Affordances in Everyday Life: A Multidisciplinary Collection of Essays

Description

The concept of affordances is being increasingly used in fields beyond ecological psychology to reveal previously unexplored interdisciplinary relationships. These fields include engineering, robotics, artificial intelligence, neuroscience, urban theory, architecture, computer science, and much more. As the concept is adapted for its relational meaning between an agent and the environment, or object, the meaning of the term has changed to fit the customs of the adapting field. This book maps the different shades of the term and brings insights into how it is operationalized by providing short accessible essays regardless of background. Each contribution addresses big questions around this topic such as the application of the concept on ongoing research, how to measure or identify affordances, as well as other reflective questions about the future of affordances in the field. The book is envisioned to be read by non-experts, students, and researchers from several disciplines, and fills the need for summarization across disciplines. As the many adaptations flourished from the same psychological concept, this book also aims to function as a catalyst and motivation for reinterpreting the concepts for new directions. Compared to existing books, this book aims not to span the vertical dimension of field by taking a deep dive into a niche-field―instead, this book aims to have a wide horizontal span highlighting a common concept shared by an increasing number of fields, namely affordances. As such, this book takes a different approach by attempting to summarize the different emerging applications and definitions of the concept, and make them accessible to non-experts, students, and researchers regardless of background and level. Preface Acknowledgements Contents 1 A Personal Introduction • Zakaria Djebbara Part I: Ecological and Philosophical View 2 Affordances for Situating the Embodied Mind in Sociocultural Practice • Ivar R. Kolvoort and Erik Rietveld 3 Affordances and the Logic of the Gift • Madeline Donald and Jelle Bruineberg 4 A Path to Ecological Psychology • Anthony Chemero Part II: Ethnographical and Social View 5 A Walk in the Park: Affordance as Urban Design Tool for Creating Inhabitable Cities • Ditte Bendix Lanng and Ole B. Jensen 6 Anthropological Affordances • Tim Ingold 7 Affordances and Social Normativity: Steps Toward an Integrative View • Manuel Heras-Escribano Part III: Architectural View 8 What Gestures (Can We) Afford? On the Resourcefulness of Tectonics in Architecture and Engineering • Marie Frier Hvejsel 9 They Are There to Be Perceived: Affordances and Atmospheres • Tonino Griffero Part IV: Psychological and Spatial View 10 Affordances for Spatial Navigation • Lara Gregorians and Hugo J. Spiers 11 Merging Affordances and (Abstract) Concepts • Anna M. Borghi 12 Perceptual Space as a Well of Possibilities • Sergei Gepshtein Part V: Psychiatric and Embodied View 13 Affordances and Absence in Psychopathology • Joel Krueger 14 Affordances and 3E Psychopathology • Kristopher Nielsen Part VI: Experiential and Interactive View 15 Studying Embodied Decisions in the Wild and in the Lab • Jeremy Gordon, Gian Luca Lancia, Mattia Eluchans, Antonella Maselli, Thomas Thiery, Paul Cisek, and Giovanni Pezzulo 16 Toward Human Augmentation Using Neural Fingerprints of Affordances • Lukas Gehrke, Pedro Lopes, and Klaus Gramann 17 A Husserlian Approach to Affectivity and Temporality in Affordance Perception • Juan Diego Bogotá and Giuseppe Flavio Artese Part VII: Engineering and Computational View 18 Easy as 1, 2, 3: On the Short History of the Use of Affordance in Active Inference • Maxwell J. D. Ramstead 19 Reflections on 20 Years of Affordance-Based Design • Jonathan R. A. Maier 20 Affordance and Active Inference • Karl Friston Index