Extended emotions

Abstract

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).

Paintings as Solid Affective Scaffolds

“…First, robustness refers to the extent to which a given instance of affective scaffolding manifests synchronous causal bidirectionality between the agent and the affective resource. Strong ongoing causal binds amount to sturdy, robust scaffolds (compare Krueger and Szanto ). For example, going to the movies to be entertained is a nonrobust case because it admits of little or no reciprocity.…”

“…Consider, for example, the improvisation of a professional musician (Krueger and Szanto ). In playing his or her instrument, he or she produces music that affects the way he or she feels, which in turn influences what he or she plays next, and so on in genuinely interactive fashion (for more on this topic, see Cochrane ; Colombetti ; Colombetti and Roberts ; Krueger ; Krueger and Szanto ). In sum, robust affective scaffolding demands a relatively high degree of synchronic causal bidirectionality between the agent and the relevant environmental resource.…”

Why so Serious? Theorising Playful Model-Driven Group Decision Support with Situated Affectivity

“…In the same way that situated cognition approaches seek to understand cognition in social(ised) practice, the lens of situated affectivity suggests that emotions can be usefully conceptualized as resulting from the interaction between affective qualities or affordances in the environment and the embodied subject's resonance (Fuchs and Koch 2014; Stephan et al 2014). A situated perspective thus views cognition and affect as being embedded in networks of socio-cultural, biological and material scaffolds that support their continued performance (Krueger and Szanto 2016). Practices aimed at sustaining and amplifying our epistemic and affective behavior-in-practice through engagement with resources in the environment that are used as scaffolds, can be characterized as niche construction (Sterelny 2010).…”

“…Features of our environment are seen to drive and partially constitute emotions with cognitive processes arising from an agent's active engagements with the environment through their body, thus lifting the barrier between body and cognition (Blackman 2012). In a matter of degrees, some emotions may even be said to be constituted by external resources so that they could be said to spread out beyond brain and body and might be socially extended and shared by multiple agents (Krueger and Szanto 2016). These new developments with the focus on situated affectivity, affective energies and creative motion, characterise cognitive-affective performance by movement and process (Blackman 2012) (Table 1).…”

Schizophrenia and the Scaffolded Self

“…The various tools and technologies we use to support these processes play such a crucial role in "scaffolding" (i.e., setting up, driving, and regulating) them, we ought to view these external resources as part of the cognitive process itself (Clark 2008) -or at least as contributing environmental support essential for maintaining the character and functional integrity of the process in question (Sterelny 2010). 2 A prominent trend in recent externalist debates considers the possibility that affective states like moods and emotions might be similarly scaffolded (Carter et al 2016;Colombetti and Roberts 2015;Greenwood 2013;Krueger 2014b;Krueger and Szanto 2016;Slaby 2014;Stephan et al 2014). Call this the scaffolded affectivity thesis (SA).…”