Central to Dewey’s treatment of the nervous system throughout his work is its import for ameliorative action. Dewey’s theory of mentation has its origins in his early thought in which he draws on contemporary physics and biology to incorporate the nascent understanding of the nervous system. This interdisciplinary approach continues through his career. After selectively reviewing Dewey’s remarks about brains and nervous systems, I apply his ameliorative theory of mind and brain to our contemporary situation in which our digital devices (...) work against the energetic focusing that Dewey saw as integral to healthy nervous system function. I consider the threat of what Tschaepe calls dopamine democracy and reflect on whether neuropragmatism is able to meet that challenge. (shrink)

Cognitive science and its philosophy have been far too long consumed with representation. This concern is indicative of a creeping Cartesianism that many scientists and philosophers wish to evade. However, their naturalism is often insufficiently evolutionary to fully appreciate the lessons of pragmatism. If cognitive neuroscience and pragmatism are to be mutually beneficial, the representational-friendly scientists and the anti-representational pragmatists need an alternative to representation that still accounts for what many find so attractive about representation, namely intentionality. I propose that (...) instead of representations we philosophers and scientists begin thinking in terms of cultural affordances. Like Gibsonian affordances, cultural affordances are opportunities for action. However, unlike Gibsonian affordances, which are merely biological and available for immediate action in the immediately present environment, cultural affordances also present opportunities for thinking about the past and acting into the future—tasks typically attributed to representations. (shrink)

John Dewey, as Sidney Hook characterized him, was the philosopher of science and freedom. Dewey, as Larry Hickman has demonstrated, was also a philosopher of technology. And, as most people familiar with Dewey know, he was a philosopher of education and democracy. The complex of technology, science, freedom, education and democracy requires re-examination, not only because of our contemporary cultural political situation but also because of our growing insights into the human condition thanks to the technosciences of life, especially human (...) life. Dewey’s philosophical method of reconstruction, equipped with insights from evolutionary neuroscience and ecological psychology, offers means of reconceiving and thus reevaluating our conception of tools and technology within our cultural context. I begin to take up Mark Tschaepe’s challenge to neuropragmatism to counter what he calls “dopamine democracy” – Plato’s critique of democracy resurrected in neural garb coupled with a critical examination of how social media and other so-called “smart” technologies undermine healthy democratic life. Central to this neuropragmatist approach are cultural affordances – opportunities for action humans have created initially for specific purposes and later retrofitted for other ends-in-view. Dewey’s reconstruction – as method as well as the reconstruction of technology, science, freedom, education and democracy as an entangled complex – is thus imagined as our best strategy for achieving the culture of creative democracy. (shrink)

Material Engagement Theory is currently driving a conceptual change in the archaeology of mind. Drawing upon the dictates of enactivism and active externalism, it specifically calls for a radical reconceptualization of mind and material culture. Unpersuaded by the common assumption that cognition is brain-bound, Malafouris argues in favour of a process ontology that situates thinking in action. In granting ontological primacy to material engagement, MET seeks to illuminate the emergence of human ways of thinking through the practical effects of the (...) material world. Considering that this is a characteristic example of a pragmatic take on cognition, this contemporary theoretical platform appears to share a lot with pragmatism. As of late, scholars working at the intersection of philosophy, semiotics, and cognitive science have made important steps towards the rapprochement between pragmatism and externalism. Looking to contribute to this growing corpus of work, the present paper focuses on MET’s relation to the pragmatism of Peirce, Dewey, and Mead. Having elsewhere recognized the overlap and complementarity between Malafouris’ and Peirce’s theories in particular, I developed a pragmatic and enactive theory of cognitive semiotics that is suitably geared to trace the nature, emergence, and evolution of material signs. Therefore, besides noting some obvious historical connections, I hereby aim to establish the theoretical backdrop upon which this composite theory is supposed to function, while also exploring new potential avenues. Given that this cognitive semiotic framework can be seen as a pragmatic extension of Malafouris’ enactivist approach to archaeology, the current paper delves into MET’s theoretical underpinnings, seeking to complement its working hypotheses and concepts with philosophical notions and ideas advanced long ago. This synthesis ultimately concludes with a call for the reconceptualization of ‘representation’ as a heuristic concept. (shrink)