Creating Chances Through Cognitive Niche Construction

  • Authors:

  • Lorenzo Magnani

  • Affiliations:

  • Department of Philosophy and Computational Philosophy Laboratory, University of Pavia, Pavia, Italy, and Department of Philosophy, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou (Canton), P.R. China

  • Venue:
  • KES '07 Knowledge-Based Intelligent Information and Engineering Systems and the XVII Italian Workshop on Neural Networks on Proceedings of the 11th International Conference
  • Year:
  • 2007

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Abstract

As a matter of fact, humans continuously delegate and distribute cognitive functions to the environment to lessen their limits. They build models, representations, and other various mediating structures, that are considered to aid thought. In doing these, humans are engaged in a process of cognitive niche construction. In this sense, I argue that a cognitive niche emerges from a network of continuous interplays between individuals and the environment, in which people alter and modify the environment by mimetically externalizing fleeting thoughts, private ideas, etc., into external supports. Through mimetic activities humans create external semiotic anchorsthat are the result of a process in which concepts, ideas, and thoughts are projected onto external structures. Once concepts and thoughts are externalized and projected, new chancesand ways of inferring come up from the blend. For cognitive niche constructionmay also contribute to make available a great portion of knowledge that otherwise would remain simply unexpressed or unreachable.