Sunday, August 30, 2009

Part 4b-iii. Brief Review: Wittgenstein and Radical Embodied Cognition

I've discussed four interrelated factors as being characteristic of various perspectives that can all be classified as non-representational:
  1. Explaining specific behaviors and experiences rather than context-independent capacities
  2. Lack of reliance on mental entities (such as representations) to explain experience and behavior
  3. Emphasis on not-purely-mental processes and/or systems rather than any individual entity (mental or otherwise)
  4. Lack of rigid boundaries between mind, body, and world
Here in Part 4b, I've attempted to illustrate several ways in which these ideas show up in (or at least are consistent with) the later Wittgenstein's writings on language, understanding, meaning, thought, and intention. Here's a very superficial review of a few main points:

IDEA #1 - Explaining specific behaviors and experiences rather than context-independent capacities.
Wittgenstein redirects our focus from the big, abstract philosophical questions (e.g., "What is thought?" "What is language?") to observation of what actually happens when we think or speak or understand something.

IDEA #2 - Lack of reliance on mental entities (such as representations) to explain experience and behavior &
IDEA #3 - Emphasis on not-purely-mental processes and/or systems rather than any individual entity (mental or otherwise)
Wittgenstein's discussions of mental life and language use focus not on what a person has (e.g., a particular mental state or mental object) or what a word has (some sort of fixed meaning), but on what happens. Thus, he relates knowing or understanding to action — what you can do, how you respond in specific situations. Likewise, he relates the meaning of words to their use — how people do things with them and respond to them.

IDEA #4 - Lack of rigid boundaries between mind, body, and world
The processes and interactions that Wittgenstein discusses as helping to explain language use, meaning, understanding, intending, and thinking are not mental processes per se; they're not all in the brain, or even in the body. In order to understand any of these activities, he suggests, we need to take into account the larger context (social, cultural, physical, etc.) — our "forms of life," looking at highly complex interactions not just within an embodied person but between that person and the rest of the world. I believe that Wittgenstein convincingly demonstrates that any description of thinking, intending, etc. as an isolated, purely "mental" thing or process is doomed to failure.

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