In this paper we adopt Sterelny's framework of the scaffolded mind, and his related dimensional approach, to highlight the many ways in which human affectivity is environmentally supported. After discussing the relationship between the scaffolded-mind view and related frameworks, such as the extended-mind view, we illustrate the many ways in which our affective states are environmentally supported by items of material culture, other people, and their interplay. To do so, we draw on empirical evidence from various disciplines, and develop phenomenological (...) considerations to distinguish different ways in which we experience the world affectively. (shrink)

In “Psychopower and Ordinary Madness” my ambition, as it relates to Bernard Stiegler’s recent literature, was twofold: 1) critiquing Stiegler’s work on exosomatization and artefactual posthumanism—or, more specifically, nonhumanism—to problematize approaches to media archaeology that rely upon technical exteriorization; 2) challenging how Stiegler engages with Giuseppe Longo and Francis Bailly’s conception of negative entropy. These efforts were directed by a prevalent techno-cultural qualifier: the rise of Synthetic Intelligence (including neural nets, deep learning, predictive processing and Bayesian models of cognition). This (...) paper continues this project but first directs a critical analytic lens at the Derridean practice of the ontologization of grammatization from which Stiegler emerges while also distinguishing how metalanguages operate in relation to object-oriented environmental interaction by way of inferentialism. Stalking continental (Kapp, Simondon, Leroi-Gourhan, etc.) and analytic traditions (e.g., Carnap, Chalmers, Clark, Sutton, Novaes, etc.), we move from artefacts to AI and Predictive Processing so as to link theories related to technicity with philosophy of mind. Simultaneously drawing forth Robert Brandom’s conceptualization of the roles that commitments play in retrospectively reconstructing the social experiences that lead to our endorsement(s) of norms, we compliment this account with Reza Negarestani’s deprivatized account of intelligence while analyzing the equipollent role between language and media (both digital and analog). (shrink)

“Teleosemantic” or “biosemantic” theories form a strong naturalistic programme in the philosophy of mind and language. They seek to explain the nature of mind and language by recourse to a natural history of “proper functions” as selected-for effects of language- and thought-producing mechanisms. However, they remain vague with respect to the nature of the proposed analogy between selected-for effects on the biological level and phenomena that are not strictly biological, such as reproducible linguistic and cultural forms. This essay critically explores (...) various interpretations of this analogy. It suggests that these interpretations can be explicated by contrasting adaptationist with pluralist readings of the evolutionary concept of adaptation. Among the possible interpretations of the relations between biological adaptations and their analogues in language and culture, the two most relevant are a linear, hierarchical, signalling-based model that takes its cues from the evolution of co-operation and joint intentionality and a mutualistic, pluralist model that takes its cues from mimesis and symbolism in the evolution of human communication. Arguing for the merits of the mutualistic model, the present analysis indicates a path towards an evolutionary pluralist version of biosemantics that will align with theories of cognition as being environmentally “scaffolded”. Language and other cultural forms are partly independent reproducible structures that acquire proper functions of their own while being integrated with organism-based cognitive traits in co-evolutionary fashion. (shrink)

What we know is enabled and constrained by what we are. Extended and enactive approaches to cognitive science explore the ways in which our embodiment enables us to relate to the world. On these accounts, rather than being merely represented in the brain, the world and our activity in it plays an on-going role in our perceptual and cognitive processes. In this chapter I outline some of the key influences on extended and enactive philosophy and cognitive science in order to (...) generate a sense of the conceptual space in which this research is going on. I focus on the concepts of sense-making, Umwelts, affordances, cultural niches, epistemic actions, environmental scaffolding, and mental institutions. Despite differences in focus and detail these influences share an underlying world-view; that cognition is relational and world-involving. This way of thinking has clear resonances with dominant approaches in non-Western philosophy. The purpose of this chapter is thus to generate in the reader a sense of this shared extended-enactive world-view in order to open up a space for communication between approaches. (shrink)

Philosophical work exploring the relation between cognition and the Internet is now an active area of research. Some adopt an externalist framework, arguing that the Internet should be seen as environmental scaffolding that drives and shapes cognition. However, despite growing interest in this topic, little attention has been paid to how the Internet influences our affective life — our moods, emotions, and our ability to regulate these and other feeling states. We argue that the Internet scaffolds not only (...) cognition but also affect. Using various case studies, we consider some ways that we are increasingly dependent on our Internet-enabled “techno-social niches” to regulate the contours of our own affective life and participate in the affective lives of others. We argue further that, unlike many of the other environmental resources we use to regulate affect, the Internet has distinct properties that introduce new dimensions of complexity to these regulative processes. First, it is radically social in a way many of these other resources are not. Second, it is a radically distributed and decentralized resource; no one individual or agent is responsible for the Internet’s content or its affective impact on users. Accordingly, while the Internet can profoundly augment and enrich our affective life and deepen our connection with others, there is also a distinctive kind of affective precarity built into our online endeavors as well. (shrink)

