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“Scaffolding” and “affordance” asintegrative concepts in the cognitivesciencesAnna Estany & Sergio MartínezPublished online: 28 Aug 2013.

To cite this article: Philosophical Psychology (2013): “Scaffolding” and “affordance” as integrativeconcepts in the cognitive sciences, Philosophical Psychology, DOI: 10.1080/09515089.2013.828569

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“Scaffolding” and “affordance” asintegrative concepts in the cognitivesciences

Anna Estany and Sergio Martınez

There are (at least) two ways to think of the differences in basic concepts and typologies

that one can find in the different scientific practices that constitute a research tradition.

One is the fundamentalist view: the fewer the better. The other is a non-fundamentalist

view of science whereby the integration of different concepts into the right abstraction

grounds an explanation that is not grounded as the sum of the explanations supported by

the parts. Integrative concepts are often associated with idealizations that can successfully

set the stage for different phenomena to be compared or for explanations of different

phenomena to be considered as jointly increasing our understanding of reality beyond that

which each explanation provides separately. In this paper, our aim is to argue for the

importance of the notions of an “affordance” and “scaffolding” as integrative concepts in

the cognitive sciences. The integrational role of the concept of affordance is closely related

with the capacity of affordances to generate the scaffoldings leading to the integration. The

capacities of affordances that turn them into (stable) scaffoldings explain why such

notions are often used interchangeably (as we shall see). On this basis, we aim to show

that the concepts of affordance and scaffolding provide the sort of epistemic perspective

that can overcome common complaints about the limits and unity of the cognitive sciences

once claims about extended cognition are taken seriously.

Keywords: Affordance; Distributed Cognition; Extended Cognition; Integrative Concept;

Scaffolding

1. Introduction

There are (at least) two ways to think of the differences in basic concepts and

typologies that one can find in the different scientific practices that constitute a

q 2013 Taylor & Francis

Anna Estany is a professor at the Autonomous University of Barcelona.

Sergio Martınez is a professor at the National Autonomous University of Mexico.Correspondence to: Anna Estany, Departament de Filosofia, Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona, 08193 Bellaterra

(Cerdanyola del Valles), Barcelona, Spain. Email: anna.estany@uab.cat

Philosophical Psychology, 2013http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09515089.2013.828569

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research tradition. On the one hand, the advancement of science can be considered ascommitted to reducing such differences. The aim of science is thus to arrive at a

fundamental theory capable of bringing all these differences together in a singleunambiguous array of concepts and one fundamental typology. This is the

fundamentalist view: the fewer the better. On the other hand, one can think that eventhough the advancement of science requires a certain trimming of the number and

type of concepts involved (Occam’s razor), it often involves the integration of differentconcepts and typologies into more abstract concepts that ground explanations having

an epistemic value that goes beyond the sum of the value of explanations grounded inthe different concepts taken separately. This is a non-fundamentalist view of science.

Integration might involve discarding inadequate concepts or typologies, but it isrecognized that integration might also retain diversity or transform it into a resource

for furthering our understanding.1 Non-reductive integration requires integrativeconcepts.

Our main thesis is that putting the discussion about extended and distributedcognition in such a non-fundamentalist perspective suggests ways in which

heterogeneity of resources and the hybrid character of cognitive systems can betaken to be epistemically productive.

Integrative concepts are often associated with idealizations that can successfully setthe stage for different phenomena to be compared or for explanations of different

phenomena to be considered as jointly increasing our understanding of reality beyondthat which each concept provides separately. The way in which Minkowski sees the

