Are We Cognitively Susceptible to Tests?
Culturecog Blog » Cognitive Science
by Michael Strand
2y ago
In one the clearest statements about the difference it makes to emphasize cognition in the study of culture and, more generally, for the social sciences as a whole, the anthropologist Maurice Bloch (2012) writes that, if we consider closely every time we use the word “meaning” in social science, then “a moment’s reflection will reveal that ‘meaning’ can only signify ‘meaning for people’. To talk of, for example, ‘the meaning of cultural symbols’, as though this could be separated from what these symbols mean, for one or a number of individuals, can never be legitimate. This being so, an absolu ..read more
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From Dual-Process Theories to Cognitive-Process Taxonomies
Culturecog Blog » Cognitive Science
by Omar Lizardo
2y ago
Although having a history as old as the social and behavioral sciences (and for some, as old as philosophical reflections on the mind itself), dual-process models of cognition have been with us only for a bit over two decades, becoming established in cognitive and social psychology in the late 1990s (see Sloman, 1996 and Smith and DeCoster, 2000 for foundational reviews). The implicit measurement revolution provided the “data” side to the theoretical and computational modeling side, thus fomenting further theoretical and conceptual development (Strack & Deutsch, 2004; Gawronski & Boden ..read more
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Consciousness and Schema Transposition
Culturecog Blog » Cognitive Science
by Omar Lizardo
2y ago
In a recent paper published in American Sociological Review, Andrei Boutyline and Laura Soter bring much-needed conceptual clarification to the sociological appropriation of the notion of schemas while also providing valuable and welcome guidance on future uses of the concept for practical research purposes. The paper is a tour de force, and all of you should read it (carefully, perhaps multiple times), so this post will not summarize their detailed argument. Instead, I want to focus on a subsidiary but no less important set of conclusions towards the en ..read more
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A Taxonomy of Artifactual (Cultural) Kinds
Culturecog Blog » Cognitive Science
by Omar Lizardo
2y ago
In previous posts, I made a broad distinction between the two “families” of cultural kinds. This distinction was based on the way they fundamentally interact with people. Some cultural kinds do their work because they can be learned or internalized by people. Other cultural kinds do their work not because people internalize them but because they can be wielded or manipulated. For the most part, these last exist outside people (or at least being potentially separable from people’s bodies). We referred to the former as cultural-cognitive kinds (or cognitive kinds for short) and to the latter as ..read more
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Habit as Prediction
Culturecog Blog » Cognitive Science
by Omar Lizardo
2y ago
In a previous post, Mike Strand points to the significant rise of the “predictive turn” in the sciences of action and cognition under the banner of “predictive processing” (Clark, 2015; Wiese & Metzinger, 2017). This turn is consequential, according to Mike, because it takes prediction and turns it from something that analysts, forecasters (and increasingly automated algorithms) do from something that everyone does as the result of routine activity and everyday coping with worldly affairs. According to Mike: To put it simply, predictive processing makes prediction the primary function of ..read more
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Explaining social phenomena by multilevel mechanisms
Culturecog Blog » Cognitive Science
by Matti Sarkia & Tuukka Kaidesoja
2y ago
Four questions about multilevel mechanisms In our previous post, we discussed mechanistic philosophy of science and its contribution to the cognitive social sciences. In this blog post, we will discuss three case studies of research programs at the interface of the cognitive sciences and the social sciences. In our cases, we apply mechanistic philosophy of science to make sense of the epistemological, ontological, and methodological aspects of the cognitive social sciences. Our case studies deal with the phenomena of social coordination, transactive memory, and ethnicity. In our work, we have ..read more
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Causal mechanisms in the cognitive social sciences
Culturecog Blog » Cognitive Science
by Tuukka Kaidesoja & Matti Sarkia
2y ago
The social sciences and the cognitive sciences have grown closer together during recent decades. This is manifested in the emergence and expansion of new research fields, such as social cognitive neuroscience (Cacioppo et al. 2012; Lieberman 2017), cognitive sociology (Brekhus & Ignatow 2019), behavioral economics (Dhami 2016), and new approaches in cognitive anthropology (Bloch 2012; Hutchins 1995; Sperber 1996). However, increasing interactions between the cognitive and social sciences also raise many pressing philosophical and methodological issues about interdisciplinary integration an ..read more
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Did John Dewey Put Prediction into Action?
Culturecog Blog » Cognitive Science
by Michael Strand
2y ago
Prediction does not appear, at first, to be something that a sociologist, or really any analyst of anything, can safely ascribe to those (or that) which they are studying without running afoul of about a thousand different stringent rules that define how probability can be used for the purposes of generating knowledge. If we follow the likes of Ian Hacking (1975) and Lorraine Daston (1988) (among others), then “modern fact-making” has a lot to do with ways of using probability, especially for the purposes of making predictions. To the degree that this transforms probability into prediction, as ..read more
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The Cognitive Hesitation: or, CSS’s Sociological Predecessor
Culturecog Blog » Cognitive Science
by Michael Strand
2y ago
Simmel is widely considered to be the seminal figure from the classical sociological tradition on social network analysis. As certain principles and tools of network analysis have been transposed to empirical domains beyond their conventional home, Simmel has also become the classical predecessor for formal sociology, giving license to the effort and providing a host of formal techniques with which to pursue the work (Erikson 2013; Silver and Lee 2012). As Silver and Brocic (2019) argue, part of the appeal of Simmel’s “form” is its pragmatic utility and adaptability. Simmel demonstrates this i ..read more
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Cognition and Cultural Kinds (Continued)
Culturecog Blog » Cognitive Science
by Omar Lizardo
2y ago
Culture and Cognition: Rethinking the Terms of the Debate As noted in the previous post, very few sociologists today doubt that insights from cognitive science are relevant for the study of cultural phenomena. In that respect, DiMaggio’s (1997) call to consider the implications of cognition for cultural analysis has not gone unheeded. Today, questions center on the particular ways cognitive processes may be relevant for cultural explanation and in what (empirical, explanatory, substantive) contexts they are more or less relevant. Some have even begun to speak of a “cognitive” (or “neuro-cognit ..read more
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