ABSTRACT
Affordances are claimed to be directly perceived and unmediated, as is the case with Jamesian percepts. If one considers the experience of affordances in the flow of everyday actions, it is clear that affordances are multidimensional. Perhaps the reason that mention of affordances is scarce in the experimental literature is that they have been introduced into scientific discourse through J. J. Gibson's later efforts and only are beginning to make an appearance. This distinction between immediate and reflective modes of awareness has been made many times in 20th-century philosophy, particularly by individuals identifying themselves with a phenomenological orientation. The philosophers and psychologists who have most directly shaped contemporary theories of perception, by contrast, have considered the objects of sensation and perception to be the mental states rather than properties of the world. The action-related quality of affordances points to a specific characteristic of percepts, noted earlier, that distinguishes them from concepts.
