Papers by Chris Drain
History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences, 2022
This paper reconstructs L.S. Vygotsky’s account of anthropogenesis with respect to the work of an... more This paper reconstructs L.S. Vygotsky’s account of anthropogenesis with respect to the work of anthropologist André Leroi-Gourhan and late philosopher Bernard Stiegler, situating Vygotsky as a forerunner to recent theories that posit cultural scaffolding and niche construction as the main drivers of human cognitive evolution. One might think there is an immediate affinity between Vygotsky and the techno-centric accounts of Leroi-Gourhan and Stiegler. Following LeroiGourhan, Stiegler argues that “technics” is the main driver in the anthropogenic development of “reflective consciousness.” Vygotsky likewise claims that “psychological tools” are responsible for the development of uniquely human forms of consciousness. However, closer inspection reveals deep disparities between Vygotsky and the French thinkers. In Stiegler’s philosophical redeployment of LeroiGourhan’s anthropology, “reflective” cognition is the product of a prehistorical rupture in which some threshold of technical-cortical complexification is breached. For Vygotsky, on the other hand, the inverse scenario obtains. Technical development initially proceeds in tandem with the complexification of biologically based signaling behavior until the introduction of signs, which then radically restructure the cognitive apparatus. Due to inconsistencies regarding the equivalency of the technical and semiotic in Stiegler and Leroi-Gourhan, I advance a Vygotskian account where anthropogenesis is the result of semiotic rather than technical intervention. This aims to establish Vygotsky’s “Cultural Historical” approach, and the Marxiandialectical tradition from which he draws, as not only presaging recent naturalistic accounts of development, but offering a relevant theoretical program that may continue to inspire contemporary enculturated accounts of anthropogenesis.
Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective, 2021
Social Epistemology Review & Reply Collective, 2021
L.S. Vygotsky’s “regulative” account of the development of human thinking hinges on the centraliz... more L.S. Vygotsky’s “regulative” account of the development of human thinking hinges on the centralization of “directive” speech acts (commands or imperatives). With directives, one directs the activity of another, and in turn begins to “self-direct” (or self-regulate). It’s my claim that Vygotsky’s reliance on directives de facto keeps his account stuck at Tomasello's level of individual intentionality. Directive speech acts feature prominently in Tomasello’s developmental story as well. But Tomasello has the benefit of accounting for a functional differentiation in directive communication—i.e., in collaborative activity, the command gives way to both the request and informational assertion. Lacking such differentiation, Vygotsky’s account runs the risk of playing to a rather strident conception of the socius, one more Machiavellian than Marxist.
Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective, 2020
Siyaves Azeri (2020) quite well shows that arithmetical thinking emerges on the basis of specific... more Siyaves Azeri (2020) quite well shows that arithmetical thinking emerges on the basis of specific social practices and material engagement (clay tokens for economic exchange practices beget number concepts, e.g.). But his discussion here is relegated mostly to Neolithic and Bronze Age practices. While surely such practices produced revolutions in the cognitive abilities of many humans, much of the cognitive architecture that allows normative conceptual thought was already in place long before this time. This response, then, is an attempt to sketch the deep prehistory of human cognition in order to show the inter-social bases of normative thought in general. To do this, I will look first to the work of Vygotsky and Leontiev, two often neglected psychologists whose combined efforts culminate in a developmental account of human cognitive origins. Then, I will review some key insights from the contemporary comparative psychologist Michael Tomasello—whose project is admittedly a Vygotskian one—in order to further shed light on the social-practical basis of abstract thought, of which mathematical cognition is surely a part.
