Rivista Italiana di Filosofia del Linguaggio, Jun 1, 2012
The use of cognitive approaches for treating the philosophy of language has had the merit of reco... more The use of cognitive approaches for treating the philosophy of language has had the merit of reconnecting culture, understood as a system of signs, to our direct, perceptual/motor experience of the external world. The knowing subject, and his bio-cognitive apparatus and conceptualizations based on his direct interaction with the world, has returned to the center of our attention. However, this theory carries with it a certain risk: that of conflating reflective thought, along with its most advanced cultural productions, the fruit of the collective elaboration of entire societies and traditions, with the initial products of individual experience. Many experiential and embodied theories of cognition admit the role of language in shaping higher cognition, as is the case for Lakoff’s theory of political thought. Nevertheless, this theory in some way weakens the importance of language and of explicit, argumentative discourse, in the construction and, in particular, and in the representation of ideologies. These observations bring us to the problem of the relationship between thought and language, between concepts and meanings. We propose a synthesis between an experiential-semantic cognitive view and theories of language formativity, showing how practical thought, based on direct experience, turns into discursive thought that is available to consciousness, and how discursive practice can be used to develop the critical thinking that is the basis of democracy.
Rivista Italiana Di Filosofia Del Linguaggio, Jul 30, 2012
The issue of ontogeny of meaning is closely connected to philosophical questions concerning both ... more The issue of ontogeny of meaning is closely connected to philosophical questions concerning both the relationship between language, thought and reality and the problem of human nature. Realist philosophers maintain that the world is intrinsically organized according to genres and species, with human knowledge reflecting this organization in terms of how our most basic concepts are developed and employed. From this point of view the ontogeny of meaning would consist of a simple naming of concepts, those which are already at hand. To examine these questions and the issues circulating around it, we turn away from realist approaches by adopting a pluralistic and socio-constructivist perspective that allows for the fact that physical reality is mutable, highly complex and may be interpreted in many different ways. The flexibility and creativity of the human mind, and of language, enables different cultures to investigate the world in different ways, giving rise to different concepts concerning the way reality functions. Children, in particular, construct a plurality of concepts through a selection of relevant traits related to how successful their actions in the physical world are, as well as through their communicative praxis in the social world. These two processes combine to become one in the ontogeny of meaning: children become able to select the semantic properties that identify the meanings of their own languages. It follows that experiential concepts and knowledge are reorganized in a web of sign relations. Hence the capacity for meta-representation can develop in such a way that children become able to reflect on their own thoughts. At the end they will construct an articulate and explicit web of semiotically organized concepts
The use of cognitive approaches for treating the philosophy of language has had the merit of reco... more The use of cognitive approaches for treating the philosophy of language has had the merit of reconnecting culture, understood as a system of signs, to our direct, perceptual/motor experience of the external world. The knowing subject, and his bio-cognitive apparatus and conceptualizations based on his direct interaction with the world, has returned to the center of our attention. However, this theory carries with it a certain risk: that of conflating reflective thought, along with its most advanced cultural productions, the fruit of the collective elaboration of entire societies and traditions, with the initial products of individual experience. Many experiential and embodied theories of cognition admit the role of language in shaping higher cognition, as is the case for Lakoff’s theory of political thought. Nevertheless, this theory in some way weakens the importance of language and of explicit, argumentative discourse, in the construction and, in particular, and in the representation of ideologies. These observations bring us to the problem of the relationship between thought and language, between concepts and meanings. We propose a synthesis between an experiential-semantic cognitive view and theories of language formativity, showing how practical thought, based on direct experience, turns into discursive thought that is available to consciousness, and how discursive practice can be used to develop the critical thinking that is the basis of democracy.
The issue of ontogeny of meaning is closely connected to philosophical questions concerning both ... more The issue of ontogeny of meaning is closely connected to philosophical questions concerning both the relationship between language, thought and reality and the problem of human nature. Realist philosophers maintain that the world is intrinsically organized according to genres and species, with human knowledge reflecting this organization in terms of how our most basic concepts are developed and employed. From this point of view the ontogeny of meaning would consist of a simple naming of concepts, those which are already at hand. To examine these questions and the issues circulating around it, we turn away from realist approaches by adopting a pluralistic and socio-constructivist perspective that allows for the fact that physical reality is mutable, highly complex and may be interpreted in many different ways. The flexibility and creativity of the human mind, and of language, enables different cultures to investigate the world in different ways, giving rise to different concepts concerning the way reality functions. Children, in particular, construct a plurality of concepts through a selection of relevant traits related to how successful their actions in the physical world are, as well as through their communicative praxis in the social world. These two processes combine to become one in the ontogeny of meaning: children become able to select the semantic properties that identify the meanings of their own languages. It follows that experiential concepts and knowledge are reorganized in a web of sign relations. Hence the capacity for meta-representation can develop in such a way that children become able to reflect on their own thoughts. At the end they will construct an articulate and explicit web of semiotically organized concepts
Rivista Italiana di Filosofia del Linguaggio, Jun 1, 2012
The use of cognitive approaches for treating the philosophy of language has had the merit of reco... more The use of cognitive approaches for treating the philosophy of language has had the merit of reconnecting culture, understood as a system of signs, to our direct, perceptual/motor experience of the external world. The knowing subject, and his bio-cognitive apparatus and conceptualizations based on his direct interaction with the world, has returned to the center of our attention. However, this theory carries with it a certain risk: that of conflating reflective thought, along with its most advanced cultural productions, the fruit of the collective elaboration of entire societies and traditions, with the initial products of individual experience. Many experiential and embodied theories of cognition admit the role of language in shaping higher cognition, as is the case for Lakoff’s theory of political thought. Nevertheless, this theory in some way weakens the importance of language and of explicit, argumentative discourse, in the construction and, in particular, and in the representation of ideologies. These observations bring us to the problem of the relationship between thought and language, between concepts and meanings. We propose a synthesis between an experiential-semantic cognitive view and theories of language formativity, showing how practical thought, based on direct experience, turns into discursive thought that is available to consciousness, and how discursive practice can be used to develop the critical thinking that is the basis of democracy.
