Situating Cognition through Conceptual Integration

Posted: 20 Nov 2008

Date Written: October 19, 2008

Abstract

Traditional cognitive science treats cognition as internal computation: formal syntactic operations on internal symbols who acquire meaning only through reference to the external world or possible worlds. Proponents of situated cognition argue that cognition is more appropriately viewed as a coupling of internal and external in an interactive process. Such couplings can be mediated by many elements simultaneously: by internal plans or programs, by the functioning of bodies and the fit between body and environment, by artifacts and physical structure in the setting of activity, by the dynamics of events and of interactions with other embodied agents, etc. The situated view focuses interest on how cognitive activities are accomplished in the real world, on the dynamics of how they unfold, and -- of special interest to cognitive linguists -- on the meanings that participants construct in the course of activity.

Among the situated approaches, one in particular, the framework of Distributed Cognition advanced by Hutchins (1995), manages to preserve the notion of cognition as computation by viewing the computational process as distributed across the individual and the material environment, across multiple individuals in interaction, and across multiple scales of historical and local time. In Hutchins' view, drawing a line on a navigation chart executes a computation that depends on the cultural history of people and tools whose activity went into the making of the chart as well as on the activities of the navigation team that measured the bearing reproduced in the line. In his analysis, Hutchins dispenses with internal symbol processing as the fundamental architecture of cognition but maintains the view that cognitive processes are those that "act on representations to produce computational outcomes." He sees cognition as "computation carried out through the propagation of representational states across representational media (which may be internal or external to the actor)." The representational states are propagated by "bringing the media into coordination with one another," and it is human actors who coordinate these media in "cognitive functional systems" that generate computational outcomes.

In this paper I explore the relationship between coordination and conceptual integration (Fauconnier & Turner, 1998; 2002). I argue that computation may be accomplished through the coordination of media in cognitive functional systems, but the coordinated elements take on meaning only through virtue of their links to mental spaces in conceptual integration networks. Using examples drawn from studies of time-telling (2004) and counting (2007), I contrast cognitive functional systems with their situated instantiations, highlighting the role that conceptual integration plays in generating meaning in real-world cognitive activities.

Keywords: conceptual integration, blending, distributed cognition

Suggested Citation

Williams, Robert F., Situating Cognition through Conceptual Integration (October 19, 2008). 9th Conference on Conceptual Structure, Discourse, & Language (CSDL9), Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=1304411

Robert F. Williams (Contact Author)

Lawrence University ( email )

711 E. Boldt Way SPC 22
Appleton, WI 54911
United States
920-993-6276 (Phone)

HOME PAGE: http://www.lawrence.edu/fast/williaro

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