An Outline of a Theory of Affordances

By Anthony Chemero. 2003

926 citations recorded by the source corpus.

A theory of affordances is outlined according to which affordances are relations between the abilities of animals and features of the environment. As relations, affordances are both real and perceivable but are not properties of either the environment or the animal. I argue that this theory has advantages over extant theories of affordances and briefly discuss the relations among affordances and niches, perceivers, and events.

Subfields: Cognitive Neuroscience, Global and Planetary Change, History and Philosophy of Science

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Citations in the corpus

Towards Continual Reinforcement Learning: A Review and Perspectives (2020, background): “…the agent-environment boundary is an open concept because the space of affordances (Khetarpal, Ahmed, Comanici, Abel, and Precup, 2020b) might evolve over time (Pezzulo and Cisek, 2016) and may only emerge as a result of agent-environment interaction (Gibson, 1977; Heft, 1989; Chemero, 2003).”
Natural Agency: The Case of Bacterial Cognition (2017, background): “Affordances are thus emergent properties of the whole organism-environment system and are qualitatively distinct from their constituent parts (Chemero 2003).”
Ecological-Enactive Cognition as engaging with a field of relevant affordances (2018, background): “By ‘affordances’ we mean the possibilities for action provided to us by the environment (Gibson 1979; Chemero 2003; Chemero 2009; Michaels 2003; Reed 1996; Costall 1995; Heft 2001; Rietveld and 1 The words “action” and “skill” should be understood in a very broad sense in this chapter.”
What can I do here? A Theory of Affordances in Reinforcement Learning (2020, methodology): “We take inspiration from Gibson (1977), Heft (1989), and Chemero (2003) and provide a framework that enables artificially intelligent (AI) agents to represent and reason about their environment through the lens of affordances.”
A Rich Landscape of Affordances (2014, background): “(Chemero, 2003, p. 190) We add that when an individual engages adequately with an affordance this is often an exercise of skill.”