Affective Scaffoldings as Habits: A Pragmatist Approach

Frontiers in Psychology

article

Laura Candiotto¹  Roberta Dreon² 

[1] Department of Philosophy and Humanities, Institute of Philosophy, Free University of Berlin;Department of Philosophy and Cultural Heritage, Ca' Foscari University of Venice

关键词: affective habits;    affective scaffoldings;    situated affectivity;    John Dewey;    Pragmatism;    sensibility;    emotion;    habit crisis;   

DOI  :  10.3389/fpsyg.2021.629046

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: Frontiers

【 摘 要 】

In this paper, we provide a pragmatist conceptualization of affective habits as relatively flexible ways of channeling affectivity. Our proposal, grounded in a conception of sensibility and habits derived from John Dewey, suggests understanding affective scaffoldings in a novel and broader sense by re-orienting the debate from objects to interactions. We claim that habits play a positive role in supporting and orienting human sensibility, allowing us to avoid any residue of dualism between internalist and externalist conceptions of affectivity. We provide pragmatist tools for understanding the environment's role in shaping our feelings, emotions, moods, and affective behaviors. However, we contend that in addition to environment, the continuous and recursive affective transaction between agent and environment (both natural and cultural) are also crucially involved. We claim that habits are transformative, which is especially evident when we consider that emotions are often the result of a crisis in habitual behavior and successively play a role in prompting changes of habits. The final upshot is a conceptualization of affective habits as pervasive tools for feelings that scaffold human conduct as well as key features in the transformation of behaviors.

【 授权许可】

CC BY