A study of the affordance of post boxes

ユウビン　ポスト　ノ　アフォーダンス　ニ　ツイテ　ノ　イチコウサツ

トヨイズミ, トシヒロ

Toyoizumi, Toshihiro

オオサカ ダイガク ダイガクイン ニンゲン カガク ケンキュウカ キョウセイガク ジャーナル ヘンシュウ イインカイ

アフォーダンス

郵便ポスト

知覚

James Gibson

Affordance

Post boxes

Perception

One of the classical criticisms against the concept of affordance advocated by the American psychologist James Gibson is that it cannot be applied to artificial or social entities. In order to respond to the criticism, I scrutinize the concept of affordance and find reasonable answers. I begin by describing the basic ideas of Gibson underlying the concept of affordance. I then consider affordance as a kind of disposition to show its peculiarity. Lastly, I demonstrate that all of the criticisms are derived from a careless reading of Gibson’s theory. This paper will rightly reevaluate the Gibson’s ecological theory hitherto suffering from an undue underestimation.