Human behaviour is the product of development of a broader system than just the system or a person's individual functions: specifically, systems of social connections and relations, of collective forms of behaviour and social cooperation. (Vygotsky, 1999, p. 41) Accounts that ignore the social dimension of human cognition and focus only on information processing will not only distort many facts about human cognition, but also will be incapable of explaining even the most rudimentary phenomena of human selfunderstanding.
In this article we propose an extended approach in terms of Cognitive Pragmatics (CP) to the explanation of the development of the higher cognitive processes. Therefore, we explain in terms of CP how linguistic and pre-linguistic social practices shape the mind. CP, as we understand it here, presents a broader transdisciplinary position covering developmental psychology, primatology, comparative psychology, cultural psychology, anthropology #0# 66 Daniel Żuromski, Anita Pacholik-Żuromska, Adam Fedyniuk and philosophy. We present an argumentation for the thesis that CP provides an explanation to the origins and developmental mechanisms of some of the higher mental functions unique to humans. Thus, we want to extend the notion of CP beyond its standard definition by emphasizing the transformative component of communicative acts. In our approach, CP first and foremost examines the cognitive mechanisms underlying social pre-linguistic and linguistic communication. Secondly, it explores how this communication reorganizes and transforms cognitive abilities and processes. We would like to extend the tasks of CP as well, because its goal is not only to describe cognitive processes that enable communication, but also to explain the social mechanisms of the transformation of mind and cognition. We provide an example of the said mechanisms of the development of higher cognitive functions through the account of metacognition.
THE INTERPERSONAL LEVEL OF EXPLANATION OF MIND AND COGNITIONWhat is the influence of the social and (to a lesser extent) the cultural on mind and cognition? The question will concern: (i) the nature of the relation between what is social and cultural, on the one hand, and the mind, cognitive ability, and cognitive development on the other; (ii) aspects of the mind, cognitive ability, and cognitive development affected by what is social and cultural; (iii) processes in which what is social and cultural becomes a part of individual cognitive functioning. This paper attempts to provide a conceptual framework within which the above questions can be answered. In the literature concerning the explanation of mind and cognitive abilities, attention is drawn to the importance of distinguishing levels of explanation. One of such approaches to multi-level explanation of the mind and cognition is the distinction drawn by Daniel Dennett between the personal level of explanation (e.g., level of beliefs, desires) and the subpersonal level of explanation (e.g., neural or computational). The purpose of this article is to argue that -recognising that the social and the cultural are one of the constitutive conditions of mind and cognition -we should posit a third level: the interpersonal level of explanation (ILE). The reason for postulating ILE is that there are specific domains in which interpersonal interactions affect elementary cognitive abilities and processes, which may thus result in their transformation into higher cognitive abilities and processes. The entire group of such domains will be defined as ILE, and at the centre of its explanatory potential will be the different types and forms of the said transformation. One of the main research objectives pursued at the ILE is to identify and formulate a taxonomy of transformative features and processes. Two models of such processes will be presented: the Vygotsky model and the Tomasello model. In the final part of this paper, the basic methodological assumptions of the ILE will be presented: the relative autonomy of this level of explanation, multi-level analysis, and the mechanism-based explanation. These assumptions will also be used to formulate general theses of the ILE.
How should we understand intentionality in the physical world? This ques tion may be further divided into at least two other: How to understand intentional states in the physical world? (And if we refer to the entirety of such states as the mind then our question will take on the following form: How should we understand the mind in the physical world) and How to understand intentional content in the physical world? One of the most important projects in modern philosophy of mind and cognitive science consists in naturalisation of the content of mental states. The prevalent concept in the thus understood content naturalisation programme was the reductionist conception. In the article I present one of the proposals of content naturalisation by Daniel D. Hutto and Glenda Satne from the article The Natural Origins of Content. On the one hand, they reject the project of naturalising the content of mental states which is conceived as a reduc tion of semantic properties of contents of mental states solely to physical
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