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“Scaffolding” and “affordance” as

integrative concepts in the cognitive
sciences
Anna Estany & Sergio Martínez
Published online: 28 Aug 2013.
To cite this article: Anna Estany & Sergio Martínez , Philosophical Psychology (2013): “Scaffolding”
and “affordance” as integrative concepts in the cognitive sciences, Philosophical Psychology, DOI:
10.1080/09515089.2013.828569
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09515089.2013.828569
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Philosophical Psychology, 2013
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09515089.2013.828569
“Scaffolding” and “affordance” as

integrative concepts in the cognitive
sciences
Downloaded by [The University Of Melbourne Libraries] at 11:25 30 September 2013
Anna Estany and Sergio Martı́nez
There are (at least) two ways to think of the differences in basic concepts and typologies
that one can find in the different scientific practices that constitute a research tradition.
One is the fundamentalist view: the fewer the better. The other is a non-fundamentalist
view of science whereby the integration of different concepts into the right abstraction
grounds an explanation that is not grounded as the sum of the explanations supported by
the parts. Integrative concepts are often associated with idealizations that can successfully
set the stage for different phenomena to be compared or for explanations of different
phenomena to be considered as jointly increasing our understanding of reality beyond that
which each explanation provides separately. In this paper, our aim is to argue for the
importance of the notions of an “affordance” and “scaffolding” as integrative concepts in
the cognitive sciences. The integrational role of the concept of affordance is closely related
with the capacity of affordances to generate the scaffoldings leading to the integration. The
capacities of affordances that turn them into (stable) scaffoldings explain why such
notions are often used interchangeably (as we shall see). On this basis, we aim to show
that the concepts of affordance and scaffolding provide the sort of epistemic perspective
that can overcome common complaints about the limits and unity of the cognitive sciences
once claims about extended cognition are taken seriously.
Keywords: Affordance; Distributed Cognition; Extended Cognition; Integrative Concept;
Scaffolding
1. Introduction
There are (at least) two ways to think of the differences in basic concepts and
typologies that one can find in the different scientific practices that constitute a
Anna Estany is a professor at the Autonomous University of Barcelona.

Sergio Martı́nez is a professor at the National Autonomous University of Mexico.
Correspondence to: Anna Estany, Departament de Filosofia, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, 08193 Bellaterra
(Cerdanyola del Vallès), Barcelona, Spain. Email: anna.estany@uab.cat
q 2013 Taylor & Francis

