The Discursive Construction of Cognitive Mechanisms

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Against cognitivism: the discursive constructionof cognitive mechanisms

Andrew Lock

Massey University

Preamble

Psychologists who study human discourse tend to have little in commonwith those interested in cognitive abilities and their evolution. The polarity of views between these two `camps' - we might call them the `socialconstructionists' and the `cognitive scientists' - is similar to a split in studies

of science itself, where one group characterises science as a `socialconstruction' and the other as the process of empirically discovering howreality works. What follows is not intended as an attempt to bring about arapprochement between these different views. Rather, I am interested in theevolution of human activities. One thing that us humans do a lot of is to getinvolved in conversations. That the knowledge we have of these

`conversational endpoints' of human evolution is formulated in a verydifferent way from the knowledge we have about human origins is a bit of aproblem, then, if, like me, you want to elucidate the process that went onbetween `beginning' and `end'.

This paper is a first attempt to grapple with this `bit-of-a-problem'. How arehumans able to do what they do? That is, have any discourses at all?

Commonalities in Constructive Processes

Fortunately, there are some fundamental compatibilities between the social construction andevolutionary perspectives. The major one of these is that both approaches are concerned to account for

processes of construction. Second, they are similar in that they posit ordering principles to the temporalcourse of construction.

The main point made here is that discourses at one point in time have implications that come to be madeexplicit and thus found new discourses at a later point in time. This is analogous to the evolutionarysituation in which biological processes also act to explicate in the future the implications of existingsystems. Again, the same situation holds in the historical elaboration of certain symbol systems. In thisconceptualisation, the implications of a system at one point serve to specify the possibilities for its futurespecification and elaboration (I have unpacked this conceptualisation in earlier publications (e.g., 1985,1986), but these are not yet available here).

A concrete example will have to suffice at present. The sequence of symbols that denote naturalnumbers is a human construction. Now, it is possible to do some quite complex tasks without anyabstract conception of number: by `tallying', for example, a shepherd can keep track of his or her flock -mark them out in the morning and tick them home in the evening. If, by any chance, one abstractednumbers out of this practice and expressed them on base 10 with Arabic numerals, then one would get


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the sequence 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9. One could use these numbers in quite a few ways without everbecoming aware of the distinctions between, and the properties of, odd and even, perfect and primenumbers. One might come to apprehend these distinctions, but then be oblivious to such properties asGoldbach's conjecture: that every even number is the sum of two primes (this conjecture fits everyknown case, but no proof of it has yet been formulated).

Three points should be noted with respect to this example. First , Popper (1972: 18) characterizes thatthese properties of numerical systems are "unintended and unavoidable properties of our creation ...

[there] ... for us to discover". Second, there is a logic to the order in which these unintended propertiesmight be discovered: that is, Goldbach could only formulate his conjecture about the properties of evennumbers once even numbers had been elucidated. Third , it follows that we could essay an evolutionaryaccount of mathematics if we could establish the conditions under which such discoveries were made.

These points can inform our understanding of the social creation of discursive resources, self concepts,and the like. As a paradigm example I take Norbert Elias' study (1978) of European etiquette manualsdating back over the last 700 years. His work can be read as revealing that the processes of socialinteraction have unintended consequences, that they `create' `things' that are only subsequentlyarticulable (or discoverable) as `things'; and that the `things' that result from this `social construction'

have an intrinsic ordering to them that constrains the order in which we come to `apprehend' them.Elias' rationale for interpreting the material he presents rests on two points. First, if a manual explicitlyproscribes a form of behaviour, then we may assume that those people to whom the advice is targetedwould otherwise do what they are being told not to. Second, if over the course of centuries particularadvice drops out of these manuals, this does not reflect a change in fashion, but that people no longerneed to be told such niceties of behaviour, for they have been `socialised' not to perform in these ways.[Thus at Massey University, for example, we were recently sent a memo informing us of the correct titleof address for the current Minister of Education in New Zealand - whether he is the Honourable Dr.Lockwood-Smith or Dr. the Honourable Lockwood-Smith, a difficult decision - so as not to causeoffence if we met him. But we were not told not to spit, fart, pick our noses, belch nor either scratch orexpose our `private' parts if we met him. One can assume people would not do these things, even if theycome from an originally agricultural institution.]

Elias' Account

Elias establishes the historical course of elaborating western practices for dealing with the assortedaccumulations of material that periodically inhabit the human nasal passages. At the root of the changesElias documents in what is considered polite is a hierarchy of actions: blowing the nose; hiding theblowing of it by using a handkerchief; hiding the blowing of it into a handkerchief. But, mostimportantly, embarrassment is being invented. Embarrassment is a (metacognitive) emotional statecreated by the explication into discourse of this hierarchy: for it to be realized, a self-censorious abilityhas to be established. People have to become able to reflect on their own behaviour - that is, on howthey act in company - where previously they had not done so.

