Extending the Concept of Cognition and Meta‑Theoretical Anthropomorphism

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DC Field	Value
dc.identifier	ECF_article_15404
dc.title	Extending the Concept of Cognition and Meta‑Theoretical Anthropomorphism
dc.contributor.author	Białek Maja
dc.publisher	Edizioni Ca’ Foscari - Venice University Press, Fondazione Università Ca’ Foscari
dc.type	Research Article
dc.language.iso	en
dc.identifier.uri	http://edizionicafoscari.it/en/edizioni4/riviste/the-journal-for-the-philosophy-of-language-mind-an/2023/2/extending-the-concept-of-cognition-and-metatheoret/
dc.description.abstract	How to deal with the controversies surrounding applying the concept of COGNITION to non-humans? I suggest a bottom-up approach that makes room for the pluralistic perspectives of non-human cognition researchers without disregarding philosophers’ worries about overextending the concept. My proposal is that COGNITION should be a holistic story, in which no part can be understood without the context of the whole. If such a project is to succeed, however, we need to deal with anthropomorphism – not of the well-known, superficial kind, but understood as a deeply embedded framework determining how we understand cognitive life in general. After explaining what this kind of meta-theoretical anthropomorphism is, I argue that investigating non-human cognition is the best way to make explicit many of our hidden assumptions and re-examine them. In the second section of the paper, I present how this approach can be effective in reconsidering Brandom’s proposal of how to define levels of concept use for the purposes of empirical research on non-humans.
dc.relation.ispartof	JoLMA
dc.relation.ispartof	Vol. 4 \| Issue 2 \| December 2023
dc.issued	2024-02-07
dc.dateAccepted	2023-12-04
dc.dateSubmitted	2023-10-02
dc.identifier.issn
dc.identifier.eissn	2723-9640
dc.rights	Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License
dc.rights.uri	http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
dc.identifier.doi	10.30687/Jolma/2723-9640/2023/02/007
dc.peer-review	yes
dc.subject	Animal cognition
dc.subject	Anthropomorphism
dc.subject	Concepts
dc.subject	Extending cognition
dc.subject	Plant cognition

Research Article
open access peer reviewed

Maja Białek University of Białystok, Poland

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abstract

How to deal with the controversies surrounding applying the concept of COGNITION to non-humans? I suggest a bottom-up approach that makes room for the pluralistic perspectives of non-human cognition researchers without disregarding philosophers’ worries about overextending the concept. My proposal is that COGNITION should be a holistic story, in which no part can be understood without the context of the whole. If such a project is to succeed, however, we need to deal with anthropomorphism – not of the well-known, superficial kind, but understood as a deeply embedded framework determining how we understand cognitive life in general. After explaining what this kind of meta-theoretical anthropomorphism is, I argue that investigating non-human cognition is the best way to make explicit many of our hidden assumptions and re-examine them. In the second section of the paper, I present how this approach can be effective in reconsidering Brandom’s proposal of how to define levels of concept use for the purposes of empirical research on non-humans.

Published

Feb. 7, 2024

Accepted

Dec. 4, 2023

Submitted

Oct. 2, 2023

Language

Keywords: Plant cognition • Animal cognition • Concepts • Extending cognition • Anthropomorphism

permalink http://doi.org/10.30687/Jolma/2723-9640/2023/02/007

Copyright: © 2023 Maja Białek. This is an open-access work distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction is permitted, provided that the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. The license allows for commercial use. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

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