2 A. Estany and S. Martı́nez
research tradition. On the one hand, the advancement of science can be considered as
committed to reducing such differences. The aim of science is thus to arrive at a
fundamental theory capable of bringing all these differences together in a single
unambiguous array of concepts and one fundamental typology. This is the
fundamentalist view: the fewer the better. On the other hand, one can think that even
though the advancement of science requires a certain trimming of the number and
type of concepts involved (Occam’s razor), it often involves the integration of different
concepts and typologies into more abstract concepts that ground explanations having
an epistemic value that goes beyond the sum of the value of explanations grounded in
the different concepts taken separately. This is a non-fundamentalist view of science.
Integration might involve discarding inadequate concepts or typologies, but it is
recognized that integration might also retain diversity or transform it into a resource
for furthering our understanding.1 Non-reductive integration requires integrative
concepts.
Our main thesis is that putting the discussion about extended and distributed
cognition in such a non-fundamentalist perspective suggests ways in which
heterogeneity of resources and the hybrid character of cognitive systems can be
taken to be epistemically productive.
Integrative concepts are often associated with idealizations that can successfully set
the stage for different phenomena to be compared or for explanations of different
phenomena to be considered as jointly increasing our understanding of reality beyond
that which each concept provides separately. The way in which Minkowski sees the
Special Theory of Relativity providing a synthesis of some of the basic concepts of
physics is a good example: “space by itself, and time by itself, are doomed to fade away
into mere shadows, and only a kind of union of the two will preserve an independent
reality” (Minkowski, 1952, p. 74). In physics, most often, the sort of integration in
question involves two (or at most a few) kinds of different concepts. In contemporary
biology, major discussions often involve the divergence of commitments with respect
to the sort of idealizations that are most promising for the integration of several kinds
of phenomena. Regev and Shapiro (2002), for example, say that one major task in
theoretical biology is to understand how insight arises from the choice of “the right
abstractions”; the sort of abstractions that allow large amounts of data regarding the
functions, activities, and interactions of biological systems (they are thinking
specifically of molecular systems in cells) to be made intelligible and fit together as
parts of a whole. These abstractions are a good example of what we mean by the
integration of concepts. Such concepts do not have a fixed causal referent, they refer to
different causal processes in different contexts, but those different processes are taken
to be parts of a whole.
The search for the right abstractions seems to play a crucial role in the somewhat
heated recent discussions concerning the explanation of morphological and behavioral
novelty in biology. There is a wide variety of explanations of novelty (associated with
different conceptual accounts of novelty), and it is not hard to see that such differences
arise at least in part from the fact that different traditions of inquiry use different
characterizations of novelty. Confronted with this fact, one might be inclined to look
Philosophical Psychology 3
for arguments that allow us to choose the right characterization of novelty and thus
the correct explanation. This approach can lead to success in some isolated cases, but it
is not always the best strategy; or at least, it is often not the whole story. An alternative
way to proceed has been suggested, for example, by Brigandt and Love in several
publications, but particularly in their 2012 paper.
Brigandt and Love claim that the diversity in the characterizations of novelty should
be seen as delineating the epistemic role of the concept of evolutionary novelty. The
concept should not be seen as playing a direct role in the causal explanation of
phenomena; rather, it should be seen as setting the stage, as a scaffold, for different
epistemic roles that the concept plays in structuring an array of related problems in
such a way that enhances understanding. Thus, evolutionary novelty as described by
Brigandt and Love could be better understood as an integrating concept that can be
used to characterize the right sort of abstraction that will allow for an integrated
account of different explanations (and thus concepts) of novelty. Of course, the
evaluation of whether a given abstraction is the right abstraction depends on what are
we willing to consider as the phenomena to be integrated. This does not mean that the
choice is arbitrary, however. Evo-devo, as a fast growing approach in the biological
sciences, can be seen as arising from the recognition that biological development (and
disciplines such as embryology) could contribute more to our understanding of
evolution than more traditional disciplines (such as molecular genetics).2 The
relevance of evo-devo for the study of evolution depends on accepting this sort of
premise. As in this case, most often, discussions about what the right abstraction is
cannot be detached from evaluating alternative ways of conceiving future research.
A paradigmatic example of this sort of strategy in the advancement of a scientific
agenda is Gibson’s ecological approach to perception.3 Gibson’s approach can be seen
as starting from his conviction that it was not possible to understand visual perception
as an interpretation of retinal images (relying on the laws of geometrical optics and a
Cartesian abstraction of space), but it requires ecological laws, discussed as part of
what Gibson calls ecological optics (Gibson, 1968, chapter 1). In our terms, Gibson was
questioning the traditional view that the abstraction necessary to gain insight into
perception is derived from (the right abstractions already instituted in) physics.
Gibson, in contrast, thinks that the right abstraction for understanding the relation
between proximal stimuli and perception requires us to take ecology into
consideration, not (only) physics. Thus, one is led to think of visual perception in
terms of a non-physical ontology; an ontology of affordances. Affordances are
invariant, but they are not physical invariants; they are invariant relative to different
niches. Such invariants are what is perceived. As Gibson puts it, perception is
perception of affordances. Affordances are distributed in the environment and Gibson
sees them as allowing a way to move beyond the traditional ontological rift between
perceiver and environment. Affordances are not mere properties in the traditional
sense. Maybe the best way of putting Gibson’s idea is that affordances are not
properties of the environment or properties of the organism; rather, they are objective
features of the interaction between organism and environment.4 Such objective features
ground specific capacities.
Often, criticism of Gibson’s approach emphasizes the problem of understanding
such a view in physicalist terms. But this criticism amounts to a denial of the basic
claim (implicit in Gibson) that development and form are more important than the
traditional physicalist ontology of objects-with-properties. Gibson’s ontology of
affordances looks odd when discussed in relation to traditional approaches to
perception; but it starts to look rather familiar when we realize that in different
sciences, there is a tendency to take seriously heterogeneity as a resource of
understanding. As mentioned above (see note 3 in particular), evo-devo in biology is a
very good example of how ontologies of abstractions that do not refer to a

