Papers by Rasmus Gahrn-Andersen
Linguistic Frontiers, 2023
In radical linguistics 1 , it is argued that linguistic phenomena are irreducible to the workings... more In radical linguistics 1 , it is argued that linguistic phenomena are irreducible to the workings of a language system. Traditionally, such a system is considered as more or less synonymous with a language or what Saussure (1959) termed 'la langue' i.e., a homogeneous system of clearly defined and predetermined abstract units existing beyond the realm of heterogeneous linguistic interaction yet determining its meaningful outcomes. Despite challenging the Saussurean view 2 by emphasizing the crucial role played by heterogeneous linguistic activity-or languaging-there is a peculiar overlap between Saussure's classical view and radical positions: in both 1 I use the term 'radical' broadly to refer to positions that challenge linguistic orthodoxies and, more specifically, approaches that ascribe central importance to linguistic activity. These are, for instance, integrationism (Harris 1981), dialogism (Linell 2013) and the Distributed Language perspective (Cowley 2009). 2 Here as well as throughout this paper, I am referring to Saussure in terms of how his theorizing is presented in the magnum opus of Course in General Linguistics which was published posthumously and edited by Charles Bally and Albert Sechehaye. cases, we find a tendency to posit a dualist ontology that distinguishes, on the one hand, language-use in the form of either parole (Saussure) or languaging (radical approaches) from, on the other, a language or second-order constructs. By contrast, Saussure took language-or la langue-to be a homogeneous phenomenon which "is a self-contained whole and a principle of classification" (9). And as such, it amounts to a well-defined object in the heterogeneous mass of speech facts. It can be localized in the limited segment of the speaking-circuit where an auditory
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Open Semiotics (- edited by A. Biglari), 2023
This chapter extends semiotics by scrutinizing a major limitation that besets sign theory: a theo... more This chapter extends semiotics by scrutinizing a major limitation that besets sign theory: a theory of this kind will all too often emphasise synchronistic processes or, in other traditions, pure relations. Such a focus overlooks how human skills and social practices inform semiosis. In pursuing this matter, the chapter gives close attention to languaging and argue that 'pure relations' are, in fact, diachronic constructs; they derive from a history of observing that draws on linguistic resources.
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Social Epistemology, 2023
The paper thematizes basic content-free cognition in human social practices. It explores the enla... more The paper thematizes basic content-free cognition in human social practices. It explores the enlanguaged dimension of skilled practical doings and expertise by taking the minimal case of concept-based perception as its starting point. Having made a case for considering such activity as free of mental content, I argue in favor of the abolishment of the distinction between truth-telling and social consensus, thus questioning the assumption held by proponents of Radical Enactivism, namely that truth and accuracy conditions are restricted to content-involving activity. Instead, I claim, even content-free practical activity can be evaluated on the basis of accuracy conditions which ultimately tie with agents' practical understandings and the normative aspects of the practice. With this as my backdrop, I explore how expertise arises in the interplay of enlanguaged affordances, concept-involving perception and the normative accuracy conditions that constrain a particular practice.
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Pragmatics and Society, 2023
In expanding on the 'dynamics first, symbols afterwards' principle (Cowley 2009) of Distributed L... more In expanding on the 'dynamics first, symbols afterwards' principle (Cowley 2009) of Distributed Language research, I propose that embodied linguistic competencies comprise the prerequisite for human agents to engage in sociomaterial practices. I make the case that human practical activity is fundamentally 'enlanguaged' and that linguistic skills are not only trans-practical in the sense of enabling agents to engage in diverse activities across practices but also that they constitute the basis for adult skill acquisition (see Dreyfus and Dreyfus 1986) more generally. Specifically, I explore language-relative skills as the enablers of more diverse activities than what is prescribed to them by Saussurean linguistic tradition i.e., the denotative relations intrinsic to linguistic signs as well the rulegoverned combinations of such signs into meaningful sentences.
