring, and for the example they set through their principled search for an internally consistent, general account of perceiving, cognizing, and acting. Finally, we thank Kim Vicente, whose work with the Abstraction Hierarchy was an important inspiration for our analysis.
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Stoffregen, T.A., Wagman, J.B. Higher order affordances. Psychon Bull Rev (2024). https://doi.org/10.3758/s13423-024-02535-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/s13423-024-02535-y