Marta Pérez-Verdugo

In this chapter, we briefly present different visions of the relationships between technology and autonomy. We accomplish this by a historical and (partly) dialectical exploration of three positions. We start with the modern thesis by which autonomous humans instrumentalize tools and techniques for their own benefit and self-determination. Next, we address the antithesis: the notion that technological systems have become autonomous, subordinating people to their own self-maintenance. Finally, we explore a synthetic position, which underlines that the only space for autonomy in a technologically mediated world is a technopolitical autonomy that takes the individual beyond itself, back to the ontotechnical constitution of its being, and forward into a personal and collective, ethical and political, participation in its becoming.

In this paper we argue that radically embodied approaches to cognition can be expanded to show that: (a) our sensorimotor engagements with technical objects can be normatively shaped in a direct manner (i.e. not necessarily involving symbolic processes), and that (b) this normativity is not only anchored in the agent but also partially supported by technical objects themselves. We depart from the enactive reinterpretation of Piagetian sensorimotor schemes and his theory of equilibration to establish how both agent-sided and environment-sided support structures (including artefacts) contribute to the autonomous self-maintenance of sensorimotor networks. We will then introduce technical behaviour as a regulatory transformation of the environment enacted to equilibrate certain sensorimotor structures. We will defend that technical objects, as products of technical behaviour, sediment these normative constraints in their material structure. Then, through the dynamics of assimilation and accommodation, we schematize how different scenarios give rise to canonical or alternative uses in the encounter of agents with artefacts. Finally, we will offer a complexification of the normative entanglement of objects and agents by introducing the sociohistorical notion of activity as developed within Activity Theory approaches as collectively articulating individual actions. Based on all of this, we will have offered a picture of technical objects as also radically embodying normative layers, without submitting to an overly-deterministic picture of artefacts as rigidly prescribing behaviour, or to the purely symbolic or culturalist interpretation of them.

This paper critically analyses the “attention economy” within the framework of cognitive science and techno-political economics, as applied to both human and machine interactions. We explore how current business models, particularly in digital platform capitalism, harness user engagement by strategically shaping attentional patterns. These platforms utilize advanced AI and massive data analytics to enhance user engagement, creating a cycle of attention capture and data extraction. We review contemporary (neuro)cognitive theories of attention and platform engagement design techniques and criticize classical cognitivist and behaviourist theories for their inadequacies in addressing the potential harms of such engagement on user autonomy and wellbeing. 4E approaches to cognitive science, instead, emphasizing the embodied, extended, enactive, and ecological aspects of cognition, offer us an intrinsic normative standpoint and a more integrated understanding of how attentional patterns are actively constituted by adaptive digital environments. By examining the precarious nature of habit formation in digital contexts, we reveal the techno-economic underpinnings that threaten personal autonomy by disaggregating habits away from the individual, into an AI managed collection of behavioural patterns. Our current predicament suggests the necessity of a paradigm shift towards an ecology of attention. This shift aims to foster environments that respect and preserve human cognitive and social capacities, countering the exploitative tendencies of cognitive capitalism.

In this paper we argue that radically embodied approaches to cognition can be expanded to show that: a) our sensorimotor engagements with technical objects can be normatively shaped in a direct manner (i.e. not necessarily involving symbolic processes), and that b) this normativity is not only anchored in the agent but also partially supported by technical objects themselves. We depart from the enactive reinterpretation of Piagetian sensorimotor schemes and his theory of equilibration to establish how both agent-sided and environment-sided support structures (including artefacts) contribute to the autonomous self-maintenance of sensorimotor networks. We will then introduce technical behaviour as a regulatory transformation of the environment enacted to equilibrate certain sensorimotor structures. We will defend that technical objects, as products of technical behaviour, sediment these normative constraints in their material structure. Then, through the dynamics of assimilation and accommodation we schematize how different scenarios give rise to canonical or alternative uses in the encounter of agents with artefacts. Finally, we will offer a complexification of the normative entanglement of objects and agents by introducing the sociohistorical notion of activity as developed within Activity Theory approaches as collectively articulating individual actions. Based on all of this, we will have offered a picture of technical objects as also radically embodying normative layers, without submitting to an overly-deterministic picture of artefacts as rigidly prescribing behaviour, or to the purely symbolic or culturalist interpretation of them.

This paper introduces the concept of “generative midtended cognition”, that explores the integration of generative AI technologies with human cognitive processes. The term “generative” reflects AI’s ability to iteratively produce structured outputs, while “midtended” captures the potential hybrid (human-AI) nature of the process. It stands between traditional conceptions of _in_tended creation, understood as steered or directed from with_in_, and _ex_tended processes that bring exo-biological processes into the creative process. We examine the working of current generative technologies (based on multimodal transformer architectures typical of large language models like ChatGPT) to explain how they can transform human cognitive agency beyond what the conceptual resources of standard theories of extended cognition can capture. We suggest that the type of cognitive activity typical of the coupling between a human and generative technologies is closer (but not equivalent) to social cognition than to classical extended cognitive paradigms. Yet, it deserves a specific treatment. We provide an explicit definition of _generative midtended cognition_ in which we treat interventions by AI systems as constitutive of the agent’s intentional creative processes. Furthermore, we distinguish two dimensions of generative hybrid creativity: 1. Width: captures the sensitivity of the context of the generative process (from the single letter to the whole historical and surrounding data), 2. Depth: captures the granularity of iteration loops involved in the process. Generative midtended cognition stands in the middle depth between _conversational_ forms of cognition in which complete utterances or creative units are exchanged, and micro-cognitive (e.g. neural) subpersonal processes. Finally, the paper discusses the potential risks and benefits of widespread generative AI adoption, including the challenges of authenticity, generative power asymmetry, and creative boost or atrophy.

Many digital technologies, designed and controlled by intensive data-driven corporate platforms, have become ubiquitous for many of our daily activities. This has raised political and ethical concerns over how they might be threatening our personal autonomy. However, not much philosophical attention has been paid to the specific role that their hyper-designed (sensorimotor) interfaces play in this regard. In this paper, we aim to offer a novel framework that can ground personal autonomy on sensorimotor interaction and, from there, directly address how technological design affects personal autonomy. To do this, we will draw from enactive sensorimotor approaches to cognition, focusing on the central notion of habits, understood as sensorimotor schemes that, in networked relations, give rise to sensorimotor agency. Starting from sensorimotor agency as a basis for more complex forms of personal autonomy, our approach gives us grounds to analyse our relationship with technology (in general) and to distinguish between autonomy-enhancing and autonomy-diminishing technologies. We argue that, by favouring/obstructing the enactment of certain (networks of) habits over others, technologies can directly act upon our personal autonomy, locally and globally. With this in mind, we then discuss how current digital technologies are often being designed to be autonomy-diminishing (as is the case of “dark patterns” in design), and sketch some ideas on how to build more autonomy-enhancing digital technologies.