Discussion note: Distributed cognition in epistemic cultures
Philosophy of Science 69 (4):637-644 (2002)
| Abstract | In Epistemic Cultures (1999), Karin Knorr Cetina argues that different scientific fields exhibit different epistemic cultures. She claims that in high energy physics (HEP) individual persons are displaced as epistemic subjects in favor of experiments themselves. In molecular biology (MB), by contrast, individual persons remain the primary epistemic subjects. Using Ed Hutchins' (1995) account of navigation aboard a traditional US Navy ship as a prototype, I argue that both HEP and MB exhibit forms of distributed cognition. That is, in both fields cognition is distributed across individual persons and complex artifacts. The cognitive system producing the knowledge is heterogeneous. Nevertheless, in both fields we can reserve epistemic agency for the human components of these systems. We do not need to postulate new distributed cognitive agents, let alone ones exhibiting new forms of consciousness. | |||||||||
| Keywords | No keywords specified (fix it) | |||||||||
| Categories | ||||||||||
| Options |
|
|||||||||
Download options| PhilPapers Archive |
Upload a copy of this paper Check publisher's policy on self-archival Papers currently archived: 5,701 |
| External links |
  Try with proxy. |
| Through your library | Configure |
Similar books and articlesRonald N. Giere (2006). The Role of Agency in Distributed Cognitive Systems. Philosophy of Science 73 (5):710-719.
Ronald N. Giere (2004). The Problem of Agency in Scienti?C Distributed Cognitive Systems. Journal of Cognition and Culture 4 (3-4):759-774.
Christian List (2003). Distributed Cognition: A Perspective From Social Choice Theory. In M. Albert, D. Schmidtchen & S Voigt (eds.), Scientific Competition: Theory and Policy, Conferences on New Political Economy. Mohr Siebeck.
Ronald N. Giere (2011). Distributed Cognition as Human Centered Although Not Human Bound: Reply to Vaesen 1. Social Epistemology 25 (4):393 - 399.
K. Knorr-Cetina (1999). Epistemic Cultures: How the Sciences Make Knowledge. Harvard University Press.
Krist Vaesen (2011). Giere's (In)Appropriation of Distributed Cognition. Social Epistemology 25 (4):379 - 391.
Ronald N. Giere (2007). Distributed Cognition Without Distributed Knowing. Social Epistemology 21 (3):313 – 320.
Analytics
Monthly downloads |
Added to index2009-01-28Total downloads9 ( #114,124 of 549,113 )Recent downloads (6 months)1 ( #63,361 of 549,113 )How can I increase my downloads? |
My notes
Discussion
