Cognitive culture studies : where science meets the humanities

Topics in Cognitive Science, 2013

Beller, Bender, and Medin rehearse an often repeated statement (challenge 1a): "Cognitive science is not on the right track" because it "never took some of the crucial dimensions of cognition seriously." Namely, "from the very beginning, they have excluded some fundamental dimensions of cognition from examination-affect, context, culture, and history […]" (p. 345). To overcome this criticism, I suggest promoting the following perspective on cognitive science. A cognitive approach to any phenomenon-action planning, face recognition, language, culture, arts, religion, etc.-views it as the product of the human brain/mind (or, as the emergent product of interacting brains/minds). The focus on the brain invites biological aspects, while studying the mind entails the computer metaphor. Bottom-up (neuron-to-phenomenon) and top-down (phenomenon-to-neuron) approaches together aim to understand how information flow in the brain produces the observable abilities of the mind. Indeed, many in the first generations of cognitive scholars decided to deny, ignore, put in parenthesis, or underplay the above-mentioned "fundamental dimensions of cognition." Yet I suggest viewing their decision as a-conscious or unconscious-research strategy, dealing first with (over)simplified cases. Imagine physics if Galilei and Newton had decided not to pursue their research for they could not satisfactorily account for drag and friction! Luckily, the above-mentioned dimensions are gradually reincorporated into cognitive science: not by throwing out the achievements of the earlier generations, but by developing them further. If cognitive science is about a biological/computational approach to functions of the brain/mind, then all such functions ought to interest cognitive science. Functions traditionally studied by humanities are not exceptions, and cognitive scientists must join Correspondence should be sent to Tam as Bir o, Amsterdam Center for Language and Communication

Kronenfeld/A Companion to Cognitive Anthropology, 2011

2013

A paradox that seems of the essence of today’s comparative literature is that the system of reference in which the act of comparison is usually situated is built so as to eliminate a mandatory reference to the different and specific cultures and traditions of literary criticism that fatally underpin the literary works brought under investigation. I do not imply that the intellectual, social, or cultural were downplayed or utterly let aside. On the contrary, “culture”, in its most extended social and anthropological understanding, is obviously taken as an absolute premise. It is seen as a background without which the individual literary works could not as much as be perceived, let alone described or analyzed (Kushner 2001, Suassy 2006). But the paradox lies in the fact that a high level of awareness of literature’s cultural determinations goes hand in hand with a manifest lack of interest in the diversity of those specific mediational mentalities, skills, value systems, forms of soci...

In: Berning, Nora; Nünning, Ansgar; Schwanecke, Christine (eds.): Reframing Concepts in Literary and Cultural Studies. Theorizing and Analyzing Conceptual Transfers. Trier WVT 2014, 185-202.

Asking how the study of culture could enhance cognitive science is a radical question. It is radical in its attempt to reframe concepts in literary and cultural studies – and it is even more radical in suggesting that such an endeavor could enhance science. In fact, it is not just for the benefit of a ‘reframed’ way of studying literature and culture that the following suggestions should be read; they should also be read as attempts to bridge science and the humanities for mutual improvement of scope and meaning. The disconnectedness between science and humanities is one of the main challenges to sci-entific development and knowledge. As we have learned from the history of science (cf. Latour 1993), the division between nature and culture is historical and artificial. Intersecting nature and culture could allow for new insights that reestablish the rela-tionship between them. It is in the field of cognitive sciences and under the paradigm of culture that such an intersection can productively be developed. Culture continues the work of nature, leading to diversity and change. In arts and literature, cognition and culture meet in a way that allows one to recognize general principles via artful exploration and contemplation. That is why the study of culture does not only produce knowledge about culture itself but it also helps to develop a deeper understanding of cognition.

In a provocative and important recent article Anthony Marsella (1998) makes an eloquent plea for the forging of a new metadiscipline of psychology that he labels global-community psychology. Marsella argues that we need a radical rethinking of the fundamental premises of psychology, rooted as they are in Western cultural traditions. Features of an emergent global-community psychology include an emphasis on multicultural and multidisciplinary approaches to human behavior that draw attention to the importance of context and meaning in human lives. Marsella's call for a global-community psychology reflects, in part, a growing body of literature that demonstrates the importance of cultural factors in a diversity of psychological domains such as cognition, emotion, social behavior, and psychopathology.

Topics in Cognitive Science, 2012

Anthropology and the other cognitive science (CS) subdisciplines currently maintain a troubled relationship. With a debate in topiCS we aim at exploring the prospects for improving this relationship, and our introduction is intended as a catalyst for this debate. In order to encourage a frank sharing of perspectives, our comments will be deliberately provocative. Several challenges for a successful rapprochement are identified, encompassing the diverging paths that CS and anthropology have taken in the past, the degree of compatibility between (1) CS and (2) anthropology with regard to methodology and (3) research strategies, (4) the importance of anthropology for CS, and (5) the need for disciplinary diversity. Given this set of challenges, a reconciliation seems unlikely to follow on the heels of good intentions alone.

Introduction Most contemporary theoretical approaches to the meaning and use of language tend to take a synchronic, individualistic, and mentalist (or cognitivist) perspective, which delegates diachronic factors and questions of the social and cultural world within which communication takes place to a secondary status. Here, I would like to reopen discussion of these methodological choices that have long been taken for granted, and to sketch an alternative. I will do this mostly in the form of a discussion with some forms of cognitive semantics, which is one of the more influential frameworks at present. Interestingly, among cognitive scientists, there seems to be an increasing awareness of the desirability of a more sophisticated account of culture, and of a more intensive interaction with social science, witness the various contributions to Gibbs & Steen (eds.) 1999 and especially Turner 2002. But whereas those attempts take a starting point in cognitive science, here I would like...