Cognitive Media Theory, edited by Ted Nanicelli and Paul Taberham

Tertium

The paper focuses on a comparison of the concepts of language and language studies as presented in contemporary cognitivism and expounded by Ronald Langacker, George Lakoff and Charles Fillmore in their versions of Cognitive Grammar on the one hand and by Noam Chomsky in his Minimalism Program on the other. The theoretical concepts and hypotheses that are discussed relate to the concept of modelling and the locus of linguistic meaning, place of intentionality in the philosophy of language and linguistic theory, the nature of language and cognitive abilities as well as the proper theme of linguistic inquiry. The status of public (shared) language and the position of meaning and semantic theories in linguistic description are dealt with in the next part. Problems evolving from those diverse views on language such as verifiability on the one hand and the methodological constraint on the other conclude the discussion. Referred to are also the generative as opposed to cognitive models of language acquisition and, consequently, diverse methodologies as used by scholars of these persuasions. Conclusions show those aspects of Chomsky's generativism and Cognitive Linguistics that seem incompatible and those that can be perceived as converging.

Research on Language & Social Interaction, 1999

No one can deny that enactive approaches to the mind are here to stay. However, much of this revolution has been built on the grounds of conceptual confusions and hurried anlyses that undermine enactive claims. The aim of this paper is to weaken the charge of intellectualism against cognitivism developed by Hutto and Myin. This charge turns to be central to the enactive purpose of setting up a fully postcognitivist position. I will follow a strategy of conceptual elucidation of "intellectualism". Hutto and Myin (2013, 2017) present two alternative characterizations of this notion. The first is tied to the Cartesian conception of the mind (which I will call "Cartesian intellectualism"), and the second is tied to the idea that there is no cognition without content (which I will call "semantic intellectualism"). I would like to go into the problems considering cognititivsm either as Cartesian or semantic intellectualism.

The SAGE Encyclopedia of Online Education, 2016

Cognitivism is a theory of learning that began in cognitive psychology. It argues that learning requires the use of memory, reflection, thinking, abstraction, metacognition, and motivation. The development of cognitivism can be seen as a critique of a behaviorist approach to learning, one that seeks to explain how humans make decisions, how they reason, why they make errors, and how they recall and remember. Cognitivism makes active mental processes (e.g., attention, memory, and information processing) the primary object of study and views knowledge as symbolic, mental constructions in the minds of individuals. Information processes are seen as the foundation of learning.

Adams and Aizawa (2010b) define cognitivism as the processing of representations with underived content. In this paper, I respond to their use of this stipulative definition of cognition. I look at the plausibility of Adams and Aizawa’s cognitivism, taking into account that they have no criteria for cognitive representation and no naturalistic theory of content determination. This is a glaring hole in their cognitivism—which requires both a theory of representation and underived content to be successful. I also explain why my own position, cognitive integration, is not susceptible to the supposed causal-coupling fallacy. Finally, I look at the more interesting question of whether the distinction between derived and underived content is important for cognition. Given Adams and Aizawa’s concession that there is no difference in content between derived and underived representations (only a difference in how they get their content) I conclude that the distinction is not important and show that there is empirical research which does not respect the distinction.

Making use of analytic devices recently introduced into psychology from rhetoric, cognitive psychology is criticized in a number of ways: (i) for reflexively failing to take into account its own rhetorical strategies in its social construction of its research 'tradition'; (ii) for failing to guard against the textual creation of a set of problems, said to be real and to do with people's mental activities, but which are in fact imaginary; and (iii) for rendering many other important aspects of people's everyday psychological knowledge rationally-invisible as a result. Central among the invisibilities of cognitivism is people's first-person sense of their own being. Social constructionists feel both (i) that the kind of Self we are depends upon the form of our social relations, and (ii) that our ways of knowing depend upon the kind of Self we are. However, if a way of being is something that is only subjectively sensed or felt, how might different ways of being be characterized? A new non-theoretical, descriptive way of talking, one which provides us with a way of seeing ourselves 'in' what is said, would seem to be required.

The Routledge Companion to Ethics (ed. John Skoruspki), 2010

Ratio, 1999

This paper argues that normative claims are truth-apt contents of cognition -propositions about what there is reason to believe, to do or to feel -but that their truth is not a matter of correspondence or representation. We do not have to choose between realism about the normative and non-cognitivism about it. The universality of reasons, combined with the spontaneity of normative responses, suffices to give normative claims the distinctive link to a 'convergence commitment' which characterises any genuine judgement; an accurate epistemology of normative discourse need postulate no faculty of receptivity to a special domain of normative fact. Some general arguments for the view that cognitivism about a domain of discourse imposes realism about it are considered and rejected. . I thank them all.

Mind and Language, 2012

In a series of recent articles, Robin Jeshion has developed a theory of singular thought which she calls ‘cognitivism’. In this article, I raise a series of concerns about Jeshion’s theory, and suggest that the relevant data can be accommodated by a version of acquaintance theory that distinguishes unsuccessful thoughts of singular form from successful singular thoughts, and in addition allows for ‘trace-based’ acquaintance.

2020

I try to interpret the notion of "scientific cognitivism" that can be found in Allen Carlson's works. I argue first that, contrary to Carlson's view, scientific knowledge does not play a necessary role in the aesthetic appreciation of nature but may even be detrimental to it. Mark Twain's aesthetic experience from the perspective of a practical level is exemplary. I argue scientific cognitivism has no plausibility in the appreciation of nature. I then analyze an inappropriate sense of scientific cognitivism in the aesthetic appreciation of nature on a theoretical level, including Kant's theory and other environmental philosophers such as Hepburn, Zangwill, and Berleant. In conclusion, I claim that scientific cognitivism enables inappropriate aesthetic appreciations of nature.