Abstract

The objective of this paper is to analyse the concept of skilful action underlying the studies of perceptual experience, especially the visual one, from the perspective of the theory of direct perception. The problem we propose to investigate can be formulated as follows: what are the possible contributions of the concept of affordance to understand the nature of skilful actions generally attributed to processes resulting from internal representations or mental models? In particular, we will try to investigate to what extent the concept of social affordance can help to understand aspects of complex skilful actions that involve capacities considered as deriving from the possession of a Theory of Mind. We will try to show that the perspective of the ecological psychology of direct perception allows to understand aspects of human skilled action, especially of a collaborative nature, from a conception of perceptual experience that involves information intrinsically significant.