Affordances, Properties and the Knowability of Reality

[Brotep]

The Epiphany of the Absurd thread got me thinking about some things, especially the discussion of Shrunkenheadspace's neuron-based argument for the incomprehensibility of the cosmos.

It might sound like I'm begging the question, but I'm just trying to describe this stuff.  Scout's honor.

A more convincing argument [for a hard-wired human inability to comprehend the universe] might be made by saying we perceive our surroundings in terms of what we can do with them.  It's not just the limitations of having five senses, but being human-shaped and human-sized.

Our perception of a chair will be far more focused on sitting than a rhinoceros' perception of the same chair.
We're not really wired to understand the universe, then--just what we can do with it.

This is pretty much the concept of affordances from ecological psychology, organism-proportioned properties of things in the environment.  And they pop out at us.

Ecological psychology says they're real, they're out in the world.  Which is weird, because that means "sittability" is an actual property of chairs.  What's more, sittability is as obvious to us as mate in one to a chess player.

At the time I was taught this, I wanted to object that affordances are relational (between organism and object) and therefore not out there in the world, but I realized chemical properties are relational, too.  "Water-soluble" doesn't mean a damn thing without water; if affordances are all in our heads, then chemical properties are all in our heads, too.

I guess properties are often a kind of bottled causation.  Action A with object Alpha yields result Aleph.  Macros in the fabric of reality, if you will.  (And I might.)

Anyway, our understanding of our environment is heavily biased toward the things we can do with it.  There are all these neglected ways of perceiving the environment--namely, the things we cannot possibly do with it.

Mind you, I believe "understanding the universe" is philosophically unintelligible to begin with.

Sure, you can be all pragmatic and say the only important way of understanding the universe is in relation to us.  Sounds like a pretty one-sided relationship if you ask me, but yeah, you can science the shit out of it.

[Lord Quantum]

Well first, what do you mean by  "understanding" ? If we know that gravity exists (etc) does that count as understanding the universe or are you talking about something else?

And speaking of definitions, is this a good working definition for affordances?

An affordance is a quality of an object, or an environment, that allows an individual to perform an action.

Assuming that the answer is yes and assuming that affordances are real, I think we've gone way beyond weird here. If "sittability" is real, doesn't that mean that every object has an infinite amount of qualities? There seems to be something wrong with that idea. And what about objects that were once used for one purpose and are now used for something else (or are not used at all) ? How does something like a vestigal organ fit into the concept of affordances? And how far are you really willing to go with this idea of "sittability" ? Is "fuckability" a quality of attractive women? Can affordances be objectively measured? If so, wouldn't that mean that we could actually measure art in some way?  And if affordances aren't measurable, in what sense are they "real"?

[Brotep]

Well first, what do you mean by  "understanding" ? If we know that gravity exists (etc) does that count as understanding the universe or are you talking about something else?'

That would count as understanding something about the universe.  I just mean that we can never get the whole picture (and ultimately I am saying that there isn't such a thing as a whole picture to get).

And speaking of definitions, is this a good working definition for affordances?

An affordance is a quality of an object, or an environment, that allows an individual to perform an action.

More or less, if you include that they are relational and say "organism" rather than "individual".

Assuming that the answer is yes and assuming that affordances are real, I think we've gone way beyond weird here.

I think you're right.

If "sittability" is real, doesn't that mean that every object has an infinite amount of qualities?

Exactly.  However, the ones that matter to us are probably finite in quantity.

There seems to be something wrong with that idea. And what about objects that were once used for one purpose and are now used for something else (or are not used at all)?

It's a weird idea, yes.  But can you extricate other kinds of properties, like solubility, from this?

As for objects that were once used for one purpose and are now used for something else, or not at all:
The old uses might not pop out to us the same way as current uses would, but they would still have those properties.
A mini-fridge affords sitting, even though that is not its intended purpose.  Because of that, and because it doesn't afford sitting as well as a chair, we generally sit on chairs instead of mini-fridges.

How does something like a vestigal organ fit into the concept of affordances?

I don't think it does.  Affordances have to do with action.  Autonomic bodily functions wouldn't apply.

And how far are you really willing to go with this idea of "sittability" ?

To second base but no further.  I'm saving myself for marriage.

Is "fuckability" a quality of attractive women?