fundamental reality (but to an ontology of forms subject to developmental
constraints) are gaining ground as a basis for future advances in biological
understanding. Thus, there are good reasons to take the concept of affordance
seriously and explore the possibility of extending it as a basic ontological notion
beyond visual perception. This is a project that was already suggested by Gibson and
that has been carried forward by many people in different directions (see Heft, 2001;
Jones, 2003; and section 2 of this paper). Following the suggestion that we present in
this paper, we should not expect to find one single causal notion that will serve as the
referent for the different uses of such abstraction in different research programs, not
even if we restrict the discussion to the cognitive sciences. Affordances should not be
seen as well-defined (causal) entities playing the same causal role in different sorts of
explanation. They are not theoretical entities in the usual sense of the term; rather,
they can be seen as sources of scaffolds which facilitate the alignment and explication
of processes and levels of description in such a way that understanding is enhanced.5
As we have seen in the example of the role of novelty in evolutionary biology,
integrative concepts play their role by setting the stage, by providing scaffolding for the
epistemic connections between different (causal) processes and levels of description.
This is in opposition to a more traditional way of understanding such connections as
being supported by some assumed common causal structure that encourages different
kinds of reduction depending on the way the causes are characterized.
In the mid-twentieth century, there starts to be talk of the cognitive sciences as a
series of related fields of research that include robotics, AI, cognitive psychology, and
others, that are integrated around the metaphor of the mind as a computer.6 For such
a metaphor to develop real methodological value, it needed to be accompanied by an
account of cognition as internal symbol processing. Thus, the unity of the cognitive
sciences can be understood as the result of the reduction of processes (modeled by
different theories) that deal with different cognitive phenomena to some fundamental
theory of cognition as symbol processing. Here, integration is really a name for one or
another version of theory reduction. Newell and Simon (1972), for example, consider
problem solving to be the paradigmatic cognitive activity, and think of it as consisting
of formal operations on symbols in the head that represent sequences of actions that
constitute a plan designed to solve a real-world problem.
Contemporary accounts of cognition as extended (embodied or situated) question
the traditional account of cognition as just internal symbol processing and thereby
bring to the fore the problem of accounting for the unity of the cognitive sciences.
A key part of the discussion about extended cognition deals precisely with the issue
that it is not clear what sort of unity we are talking about. Abrahamsen says that the
cognitive sciences have been “drawn back downwards into the brain and outwards
into the world” (1998, p. 98). Such a metaphor suggests that the unity that is in
question is about the site of cognition. This is indeed an issue; but an important
challenge to the traditional view of cognition relies on claims about the need of
understanding cognition as part of a cognition – action axis that is the result of
development (Thelen & Smith, 1994) or evolution (Brooks, 1999). In these sorts
of approaches, the issue is not so much about the site of cognition but the kind of
processes that embody cognition. Situated accounts of cognition are often related to
challenges to the traditional way of understanding the unity of the cognitive sciences
arising from methodology in the social sciences and the psychology of culture in
particular.
What is meant by embodied or situated cognition depends heavily on the sort of
methods used to study cognition. We might be inclined to think of such diversity as a
sign of “pre-paradigmatic” science. As we want to show, they should alternatively be
seen as resources ready to enter into the sort of shifting alignments of methodological
resources that ground new explanatory abstractions. Such abstractions should not be
understood as groping to fit a homogeneous theoretical framework, but as promoting
understanding through integration. Integration exploits ontological heterogeneity as a
resource for epistemic understanding.
Since our aim in this paper is to argue for the integrative role of the concept of
affordance via its capacity to generate scaffoldings supporting integrative abstractions,
it is advisable to provide at least a very rough survey of the different uses of affordance
and scaffolding in the recent cognitive sciences, and in particular, by authors involved
in the discussion about the methodological and epistemic claims of extended
cognition. This is important because metaphysics, usually associated with a reductive
view, quite often screens off the role of integrative concepts. A historical account of the
problems involved (even as brief as this one) can help to counterbalance such
metaphysical biases.
2. The Genesis and Polysemy of “Scaffolding” and “Affordance”