Special Theory of Relativity providing a synthesis of some of the basic concepts ofphysics is a good example: “space by itself, and time by itself, are doomed to fade away

into mere shadows, and only a kind of union of the two will preserve an independentreality” (Minkowski, 1952, p. 74). In physics, most often, the sort of integration in

question involves two (or at most a few) kinds of different concepts. In contemporarybiology, major discussions often involve the divergence of commitments with respect

to the sort of idealizations that are most promising for the integration of several kindsof phenomena. Regev and Shapiro (2002), for example, say that one major task in

theoretical biology is to understand how insight arises from the choice of “the rightabstractions”; the sort of abstractions that allow large amounts of data regarding the

functions, activities, and interactions of biological systems (they are thinkingspecifically of molecular systems in cells) to be made intelligible and fit together as

parts of a whole. These abstractions are a good example of what we mean by theintegration of concepts. Such concepts do not have a fixed causal referent, they refer todifferent causal processes in different contexts, but those different processes are taken

to be parts of a whole.The search for the right abstractions seems to play a crucial role in the somewhat

heated recent discussions concerning the explanation of morphological and behavioralnovelty in biology. There is a wide variety of explanations of novelty (associated with

different conceptual accounts of novelty), and it is not hard to see that such differencesarise at least in part from the fact that different traditions of inquiry use different

characterizations of novelty. Confronted with this fact, one might be inclined to look

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for arguments that allow us to choose the right characterization of novelty and thusthe correct explanation. This approach can lead to success in some isolated cases, but it

is not always the best strategy; or at least, it is often not the whole story. An alternativeway to proceed has been suggested, for example, by Brigandt and Love in several

publications, but particularly in their 2012 paper.Brigandt and Love claim that the diversity in the characterizations of novelty should

be seen as delineating the epistemic role of the concept of evolutionary novelty. Theconcept should not be seen as playing a direct role in the causal explanation of

phenomena; rather, it should be seen as setting the stage, as a scaffold, for differentepistemic roles that the concept plays in structuring an array of related problems in

such a way that enhances understanding. Thus, evolutionary novelty as described byBrigandt and Love could be better understood as an integrating concept that can be

used to characterize the right sort of abstraction that will allow for an integratedaccount of different explanations (and thus concepts) of novelty. Of course, the

evaluation of whether a given abstraction is the right abstraction depends on what arewe willing to consider as the phenomena to be integrated. This does not mean that the

choice is arbitrary, however. Evo-devo, as a fast growing approach in the biologicalsciences, can be seen as arising from the recognition that biological development (and

disciplines such as embryology) could contribute more to our understanding ofevolution than more traditional disciplines (such as molecular genetics).2 The

relevance of evo-devo for the study of evolution depends on accepting this sort ofpremise. As in this case, most often, discussions about what the right abstraction is

cannot be detached from evaluating alternative ways of conceiving future research.A paradigmatic example of this sort of strategy in the advancement of a scientific

agenda is Gibson’s ecological approach to perception.3 Gibson’s approach can be seenas starting from his conviction that it was not possible to understand visual perception

as an interpretation of retinal images (relying on the laws of geometrical optics and aCartesian abstraction of space), but it requires ecological laws, discussed as part of

what Gibson calls ecological optics (Gibson, 1968, chapter 1). In our terms, Gibson wasquestioning the traditional view that the abstraction necessary to gain insight into

perception is derived from (the right abstractions already instituted in) physics.Gibson, in contrast, thinks that the right abstraction for understanding the relation

between proximal stimuli and perception requires us to take ecology intoconsideration, not (only) physics. Thus, one is led to think of visual perception in

terms of a non-physical ontology; an ontology of affordances. Affordances areinvariant, but they are not physical invariants; they are invariant relative to differentniches. Such invariants are what is perceived. As Gibson puts it, perception is

perception of affordances. Affordances are distributed in the environment and Gibsonsees them as allowing a way to move beyond the traditional ontological rift between

perceiver and environment. Affordances are not mere properties in the traditionalsense. Maybe the best way of putting Gibson’s idea is that affordances are not

properties of the environment or properties of the organism; rather, they are objectivefeatures of the interaction between organism and environment.4 Such objective features

ground specific capacities.

