Tim Rohrer
"Pragmatism, Ideology and Embodiment: William James and the
philosophical foundations of cognitive linguistics"
What others call an "ideology" of cognitive linguistics
(CL), I prefer to old-fashionedly call its philosophical foundations
and commitments. In this presentation I review several of the
different senses of the way the word 'embodiment' is currently
used in CL, and argue for a broad theoretic framework which ties
CL to the larger enterprise of cognitive science. I take as my
primary topic of analysis research on spatial frames of reference
because it is important to show that embodied cognitive linguistics
is much more than simply a set of hypotheses in one of its most
prominent theories, conceptual metaphor. I trace that topic through
the multiple levels of investigation implicit in the conception
of cognitive science as a multi-disciplinary enterprise which
ranges from anthropology all the way to neuroanatomy.
I begin this talk with a short explanation why the philosopher
William James was an early cognitive linguist. In his second lecture
on Pragmatism, James introduces the pragmatic method as settling
a metaphysical dispute about the meaning of the English phrase
"to go round the squirrel." There are, James notes,
two possible spatial frames of reference: an absolute frame of
reference, in which it is possible to go around the squirrel with
reference to the four cardinal directions; and a relative frame
of reference, in which it is possible to go around the squirrel
with reference to its front, left side, back and right side. This
second spatial reference involves a projecting the relations of
left/right and front/back with respect to the speaker's body onto
the squirrel's body for use as the directional landmark.
Resolving possible spatial frames of reference has recently become
a productive topic for both cognitive linguistics and cognitive
science more generally. In cross-cultural studies of languages,
Sotaro Kita, Eric Pedersen, Steven Levinson and other collaborators
have linguistic, gestural and non-linguistic experimental evidence
suggesting that the relative/absolute frames of reference dichotomy
reflects differing underlying cognitive systems. Lakoff, Brugman
and other collaborators have argued that a Mayan language, Mixtec,
indicates spatial relations with the projection of body-part terms,
reflects a metaphoric conceptualization system in which the body
is systematically mapped onto the world. However, in several related
child language acquisition studies, Lopez de Jensen and Sinha
have recently argued that for a closely related Mayan language,
the so called body part terms are not acquired first as body part
terms and then projected to spatial relations, but instead seem
to be acquired independently. From a different perspective, Edwin
Hutchins has presented evidence that some errors in complex distributed
cognitive tasks, such as maritime navigation, are also produced
by frame of reference problems.
Like James however, I only raise these examples from the frames
of reference literature as a springboard to investigate foundational
philosophical issues for an emerging new picture of cognitive
science. In particular, I argue for a broad-based theoretic framework
of embodied cognitive science that ties together levels of investigation
ranging from the cognitive neurosciences through the computer
sciences and psychology to anthropology. I show how this theoretic
framework can be usefully applied to organize the exploding literature
on frames of reference, and how these studies hang together as
embodied cognitive science.
What emerges is a philosophy of cognitive science that is pragmatic,
patient and problem centered, rather than one centered on symbol
manipulation. I call this philosophical account of the new generation
of cognitive science a PCP account, for a Patient-, Problem- and
Pragmatically-Centered-Philosophy of cognitive science, and I
end by contrasting it with the PSS (Physical Symbol System) philosophy
of the previous generations of cognitive science.