Cobb P. (2007) Putting philosophy to work. In: Lester F. K. (ed.) Second handbook of research on mathematics teaching and learning. Information Age Publishing, Charlotte NC: 3–38.
Excerpt: In inviting me to write this chapter on philosophical issues in mathematics education, the editor has given me the leeway to present a personal perspective rather than to develop a comprehensive overview of currently influential philosophical positions as they relate to mathematics education. I invoke this privilege by taking as my primary focus an issue that has been the subject of considerable debate in both mathematics education and the broader educational research community, that of coping with multiple and frequently conflicting theoretical perspectives. The theoretical perspectives currently on offer include radical constructivism, sociocultural theory, symbolic interactionism, distributed cognition, information-processing psychology, situated cognition, critical theory, critical race theory, and discourse theory. To add to the mix, experimental psychology has emerged with a renewed vigor in the last few years. Proponents of various perspectives frequently advocate their viewpoint with what can only be described as ideological fervor, generating more heat than light in the process. In the face of this sometimes bewildering array of theoretical alternatives, the issue I seek to address in this chapter is that of how we might make and justify our decision to adopt one theoretical perspective rather than another. In doing so, I put philosophy to work by drawing on the analyses of a number of thinkers who have grappled with the thorny problem of making reasoned decisions about competing theoretical perspectives.
Cowley S. (2007) How human infants deal with symbol grounding. Interaction Studies 8(1): 83–104. Fulltext at https://cepa.info/5649
Taking a distributed view of language, this paper naturalizes symbol grounding. Learning to talk is traced to – not categorizing speech sounds – but events that shape the rise of human-style autonomy. On the extended symbol hypothesis, this happens as babies integrate micro-activity with slow and deliberate adult action. As they discover social norms, intrinsic motive formation enables them to reshape co-action. Because infants link affect to contingencies, dyads develop norm-referenced routines. Over time, infant doings become analysis amenable. The caregiver of a nine-month-old may, for example, prompt the baby to fetch objects. Once she concludes that the baby uses ‘words’ to understand what she says, the infant can use this belief in orienting to more abstract contingencies. New cognitive powers will develop as the baby learns to act in ways that are consistent with a caregiver’s false belief that her baby uses ‘words.’
Cowley S. (2014) The Integration Problem: Interlacing Language, Action and Perception. Cybernetics & Human Knowing 21(1–2): 53–65. Fulltext at https://cepa.info/3415
Human thinking uses other peoples’ experience. While often pictured as computation or based on the workings of a language-system in the mind or brain, the evidence suggests alternatives to representationalism. In terms proposed here, embodiment is interlaced with wordings as people tackle the integration problem. Using a case study, the paper shows how a young man uses external resources in an experimental task. He grasps a well-defined problem by using material resources, talking about his doings and switching roles and procedures. Attentional skills enable him to act as an air cadet who, among other things, connects action, leadership and logic. Airforce practices prompt him to draw timeously on non-local resources as, using impersonal experience, he interlaces language, action and perception. He connects the cultural and the metabolic in cognitive work as he finds a way to completion of the task.
Recognition of the importance of autopoiesis to biological systems was crucial in building an alternative to the classic view of cognitive science. However, concepts like structural coupling and autonomy are not strong enough to throw light on language and human problem solving. The argument is presented though a case study where a person solves a problem and, in so doing relies on non-local aspects of the ecology as well as his observer’s mental domain. Like Anthony Chemero we make links with ecological psychology to emphasize how embodiment draws on cultural resources as people concert thinking, action and perception. We trace this to human interactivity or sense-saturated coordination that renders possible language and human forms of cognition: it links human sense-making to historical experience. People play roles with natural and cultural artifacts as they act, animate groups and live through relationships drawing on language that is, at once, artificial and natural. Thus, while constrained by wordings, interactivity is able to fine-tune what we do with action-perception loops. Neither language nor human problem solving reduce to biological sense-making.
Hayles N. K. (2001) Desiring agency: Limiting metaphors and enabling constraints in Dawkins and Deleuze/Guattari. SubStance 94/95: 144–159. Fulltext at https://cepa.info/4093
Excerpt: My focus is this essay will be somewhat different than in How We Became Posthuman. Whereas there I emphasized connecting embodiment with information, here I will be concerned with the role of metaphor and constraint in re-envisioning agency within posthuman contexts. If the posthuman implies distributed cognition, then it must imply distributed agency as well, for multiplying the sites at which cognizing can take place also multiplies the entities who can count as agents. I will take as my tutor texts Richard Dawkins’s The Selfish Gene and Deleuze and Guattari’s A Thousand Plateaus. Enacting the posthuman primarily through speech acts, these two texts mirror each other. One is a work of popular science that occasionally looks as if it is trying to do philosophy, the other a work of philosophy that occasionally looks as if it is trying to do popular science. Both propose radical reconfigurations of agency, Dawkins through the selfish gene and Deleuze and Guattari through “desiring machines” that engage in a ceaseless play of deterritorialization and reterritorialization. What can their mobilizations of metaphor tell us about the cultural significance of the posthuman, and what does their use or neglect of constraints imply about the viability of their respective projects? What is at stake in redefining agency, and how do these redefinitions of agency fit together with distributed cognition? Perhaps most significantly, what do these projects imply about our ability to exercise agency? Should we count as conscious human subjects capable of meaningful action, or are we rather assemblages of selfish genes and mutating desiring machines?