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Often, criticism of Gibson’s approach emphasizes the problem of understandingsuch a view in physicalist terms. But this criticism amounts to a denial of the basic

claim (implicit in Gibson) that development and form are more important than thetraditional physicalist ontology of objects-with-properties. Gibson’s ontology of

affordances looks odd when discussed in relation to traditional approaches toperception; but it starts to look rather familiar when we realize that in different

sciences, there is a tendency to take seriously heterogeneity as a resource ofunderstanding. As mentioned above (see note 3 in particular), evo-devo in biology is a

very good example of how ontologies of abstractions that do not refer to afundamental reality (but to an ontology of forms subject to developmental

constraints) are gaining ground as a basis for future advances in biologicalunderstanding. Thus, there are good reasons to take the concept of affordance

seriously and explore the possibility of extending it as a basic ontological notionbeyond visual perception. This is a project that was already suggested by Gibson and

that has been carried forward by many people in different directions (see Heft, 2001;Jones, 2003; and section 2 of this paper). Following the suggestion that we present in

this paper, we should not expect to find one single causal notion that will serve as thereferent for the different uses of such abstraction in different research programs, not

even if we restrict the discussion to the cognitive sciences. Affordances should not beseen as well-defined (causal) entities playing the same causal role in different sorts of

explanation. They are not theoretical entities in the usual sense of the term; rather,they can be seen as sources of scaffolds which facilitate the alignment and explication

of processes and levels of description in such a way that understanding is enhanced.5

As we have seen in the example of the role of novelty in evolutionary biology,

integrative concepts play their role by setting the stage, by providing scaffolding for theepistemic connections between different (causal) processes and levels of description.

This is in opposition to a more traditional way of understanding such connections asbeing supported by some assumed common causal structure that encourages different

kinds of reduction depending on the way the causes are characterized.In the mid-twentieth century, there starts to be talk of the cognitive sciences as a

series of related fields of research that include robotics, AI, cognitive psychology, andothers, that are integrated around the metaphor of the mind as a computer.6 For such

a metaphor to develop real methodological value, it needed to be accompanied by anaccount of cognition as internal symbol processing. Thus, the unity of the cognitive

sciences can be understood as the result of the reduction of processes (modeled bydifferent theories) that deal with different cognitive phenomena to some fundamentaltheory of cognition as symbol processing. Here, integration is really a name for one or

another version of theory reduction. Newell and Simon (1972), for example, considerproblem solving to be the paradigmatic cognitive activity, and think of it as consisting

of formal operations on symbols in the head that represent sequences of actions thatconstitute a plan designed to solve a real-world problem.

Contemporary accounts of cognition as extended (embodied or situated) questionthe traditional account of cognition as just internal symbol processing and thereby

bring to the fore the problem of accounting for the unity of the cognitive sciences.

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A key part of the discussion about extended cognition deals precisely with the issuethat it is not clear what sort of unity we are talking about. Abrahamsen says that the

cognitive sciences have been “drawn back downwards into the brain and outwardsinto the world” (1998, p. 98). Such a metaphor suggests that the unity that is in

question is about the site of cognition. This is indeed an issue; but an importantchallenge to the traditional view of cognition relies on claims about the need of

understanding cognition as part of a cognition–action axis that is the result ofdevelopment (Thelen & Smith, 1994) or evolution (Brooks, 1999). In these sorts

of approaches, the issue is not so much about the site of cognition but the kind ofprocesses that embody cognition. Situated accounts of cognition are often related tochallenges to the traditional way of understanding the unity of the cognitive sciences

arising from methodology in the social sciences and the psychology of culture inparticular.

What is meant by embodied or situated cognition depends heavily on the sort ofmethods used to study cognition. We might be inclined to think of such diversity as a

sign of “pre-paradigmatic” science. As we want to show, they should alternatively beseen as resources ready to enter into the sort of shifting alignments of methodological

resources that ground new explanatory abstractions. Such abstractions should not beunderstood as groping to fit a homogeneous theoretical framework, but as promotingunderstanding through integration. Integration exploits ontological heterogeneity as a

resource for epistemic understanding.Since our aim in this paper is to argue for the integrative role of the concept of

affordance via its capacity to generate scaffoldings supporting integrative abstractions,it is advisable to provide at least a very rough survey of the different uses of affordance

and scaffolding in the recent cognitive sciences, and in particular, by authors involvedin the discussion about the methodological and epistemic claims of extended

cognition. This is important because metaphysics, usually associated with a reductiveview, quite often screens off the role of integrative concepts. A historical account of the

problems involved (even as brief as this one) can help to counterbalance suchmetaphysical biases.

