Perceptual Space as a Well of Possibilities

Abstract

Everyone seems to know what space is. But the meaning of “space” varies from person to person and from one occasion to another. It varies among the academic disciplines concerned with spatiality, such as physics, psychology, and phenomenology, and among practical professions, such as architecture and filmmaking, stage design, and creative writing. How can we reconcile this polyphony? Is there an underlying root concept of space? In other words, do these multiple and disparate concepts have a “focal meaning”? One manner of answering these questions is offered here, by considering a moving person who is sequentially exposed to specific possibilities of experience at different spatial locations. Reminiscent of the concept of affordance, the present account is concerned with possibilities of experience, rather than with actual experience, and it is trained on distributed patterns of perception and behavior, rather than on their piecewise characterization.