Cognitive Practices

Abstract

The ideas and arguments of this chapter are the most open to further investigation, both conceptual and empirical, of any so far broached. My aim is to provide a framework in which further work could begin to be done and to show how cognitive practices are dependent upon the manipulation thesis and hybrid mind thesis, as developed in the previous two chapters. In both parts of the book, I have been urging a normative conception of integrated cognitive capacities. The normative nature of cognition is best illustrated in the class of manipulations I have dubbed cognitive practices.

Whence did the wondrous mystic art arise of painting speech and speaking to the eyes that we by tracing magic lines are taught how to embody and colour thought.

— William Massey