Chances, affordances, niche construction

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 anchors that 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 chances and ways of inferring come up from the blend. For cognitive niche construction may also contribute to make available a great portion of knowledge that otherwise would remain simply unexpressed or unreachable. © 2008 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.