Epistemology & Philosophy of Science, 2018
According to Leontiev’s “activity approach,” the external world
is not something available to be ... more According to Leontiev’s “activity approach,” the external world
is not something available to be “worked over” according to a
subject’s inner or “ideal” representations; at stake instead is
the emergence of an “idealized” objective world that relates to
a subject’s activity both internally and externally construed. In
keeping with a Marxian account of anthropogenesis, Leontiev
links the emergence of “ideality” with social activity itself,
incorporating it within the general movement between the
poles of ‘inner’ cognition and ‘external’ action. In this manner,
Leontiev both parallels and goes beyond Hutto and Myin’s recent
“enactivist” account of “content-involving” cognition, where
representational thought depends on socio-cultural scaffolding
and, as such, is uniquely human. What traditionally comes to
be called representational content is for Leontiev the result of
the transition from a primitive cognitive apparatus of “image-
consciousness” to a one which is mediated by social activity. For
the being endowed with “activity-consciousness,” mental content
is something apprehended by assimilating “the objective world
in its ideal form” [Leontiev, 1977, p. 189]. And the precondition
for such assimilation is the apprehension of meanings from their
origin in the social-material system of activity. The genesis of
content-involving cognition is thus coeval with the development
of socializing activity systems, replete with the external
representations of values and norms as described in enactivist
literature as publicly scaffolded symbol systems. Leontiev thus
offers an anti-internalist account of cognition commensurate
with Hutto and Myin but with the added dimension of a
developmental scale of analysis with which to explain the origin
of human-specific cognition.
What’s the Matter with Cognition? A ‘Vygotskian’ Perspective on Material Engagement Theory
The cross-disciplinary framework of Material Engagement Theory (MET) has emerged as a novel resea... more The cross-disciplinary framework of Material Engagement Theory (MET) has emerged as a novel research program that flexibly spans archeology, anthropology, philosophy, and cognitive science. True to its slogan to 'take material culture seriously', " MET wants to change our understanding of what minds are and what they are made of by changing what we know about what things are and what they do for the mind " (Malafouris 2013, 141). By tracing out more clearly the conceptual contours of 'material engagement,' and firming up its ontological commitments, the main goal of this article is to help refine Malafouris' fertile approach. In particular, we argue for a rapprochement between MET and the tradition of Cultural-Historical Activity Theory, based on the 'Vygotskian' hypothesis of scaffolded and/or distributed cognition.
The ubiquitous computing engendered by smartphone use has indeed already wrought major changes to... more The ubiquitous computing engendered by smartphone use has indeed already wrought major changes to how we act as social, cognitive, agents. In the first part of this essay we argue that in keeping with the thematic of situated cognition, the smartphone allows for memory to be extended and distributed in a manner hitherto unimaginable. The content and means of identity creation becomes radicalized when considered from the perspective of a hybrid artifactual agent. Such a shift consists in the reciprocal nature of memorialization insofar as such a process is grounded on the constant access to and creation of documents, whether imagistic or textual in nature. With a smartphone an agent's personal memory is augmented and enhanced, and insofar as that agent is merely one part of an assemblage of likewise enhanced agents, interpersonal and collective modes of memory are similarly altered in their potential for self and social identity construction. In the second part we addressed how, when considered epistemologically, the ‘enhancements’ and modifications that follow from such hybrid agents are uneven and problematic. We showed that although perpetual access to information alters what and how the average human agent knows, it does so not in a purely progressive or enlightened way. The smartphone alters those who use it by diminishing their attention in formal learning settings and by producing agents who tend to overestimate their own ‘internal’ knowledge. In sum, we hope that this modest contribution adds to the larger picture how humanity is not a pre-given notion and that alterations to seemingly fixed human capacities such as knowing and remembering are intimately bound up with and altered by technological practices.
Book Reviews by Chris Drain
Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 2021
AVANT. Trends in Interdisciplinary Studies, 2014
The Hand, an Organ of the Mind, edited by Zdravko Radman, consists of seventeen essays by an impr... more The Hand, an Organ of the Mind, edited by Zdravko Radman, consists of seventeen essays by an impressive array of philosophers, psychologists, and cognitive scientists, as well as a foreword by Jesse Prinz and a postscript by haptic artist Rosalyn Driscoll.
