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To clarify, from “Gendered affordance perception and unequal domestic labour” from the journal “Philosophy and Phenomenological Research”

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/phpr.12929

2.1 Affordance perception

Let us start by unpacking the notion of affordance perception. What is an affordance? An affordance is a possibility for action. As you enter your kitchen the floor affords walking-on, the knife affords chopping-with and the cup affords drinking-from. The term ‘affordance’ was introduced by ecological psychologist J. Gibson. He explains ‘[t]he affordances of the environment are what it offers the animal, what it provides or furnishes, either for good or ill.’15 J. Gibson deployed his concept of affordances within a complex theory of action with many contentious components. But the concept has since taken on a life of its own, with theorists across multiple disciplines utilising the term whilst jettisoning J. Gibson’s wider theoretical baggage. Although the term has been used in different ways by different theorists, the best way to pin it down is as follows: a situation affords an action for an agent if it is possible for the agent to perform that action in that situation. Affordances are thus subject-relative: if two people are looking at a tree it might afford climbing for one of them but not afford climbing for the other. And they are situation relative: a tree that affords climbing for you here and now ceases to afford climbing when you are no longer in its vicinity.

In itself, the claim that our environment affords different actions is not especially bold. The bolder claim, that J. Gibson himself emphasised, is that these affordances are perceptible. Rather than seeing the shape and colour of a tree then inferring that you can climb it, you can simply see the tree as climbable. So when entering the kitchen, an agent might perceive the floor as walk-on-able, the knife as chop-with-able and the cup as drink-from-able. Some argue that this is evident from first-person reflection: if you consider your perceptual experience of the kitchen you can recognise that besides perceiving various shapes, colours and textures you perceive the possibilities for action offered by that environment. Others focus instead on third-person evidence, citing empirical work that strongly suggests we are perceptually sensitive to the affordances around us.16

Perceiving an affordance does not, in and of itself, constitute a motivation to perform the afforded action. One can, for example, perceive a piece of lettuce as edible without being in any way moved to eat it. But in many cases our perception of an affordance does seem to have motivational force. Ridderinkhof et al. suggest ‘…intrinsic to the experience of an affordance is that stimuli incite or summon certain actions.’.17 Unlike the lettuce, a cake might be perceived not just as edible but as to be eaten. Siegel refers to these as soliciting affordances.18 This experience of being solicited has been variously described in terms of ‘demand character’ (Koffka)19, ‘a felt tension which fluctuates around a norm’ (Merleau-Ponty)20, ‘affective allure’ (Rietveld)21 and ‘a feeling of answerability’ (Siegel).22