It is way beyond the scope of this presentation to provide an exhaustive panorama of
the different meanings and uses of scaffolding and affordance. What we want to do
instead is to exemplify the plurality of meanings of the concepts and show that this
polysemy has its roots in the type of concepts that scaffolding and affordance are. In
this section, we take a brief look at how the concepts of “scaffolding” (Vygotsky, 1978)
and “affordance” (Gibson, 1977) enter different areas of the cognitive sciences.
2.1. Scaffolding
The idea of “scaffolding” originates with the Russian psychologist Lev Semiónovich
Vygotsky (1896– 1934) and refers to the help and support that adults provide children
in order for them to learn and develop complex cognitive abilities.7 Related to the idea
of scaffolding is what Vygotsky calls the “zone of proximal development,” which he
uses to describe the separation between what a child can achieve alone and what that
child can achieve with help, either from adults or through collaboration with other
children, an idea that cannot be separated from a sociocultural view of development.
Following the same lines as Vygotsky, in 1976 we come across Wood, Bruner, and Ross
(1976), who introduce the term ‘scaffolding’ to describe the tutoring interaction
between an adult and a child; it is a meaning that is very close to that used by Vygotsky
(Read, 2006).
More recently, Dunlap and Grabinger (1996, p. 242), for example, use the term
‘scaffolding’ to refer to the support that educators provide children through guides
that are appropriate for the children’s age and level of experience. This application to
education can be seen to be mirrored in scientific practice in the way in which tasks are
made easier for apprentices or junior researchers by an expert. This is precisely the
sense in which Hutchins (1995) uses the term, for example, when referring to
scaffolding as what makes the learning of the practice of “standard steaming watch”
easier. He claims that “the scaffolding provided to the novice by the other members of
the team is constructed on cultural understandings about what is hard and what is easy
to learn” (Hutchins, 1995, p. 280). Therefore, Hutchins’s reference resonates very
closely with Vygotsky’s original idea, related to learning and with the emphasis placed
on cultural models.8
An author within the cognitive sciences for whom “scaffolding” plays a crucial
explanatory role in his model of cognition is Andy Clark. In his book Natural-Born
cyborgs: Minds, technologies, and the future of human intelligence (2004), Clark analyzes
different meanings of the concept. Among the most relevant for scientific practice, we
could include the following: scaffolding as a conceptual instrument, for example, the
mind –body problem could be a scaffolding to “understand how human thought and
reason is born out of looping interactions between material brains, material bodies,
and complex cultural and technological environments” (Clark, 2004, p. 11);
scaffolding as a source of capacities that complement those provided by the biological
brain, such as a note pad; and language as scaffolding that allows us to freeze a thought
or idea in words.
One author who is particularly interested in the relation between scaffolding and
distributed and extended cognition is Pea (2004). Pea’s thesis is that there are two
different ways of organizing support for learning processes: along the social axis and
along the technological axis. According to Pea, these two axes should not be confused,
since “the social conception of between-people scaffolding and support for learning is
not primarily about the uses of the technological artifacts but about social practices
that have arisen over millennia in parenting and other forms of caring” (Pea, 2004,
p. 430). Pea suggests that the integration that is relevant for understanding the sense in
which cognition is distributed and extended concerns the integration between
technological and social elements. It is questionable whether such a distinction
between social and technological elements can be taken for granted, but Pea gives us a
clear account of the role of social practices.
2.2. Affordance
The concept of “affordance” is linked, initially at least, to the work of Gibson and it is
particularly relevant for his theory of perception, which he laid out in several papers
and in The ecological approach to visual perception (Gibson, 1986). According to
Gibson, perception is holistic and integrated within an ecological framework, so that
the properties of the environment are not perceived as different and isolated points,
but rather as significant entities within a given ecological context of interrelated
variables. In this framework, affordances are relative to the species or group for which
they facilitate a task (Gibson, 1986, p. 128). Therefore, something is an affordance not
in absolute terms but in relation to a particular context and for a particular species.
Thus, there can be affordances that are such for humans but not for other species, and
vice versa.
In the case of affordances, we can also follow the development of the idea via
different authors who have taken up Gibson’s idea and applied it to different fields.
One author who has used the concept of affordance in a way that is somewhat different
from Gibson’s original characterization is Norman (1999). For Gibson, affordances
constitute action possibilities in an environment in relation to the action capabilities
of an actor as a member of a species. Meanwhile, for Norman, affordances are
perceived properties that may or may not actually exist; they constitute suggestions or
clues as to how to use properties, and they can be dependent on the experience,
knowledge, or cultural background of the actor. Whereas Gibson was fundamentally
interested in how we perceive our environment and in how people and animals shape
their environment to facilitate survival, Norman’s focus was on the way in which the
manipulation and design of the environment led to the perception of its usefulness
(McGrenere & Ho, 2000). This point is the crucial difference between Gibson and
Norman; for Norman, affordances are not relative to species but grounded in practices
that are learned (Norman, 1999).
If we take Norman’s characterization of the notion of affordance seriously, several
studies that do not use the term ‘affordance’ can be understood as using the concept
to ground the way in which cognition is distributed. That is the case with Smith
(2007), who does not talk of affordances, but his characterization of the nature or
function of an artifact can be formulated in terms of affordances. Smith defines an
artifact as
an object produced or modified by human agency, especially a tool or ornament; a