Over all the activities he considers, there emerges from Elias's study the strong implication that thisability was not just lacking in the area of nose-blowing, but that it was unavailable for any activity:people generally did not reflect on what they were doing. Hence, they did not provide the necessaryconditions that would enable them to feel embarrassed. In Elias's view, the kind of change ininterpersonal behaviour that such advice reflects is not one of fashion; further,

it does not involve solely changes of `knowledge' transformations of `ideologies', in short,alterations of the content of consciousness, but changes in the whole human make-up,within which ideas and habits of thought are only a single sector (Elias, 1982: 284,underlying added for emphasis).
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These changes reflect a reorganization and transformation of

the whole personality throughout all its zones, from the steering of the individual by himself at the more flexible level of consciousness and reflection to that at the more automatic and rigid level of drives and affects. (Elias, 1982: 284)

Elias predicates these changes in personality structure on structural changes in society brought about bythe expansion of trade, the diffusion of money, the monopolization of power and physical force by a

central `state', and the growing stabilization of the central organs of society. In sum, `as the social fabricgrows more intricate, the sociogenic apparatus of individual self-control also becomes moredifferentiated, more allround and more stable' (Elias, 1982: 234). He offers the following explanation asto why there is this relationship:

From the earliest period of the history of the Occident to the present, social functions havebecome more and more differentiated under the pressure of competition. The moredifferentiated they become, the larger grows the number of functions and thus of people onwhom the individual constantly depends in all his actions, from the simplest and most commonplace to the more complex and uncommon. As more and more people must attunetheir conduct to that of others, the web of actions must be organized more and more strictlyand accurately, if each individual action is to fulfil its social function. The individual iscompelled to regulate his conduct in an increasingly differentiated, more even and morestable manner. (Elias, 1982: 232)

Elias considers that it is the relationship between the psychological functions controlling an individual'sactions that changes during historical time; that it is

these relationships within man between the drives and affects controlled and the built-incontrolling agencies, whose structure changes in the course of a civilizing process, inaccordance with the changing structure of the relationships between individual human

beings, in society at large (Elias, 1982: 286).

[Note that this formulation is very `Russian', and could be put in Vygotskian terminology with minimaldifficulty: cf Vygotsky's distinction between the inter- and intra- psychological planes, and his claim thatevery element in the child's development appears twice, first between people and second within thechild.]

Interaction, Discourse and Cognition

How do we relate these changes in the basic structuring of Western psychological structure to

discourse? Elias's argument is subtle . His essential point is that our personalities, our conceptions of ourselves and others, our emotional experiences and our views of the world are explicated fromphenomena whose existence is created beyond us in our social worlds. Human beings and theirconceptual systems are explicated renderings into mental form of their social discourses. This is thesocial constructionist's credo.

This process of explication is contributed to by the potentialities of the various symbol systems thathumans use, as well as the nature and structure of the human practices within which these are sustained.It is becoming clearer that (1) the properties of particular symbol systems and (2) the conditions underwhich they are employed affect the ease with which humans can use them for particular purposes .

The first point has been clear to mathematicians, for example, for quite a long time: it is easier to add 21to 38 to get 59 than XXI to XXXVIII to get LIX. [It is even easier to do it on an abacus, but here we areat a further remove in that a technology for manipulating symbols has been introduced. In addition thedevice - the abacus - can be 'internalised' and used as fast and accurately, and often faster, than using itphysically. In addition, such skilled users show very specific enhancements to their mathematical skills:
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digit memory - forward and backward - increases to 15 digit strings, while for other item lists it remainsaround the magic number 7 +/- 2 (Hatano, 1982; Stigler et al., 1982)].

The second point is well documented in a number of contexts of study. For example:

1. Discourse-type studies: `ideologies' and what has been termed `power' clearly influence our habituallines of thought; and rhetoric influences the effects and affects we can accomplish with a particular stockof words.

2. Cross-cultural psychology is providing compelling evidence that human abilities are not solely theproperties of individuals, but are embedded within socio-cultural practices, and that those practices areintegral to the construction and maintenance of the abilities found. For example, the classic study of literacy by Scribner and Cole (1981) clearly showed how the all-transforming and liberating effectsclaimed for being literate do not follow from literacy by magic, but incrementally in relation to the socialpractices they are used in support or conduct of (see Lock and Symes, in press , for a full review).

