Abstract
Scientific concepts and conceptual systems (theories) are particular forms of higher mental activity. They are cognitive organs that provide the ability of systematic cognition of phenomena, which are not available to the grasp of ordinary sense organs. They are tools of scientific “groping” of phenomena. Scientific concepts free perceptual and cognitive activity from determination of ordinary sense organs by providing a high degree of cognitive abstraction and generalization. Scientific cognition, like perceptual activity, is actualized by consciousness but outside the consciousness.
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Notes
Although Quine does not endorse the language of sense-datum and explains perception in a more “naturalistic” language, he still differentiates between sensation as a response to sensory stimulation and the perceived object. From a materialist point of view, I believe, there is not much a difference between Quine's naturalism and sens-datum theories. For the latter perception happens in the subject, for Quine it happens on the surface of the sense-organ of the subject.
See Karl Marx, Theses on Feuerbach, the first thesis.
Wartofsky (1973b) formulates the historical-activeness of perception as follows: “I do not hit you because I see you; I see you because I want to hit you.”
Bakhurst (1991) calls the Vygotskian-Ilyenkovian idea of genesis of human consciousness “antiinnatism”. He states, “Like Vygotsky, Ilyenkov maintains that the higher mental functions do not evolve ‘naturally’ or ‘spontaneously’ in a process analogous to physical growth. Rather, the child’s mind must be created through the agency of the community. Children become thinking subjects as they are socialized by their elders into the community’s forms of ‘life activity.’ As they appropriate, or ‘internalize,’ those activities, so their minds are born” (1991, 218).
“All use of language embodies theory; as I have said in various earlier contexts, the grammar of every language contains a theory of human experience: It categorizes the elements of our experience into basic phenomenal types, construing these into configurations of various kinds, and these configurations in turn into logical sequences” (Halliday 2004, xvii).
In preface to The Structures of Scientific Revolutions (1970), Kuhn introduces Piaget’s The Child’s Conception of Causality as one of the sources that inspired his approach to science: “A footnote encountered by chance led me to the experiments by which Jean Piaget has illuminated both the various worlds of the growing child and the process of transition from one to next” (vi).
I am aware that social constructionism is not a homogenous phenomenon and that the term refers to a wide spectrum of ideas. I follow Bakhurst (2011) in identifying characteristics of social constructionism: “We can characterize social constructionism in somewhat abstract terms as follows. Those who claim that X is ‘constructed’ typically have an ontological purpose. Sometimes they aim to contrast the constructed to the real, either by arguing that X is unreal—a mere construct, or that X is not robustly real in the way that, say, physical objects are real (X is real but owes its reality to processes of construction). Sometimes the point is not that to contrast the constructed and the real, but to question the very notion of reality. The point of calling X a ‘construct’ is often to emphasise its historical contingency: X is not an immutable feature of the order of things but the product of human practices, modes of categorization or discourse. This point may be supplemented by the thought that what is mutable is open to transformation. What is made can be remade, at least sometimes” (2011, 24–5).
For the relation between history of science and science according to Kuhn, see 1970, Chapter 1, pp. 1–9.
For instance, Kuhn states, “Perhaps the most striking feature of the normal research problems we have just encountered is how little they aim to produce major novelties, conceptual or phenomenal. Sometimes, as in a wave-length measurement, everything but the most esoteric detail of the result is known in advance, and the typical latitude of expectation is only somewhat wider” (1970, 35). See also 1970, 23–4, and 34.
“Social consciousness is an idealization of the class of beliefs consciously espoused by concrete individuals, and in some circumstances the Popperian conception of the ‘third world’ makes an adequate account of some properties of social consciousness” (Kmita 1991, 8).
“No part of the aim of normal science to call forth new sorts of phenomena; indeed those that will not fit the box are often not seen at all…. Indeed, normal-scientific research is directed to the articulation of those phenomena and theories that the paradigm already supplies” (Kuhn 1970, 24).
“Paradigms gain their status because they are more successful than their competitors in solving a few problems that the group of practitioners has come to recognize as acute” (1970, 23).
For instance, Kuhn writes, “In a sense that I am unable to explicate further, the proponents of competing paradigms practice their trades in different worlds. One contains constrained bodies that fall slowly, the other pendulums that repeat their motion again and again. In one, solutions are compounds, in the other mixtures. One is embedded in a flat, the other in a curved matrix of space. Practicing in different worlds, the two groups of scientists see different things when they look form the same point in the same direction.” However, in a passage right after this one he continues, “Again, that is not to say that they can see anything they please. Both are looking at the world, and what they look at has not changed. But in some areas they see different things, and they see them in different relations one to the other” (1970, 150).
See note 1 above.
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Acknowledgment
This article was made possible in part by a grant provided by the Scientific and Technological Council of Turkey (TÜBİTAK). I am thankful to Prof. David Bakhurst for supervising this research and for his criticism, suggestions, and encouragement.
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Azeri, S. Conceptual Cognitive Organs: Toward an Historical-Materialist Theory of Scientific Knowledge. Philosophia 41, 1095–1123 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-013-9460-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-013-9460-3