creation of human conception or agency rather than an inherent element; an
erroneous effect, observation, or result, especially one generated from the technology
used or from experimental error; and a structure or feature not normally present
but visible because of an external agent or action. (Smith, 2007, p. 4)
For example, the concept of transparent design naturally relates to affordances;

transparent design encodes affordances in the environment for those agents who have
learned to see them. Just as for Norman, Smith’s artifacts distribute cognition to the
extent that they constitute resources for extending cognition.
2.3. Affordances and Scaffolds
In the last couple of decades, the concepts of “scaffolding” and “affordance” have
gained prominence in many debates that are, at first blush, disconnected. Some would
be tempted to use this acknowledgment of diversity of uses as evidence against the
unifying importance of such concepts. However, quite the opposite is in fact the case.
More precisely, the two concepts are abstractions that allow us to combine different
experimental results with different types of activities and interactions among agents.
Moreover, the variety of uses of those notions can be seen as responding to the variety
of ways in which environment and agency combine in the formation and development
of cognitive processes.
As we have seen above, there are several discussions about the meaning of
affordances. There are not that many discussions on the meaning of ‘scaffold’. Mascolo
(2005) provides a discussion of different types of scaffolding. He distinguishes
between social scaffolding, ecological scaffolding, and self-scaffolding. The first is the
type that is closest to Vygotsky’s original idea of scaffolding, insofar as he relates it to
processes through which exchanges with other people are produced. “Ecological
scaffolding,” or what he also calls “naturalistic scaffolding”: “involves the use of
naturally occurring environmental features in their unaltered state to aid in acting”
(Mascolo, 2005, p. 190). Finally, “self-scaffolding” encompasses the idea that the
actions of the individual create new conditions for new forms of action and meaning.
In addition to the above distinctions, Mascolo talks of “coactive scaffolding” to refer to
the cognitive resources that become available “when elements of the person–
environment system beyond the direct control of an individual actor direct or
channelize the construction of action in novel and unanticipated ways” (Mascolo,
2005, p. 187).
Even though the role of the environment is more explicitly stated in discussions
about affordances, the environment is no less important for scaffoldings, since the
latter are (material and cultural) elements located in the environment, elements that
can also facilitate action. Thus, the relationship between scaffolding/affordance and
action relates, in turn, to the interrelation between perception and action. Stoffregen,
Bardy, and Mantel (2006) analyze that connection and argue that when one says that
people perceive affordances, what they actually perceive are the possible actions
available in definite circumstances. Here one can see that affordances set the stage for
the individuation of possible actions, and in this sense they scaffold actions.
Affordances generate variations that are productive in different spheres because they
scaffold stable features of interactions that can be inherited, from education to
engineering. Affordances aim to explain how the environment can set the stage for the
sort of cognitive scaffoldings that constitute the extension of cognition.
Thus, it is only natural that a distinction between affordances and scaffolds is that
scaffolds are usually thought of as temporary, as resources of processes of
development, whereas affordances are considered to be objective features of the
environment that might change with different interactions between agents and
environments. Those variations form paths to achieving goals through actions that are
always directed towards changing the environment in such a way as to originate
resources that can be exploited in a great variety of manners.
3. Implications for Discussions of Extended and Distributed Cognition