What experimental game theorists may have demonstrated is not that people are systematically irrational but that human rationality is heavily scaffolded. Remove the scaffolding, and we do not do very well. People are able to get on because they “offload” an enormous amount of practical reasoning onto their environment. As a result, when they are put in novel or unfamiliar environments, they perform very poorly, even on apparently simple tasks. -/- This observation is supported by recent empirically informed shifts (...) in philosophy of mind toward a view of cognition as (to cite the current slogan) “embodied, embedded, enactive, extended.” Andy Clark and others have made a very plausible case for the idea that a proper assessment of human cognitive competence must include environmental components. To limit our attention to what lies within the skin-skull boundary is, in effect, to miss the big story on human rationality. Insofar as we are rational, it is often because of our ingenuity at developing “work-arounds” to the glitches in the fast-and-frugal heuristic problem-solving capabilities that natural selection has equipped us with. And these work-arounds often involve a detour through the environment (so-called offloading of cognitive burdens). -/- When it comes to practical rationality, things are no different. Yet in many discussions of “the will,” there is still a tendency to put too much emphasis on what goes on inside the agent’s head. Our objective in this chapter is to articulate this conception of “the extended will” more clearly, using the strategies that people employ to overcome procrastination for the central set of examples. Procrastination, in our view, constitutes a particular type of self-control problem, one that is particularly amenable to philosophical reflection, not only because of the high volume of psychological research on the subject but also because of the large quantity of “self-help” literature in circulationa literature that provides an invaluable perspective on the everyday strategies that people use in order to defeat (or, better yet, circumvent) this type of self-defeating behavior pattern. In general, what we find is that the internalist bias that permeates discussions of the will gives rise to a set of practical recommendations that overemphasize changing the way one thinks about a task, while ignoring the much richer set of strategies that are available in the realm of environmental scaffolding. In the concluding section, we highlight some of the policy implications of this, particularly regarding social trends involving the dismantling of support structures. (shrink)

Building on Elliot and SilvermanÕs (2015) embodied and enactive approach to musicing, I argue for an extended approach: namely, the idea that music can function as an environmental scaffolding supporting the development of various experiences and embodied practices that would otherwise remain inaccessible. I focus especially on the materiality of music. I argue that one of the central ways we use music, as a material resource, is to manipulate social spaceÑand in so doing, manipulate our emotions. Acts of (...) musicing, thought of as processes of environmental space manipulation, are thus examples of what I term Òemotional niche construction.Ó I explore three dimensions of this process and appeal to different strands of empirical work to support this picture. (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)

This paper introduces a new, expanded range of relevant cognitive psychological research on collaborative recall and social memory to the philosophical debate on extended and distributed cognition. We start by examining the case for extended cognition based on the complementarity of inner and outer resources, by which neural, bodily, social, and environmental resources with disparate but complementary properties are integrated into hybrid cognitive systems, transforming or augmenting the nature of remembering or decision-making. Adams and Aizawa, noting this distinctive complementarity (...) argument, say that they agree with it completely: but they describe it as “a non-revolutionary approach” which leaves “the cognitive psychology of memory as the study of processes that take place, essentially without exception, within nervous systems.” In response, we carve out, on distinct conceptual and empirical grounds, a rich middle ground between internalist forms of cognitivism and radical anti-cognitivism. Drawing both on extended cognition literature and on Sterelny’s account of the “scaffolded mind” (this issue), we develop a multidimensional framework for understanding varying relations between agents and external resources, both technological and social. On this basis we argue that, independent of any more “revolutionary” metaphysical claims about the partial constitution of cognitive processes by external resources, a thesis of scaffolded or distributed cognition can substantially influence or transform explanatory practice in cognitive science. Critics also cite various empirical results as evidence against the idea that remembering can extend beyond skull and skin. We respond with a more principled, representative survey of the scientific psychology of memory, focussing in particular on robust recent empirical traditions for the study of collaborative recall and transactive social memory. We describe our own empirical research on socially distributed remembering, aimed at identifying conditions for mnemonic emergence in collaborative groups. Philosophical debates about extended, embedded, and distributed cognition can thus make richer, mutually beneficial contact with independently motivated research programs in the cognitive psychology of memory. (shrink)

The extended mind thesis (EM) asserts that some cognitive processes are (partially) composed of actions consisting of the manipulation and exploitation of environmental structures. Might some processes at the root of social cognition have a similarly extended structure? In this paper, I argue that social cognition is fundamentally an interactive form of space management—the negotiation and management of ‘‘we-space”—and that some of the expressive actions involved in the negotiation and management of we-space (gesture, touch, facial and whole-body expressions) drive (...) basic processes of interpersonal understanding and thus do genuine social-cognitive work. Social interaction is a kind of extended social cognition, driven and at least partially constituted by environmental (non-neural) scaffolding. Challenging the Theory of Mind paradigm, I draw upon research from gesture studies, developmental psychology, and work on Moebius Syndrome to support this thesis. (shrink)

To biologise racism is to treat racism as a neurological phenomenon susceptible to biochemical intervention. In 'Race on the Brain: What Implicit Bias Gets Wrong About the Struggle for Racial Injustice', Kahn (2018) critiques cognitive psychologists and neuroscientists for framing racism in a way that tends to biologise racism, which he argues draws attention and resources away from non-individualistic solutions to racial inequality. In this paper I argue the psychological sciences can accommodate several of Kahn’s criticisms by adopting a situated (...) approach to cognition, where we take environmental features as integral to the cognitive processes that manifest racial bias. (shrink)

Plants have evolved with complex signaling circuits that operate under multiple conditions and govern numerous cellular functions. Stress signaling in plant cells is a sophisticated network composed of interacting proteins organized into tiered cascades where the function of a molecule is dependent on the interaction and the activation of another. In a linear scheme, the receptors of cell surface sense the stimuli and convey stress signals through specific pathways and downstream phosphorylation events controlled by mitogen-activated protein (MAP) kinases and second (...) messengers, leading to appropriate adaptive responses. The specificity of the pathway is guided by scaffolding proteins and docking domains inside the interacting partners with distinctive structures and functions. The flexibility and the fine-tuned organization of the signaling molecules drive the activated MAP kinases into the appropriate location and connection to control and integrate the information flow. Here, we overview recent findings of the involvement of MAP kinases in major abiotic stresses (drought, cold and temperature fluctuations) and we shed light on the complexity and the specificity of MAP kinase signaling modules. (shrink)