Talks by Chris Drain
Radical enactivists Hutto and Myin (2017) argue that cognition “is always interactive and dynamic... more Radical enactivists Hutto and Myin (2017) argue that cognition “is always interactive and dynamic in character” and that “Content involving cognition need not … be grounded in cognitive processes that involve the manipulation of contentful tokens” (135). They further propose that human cognition, when it is content-involving, is of a special kind not found elsewhere in nature (136) and that “contentless minds might become content-involving through a process of sociocultural scaffolding” (128).
This decidedly invokes a Vygotskian account of cognitive development, which maintains that complex cognition is achieved and enacted through the transformation of more basic mental functions by means of social and artefactual mediation.
For A.N. Leontiev, pupil of Vygotsky, content-involving cognition results from the transition from a primitive apparatus of “image-consciousness” to a one which is socially mediated and in which activity itself is taken as “the object of consciousness” (Leontiev 2009b, 406). For the being endowed with ‘activity-consciousness’ the ‘mental image’ is something apprehended though a process of assimilating the social-objective world.
In this talk I aim to present my current research on Leontiev’s relevance for radical enactivist accounts cognition. At stake specifically is the missing story behind Hutto and Myin's account of the emergence of content involving cognition.They argue that content-involving cognition is a special kind of cognition which arises when there obtains a stabilization of claim-making practices (which can be subject to social censure and to which the predicates “right” and “wrong” can be felicitously ascribed).
However, they defer to Clark (2006) when describing the mechanism by which such qualitatively distinct minds may be said to occur. For Clark “language itself as a cognition-enhancing animal-built structure… [is a] a kind of self-constructed cognitive niche” (370). No doubt Leontiev would agree with Clark. However, he would be hesitant to utilize such a model full stop to underwrite an account of the emergence of content-involving cognition. Leontiev argues that socially scaffolded 'content' can only come on the scene after there is social activity. Meaningful mental reflection, or semantic content-involving cognition, for Leontiev is typified by language use. But while:
The vehicle of meaning is language… language is not the demiurge of meaning. Concealed behind linguistic meanings (values) are socially evolved
modes of action (operations), in the process of which people change and cognize objective reality. (2009, 409)
I suggest that Leontiev's Marxian activity account of the development of specifically human forms of mental reflection gives the missing story of content for Enactivists
L.S. Vygotsky aimed to explain human cognition by appealing to: (a) a three-pronged genetic analy... more L.S. Vygotsky aimed to explain human cognition by appealing to: (a) a three-pronged genetic analysis (phylogenetic, ontogenetic, and cultural-historical); (b) the idea that much of human cognitive experience is “always-already” artifactual and/or prosthetic; and c) the primacy of social and cultural life. Vygotsky thus takes material-cultural organization as the primary explanans of higher forms of human mentality and rejects any irreducible interior mental power or powers that can be taken as responsible for some uniquely human experience of self-hood, agency, or meaning.
Despite a deep suspicion of internalist-subjectivist accounts of mind, Vygotsky continued to employ a vocabulary stressing internal-external oppositions. His concept of internalization for instance re-deploys an inner-outer binary in explaining the emergence of so called “higher” mental functions.
In this presentation, I explore two aspects of Vygotsky’s work with respect to his spatial/directional vocabulary:
1) Internalism: Vygotsky’s spatialized terminology is less problematic than it initially appears, with “internalization” being used to describe the genesis of an internal psychical plane rather than the inscription on a pre-existing one. In this sense, Vygotsky adheres to a kind of internalism, but one quite different from the traditional Cartesian bogey.
2) Hierarchy: Though Vygotsky’s account of “higher” mental functions seems justified insofar it expands the domain of psychology to include the cultural-historical development of cognition and the effects of culture and history in ontogenesis, such a hierarchy is problematic in terms of its possible use in promulgating racist or ‘ethno-exceptionalist’ agendas.