2. The Genesis and Polysemy of “Scaffolding” and “Affordance”

It is way beyond the scope of this presentation to provide an exhaustive panorama ofthe different meanings and uses of scaffolding and affordance. What we want to do

instead is to exemplify the plurality of meanings of the concepts and show that thispolysemy has its roots in the type of concepts that scaffolding and affordance are. In

this section, we take a brief look at how the concepts of “scaffolding” (Vygotsky, 1978)and “affordance” (Gibson, 1977) enter different areas of the cognitive sciences.

2.1. Scaffolding

The idea of “scaffolding” originates with the Russian psychologist Lev SemionovichVygotsky (1896–1934) and refers to the help and support that adults provide children

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in order for them to learn and develop complex cognitive abilities.7 Related to the ideaof scaffolding is what Vygotsky calls the “zone of proximal development,” which he

uses to describe the separation between what a child can achieve alone and what thatchild can achieve with help, either from adults or through collaboration with other

children, an idea that cannot be separated from a sociocultural view of development.Following the same lines as Vygotsky, in 1976 we come across Wood, Bruner, and Ross

(1976), who introduce the term ‘scaffolding’ to describe the tutoring interactionbetween an adult and a child; it is a meaning that is very close to that used by Vygotsky

(Read, 2006).More recently, Dunlap and Grabinger (1996, p. 242), for example, use the term

‘scaffolding’ to refer to the support that educators provide children through guidesthat are appropriate for the children’s age and level of experience. This application to

education can be seen to be mirrored in scientific practice in the way in which tasks aremade easier for apprentices or junior researchers by an expert. This is precisely the

sense in which Hutchins (1995) uses the term, for example, when referring toscaffolding as what makes the learning of the practice of “standard steaming watch”

easier. He claims that “the scaffolding provided to the novice by the other members ofthe team is constructed on cultural understandings about what is hard and what is easy

to learn” (Hutchins, 1995, p. 280). Therefore, Hutchins’s reference resonates veryclosely with Vygotsky’s original idea, related to learning and with the emphasis placed

on cultural models.8

An author within the cognitive sciences for whom “scaffolding” plays a crucial

explanatory role in his model of cognition is Andy Clark. In his book Natural-Borncyborgs: Minds, technologies, and the future of human intelligence (2004), Clark analyzes

different meanings of the concept. Among the most relevant for scientific practice, wecould include the following: scaffolding as a conceptual instrument, for example, the

mind–body problem could be a scaffolding to “understand how human thought andreason is born out of looping interactions between material brains, material bodies,

and complex cultural and technological environments” (Clark, 2004, p. 11);scaffolding as a source of capacities that complement those provided by the biological

brain, such as a note pad; and language as scaffolding that allows us to freeze a thoughtor idea in words.

One author who is particularly interested in the relation between scaffolding and

distributed and extended cognition is Pea (2004). Pea’s thesis is that there are twodifferent ways of organizing support for learning processes: along the social axis and

along the technological axis. According to Pea, these two axes should not be confused,since “the social conception of between-people scaffolding and support for learning is

not primarily about the uses of the technological artifacts but about social practicesthat have arisen over millennia in parenting and other forms of caring” (Pea, 2004,

p. 430). Pea suggests that the integration that is relevant for understanding the sense inwhich cognition is distributed and extended concerns the integration between

technological and social elements. It is questionable whether such a distinctionbetween social and technological elements can be taken for granted, but Pea gives us a

clear account of the role of social practices.

