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Human Affairs
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2013
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vol. 23
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issue 4
594-605
EN
Cognitive science and its philosophy have been far too long consumed with representation. This concern is indicative of a creeping Cartesianism that many scientists and philosophers wish to evade. However, their naturalism is often insufficiently evolutionary to fully appreciate the lessons of pragmatism. If cognitive neuroscience and pragmatism are to be mutually beneficial, the representational-friendly scientists and the anti-representational pragmatists need an alternative to representation that still accounts for what many find so attractive about representation, namely intentionality. I propose that instead of representations we philosophers and scientists begin thinking in terms of cultural affordances. Like Gibsonian affordances, cultural affordances are opportunities for action. However, unlike Gibsonian affordances, which are merely biological and available for immediate action in the immediately present environment, cultural affordances also present opportunities for thinking about the past and acting into the future-tasks typically attributed to representations.
Human Affairs
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2013
|
vol. 23
|
issue 4
576-593
EN
Neuropragmatism is a research program taking sciences about cognitive development and learning methods most seriously, in order to reevaluate and reformulate philosophical issues. Knowledge, consciousness, and reason are among the crucial philosophical issues directly affected. Pragmatism in general has allied with the science-affirming philosophy of naturalism. Naturalism is perennially tested by challenges questioning its ability to accommodate and account for knowledge, consciousness, and reason. Neuropragmatism is in a good position to evaluate those challenges. Some ways to defuse them are suggested here, along with recommendations about the specific kind of naturalism, a pluralistic and perspectival naturalism, that neuropragmatism should endorse.
EN
John Dewey, as Sidney Hook characterized him, was the philosopher of science and freedom. Dewey, as Larry Hickman has demonstrated, was also a philosopher of technology. And, as most people familiar with Dewey know, he was a philosopher of education and democracy. The complex of technology, science, freedom, education and democracy requires re-examination, not only because of our contemporary cultural political situation but also because of our growing insights into the human condition thanks to the technosciences of life, especially human life. Dewey’s philosophical method of reconstruction, equipped with insights from evolutionary neuroscience and ecological psychology, offers means of reconceiving and thus reevaluating our conception of tools and technology within our cultural context. I begin to take up Mark Tschaepe’s challenge to neuropragmatism to counter what he calls “dopamine democracy” – Plato’s critique of democracy resurrected in neural garb coupled with a critical examination of how social media and other so-called “smart” technologies undermine healthy democratic life. Central to this neuropragmatist approach are cultural affordances – opportunities for action humans have created initially for specific purposes and later retrofitted for other ends-in-view. Dewey’s reconstruction – as method as well as the reconstruction of technology, science, freedom, education and democracy as an entangled complex – is thus imagined as our best strategy for achieving the culture of creative democracy.
EN
We address Mark Tschaepe’s response to Tibor Solymosi, in which Tschaepe argues that neuropragmatism needs to be coupled with humility in order to redress “dopamine democracy,” Tschaepe’s term for our contemporary situation of smartphone addiction that undermines democracy. We reject Tschaepe’s distinction between humility and fallibility, arguing that audacious fallibility is all we need. We take the opportunity presented by Tschaepe’s constructive criticism of neuropragmatism to reassert some central themes of neuropragmatism. We close with discussion of Bywater’s method of apprenticeship, as an imaginative education for creative democracy, thereby rejecting Tschaepe’s claim that neuropragmatism lacks a pedagogical method.
EN
In his essay, “Affording our Culture: “Smart” Technology and the Prospects for Creative Democracy,” Tibor Solymosi addresses my challenge for neuropragmatism to counter what I have elsewhere called dopamine democracy. Although I believe that Solymosi has begun to provide an explanation for how neuropragmatism may counter dopamine democracy, especially with his conceptions Œ and cultural affordances, I respond with a helpful addition to his approach by returning to the theory of inquiry as put forth by John Dewey. In particular, I focus on the phases of inquiry as colored by Dewey’s concept of humility. Solymosi does not pay adequate attention to the function of inquiry necessary for combatting dopamine democracy. His account of cultural affordances and education is strengthened by using Dewey’s concept of humility as a guiding disposition for neuropragmatic inquiry. Recognizing humility as an instrument of neuropragmatic inquiry provides us with a tool to better address the pitfalls of dopamine democracy, especially misinformation and incentive salience. My argument proceeds by first articulating dopamine democracy as a problem and Solymosi’s concept of cultural affordances and how he understands these as neuropragmatic tools to address the problem through education. I present humility as an instrumental concept derived from Dewey’s work on inquiry. I then suggest how humility may serve neuropragmatic inquiry to assist in combatting the problems of dopamine democracy.
Human Affairs
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2013
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vol. 23
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issue 4
606-615
EN
I propose the next steps in the neuropragmatic approach to philosophy that has been advocated by Solymosi and Shook (2013). My focus is the initial process of inquiry implicit in addressing philosophical questions of cognition and mind by utilizing the tools of neuroscientific research. I combine John Dewey’s pattern of inquiry with Charles Peirce’s three forms of inference in order to outline a methodological schema for neuropragmatic inquiry. My goal is to establish ignorance and guessing as well-defined pillars of methodology upon which to build a neuropragmatic approach to inquiry. First, I outline Dewey’s pattern of inquiry, highlighting the initial problematic phase in which recognized ignorance provides the basis upon which to frame a philosophical problem and initiate the trajectory by which philosophical questions may be addressed with the assistance of neuroscientific evidence. Second, I provide an outline of Peirce’s three forms of inference, focusing upon the first phase of abduction: guessing. Third, I explain the transition between ignorance and guessing, urging the benefit of attending to these two aspects of inquiry. Finally, I provide an initial sketch indicating the next steps concerning a pragmatic reconstruction of neurophilosophy, pointing towards the need for a more thorough examination of scientific methodology within and following analyses of philosophical problems and neuroscientific evidence.
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