Affordances—opportunities for action in the environment—should be understood across three different timescales, unifying enactive and ecological approaches to cognition. At the elementary scale, affordances relate to the constantly changing sensorimotor contingencies of embodied assemblies. At the integrative scale, affordances become solicitations that are actualized and constitute an umwelt, with perception structured by the intrinsic temporality of experience. At the narrative scale, affordances operate over developmental time and explain learning, as proposed in Chemero's dynamicist account. These three scales are always intertwined, as learning and perception are ongoing, inseparable processes. The paper argues that considering affordances as synergies—where abilities and environmental aspects constrain system trajectories—helps explain behavior across macro to micro levels.
The embodiment approach to cognition, which grounds mental processes in bodily experience, faces resistance due to evidence against its strong forms. This approach breaks from Cartesian dualism by treating cognition as rooted in modal experience, aligns with emergent materialism, and is supported by experimental research. However, embodiment must still address abstractions, theoretical debates about representations, and neuroscientific findings questioning the role of sensorimotor properties in cognition. While strong embodiment is challenged by conceptual and physiological setbacks, weak embodiment is supported by compelling evidence. Future research should focus on the psychophysiological bases of grounded cognition and redirect efforts toward cross-modal correspondence.