In what way might public statues wrong people? In recent years, philosophers have drawn on speech act theory to answer this question by arguing that statues constitute harmful or disrespectful forms of speech. My aim in this paper will be add a different theoretical perspective to this discussion. I will argue that while the speech act approach provides a useful starting point for thinking about what is wrong with public statues, we can get a fuller understanding of these wrongs by (...) drawing on resources from recent work in situated affectivity. I will argue that public statues can be understood as affective artifacts and that this can both help us understand both the deep affective wrongs caused by public statues and offer a possible explanation as to why some people are so strongly opposed to their removal. (shrink)

I begin the first part by showing how situationism should make us question traditional understandings of virtues as intrinsic dispositions. I concentrate specifically on situationist experiments related to mood. I then introduce Islamic virtue ethics and the dawa movement. In parts two and three I examine ethnography of the dawa movement to explore how they deal with worries about the influence of mood on their virtue. In part two I show how they train their habits in very traditional virtue ethics (...) ways in order to be more resilient when faced with virtue-diminishing affective situations. In part three I show how the situation, rather than hindering practitioners, is recruited into helping these women achieve piety. I conclude, in part four, by showing the dawa movement's creative use of the Islamic veil as a way to help these women deal with the objection that one cannot avoid all bad situations. Going beyond social psychological experiments, I examine two methodological sources not found in situationist debates. First, I argue for ethnography as an empirical method through which to study virtue. I draw on ethnography of the Islamic women's dawa movement. Secondly, the work in the philosophy of mind on ‘affective scaffolding’. (shrink)

Affordances are action-possibilities, ways of relating to and acting on things in our world. They help us understand how these things mean what they do and how we have bodily access to our world more generally. But what happens when this access is ruptured or impeded? I consider this question in the context of psychopathology and reports that describe this experience. I argue that thinking about the bodily consequences of losing access to everyday affordances can help us better understand these (...) reports. An affordance-based approach to psychopathology can illuminate some of the causes, as well as the experiential character and consequences, of affective disorders and diminished spatial agency in self-world disturbances. It also highlights some under-explored ethical and political dimensions of these issues that need further attention. (shrink)

It is often suggested that social media is a hostile environment for critical thinking and that a major source for epistemic problems concerning social media is that it facilitates emotions. We argue that emotions per se are not the source of the epistemic problems concerning social media. We propose that instead of focusing on emotions, we should focus on the affective scaffolding of social media. We will show that some affective scaffolds enable desirable epistemic practices, while others obstruct beneficial epistemic (...) practices, or enable hostile epistemic practices. Particularly, we will show that emotions play a crucial role in the epistemic practice of critical thinking and that the affective scaffolding of social media can support, or hinder, online critical thinking. The upshot of our argument is that affective scaffoldings of social media can harness emotions to support beneficial epistemic practices, like online critical thinking. (shrink)

In this article, I provide phenomenological reflections on patients’ experiences of undergoing extreme isolation protocols while admitted to Intensive Care Units [ICU] during the first wave of COVID-19. Based on observation studies from within the patient isolation rooms and retrospective, in-depth phenomenological interviews with patients, I characterize this exceptional experience as one of becoming anonymous. To illustrate this, I start by establishing a perspective on embodied existence as constituted on a scale between anonymous embodiment and being enrooted into a personal (...) niche. Against the backdrop of this framework, I illustrate how being admitted to the ICU under strict isolation protocols produced extraordinary experiences of becoming anonymous. Sources of the anonymization were: (1) Mechanical expropriation, pacification and disownership of the visceral-kinaesthetic body; (2) Objectification; (3) Spatial and intercorporeal anonymity (4) Surrealism: the intermingling of objective impressions and dream-like interpretations. Finally, I illustrate how anonymization induced an experience of embodiment as raw materiality, confronting the patient with what Martin Heidegger called the facticity of naked existence. This experience is discussed against Levinas’ critique of Heidegger, while I propose that insights from this exceptional case may substantiate Heidegger’s account. (shrink)

Debates on situated affectivity have mainly focused on tools that exert some positive influence on affective experience. Far less attention has been paid to artifacts that interact with the expression of affect, or to those that exert some negative influence. To shed light on that shadowy corner of our affective social lives, I describe the workings of an atypical socio-affective artifact, namely, sunglasses. Drawing on insights from psychology and other social sciences, I construe sunglasses as a social shield that helps (...) us block spontaneous emotional expressions, as well as affecting other social processes that heavily depend on the eye region: gaze direction detection, identity recognition, and the sense of intimacy afforded by eye contact. (shrink)

It is increasingly acknowledged that creativity cannot be fully understood without considering the setting where it takes place. Building on this premise, we use the concepts of niche construction, scaffolding, coupling, and functional integration to expound on the environmentally situated nature of painters’ studio work. Our analysis shows studios to be multi-resource niches that are customized by artists to support various capacities, states, and actions crucial to painting. When at work in these personalized spaces, painters do not need to rely (...) solely on their “inner” powers of imagination, memory, decision making, and technique to execute their paintings. Instead, with the help of carefully selected resources, they can offload elements of creative mentation and action onto the studio niche and enact different forms of a creative agency. To put more flesh on these ideas, we examine how painters use existing artworks, memory aids, and music to scaffold the creative process. Overall, our analysis illuminates underexamined aspects of environmentally situated creativity and demonstrates the broader utility of the applied concepts for future creativity research. (shrink)

Topics in Cognitive Science, Volume 14, Issue 2, Page 363-387, April 2022.

