On defining cognition sociologically

pp. 127-146

in: Jeff Coulter, Rethinking cognitive theory, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 1983

Abstract

Mental predicates, in all their variety, belong firmly within the social matrix of concept formation and usage. In earlier work, I was concerned to exploit this fact in the service of undermining the twin doctrines of mentalism and behaviourism;¹ mental predicates are not properly analysed as either names for putatively private, inner phenomena nor as names for constellations of behavioural events. Of course, this in no way contradicts the mundane experiences of silent soliloquies, mental images or dreams ("inner" events) nor the critical relevance of observable conduct for understanding the meanings and functions of mental concepts. However, the view that "mind" is either a private repository of the things or events putatively labelled by our mental vocabulary ("mentalism") and the twin view (developed as its antithesis) that "mind" is a (fictional) construction out of behavioural events per se (or dispositions to behave per se) — behaviourism (especially of the "methodological" or "logical" variety) — are together misleading and at best partial approximations to the appreciation of the nature of the mental and its proper conceptualisation.