Journal | JoLMA
Journal issue | 4 | 2 | 2023
Research Article | Extending the Concept of Cognition and Meta‑Theoretical Anthropomorphism
Extending the Concept of Cognition and Meta‑Theoretical Anthropomorphism
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.
Submitted: Oct. 2, 2023 | Accepted: Dec. 4, 2023 | Published Feb. 7, 2024 | Language: en
Keywords Animal cognition • Plant cognition • Anthropomorphism • Extending cognition • Concepts
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.
Permalink http://doi.org/10.30687/Jolma/2723-9640/2023/02/007
