Stabilizing cognition: An STS approach to the Sloan Foundation Report

Abstract

Critics of the cognitive revolution have argued that the movement should be better understood as a socio-rhetorical phenomenon that only changed the language used by psychologists. In this article I adopt the concept of factish as a way to reconcile these criticisms with the changes brought about by information processing theory in psychology and other cognitive disciplines. My main argument is that contemporary cognition is a kind of factish that from the beginning was institutionalized in a way that allowed multiple performances. I turn to the Sloan Foundation Report of 1978 as a way to discuss the institutionalization of cognition. As we will see in the reading, institutionalization was only possible through an oscillation between convergence and multiplicity. I conclude that a definitive consensus or a single approach to cognition doesn’t represent a possible—or desirable—final goal for the multidisciplinarity of cognitive sciences.

What is a Psychological Task? The Operational Pliability of “Task” in Psychological Laboratory Experimentation

“…This article responds to this challenge. While STS has not exactly ignored psychology (Ashmore, Brown and Macmillan 2005;Baum 2016), articles that address psychological experimentation are rare. Where they have appeared they tend to center on the reassuringly machinic appearance of neuropsychology (Pickersgill 2011;Schüll and Zaloom 2011;Fitzgerald et al 2014) or are embedded in investigations of how non-human organisms might model human behavior (Nelson 2013;Leonelli et al 2014).…”

Política ontológica como abordagem para as relações intercientíficas

“…Enquanto disciplinas como psicologia, ciências da computação, linguística e neurociências compartilham objetivos gerais e pontos de interesse, cada uma delas aborda diferentes objetivos específicos através de diferentes questões, métodos e instrumentos (Baum, 2016). Seguindo Mol (2002) Mol (2002) em seu entendimento de que esses objetos são múltiplos, mas não plurais.…”