Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

What is ecological about Gibsonian Ecological Psychology?Well-known senses in which Gibson’s scientific program is‘ecological’ have to do with its theoretical, ontological andmethodological foundations. But, besides these, the Gibsonianframework is ‘ecological’ in an additional sense that has re-mained understudied and poorly understood—a sense of “eco-logical” that connects Gibson’s view to the environmentalismof environmental psychology and environmental ethics. Thispaper focuses on the latter sense of ‘ecological’, and exploresthe relevance of Gibson’s notion of “affordance” for thinkingabout environmental issues like deforestation, pollution andclimate change. One existing account is criticized and an al-ternative is proposed.