Canonical Affordances

Abstract

Psychologists have had very little to say about things. Things are one thing, people are another. There is now, however, a growing recognition of the importance of things within human psychology. But, in cognitive theory, the meanings of things are usually radically subjectivized. ‘Their’ meanings are really ‘our’ meanings that we mentally project upon them. James Gibson’s concept of affordances was an attempt to avoid subject–object dualism by defining the meanings of things-what we can do with them-as properties of the object but defined relative to the agent. Critics have rightly objected that Gibson himself, nevertheless, overly objectified or reified affordances. Yet the affordances of many objects in the human world are objective, or, better, impersonal. The present chapter, however, is concerned with such ‘canonical affordances’-the things that things are for. But, as it argues, this kind of ‘objectivity’ must itself be understood in relation to other objects and events, and other people.

Foregrounding Sociomaterial Practice in Our Understanding of Affordances: The Skilled Intentionality Framework

“…The affordance of drinking from a bottle has, as Costall (1997) called a “canonical” character. Crucially, this canonical character comes from the bottle figuring in a large “constellation” of practices as Costall (2012, p. 91) calls it, shared among many individuals. In this way canonical affordances:…”

Alcohol-related affordances and group subjectivities: A Q-Methodology study

“…This further highlights the importance of understanding canonical affordances in context (e.g. Costall, 2012). For example, these individuals regulated their behaviour by acting upon appropriate and normative canonical action opportunities for a given setting but, unlike others, did not seek out additional consumption opportunities.…”

“…This meaning exists in the interdependence of an individual and their environment (Costall, 2001(Costall, , 2012. When understanding behaviour, the focus is then moved from inside the head to these direct and unmediated relations.…”

“…For example, individuals act upon canonical, or conventional, meanings of an affordance, based on their history of experiencing the culturally normative uses of an object in similar contexts (Costall, 2012). This knowledge about convention is both situated and social, because it is based on an individual's experiences of interacting with environmental objects and with other individuals.…”

Content in languaging: why radical enactivism is incompatible with representational theories of language

“…It makes sense to talk of an affordance when the pattern to which an organism is responding is not just an informational invariance but an intention (on the part of some other agent) to create an informational invariance (cf. Costall, 1995Costall, , 1997Costall, , 2012. Wordings are an excellent example of this: they do not correspond to invariant auditory patterns within an acoustic milieu, but infants learn to attend to them as stable, repeatable physical entities nonetheless, through their presentation (by caretakers) as intentional objects.…”