Fuckability is a quality of anyone or anything that you can fuck.

Can affordances be objectively measured?

Yes, with what is known as critical and optimal pi numbers.  These numbers are ratios between the organism and the object.  In the case of stairs, the pi numbers are a ratio between leg length and step height.  The critical pi number refers to the ratio beyond which the stairs would be unclimbable.  The optimal pi number is the ratio at which one needs to expend the least energy to climb the stairs.

If so, wouldn't that mean that we could actually measure art in some way?

I don't think so...How do you mean?

[Lord Quantum]

So if there's no Big Picture what Is out there? Just a bunch of tiny, occasionally overlapping Polaroids? Or are you taking the stance that the Universe is literally Chaos (which I would say counts as a Big Picture)?

Does this revised definition of affordance mean that objects have different properties in relation to different organism? Or does it hold all of those properties at once (with the majority just being useless to any particular organism) ?

The art question was directed towards the hypothetical property of appreciability. In theory a masterpiece has a high appreciability (etc). So if affordance actually exists and can be objectively measured, this suggests that some sort of scientific test exists that man measure the level of appreciability in a piece of art. I have no idea how that would work, but then again, I'm still trying to figure out the stair thing.

We should start a "Way Beyond Weirdness" forum.

[Brotep]

So if there's no Big Picture what Is out there? Just a bunch of tiny, occasionally overlapping Polaroids? Or are you taking the stance that the Universe is literally Chaos (which I would say counts as a Big Picture)?

I'm just saying we can only understand the universe in terms of stuff we can do to it and stuff it does.

Does this revised definition of affordance mean that objects have different properties in relation to different organism? Or does it hold all of those properties at once (with the majority just being useless to any particular organism) ?

I haven't revised the definition--just explained it a little better.  A barstool affords sitting for people but not for cheetahs.  It still affords sitting for people when a cheetah is looking at it...So yes, an object holds all such properties at once.

The art question was directed towards the hypothetical property of appreciability. In theory a masterpiece has a high appreciability (etc). So if affordance actually exists and can be objectively measured, this suggests that some sort of scientific test exists that man measure the level of appreciability in a piece of art. I have no idea how that would work, but then again, I'm still trying to figure out the stair thing.

Ah, okay.  That's stretching the concept pretty far.  It's one thing to say "these stair steps are too high for people; they don't afford stepping".  It's another to say "this painting is too ugly; it doesn't afford appreciation".

We should start a "Way Beyond Weirdness" forum.

Nah, it's business as usual around these parts.

[Triple Zero]

I once had a similar thought; How a couch floating in space would be just a bunch of atoms not really "being" a couch, cause it's only a couch by the virtue of humans being able to sit on it and know it's a couch.

There's probably some kind of philosophical school of thought about this, and a whole bunch of arguments against it.

[LMNO]

From what I gather, this seems to be the Aneristic illusion writ large.

We are pattern makers; we can make patterns.  Pragmatically, we tend to make patterns out of things that may be useful to us. 

But I don't think you can extrapolate this to say that's the only way we can perceive the universe.  It might explain why we can see certain patterns more easily than others.

If an object can be used in whatever way our pattern-making heads come up with, then the "affordability" isn't in the object, it's in our pattern-makers.  So to say the universe is made up of "affordabilities" seems to project an internal solipsism onto the universe.

[Lord Quantum]

There seems to be something wrong with that idea.

If an object can be used in whatever way our pattern-making heads come up with, then the "affordability" isn't in the object, it's in our pattern-makers.  So to say the universe is made up of "affordabilities" seems to project an internal solipsism onto the universe.

There ya go. That's what I was trying to think of . What he said.

I once had a similar thought; How a couch floating in space would be just a bunch of atoms not really "being" a couch, cause it's only a couch by the virtue of humans being able to sit on it and know it's a couch.

There's probably some kind of philosophical school of thought about this, and a whole bunch of arguments against it.

A couch is a couch regardless of whether or not there's anybody around to recognize it. When we dig up an ancient artifact, it doesn't cease to be whatever it was originally just because we don't know what it is. The idea you're referencing though is from Aristotle or Plato. I'd have to dig through my notes to find the name, but it's vaguely teleological; a thing is what it does. And yeah, there's a bunch of arguments against it but mostly people have stopped arguing that point.

