Affordances, Culture, and the Self: Constituting a New Cognitive-Behavioral Paradigm

I have three goals in this chapter: the first is to discuss and reject the concept of self as a necessary underpinning or part of cognition and in so doing consider the self a product of the interpreter function of the left side of the brain. The second is to discuss how we cognize affordances and how they are evolutionary adaptations to the environment, and therefore cognized. And the third is to reposition cultural models explicitly between cognition and behavior. Cognition feels as if it is a product of the self. This “truism” needs to be destroyed. Rather than the self-producing the cultural models and affordances we use to navigate and make sense of the world, I posit that the self is a product of cognition. I link affordance to fast thinking cognition and cultural models to slow thinking. Affordance is the key concept behind radical enactivist models of cognition or the mind. I agree with the enactivist position that a main feature of everyday life is its contingent nature; ordinary life comes in discrete cultural shreds and patches. However, I do show that cognition is necessary to recognize affordances in the environment. This sort of cognition is related to fast thinking.