Probably the leading exponent of W’s ideas on the language games of inner and outer (the ‘Two Selves’ operation of our personality or intentionality or EP etc. ) the prolific Daniel Hutto’s (DH) approach is called ‘Radical Enactivism’ and is well explained in numerous recent books and papers. It is a development of or version of the Embodied Mind ideas now current and, cleansed of its jargon, it is a straightforward extension of W’s 2nd and 3rd period writings (though Hutto (...) seems only intermittently aware of this). -/- The basic idea of the Embodied Mind or Enactivism is that much of behavior is automated and does not involve representations (basically S2 dispositions-see Hutto’s lovely dissection of the ‘representation rats nest’ in his online papers ). To me this is just another way of stating the fact that System 1 precedes the operation of System 2 which is a standard feature of contemporary psychology, which I have explained above and in further detail in my reviews of Wittgenstein (who was the first to see this and explored it in great detail) and Searle (who called it The Phenomenological Illusion in his superb essay of this name in his book Philosophy in a New Century which I have also reviewed). Since these are basic incontrovertible facts of animal behavior and I have already discussed them I won’t dwell on it here. -/- This book is a sustained argument against other similar ways of describing behavior which he calls CEC and CIC in favor of REC (Radical Embodied Cognition), which he characterizes as “the strongest reading of the embodiment thesis—one that uncompromisingly maintains that basic cognition is literally constituted by, and to be understood in terms of concrete patterns of environmental situated organismic activity, nothing more or less” (p11). This is clear as a bell if you understand the two systems view explained above but likely opaque if you don’t. Much clearer is Fodor’s characterization which he quotes as “abilities are prior to theories”, that “competence is prior to content” and that “knowing how is the paradigm cognitive state and it is prior to knowing that” (p10). That is, the unconscious automatisms of S1 are evolutionarily and behaviorally prior to the slow conscious dispositions of S2. -/- This is classic Hutto high level philosophical dialog, which is quite elegant, but somewhat too dense and a tad pretentious for the rest of us. I have not before encountered his coauthor Myin so can’t say how much of this text is really due to him. It is clear from this and the rest of Hutto’s work that (like everyone else) he has not quite kept up with the latest work in psychology nor really grasped the full power of W or S, even though he is one of the top Wittgensteinians alive and as bright as anyone in the field. His discussions of the language games of “information” and “representation” in his other papers and books (and much else including his deconstructions of Dennett and Fodor) should be required reading for anyone interested in behavior. So, I have the greatest respect for him, but one hopes that he will mellow with time and write descriptions of behavior (i.e., all we can really do as philosophers according to W) in more mundane prose such as this lovely summation on p15. “Hence, REC is nothing less than a fundamental rethinking of the very foundations of standard approaches to cognitive science and philosophy of mind.” Yes and what a pity that this great Wittgensteinian (and everyone else) does not realize that W laid it all out with great (and unmatched) clarity in his third period works over 60 years ago. -/- I have much less sympathy for the extended and scaffolded minds of Chap 7. I don’t see how one can lay the burden of explaining how the mind works at Searle’s door, nor how the convoluted prose about “decoupled contentful activities” etc helps at all. Why not just say that automated unconscious prelinguistic S1 feeds deliberate, conscious linguistic S2, which is axiomatically extended by public language into the myriad wonders of S3 culture? Beginning and end of story. -/- Their last chapter is about “regaining consciousness,” but I would say that if one has understood Wittgenstein and Searle, one has never lost it. And, though this is an excellent book by two of the brightest and the best, I suggest mulling over my thoughts in this and other reviews and reading Johnston and the latest from Searle, along of course with as much of 3rd period W as feasible, is an even better filter for folly. In sum an excellent book with various faults which I try to correct. -/- Those wishing a comprehensive up to date framework for human behavior from the modern two systems view may consult my book ‘The Logical Structure of Philosophy, Psychology, Mind and Language in Ludwig Wittgenstein and John Searle’ 2nd ed (2019). Those interested in more of my writings may see ‘Talking Monkeys--Philosophy, Psychology, Science, Religion and Politics on a Doomed Planet--Articles and Reviews 2006-2019 3rd ed (2019), The Logical Structure of Human Behavior (2019), and Suicidal Utopian Delusions in the 21st Century 4th ed (2019). (shrink)