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2.2. Affordance

The concept of “affordance” is linked, initially at least, to the work of Gibson and it is

particularly relevant for his theory of perception, which he laid out in several papers

and in The ecological approach to visual perception (Gibson, 1986). According to

Gibson, perception is holistic and integrated within an ecological framework, so that

the properties of the environment are not perceived as different and isolated points,

but rather as significant entities within a given ecological context of interrelated

variables. In this framework, affordances are relative to the species or group for which

they facilitate a task (Gibson, 1986, p. 128). Therefore, something is an affordance not

in absolute terms but in relation to a particular context and for a particular species.

Thus, there can be affordances that are such for humans but not for other species, and

vice versa.In the case of affordances, we can also follow the development of the idea via

different authors who have taken up Gibson’s idea and applied it to different fields.

One author who has used the concept of affordance in a way that is somewhat different

from Gibson’s original characterization is Norman (1999). For Gibson, affordances

constitute action possibilities in an environment in relation to the action capabilities

of an actor as a member of a species. Meanwhile, for Norman, affordances are

perceived properties that may or may not actually exist; they constitute suggestions or

clues as to how to use properties, and they can be dependent on the experience,

knowledge, or cultural background of the actor. Whereas Gibson was fundamentally

interested in how we perceive our environment and in how people and animals shape

their environment to facilitate survival, Norman’s focus was on the way in which the

manipulation and design of the environment led to the perception of its usefulness

(McGrenere & Ho, 2000). This point is the crucial difference between Gibson and

Norman; for Norman, affordances are not relative to species but grounded in practices

that are learned (Norman, 1999).If we take Norman’s characterization of the notion of affordance seriously, several

studies that do not use the term ‘affordance’ can be understood as using the concept

to ground the way in which cognition is distributed. That is the case with Smith

(2007), who does not talk of affordances, but his characterization of the nature or

function of an artifact can be formulated in terms of affordances. Smith defines an

artifact as

an object produced or modified by human agency, especially a tool or ornament; acreation of human conception or agency rather than an inherent element; anerroneous effect, observation, or result, especially one generated from the technologyused or from experimental error; and a structure or feature not normally presentbut visible because of an external agent or action. (Smith, 2007, p. 4)

For example, the concept of transparent design naturally relates to affordances;

transparent design encodes affordances in the environment for those agents who have

learned to see them. Just as for Norman, Smith’s artifacts distribute cognition to the

extent that they constitute resources for extending cognition.

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2.3. Affordances and Scaffolds

In the last couple of decades, the concepts of “scaffolding” and “affordance” have

gained prominence in many debates that are, at first blush, disconnected. Some would

be tempted to use this acknowledgment of diversity of uses as evidence against the

unifying importance of such concepts. However, quite the opposite is in fact the case.

More precisely, the two concepts are abstractions that allow us to combine different

experimental results with different types of activities and interactions among agents.

Moreover, the variety of uses of those notions can be seen as responding to the variety

of ways in which environment and agency combine in the formation and development

of cognitive processes.As we have seen above, there are several discussions about the meaning of

affordances. There are not that many discussions on the meaning of ‘scaffold’. Mascolo

(2005) provides a discussion of different types of scaffolding. He distinguishes

between social scaffolding, ecological scaffolding, and self-scaffolding. The first is the

type that is closest to Vygotsky’s original idea of scaffolding, insofar as he relates it to

processes through which exchanges with other people are produced. “Ecological

scaffolding,” or what he also calls “naturalistic scaffolding”: “involves the use of

naturally occurring environmental features in their unaltered state to aid in acting”

(Mascolo, 2005, p. 190). Finally, “self-scaffolding” encompasses the idea that the

actions of the individual create new conditions for new forms of action and meaning.

In addition to the above distinctions, Mascolo talks of “coactive scaffolding” to refer to

the cognitive resources that become available “when elements of the person–

environment system beyond the direct control of an individual actor direct or

channelize the construction of action in novel and unanticipated ways” (Mascolo,

2005, p. 187).

Even though the role of the environment is more explicitly stated in discussions

about affordances, the environment is no less important for scaffoldings, since the

latter are (material and cultural) elements located in the environment, elements that

can also facilitate action. Thus, the relationship between scaffolding/affordance and

action relates, in turn, to the interrelation between perception and action. Stoffregen,

Bardy, and Mantel (2006) analyze that connection and argue that when one says that

people perceive affordances, what they actually perceive are the possible actions

available in definite circumstances. Here one can see that affordances set the stage for

the individuation of possible actions, and in this sense they scaffold actions.