I begin this presentation with a reflection on John Searle’s account of institutional reality, th... more I begin this presentation with a reflection on John Searle’s account of institutional reality, the construction of which relies on the basic representational ability of symbolic signification. From Searle I move to Rakoczy and Tomasello, who attempt to provide an ontogenetic ‘backstory’ to Searle’s account. While extremely insightful in their own regard, Rakoczy and Tomasello do not seek to address the mechanisms by which the skills necessary to engage in symbolic representation come about. I argue that an updated version of Vygotkyian semiotics found in contemporary CHAT can mechanistically account for the processes necessary for signification to function. I build on this with MET, especially with respect to its focus on the materiality of enactive signification. I argue that both CHAT and MET can aide Rakoczy and Tomasello’s ontogenetic account by explaining the generation of the HMF of arbitrary symbolism, with CHAT attending to the LMF of attention in joint-pretense activities and MET attending to the pre-conceptual processes that scaffold and guide signification in the material environment. Finally, from MET and CHAT I look at gesture as an archetypical form of developmentally ‘primitive’ signification in which the material and social aspects of the sign are functionally integrated in the embodied signal.
The point of this presentation is to advance a very “in progress” research platform regarding eme... more The point of this presentation is to advance a very “in progress” research platform regarding emergence metaphysics and material engagement theory. Material engagement theory is an offshoot of the recent 4E programs in cognitive science (the 4Es,being enactive, extended, embodied, and embedded accounts of cognition— situational, distributed, and group cognition, these areas are foreign neither to the 4E specialists nor to material engagement theorists). Specifically, material engagement theory is a research paradigm predominantly within archeology that seeks to “downplay an analytical separation between mind and matter, or ‘idealist’ versus ‘materialist’ approaches” and as such aims to “understand the processes underlying the development of new concepts, symbols, social institutions, and ultimately their effects on longer-term dynamics of socio-political change.” The archeological context here might seem surprising, but if we think about how archeologists’ primary practice is to uncode the minds and subjective states of peoples through material remnants, it’s not so mysterious. What is novel about MET is that not only does it square itself with recent cognitive science, eschewing traditional dualist binaries and monadic conceptions of the mind, self, or the ego—what is novel is that it does this against a realist relational ontology of mental, social, and technical life. And most notably for the work at hand, this ontology, while inherently materialistic, is one that holds commitments to an emergentist metaphysics which postulates that “mind” and the attributes traditionally associated with mind, namely agency and intentionality, are emergent properties or events, ones which come forth from out of a situational dynamic between brains, bodies, and things in the world.
After expounding my own approach, I'll try to show the significance of an emergentist paradigm for social ontology and, in keeping with the themes of this symposium, the structuralism of the Cahiers writers (specifically Jacques-Alain Miller's assessment in "Action de la Structure").
In his 2005 work Reification (Verdinglichung), Axel Honneth attempts to rehabilitate Georg Lukacs... more In his 2005 work Reification (Verdinglichung), Axel Honneth attempts to rehabilitate Georg Lukacs’ concept of reification in order to offer an account of how reification negates a genetically primary phenomenon of social relationality. Honneth claims that rather than signifying an epistemic category mistake, where an actor cognitively misperceives a person to be a mere “thing,” or indicating a morally objectionable act, where a person is treated as a means to an end for instance, reification (literally “thingification”) reflects a distorted form of social praxis. Indeed, for Honneth this mode is a distortion of an originary form of intersubjective empathetic engagement which results from a failing to take another’s perspective. His claim, more or less, is that to undergo reification is to forget a primary empathetic, recognitive, stance and enter into a deficient and secondary mode of social action, a mode that covers over the basic intersubjectivity which grounds the normative dynamic of respectful social interaction.
I argue that this is not a tenable reading if one takes sociality and objectification to be co-originary phenomena. If externalizing processes are always performed in a social context, then one can indeed utilize production as a normative basis for social action—any productive act that inhibits the recognition of one’s self and others in the product or process of production would violate the primary sociality of the productive world. A more substantial critique of reification would not be one that simply replaced the externalization model with a recognitive one, but one which investigated the positive interplay between externalization and recognition.
