Abstract Affordances for Extended Affectivity

In adopting new theoretical advancements within cognitive science, emotion studies and ecological psychology, this paper explores how the notion of affordances gains strength and explanatory power by being linked to notions of affect and emotion. In doing so it is claimed that the notions of direct perception and affordances can be used to analyse and understand the fast and on-going trajectory of choices that underlies human interaction. This perspective is laid out in in-depth analyses of three real-life examples from different institutional settings: an emergency ward at a hospital, a school for children with special needs, and a kindergarten. Inherent in each setting one finds a pre-defined set of expectations of how specific actions are carried out by the participants to achieve institutional goals. However, in each example, slightly different and surprising actions are accomplished during the on-going interaction. As the participants engage in the task, they use the affordances of the environment - including other individuals - differently, which highlights the complicated nature of affordances in relation to social interaction. The situations all entertain a number of potential affordances; yet only one (or at least few) is enacted. It is argued that this choice – a pull towards certain aspects at the expense of others – is deeply saturated by emotionality and affective involvement. Finally, these findings are used to illustrate how emotion and cognition can be re-thought, not as distinct processes, but as intertwined in an organism-environment-system.

Discipline Filosofiche, Special Issue: "Philosophical Perspectives on Affective Experience and Psychopathology", eds. Anna Bortolan and Alessandro Salice", 2018

Self-disorders in depression and schizophrenia have been the focus of much recent work in phenomenological psychopathology. But little has been said about the role the material environment plays in shaping the affective character of these disorders. In this paper, we argue that enjoying reliable (i.e., trustworthy) access to the things and spaces around us — the constituents of our material environment — is crucial for our ability to stabilize and regulate our affective life on a day-today basis. These things and spaces often play an ineliminable role in shaping what we feel and how we feel it; when we interact with them, they contribute ongoing feedback that " scaffolds " the character and temporal development of our affective experiences. However, in some psychopathological conditions, the ability to access to these things and spaces becomes disturbed. Individuals not only lose certain forms of access to the practical significance of the built environment but also to its ​ regulative​ significance, too — and the stability and organization of their affective life is compromised. In developing this view, we discuss core concepts like " affordance spaces " , " scaffolding " , and " incorporation ". We apply these concepts to two case studies, severe depression and schizophrenia, and we show why these cases support our main claim. We conclude by briefly considering implications of this view for developing intervention and treatment strategies.

Philosophy Compass 11(12), 863-878, 2016

Until recently, philosophers and psychologists conceived of emotions as brain-and body-bound affairs. But researchers have started to challenge this internalist and individualist orthodoxy. A rapidly growing body of work suggests that some emotions incorporate external resources and thus extend beyond the neurophysiological confines of organisms; some even argue that emotions can be socially extended and shared by multiple agents. Call this the extended emotions thesis (ExE). In this article, we consider different ways of understanding ExE in philosophy, psychology, and the cognitive sciences. First, we outline the background of the debate and discuss different argumentative strategies for ExE. In particular, we distinguish ExE from cognate but more moderate claims about the embodied and situated nature of cognition and emotion (section 1). We then dwell upon two dimensions of ExE: emotions extended by material culture and by the social factors (section 2). We conclude by defending ExE against some objections (section 3) and point to desiderata for future research (section 4). Defenders of the extended mind thesis (ExM) argue that some cognitive processes like thinking, planning, and navigating our environment extend beyond the head. Features of our environment drive and thus partially constitute some of these processes. Might emotions be similarly extended? Until recently, most emotion researchers assumed that emotions supervene on processes inside an individual's brain and body. But some now question this internalist and individualist orthodoxy. An increasing number of researchers argue that some emotions incorporate external resources so deeply that they can be said to extend beyond brain and body; some even argue that emotions can be socially extended and shared by multiple agents. Call this the extended emotions thesis (ExE).

Oxford Handbook of Phenomenological Psychopathology (eds. G. Stanghellini et al.)., 2018

Intentionality comes from the Latin verb intendo meaning to aim, hold out, or stretch. In the context of phenomenology, it refers to consciousness's ability to be of or about things -how consciousness can direct itself toward objects internal (images, memories, etc.) and external (things, relations, and events in the world). Phenomenologists argue that intentionality is a central feature of consciousness. This article discusses phenomenological approaches to intentionality. It consider intentionality's mental, motor, and affective dimensions as developed within the phenomenological tradition. It also considers why phenomenologists think intentionality is integral to subjectivity, and how this qualitative orientation can help illuminate the lived experience of psychopathological conditions, some of which appear to involve subtle disturbances of intentionality.

HUMANA.MENTE Journal of Philosophical Studies, 2019

In this paper we suggest an understanding of the self within the conceptual framework of situated affectivity, proposing the notion of an affectively extended self and arguing that the construction, diachronic reshaping and maintenance of the self is mediated first by affective interactions. We initially consider the different variations on the conception of the extended self that have been already proposed in the literature (Clark & Chalmers 1998; Heersmink 2017, 2018; Krueger 2018; Wilson, Lenart 2015). We then propose our alternative, contextualising it within the current debate on situated affectivity. While the idea that we exploit the external environment in order to manage our affective life is now rather widespread among philosophers (e.g. Colombetti & Krueger 2015, Piredda 2019), its potential consequences for and connections with the debate on the self remain underexplored. Drawing on James' intuition of the "material self", which clearly connects the self and the emotions in agency, and broadly envisioning an extension of the self beyond its organismic boundaries, we propose our pragmatist conception of the self: an affectively extended self that relies on affective artifacts and practices to construct its identity extended beyond skin and skull.

A family of recent externalist approaches in philosophy of mind argues that our psychological capacities are synchronically and diachronically "scaffolded" by external (i.e., beyond-the-brain) 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.

The Value of Emotions for Knowledge, ed. L. Candiotto, 2019

The aim of this chapter is to discuss the relevance that emotions can play in our epistemic life considering the state of the art of the philosophical debate on emotions. The strategy is the one of focusing on the three main models on emotions as evaluative judgements, bodily feelings, and perceptions, following the fil rouge of emotion intentionality for rising questions about their epistemic functions. From this examination, a major challenge to mainstream epistemology arises, the one that asks to provide prominence to the epistemic agent and to her affects. This chapter discusses these implications, also providing an overview of the many alternatives available nowadays in epistemology, arguing for an open, comprehensive, and interdisciplinary approach to emotions in knowledge.

Proceedings of A Body of Knowledge - Embodied Cognition and the Arts conference CTSA UCI 8-10 Dec 2016, 2018

Music and Consciousness II, eds. David Clarke, Ruth Herbert, and Eric Clarke. Oxford University Press., 2019

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.