Abstract
Some theorists have argued that elements of the surrounding world play a crucial role in sustaining and amplifying both cognition and emotion. Such insights raise an interesting question about the relationship between cognitive and affective scaffolding: in addition to enabling the realization of specific affective states, can an affective niche also enable the realization of certain cognitive capacities? In order to gain a better understanding of this relationship between affective niches and cognition, I will examine the use of expressive arts in the context of psychotherapy and peacebuilding. In these settings, environmental resources and interpersonal scaffolds not only evoke emotion and encourage the adoption of particular bodily affective styles, but also support the development of capacities for self-awareness and interpersonal understanding. These affective scaffolds play a crucial role in therapy and peacebuilding, in fact, insofar as they facilitate the development of self-knowledge, enhance capacities associated with social cognition, and build positive rapport and trust among participants. I will argue that this is because affectivity is linked to the way that subjects frame and attend to their surroundings. Insofar as the regulation and modification of emotion goes hand in hand with opening up new interpretive frames and establishing new habits of mind, the creation of an affective niche can contribute significantly to various modes of cognition.
Highlights
Sterelny (2010) has maintained that mind and cognition are “environmentally supported” and highlights the way in which cognitive agents often engineer their environment so as to sustain and amplify their cognitive abilities
In order to gain a better understanding of the relationship between affective scaffolds and cognition, I will examine the use of expressive arts in the context of psychotherapy and peacebuilding
Environmental resources and interpersonal scaffolds evoke emotion and encourage the adoption of particular “bodily affective styles,” and support the development of capacities for self-awareness and interpersonal understanding. These affective scaffolds play a crucial role in therapy and peacebuilding, insofar as they facilitate the development of selfknowledge, enhance capacities associated with social cognition, and build positive rapport and trust among participants
Summary
Sterelny (2010) has maintained that mind and cognition are “environmentally supported” and highlights the way in which cognitive agents often engineer their environment so as to sustain and amplify their cognitive abilities. Drawing on this work, Colombetti and Krueger (2014) argue that the environment scaffolds not just the mind’s cognitive capabilities, and its affective ones They point to various ways in which agents engineer their affective environments and “in doing so let these environments influence their affective states in an ongoing way” In order to gain a better understanding of the relationship between affective scaffolds and cognition, I will examine the use of expressive arts in the context of psychotherapy and peacebuilding. In these settings, environmental resources and interpersonal scaffolds evoke emotion and encourage the adoption of particular “bodily affective styles,” and support the development of capacities for self-awareness and interpersonal understanding. Insofar as the regulation and modification of emotion goes hand in hand with opening up new interpretive frames and establishing new habits of mind, the creation of an affective niche can contribute significantly to various modes of cognition
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