This paper concerns the possibility of a pure judgment of ugliness within Kant’s aesthetics. I a... more This paper concerns the possibility of a pure judgment of ugliness within Kant’s aesthetics. I argue that pure judgments of ugliness are indeed possible, but that only if they are distinguished from judgments of sensation. Utilizing Kant’s distinction in the unpublished First Introduction between aesthetic judgments of sensation and reflection, I argue that judgments of ugliness can be reflective and hence pure judgments of taste, so long as we construe the harmony of the faculties as being separate from their free play. In effect, a judgment of ugliness responds to a peculiarity in the formal apprehension of an object, the latter giving cause to a reciprocal free play of the faculties which is mutually expeditious yet also disharmonious insofar as it causes in the subject a feeling of displeasure. In this sense, I build on and amend Henry Allison’s account of negative aesthetic judgments. While agreeing with Allison’s move to separate the free play of the faculties from their dis/harmony, I argue that Allison is unclear as to how such judgments are reflective while being at the same time grounded in a disharmony—the problem being that such grounding seems in fact to disallow reflective judgment altogether. The following thus consists of several parts. First, I discuss Kant’s (very few) remarks on ugliness, arguing that, while he never spells out the mechanics of negative judgments of taste, his system clearly allows their possibility. Next, I discuss disinterestedness in relation to aesthetic judgments. Problematized here is the feeling of displeasure, which must not be a purely sensitive reaction if a judgment of ugliness is to be considered disinterested (and hence pure). The final section considers and critiques Allison’s position.
This paper seeks to examine the question of animality, of the animal/human divide, in the work of... more This paper seeks to examine the question of animality, of the animal/human divide, in the work of Agamben and Foucault. Foucault’s reading of political discourses on sovereignty (and in particular, of Hobbes) brought about a new way to conceive of power as a field of relations. However the place of the animal in this discussion is slight, relegated to his discussion of clinical procedures regarding mental health. Using the work of Giorgio Agamben, I will re-open the question of the animal and hopefully show its place Foucault’s treatment of sovereignty. Central to this discussion are Foucault’s and Agamben’s respective readings of Hobbes. Where Foucault solely discusses power and its structure in Hobbes’ architectonics of modernity, Agamben’s reading draws out a place for the question of the animal in this architectonics. With Agamben, I will examine Hobbes’ account of anthropogenesis and its impact on his account of sovereign power. I will argue that Hobbes’ account of anthropogenesis generates the ethico-ontological possibility of the animal as “Other,” and that the memory and ultimately fear of this “Other” permeates and haunts his entire political formulation. Concluding that Hobbes’ account of sovereignty is in constant tension with the question of animality, I will examine the stakes of inserting the question of the animal in Foucault’s reading of modernity, sovereignty, and power.
"For Hobbes, the possibility of a “state of nature” at the heart of all political organization en... more "For Hobbes, the possibility of a “state of nature” at the heart of all political organization ensures that even though humans may have the means to distinguish themselves from the rest of the animal kingdom (via the prostheses of language and technical objects), such resources by themselves are not sufficient for a politico-genesis. As such, the founding of a political order is accomplished only through a specific utilization of the linguistic-technical apparatus— a collective linguistic action consisting in the transferring of rights to an artificial person, the Leviathan. Thus, while Hobbes’ account of anthropogenesis depicts the interjection of art, the artifact, and artificiality into Nature as a means for distinguishing the human from the animal, this distinction is by no means completely exclusionary nor of a permanent nature. In other words, while Hobbes’ animals may never be human, his humans certainly can and will be animals. For while Hobbes takes care to distinguish the ways in which artificiality can elevate the human from the animal, his account of politico-genesis never leaves behind and is in constant tension with the intrinsic animality of the human.
This paper focuses on Hobbes’ account of anthropogenesis and the political repercussions of his construal of the animal/human divide. Part 1 describes Hobbes’ place in contemporary posthumanist theory, and situates the Hobbesian legacy in light of Derrida and Agamben’s critiques of the inherent anthropocentrism of Western thought. Part 2 gives an account of Hobbes’ theory of natural minds, and gives background to his theory of the imagination. At bottom, this section stresses how Hobbes’ materialism renders all minds, animal or otherwise, as natural occurring entities. Part 3 builds on Hobbes’ theory of natural minds, analyzing his account of language in relation to technical behavior. Here it is proposed that Hobbes’ account of semiogenesis relies on his account of technical curiosity, and that this relationship itself ultimately indicates anticipatory intentional structures in the natural mind. Part 4 explains the binary role that artificiality and memorialization play in Hobbes’ semiological and political systems, and concludes by exploring the relationship that language phenomenologically maintains with death and animality."