Probably the leading exponent of Wittgenstein’s ideas on the language games of inner and outer (the ‘Two Selves’ operation of our personality or intentionality or EP etc.) the prolific Daniel Hutto’s approach is called ‘Radical Enactivism’ and is well explained in numerous recent books and papers. It is a development of or version of the Embodied Mind ideas now current and, cleansed of its jargon, it is a straightforward extension of Wittgenstein’s 2nd and 3rd period writings (though Hutto seems only (...) intermittently aware of this). -/- The basic idea of the Embodied Mind or Enactivism is that much of behavior is automated and does not involve representations (basically S2 dispositions-see Hutto’s lovely dissection of the ‘representation rats nest’ in his online papers). To me this is just another way of stating the fact that System 1 precedes the operation of System 2 which is a standard feature of contemporary psychology, which I have explained above and in further detail in my reviews of Wittgenstein (hereafter W-who was the first to see this and explored it in great detail) and Searle (hereafter S-who called it The Phenomenological Illusion in his superb essay of this name in his book Philosophy in a New Century, which I have also reviewed). Since these are basic incontrovertible facts of animal behavior and I have already discussed them I won’t dwell on it here. -/- This book is a sustained argument against other similar ways of describing behavior which he calls CEC and CIC in favor of REC (Radical Embodied Cognition), which he characterizes as “the strongest reading of the embodiment thesis—one that uncompromisingly maintains that basic cognition is literally constituted by, and to be understood in terms of concrete patterns of environmental situated organismic activity, nothing more or less” (p11). This is clear as a bell if you understand the two systems view explained above but likely opaque if you don’t. Much clearer is Fodor’s characterization which he quotes as “abilities are prior to theories”, that “competence is prior to content” and that “knowing how is the paradigm cognitive state and it is prior to knowing that” (p10). That is, the unconscious automatisms of S1 are evolutionarily and behaviorally prior to the slow conscious dispositions of S2. -/- This is classic Hutto high-level philosophical dialog, which is quite elegant, but somewhat too dense and a tad pretentious for the rest of us. I have not before encountered his coauthor Myin, so can’t say how much of this text is really due to him. It is clear from this and the rest of Hutto’s work that (like everyone else) he has not quite kept up with the latest work in psychology nor really grasped the full power of W or S, even though he is one of the top Wittgensteinians alive and as bright as anyone in the field. His discussions of the language games of “information” and “representation” in his other papers and books (and much else including his deconstructions of Dennett and Fodor) should be required reading for anyone interested in behavior. So, I have the greatest respect for him, but one hopes that he will mellow with time and write descriptions of behavior (i.e., all we can really do as philosophers according to W) in more mundane prose such as this lovely summation on p15. “Hence, REC is nothing less than a fundamental rethinking of the very foundations of standard approaches to cognitive science and philosophy of mind.” Yes, and what a pity that this great Wittgensteinian (and everyone else) does not realize that W laid it all out with unmatched clarity in his third period works over 60 years ago. -/- I have much less sympathy for the extended and scaffolded minds of Chap 7. I don’t see how one can lay the burden of explaining how the ‘mind’ works at Searle’s door, nor how the convoluted prose about “decoupled contentful activities” etc. helps at all. Why not just say that automated unconscious prelinguistic S1 feeds deliberate, conscious linguistic S2, which is axiomatically extended by public language into the myriad wonders of culture (S3)? Beginning and end of story. Their last chapter is about “regaining consciousness,” but I would say that if one has understood Wittgenstein and Searle, one has never lost it. And, though this is an excellent book by two of the brightest and the best, I suggest an even better filter for folly is mulling over my thoughts in this and other reviews, and reading Johnston and the latest from Searle, along of course with as much of 3rd period W as feasible. In sum an excellent book with various faults which I try to correct. -/- Those wishing a comprehensive up to date framework for human behavior from the modern two systems view may consult my book ‘The Logical Structure of Philosophy, Psychology, Mind and Language in Ludwig Wittgenstein and John Searle’ 2nd ed (2019). Those interested in more of my writings may see ‘Talking Monkeys--Philosophy, Psychology, Science, Religion and Politics on a Doomed Planet--Articles and Reviews 2006-2019 3rd ed (2019), The Logical Structure of Human Behavior (2019), and Suicidal Utopian Delusions in the 21st Century 4th ed (2019) . (shrink)

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)

Much attention has been drawn to the cognitive basis of innovation. While interesting in many ways, this poses the threat of falling back to traditional internalist assumptions with regard to cognition. We oppose the ensuing contrast between internal cognitive processing and external public practices and technologies that such internal cognitive systems might produce and utilize. We argue that innovation is best understood from the gibsonian notion of affordance, and that many innovative practices emerge from the external scaffolding of cognitive (...) processes. The public engageability that allows the disclosure of hidden affordances is not only –not even primarily– a property of cognitive products, but of cognitive processes. We elaborate on this claims by drawing on Dutilh Novaes’ account of formal languages as cognitive technologies and Hutto’s Narrative Practice Hypothesis. This paves the way to sketch some general principles on how to strategically seek for innovation by targeting hidden affordances. (shrink)

Scaffolded Minds offers a novel account of cognitive scaffolding and its significance for understanding mental disorders. The book is part of the growing philosophical engagement with empirically informed philosophy of mind, which studies the interfaces between philosophy and cognitive science. It draws on two recent shifts within empirically informed philosophy of mind: the first, toward an intensified study of the embodied mind; and the second, toward a study of the disordered mind that acknowledges the convergence of the explanatory concerns (...) of psychiatry and interdisciplinary inquiries into the mind. The book sets out to accomplish a dual task: theoretical mapping of cognitive scaffolding; and the application/calibration of fine-grained philosophical distinctions to empirical research. It introduces the notion of actively scaffolded cognition (ASC) and offers a taxonomy that distinguishes between intrasomatic and extrasomatic scaffolding. It then shows that ASC offers a productive framework for considering certain characteristic features of mental disorders, focusing on altered bodily experience and social cognition deficits. (shrink)

Darwin provided us with a powerful theoretical framework to explain the evolution of living systems. Natural selection alone, however, has sometimes been seen as insufficient to explain the emergence of new levels of selection. The problem is one of “circularity” for evolutionary explanations: how to explain the origins of Darwinian properties without already invoking their presence at the level they emerge. That is, how does evolution by natural selection commence in the first place? Recent results in experimental evolution suggest a (...) way forward: Paul Rainey and his collaborators have shown that Darwinian properties could be exogenously imposed via what they call “ecological scaffolding.” This could solve the “black box” dilemma faced by Darwinian explanations of new levels of organization. Yet, despite “scaffolding” recently becoming a popular term in the study of cognition, culture, and evolution, the concept has suffered from vagueness and ambiguity. This article aims to show that scaffolding can be turned into a proper scientific concept able to do explanatory work within the context of the major evolutionary transitions. Doing so will allow us to once again extend the scope of the Darwinian model of evolution by natural selection. (shrink)

Through a selective historical, theoretical, and critical survey of the uses of the concept of scaffolding over the past 30 years, this chapter traces the development of the concept across developmental psychology, educational theory, and cognitive anthropology, and its place in the interdisciplinary field of distributed cognition from the 1990s. Offering a big-picture overview of the uses of the notion of scaffolding, it suggests three ways to taxonomise forms of scaffolding, and addresses the possible criticism that the (...) metaphor of scaffolding retains an overly individualist vision of cognition. The chapter is aimed at a broad interdisciplinary audience interested in processes of learning, teaching, and apprenticeship as they apply to the study of memory. (shrink)

