sense is the hearing of sound, listening involves the translation of sound into
meaningful statements and this relies not only on the sound and the organisms
response but a receiver which is capable of making this construction. Such a
capability requires the induction into culture and into the use of language i.e. it
depends upon the social development of mind.
The key question that arises in this context is whether or not meaning is specifically a
human characteristic. A human’s relation to its environment involves concept use, i.e.
it is mediated. That is not to say that any one individual is necessarily aware of
concepts in play as background to their responsiveness. However, it does mean that
our contact with the world as humans rather than animals involves a different relation,
one mediated by meaning (i.e. reasons). The philosopher Robert Brandom provides a
helpful way of thinking about the issue of our distinctive relation to the world. He
raises the question of how it would be possible to distinguish between a human and
machine response if both could be conceived in terms of „differential responses’ to an
environment. For the purposes of the argument being developed here I will take the
phrase „differential response’ to be implicit in the idea of direct perception contained
in the concept of affordance.
It is Gibson’s claims that „the basic affordances of the environment are usually
perceivable directly, without an excessive amount of learning’ (Gibson, 1986, p. 143)
that has proved highly influential. To the extent that technologies are self-revealing
the concept of affordance has clearly got a crucial part to play in their design.
However, questions remain of just how self-revealing technologies are in the context
of their use in enhancing learning and of whether the concept of affordance is helpful
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