Uploads
Papers by Chris Drain
is not something available to be “worked over” according to a
subject’s inner or “ideal” representations; at stake instead is
the emergence of an “idealized” objective world that relates to
a subject’s activity both internally and externally construed. In
keeping with a Marxian account of anthropogenesis, Leontiev
links the emergence of “ideality” with social activity itself,
incorporating it within the general movement between the
poles of ‘inner’ cognition and ‘external’ action. In this manner,
Leontiev both parallels and goes beyond Hutto and Myin’s recent
“enactivist” account of “content-involving” cognition, where
representational thought depends on socio-cultural scaffolding
and, as such, is uniquely human. What traditionally comes to
be called representational content is for Leontiev the result of
the transition from a primitive cognitive apparatus of “image-
consciousness” to a one which is mediated by social activity. For
the being endowed with “activity-consciousness,” mental content
is something apprehended by assimilating “the objective world
in its ideal form” [Leontiev, 1977, p. 189]. And the precondition
for such assimilation is the apprehension of meanings from their
origin in the social-material system of activity. The genesis of
content-involving cognition is thus coeval with the development
of socializing activity systems, replete with the external
representations of values and norms as described in enactivist
literature as publicly scaffolded symbol systems. Leontiev thus
offers an anti-internalist account of cognition commensurate
with Hutto and Myin but with the added dimension of a
developmental scale of analysis with which to explain the origin
of human-specific cognition.
Book Reviews by Chris Drain
Talks by Chris Drain
This decidedly invokes a Vygotskian account of cognitive development, which maintains that complex cognition is achieved and enacted through the transformation of more basic mental functions by means of social and artefactual mediation.
For A.N. Leontiev, pupil of Vygotsky, content-involving cognition results from the transition from a primitive apparatus of “image-consciousness” to a one which is socially mediated and in which activity itself is taken as “the object of consciousness” (Leontiev 2009b, 406). For the being endowed with ‘activity-consciousness’ the ‘mental image’ is something apprehended though a process of assimilating the social-objective world.
In this talk I aim to present my current research on Leontiev’s relevance for radical enactivist accounts cognition. At stake specifically is the missing story behind Hutto and Myin's account of the emergence of content involving cognition.They argue that content-involving cognition is a special kind of cognition which arises when there obtains a stabilization of claim-making practices (which can be subject to social censure and to which the predicates “right” and “wrong” can be felicitously ascribed).
However, they defer to Clark (2006) when describing the mechanism by which such qualitatively distinct minds may be said to occur. For Clark “language itself as a cognition-enhancing animal-built structure… [is a] a kind of self-constructed cognitive niche” (370). No doubt Leontiev would agree with Clark. However, he would be hesitant to utilize such a model full stop to underwrite an account of the emergence of content-involving cognition. Leontiev argues that socially scaffolded 'content' can only come on the scene after there is social activity. Meaningful mental reflection, or semantic content-involving cognition, for Leontiev is typified by language use. But while:
The vehicle of meaning is language… language is not the demiurge of meaning. Concealed behind linguistic meanings (values) are socially evolved
modes of action (operations), in the process of which people change and cognize objective reality. (2009, 409)
I suggest that Leontiev's Marxian activity account of the development of specifically human forms of mental reflection gives the missing story of content for Enactivists
Despite a deep suspicion of internalist-subjectivist accounts of mind, Vygotsky continued to employ a vocabulary stressing internal-external oppositions. His concept of internalization for instance re-deploys an inner-outer binary in explaining the emergence of so called “higher” mental functions.
