The Library
Representing our options : the perception of affordances for bodily and mental action
Tools
McClelland, Tom (2019) Representing our options : the perception of affordances for bodily and mental action. Journal of Consciousness Studies, 26 (3-4). pp. 155-180. ISSN 1355-8250.
|
PDF
WRAP-representing-options-perception-affordances-bodily-mental-action-McClelland-2018.pdf - Accepted Version - Requires a PDF viewer. Download (993Kb) | Preview |
Official URL: https://www.ingentaconnect.com/contentone/imp/jcs/...
Abstract
Affordances are opportunities for action. An appropriately positioned teapot, for example, might afford the act of gripping. Evidence that we perceive affordances in our environment can be found through first-person reflection on our perceptual phenomenology and through third-person theorizing about how subjects select what action to perform. This paper argues for two claims about affordance perception. First, I argue that by experiencing affordances we implicitly experience ourselves as agents with the power to perform the afforded actions. This variety of implicit self-awareness is an important but overlooked aspect of our sense of agency. Second, I argue that among the affordances we experience are affordances for mental action such as attending, imagining, and deliberating. Our awareness of mental affordances helps us to select which mental actions to perform and underwrites our sense of ourselves as mental agents. My case for these two conclusions combines a range of phenomenological and theoretical considerations.
Item Type: | Journal Article | ||||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Divisions: | Faculty of Social Sciences > Philosophy | ||||||||
Journal or Publication Title: | Journal of Consciousness Studies | ||||||||
Publisher: | Imprint Academic | ||||||||
ISSN: | 1355-8250 | ||||||||
Official Date: | March 2019 | ||||||||
Dates: |
|
||||||||
Volume: | 26 | ||||||||
Number: | 3-4 | ||||||||
Page Range: | pp. 155-180 | ||||||||
Status: | Peer Reviewed | ||||||||
Publication Status: | Published | ||||||||
Access rights to Published version: | Restricted or Subscription Access | ||||||||
Date of first compliant deposit: | 20 February 2019 | ||||||||
Date of first compliant Open Access: | 1 January 2021 | ||||||||
Related URLs: |
Request changes or add full text files to a record
Repository staff actions (login required)
View Item |
Downloads
Downloads per month over past year