Most accounts of cognitive scaffolding focus on ways that external structure can support or augment an agent’s cognitive capacities. We call cases where the interests of the user are served benign scaffolding and argue for the possibility and reality of hostile scaffolding. This is scaffolding which depends on the same capacities of an agent to make cognitive use of external structure as in benign cases, but that undermines or exploits the user while serving the interests of another agent. We develop (...) criteria for scaffolding being hostile and show by reference to examples including the design features of electronic gambling machines and casino management systems that hostile scaffolding exists and can be highly effective. In cases where the scaffolding is deep and permits the offloading of significant cognitive work, hostile scaffolding exploitatively manipulates cognitive processing itself. Given the extent of human reliance on scaffolding this is an important and neglected vulnerability. [This is an updated version of the paper, added in February 2023.]. (shrink)

The primary goal of this essay is to provide a comprehensive overview and analysis of the various relations between material artifacts and the embodied mind. A secondary goal of this essay is to identify some of the trends in the design and use of artifacts. First, based on their functional properties, I identify four categories of artifacts co-opted by the embodied mind, namely (1) embodied artifacts, (2) perceptual artifacts, (3) cognitive artifacts, and (4) affective artifacts. These categories can overlap and (...) so some artifacts are members of more than one category. I also identify some of the techniques (or skills) we use when interacting with artifacts. Identifying these categories of artifacts and techniques allows us to map the landscape of relations between embodied minds and the artifactual world. Second, having identified categories of artifacts and techniques, this essay then outlines some of the trends in the design and use of artifacts, focussing on neuroprosthetics, brain-computer interfaces, and personalisation algorithms nudging their users towards particular epistemic paths of information consumption. (shrink)

Contemporary and emerging chatbots can be fine-tuned to imitate the style, tenor, and knowledge of a corpus, including the corpus of a particular individual. This makes it possible to build chatbots that imitate people who are no longer alive — deathbots. Such deathbots can be used in many ways, but one prominent way is to facilitate the process of grieving. In this paper, we present a framework that helps make sense of this process. In particular, we argue that deathbots can (...) serve as affective scaffolds, modulating and shaping the emotions of the bereaved. We contextualize this affective scaffolding by comparing it to earlier technologies that have also been used to scaffold the process of grieving, arguing that deathbots offer some interesting novelties that may transform the continuing bonds of intimacy that the bereaved can have with the dead. We conclude with some ethical reflections on the promises and perils of this new technology. (shrink)

In recent years, philosophers of mind have explored the relationship between lived embodied experiences and self-narratives in bringing about a sense of self. This relationship has been vividly debated, with no consensus in the field. While some have argued that lived embodied experiences influence, but are not influenced by, self-narratives, others have maintained that lived embodied experiences and self-narratives influence each other across time. However, the very concept of ‘self-narrative’ and its scope of application has remained underspecified. The debate, I (...) will argue, can only be resolved if we arrive at a better theoretical understanding of self-narrative. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to develop a conceptual account of the notion of ‘self-narrative’ and a descriptive account of its scope of application. It will then be shown how these accounts can pave the way towards resolving the debate on the experience-narrative nexus. (shrink)

Environmental scaffolding refers to the ways in which agents make use of features of the environment to augment and enhance their cognitive behavior. Recent discussion on the notion of affective scaffolding extends this perspective to investigate how agents’ affective states are supported by environmental scaffolds. This paper builds on such discussion by exploring how elements of nature, such as forests, oceans, and gardens, function as affective scaffolds. Empirical research demonstrates that the presence of natural elements has a positive impact on (...) health and wellbeing, as well as a modulatory effect on stress response mechanisms. I argue that there are specific characteristics to these types of scaffolds which can be surveyed to shed philosophical light on this research. I suggest that natural environments scaffold our affective lives by enabling, enhancing, and promoting a specific bodily affective profile characterized by restorativeness and immersion attentiveness. An analysis of this scaffolding can aid in understanding the relationship between nature and affect, in turn identifying a new application for the scaffolded mind framework. (shrink)

In recent years, philosophers have developed accounts of cognitive and affective scaffolding to describe the contribution of environmental resources to the realization of mental abilities. However, an integrative account, which captures scaffolding relations in general terms and across domains, is currently lacking. To close this gap, this paper proposes a pattern theory of scaffolding. According to this theory, the functional and causal role of an environmental resource for an individual agent or a group of agents concerning a mental ability in (...) a situational context can be specified by multiple conditions that a scaffold can satisfy. On this view, scaffolds can be described in terms of patterns of relevance-weighted, gradually satisfied scaffolding conditions. The resulting theory will be applied to cases of mathematical cognition to demonstrate its plausibility and feasibility. The pattern theory of scaffolding, it will be shown, has important implications for research on embodied, embedded, extended, and enactive (4E) cognition. (shrink)

