Chances, Affordances, Niche Construction Lorenzo Magnani University of Pavia, Department of Philosophy and Computational Philosophy Laboratory, Pavia, Italy, and Sun Yat-sen University, Department of Philosophy, Guangzhou (Canton), P.R. China lmagnani@unipv.it Abstract. As a matter of fact, humans continuously delegate and distribute cog- nitive functions to the environment to lessen their limits. They build models, rep- resentations, and other various mediating structures, that are considered to aid thought. In doing these, humans are engaged in a process of cognitive niche con- struction. 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 cre- ate 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 unex- pressed or unreachable. 1 Introduction 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 thought to be good to think. The aim of this paper is to shed light on these designing activities. In the first part of the paper I will argue that these designing activities are closely related to the process of niche construction. I will point out that in building various mediating structures, such as models or represen- tations, humans alter the environment and thus create cognitive niches. In dealing with the exploitation of cognitive resources and chances embedded in the environment, the notion of affordance, originally proposed by Gibson [1] to illustrate the hybrid character of visual perception, can be extremely relevant. The analysis of the concept of affordance also provides an alternative account about the role of external – also artifactual – objects and devices. Artifactual cognitive objects and devices extend, modify, or substitute “natural” affordances actively providing humans and many ani- mals with new opportunities for action [2]. In order to solve various controversies on the concept of affordance, I will take advantage of some useful insights that come from the study on abduction [3]. Abduction may fruitfully describe all those human and an- imal hypothetical inferences that are operated through actions which consist in smart manipulations to both detect new affordances and to create manufactured external ob- jects that offer new affordances. I. Lovrek, R.J. Howlett, and L.C. Jain (Eds.): KES 2008, Part II, LNAI 5178, pp. 719–726, 2008. c  Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2008