As we have already seen in the discussion above, Clark’s idea of an “extended mind”
and other related views asserting extended cognition pose important philosophical
questions.9 Our claim is that by shedding light on the integrative character of the
concepts of “affordance” and “scaffolding,” we are better positioned to understand

several controversies concerning the sense in which the mind is extended and
cognition is distributed.
Distributed cognition can be understood in either a weak or a strong epistemic
mode. A distributed cognitive system involves humans and artifacts in such a way that
any single unit of the system could not produce the cognitive output by itself. In the
weak epistemic mode, one accepts that cognition is distributed but epistemic agency is
not. In this mode, only humans are epistemic agents. Giere (2007) and many
philosophers of science hold such a view. Distributed cognition in the strong mode
holds that epistemic agency is equally distributed among artifacts and humans;
therefore, it implies distributed epistemic agency. Hutchins, for example, claims that
cognitive distribution implies that the knowledge of a whole system depends on the
cognitive organization of the parts, and thus, that epistemic agency is distributed not
only among the human agents but among artifacts as well. The following quotation
from Hutchins sums up this strong view of the unit of cognition:
Of course, in a very important sense, the question of interest to you as a passenger
should not be whether a particular pilot is performing well, but whether or not the
system that is composed of the pilots and the technology of the cockpit environment
is performing well. (Hutchins & Klausen, 1996, p. 3)
From this perspective, we can make two observations. In the first place, the fact that
the unit of cognition is a system does not eliminate the cognitive properties of the
subject as an individual. Secondly, the success of a cognitive process depends on
collaboration with other subjects; for example, in the case of the cockpit of an airplane,
the relation between the pilot and the co-pilot or the air traffic controllers is crucial;
and for this interaction, communication technologies are very important. Therefore,
the technology intervenes not only as part of an extended cognition, but it also (as
Hutchins points out) plays a role by framing the interaction between the individuals
who form part of the same cognitive system.
From the perspective of distributive cognition, artifacts form part of the cognitive
system and function as resources that can naturally be characterized as scaffoldings.
But we can also think of artifacts as entrenched affordances that produce those
scaffoldings that constitute the extended cognitive system. Of course, such a claim
would require elaborating on how such affordances are understood. We understand
that Hutchins does not need to worry about such “unnecessary” discussion (from the
perspective of his objective), but if our aim is to have a broader integrated account of
extended cognition, then things look different. Affordances are required to support an
explanation of artifacts as scaffolds.
“Scaffolding” in Vigotsky’s sense would be appropriate here to explain the cognitive
significance of the teaching-cum-learning method that veteran pilots use to show
trainees how to read the temperature from the display. A different question is whether
(or how) artifacts such as a display could be considered as affordances. Mascolo, for
example, points out that the sense of scaffolding that he calls “naturalistic scaffolding
is the most similar to Gibson’s affordances” (2005, p. 191). The suggestion is not
obvious if we stick to Gibson’s original idea; but Michaels’ idea of linking affordances
to “effectivities” suggests the required link. Affordances are not the result of a mere
reading of properties or functions of things. Affordances should be understood as
anchored in artifacts (instruments, technology, standards, and so on) that are effective
in generating the sort of scaffolded processes that constitute extended cognition
(Michaels, 2003).
This goes along with a view of culture as something learned and inherited
through processes that involve organization stabilized through the use of artifacts.
Thus, from this perspective, scaffolding abstracts general features of development
that through the use of artifacts gets stabilized and inherited through generations of
learners.10
Of course, different ways of talking lead to, or presuppose, different epistemic
commitments. Knowledge might mean many things. If we think of knowledge as sheer
information, it does not seem difficult to accept the idea that an artifact knows
something: all that is meant is that an artifact can transfer or retain information.
However, information is not the only thing we can think of knowledge as being. An
account of knowledge seems to require discussion of the origin and role of epistemic
norms. If we take Giere’s approach and distinguish between the human parts of a
cognitive system and its non-human parts, then it seems that we have to be content
with an account of distributed cognition that is compatible with a non-extended
account of epistemic norms. Such an account of distributed cognition does not,
however, abandon the basic model of cognition as centered on individuals, at least if
we recognize that cognition cannot be explained without assessing epistemic
considerations.
Giere is led to such a conclusion because he thinks that epistemic agency can
ultimately be characterized in terms of knowledge; and knowledge, for Giere, consists
of justified (reliable) beliefs. If epistemic agency boils down to the production of
reliable beliefs, then Giere’s analysis seems unobjectionable. In this view, distributed
cognition is therefore compatible with non-distributed epistemic agency. That is,
Giere’s characterization of epistemic agency commits us to thinking of distributed
cognition as being of the weak kind. We do not, nonetheless, need to understand
epistemology as gravitating towards truth, as reliabilism requires. Nor need we think
of epistemology as exclusively dealing with beliefs. Approaches that adopt the notion
of understanding as the main epistemic aim of science are now being taken seriously
(see note 1). Understanding, as opposed to knowledge, does not need to gravitate
towards truth.
Take the case of the use of false models in science as an example. False models play a
role in understanding, but they do not lead to understanding by moving closer to what
is the case (Elgin, 2007). Elgin (2007) has argued for an account of understanding as a
graded epistemic end that involves grasping a comprehensive body of information that
in turn is grounded in fact, duly responsive to evidence, but not necessarily valuable
because of its approximation to truth. What here we are calling abstractions is part of
what Elgin calls “effective idealizations”: constructs that help us to understand, not
because of their closeness to truth, but because of their role in allowing us epistemic
access to matters of fact that otherwise we could not discern. Thinking of