In this presentation, I explore two aspects of Vygotsky’s work with respect to his spatial/directional vocabulary:
1) Internalism: Vygotsky’s spatialized terminology is less problematic than it initially appears, with “internalization” being used to describe the genesis of an internal psychical plane rather than the inscription on a pre-existing one. In this sense, Vygotsky adheres to a kind of internalism, but one quite different from the traditional Cartesian bogey.
2) Hierarchy: Though Vygotsky’s account of “higher” mental functions seems justified insofar it expands the domain of psychology to include the cultural-historical development of cognition and the effects of culture and history in ontogenesis, such a hierarchy is problematic in terms of its possible use in promulgating racist or ‘ethno-exceptionalist’ agendas.
After expounding my own approach, I'll try to show the significance of an emergentist paradigm for social ontology and, in keeping with the themes of this symposium, the structuralism of the Cahiers writers (specifically Jacques-Alain Miller's assessment in "Action de la Structure").
I argue that this is not a tenable reading if one takes sociality and objectification to be co-originary phenomena. If externalizing processes are always performed in a social context, then one can indeed utilize production as a normative basis for social action—any productive act that inhibits the recognition of one’s self and others in the product or process of production would violate the primary sociality of the productive world. A more substantial critique of reification would not be one that simply replaced the externalization model with a recognitive one, but one which investigated the positive interplay between externalization and recognition.
This paper focuses on Hobbes’ account of anthropogenesis and the political repercussions of his construal of the animal/human divide. Part 1 describes Hobbes’ place in contemporary posthumanist theory, and situates the Hobbesian legacy in light of Derrida and Agamben’s critiques of the inherent anthropocentrism of Western thought. Part 2 gives an account of Hobbes’ theory of natural minds, and gives background to his theory of the imagination. At bottom, this section stresses how Hobbes’ materialism renders all minds, animal or otherwise, as natural occurring entities. Part 3 builds on Hobbes’ theory of natural minds, analyzing his account of language in relation to technical behavior. Here it is proposed that Hobbes’ account of semiogenesis relies on his account of technical curiosity, and that this relationship itself ultimately indicates anticipatory intentional structures in the natural mind. Part 4 explains the binary role that artificiality and memorialization play in Hobbes’ semiological and political systems, and concludes by exploring the relationship that language phenomenologically maintains with death and animality."
is not something available to be “worked over” according to a
subject’s inner or “ideal” representations; at stake instead is
the emergence of an “idealized” objective world that relates to
a subject’s activity both internally and externally construed. In
keeping with a Marxian account of anthropogenesis, Leontiev
links the emergence of “ideality” with social activity itself,
incorporating it within the general movement between the
poles of ‘inner’ cognition and ‘external’ action. In this manner,
Leontiev both parallels and goes beyond Hutto and Myin’s recent
“enactivist” account of “content-involving” cognition, where
representational thought depends on socio-cultural scaffolding
and, as such, is uniquely human. What traditionally comes to
be called representational content is for Leontiev the result of
the transition from a primitive cognitive apparatus of “image-
consciousness” to a one which is mediated by social activity. For
the being endowed with “activity-consciousness,” mental content
is something apprehended by assimilating “the objective world
in its ideal form” [Leontiev, 1977, p. 189]. And the precondition
for such assimilation is the apprehension of meanings from their
origin in the social-material system of activity. The genesis of
content-involving cognition is thus coeval with the development
of socializing activity systems, replete with the external
representations of values and norms as described in enactivist
literature as publicly scaffolded symbol systems. Leontiev thus
offers an anti-internalist account of cognition commensurate
with Hutto and Myin but with the added dimension of a
developmental scale of analysis with which to explain the origin
of human-specific cognition.
This decidedly invokes a Vygotskian account of cognitive development, which maintains that complex cognition is achieved and enacted through the transformation of more basic mental functions by means of social and artefactual mediation.