[Bebek Sincap Ratatosk]

There seems to be something wrong with that idea.

If an object can be used in whatever way our pattern-making heads come up with, then the "affordability" isn't in the object, it's in our pattern-makers.  So to say the universe is made up of "affordabilities" seems to project an internal solipsism onto the universe.

There ya go. That's what I was trying to think of . What he said.

I once had a similar thought; How a couch floating in space would be just a bunch of atoms not really "being" a couch, cause it's only a couch by the virtue of humans being able to sit on it and know it's a couch.

There's probably some kind of philosophical school of thought about this, and a whole bunch of arguments against it.

A couch is a couch regardless of whether or not there's anybody around to recognize it. When we dig up an ancient artifact, it doesn't cease to be whatever it was originally just because we don't know what it is. The idea you're referencing though is from Aristotle or Plato. I'd have to dig through my notes to find the name, but it's vaguely teleological; a thing is what it does. And yeah, there's a bunch of arguments against it but mostly people have stopped arguing that point.

2+2 is truth; 2+2=4 is a lie

A couch is a couch regardless of whether or not there's anybody around to recognize it.

I would argue that a couch with no one around is simply wood and cloth and stuffing... or (insert chemical formula for couches here).. The label "couch" is simply a semantic one that ties the idea of "a thing you sit on" with a particular kind of physical object.

It exists as the sum of its parts, but not as a couch (sum of parts + semantic connection [label] about what to do with said parts)

[Rococo Modem Basilisk]

There's another tendency which factors in -- the tendency for things to find uses for other things. Imaginary numbers and boolean algebra were entirely useless for quite some time, if I understand correctly. They are now, of course, used pretty constantly (your computer was built on the principles of boolean algebra, and imaginary numbers are used in electronics somehow). If you found some arbitrary non-human-made object that you had never seen before, but you could sit on it and you lacked a chair, you'd probably sit on it.

I might argue that a couch is never a couch. The physical couch is just itself; the set of couches and its belonging to the set of couches is something that humans have invented so that they can more easily communicate about couches. If you name a thing, you can talk about it, and if you reuse names for similar things, you don't run out of short pronouncable names as quickly.

[LMNO]

Goddammit.


Every once in a while, you're somewhat coherent, and it pisses me off I can't just write you off as a total loss.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

Goddammit.


Every once in a while, you're somewhat coherent, and it pisses me off I can't just write you off as a total loss.

I can.  I'd rather have a car that I knew wouldn't start, rather than a car that would start just often enough to keep me from junking it.

Remember Peanuts?  Lucy would have been more effective if she let Charlie Brown kick the ball once in a while.

Just saying.

[Rococo Modem Basilisk]

Goddammit.


Every once in a while, you're somewhat coherent, and it pisses me off I can't just write you off as a total loss.

Which part was coherent -- the part about imaginary numbers, or the part where I said couches weren't couches?

[LMNO]

Not telling -- knowing you, you'd deliberately avoid doing it again.

[Brotep]

 

I once had a similar thought; How a couch floating in space would be just a bunch of atoms not really "being" a couch, cause it's only a couch by the virtue of humans being able to sit on it and know it's a couch.

There's probably some kind of philosophical school of thought about this, and a whole bunch of arguments against it.

By any chance were you listening to Zappa at the time?

From what I gather, this seems to be the Aneristic illusion writ large.

We are pattern makers; we can make patterns.  Pragmatically, we tend to make patterns out of things that may be useful to us.

I'm with you so far.

But I don't think you can extrapolate this to say that's the onlyway we can perceive the universe.  It might explain why we can see certain patterns more easily than others.

A fair point. 

If an object can be used in whatever way our pattern-making heads come up with, then the "affordability" isn't in the object, it's in our pattern-makers.  So to say the universe is made up of "affordabilities" seems to project an internal solipsism onto the universe.

I see what you're saying about affordances, but a chair affords sitting whether we think about it or not.  That is, there is a fit between object and organism conducive to certain things.

Affordability is in wholesale, my friend.   

It's not that the universe is made up of affordances, but rather that they are actual properties of objects in the universe.  A sofa still affords sitting or lying down even if there is no one there to do it, it's just not very relevant in such a context.

If affordances are just in our heads, solubility and melting point and such are just in our heads, too.