Objections to the computational theory of cognition, inspired by twentieth century phenomenology, have tended to fixate on the embodiment and embeddedness of intelligence. In this paper I reconstruct a line of argument that focusses primarily on the abstract nature of scientific models, of which computational models of the brain are one sort. I observe that the critique of scientific abstraction was rather commonplace in the philosophy of the 1920s and 30s and that attention to it aids the reading of The (...) Organism ([1934] 1939) by the neurologist Kurt Goldstein. With this background in place, we see that some brief but spirited criticisms of cybernetics by two later thinkers much influenced by Goldstein, Georges Canguilhem (1963) and Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1961), show continuity with the earlier discussions of abstraction in science. (shrink)

We have already had the occasion to study how Goldstein offered his fundamental postulates to neurorehabilitation, enabling it to establish itself as a new disciplinary branch of medicine [Gilart de Keranflec’h 2021]. Now we shall hypothesize that the proposals that Goldstein borrowed from his fellow contemporary neurologists by reformulating them, those he rejected and those he prolonged, were successive acculturations leading to a broader area than neurology alone, namely rehabilitative care. Long before he experienced exile —a major biographical turning point (...) in his life—had Goldstein not already led neurology down the path of exile, by demanding that it take into consideration its necessary hybridization with social and environmental issues? Combining dimensions of care, cures and even healing, rehabilitative care challenges the medical discipline alone for its pre-eminence over positive health outcomes for patients with health problems whose severity leaves them in a situation of disability. (shrink)