3. There is evidence from comparative psychology that animals lacking human brains can make adegree of progress in the communicative use of symbols: individuals of all the species of the GreatApes, some dolphins and a few parrots demonstrate this claim (see Ristau, in press , for details). Thepoint that is seldom drawn from this work is that it establishes a prime facie case for the constructivepowers of human social practices: that is, when even an animal is included within those processes theycan accomplish psychological alchemy.

How are these lines of evidence to be brought to bear on human evolutionary issues?

The general line I am going to follow from here is that the structure of relations between people andthe properties of the discourses and practices they engaged in constituted the conditions thatenabled their discovery of the unintended properties of the systems of symbols, social relationsand discourse practices their modes of life constituted . These `discoveries' then constitute the

phenomena that have been subsumed under the term: the `evolution' of human abilities.

Human Evolution

I turn now to a brief review (a more detailed overview is available) of the evolutionary history of modern humans. There are two issues on which tangible, material evidence can be brought to bear

1. When did anatomically-modern humans become established?

The earliest dates for anatomically-modern human fossil remains are around 100 000 years bp. (eg.,

Klasies River Mouth; South Africa: Skhul, Qafzeh, Near East: see both Campbell, in press , andWaddell and Penny, in press , for details). It can be assumed, on anatomical grounds, that these earliestanatomically-modern humans would be able to speak. Whether they did cannot be established directly.

2. When did `typically' modern human activity begin?

Contemporary human activities rely on the social and cultural maintenance of symbolic resources. Themeans of maintenance and transmission of symbols are conservative; the symbols themselves arevolatile. The physical instantiations of contemporary human symbolic activities show temporal volatility,differential spatial distribution, and spatial relocation.

Temporal volatility is not necessarily associated with functional utility. Clothing, for example, isfunctional, but fashion is volatile for other reasons; hem lines on dresses go up and down for reasonsunrelated to the function of wearing a dress, just as accepted male and female garb differs according tocustom rather than function.
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writing, and only later became vocal: we may assume speaking was done. `Written' symbolism has anearliest date of c.18 000bp. The practice of inscribing artifacts goes back earlier, and personalornamentation is evidenced around 35 000 years bp, as is representational art. These dates are forEuropean and Near-Eastern remains. Material from African, East Asian and Australasian sites is lesswell documented but does not radically alter these dates (see, for example, Barton and Hamilton, inpress ; Conkey, in press ; White, in press ).

3. We may assume, extrapolating from the notational record, that a symbolic, spoken communication

system was actually used by 10 000 years bp. It is also likely that by this time such systems showedcharacteristics that modern languages have, such as a phonemic sound system. [The evidence being thatnow-extinct Tasmanian languages showed modern features, while the speakers of these languages hadbeen isolated from other human contact since Tasmania became separated from the Australian continentc14 000-12 000 years bp by changes in sea level: it would seem unlikely that the modern structuralcharacteristics of Tasmanian languages were an independent re-invention of Tasmanian peoples, but aninheritance from before their isolation. However, this does not mean that `languages' were fully modernat this time (see Foster, in press ; Rolfe, in press ).]

The question, then, was what was going on in between these two dates? As might be expected, opinion

on this question varies across the entire temporal spectrum. Lieberman (1991: 172), for example, isconfident that

we can date language as we know it back to at least ... 100 000 years ago at the edge of Africa and Asia.

Others (for example; Jaynes, 1976; Foster, in press ) have argued for the more recent extreme, around thebeginning of the Neolithic period some 10 000bp. A variety of factors are invoked in the argumentsused.

However, practically all arguments put forward invoke an appeal to a rather unspecified `selective

advantage conveyed by the increased efficiency' of spoken, grammatical, or other structural features forthe `communication of information'. Most come back to individual characteristics of `intelligence',

`cognitive abilities' and `biologically-based preadaptions' that are transferred from one modality ordomain to another. And there appear to be modules within modules where language is concerned; this isthe intellectual achievement of contemporary cognitive neuroscience. But, it would be naive to assertthat these modules have a pre-ordained anatomical existence: that prior to being used in support of modern speaking and living great chunks of the human brain were sitting around vacant, just waiting forthe systems to operate on.

A different, but none-the-less very successful, tactical response to the problem has been to deny the

validity of the question. Thus, following the Chomskyean paradigm in linguistics, the `principles andparameters' constitutive of the hypothesised Universal Grammar that accounts for the organizationalproperties of contemporary human languages are so interdependent that they must be innately given asan entire package - `some distinguishable faculty ... one `module' of the mind' (Chomsky, 1986: 12).These principles cannot be acquired piecemeal, as could have been the case for earlier transformationalgrammars where learning or development could be accounted for as just `one damn rule after another':they must all be present to begin with (see Johnson, Davis and Macken, in press , for a fuller account).