understanding as the main epistemic aim of methodological integration allows us to
promote a kind of integration that is compatible with the heterogeneity of ontologies
and kinds of epistemic practices involved in cognitive science and with recognition of
the importance of scientific practices in explaining the distributed nature of epistemic
norms.
For us, the relevant aspects of Clark’s idea of an “extended mind” are its
implications for how we draw the boundaries of agency. For example, we may wonder
whether the cognitive limits of a subject are the same whether we consider dependence
only on a biological brain or dependence on a brain plus all the accompanying non-
biological fundamentally technological “prostheses.” Clark argues that pacemakers,
implanted corneas, etc. can lead to the formation of a type of “cyborg,” but for such
beings to be a symbiosis of flesh and technology, it is not necessary for the technology
to be under the skin. Symbiosis can occur with devices that have transformed our lives
such as mobile phones, computers, and so on. The idea of symbiosis seems to involve
there being not one main element and another secondary one, but rather that elements
mesh into a new cognitive “actor” or “agent.” Clark says:
We—more than any other creature on the planet—deploy non-biological elements

(instruments, media, notations) to complement our basic biological modes of
processing, creating extended cognitive systems whose computational and problem-
solving profiles are quite different from those of the naked brain. (Clark, 2004, p. 78)
This claim suggests that a cognitive system is different according to whether we see it
as just a brain or as a brain extended through non-biological circuits.
For critics of the extended mind hypothesis, such as Adams and Aizawa (2001), the
unity of cognition involves the homogeneity of psychology, to wit, the claim that
psychology is grounded in a framework of causal mechanisms that characterizes a
cognitive kind. To the extent that the extended mind hypothesis, as we see it, is
promoting the scientific status of a science of cognition that relies on the irreducible
heterogeneity of processes (involving neurons, artifacts, institutions, and so on), we
would need to abandon the claim that there is such a cognitive kind characterized by a
(hypothetical) homogeneous causal mechanism. The claim that affordances and
scaffoldings integrate heterogeneous processes or mechanisms, and that this
integration leads to the sort of understanding that is the aim of science, answers
such criticisms. Integrative concepts play an important role in the epistemology of
science, in which the integration of highly heterogeneous processes and mechanisms is
a prerequisite for the advancement of understanding.
4. Conclusions
The concepts of affordance and scaffolding are related to different traditions of inquiry
in the cognitive sciences. However, they can be seen as closely related through their
contribution to a potentially productive integration of the resources of an extended
view of cognition. Such a view of cognition is “bottom-up,” in the sense that cognition
is a complex series of processes that arise and develop as the evolving architecture of
constraints embodied (or embedded) in artifacts and social organization (institutions
and practices, in particular) that have the capacity to reproduce.
It is clear that we are not gods, that our capacities as a species are limited. However,
as humans, we possess a great capacity to arrange things in empowering ways and seek
out what we need to survive in our environment. Without being the only ones who do
so, there is no doubt that scaffolding and affordances are two ways in which we
mitigate our limitations. Specifically, in the case of humans, when we talk of survival,