YouTube has been implicated in the transformation of users into extremists and conspiracy theorists. The alleged mechanism for this radicalizing process is YouTube’s recommender system, which is optimized to amplify and promote clips that users are likely to watch through to the end. YouTube optimizes for watch-through for economic reasons: people who watch a video through to the end are likely to then watch the next recommended video as well, which means that more advertisements can be served to them. This (...) is a seemingly innocuous design choice, but it has a troubling side-effect. Critics of YouTube have alleged that the recommender system tends to recommend extremist content and conspiracy theories, as such videos are especially likely to capture and keep users’ attention. To date, the problem of radicalization via the YouTube recommender system has been a matter of speculation. The current study represents the first systematic, pre-registered attempt to establish whether and to what extent the recommender system tends to promote such content. We begin by contextualizing our study in the framework of technological seduction. Next, we explain our methodology. After that, we present our results, which are consistent with the radicalization hypothesis. Finally, we discuss our findings, as well as directions for future research and recommendations for users, industry, and policy-makers. (shrink)

A family of recent externalist approaches in philosophy of mind argues that our psychological capacities are synchronically and diachronically “scaffolded” by external resources. I consider how these “scaffolded” approaches might inform debates in phenomenological psychopathology. I first introduce the idea of “affective scaffolding” and make some taxonomic distinctions. Next, I use schizophrenia as a case study to argue—along with others in phenomenological psychopathology—that schizophrenia is fundamentally a self-disturbance. However, I offer a subtle reconfiguration of these approaches. I argue that (...) schizophrenia is not simply a disruption of ipseity or minimal self-consciousness but rather a disruption of the scaffolded self, established and regulated via its ongoing engagement with the world and others. I conclude by considering how this scaffolded framework indicates the need to consider new forms of intervention and treatment. (shrink)

For 4E cognitive science, minds are embodied, embedded, enacted, and extended. Proponents observe that we regularly ‘offload’ our thinking onto body and world: we use gestures and calculators to augment mathematical reasoning, and smartphones and search engines as memory aids. I argue that music is a beyond-the-head resource that affords offloading. Via this offloading, music scaffolds access to new forms of thought, experience, and behaviour. I focus on music’s capacity to scaffold emotional consciousness, including the self-regulative processes constitutive of emotional (...) consciousness. In developing this idea, I consider the ‘material’ and ‘worldmaking’ character music, and I apply these considerations to two case studies: music as a tool for religious worship, and music as a weapon for torture. (shrink)

Environmental ethicists have been arguing for decades that swift action to protect our natural environment is morally paramount, and that our concern for the environment should go beyond its importance for human welfare. It might be thought that the widespread acceptance of moral anti-realism would undermine the aims of environmental ethicists. One reason is that recent empirical studies purport to show that moral realists are more likely to act on the basis of their ethical convictions than anti-realists. In (...) addition, it is sometimes argued that only moral realists can countenance the claim that nature is intrinsically valuable. Against this, we argue that the acceptance of moral anti-realism is no threat to the environmentalist cause. We argue, further, that the acceptance of moral realism is potentially an obstacle to delivering on a third core environmental ethicist demand: namely, that successful action on climate change and environmental destruction requires us to change some of our commonly-held ethical views and to achieve a workable consensus. (shrink)

In the Tractatus Wittgenstein often uses graphic metaphors: a ladder, which is to be thrown away after it has been climbed; pictures with feelers; networks with fine square meshes. Although they are illuminating, it is not always clear in exactly what sense Wittgenstein employs them. In this paper, we will try to eliminate this fuzziness with respect to the concept of scaffolding (Gerüst).

A restrictive view of self-control identifies exercises of self-control with synchronic intrapsychic processes, and pictures diachronic and externally-scaffolded strategies not as proper instances of self-control, but as clever ways of avoiding the need to exercise that ability. In turn, defenders of an inclusive view of self-control typically argue that we should construe self-control as more than effortful inhibition, and that, on grounds of functional equivalence, all these diverse strategies might be properly described as instances of self-control. In this paper, I (...) take a fresh look at this debate by focusing on cases of addiction. I argue that addicted agents face a paradigmatic sort of self-control challenge, which makes addiction an important test case for theories of self-control. And I discuss evidence that highlights both the unreliability of synchronic intrapsychic strategies and the crucial role that is played by diachronic and externally-scaffolded strategies in successful attempts at achieving abstinence by addicted individuals. Abstaining addicts are a paradigmatic case of agents who successfully exercise self-control, and they mostly do so by relying on diachronic and externally-scaffolded strategies. This, I argue, lends further support to an inclusive view of self-control. (shrink)

Cognitive scaffolding refers to external structures that change the cognitive demands of tasks. This dissertation begins by reviewing the literature around scaffolding—discussing key thinkers such as Hutchins (1995a), Clark (1997) and Sterelny (2003, 2010). I then develop the above scaffolding characterisation by drawing a distinction between shallow and deep scaffolding. Shallow scaffolding primarily involves cues, whereas deep scaffolding involves the significant offloading of cognitive work. By appealing to the complementarity thesis, I show that deep (...) scaffolds can be explained through a model of cognitive extension (Menary, 2006; Sutton, 2010). Most crucially, despite the abundance of benign/ neutral examples in the literature, I argue that scaffolding can also be ‘hostile’ to agents’ interests—benefitting one agent while undermining another. I draw on Sterelny (2003) to clarify my use of the word ‘hostile’ and also specify what I mean by ‘interests’. I then review authors with similar concerns to my own—i.e., the lack of discussion around external structures that negatively impact agents (Aagaard, 2020; Liao & Huebner, 2020; Slaby, 2016). Despite these authors’ concerns, the idea of ‘hostile scaffolding’ is not quite reached. I then present examples of shallow hostile scaffolding by reviewing how sunglasses (Viola, 2022) and casino interior design and ambience (Friedman, 2000; Schüll, 2012) can be hostile. Most importantly, I show that deep hostile scaffolding is a genuine concern (and not only a theoretical one) by reviewing gambling machines that use player tracking systems and virtual reel mapping (Schüll, 2012), as well as Twitter’s use of gamification (Nguyen, 2021). I close the dissertation by discussing avenues for future hostile scaffolding research. This includes the ethical implications deep hostile scaffolding, scaffolding’s role in forming addictive behavior, other instance of gamification, ‘racist scaffolding’, and hostile scaffolding in developing technologies (such as VR, dark patterns and AI). (shrink)