Affordances generate variations that are productive in different spheres because they

scaffold stable features of interactions that can be inherited, from education to

engineering. Affordances aim to explain how the environment can set the stage for the

sort of cognitive scaffoldings that constitute the extension of cognition.Thus, it is only natural that a distinction between affordances and scaffolds is that

scaffolds are usually thought of as temporary, as resources of processes of

development, whereas affordances are considered to be objective features of the

environment that might change with different interactions between agents and

environments. Those variations form paths to achieving goals through actions that are

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always directed towards changing the environment in such a way as to originateresources that can be exploited in a great variety of manners.

3. Implications for Discussions of Extended and Distributed Cognition

As we have already seen in the discussion above, Clark’s idea of an “extended mind”

and other related views asserting extended cognition pose important philosophicalquestions.9 Our claim is that by shedding light on the integrative character of the

concepts of “affordance” and “scaffolding,” we are better positioned to understandseveral controversies concerning the sense in which the mind is extended and

cognition is distributed.Distributed cognition can be understood in either a weak or a strong epistemic

mode. A distributed cognitive system involves humans and artifacts in such a way thatany single unit of the system could not produce the cognitive output by itself. In theweak epistemic mode, one accepts that cognition is distributed but epistemic agency is

not. In this mode, only humans are epistemic agents. Giere (2007) and manyphilosophers of science hold such a view. Distributed cognition in the strong mode

holds that epistemic agency is equally distributed among artifacts and humans;therefore, it implies distributed epistemic agency. Hutchins, for example, claims that

cognitive distribution implies that the knowledge of a whole system depends on thecognitive organization of the parts, and thus, that epistemic agency is distributed not

only among the human agents but among artifacts as well. The following quotationfrom Hutchins sums up this strong view of the unit of cognition:

Of course, in a very important sense, the question of interest to you as a passengershould not be whether a particular pilot is performing well, but whether or not thesystem that is composed of the pilots and the technology of the cockpit environmentis performing well. (Hutchins & Klausen, 1996, p. 3)

From this perspective, we can make two observations. In the first place, the fact that

the unit of cognition is a system does not eliminate the cognitive properties of thesubject as an individual. Secondly, the success of a cognitive process depends on

collaboration with other subjects; for example, in the case of the cockpit of an airplane,the relation between the pilot and the co-pilot or the air traffic controllers is crucial;and for this interaction, communication technologies are very important. Therefore,

the technology intervenes not only as part of an extended cognition, but it also (asHutchins points out) plays a role by framing the interaction between the individuals

who form part of the same cognitive system.From the perspective of distributive cognition, artifacts form part of the cognitive

system and function as resources that can naturally be characterized as scaffoldings.But we can also think of artifacts as entrenched affordances that produce those

scaffoldings that constitute the extended cognitive system. Of course, such a claimwould require elaborating on how such affordances are understood. We understand

that Hutchins does not need to worry about such “unnecessary” discussion (from theperspective of his objective), but if our aim is to have a broader integrated account of

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extended cognition, then things look different. Affordances are required to support anexplanation of artifacts as scaffolds.

“Scaffolding” in Vigotsky’s sense would be appropriate here to explain the cognitivesignificance of the teaching-cum-learning method that veteran pilots use to show

trainees how to read the temperature from the display. A different question is whether(or how) artifacts such as a display could be considered as affordances. Mascolo, for

example, points out that the sense of scaffolding that he calls “naturalistic scaffoldingis the most similar to Gibson’s affordances” (2005, p. 191). The suggestion is not

obvious if we stick to Gibson’s original idea; but Michaels’ idea of linking affordancesto “effectivities” suggests the required link. Affordances are not the result of a mere

reading of properties or functions of things. Affordances should be understood asanchored in artifacts (instruments, technology, standards, and so on) that are effective

in generating the sort of scaffolded processes that constitute extended cognition(Michaels, 2003).

