Affording imagination

2024/05/21 by Tom McClelland, Monika Dunin-Kozicka · 1 voice
Arts and Humanities · Neuroscience · Psychology · #Action Observation and Synchronization #Embodied and Extended Cognition #Philosophy and History of Science

paper · pdf · doi:10.1080/09515089.2024.2354433

openalex publication_date 2024/05/21 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/25

Abstract

Discussion of affordance perception focuses almost exclusively on affordances for non-mental actions like climbing, walking and eating.This paper asks whether we might also perceive affordances for a specific class of mental action: acts of imagination.We first explore how the environment can present opportunities for imaginative action.We then combine phenomenological and theoretical considerations to argue that we do indeed perceive affordances for imaginative action.Putting this claim to work, we apply the concept of imaginative affordances to the topics of imaginative skill and imaginative tools.

Citations

• Imagination Is Where the Action Is
• Lives without imagery – Congenital aphantasia
• The Mental Affordance Hypothesis
• Learning to Imagine
• The risk of trivializing affordances: mental and cognitive affordances examined
• Affordances from a control viewpoint

Discussions

• In an #openaccess #vol37issue7 paper, Tom McClelland & Monika Dunin-Kozicka ask whether we might perceive affordances for a specific class of mental action: acts of #imagination doi.org/10.1080/0951.. [bsky, 1 points, 0 comments]

Related

• The Mental Affordance Hypothesis
• The risk of trivializing affordances: mental and cognitive affordances examined
• Mind in action: expanding the concept of affordance
• Remembered affordances reflect the fundamentally action-relevant, context-specific nature of visual perception.
• The affordance hypothesis