Abstract
Humans continuously delegate and distribute cognitive functions to the environment to lessen their limits. They build models, representations, and other various mediating structures, that are thought to be good to think. The case of scientific innovation is particularly important: the main aim of this paper is to revise and criticize the concept of scientific innovation, reframing it in what I will call an eco-epistemic perspective, taking advantage of recent results coming from the area of distributed cognition (common coding) and abductive cognition (manipulative). Taking advantage of this eco-cognitive perspective the article outlines how innovative scientific modeling activity can be better described taking advantage of the concept of “epistemic warfare”, which sees scientific enterprise as a complicated struggle for rational knowledge in which it is crucial to distinguish epistemic (for example scientific models) from non epistemic (for example fictions, falsities, propaganda) weapons.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
Representational delegations are those cognitive acts that transform the natural environment in a cognitive one.
We have to note that manipulative abduction (cf. below in this article) also happens when we are thinking through doing (and not only, in a pragmatic sense, about doing). This kind of action-based cognition can hardly be intended as performed through completely intentional and/or conscious acts (Magnani 2009).
On the cognitive delegations to external artifacts see (Magnani 2009, chapter three, Section 3.6). A useful description of how formats also matter in the case of external hypothetical models and representations, and of how they provide different affordances and inferential chances, cf. Vorms (Vorms 2010).
The complicated analysis of some seminal Peircean philosophical considerations concerning abduction, perception, inference, and instinct, which have to be considered still important to current cognitive and epistemological research, is provided in (Magnani 2009, chapter five).
“The basic argument for common coding is an adaptive one, where organisms are considered to be fundamentally action systems. In this view, sensory and cognitive systems evolved to support action, and they are therefore dynamically coupled to action systems in ways that help organisms act quickly and appropriately. Common coding, and the resultant replication of external movements in body coordinates, provides one form of highly efficient coupling. Since both biological and nonbiological movements are equally important to the organism, and the two movements interact in unpredictable ways, it is beneficial to replicate both types of movements in body coordinates, so that efficient responses can be generated” (Chandrasekharan 2009, p. 1069): in this quoted paper the reader can find a rich reference to the recent literature on embodied cognition and common coding.
I contend that the so-called abstract model can be better described in terms of what Nersessian and Chandrasekharan (2009) call manifest model: when the scientific collective decides whether the model is worth pursuing, and whether it would address the problems and concepts researchers are faced with, it is an internal model and it is manifest because it is shared and “[...] allows group members to perform manipulations and thus form common movement representations of the proposed concept. The manifest model also improves group dynamics” (Chandrasekharan 2009, p. 1079).
On the concept of multimodal abduction see (Thagard 2007).
Written natural languages are intertwined with iconic aspects too. Stjernfelt (2007) provides a full analysis of the role of icons and diagrams in Peircean philosophical and semiotic approach, also taking into account the Husserlian tradition of phenomenology.
It is from this perspective that [sentential] syllogism and [model-based] perception are seen as rigorously intertwined. Consequently, there is no sharp contrast between the idea of cognition as perception and the idea of cognition as something that pertains to logic. Both aspects are inferential in themselves and fruit of sign activity. Taking the Peircean philosophical path we return to observations Thagard stressed when speaking of the case of abduction: cognition is basically multimodal (2007).
To confront critiques and suspects about the legitimacy of the new number dx, Leibniz prudently conceded that dx can be considered a fiction, but a “well founded” one. The birth of non-standard analysis, an “alternative calculus” invented by Abraham Robinson (1966), based on infinitesimal numbers in the spirit of Leibniz’s method, revealed that infinitesimals are not at all fictions, through an extension of the real numbers system \(\mathbb{R}\) to the system \(\mathbb{R}^*\) containing infinitesimals smaller in the absolute value than any positive real number.
The characteristic feature of epistemic weapons is that they are value-directed to the aim of promoting the attainment of scientific truth, for example through predictive and empirical accuracy, simplicity, testability, consistency, etc.: in this perspective I basically agree with the distinction between epistemic and non-epistemic values as limpidly depicted in (Steel 2010).
On the related problem of resemblance (similarity, isomorphism, homomorphism, etc.) in scientific modeling see (Magnani 2012).
