8-9th of June, 2026
University of Southern Denmark, Odense.
Hostile & Inauthentic Atmospheres
Atmospheres play significant explanatory roles across architecture, geography, and phenomenology, yet remain difficult to precisely define. Recent work has proposed that atmospheres are high-level nested relations of agent-environment joint potentialities (Fernandez Velasco & Niikawa, 2025). On this view, atmospheres provide agents with a quick orientation toward the high-level possibilities a given environment offers, enabling them to grasp more fine-grained affordances from within a coherent, holistic experiential 'whole'. Atmospheres, in this sense, function as a kind of epistemic resource, furnishing agents with information about ways of being oriented toward what is possible.
From this framework, we can draw a distinction between hostile and inauthentic atmospheres. In the former, the affordances structuring an environment are accurate, but negative for the individual who encounters them. In the latter, atmospheres are structured so as to misrepresent the affordances they ostensibly offer. A psychiatric ward, for instance, may be designed to appear calming through warm lighting, soft furnishings, and careful sound management, yet reveal upon closer inspection features that contradict this presentation: the absence of sharp objects, immovable furniture, the conspicuous absence of laughter. Here, the initial atmospheric orientation is not merely incomplete but actively misleading. Recognising this generates a distinctive epistemic disorientation - agents find themselves unable to trust their own reading of the environment and, crucially, unable to trust themselves as interpreters of it.
We argue this constitutes a form of epistemic self-alienation: a condition in which agents come to experience their own perceptions and inferences as unreliable. This concept connects to emerging literature on both hostile scaffolding (Timms, 2023) and gaslighting (Abrahamson, 2024), and making these links helps illuminate how atmospheres can act to undermine individual agency and cause specific kinds of harm.
Hamish Linehan
University of Stirling
University of St Andrews
Hamish Linehan McCaldin is a PhD researcher on the Stirling and St Andrews Partnership Programme (SASP), working with the Centre for the Science of Place and Memory. His research focuses on accounting for the ways in which memories are embedded, embodied, extended, and enacted. Drawing on his professional background in social research, he is especially interested in how first-person testimonies can provide insights into the mind and the ways in which our cognition is encultured.
Pablo Fernandez Velasco
University of Stirling
Pablo Fernandez Velasco Works on philosophy of mind and cognitive science, and a big aspect of my research lies in interdisciplinary collaboration. He viewsphilosophy both as a way of advancing interdisciplinary work through the development of solid theoretical foundations, and as a way of connecting scientific advances to pressing social issues. He is particularly interested in navigation and in environmental experience, and my current research explores ecological grief. He has been published academic articles in top journals across a variety of disciplines, and my work has received media attention in venues including BBC, The Guardian, Irish Times, Le Monde, and New Scientist.