Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Human Cognition in Context: On the Biologic, Cognitive and Social Reconsideration of Meaning as Making Sense of Action

  • Target Article
  • Published:
Integrative Psychological and Behavioral Science Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

The aim of this special issue of IPBS has been to explore concrete and explicit alternatives to cognitivism. Indeed, in our editorial introduction we set out to give a brief survey of the numerous criticisms that have been made of understanding the mind this way (Ibáñez and Cosmelli, Integrative Psychological and Behavioral Sciences, 2008). Thus in what sense do the contributions here presented succeed in providing novel alternatives, moving into original and potentially generative domains of inquiry? While much remains to be done, we believe that they make significant headway in more than one sense. We do believe, however, that there is one locus that furnishes a convergence ground that is worth considering seriously: the problem of meaning. Meaning as making sense of contextualized action seems to cross the domains of intentionality, intersubjectivity and ecology of mind. The development of multilevel approaches, as the authors here exemplify, argues for a novel research agenda.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

Notes

  1. We use here the word “fact” as is usual in philosophy of science, as when new theories or new methodological tools make a given fact available for scrutiny as a matter of being pointed at (Lakatos 1978). For example, the neuron as a unit was not a fact until Ramon and Cajal, using Golgi’s stain redefined them so; or inversely: phlogiston in combustion, ether in light propagation or epicycles in the Ptolomean system ceased to be “facts” when the underlying theory was abandoned.

  2. This is not incompatible with a given functional description that distinguishes internal hierarchies, as seen by an (also contextualized) observer.

  3. Cf. Note no. 2.

References

  • Adolphs, R. (2003). Cognitive neuroscience of human social behaviour. Nature Review Neuroscience, 4(3), 165–178.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Amodio, D. M., Jost, J. T., Master, S. L., & Yee, C. M. (2007). Neurocognitive correlates of liberalism & conservatism. Nature Neuroscience, 10, 1246–1247.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Baldwin, D. A., & Baird, J. A. (2001). Discerning intentions in dynamic human action. Trends in Cognitive Science, 5(4), 171–178.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bem, S. (2001). The explanatory autonomy of psychology: Why a mind is not a brain. Theory & Psychology, 11, 785–795.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Broad, K. D., Curley, J. P., & Keverne, E. B. (2006). Mother–infant bonding and the evolution of mammalian social relationships. Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological Sciences, 361(1476), 2199–2214.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Camerer, C. F., & Fehr, E. (2006). When does “economic man” dominate social behavior? Science, 311(5757), 47–52.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Choi, S., McDonough, L., Bowerman, M., & Mandler, J. M. (1999). Early sensitivity to language-specific spatial categories in English and Korean. Cognitive Development, 14, 241–268.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Cornejo, C. (2008). Intersubjectivity as co-phenomenology: From the holism of meaning to the Being-in-the-world-with-others. Integrative Psychological and Behavioral Science (this issue), DOI 10.1007/s12124-007-9043-6.

  • Costall, A., Bremner, G., & Slater, A. (2004). From direct perception to the primacy of action: a closer look at James Gibson’s ecological approach to psychology. In G. Bremner, & A. Slater (Eds.), Theories of infant development (pp. 70–89). Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Cowley, S., Moodby, S., Fiori-Cowley, A. (2004). Grounding signs of culture: Primary intersubjectivity in social semiosis. Mind, Culture and Activity, 11, 109–132.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Cunha, C., & Salgado, J. (2008). Being human: Experiencing and communicating. Integrative Psychological and Behavioral Science (this issue), DOI 10.1007/s12124-007-9050-7.

  • Depraz, N., & Cosmelli, D. (2004). Empathy and openness: Practices of intersubjectivity at the core of the science of consciousness. In E. Thompson (Ed.), The problem of consciousness: New essays in phenomenological philosophy of mind, Canadian Journal of Philosophy, Supplementary Volume, Calgary, Alberta: University of Calgary Press.

  • Dweck, C. S., Mangels, J. A., Good, C., Dai, D. Y., & Sternberg, R. J. (2004). Motivational effects on attention, cognition, and performance. In D. Dai, & R. Sternberg (Eds.), Motivation, emotion, and cognition: Integrative perspectives on intellectual functioning and development (pp. 41–55). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.

    Google Scholar 

  • Eisenberg, L. (1999). The social construction of the human brain. American Journal of Psychiatry, 152, 1563–1575.

    Google Scholar 

  • Engbert, K., Wohlschläger, A., & Haggard, P. (2008). Who is causing what? The sense of agency is relational and efferent-triggered. Cognition, 107, 693–704.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Engeström, Y. (2000). From individual action to collective activity and back: Developmental work research as an interventionist methodology’ in Workplace studies. In P. Luff, J. Hindmarsh, & C. Heath (Eds.), Workplace studies: Recovering work practice and informing system (pp. 150–168). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Engeström, Y., Miettinen, R., & Punamäki, R. (Eds). (1999). Perspectives on activity theory. learning in doing: Social, cognitive, and computational perspectives. Cambridge UK: Cambridge University Press.