References
Abe A (2009) Cognitive chance discovery. In: Stephanidis C (ed) Universal access in HCI, part I, HCII2009 (LNCS5614). Springer, Berlin, pp 315–323
Bardone E (2011) Seeking chances, from biased rationality to distributed cognition. Springer, Heidelberg
Barsalou LW (2008a) Cognitive and neural contributions to understanding the conceptual system. Curr Dir Psychol Sci 17(2):91–95
Barsalou LW (2008b) Grounded cognition. Annu Rev Psychol 59:617–645
Bertolotti T (2012) From mindless modeling to scientific models. The case of emerging models. In: Magnani L, Li P (eds) Philosophy and cognitive science. Western and Eastern Studies, Springer, Heidelberg, pp 75–104
Callon M, Latour B (1992) Don’t throw the baby out with the bath school! A reply to Collins and Yearley. In: Pickering A (ed) Science as practice and culture. The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, pp 343–368
Callon M (1994) Four models for the dynamics of science. In: Jasanoff S, Markle GE, Petersen JC, Pinch TJ (eds) Handbook of science and technology studies. Sage, Los Angeles, pp 29–63
Callon M (1997) Society in the making: the study of technology as a tool for sociological analysis. In: Bjiker WE, Hughes TP, Pinch T (eds) The social construction of technological systems. The MIT Press, Cambridge, pp 83–106
Chandrasekharan S (2009) Building to discover: a common coding model. Cogn Sci 33:1059–1086
De Cruz H, De Smedt J (2011) Mathematical symbols as epistemic actions. Synthese, doi:10.1007/s11229-010-9837-9
Feyerabend P (1975) Against method. Verso, New York
Hutchins E (1999) Cognitive artifacts. In: Wilson RA, Keil FC (eds) Encyclopedia of the cognitive sciences. The MIT Press, Cambridge, pp 126–127
Kirsh D, Maglio P (1994) On distinguishing epistemic from pragmatic action. Cogn Sci 18:513–549
Latour J (1987) Science in action: how to follow scientists and engineers through society. Harvard University Press, Cambridge
Latour J (1988) The Pasteurization of France. Harvard University Press, Cambridge
Law J (1993) Modernity, myth, and materialism. Blackwell, Oxford
Magnani L, Bardone E (2008) Sharing representations and creating chances through cognitive niche construction. The role of affordances and abduction. In: Iwata S, Oshawa Y, Tsumoto S, Zhong N, Shi Y, Magnani L (eds) Communications and discoveries from multidisciplinary data. Springer, Berlin, pp 3–40
Magnani L (2005) Chance discovery and the disembodiment of mind. In: Oehlmann R, Abe A, Ohsawa Y (eds) Proceedings of the workshop on chance discovery: from data interaction to scenario creation, international conference on machine learning (ICML 2005), pp 53–59
Magnani L (2009) Abductive cognition. The epistemological and eco-cognitive dimensions of hypothetical reasoning. Springer, Heidelberg
Magnani L: Mindless abduction. from animal guesses to artifactual mediators. In: Rydenfelt H, Bergman M (eds) Ideas in action: proceedings of the applying peirce conference, pp 201–215, Helsinki, 2010. Series “Nordic Studies in Pragmatism”, Nordic Pragmatism Network, Helsinki (http://www.nordprag.org). On line publication
Magnani L (2012) Scientific models are not fictions. model-based science as epistemic warfare. In: Magnani L, Li P (eds) Philosophy and cognitive science. Western and Eastern Studies, Springer, Heidelberg, Berlin, pp 1–38
Nersessian NJ, Chandradekharan S (2009) Hybrid analogies in conceptual innovation in science. Cogn Syst Res 10(3):178–188
Odling-Smee FJ, Laland KN, Feldman MW (2003) Niche construction, the neglected process in evolution. Princeton University Press, Princeton
Oshawa Y, McBurney P (eds) (2003) Chance discovery. Springer, Berlin
Park W (2011) Abduction and estimation in animals. Found Sci. doi:10.1007/s10699-011-9275-2
Peirce CS (1931–1958) Collected papers of Charles Sanders Peirce vol. 1–6, 7–8. In: Hartshorne C, Weiss P, Burks AW (eds) Harvard University Press, Cambridge
Pickering A (1995) The mangle of practice, time, agency, and science. The University of Chicago Press, Chicago
Robinson A (1966) Non-standard analysis. North Holland, Amsterdam
Steel D (2010) Epistemic values and the argument from inductive risk. Philos Sci 77:14–34
Stjernfelt F (2007) Diagrammatology, an investigation on the borderlines of phenomenology, ontology, and semiotics. Springer, Berlin
Thagard P (2007) Abductive inference: from philosophical analysis to neural mechanisms. In: Feeney A, Heit E (eds) Inductive reasoning: experimental, developmental, and computational approaches. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp 226–247
Thomas HJ (1999) Are theories of imagery theories of imagination? An active perception approach to conscious mental content. Cogn Sci 23(2):207–245
Vorms M (2010) The theoretician’s gambits: scientific representations, their formats and content. In: Magnani L, Carnielli W, Pizzi C (eds) Model-based reasoning in science and technology. Springer, Heidelberg/Berlin, pp 533–558
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Magnani, L. Scientific innovation as eco-epistemic warfare: the creative role of on-line manipulative abduction. Mind Soc 12, 49–59 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11299-013-0118-4
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11299-013-0118-4