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Entropy, 2023
This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative... more This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY
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Organizational Cognition
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Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence, 2023
Epistemic engineering arises as systems and their parts develop functionality that is construed a... more Epistemic engineering arises as systems and their parts develop functionality that is construed as valid knowledge. By hypothesis, epistemic engineering is a basic evolutionary principle. It ensures that not only living systems identify the di erences that make di erences but also ensure that distributed control enables them to construct epistemic change. In tracking such outcomes in human life, we stress that humans act within poly-centered, distributed systems. Similar to how people can act as inert parts of a system, they also actively bring forth intents and vicariant e ects. Human cognitive agents use the systemic function to construct epistemic novelties. In the illustration, we used a published experimental study of a cyborg cockroach to consider how an evoneered system enables a human subject to perform as an adaptor with some "thought control" over the animal. Within a wide system, brains enable the techniques to arise ex novo as they attune to the dictates of a device. Human parts act as adaptors that simplify the task. In scaling up, we turn to a case of organizational cognition. We track how adaptor functions spread when drone-based data are brought to the maintenance department of a Danish utility company. While pivoting on how system operators combine experience with the use of software, their expertise sets o epistemically engineered results across the company and beyond. Vicariant e ects emerge under the poly-centered control of brains, persons, equipment, and institutional wholes. As a part of culture, epistemic engineering works by reducing entropy.
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Biosystems, 2023
This paper presents an alternative to Autopoietic Enactivism in the form of a Code Biology-inform... more This paper presents an alternative to Autopoietic Enactivism in the form of a Code Biology-informed account on human sense-making. It demonstrates the possibility of avoiding a dualism between, on the one hand, the autonomy of individual sense-makers and, on the other, the heteronomy of social facts. This is possible because code biological principles are pertinent to different levels of biological and non-biological organization and cut across the organismic self-non-self border. Analytically, one can maintain the overall integrity of an agent as a separable unit of (inter)action while also avoiding an autonomy-heteronomy divide. We therefore emphasise the constitutive role of codified relations that, while irreducible to operational closure, connect the sense-making agent's social interactions to those of other agents. The move grants a central, constitutive role to external norms (or, heteronomy) as altering the internal, embodied integrity of an autonomous agent. Drawing on the case of prosthetics use in amputees, we show that successful integration of a prothesis cannot be reduced to the substitution of a missing limb. Rather, it demands experienced bodily wholeness on the part of the agent which can only be achieved by attuning and adapting to use of a prosthesis while also internalizing social norms and values. It is concluded that many aspects of the living actualize codified relations which incorporate both heteronomous and autonomous traits.
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Organizational Cognition: The Theory of Social Organizing. Secchi, D., Gahrn-Andersen, R. & Cowley, S. J. (eds.). Routledge,, 2023
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Routledge, 2023
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This article presents interactivity as the crux for much work conducted by members of the Centre ... more This article presents interactivity as the crux for much work conducted by members of the Centre for Human Interactivity. Interactivity can be understood in two senses: First, as the ontological substrate of human action. Second, as an approach for studying human-specific phenomena. The article begins by elaborating on the definition of interactivity as 'sense-saturated coordination that contributes to human action'. In this connection, we clarify the two central notions of 'sense-saturation' and 'coordination'. With the clarification in place, we move on by showing how interactivity can be studied empirically. First, we present Cognitive Event Analysis as a fruitful methodology for coming to terms with the multi-scalarity of human cognition and social interaction; second, we present a multitude of exemplars and case-studies on interactivity on diverse phenomena including human organizing, reading, trace-making, participatory design, social presence, online consultation and psychotherapy. Finally, we address some of the current and future challenges of inter-activity-based approaches to human cognition.