  • Fadiga, L., Craighero, L., & Olivier, E. (2005). Human motor cortex excitability during the perception of others’ action. Current Opinion in Neurobiology, 15(2), 213–218.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Faiciuc, L. (2008). Are there reasons to challenge a symbolic computationalist approach in explaining deductive reasoning? Integrative Psychological and Behavioral Science (this issue), DOI 10.1007/s12124-007-9047-2.

  • Farrant, B. M., Fletcher, J., & Maybery, M. T. (2006). Specific language impairment, theory of mind, and visual perspective taking: Evidence for simulation theory and the developmental role of language. Child Development, 77(6), 1842–1853.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Field, T., Hernandez-Reif, M., Diego, M., Feijo, L., Vera, Y., & Gil, K. (2004). Massage therapy by parents improves early growth and development. Infant Behavior and Development, 27, 435–442.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Flores-Gonzalez, L. (2008). Phenomenological views on intersubjectivity: Towards a reinterpretation of consciousness. Integrative Psychological and Behavioral Science (this issue), DOI 10.1007/s12124-007-9044-5.

  • Freeman, W. J. (2003). Neurodynamic models of brain in psychiatry. Neuropsychopharmacology, 1, 554–563.

    Google Scholar 

  • Freeman, W. J. (2007). Indirect biological measures of consciousness from field studies of brains as dynamical systems. Neural Networks, 20(9), 1021–1031.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Freeman, W. J. (2008). Perception of time and causation through the kinesthesia of intentional action. Integrative Psychological and Behavioral Science (this issue), DOI 10.1007/s12124-007-9049-0.

  • Fuchs, T. (2007). The temporal structure of intentionality and its disturbance in schizophrenia. Psychopathology, 40(4), 229–235.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Gallese, V. (2007). Before and below ‘theory of mind’: Embodied simulation and the neural correlates of social cognition. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological Sciences, 362(1480), 659–669.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Hagoort, P., & van Berkum, J. (2007). Beyond the sentence given. Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological Sciences, 362(1481), 801–811.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Hall, N. M., Gjedde, A., & Kupers, R. (2008). Neural mechanisms of voluntary and involuntary recall: A PET study. Behavioural Brain Research, 186(2), 261–272.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Hawkley, L. C., & Cacioppo, J. T. (2003). Loneliness and pathways to disease. Brain, Behavior and Immunity, 17, S98–S105.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Haye, A. (2008). Living being and speaking being: Toward a dialogical approach to intentionality Integrative Psychological and Behavioral Science (this issue), DOI 10.1007/s12124-007-9051-6.

  • Hazlehurst, B., McMullen, C. K., & Gorman, P. N. (2007). Distributed cognition in the heart room: How situation awareness arises from coordinated communications during cardiac surgery. Journal of Biomedical Informatics, 40(5), 539–551.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Heine, S. H., Lehman, D. R., Markus, H. R., & Kitayama, S. (1999). Is there a universal need for positive self-regard? Psychological Review, 106, 766–794.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Hesse, M. D., Thiel, C. M., Stephan, K. E., & Fink, G. R. (2006). The left parietal cortex and motor intention: An event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging study. Neuroscience, 140(4), 1209–1221.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Hodge, S. (2005). Competence, identity and intersubjectivity: Applying Habermas’s theory of communicative action to service user involvement in mental health policy making. Social Theory and Health, 3, 165–182.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hofmann, R., & Rainio, A. (2007). It doesn’t matter what part you play, it just matters that you’re there. Towards shared agency in narrative play activity in school. In R. Alanen, & S. Pöyhönen (Eds.), Language in action. Vygotsky and leontievian legacy today. Newcastle-upon-Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hommel, B. (2005). Perception in action: Multiple roles of sensory information in action control. Cognitive Processing, 6, 3–14.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hutchinson, J. M., & Gigerenzer, G. (2005). Simple heuristics and rules of thumb: Where psychologists and behavioural biologists might meet. Behavioural processes, 69(2), 97–124.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Ibáñez, A., & Cosmelli, D. (2008). Moving beyond computational cognitivism: Understanding intentionality, intersubjectivity and ecology of mind. Integrative Psychological and Behavioral Sciences (this issue), DOI 10.1007/s12124-007-9045-4.

  • Jantzen, K. J., Oullier, O., Marshall, M., Steinberg, F. L., & Kelso, J. A. (2007). A parametric fMRI investigation of context effects in sensorimotor timing and coordination. Neuropsychologia, 45(4), 673–684.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Kant, I. (1790). Kritik der Urteilskraft (Critique of Judgement, trans. J. H. Bernard. New York: Hafner Publishing Company, 1951).

