Friends with benefits! Distributed cognition hooks up cognitive and social conceptions of science

Authors

P.D. Magnus, University at Albany, State University of New YorkFollow
Ron McClamrock, University at Albany, State University of New YorkFollow

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2014

DOI

10.1080/09515089.2014.964857

Abstract

One approach to science treats science as a cognitive accomplishment of individuals and so defines a scientific community as an aggregate of individual enquirers. Another treats science as a fundamentally collective endeavor and so defines a scientist as a member of a scientific community. Distributed cognition has been offered as a framework that could be used to reconcile these two approaches. Adam Toon has recently asked if the cognitive and the social can be friends at last. He answers that they probably cannot, posing objections to the would-be rapprochement. We clarify both the animosity and the tonic proposed to resolve it, ultimately arguing that that worries raised by Toon and others are uncompelling.

Comments

This is the Author's Original Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Philosophical Psychology in 2014, available online: http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/09515089.2014.964857.

Recommended Citation

Magnus, P. D. & McClamrock, Ron (2014). Friends with benefits! Distributed cognition hooks up cognitive and social conceptions of science. Philosophical Psychology 28 (8):1114-1127.