Content and Cognition
In response to a post from Clark Quinn . My view is that if you're still channeling Paul Kirschner you are at the very least endorsing an idea of cognition as a representational system, even if not a physical symbol system, in which there is a clear separation between 'content' and other (presumably incidental) cognitive activities. That to my mind would be enough to make you a cognitivist. This isn't contrary to situationism. It can be true that our actions can inform our cognitive state, and still have a basis in both 'content' and (presumably incidental) non-content. Consider for example Wittgenstein inferring what a person 'knows' or 'believes' about the thickness of the ice as we walks across the frozen lake. And how we act can feed back into what we 'know' through the creation of contentful experiences. I think that to be a non-cognitivist it is necessary to be a non-representationalist. What that means is a bit difficult to tease o...
