Debates in 4E and scaffolded cognition have been centered on cases in which human cognitive or affective capacities are enhanced through technology. Recently some authors have noted that this may not always be the case: the technologies and environment around us can negatively impact cognitive and affective abilities. In the first part, I elaborate on this change of perspective in the debate. In the second part, I discuss a case of technology scaffolding maladaptive psychological processes. More in detail, I will (...) focus on the role of smartphones in scaffolding ruminative processes. To illustrate this claim, I introduce four core features of rumination and discuss how they may be supported by problematic smartphone use in light of existing evidence. (shrink)

Cognitive scaffolding is typically conceptualized in terms of environmental design which serves to offload, facilitate, or enhance the cognitive capacities of interacting agents. Recent contributions to the literature on scaffolding have noted that environmental design might likewise scaffold cognition in ways that undermine the interests of interactant agents—giving rise to notions of problematic or hostile scaffolding. Given the pervasiveness of social and technological scaffolding in contemporary life, the importance of understanding and assessing its effects can hardly be overstated. At the (...) same time, however, the very pervasiveness of scaffolding raises a challenge to the current criteria for evaluating its effects by comparison with agents’ interests. This is because human agents and their interests alike are themselves the results of various forms of social and technological scaffolding. This paper explores the relationship between scaffolding and the formation of agents along with their interests, as well as the implications of this relationship for evaluating scaffolding as being hostile, neutral, or beneficial. I will argue that the formative aspect of scaffolding imparts a degree of uncertainty to evaluations of scaffolding based on agents’ interests. I will then demonstrate the relevance of the formative aspect of scaffolding in evaluating and assessing the potentially pernicious effects of contemporary social and technological scaffolding focusing on the examples of servitization marketing models and social and vocational digital infrastructures. (shrink)

From a 4E cognition framework, this article compares earlier cultural and technologically mediated expert practices with contemporary use of digital technology. I discuss two case studies. First, the art of memory, where I look at how medieval monks constructed memory palaces inside their minds to enable creative thinking and how Renaissance thinker Giulio Camillo built on this tradition to create a complex machine to think. The second example is of literary writing, where I look at how writers engage with the (...) materiality of language and the writing material, creating new cognitive opportunities. Finally, I compare these earlier practices with contemporary digital technology, discussing both continuous and novel aspects. First, I examine how all practices engineer the cognitive surroundings of its practitioners to enable new cognitive possibilities. However, this comparative work also allows me to spot a worrisome novelty in digital technology. In many cases, the goals of such technology are contrary to those of its users. Drawing on discussions both outside and inside the 4E framework, I argue that digital technology introduces economic agency into our minds. I suggest that when we extend our minds in the digital ecology, we allow powerful economic actors to shape the direction of our cognitive lives in ways that are contrary to our own goals. Finally, I argue, building on the case studies, that my discussion might point to a new and more pragmatic approach to these issues. (shrink)

Situated affectivity investigates how natural, material, and social environmental structures, so-called ‘scaffolds,’ influence our affective life. Initially, the debate focused on user-resource-interactions, i.e., on cases where individuals (‘users’) actively structure the environment (‘resource’) in beneficial ways, setting up scaffolds that allow them to solve routine problems, modify their means of coping with challenges, or avail themselves of new affective competences. More recently, cases of mind invasion have captured philosophers’ attention where the ways others structure the environment affect, or invade, people’s (...) minds, typically without their awareness and with harmful consequences. This paper contributes to recent discussions about the variety of phenomena that can count as ‘scaffolded affectivity’ in general and ‘scaffolded affective harm’ in particular. It also addresses the emerging question of how harmful affective scaffolds can come to have a grip on people’s minds, despite their detrimental consequences. We first disentangle some misconceptions and illustrate how diverse (harmful) affective scaffolds can be. In contrast to recent approaches that have characterized scaffolds in largely descriptive terms, we then identify factors that can help explain why a given scaffold is effective in modifying people’s minds. We also try to shed light on why some agents and some social structures are especially likely to experience or cause scaffolded affective harm, respectively, by arguing that user-resource-interactions and mind invasions are not independent, but intimately intertwined and mutually reinforcing, especially in the digital domain. We conclude with a speculative suggestion for further research. (shrink)

In recent years, with the advances in machine learning and neuroscience, the abundances of sensors and emotion data, computer engineers have started to endow machines with ability to detect, classify, and interact with human emotions. Emotional artificial intelligence (AI), also known as a more technical term in affective computing, is increasingly more prevalent in our daily life as it is embedded in many applications in our mobile devices as well as in physical spaces. Critically, emotional AI systems have not only (...) the ability to not passively read and classify emotions, but most also have an ability to predict and ‘nudge’ users to certain desired emotional states. Drawing from Piredda (2020)’s account on affective artifacts and other recent accounts, we've examined various emerging emotion-sensing technologies such as recommender algorithms, personal AI assistants, work-related emotion trackers, and emotional AI toys and robots through the lens of affective artifacts. We show how these technologies fulfill the criteria of being affective artifacts: they are artifactual, multifunctional, semi-agentive, and semi-interpesonal. Emotional AI systems as affective artifacts can influence the affective states of the users (e.g., help regulate emotions of ourselves and others), and importantly, our manipulation of these algorithms can intersect with the maintenance and construction of our sense of self and identity. (shrink)

Recent work within the tradition of 4E cognitive science and philosophy of mind has drawn attention to the ways that our technological, material, and social environments can act as hostile, oppressive, and harmful scaffolding. These accounts push back against a perceived optimistic bias in the wider literature, whereby, according to the critics, our engagements with technology are painted as taking place on our terms, to our benefit, in ways uncomplicated by political realities. This article enters into that conversation, and aims (...) to highlight a specific form of threat from emerging technology: the threat of the ‘techno-wanton. ’ Drawing on classic work on personhood by Harry Frankfurt, I argue that emerging forms of adaptive technology threaten to degrade the depth and reflexivity of our economy of preferences. Techno-wantonness is a wanton-like state of diminished agency and personhood, whereby adaptive technology facilitates the wanton satisfaction of shallow preferences and the weakening of higher order volition. I argue that the concept of ‘mind invasion’, within the context of the hostile scaffolding literature has been applied too broadly, to the detriment of our analysis, and argue that the notion of ‘techno-wantonness’ should replace ‘mind invasion’ in regard to a specific class of case. In short, the new concept allows for a more subtle distinction between scaffolding impinging on an unwilling mind and technology that panders to the preferences of initially often very willing users. (shrink)