When it Comes to Affordances, what do Animals Know and how do they Know it?

James Gibson developed the concept of affordance as a—or perhaps the—critical component of his Ecological approach to perception. Affordances are often defined as opportunities for behavior that emerge from relationships between animals and environments. In this chapter, we argue that this definition ultimately leads to two distinct categories of affordances and two different means by which an animal can know about the affordances in each category. We propose an amendment to this definition that affordances can also emerge from relationships between affordances. We argue that this amendment warrants just a single category of affordances and a single means by which animals know about affordances. It is consistent with a general and thoroughgoing Ecological Approach in which both affordances and laws govern them exist in indefinitely rich contexts.