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AI & SOCIETY, 2021
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With the purpose of establishing life-mind-language continuity, the paper thematizes an important... more With the purpose of establishing life-mind-language continuity, the paper thematizes an important phenomenon missing from Maturana’s (1988) theory of languaging: the generative basis of second order consensual coordination. While Maturana suggests that coordination involving biological information is qualitatively different from coordination involving concepts, we make the case that the two should be seen as continuous. We critically expand on Clark’s (2003) point that language and technical artefacts extend human cognitive capacities while challenging Clark’s Shannon-based view on information. Rather than focusing on language as a representational medium we turn to how languaging is enabled by multiple, qualitatively different organizational levels in organism-environment systems. On our view, language is irreducible to the exchange of predetermined, conceptual meanings. Rather, we hold, human linguistic abilities are based in embodied hierarchies of molecular coding in the sense that some of these hierarchies rise to neuronal (electromagnetic) and cognitive patterns that enable meaning-making activities (including languaging) connected with a particular praxis. Our account is based on the case of synthetic evolution and engineering (Evoneering) of humans with intelligent (bio)nanomaterials and (bio)chips implanted into their body for medical purposes.
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Chinese Semiotic Studies, 2022
Looking beyond the internalism-externalism debate, we offer a distributed view of how experience ... more Looking beyond the internalism-externalism debate, we offer a distributed view of how experience can garner linguistic and mental content. To make the case, first, we challenge the idea that cognition is organism-centered and synchronistic. Instead, we use Berthoz's principle of "simplexity" to open up the multiscalarity of cognitive ecosystems. In exemplifying wide cognition, we track how the eyeball's neurophysiology is transformed by simplex tricks. As learning was integrated with seeing, looking evolved. Later, we argue, lineages gained social use of gaze. In primates, gaze was integrated with cultural techniques like nut-cracking and termite dipping. Individual perceptual experience thus came to build on enculturated behavior. We then turn to the case of modern humans who make use of things with "meaning attached." Their cognition, we argue, is not only enculturated but also enlanguaged. In this connection, we show how simplex mechanisms disclose aspects-inthings, thus allowing individuals to attribute practical significance to selected parts of their surroundings. In harnessing articulatory skills, human judgements draw on cultural and practical expectations: as a child perceives, she also learns to observe and say things. In this connection, we argue, people come to act ostensively and give rise to descriptions. In terms proposed here, humans learn to simplexify.
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Philosophia, 2022
It is a well-established fact in representationalist cognitive science that concrete concepts inf... more It is a well-established fact in representationalist cognitive science that concrete concepts influence human perception. In radical, anti-representationalist cognitive science, however, the case is far from clear. One reason for this is that proponents of Radical Enactivism (REC) yet have to clarify whether perceptual activity involving concepts is bound to rely on mental content or if it instantiates basic, contentfree cognition. The purpose of this paper is to show that conceptinvolving perception instantiates REC-style basic cognition. It begins by considering 'cognitive projection' as the term is introduced by Distributed Cognition research. Although being introduced as a means for exploring concept-based perception in non-representationalist terms, I argue that 'cognitive projection' comes with mentalist overtones and unclarities concerning its linguistic basis. With the purpose of overcoming these shortcomings, I unfold a REC-friendly reading of Wittgenstein's writings on aspect perception, arguing that basic concept-involving perception is an instantiation of this particular phenomenon. Concludingly, with the aim of ensuring compatibility, I make a connection between conceptual aspect perception and the REC notion of attentional anchors. The latter has been introduced to explore the role of material artefacts in the context of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics educational design but has, I submit, the potential for being extended to other practical contexts.
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Italian Journal of Philosophy of Language , 2021
With the purpose of establishing life-mind-language continuity, the paper thematizes an important... more With the purpose of establishing life-mind-language continuity, the paper thematizes an important phenomenon missing from Maturana's (1988) theory of languaging: the generative basis of second order consensual coordination. While Maturana suggests that coordination involving biological information is qualitatively different from coordination involving concepts, we make the case that the two should be seen as continuous. We critically expand on Clark's (2003) point that language and technical artefacts extend human cognitive capacities while challenging Clark's Shannonbased view on information. Rather than focusing on language as a representational medium we turn to how languaging is enabled by multiple, qualitatively different organizational levels in organism-environment systems. On our view, language is irreducible to the exchange of predetermined, conceptual meanings. Rather, we hold, human linguistic abilities are based in embodied hierarchies of molecular coding in the sense that some of these hierarchies rise to neuronal (electromagnetic) and cognitive patterns that enable meaning-making activities (including languaging) connected with a particular praxis. Our account is based on the case of synthetic evolution and engineering (Evoneering) of humans with intelligent (bio)nanomaterials and (bio)chips implanted into their body for medical purposes.
