Disunity with unity in cognition within the context of language–biology relations.

Mondal, Prakash (2022) Disunity with unity in cognition within the context of language–biology relations. Journal of Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology, 42 (1). pp. 19-36. ISSN 1068-8471

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Abstract

This article will present a critique of the neurocentric view of language and cognition by locating it within the context of unification in cognitive science. While unity consists in the integration of the constraints, contents, and operations of various levels or scales of organization of the cognitive system, it contrasts with disunity. Disunity emanates from variations in structure and content at any level of the cognitive system that gives rise to significant and often unique differences in experience, appearance, form, and organiza-tion of a cognitive phenomenon at the given level. This happens when the given level is looked at in greater detail. For instance, the gap in the organizational character between a cognitive schema for reasoning how and whether to travel and its account in terms of neuronal activation patterns reflects disunity. Many neurobiological accounts of language aim at the integration of the cognitive organization of language with the neuronal structures at bottom in order to achieve unity, but disunity arises from the special nature of the symbolic/cognitive properties of natural language which are argued to reside neither in the brain nor in the environment alone most plausibly because they are emergent patterns between designated brain states and various kinds of linguistic experience. The proposal that is advanced and then defended with special reference to language–biology relations employs Haugeland’s (Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 1978, 1, 215) notion of dimensions and levels, and thereby emphasizes that unity and disunity can coexist in an explanatory union but from different perspectives and orientations © 2021 American Psychological Association

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