This goes along with a view of culture as something learned and inheritedthrough processes that involve organization stabilized through the use of artifacts.

Thus, from this perspective, scaffolding abstracts general features of developmentthat through the use of artifacts gets stabilized and inherited through generations of

learners.10

Of course, different ways of talking lead to, or presuppose, different epistemic

commitments. Knowledge might mean many things. If we think of knowledge as sheerinformation, it does not seem difficult to accept the idea that an artifact knows

something: all that is meant is that an artifact can transfer or retain information.However, information is not the only thing we can think of knowledge as being. An

account of knowledge seems to require discussion of the origin and role of epistemicnorms. If we take Giere’s approach and distinguish between the human parts of a

cognitive system and its non-human parts, then it seems that we have to be contentwith an account of distributed cognition that is compatible with a non-extended

account of epistemic norms. Such an account of distributed cognition does not,however, abandon the basic model of cognition as centered on individuals, at least if

we recognize that cognition cannot be explained without assessing epistemicconsiderations.

Giere is led to such a conclusion because he thinks that epistemic agency can

ultimately be characterized in terms of knowledge; and knowledge, for Giere, consistsof justified (reliable) beliefs. If epistemic agency boils down to the production of

reliable beliefs, then Giere’s analysis seems unobjectionable. In this view, distributedcognition is therefore compatible with non-distributed epistemic agency. That is,

Giere’s characterization of epistemic agency commits us to thinking of distributedcognition as being of the weak kind. We do not, nonetheless, need to understand

epistemology as gravitating towards truth, as reliabilism requires. Nor need we thinkof epistemology as exclusively dealing with beliefs. Approaches that adopt the notion

of understanding as the main epistemic aim of science are now being taken seriously(see note 1). Understanding, as opposed to knowledge, does not need to gravitate

towards truth.

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Take the case of the use of false models in science as an example. False models play a

role in understanding, but they do not lead to understanding by moving closer to what

is the case (Elgin, 2007). Elgin (2007) has argued for an account of understanding as a

graded epistemic end that involves grasping a comprehensive body of information that

in turn is grounded in fact, duly responsive to evidence, but not necessarily valuable

because of its approximation to truth. What here we are calling abstractions is part of

what Elgin calls “effective idealizations”: constructs that help us to understand, not

because of their closeness to truth, but because of their role in allowing us epistemic

access to matters of fact that otherwise we could not discern. Thinking of

understanding as the main epistemic aim of methodological integration allows us to

promote a kind of integration that is compatible with the heterogeneity of ontologies

and kinds of epistemic practices involved in cognitive science and with recognition of

the importance of scientific practices in explaining the distributed nature of epistemic

norms.For us, the relevant aspects of Clark’s idea of an “extended mind” are its

implications for how we draw the boundaries of agency. For example, we may wonder

whether the cognitive limits of a subject are the same whether we consider dependence

only on a biological brain or dependence on a brain plus all the accompanying non-

biological fundamentally technological “prostheses.” Clark argues that pacemakers,

implanted corneas, etc. can lead to the formation of a type of “cyborg,” but for such

beings to be a symbiosis of flesh and technology, it is not necessary for the technology

to be under the skin. Symbiosis can occur with devices that have transformed our lives

such as mobile phones, computers, and so on. The idea of symbiosis seems to involve

there being not one main element and another secondary one, but rather that elements

mesh into a new cognitive “actor” or “agent.” Clark says:

We—more than any other creature on the planet—deploy non-biological elements(instruments, media, notations) to complement our basic biological modes ofprocessing, creating extended cognitive systems whose computational and problem-solving profiles are quite different from those of the naked brain. (Clark, 2004, p. 78)

