Interactional Imogen: language, practice and the body
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Interactional Imogen: language, practice and the body Harry Collins 1 # The Author(s) 2020
Abstract Here I try to improve on the available answers to certain long-debated questions and set out some consequences for the answers. Are there limits to the extent to which we can understand the conceptual worlds of other human communities and of non-human creatures? How does this question relate to our ability to engage in other cultures’ practices and languages? What is meant by ‘the body’ and what is meant by ‘the brain’ and how do different meanings bear on the questions? The central answer developed here is that it is possible, given the right circumstances, for a competent human from any human group to understand the culture of any other human group without engaging in their practices though there are barriers when it comes to communication across species. This answer has important social and political consequences and consequences for the debate about artificial intelligence. Keywords Understanding strange cultures . Language and practice . Language and the
body . Hubert Dreyfus . Rachel Dolezal . Artificial intelligence Are there limits to the extent to which we can understand the conceptual worlds of other human communities and of non-human creatures? Is it necessary to engage in the practice of others to understand their conceptual world? To what extent and under what circumstance can language convey an understanding of the practical world of another The initial trigger for this paper was the question: ‘What does it mean for language to contain practice’ put to me at a seminar at the ‘International Centre for Semiotic Studies “Umberto Eco”’ in Urbino, Italy, in September/October 2019, though the topic has expanded well beyond this and goes back to a question I have been trying to answer since 1970. Arthur Reber read an early draft and kept me straight on evolution. I benefited greatly from a useful discussion at Cardiff University’s Centre for the Study of Knowledge, Expertise and Science (KES) in October, 2019. All remaining mistakes and infelicities are my responsibility. Some of the earlier positions and arguments were published as Collins 1996, 2000 (and Dreyfus’s response to this within his, 2000, Festschrift volume), 2004a, 2004b, 2008, 2017a, Collins 2019a; Dreyfus 1967, 1972, 2017; Malpas and Wrathall 2000; Selinger 2003, 2008; Selinger et al. 2007.
* Harry Collins [email protected]
1
Cardiff University, Glamorgan Building, Cardiff CF10 3WT, UK
H. Collins
community or group of creatures? What does it mean to say, ‘language contains practice’? What is meant by ‘the body’ and what is meant by ‘the brain’ and how do different meanings bear on the questions? What are the implications of the answers to the questions for society, for the understanding of society, and for the prospect of artificial intelligence? Those are some of the topics addressed in this paper. I begin by revisiting and reassessing existing positions some of which have been the subject of long running arguments.1
1 Terminological
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