Dr Stockmann, the principal character in Henrik Ibsen's A Public Enemy, is a classic example of a whistle-blower who, upon detecting and disclosing a serious case of environmental pollution, quickly finds himself transformed from a public benefactor into a political outcast by those in power. If we submit the play to a 'second reading', however, it becomes clear that the ethical intricacies of whistle-blowing are interwoven with epistemological issues. Basically, the play is about the complex task of communicating scientific (...) (notably microbiological) data to lay audiences. This becomes even more apparent when we realise that Stockmann was a contemporary of real 'microbe hunters' such as Pasteur and Koch. The play's basic message is that epoch-making scientists (such as Pasteur and Koch) not only produced convincing and reliable data from a scientific point of view, but also acquired the skills and insights needed to enter into a dialogue with their cultural and societal environment. (shrink)

Daoism and Environmental Philosophy explores ethics and the philosophy of nature in the Daodejing, the Zhuangzi, and related texts to elucidate their potential significance in our contemporary environmental crisis. This book traces early Daoist depictions of practices of embodied emptying and forgetting and communicative strategies of undoing the fixations of words, things, and the embodied self. These are aspects of an ethics of embracing plainness and simplicity, nourishing the asymmetrically differentiated yet shared elemental body of life of the (...) myriad things, and being responsively attuned in encountering and responding to things. These critical and transformative dimensions of early Daoism provide exemplary models and insights for cultivating a more expansive ecological ethos, environmental culture of nature, and progressive political ecology. This work will be of interest to students and scholars interested in philosophy, environmental ethics and philosophy, religious studies, and intellectual history. (shrink)

Why is listening to sad music pleasurable? Eerola et al. convincingly argue that we should adopt an integrative framework — encompassing biological, psycho-social, and cultural levels of explanation — to answer this question. I agree. The authors have done a great service in providing the outline of such an integrative account. But in their otherwise rich discussion of the psycho-social level of engagements with sad music, they say little about the phenomenology of such experiences — including features that may help (...) shed further light on this question. I suggest that emerging enactive perspectives on music and emotion can offer some useful resources. (shrink)

The case for an unprecedented penetration of life mechanisms into the politics of Western modernity has been a cornerstone of 20th-century social theory. Working with and beyond Foucault, this article challenges established views about the history of biopower by focusing on ancient medical writings and practices of corporeal permeability. Through an analysis of three Roman institutions: a) bathing; b) urban architecture; and c) the military, it shows that technologies aimed at fostering and regulating life did exist in classical antiquity at (...) the population scale. The article highlights zones of indistinction between natural and political processes, zoē and bíos, that are not captured by a view of destructive incorporation of or over life by sovereign power. In conclusion, the article discusses the theoretical potential of this historical evidence for contemporary debates on ‘affirmative biopolitics’ and ‘environmental biopower’. (shrink)

ABSTRACTConventional wisdom holds that there is no lucky knowledge: if it is a matter of luck, in some relevant sense, that one's belief that p is true, then one does not know that p. Here I will argue that there is similarly no lucky understanding, at least in the case of one type of luck, namely environmental luck. This argument has three parts. First, we need to determine how we evaluate whether one has understanding, which requires determining what I (...) will call understanding's evaluative object. I argue that as the evaluative object of knowledge is a belief in a proposition, the evaluative object of understanding is a mental representation of a relational structure. Next, I show that arguments that environmental luck is incompatible with understanding miss the mark by considering cases in which one has a belief in a proposition is lucky to be true, instead of ones in which one's mental representation of a relational structure is lucky to obtain. I agree, then, with those who argue that one can have understanding when one's beliefs are environmentally lucky to be true, but that this compatibility is not relevant when considering the question of whether one can have environmentally lucky understanding. I then present what I take to be a properly constructed case which shows the incompatibility of environmental luck with understanding. (shrink)

Social movements often impose nontrivial costs on others against their wills. Civil disobedience is no exception. How can social movements in general, and civil disobedience in particular, be justifiable despite this apparent wrong-making feature? We examine an intuitively plausible account—it is fair that everyone should bear the burdens of tackling injustice. We extend this fairness-based argument for civil disobedience to defend some acts of uncivil disobedience. Focusing on uncivil environmental activism—such as ecotage (sabotage with the aim of protecting the (...) environment)—we argue that some acts of uncivil disobedience can be morally superior to their civil counterparts, when and because such acts target people who are responsible for environmental threats. Indeed, insofar as some acts of uncivil disobedience can more accurately target responsible people, they can better satisfy the demands of fairness compared to their civil counterparts. In some circumstances, our argument may require activists to engage in uncivil disobedienceeven whencivil disobedience is available. (shrink)

We propose the beginnings of a general theory of environments, of the parts or regions of space in which organisms live and move. We draw on two sources: on the one hand on recent work on the ontology of space; and on the other hand on work by ecological scientists on concepts such as territory, habitat, and niche. An environment is in first approximation a volume of space; it is a specific habitat, location, or site that is suitable or adequate (...) for given purposes (of foraging, resting, hunting, breeding, nesting, grooming) in the life of an organism or group of organisms. This spatial notion of environment can be drawn closer to biological and ecological science by taking account of the pertinent physical attributes realized within given spatial regions. (shrink)

