Organismo y acción situada: mapeando el concepto de affordance

Abstract

In the context of the understanding of environment-organism interactions, the concept of affordance refers to the different opportunities for action that the perception of an object invites. When we see a wall, we do not only perceive its brute physical properties (such as color, size, location, etc.), but we perceive it as climbable, depending on the context in which such perception occurs. The notion of climbability embedded into the perception of the wall will be called affordance. Over the last years, this concept has become popular within a number of disciplines; however, this has not been accompanied by a precise and unified conceptual development of the term. This article formulates and examines some of the most fundamental debates surrounding the understanding of the current concept of affordance. After critically evaluating some of the main tenets within these discussions, I propose a number of challenges that the development of the produces and explore some ways in which such challenges can be faced.