ABSTRACT
This chapter outlines a theory of affordances according to which affordances are relations between the abilities of animals and features of the environment. As relations, affordances are both real and perceivable but are not properties of either the environment or the animal. The primary difference between direct and inferential theories of perception concerns the location of perceptual content, the meaning of our perceptions. In inferential theories of perception, these meanings arise inside animals, based on their interactions with the physical environment. The resources in the environment are the source of selection pressure on animals, causing them to develop perceptual systems that can perceive those resources. Those resources that some species of animal evolve the ability to perceive are affordances for members of that species. In Ecological Psychology in Context, H. Heft argued quite convincingly that Gibson's ecological psychology is a descendent of the radical empiricism of W. James.