Rivista Italiana Di Filosofia Del Linguaggio, Jul 30, 2012
The issue of ontogeny of meaning is closely connected to philosophical questions concerning both ... more The issue of ontogeny of meaning is closely connected to philosophical questions concerning both the relationship between language, thought and reality and the problem of human nature. Realist philosophers maintain that the world is intrinsically organized according to genres and species, with human knowledge reflecting this organization in terms of how our most basic concepts are developed and employed. From this point of view the ontogeny of meaning would consist of a simple naming of concepts, those which are already at hand. To examine these questions and the issues circulating around it, we turn away from realist approaches by adopting a pluralistic and socio-constructivist perspective that allows for the fact that physical reality is mutable, highly complex and may be interpreted in many different ways. The flexibility and creativity of the human mind, and of language, enables different cultures to investigate the world in different ways, giving rise to different concepts concerning the way reality functions. Children, in particular, construct a plurality of concepts through a selection of relevant traits related to how successful their actions in the physical world are, as well as through their communicative praxis in the social world. These two processes combine to become one in the ontogeny of meaning: children become able to select the semantic properties that identify the meanings of their own languages. It follows that experiential concepts and knowledge are reorganized in a web of sign relations. Hence the capacity for meta-representation can develop in such a way that children become able to reflect on their own thoughts. At the end they will construct an articulate and explicit web of semiotically organized concepts
The use of cognitive approaches for treating the philosophy of language has had the merit of reco... more The use of cognitive approaches for treating the philosophy of language has had the merit of reconnecting culture, understood as a system of signs, to our direct, perceptual/motor experience of the external world. The knowing subject, and his bio-cognitive apparatus and conceptualizations based on his direct interaction with the world, has returned to the center of our attention. However, this theory carries with it a certain risk: that of conflating reflective thought, along with its most advanced cultural productions, the fruit of the collective elaboration of entire societies and traditions, with the initial products of individual experience. Many experiential and embodied theories of cognition admit the role of language in shaping higher cognition, as is the case for Lakoff’s theory of political thought. Nevertheless, this theory in some way weakens the importance of language and of explicit, argumentative discourse, in the construction and, in particular, and in the representation of ideologies. These observations bring us to the problem of the relationship between thought and language, between concepts and meanings. We propose a synthesis between an experiential-semantic cognitive view and theories of language formativity, showing how practical thought, based on direct experience, turns into discursive thought that is available to consciousness, and how discursive practice can be used to develop the critical thinking that is the basis of democracy.
The issue of ontogeny of meaning is closely connected to philosophical questions concerning both ... more The issue of ontogeny of meaning is closely connected to philosophical questions concerning both the relationship between language, thought and reality and the problem of human nature. Realist philosophers maintain that the world is intrinsically organized according to genres and species, with human knowledge reflecting this organization in terms of how our most basic concepts are developed and employed. From this point of view the ontogeny of meaning would consist of a simple naming of concepts, those which are already at hand. To examine these questions and the issues circulating around it, we turn away from realist approaches by adopting a pluralistic and socio-constructivist perspective that allows for the fact that physical reality is mutable, highly complex and may be interpreted in many different ways. The flexibility and creativity of the human mind, and of language, enables different cultures to investigate the world in different ways, giving rise to different concepts concerning the way reality functions. Children, in particular, construct a plurality of concepts through a selection of relevant traits related to how successful their actions in the physical world are, as well as through their communicative praxis in the social world. These two processes combine to become one in the ontogeny of meaning: children become able to select the semantic properties that identify the meanings of their own languages. It follows that experiential concepts and knowledge are reorganized in a web of sign relations. Hence the capacity for meta-representation can develop in such a way that children become able to reflect on their own thoughts. At the end they will construct an articulate and explicit web of semiotically organized concepts
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