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Abstract

Recent work in neurophilosophy has either made reference to the work of John Dewey or independently developed positions similar to it. I review these developments in order first to show that Dewey was indeed doing neurophilosophy well before the Churchlands and others, thereby preceding many other mid-twentieth century European philosophers’ views on cognition to whom many present day philosophers refer (e.g., Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty). I also show that Dewey’s work provides useful tools for evading or overcoming many issues in contemporary neurophilosophy and philosophy of mind. In this introductory review, I distinguish between three waves among neurophilosophers that revolve around the import of evolution and the degree of brain-centrism. Throughout, I emphasize and elaborate upon Dewey’s dynamic view of mind and consciousness. I conclude by introducing the consciousness-as-cooking metaphor as an alternative to both the consciousness-as-digestion and consciousness-as-dancing metaphors. Neurophilosophical pragmatism—or neuropragmatism—recognizes the import of evolutionary and cognitive neurobiology for developing a science of mind and consciousness. However, as the cooking metaphor illustrates, a science of mind and consciousness cannot rely on the brain alone—just as explaining cooking entails more than understanding the gut—and therefore must establish continuity with cultural activities and their respective fields of inquiry. Neuropragmatism advances a new and promising perspective on how to reconcile the scientific and manifest images of humanity as well as how to reconstruct the relationship between science and the humanities.

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Notes

  1. See Dalton 2002 on Dewey’s interest in contemporary science and its influence on his philosophy.

  2. Given the popularity of affixing the prefix neuro- to various fields and ideas, it comes as no surprise that something very close to neuropragmatism has already been coined. Coming predominantly out of cognitive linguistics is the emerging field of neuropragmatics. While pragmatics within linguistics is distinct from pragmatism, there are important affinities, especially in their shared origins (see Tschaepe 2009). Brigitte Stemmer and Paul Walter Schönle introduce neuropragmatics in a manner that has great affinity with neuropragmatism in the call for wide interdisciplinary work yet nevertheless succumb to a version of Cartesian materialism in which the mind/brain is the subject matter of inquiry (see Stemmer and Schönle 2000). Bruno G. Bara and Maurizio Tirassa are likewise very sympathetic with what I am calling neuropragmatism, not only in their call for interdisciplinary inquiry but also with the emphasis for “a more ecological framework.” Yet, they too come too close to Cartesian materialism in their endorsement of the mind/brain and the condonation of mind as the function of the brain, a relation analogously based on digestion and the gut (see Bara and Tirassa 2000). As I show, not only is this metaphor inadequate for understanding mentality, but also it is not taken as seriously by its proponents as it needs to be. Neuropragmatism differs from neuropragmatics in that the former is a general philosophical position taken with regard to inquiry into mentality and thereby seeks to evade problematic premises and implicit dichotomies found in the latter, a specific scientific subfield. Moreover, neuropragmatism is post-linguistic, whereas neuropragmatics is specifically focused on the linguistic—not a weakness, mind you, just a difference in emphasis and purpose. And let us not forget the “abductive” history of the early pragmatists and the name of their doctrine (see Peirce 1905, p. 335).

  3. Or something special or uniquely intrinsic about the brain as opposed to other non-neural media.

  4. The discussion of pragmatism or Dewey or the traits I attribute to the first-wave is so disparate among these first wavers that I find no easy way to discuss them individually or summarily. Here are some relevant citations on these details: Churchland 1989, 2002, 2007; Flanagan 1996, 1998, 2002, 2007; Dennett 1991, 1995, 2006.

  5. See Clark 2008, pp. x, xvii, and Noë 2009, p. 67, for the only mention of Dewey or pragmatism that I have found among these second wavers. Thompson (2007) shares many affinities with the pragmatism I suggest; however, his resources are more Continental than American.

  6. Mark Johnson deserves recognition as seeing past many of the issues, though I limit myself from discussing his views here. See Johnson 1987, 1993, 2007, 2009, 2010. Where Johnson and I differ is in particular emphasis. Where I restrain myself to neurophilosophers, he looks at the history of cognitive science as in two generations, the early being Cartesian and the latter coming around to pragmatism. While he rightly notes that pragmatism was in most regards anathema to the first generation, it is worth considering that Jerry Fodor has recently recognized that the problem with the whole of mind science today is precisely because it is infected with pragmatism! (See Fodor 2008, pp. 8–15.)

  7. Throughout this paper, I interchange interaction and transaction, perhaps to the chagrin of many. For details on the subtle differences between interaction, transaction, and enaction, see Johnson 2009, p. 372.

  8. The use of processed foods and fast food may seem to be enough to falsify my claim here. I respond by returning to Dewey’s emphasis on the need for unifying such disparate fields of experience or inquiry like nutrition and economics. To say more on the plausible consequences of such, an integration would go well beyond the scope of this essay.

  9. There are insects like bees that can be described as performing external digestion. My point here is more concerned with mammalian evolution and the development of human consciousness. While exceptions are bound to be found throughout nature, my proposed metaphor may be suitably modified, or, if necessary, rejected, in cases like external digestion.

  10. My distinction between internal/external and organism/environment may seem to be a return to the dualism I am otherwise attacking. Make no mistake: despite the limits of ordinary language, my distinction is functional and emphasizes the transaction between organism and environment. While there may not be a clear boundary between the two there is nevertheless a difference that makes a difference in practice: viable organisms tend not to eat themselves.

  11. To be clear, my use of “cooking” here is very broad. While fire-using is central to my imagery here, its use is not the only means humans have developed and utilized to prepare food. From yogurt to ceviche, there are clearly ways to prepare foodstuffs in ways that serve similar ends as cooking with heat. Regardless of the particular method, the emphasis here is on the transformation that occurs when digestion becomes intelligently extended beyond the gut.

  12. This phrasing—experiences are had but not known—I had thought was Dewey’s very phrasing; it certainly sounds like something he would have said. Having searched through the electronic version of his Collected Works and a general web search, I have found nothing to suggest that it is not my own phrasing. Should I be shown that it is not my own creation, I would gladly give proper credit to the author of such pith.

  13. Experiences are first had before they are known. They are not always known, however.

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Acknowledgments

I am indebted to Larry Hickman, John Shook, Shaun Gallagher, Jay Schulkin, Donald Dryden, Liz Swan, Judy Walker, Teed Rockwell, Steven Miller, Mark Tschaepe and, especially, Bill Bywater for their feedback and support through various drafts of this paper. I also am thankful for the helpful comments from anonymous reviewers.

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Correspondence to Tibor Solymosi.

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Solymosi, T. Neuropragmatism, old and new. Phenom Cogn Sci 10, 347–368 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11097-011-9202-6

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