WRITING AND READING AS “COGNITIVE TECHNOLOGIES” AND THE STUDY OF READING IN COGNITIVE SCIENCES: TOWARDS AN ALTERNATIVE APPROACH TO THE THOUGHT-LANGUAGE RELATIONSHIP

Abstract

In the framework of the philosophical debate on the relationship thought-language, Dascal proposes to understand language as a "cognitive technology" (CT): that is, those means -material or mental- that humans use in a meaningful and routine way for the performance of their "cognitive objectives" (Dascal, 2002). On the other hand, Dehaene sets out to resolve, through his “neuronal recycling hypothesis”, the question of how writing fitted into our neural architecture, giving rise to the emergence of a novel cognitive capacity not caused by evolution: reading (Dehaene, 2014). I will defend that the notion of CT applied to the study of reading and writing could be a fruitful and alternative avenue of research to the problem of the thought-language relationship. Since this notion no It is committed to antagonistic positions on the thought-language relationship, and, on the other hand, it is consistent with current studies in cognitive science and neuroscience on the cognitive phenomenon of reading.