Hutto D., Kirchhoff M. & Myin E. (2014) Extensive enactivism: Why keep it all in? Frontiers in Human Neuroscience 8: 706. Fulltext at https://cepa.info/2392
Radical enactive and embodied approaches to cognitive science oppose the received view in the sciences of the mind in denying that cognition fundamentally involves contentful mental representation. This paper argues that the fate of representationalism in cognitive science matters significantly to how best to understand the extent of cognition. It seeks to establish that any move away from representationalism toward pure, empirical functionalism fails to provide a substantive “mark of the cognitive” and is bereft of other adequate means for individuating cognitive activity. It also argues that giving proper attention to the way the folk use their psychological concepts requires questioning the legitimacy of commonsense functionalism. In place of extended functionalism – empirical or commonsensical – we promote the fortunes of extensive enactivism, clarifying in which ways it is distinct from notions of extended mind and distributed cognition.
Despite a strong tradition of viewing coded equivalence as the underlying principle of linguistic semiotics, it lacks the power needed to understand and explain language as an empirical phenomenon characterized by complex dynamics. Applying the biology of cognition to the nature of the human cognitive/linguistic capacity as rooted in the dynamics of reciprocal causality between an organism and the world, we can show language to be connotational rather than denotational. This leaves no room for the various ‘code-models’ of language exploited in traditional linguistics. Bio-cognitive analysis leads to deeper insights into the essence of language as a biologically based, cognitively motivated, circularly organized semiotic activity in a consensual domain of interactions aimed at adapting to, and, ultimately, gaining control of the environment. The understanding that cognition is grounded in the dynamics of biological self-organization fits both the integrational model of communication and distributed cognition. A short discussion of the key notions of representation, sign and signification, interpretation, intentionality, communication, and reciprocal causality is offered, showing that the notion of ‘code’ is only misleadingly applied to natural language.
There is arguably a parallel between recent ideas within cognitive science about the distributed mind and the development within linguistics known as integrationism, turning on similarities between the critique offered by the former of the ‘classical’ view of mind and by the latter of the ‘classical’ view of language. However, at the heart of the integrationist attack on the classical view of language is rejection of the idea that natural languages are codes. This idea appears to be taken for granted by certain cognitive scientists as the basis for explaining not only how language is mentally apprehended by the individual, but also how it facilitates ‘second-order cognition’. It is suggested that the language-as-code idea, although prima facie endowed with the attractiveness of common sense, is untenable, and should not figure, at least in the role usually assigned to it, in any inquiry into either language or human cognition in general.
Madsen J. & Cowley S. (2014) Living Subjectivity: Time Scales, Language, and the Fluidity of the Self. Cybernetics & Human Knowing 21(1–2): 11–22. Fulltext at https://cepa.info/3311
The concepts of subjectivity and the self permeate the foundations of the philosophy of distributed cognition (DCog). Proponents of DCog argue that cognition extends beyond the confines of the brain and moves into the immediate bio-social environment. Here, as well as in the special issue in general, we extend this argument by looking at multi-scalar temporalities that influence the emergence and potential of the self. In particular, we argue that the self is best understood as a relational entity that immerses contextually in a distributed, non-stable, and temporally multi-scalar manner. This conceptualization of the self points to interesting conclusions concerning the operationalization of reasoning, the foundations of communication, and cognition in general. Together, this bring home at least two major philosophical implications of viewing language and thinking as temporally multi-scalar. First, contextually immersed subjectivity is compatible with tracing language and cognition to how cultural resources extend human embodiment (this frames the potential for cognition, subjectivity, and the self). Second, while distributed and fragmented, the construction of temporal experience can become an organizing principle for the construction of the self. Through this lens, cognition binds what is learned from introspection with contextual immersion that uses skills in temporal integration. This challenges views of self and cognition as stable internal phenomena and, conversely, shows that philosophy and psychology have much to gain from examining how living human beings achieve temporal unity.
Masciotra D., Medzo F. & Jonnaert P. (2010) Vers une approche située en éducation: Réflexions, pratiques, recherches et standards [Toward a Situations-based Approach in Education: Reflections, Practices, Research and Standards]. ACFAS, Montreal.
A situated or situations-based approach is becoming increasingly adopted by education reforms as either a continuation of or an alternative to the competency-based approach. In fact, recent curriculum reforms have begun to organize the content of their programs of study around classes of situations. While proponents of the competency-based approach generally view competency as the mastery of decontextualized knowledge, advocates of a situations-based approach define it in terms of the mastery of situations. In this latter perspective, the acquisition of competency and knowledge is contextualized, that is, it develops by acting in situation. The situations-based approach is grounded in different theoretical orientations, such as the communicative approach (in language teaching), the problem-based approach, constructivism, socioconstructivism, situated action, situated cognition, distributed cognition and enaction. In short, the book explores a wide range of practices and research associated with the situations-based approach.