Attentional landscaping

Our sensory environments are attentionally landscaped: they have been changed in order to affect our patterns of attention. This paper analyzes attentional landscaping as a form of cognitive scaffolding and argues for its significance. While not uniquely human, attentional landscaping is a pervasive aspect of our social life. It is significant in at least three respects. First, it is important for understanding attention and agency. Attentional landscaping can yield a dramatic expansion of agency by collectivizing mechanisms of attention guidance and turning them into a partly communal project. Second, attentional landscaping illuminates mindshaping and cognitive scaffolding more generally: since attention is both central and relatively easy to shape, attentional landscaping is a key ingredient in many forms of social interaction. Third, our discussion sheds light on communication. Much ostensive communication can be understood as a specific form of attentional landscaping, and ostensive practices together with the social norms that structure them can function as safety devices that help reap the advantages of friendly and pro-social landscaping while constraining hostile forms of attentional manipulation.