A number of writers have drawn on Hayek’s epistemic defence of market institutions to argue that free-markets and tort law are best placed to overcome the knowledge problems associated with the environmental sphere. This paper argues to the contrary, that this Austrian School approach itself suffers from significant knowledge problems. The first of these relates to the ability of Austrian economics to assign victim compensation and the second to the difficulty of establishing causation in complex environmental problems. The (...) paper will also show how alternative approaches may not suffer from these epistemic challenges and are better placed to overcome them. (shrink)

Ecofascism as a tradition in Environmental Ethics seems to burgeoning with potential. The roots of Ecofascism can be traced back to the German Romantic School, to the Wagnerian narration of the Nibelungen saga, to the works of Fichte and Herder and, finally, to the so-called völkisch movement. Those who take pride in describing themselves as ecofascists grosso modo tend to prioritize the moral value of the ecosphere, while, at the same time, they almost entirely devalue species and individuals. Additionally, (...) these ecofascists are eager to reject democracy, the idea of progress in its entirety, as well as industrialization and urbanization. They also seem to be hostile towards individual autonomy and free will. In this short essay I will present and discuss Kaarlo Pentti Linkola’s approach to environmental ethics, one that could be well described as the epitome of Ecofascism. I will argue that his arguments are neither sound nor documented, and I will conclude that Linkola’s overall approach is, in my view, contrary to the purpose as well as to the very essence of morality. (shrink)

The article is aimed at studying environmental responsibility of multinational enterprises in electronics and IT sectors. The main aspects of environmental policy of global business enterprises have been systematized, their characteristics for such high-tech market leaders as Alphabet Inc, IBM and Intel Corporation have been given. Corporate policies have been analyzed and compared in three aspects of environmental activity of the companies selected for this study: waste recycling, energy use and environmental impact. The results of the (...) analysis of eco-responsible companies’ practices show that each company forms management style and tools by implementing environmental responsibility, but none of them has managed to hold higher positions in the ranking of business environmental responsibility. Reserves for activating eco-oriented companies’ policy in IT sector have been identified. (shrink)

The burgeoning literature on the ethical issues raised by climate engineering has explored various normative questions associated with the research and deployment of climate engineering, and has examined a number of responses to them. While researchers have noted the ethical issues from climate engineering are global in nature, much of the discussion proceeds predominately with ethical framework in the Anglo-American and European traditions, which presume particular normative standpoints and understandings of human–nature relationship. The current discussion on the ethical issues, therefore, (...) is far from being a genuine global dialogue. The aim of this article is to address the lack of intercultural exchange by exploring the ethics of climate engineering from a perspective of Confucian environmental ethics. Drawing from the existing discussion on Confucian environmental ethics and Confucian ethics of technology, I discuss what Confucian ethics can contribute to the ethical debate on climate engineering. (shrink)

Deep Ecology, the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement (VHEMT), and Anti-Civilization Primitivism have frequently been labeled as radical environmental ideologies, owing to their relationship with activities conducted by environmental extremists. Nonetheless, given the serious concerns faced by climate change and biodiversity loss, it is critical to engage with a broad range of perspectives and techniques. Such participation allows us to have access to a greater range of perspectives and a more diverse pool of knowledge, boosting our capacity for creative (...) problem-solving. The purpose of this essay is to reconsider the underlying concepts and principles that drive these theories, as well as to assess their relevance in tackling modern environmental issues. We think that Deep Ecology, the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement (VHEMT), and Anti-Civilization Primitivism should be called "unconventional" or "distinctive" rather than "radical," because they primarily focus on the ontological perspective but do not urge extreme acts. Meanwhile, their distinctiveness helps increase public awareness about environmental issues and promote reflection on and rethinking of the ontological link between mankind and the natural world. (shrink)

Environmental activism plays a vital role in raising awareness of environmental degradation and halting environmentally destructive activities, which is expected to contribute to safeguarding the Earth’s system against climate and biodiversity loss crises. Although the passion and commitment of environmental activists should be acknowledged, several groups of environmental activists are embracing the radical environmentalist movement. They support using illegal actions to achieve their primary goal of environmental protection. The actions perpetrated by radical environmentalist groups are (...) not impulsive but rather part of a deliberately planned and organized following a long-term strategy. (shrink)

Recent critics (Andrew Light, Bryan Norton, Anthony Weston, and Bruce Morito, among others) have argued that we should give up talk of intrinsic value in general and that of nature in particular. While earlier theorists might have overestimated the importance of intrinsic value, these recent critics underestimate its importance. Claims about a thing’s intrinsic value are claims about the distinctive way in which we have reason to care about that thing. If we understand intrinsic value in this manner, we can (...) capture the core claims that environmentalists want to make about nature while avoiding the worries raised by contemporary critics. Since the distinction between intrinsic and extrinsic value plays a critical role in our understanding of the different ways that we do and should care about things, moral psychology, ethical theory in general, and environmental ethics in particular shouldn’t give up on the concept of intrinsic value. (shrink)

Environmental pollution and climate change have been considered the main environmental challenges affecting the world’s ecosystem, including that of South Africa. They cause poverty, land degradation, and health hazards. One of the leading causes and contributing factors of environmental pollution and climate change is carbon emissions into the atmosphere. As a way to curb these emissions, Carbon tax policy has been introduced in various countries, including South Africa. In 2019, a Carbon tax was introduced to assist South (...) Africa in delivering on the commitments made in the Paris Agreement in 2015. If the policy is effectively applied, it will raise revenues while reducing carbon dioxide emissions. Before and after introducing the Carbon tax policy in South Africa, there has been debate and discussion on its impact on the environment, economy, and society. Based on the debate and discussion, it has been observed that more attention is paid to the economic implications and benefits of the tax on South Africa than the ethical implications. Thus, this paper aims to contribute to the ongoing debate and discussion by ethically evaluating the Carbon tax policy in South Africa. (shrink)