In the end, however, both these tactics are unsatisfactory. Whatever the `biological' starting point,language systems, and the discursive practices that they both constitute and are sustained by, have to beconstructed. A more satisfactory answer may be begun by marshalling the points made in this paper thusfar.

Pulling the Threads Together
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First , recall findings in the field of comparative psychology. We turn out to share a remarkable numberof basic cognitive processes with other species, particularly apes (see Lock and Colombo, in press ).Despite these similarities, however, we are the only species that uses language habitually, sings anddances, does maths, plays chess, etc.. Attempts to get other animals, particularly both species of chimpanzee, to do these things indicates, in my view, little about the nature of these animals as animals,but a great deal about the power of our modern, discourse-based and scaffolded, speaking practices. In

`domestication', chimps, while remaining chimps, appear capable of most things a human 3 year old iscapable of. In `the wild', they give little evidence of these potential abilities.

Second , consider the findings from the human archaeological record. There is the transition point about40,000 B.P. noted above (referred to as the `Mid/Upper Palaeolithic Transition'). Prior to that time, thereis nothing in the archaeological record that is comparable to typically modern human practices: no art;no spatial or temporal volatility of style in the tool-kit record; conservative foraging patterns apparentlybased more on scavenging than hunter-gathering; little geographical movement of tool materials (whereafter the transition tools, if still made of stone, rather than `new' materials such as ivory or bone, a stonetool might be found 900 or more kilometres from the nearest known natural occurrence of such stone);etc.. After the transition, the archaeological record contains evidence of typically modern humanpractices.

Third , the Mid/Upper Palaeolithic Transition boundary does not coincide with the known temporalorigins of the modern human morphology (or species). Modern humans existed well before this point intime, but their material remains are indicative of a non-modern way of life. The biological appearance of modern human forms is thus independent of the cultural appearance of modern human behaviours. Wealso know, as I mentioned earlier, something of the power of modern social practices in reconfiguringthe cognitive abilities of modern apes. We see in the current world the analogous reconfiguration,through their transformation and amplification of the cognitive technologies constituted by symbols, of the cognitive abilities of am humans.

Finally , recall the interplay of social relations with language in the constitution of the modern westernemotion of embarrassment. Interaction constructs contexts that language can come to symbolise, therebyproviding a cognitive technology that bootstraps the increasing discovery of those `things' that areimplied by what has already been symbolised (and see Lock, 1980, for a fuller discussion of thisapproach to the developmental elaboration of a language system).

Now, evolutionary scenario building is a notorious pastime, but I suggest that something concerned withthe social practices of morphologically modern humans changed at the 40 000bp Mid/Upper Palaeolithictransition point, and that these changes provided the ground for the sustained elaboration of pre-modernlanguage communication systems towards modern ones. Second, I suggest that as these languagesystems became a regular feature of everyday human life, they provided a culturally-conserved

environmental feature that influenced the ontogenetic elaboration of cognitive systems, such that thosefeatures we tend to regard as biological - natural science province - parts of `human nature' are, in fact,originally constituted, and subsequently maintained, by what we today label as `discourse' processes.(This hypothesis seems more parsimonious to me than the alternative, that around the time of thistransition there occurred a shift in the cognitive architecture of humans from a collection of domain-specific, encapsulated and modular intelligences to a generalised, pan-domain form of intelligence (oreven vice versa ), for there is no evidence of any biological change in the human lineage at this time thatwould likely accompany such a profound change in basic functioning.)

Working through the implications of these hypotheses to arrive at testable formulations of them will taketime. But accepting them for a moment, two points then follow. First , the study of human discoursepractices is moved from the fringe of psychological science to its centre, for the processes fundamentalto the project of the cognitive revolution are no longer encapsulated within the head of an individual, butdistributed in the symbolically-mediated practices that comprise human cultures; distributed between theindividual and the social (see also Bruner, 1990).
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Second , these hypotheses credit discourse with tremendous powers: discourse practices are beingcredited with a central role in the creation of the psychological abilities that underpin discursive practicesthemselves. `Cognitive mechanisms', if they exist, are constructed out of an interaction betweendevelopmental, maturational and socio-cultural processes, a constructive process in which the drivingengine is a consequence of the changing structure of discourse and social relation. That is, it is no longersensible to assume a biologically-given individual with a set of pre- given cognitive abilities that allowinformation `to be moved about and processed', nor to use this assumption to legitimate the currentlydominant psychological paradigms.

