Cognitive Neuroscience Meets the Community of Knowledge

• Authors: Steven A Sloman, Brown University; Richard Patterson, Emory University; Aron K Barbey, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
• Journal Title: FRONTIERS IN SYSTEMS NEUROSCIENCE
• Volume: Volume 15
• Publisher: FRONTIERS MEDIA SA | 2021-10-21, Pages 675127-675127
• Type of Work: Article | Final Publisher PDF
• Publisher DOI: http://doi.org/10.3389/fnsys.2021.675127
• Subjects: Health Sciences, Medicine and Surgery
• Keywords: Science & Technology; Life Sciences & Biomedicine; Neurosciences; Neurosciences & Neurology; community of knowledge; cognitive neuroscience; thinking; collective cognition; social neuroscience; PARTISAN BIAS; ILLUSION; SCIENCE; CULTURE; BRAIN; MEMORIES; PARTY; TIME

Abstract

Cognitive neuroscience seeks to discover the biological foundations of the human mind. One goal is to explain how mental operations are generated by the information processing architecture of the human brain. Our aim is to assess whether this is a well-defined objective. Our contention will be that it is not because the information processing of any given individual is not contained entirely within that individual’s brain. Rather, it typically includes components situated in the heads of others, in addition to being distributed across parts of the individual’s body and physical environment. Our focus here will be on cognition distributed across individuals, or on what we call the “community of knowledge,” the challenge that poses for reduction of cognition to neurobiology and the contribution of cognitive neuroscience to the study of communal processes.