In our everyday life, music is taken as an object – an object that is helpful in one sense or the other: Music can help alleviate sadness, lift the mood if life seems a bit dull, or enhance an already great atmosphere. In other words, music is often approached as an instrument of so-called affective scaffolding. Yet music is more than an instrument which can be used to gain desired affective states. In the present paper, the possibility of an experience (...) of listening without a listener is examined – that is, an experience where music is not separated from one’s self into an instrument, into an external object. The analysis of listening without a listener carried out here will be based on Nishitani Keiji’s philosophy of emptiness. Additionally, I will critically employ the concept of affective scaffolding and elaborate the possibility of listening without a listener in relation to this concept. The aim of this paper is to show that there are hidden depths in our relation to music, which are obscured by taking music as an object and by approaching it instrumentally. Further, it will be argued that by illuminating these hidden depths we can, moreover, understand ourselves more deeply, to reveal the empty nature of our selves. (shrink)

Mental capacities, philosophers of mind and cognition have recently argued, are not exclusively realised in brain, but depend upon the rest of the body and the local environment. In this context, the concept of ‘scaffolding’ has been employed to specify the relationship between embodied organisms and their local environment. The core idea is that at least some cognitive and affective capacities are causally dependent upon environmental resources. However, in-depth examinations of specific examples of scaffolding as test cases for current theorising (...) about scaffolding have remained scarce. The aim of the current paper is to help close this gap. To this end, I will offer a characterisation of key aspects of ‘scaffolding’ that can help specify scaffolding relations. In a second step, I will analyse fictional textual narrative as a test case for accounts of cognitive and affective scaffolding. The key claim of this paper will be that fictional textual narrative can be considered as a scaffold that transforms our capacities in social understanding and empathising in the course of ontogeny. (shrink)

Addiction is widely taken to involve a profound loss of self-control. Addictive motivation is extremely forceful, and it is remarkably hard to abstain from addictive behaviors. Theories of addiction have sought to explain how self-control is undermined in addiction. However, an important explanatory factor in addictive motivation and behaviors has so far been underexamined: emotion. This paper examines the link between emotion and loss of control in addiction. I use the concept of affective scaffolding to argue that drug use functions (...) as a form of emotion regulation that, especially in certain psycho-socioeconomic conditions, can escalate into what I term addictive affective dependence. Addictive affective dependence is extremely motivating of drug use, and in this way contributes to the agent losing control. An upshot of the paper is that it predicts something that is known to be true about addiction treatment and recovery: strategies that address psycho-socioeconomic conditions are particularly successful in bolstering agency in addiction. Furthermore, my view explains why these strategies work. Thus, the view provides a conceptual framework for existing effective methods of addressing addiction. (shrink)

People have experienced many forms of temporal disorientation during the Covid-19 crisis. For this study, we collected a rich corpus of reports on the multifaceted experiences of disorientation during the pandemic. In this paper, we study the resulting corpus using a descriptive approach. We identify six emerging themes: temporal rift; temporal vertigo; impoverished time; tunnel vision; spatial and social scaffolding of time; suspended time. We offer a phenomenological analysis of each of the themes. Based on the phenomenological analysis, we draw (...) a key distinction between episodic and existential forms of temporal disorientation, and we argue that the Covid-19 crisis is best conceptualised as a period of suspended time. (shrink)

In this article, I consider the interpersonal support, i.e., scaffolding, that agents provide to one another to share emotions. Moreover, the main target of this paper is to identify those scaffolds and their features that effectively function to boost, support, or enable emotional sharing interactions. To do so, I engage with the “multi-dimensional framework of environmental scaffolding” proposed by Sterelny (_Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences_ 9:465–481, 2010). This framework highlights various types of environmental resources, including social and interpersonal factors, that (...) serve as scaffolds for human cognitive agency. Furthermore, the model identifies the functional characteristics associated with these resources, which significantly contribute to scaffolding cognitive (and emotional) performance and skillfulness. Mainly concentrating on social interaction, I argue that individual, familiar social interaction behaviors, shared references, and shared bodily-affective and habitual patterns scaffold the interacting individuals allowing them to effectively share emotions. By examining the functional relationship between these particularly interpersonal scaffolds and shared emotions, I suggest that we can better understand the complex, situationally unfolding dynamics and the versatility of conditions that can boost emotional sharing. As a result, my analysis reveals that there are different types of social interactional scaffolds that vary in familiarity, predictability, robustness, individualization, and mutual adaptation. These features boost and trigger emotional sharing in degrees and different functions and different degrees of these functional features; therefore, different types of social interaction scaffolds are required depending on the situation to situation. (shrink)