  • Kelso, J. A., Fink, P. W., DeLaplain, C. R., & Carson, R. G. (2001). Haptic information stabilizes and destabilizes coordination dynamics. Proceedings Biological Sciences/The Royal Society, 268(1472), 1207–1213.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Kostogriz, A. (2000). Social construction of identities in community of practice classrooms. Teaching Education, pp. 365–370.

  • Lamm, C., Nusbaum, H. C., Meltzoff, A. N., & Decety, J. (2007). What are you feeling? Using functional magnetic resonance imaging to assess the modulation of sensory and affective responses during empathy for pain. PLoS ONE, 2(12), 1287–1292.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lakatos. (1978). Mathematics, science and epistemology: Philosophical papers volume 2. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Leitao, S. (2008). Commentary: Are there good reasons to adopt dynamic systems approaches for explaining deductive reasoning? Integrative Psychological and Behavioral Science (this issue), DOI 10.1007/s12124-008-9063-x.

  • Ligorio, M. B., Talamo, A., & Pontecorvo, C. (2005). Building intersubjectivity at a distance during the collaborative writing of fairytales. Computers & Education, 45(3), 357–374.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Margrett, J., & Willis, S. L. (2006). In-home cognitive training with older married couples: Individual versus collaborative learning. Aging, Neuropsychology, and Cognition, 13(2), 176–195.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Markus, H. R., & Kitayama, S. (1991). Culture and the self: Implications for cognition, emotion, and motivation. Psychological Review, 98, 224–253.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Märtsin, M. (2008). Self and other in communication and cognition: The role of auto-communication and intersubjectivity in autopoiesis of psychic systems. Integrative Psychological and Behavioral Science (this issue), DOI 10.1007/s12124-007-9035-6.

  • Mascareno, A. (2008). Communication and cognition: The social beyond language, interaction and culture. Integrative Psychological and Behavioral Science (this issue), DOI 10.1007/s12124-007-9046-3.

  • Meltzoff, A., & Decety, J. (2003). What imitation tells us about social cognition: A rapprochement between developmental psychology and cognitive neuroscience. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological Sciences, 358, 491–500.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Metzinger, T. (2007). Empirical perspectives from the self-model theory of subjectivity: A brief summary with examples. Progress in Brain Research, 168, 215–278.

    Google Scholar 

  • Miller, G. (2006). Cognitive Neuroscience Society meeting. Probing the social brain. Science, 12(5775), 838–839.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Nardi, B. (1996). Studying context: A comparison of activity theory, situated action models and distributed cognition. In B. Nardi (Ed.), Context and consciousness: Activity theory and human–computer interaction (pp. 35–42). MT: MIT Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Niedenthal, P. M., Barsalou, L. W., Winkielman, P., Krauth-Gruber, S., & Ric, F. (2005). Embodiment in attitudes, social perception, and emotion. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 9(3), 184–211.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Nisbett, R. E., Peng, K., Choi, I., & Norenzayan, A. (2001). Culture and systems of thought: holistic versus analytic cognition. Psychological Review, 108, 291–310.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Norenzayan, A., Smith, E., Kim, B., & Nisbett, R. E. (2002). Cultural preferences for formal versus intuitive reasoning. Cognitive Science, 26, 653–684.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Olsson, A., & Phelps, E. A. (2007). Social learning of fear. Nature Neuroscience, 10(9), 1095–1102.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Paz, R., Wise, S. P., & Vaadia, E. (2004). Viewing and doing: Similar cortical mechanisms for perceptual and motor learning. Trends in Neuroscience, 27(8), 496–503.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Rakoczy, H. (2007). Play, games, and the development of collective intentionality. New Directions for Child and Adolescent Development, 115, 53–67.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Raz, A., Kirsch, I., Pollard, J., & Nitkin-Kaner, Y. (2007). Suggestion reduces the Stroop effect. Psychological Science, 17, 91–95.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Rieger, J. W., Köchy, N., Schalk, F., Grüschow, M., & Heinze, H. J. (2008). Speed limits: Orientation and semantic context interactions constrain natural scene discrimination dynamics. Journal of Experimental Psychology. Human Perception and Performance, 34(1), 56–76.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Rizzolatti, G., & Craighero, L. (2004). The mirror-neuron system. Annual Review of Neuroscience, 27, 169–192.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Rizzolatti, G., & Sinigaglia, C. (2007). Mirror neurons and motor intentionality. Functional Neurology, 22(4), 205–210.

    PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Rogoff, B., & Lave, J. (Eds). (1984). Everyday cognition: Its development in social context. MA: Cambridge University Press.