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Acta Analytica, 2021
The paper reviews the current state of play around non-representationalist attempts at countering... more The paper reviews the current state of play around non-representationalist attempts at countering Clark and Toribio's (1994) representation-hunger thesis. It introduces a distinction between different approaches to Chemero's (2009) Radical Embodied Cognition thesis in form of, on the one hand, those pushing a hard line and, on the other, those who are more relaxed about their antirepresentationalist commitments. In terms of overcoming Clark and Toribio's thesis, hardliners seek to avoid any mentioning of mental content in the activity they purport to explain. Yet, the paper argues, adopting a hardline complicates this endeavor considerably and unnecessarily. Those adopting a relaxed REC, however, are better off in that they have no problem in recognizing that some types of cognition are hybrid. By turning to Hutto and Myin's Radical Enactivism as a prime example of a relaxed approach to the REC thesis, the paper points towards the lack of continuity of covariant information and informational content as the gap that would necessarily have to be closed in order for RECers to, once and for all, dismiss Clark and Toribio's hypothesis that certain kinds of cognition are per definition off limits to antirepresentationalism.
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Context Dependence in Language, Action, and Cognition . Ciecierski, T. & Grabarczyk, P. (eds.). De Gruyter, p. 209–228 ( Epistemic Studies, vol. 46)., 2021
Socio-material practices entail what Per Linell (2009) terms 'situation-transcendence' in that th... more Socio-material practices entail what Per Linell (2009) terms 'situation-transcendence' in that they allow agents to engage in purposeful activity that exceeds the spatiotemporal constraints of a given situation. Radical perspectives in cognitive science offer insights into the cognitive dynamics involved: While those supportive of Distributed Cognition (DCog) analyze how cognition is distributed synchronously across situations, proponents of 4E Cognition show that cognition extends in a diachronic manner. Despite their differences, both perspectives acknowledge that agents must be sensitive to contextual information in order to accomplish cognitive tasks. In fact, both analyse the functionality of socio-cultural resources (e.g. computers, notebooks, instruments etcetera) in relation to particular contexts and tasks, and focus on how they give rise to the cognitive resources required for different kinds of cognitive activity. Having described key positions in the literature, the paper presents a case study on the practice of leakage detection in heating pipes as this is done by professionals in a Danish utility company. Accordingly, the paper explores situation-transcendence and, more specifically, how contextual constrains connect with and emerge from the synchronic and diachronic processes involved as professionals engage in data analysis, internal and external coordination and on-site exploration.
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Papers by Rasmus Gahrn-Andersen
others who hold that language can be studied in isolation from its concrete manifestations. By exploring the relation between materiality and linguistic activity, the article extends Malafouris’ Material Engagement Theory (MET) while clarifying the phenomenon of ‘linguistic denotation’. In so doing, it critiques orthodox approaches to language which trace denotation to abstract meanings and/or mental representations. The article shows how the denotative aspects of language can be cashed out in non-representational terms and, furthermore, that the interrelation of denotation and materiality is crucial to human material culture in that it allows for material engagements to
transcend localised contexts. These engagements become global in Latour’s sense and, in so doing, denotation ceases to demand descriptions in terms of representations.
Languaging and Eco-civilizations: Towards Consilience with the Life Sciences
University of Southern Denmark (Odense Campus)
12th to 15th of August 2019
The conference aims to bring about consilience (a bringing forth of new knowledge) that can unite those who acknowledge human responsibility for the well-being of the living world. Accordingly, we aim to connect ecolinguists with work in fields that include bio-ethics, ecocriticism, biosemiotics, economics and the environmental sciences.