John O’Neill, Alan Holland, and Andrew Light usefully distinguish two ways of thinking about environmental values, namely, end-state and historical views. To value nature in an end-state way is to value it because it instantiates certain properties, such as complexity or diversity. In contrast, a historical view says that nature’s value is (partly) determined by its particular history. Three contemporary defenses of a historical view are explored in order to clarify: (1) the normatively relevant history; (2) how historical considerations (...) are supposed to instruct environmental decision making; and (3) the relative importance of historical and end-state considerations. There are multiple reasons for including historical considerations in an account of environmental values. For example, knowledge of a natural object’s history can add depth and texture to our appreciation of that object. Further, if we were blind to the relevant history, we could not adequately understand and defend environmental policy goals such as preserving the potentials of natural systems or maintaining ecological health, for these goals appear to have irreducibly historical aspects. While historical considerations are important, such considerations are insufficient to guide our normative thinking about nature and how it should be dealt with practically. But they succeed in broadening and deepening our understanding of the nature and sources of environmental value. (shrink)

This article asks whether a country that suffers from serious environmental problems caused by another country could have a just cause for a defensive war? Danish philosopher Kasper Lippert-Rasmussen has argued that under certain conditions extreme poverty may give a just cause for a country to defensive war, if that poverty is caused by other countries. This raises the question whether the victims of environmental damages could also have a similar right to self-defense. Although the article concerns justice (...) of war, we will concentrate only on the issue of what can be just causes of war, instead of evaluating the entire justification of war. This is to say that we will limit our discussion to the question concerning just cause and leave aside more general questions concerning justness and moral permissibility of war. Our aim is to list the questions that must be made and settled if defensive war in the case of serious environmental problems is said to have (or not to have) a just cause. We will argue that there are three questions that are most important in this context. They are the question concerning liability, the question of collective responsibility, and the question whether environmental harms may create a “sufficient reason” for raising a war. (shrink)

Aesthetics is fundamentally a theory of sensible experience. Its scope has expanded greatly from an initial centering on the arts and scenic nature to the full range of appreciative experience. Expanding the range of aesthetics raises challenging questions about the experience of appreciation. Traditional accounts are inadequate in their attempt to identify and illuminate the perceptual experiences that these new applications evoke. Considering the range of environmental and everyday occasions aesthetically changes aesthetics into a descriptive and not necessarily celebratory (...) study of sensible experience, for it must now accommodate a complete range of negative as well as positive values. Th is paper develops an analysis of the multiple dimensions of environmental sensibility. (shrink)

Much recent cognitive neuroscientific work on body knowledge is representationalist: “body schema” and “body images”, for example, are cerebral representations of the body (de Vignemont 2009). A framework assumption is that representation of the body plays an important role in cognition. The question is whether this representationalist assumption is compatible with the variety of broadly situated or embodied approaches recently popular in the cognitive neurosciences: approaches in which cognition is taken to have a ‘direct’ relation to the body and to (...) the environment. A “direct” relation is one where the boundaries between the body and the head, or between the environment and the animal are not theoretically important in the understanding of cognition. These boundaries do not play a theoretically privileged role in cognitive explanations of behavior. But representationalism appears to put a representational veil between the locus of cognition and that which is represented, making cognitive relations to the body and to the environment be indirect, with a high associated computational load. For this reason, direct approaches have tried to minimize the use of internal representations (Suchman 1987; Barwise 1987; Agre and Chapman 1987; Brooks 1992; Thelen and Smith 1994; van Gelder 1995; Port and van Gelder 1995; Clark 1997, 1999; Rupert 2009, p. 180). Does a cognitive neuroscience committed to direct relations rule out a representationalist approach to body knowledge? Or is direct representationalism possible? (shrink)

In this paper, I argue both that philosophy as a way of life is a tradition worth reviving and that environmental philosophy is a promising branch of philosophy to enact this revival. First, I sketch what constitutes philosophy as a way of life, which includes both some conception of the good life and an array of spiritual exercises that assists one in living according to that conception. I then discuss a connection between possessing virtue and leading the good life, (...) a connection of great importance to ancient and modern practitioners of philosophy as a way of life. Next, I offer an argument for why this tradition of philosophy is worth reviving at the present time. The remainder of the paper is devoted to exploring the prospects for a distinctively environmental approach to philosophy as a way of life. (shrink)

This work introduces the reader to the central issues and theories in Western environmental ethics, and against this background develops a Buddhist environmental philosophy and ethics. Drawing material from original sources, there is a lucid exposition of Buddhist environmentalism, its ethics, economics and Buddhist perspectives for environmental education. The work is focused on a diagnosis of the contemporary environmental crisis and a Buddhist contribution for positive solutions. Replete with stories and illustrations from original Buddhist sources, it (...) is both informative and engaging. (shrink)

This essay considers how ancient Stoic cosmopolitanism – roughly, the claim all human beings are members of the same “cosmopolis”, or universal city, and so are entitled to moral concern in virtue of possessing reason – informs Stoic thinking about how we ought to treat non-human entities in the environment. First, I will present the Stoic justification for the thesis that there are only rational members of the cosmopolis – and so that moral concern does not extend to any non-human (...) part of the natural world – and explore the foundations of these views in Stoic physics. Next, I will show that, like other anthropocentric theories, Stoic cosmopolitanism allows for environmental preservation and protection of non-human entities, so long as these activities ultimately benefit human beings. However, because the Stoics include the appreciation of natural beauty as a component of the happy life, this justification is not as feeble as it might seem. Humans are naturally set up to contemplate the order and complexity of the universe, and so environmental degradation and species loss, in marring this harmonious system, frustrates the achievement of the human goal. After exploring these facets of Stoic philosophy, and assessing to what extent they might justify environmental conservation, I close with a critical appraisal of Stoic theory – specifically, of the claims that (i) only humans possess reason and (ii) only rational creatures are deserving of moral concern. (shrink)