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)

Narrative views of the self argue that we constitute our self in self-narratives. Embodied views hold that our self is shaped through embodied experiences. In that case, what is the relation between embodiment and narrativity in the process of self-constitution? The question demands a clear definition of embodiment, but existing studies remains unclear on this point (section 2). We offer a correction to this situation by drawing on Merleau-Ponty’s analysis of the body that highlights its habituality. On this account, the (...) body has an inherent tendency to cultivate an organization of habits through its history of engagement with the world (section 3). Next, we explore its role in narrative self-constitution by distinguishing between two aspects of the narrative self, the narrated I and the narrating I (section 4). We argue on phenomenological grounds that self-narratives are informed by bodily perspectives in both respects. Furthermore, a focus on the habituality of the body allows for a better explanation of self-constitution than those based on implicit self-narratives (section 5). For these phenomenological and theoretical reasons, we conclude that narrative self-constitution is an embodied and embedded practice (section 6). (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)

Richard Heersmink argues that self‐narratives are distributed across embodied organisms and their environment, given that their building blocks, autobiographical memories, are distributed. This argument faces two problems. First, it commits a fallacy of composition. Second, it relies on Marya Schechtman's narrative self‐constitution view, which is incompatible with the distributed cognition framework. To solve these problems, this article develops an alternative account of self‐narratives. On this account, we actively connect distributed autobiographical memories through distributed conversational and textual self‐narrative practices. This account (...) enhances our understanding of the memory–narrative nexus and has implications for philosophical conceptions of self. (shrink)

On many occasions, irony is used to communicate emotions, to criticise or to tease other people. Irony comprehension consists in identifying an utterance as ironical and detecting its implied meaning. Existing research has investigated irony comprehension as a pragma-linguistic phenomenon, which has led to several theoretical accounts and interesting empirical results. However, given that irony comprehension is situated in a social context and has the purpose to communicate the mental states of the speaker/writer indirectly, it is reasonable to assume that (...) social cognition and emotional processes play an important role. Until very recently, this has been largely overlooked by research in the field. Furthermore, an overarching framework that can integrate theoretical insights and empirical data on the component processes of irony comprehension is still lacking. The purpose of this paper is to help close this gap. The positive proposal is that the predictive processing framework provides the theoretical resources and conceptual tools to describe relevant aspects of irony comprehension. According to predictive processing, perception, action, cognition, and emotion can be described as a continuous attempt to minimise prediction error. Irony comprehension, I will show, can be depicted as a special case of prediction error minimisation. The neuro-functional mechanism postulated by predictive processing is apt to account for the realisation of the pragma-linguistic, social, and emotional processes that jointly give rise to irony comprehension. The emerging perspective can elucidate why and how people comprehend ironical utterances. (shrink)

Research in evolutionary biology and philosophy of biology and cognition strongly suggests that human organisms modify their environment through active processes of niche construction. Recently, proponents of the free-energy principle and variational active inference have argued that their approach can deepen our understanding of the reciprocal causal relationship between organisms and their niche on various scales. This paper examines the feasibility and scope of variational formalisations and conceptualisations of the organism-niche nexus with a particular focus on the extended active inference (...) account. I will draw a conceptual distinction between selective niche construction, developmental niche construction, and organism-niche coordination dynamics and argue that these notions capture different causal patterns, each of which with a distinct scope. Against this background, I will analyse and discuss the extended active inference account and its strategy to integrate variational active inference with work on extended cognition. The proponents of extended active inference assume that their account can provide an explanation of selective niche construction, developmental niche construction, and organism-niche coordination dynamics. However, my key claim will be that this account has the potential to elucidate the workings of organism-niche coordination dynamics, but does not adequately capture the causal patterns of selective niche construction and developmental niche construction. (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)

In the literature on enculturation—the thesis according to which higher cognitive capacities result from transformations in the brain driven by culture—numerical cognition is often cited as an example. A consequence of the enculturation account for numerical cognition is that individuals cannot acquire numerical competence if a symbolic system for numbers is not available in their cultural environment. This poses a problem for the explanation of the historical origins of numerical concepts and symbols. When a numeral system had not been created (...) yet, people did not have the opportunity to acquire number concepts. But, if people did not have number concepts, how could they ever create a symbolic system for numbers? Here I propose an account of the invention of symbolic systems for numbers by anumeric people in the remote past that is compatible with the enculturation thesis. I suggest that symbols for numbers and number concepts may have emerged at the same time through the re-semantification of words whose meanings were originally non-numerical. (shrink)