Mads J. Dengsø

‘Modern times’ are consistently associated with a sense of temporal acceleration and disruption brought on by the breakneck speed of modern sociotechnology. But how does modern sociotechnology impact our sense of time and temporality? This paper seeks to establish the relationship between human time and technology in order to explain the contemporary phenomenon of temporal disruption. In the first case, I will argue that human temporality and temporal cognition have always been hybrid structures: involving both biological and sociotechnological components. Second, I will argue that understanding the hybrid structure of human time provides a systematic framework for diagnosing disruptive effects of contemporary sociotechnology. Contrary to commonplace presuppositions that temporal disruptions are caused by sociotechnological integration, dirsuptions result from the disintegration of the biological and sociotechnological components of hybrid human temporality. By combining insights from neuroanthropology and the neuroscience of temporal cognition, I will argue that human temporal capacities, such as memory and our sense of time, were at all times partly sociotechnological, hybrid structures. I will then review sociological research concerning the relationship between modern technology and human time and show how recognizing the hybrid structure of human temporality adds crucial theoretical resources for identifying and dealing with the problem of temporal disruption.

Cognitive scaffolding is typically conceptualized in terms of environmental design which serves to offload, facilitate, or enhance the cognitive capacities of interacting agents. Recent contributions to the literature on scaffolding have noted that environmental design might likewise scaffold cognition in ways that undermine the interests of interactant agents—giving rise to notions of problematic or hostile scaffolding. Given the pervasiveness of social and technological scaffolding in contemporary life, the importance of understanding and assessing its effects can hardly be overstated. At the same time, however, the very pervasiveness of scaffolding raises a challenge to the current criteria for evaluating its effects by comparison with agents’ interests. This is because human agents and their interests alike are themselves the results of various forms of social and technological scaffolding. This paper explores the relationship between scaffolding and the formation of agents along with their interests, as well as the implications of this relationship for evaluating scaffolding as being hostile, neutral, or beneficial. I will argue that the formative aspect of scaffolding imparts a degree of uncertainty to evaluations of scaffolding based on agents’ interests. I will then demonstrate the relevance of the formative aspect of scaffolding in evaluating and assessing the potentially pernicious effects of contemporary social and technological scaffolding focusing on the examples of servitization marketing models and social and vocational digital infrastructures.

Enactive approaches to psychiatry have recently argued for an understanding of psychiatric conditions based within relational interactions between individuals and their environments. A central motivation for these enactive approaches is the goal of social integration: the integration of a naturalistic approach to psychiatric conditions with their broader sociocultural dimensions. One possible issue, however, is whether appeals to the autonomy and authenticity of relationally constituted enactive individuals can provide a means of adjudicating between harmful and beneficial social constraints upon individual behaviour. This paper seeks to provide enactive approaches to psychiatry with a possible means of evaluating normative influences of social contexts beyond direct interactions with relationally constituted individuals. Some of the most significant influences of the sociocultural dimension of psychiatric conditions consist not in direct interaction with individuals, but in setting the terms for interactions and interactants alike. Insofar as some social influences precede and predefine dyadic relations between individuals and their social context, these cannot be accounted for as features of interactions, but must be assessed as independent structures of the sociocultural dimension. I will provide one potential means for enactive models to assess social norms using Canguilhem’s distinction between health and pathology. I will argue that Canguilhem’s conceptualization of health in terms of adaptive normative structure provides a potential tool for social integration which strongly complements enactive approaches to psychiatry.

Open peer commentary on the article “A Moving Boundary, a Plastic Core: A Contribution to the Third Wave of Extended-Mind Research” by Timotej Prosen. Abstract: We explore both some novel claims made by Prosen’s account of plastic cores and some overlaps between his and other accounts of third-wave extended mind. In the first instance we discuss whether the Markov blanket formalism should be regarded as incompatible with a third-wave extended view. Secondly, we discuss whether Prosen’s proposal of a plastic core quite meets the radical departure of the third wave from organism-centeredness - or whether Prosen’s contribution might be more aptly considered as a compromise between second- and third-wave extended mind.

Context: A central motivation behind various embodied, extended, and enactive (4E) approaches to cognition is to ground our understanding of minds and cognition within the biological structures that give rise to life. Because of this, their advocates often claim a natural kinship with dynamical and developmental systems theories. However, these accounts also explicitly or implicitly privilege individual organisms in ways that contrast with many of the insights of systems and developmental systems approaches to biology. Problem: The prioritization of individual organisms within 4E approaches to cognition contrasts with the default entangled structure of biological systems associated with cognitive agency. We provide means for 4E cognitive science to move beyond an individual-centred view of cognitive agency. Method: We first identify and problematize individual-centredness within various predominant 4E approaches by comparison with biological research and developmental systems theory. Subsequently, we offer conceptual resources from the field of ecological research for understanding cognitive agency beyond the predominant focus on individual organisms. Results: Cognitive agency may be understood without privileging individual organisms by reading nonequilibrium maintenance in terms of a dynamic differentiation instead of individual organismic autonomy. This form of organizational structure corresponds to the notion of sympoiesis from ecological research. Implications: Approaching cognitive agency without privileging individual organisms should be invaluable to advocates of 4E cognition seeking to ground notions of cognition and mind within contemporary biological research. Constructivist content: We seek to expand upon existing constructivist perspectives on the organizing principles of cognitive agency, such as sensorimotor embodiment and autopoiesis, arguing that meta-organismic cognitive agents (including humans) embody distributed relations beyond the privileging of individual organisms. Key words: 4E cognition, autopoiesis, cognitive agency, developmental systems theory, enactivism, extended mind thesis, holobionts, sympoeisis.

Recent developments from 4E approaches to cognition argue for variously distributed forms of life and cognition. But while these accounts assert the existence and predominance of distributed forms of organization, what is less clear is: what role does distributed organization play for life and cognition? This thesis seeks to explore, explain, and apply the active role that spatiotemporally distributed forms of organization play in facilitating the cognitive capacities of living systems. It will employ a broadly interdisciplinary synthetic philosophy in dialogue with 4E approaches to cognition. The thesis will thus address the material and organizational substrates of cognition while raising critical issues related to individualistic assumptions within cognitive science and psychiatry. The overall questions that this thesis seeks to address are: What are the organizational principles through which cognitive systems individuate themselves from their environment, and how do their cognitive capacities emerge? This thesis offers an answer to these questions by focusing on and exploring the active role of spatiotemporally distributed organization. The goal is thus to support and expand the theoretical and empirical resources for a cognitive science based within the concrete material and relational organization of living systems.