Open peer commentary on the article “Précis of The Philosophy of Affordances” by Manuel Heras-Escribano. Abstract: Heras-Escribano argues against the normative character of affordances from a framework that relies on (a) a Wittgensteinian notion of normativity and (b) the incompatibility of direct perception, as it is described in ecological psychology, and perceptual error. We argue against this position and provide a pluralistic notion of normativity that is able to accommodate the normative character of affordances.

Ecological psychology is one of the most influential theories of perception in the embodied, anti-representational, and situated cognitive sciences. However, radical enactivists claim that Gibsonians tend to describe ecological information and its ‘pick up’ in ways that make ecological psychology close to representational theories of perception and cognition. Motivated by worries about the tenability of classical views of informational content and its processing, these authors claim that ecological psychology needs to be “RECtified” so as to explicitly resist representational readings. In this paper, we argue against this call for RECtification. To do so, we offer a detailed analysis of the notion of perceptual information and other related notions such as specificity and meaning, as they are presented in the specialized ecological literature. We defend that these notions, if properly understood, remain free of any representational commitment. Ecological psychology, we conclude, does not need to be RECtified. Abbreviations: EP = Ecological Psychology REC = Radical Enactivism

Key words: ecological psychology, radical enactivism, information, affordances, meaning, specificity