RESIDUALISM AND CATEGORICAL RE-COGNITION

by Hugh M. Lewis

This article is good in detailing the spectrum of general theory on human cognition from one extreme of "In the best described tasks in cognitive psychology…thinking and its various sub-categories (comparing, searching, retrieving, etc.) are embodied in precisely stated (computer) programs and data structures" (page 54) to the opposite extreme of "As the theories come to be couched in less specific and formalized terms, the warrant for talking about particular cognitive processes in operation becomes progressively weaker." (page 55) Needless to say, Cognitive Psychology sits upon the first end, in which "the psychologist must have a well defined task which serves at the environment (or psychologist must have a well defined task which serves as the environment (or context) within which an informants behaviors can be framed." (page 53) While "most anthropological statements on thinking fall at the extreme end of weakly defined operations for the specification of cognitive processes." (page 55)

A fundamental difference is pointed out between psychologists and anthropologists, held to arise from basic contrasts of research orientation. The former, wants to "generalize across individuals within a task as a first step…seeks conclusions about the within-informant workings of the human mind" (page 55-6) whereas the latter "seek tasks that systematically represent the organization of tasks systematically represent the organization of tasks within a community…groping for conclusions about culture." (page 56) The psychologist tends to work within a tightly circumscribed and controlled task environment while the anthropologist "must discover both the task environment and the behaviors." (page 56)

As pointed out by Cole and Scribner…"by choosing different ways of proceeding in the delimitation of task environments, psychologists are more efficient at modeling thought processes in specific task environments but consequently have difficulty generalizing their results to adequate statements about the thinking anyone might do in other settings. Anthropologists aim their inquiries to a larger range of phenomena, but it is unclear how much they are able to specify about thinking." (page 56)

The article goes on to summarize a few anthropological contributions to scientific understanding of human cognition (modes of thought, primitive vs. civilized, rational vs. magical, orality vs. literacy, analogical vs. homological and analytical, ethno-science, ethno-semantics, ethno-methodology, expert systems and folk classification, etc.) "This entire enterprise shows how the typical range of verbal reports from open interviews to constrained psychological experiments proves inadequate if it is not embedded in data gained from a more systematic analysis of the actual doing of the task in question." (page 66)

In conclusion, psychology does not have "presumed privilege access to peoples thought processes because it is not found there; rather the virtues of cognitive psychology is to be found in its procedures for limiting uncontrolled speculation about thinking…" (page 66)

Anthropologists and psychologists share the same kinds of questions, but differ fundamentally in the 'level of context' which is being questioned.

Anthropologists have increased the constraints applied to their fieldwork, but this has yet fallen short of the criteria applied by psychologists. "The result is indeterminacy."

This critique is valid if we accept uncritically the premises upon which it is based. The model is a restricted version of experimental scientific psychology which is an exclusively academic preoccupation. (Of course so is cognitive anthropology). But whether, either theoretically or practically, anthropologists who might be preoccupied with 'how natives think' or 'why natives act as they do' must necessarily be constrained, compared and judged by this model or its hyper-scientific criterion, remains to be asked. Psychology itself is far from paradigmatic unity except in the most academically scientific sense, and their own researchers frequently (if unwittingly) fall far short of the kind of 'task' criteria held up in this essay as validating and legitimating. (Sigmund Rock, 1981; Arthur Staats, 1981; Richard Shweder, 1979; James Lamiell, 1981)

My experience with cognitive anthropology and with those who 'do it' is that it often operates under its own paradigm with a different kind of agenda having a different set of criteria and research objective. Rather than 'getting into peoples heads' or 'reading minds' it merely but sublimely asks 'what is it?' and 'what does it mean?'. Absent is the sense of empirical phenomenology which tends to inform such ethnographic texts. All this is far from the paradigmatic closure (structuralism vs. constructivism, for instance, or behaviorists vs. psychoanalysts) and the psychological need for a strict scientific sense of cognitive determinacy which some seem so committed to. Others feel more comfortable with 'indeterminacy' but these would probably prefer to be called 'humanists' rather than true blue 'scientists'. And much of what passed in the name of cognitive anthropology did not come from a scientific tradition of psychology, but from a hermeneutic tradition of religious studies.

Finally I am not so sure anthropologists have done all that poorly in the 'task' performance criteria which they set for themselves in their field work. New work on task performance, pragmatic analysis, status control, discursive analysis and cultural inference has demonstrated that the field is not necessarily a marginal residuum of other interests and issues, but 'holds its own' in a very fundamental way, and has been looked to by many who are involved in the 'anthropology of meaning' as the core theoretical concern about the paradoxical problematics of asking 'what is human reality?'.

As usual, this brings us back upon the horns of a classical dilemma, one which underlies both the philosophy and mythology and ideology of 'True Science' versus 'scientific realities and realism'. This is the mind/body dichotomy--in this case the 'mind' as 'the ghost in the machine' and the 'brain' as 'the computer in the head'. And as always those who take sides and argue this point tend to talk past one another more than with one another, aiming more at strawmen prefabricated for the sake of theoretical epistemological and metaphysical orientations (Naturwissenschaften vs. Geisteswissenschaften). Where the one seems to be analytical and rational in its approach, the other seems to be synthetical and phenomenological. Which view is the correct one depends upon what one believes to be more important, the spirit or the machine, or Truth or Reality (or something in-between).