  • Rukab, J., Johnson-Throop, K., Malin, J., & Zhang, J. (2004). A framework of interruptions in distributed team environments. In M. Fieschi, E. Coiera, & Y.-C. J. Li (Eds.), Proceedings of the 11th World Congress on Medical Informatics (pp. 1282–1286). Amsterdam: IOS Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Schlaug, G., Norton, A., Overy, K., & Winner, E. (2005). Effects of music training on the child’s brain and cognitive development. Annals of the New York Academy of Scienc, 1060, 219–230.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Simons-Morton, B. G. (2004). The protective effect of parental expectations against early adolescent smoking initiation. Health Education Research, 19, 561–569.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Smorti, A. (2008). Everyday life reasoning, possible worlds and cultural processes. Integrative Psychological and Behavioral Science (this issue), DOI 10.1007/s12124-007-9048-1.

  • Snyder, L. H., Batista, A. P., & Andersen, R. A. (2000). Intention-related activity in the posterior parietal cortex: A review. Vision Research, 40(10-12), 1433–1441.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Swinnen, S. P. (2002). Intermanual coordination: From behavioural principles to neural-network interactions. Nature Review Neuroscience, 3(5), 348–359.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Thompson, E. (Ed). (2001). Between ourselves. Special issue of the Journal of Consciousness Studies, 8(5–7), 1–32.

    Google Scholar 

  • Todorov, A., Harris, L. T., & Fiske, S. T. (2006). Toward socially inspired social neuroscience. Brain Research, 1079(1), 76–85.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Tognoli, E., Lagarde, J., DeGuzman, G. C., & Kelso, J. A. (2007). The phi complex as a neuromarker of human social coordination. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 104(19), 8190–1295.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Tollefsen, D. (2002). Collective intentionality and the social sciences. Philosophy of the Social Sciences, 32, 25–50.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Tomasello, M., & Carpenter, M. (2007). Shared intentionality. Developmental Science, 10(1), 121–125.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Tomasello, M., Carpenter, M., Call, J., Behne, T., & Moll, H. (2005). Understanding and sharing intentions: The origins of cultural cognition. The Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 28(5), 675–691.

    PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Tremoulet, P. D., & Feldman, J. (2006). The influence of spatial context and the role of intentionality in the interpretation of animacy from motion. Perception & Psychophysics, 68(6), 1047–1058.

    Google Scholar 

  • Turner, R. R., Nehrke, M. F., & Batt, B. K. (1981). The relationship between problem solving and activity level in the elderly. Experimental Aging Research, 7(3), 245–251.

    PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Uden, L., Kumarasen, A., & Salmenjoki, K. (2007). Usable collaborative email requirements using activity theory. Informatica, 31, 71–83.

    Google Scholar 

  • Van Berkum, J., van den Brink, D., Tesink, C. M., Kos, M., & Hagoort, P. (2008). The neural integration of speaker and message. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 20, 580–591.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Verheul, M. H., & Geuze, R. H. (2004). Bimanual coordination and musical experience: The role of intrinsic dynamics and behavioral information. Motor Control, 3, 270–291.

    Google Scholar 

  • Wilson, M. (2002). Six views of embodied cognition. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 9(4), 625–636.

    Google Scholar 

  • Zahavi, D. (2001). Beyond empathy: Phenomenological approaches to intersubjetivity. In E. Thompson, (Ed.), Between ourselves (pp. 151–167). Special issue of the Journal of Consciousness Studies, 8(5–7).

  • Zahavi, D. (2005). Subjectivity and selfhood: Investigating the first-person perspective. MT: MIT Press.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgments

This paper was partially supported by Grant PKZ:A/07/71171 from DAAD to Agustin Ibanez. AI thanks Drs. Alvaro Moya and Phil Baker for their helpful criticism on an earlier version of this manuscript. Diego Cosmelli acknowledges partial support by FONDECYT project 3060094 and the PBCT-CONICYT Sensory Neuroscience Ring ACT-45.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Neuroscience Laboratory, Universidad Diego Portales, Vergara 275, Santiago de Chile, Chile

    Agustín Ibáñez

  2. Department of Geriatric Psychiatry, Heidelberg University, Heidelberg, Germany

    Agustín Ibáñez

  3. Escuela de Psicología, P. Universidad Católica de Chile, Vicuña Mackenna 4860, Macul, Santiago, Chile

    Diego Cosmelli

  4. Centro de Estudios Neurobiológicos, P. Universidad Católica de Chile, Marcoleta 391 Segundo Piso, Santiago, Chile

    Diego Cosmelli

Authors
  1. Diego Cosmelli
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Agustín Ibáñez
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Agustín Ibáñez.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Cosmelli, D., Ibáñez, A. Human Cognition in Context: On the Biologic, Cognitive and Social Reconsideration of Meaning as Making Sense of Action. Integr. psych. behav. 42, 233–244 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12124-008-9060-0

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12124-008-9060-0

Keywords

Search

Navigation