Cognition as a Black Box: The Blind Date of Mind and Culture

Abstract

Building upon Wassmann's (1995) dialogue, it is claimed that a debate between psychology and anthropology cannot be reduced to narrow issues of methodology. The core of the dialogue is in the conceptual domain-how does knowledge emerge, and what is its nature? Knowledge always appears situated in action, and the type of knowledge involved in the interface between the individual and his or her group necessarily has a communicative, discursive character. The type of knowledge about cultural and mental processes always assumes the social embeddedness of human individuals. Hence both psychological processes and cultural phenomena may be viewed as inherently chaotic. Nevertheless there needs to exist some pre-organized state of the phenomena on which meanings can be built. The problem of the relationship between psychology and anthropology cannot be reduced to the relationship between cognitive psychology and cognitive anthropology, but requires a historical approach to the processes of emergence of cultural meanings.