References

Bruner, J. (1990) Acts of Meaning . Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press

Campbell, B. (in press) An outline of human phylogeny. In A. Lock and C.R. Peters (eds), Handbook of Human Symbolic Evolution . Oxford: Clarendon Press

Chomsky, N. (1986) Knowledge of Language: its Nature, Origin, and Use . New York: Praeger

Conkey, M. (in press) A history of the interpretation of European 'Palaeolithic art': magic, mythogram,and metaphors. In A. Lock and C.R. Peters (eds), Handbook of Human Symbolic Evolution . Oxford:Clarendon Press

Elias, N. (1978) The Civilizing Process . Oxford: Basil Blackwell

Elias, N. (1982) Power & Civility . New York: Pantheon Books

Foster, M.LeC. (in press) The reconstruction of the evolution of human spoken language. In A. Lockand C.R. Peters (eds), Handbook of Human Symbolic Evolution . Oxford: Clarendon Press

Hatano, G. (1982) Cognitive consequences of practice in culture specific procedural skills. Quarterly Newsletter of the Laboratory of Comparative Human Cognition , 4, 15-17

Holloway, R. (in press) Evolution of the human brain. In A. Lock and C.R. Peters (eds), Handbook of Human Symbolic Evolution . Oxford: Clarendon Press

Jaynes, J. (1976) The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind . London: AllenLane

Johnson, C., Davis, H. and Macken, M. (in press) Symbols and structures in language acquisition. In A.Lock and C.R. Peters (eds), Handbook of Human Symbolic Evolution . Oxford: Clarendon Press

Laitman, J. T. and Reidenberg, J. S. (1988) Advances in understanding the relationship between theskill base and larynx with comments on the origins of speech. Human Evolution , 3, 99-109

Lieberman, P. (1991) Uniquely Human: the Evolution of Speech, Thought, and Selfless Behavior .Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press

Lock, A. (1980) The Guided Reinvention of Language . London: Academic Press

Lock, A. (1985) Processes of change and the elaboration of language. In E. S. Gollin (ed) The

Comparative Development of Adaptive Skills: Evolutionary Implications (pp. 239-270). Hillsdale, NJ:Lawrence Erlbaum Associates

Lock, A. (1986) Metaphenomena and change. In C. Antaki and A. Lewis (eds) Mental Mirrors: Metacognition in Social Knowledge and Communication (pp. 97-116). London: Sage Publications


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Lock, A. and Colombo, M. (in press) Cognitive abilities in a comparative perspective. In A. Lock andC.R. Peters (eds), Handbook of Human Symbolic Evolution . Oxford: Clarendon Press

Lock, A. and Symes, K. (in press) Social relations, communication, and cognition. In A. Lock and C.R.Peters (eds), Handbook of Human Symbolic Evolution . Oxford: Clarendon Press

Luria, A.R. and Yudovich, F.A. (1971) Speech and the Development of Mental Processes in the Child .Harmondsworth: Penguin

Popper, K. (1972) Objective Knowledge: An Evolutionary Approach . Oxford: Oxford University Press

Ristau, C. (in press) Animal language and cognition projects. In A. Lock and C.R. Peters (eds), Handbook of Human Symbolic Evolution . Oxford: Clarendon Press

Rolfe, L. (in press) Theoretical stages in the prehistory of grammar. In A. Lock and C.R. Peters (eds), Handbook of Human Symbolic Evolution . Oxford: Clarendon Press

Scribner, S. and Cole, M. (1981) The Psychology of Literacy . Cambridge, Mass: Harvard UniversityPress

Stigler, J.W., Barclay, C. and Aiello, P. (1982) Motor and mental abacus skills: a preliminary look at anexpert. Quarterly Newsletter of the Laboratory of Comparative Human Cognition , 4, 12-14

Stringer, (1989) The origin of early modern humans: a comparison of the European and non-Europeanevidence. In P. Mellars and C. Stringer (eds) The Human Revolution: Behavioural and BiologicalPerspectives on the Origins of Modern Humans . Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Waddell, P.J. and Penny, D. (in press) Evolutionary trees of apes and humans from DNA sequences. InA. Lock and C.R. Peters (eds), Handbook of Human Symbolic Evolution . Oxford: Clarendon Press

White, R. (in press) On the evolution of human socio-cultural systems. In A. Lock and C.R. Peters(eds), Handbook of Human Symbolic Evolution . Oxford: Clarendon Press

Wynn, T. (in press) The evolution of tools and symbolic behaviour. In A. Lock and C.R. Peters (eds), Handbook of Human Symbolic Evolution . Oxford: Clarendon Press

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The Discursive Construction of Cognitive Mechanisms