we do not refer solely to physical survival but also to cultural and social survival.
Acknowledgements
Financial support for this research was received from the Spanish Government’s
DGICYT research project: FFI2011-23238, “Innovation in Scientific Practice:
Cognitive Approaches and Their Philosophical Consequences,” and from project:
133345 CONACYT, Mexico.
Notes
[1] In this paper, we assume that understanding can be characterized as an important epistemic
aim of science that is not reducible to the aim of increasing factual knowledge. For views
defending different versions of this view of understanding, see De Regt, Leonelli, and Eigner
(2009).
[2] Evo-devo is not a clear-cut label. Roughly, evo-devo refers to a new discipline focusing on
the search for the integration of different traditions (theoretical as well as experimental) of
studying biological development that grew rather separately during the twentieth century
(Laubichler & Maienschein, 2007). As Hall puts it: “evo-devo is a synthesis of evolution and
development with emergent properties not found from analysis of development or
evolution alone” (2000, p. 177).
[3] See, for example, the section “On surfaces and the ecological laws of surfaces” in chapter 2 of
Gibson (1986). The chapter concludes with a telling summary. The first sentence of the
summary is the following: “we live in an environment consisting of substances that are more
or less substantial; of a medium, the gaseous atmosphere; and of the surfaces that separate
the substances from the medium. We do not live in ‘space’.”
[4] See Chemero (2009) for an elaboration of such a view.
[5] In section 2, we will see other ways to understand scaffolding and affordance that do not
exactly match our position.
[6] An example of the interdisciplinary field of the cognitive sciences formed by various
disciplines centered on the study of cognition is the report Cognitive science, 1978 (Walker,
1978), under the auspices of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.
[7] Some authors deem that the English term ‘scaffolding’ predates Vygotsky’s writings (Wood
et al., 1976), and that the corresponding concept changed under the influence of his work.
Be that as it may, the meaning of ‘scaffolding’ in the current scientific literature comes from
Vygotsky’s work.
[8] Hutchins may have been influenced by the writing of Vygotsky but it certainly is not the case
that they belong to the same theoretical tradition. Firstly, Vygotsky’s work comes from
psychology and Hutchins’s from anthropology, and one of his closest influences is that of
Andrade. Therefore, there does not seem to be a direct relation between Hutchins and
Vygotsky.
[9] For a detailed account of this discussion, see Theiner (2011).
[10] See the introduction to Caporael, Griesemer, and Wimsatt (2013) and Martı́nez (2013) for
an elaboration of this view.
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“Scaffolding” and “affordance” as

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“Scaffolding” and “affordance” as

Anna Estany and Sergio Martı́nez

Anna Estany is a professor at the Autonomous University of Barcelona.

q 2013 Taylor & Francis

very good example of how ontologies of abstractions that do not refer to a

2. The Genesis and Polysemy of “Scaffolding” and “Affordance”

an object produced or modified by human agency, especially a tool or ornament; a

For example, the concept of transparent design naturally relates to affordances;

3. Implications for Discussions of Extended and Distributed Cognition

concepts of “affordance” and “scaffolding,” we are better positioned to understand

access to matters of fact that otherwise we could not discern. Thinking of

We—more than any other creature on the planet—deploy non-biological elements

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