心靈與物質－陰暗面：壓迫性的事物、敵對的框架和不適應的生態位

Humans are embedded in material environments. From the objects and artefacts that surround us, to the people we share our lives with, and the places we inhabit. We live in material worlds. Situated or distributed approaches to the mind argue that these material thingsbodies, artefacts, social practices, photographs, works of literature and art, and other aspects of the external environmentcontribute in important ways to our cognitive and affective lives (Sutton 2006; Robbins & Aydede 2009; Menary 2018). The external world offers cognitive and affective support and can shape and scaffold our minds in important ways (Sterelny 2010; Heersmink 2018). In this kind of view, humans and their environments can be seen as extended or distributed cognitive and affective systems. If an external resource (like a notebook or smartphone) functions in the same way as internal memory or reasoning—being reliably available, automatically used, and trusted—then it should count as part of the mind, and the subject coupled with the artifact can be seen as a distributed cognitive system (Clark & Chalmers 1998). Another aspect of the mind that has been the target of situated approaches is the way in which our affective lives interact with the environments we inhabit (Krueger 2014; Krueger & Szanto 2016; Piredda 2020). In this view, emotions should be viewed not merely as internal states that provide a subject with information about a certain situation, but rather as complex affective events, developed in interaction with the physical and the social environment (Griffiths & Scarantino 2009). We can regulate, organize, and maintain our affective life by manipulating everyday artifacts and spaces (Colombetti et al. 2018). In many cases, this scaffolding of the mind is seen to be something that contributes positively to our cognitive economies. We scaffold the mind and it improves our cognition, positively regulates our emotions: “we feel, remember, reason, and plan more accurately, quickly or efficiently than we would without scaffolding” (Spurrett et al. 2025, p. 345). Nonetheless, scaffolding can also be bad for the mind (Sutton 2024). Scaffolding can hinder or hamper our (mental) lives in some cases. Material things can be “oppressive”, leading to forms of injustice (Liao & Huebner 2021); we construct environmental niches to support our cognition but this can sometimes be “maladaptive” or “oppressive” (Coninx 2023; Fabry 2025); indeed, scaffolding can sometimes be “hostile”, in which there might be deliberate manipulations of our cognitive and affective openness (Timms & Spurrett 2023). This course investigates this dark side of the way that minds and material interact. It examines how cognitive and affective states and processes can be affected in detrimental or maladaptive ways by the material and social environments, and discovers ways of improving this kind of bad scaffolding. Objectives The goal of the course is to further students’ familiarity with some of the fundamental issues in philosophy of mind and cognition with a focus on situated approaches to cognitive and affective states and processes. By the end of the course students should be comfortable discussing some of the central problems in this field, offering critical responses to proposed solutions to these problems, and using their understanding to engage critically with the theories. Specifically, students should will be able to: 1. Demonstrate an awareness of some of the central issues in philosophy of situated cognition. 2. Understand and analyse arguments in the relevant literature. 3. Critically evaluate these theories and arguments. 4. Develop their own views or perspectives through consideration and analysis of the views and arguments presented in the course, and to present their own views with clarity and rigour. 5. Develop clarity of thought; clarity of verbal expression; clarity of written expression and exposition.

教師未提供此項資料

無備註

Teaching assistant

- Participation in class discussions: 20% - Weekly comments: 40% - Term paper: 40%

教師未提供此項資料

See weekly content.

地點

教師未提供此項資料

時間

By appointment.

聯絡方式

chrismccarroll@nycu.edu.tw