Abstracts
The following papers have been accepted for presentation at AAP 2013. If you've just submitted an abstract, it may take a few days to appear.
| Name: Mr Nikolai Alksnis |
| Institution: La Trobe University |
| Title: The Limits of Affordances |
| Abstract: There is growing support for the concept of affordances - the idea that an organism can directly perceive possible action in the world around it. With this growth, the concept has been stretched to include almost all aspects of action-based behaviour. For example, a glass affords that it is for drinking, a notebook that it is for writing. However, when closely examined, what actions can be perceived in an environment is actually severely limited, essentially only being able to account for innate or instinctual behaviours. It will be argued, that the theory struggles to explain learnt behaviour, specifically because associations do not have perceivable characteristics. This is the case even when learnt behaviour involves perception followed by action. The goal of the paper will not be to dismiss the notion of affordances, it is a useful idea that successfully explains some aspects of our perception and behaviour. However, the explanatory use of affordances is limited and theories that use it outside of this range are in need of careful re-examination. |
| Keywords: Cognitive Science, Philosophy of Mind, Direct Perception, |
