Continuous Green Abstraction
Ben Woodard
Punctum Books September 11, 2018 DOI: 10.21983/p3.0207.1.12 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Theoretical or philosophical paper Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Key points | Argues that critiques of classical cognitive models and human-centered ways of knowing over-rely on a metaphorical disjunction that is itself embedded in both embodied cognition and transcendental accounts. This tension appears in recent arguments for thinking in 'lower lifeforms' that simultaneously invoke highly abstract concepts from philosophers such as C.S. Peirce. |
Abstract
Is there a relation between de-centralizing forms of thought in the various research programs of the cognitive sciences and the democratization of thought across species in philosophy? Or, put otherwise, do the forms of thought articulated in human cognition (reason, imagination, intuition, etc.) map in any ad-equate way onto embodiment across numerous species in terms of how such species cognitively function, as well as how they rely upon physical embodiment to think? And, lastly, do the various theories of 4E Cognition (embodied, enacted, embedded, and extended) clarify or needlessly complicate this?While it critiques of classical cognitive models often go hand in hand with critiques of epistemology, or human-centered ways of knowing, such projects seem to over-rely on a metaphorical disjunction, which itself is not anti-epistemological but embed-ded within both the embodied modes of cognition and more dis-embodied transcendental accounts. This is particularly evident in recent works that have attempted to argue for the presence of thinking in so called ‘lower lifeforms,’ while at the same time in-voking, and capitalizing on, highly abstract concepts taken from philosophers such as C.S. Peirce (a thinker who is anything but anti-epistemological).