For A.N. Leontiev, pupil of Vygotsky, content-involving cognition results from the transition from a primitive apparatus of “image-consciousness” to a one which is socially mediated and in which activity itself is taken as “the object of consciousness” (Leontiev 2009b, 406). For the being endowed with ‘activity-consciousness’ the ‘mental image’ is something apprehended though a process of assimilating the social-objective world.
In this talk I aim to present my current research on Leontiev’s relevance for radical enactivist accounts cognition. At stake specifically is the missing story behind Hutto and Myin's account of the emergence of content involving cognition.They argue that content-involving cognition is a special kind of cognition which arises when there obtains a stabilization of claim-making practices (which can be subject to social censure and to which the predicates “right” and “wrong” can be felicitously ascribed).
However, they defer to Clark (2006) when describing the mechanism by which such qualitatively distinct minds may be said to occur. For Clark “language itself as a cognition-enhancing animal-built structure… [is a] a kind of self-constructed cognitive niche” (370). No doubt Leontiev would agree with Clark. However, he would be hesitant to utilize such a model full stop to underwrite an account of the emergence of content-involving cognition. Leontiev argues that socially scaffolded 'content' can only come on the scene after there is social activity. Meaningful mental reflection, or semantic content-involving cognition, for Leontiev is typified by language use. But while:
The vehicle of meaning is language… language is not the demiurge of meaning. Concealed behind linguistic meanings (values) are socially evolved
modes of action (operations), in the process of which people change and cognize objective reality. (2009, 409)
I suggest that Leontiev's Marxian activity account of the development of specifically human forms of mental reflection gives the missing story of content for Enactivists
Despite a deep suspicion of internalist-subjectivist accounts of mind, Vygotsky continued to employ a vocabulary stressing internal-external oppositions. His concept of internalization for instance re-deploys an inner-outer binary in explaining the emergence of so called “higher” mental functions.
In this presentation, I explore two aspects of Vygotsky’s work with respect to his spatial/directional vocabulary:
1) Internalism: Vygotsky’s spatialized terminology is less problematic than it initially appears, with “internalization” being used to describe the genesis of an internal psychical plane rather than the inscription on a pre-existing one. In this sense, Vygotsky adheres to a kind of internalism, but one quite different from the traditional Cartesian bogey.
2) Hierarchy: Though Vygotsky’s account of “higher” mental functions seems justified insofar it expands the domain of psychology to include the cultural-historical development of cognition and the effects of culture and history in ontogenesis, such a hierarchy is problematic in terms of its possible use in promulgating racist or ‘ethno-exceptionalist’ agendas.
After expounding my own approach, I'll try to show the significance of an emergentist paradigm for social ontology and, in keeping with the themes of this symposium, the structuralism of the Cahiers writers (specifically Jacques-Alain Miller's assessment in "Action de la Structure").
I argue that this is not a tenable reading if one takes sociality and objectification to be co-originary phenomena. If externalizing processes are always performed in a social context, then one can indeed utilize production as a normative basis for social action—any productive act that inhibits the recognition of one’s self and others in the product or process of production would violate the primary sociality of the productive world. A more substantial critique of reification would not be one that simply replaced the externalization model with a recognitive one, but one which investigated the positive interplay between externalization and recognition.
This paper focuses on Hobbes’ account of anthropogenesis and the political repercussions of his construal of the animal/human divide. Part 1 describes Hobbes’ place in contemporary posthumanist theory, and situates the Hobbesian legacy in light of Derrida and Agamben’s critiques of the inherent anthropocentrism of Western thought. Part 2 gives an account of Hobbes’ theory of natural minds, and gives background to his theory of the imagination. At bottom, this section stresses how Hobbes’ materialism renders all minds, animal or otherwise, as natural occurring entities. Part 3 builds on Hobbes’ theory of natural minds, analyzing his account of language in relation to technical behavior. Here it is proposed that Hobbes’ account of semiogenesis relies on his account of technical curiosity, and that this relationship itself ultimately indicates anticipatory intentional structures in the natural mind. Part 4 explains the binary role that artificiality and memorialization play in Hobbes’ semiological and political systems, and concludes by exploring the relationship that language phenomenologically maintains with death and animality."