This claim suggests that a cognitive system is different according to whether we see it

as just a brain or as a brain extended through non-biological circuits.For critics of the extended mind hypothesis, such as Adams and Aizawa (2001), the

unity of cognition involves the homogeneity of psychology, to wit, the claim that

psychology is grounded in a framework of causal mechanisms that characterizes a

cognitive kind. To the extent that the extended mind hypothesis, as we see it, is

promoting the scientific status of a science of cognition that relies on the irreducible

heterogeneity of processes (involving neurons, artifacts, institutions, and so on), we

would need to abandon the claim that there is such a cognitive kind characterized by a

(hypothetical) homogeneous causal mechanism. The claim that affordances and

scaffoldings integrate heterogeneous processes or mechanisms, and that this

integration leads to the sort of understanding that is the aim of science, answers

such criticisms. Integrative concepts play an important role in the epistemology of

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science, in which the integration of highly heterogeneous processes and mechanisms isa prerequisite for the advancement of understanding.

4. Conclusions

The concepts of affordance and scaffolding are related to different traditions of inquiryin the cognitive sciences. However, they can be seen as closely related through theircontribution to a potentially productive integration of the resources of an extended

view of cognition. Such a view of cognition is “bottom-up,” in the sense that cognitionis a complex series of processes that arise and develop as the evolving architecture of

constraints embodied (or embedded) in artifacts and social organization (institutionsand practices, in particular) that have the capacity to reproduce.

It is clear that we are not gods, that our capacities as a species are limited. However,as humans, we possess a great capacity to arrange things in empowering ways and seek

out what we need to survive in our environment. Without being the only ones who doso, there is no doubt that scaffolding and affordances are two ways in which wemitigate our limitations. Specifically, in the case of humans, when we talk of survival,

we do not refer solely to physical survival but also to cultural and social survival.

Acknowledgements

Financial support for this research was received from the Spanish Government’s

DGICYT research project: FFI2011-23238, “Innovation in Scientific Practice:Cognitive Approaches and Their Philosophical Consequences,” and from project:133345 CONACYT, Mexico.

Notes

[1] In this paper, we assume that understanding can be characterized as an important epistemicaim of science that is not reducible to the aim of increasing factual knowledge. For viewsdefending different versions of this view of understanding, see De Regt, Leonelli, and Eigner(2009).

[2] Evo-devo is not a clear-cut label. Roughly, evo-devo refers to a new discipline focusing onthe search for the integration of different traditions (theoretical as well as experimental) ofstudying biological development that grew rather separately during the twentieth century(Laubichler & Maienschein, 2007). As Hall puts it: “evo-devo is a synthesis of evolution anddevelopment with emergent properties not found from analysis of development orevolution alone” (2000, p. 177).

[3] See, for example, the section “On surfaces and the ecological laws of surfaces” in chapter 2 ofGibson (1986). The chapter concludes with a telling summary. The first sentence of thesummary is the following: “we live in an environment consisting of substances that are moreor less substantial; of a medium, the gaseous atmosphere; and of the surfaces that separatethe substances from the medium. We do not live in ‘space’.”

[4] See Chemero (2009) for an elaboration of such a view.[5] In section 2, we will see other ways to understand scaffolding and affordance that do not

exactly match our position.

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[6] An example of the interdisciplinary field of the cognitive sciences formed by various

disciplines centered on the study of cognition is the report Cognitive science, 1978 (Walker,

1978), under the auspices of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

[7] Some authors deem that the English term ‘scaffolding’ predates Vygotsky’s writings (Wood

et al., 1976), and that the corresponding concept changed under the influence of his work.

Be that as it may, the meaning of ‘scaffolding’ in the current scientific literature comes from

Vygotsky’s work.

[8] Hutchins may have been influenced by the writing of Vygotsky but it certainly is not the case

that they belong to the same theoretical tradition. Firstly, Vygotsky’s work comes from

psychology and Hutchins’s from anthropology, and one of his closest influences is that of

Andrade. Therefore, there does not seem to be a direct relation between Hutchins and

Vygotsky.

[9] For a detailed account of this discussion, see Theiner (2011).

[10] See the introduction to Caporael, Griesemer, and Wimsatt (2013) and Martınez (2013) for

an elaboration of this view.

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