Cognitive Polyphasia

Sandra Jovchelovitch
UFRGS
August 2013
Plan
The context of cognitive polyphasia: why
does it matter?
The frames of the debate: unilinear
evolutionism and the unity of reason
Revisiting ancestors and Moscovicis
position
Studying polyphasia in contemporary public
spheres
The context: acute representational
diversity in the contemporary world
Social psychological
research and intervention
in a variety of contexts:
Schools
Communities
Organisations
Health
Institutions
Conflict and inter-group
relations
Multiculture
Diversity of
representations, views,
practices towards issues at
stake:
Communication;
Conflict
Dialogue
Segregation
Exclusion
Constructing shared
narratives
The diversity of representations
today
Globalisation versus localisation
Multi-cultural communities
New encounters between different knowledge
systems and representations
Increase in cognitive polyphasia
How do we treat the diversity of
knowledge?
Is there one form of knowing, that is the right
one, against which all others are compared and
assessed? Ex: what is the form of knowing that
qualifies as the only true knowledge today?
How do we decide which forms of knowing are
legitimate and deserve recognition? Ex: children,
lay people, tribal communities (exotic others)
Do different forms of knowing displace each
other? Ex: when development planners go to
Africa to work with local populations, what
happens with local knowledge?
Why does it matter?
The debate about diversity in knowledge is important for
conceptual, applied and even political reasons:
Different ways of knowing express different communities,
ways of life and traditions;
There is a tendency to devalue forms of knowing based on
common sense, belief and tradition; these are usually
called ignorance;
The clash between different forms of knowing is a crucial
component of policy making and institutional practices
Failure to recognise forms of knowing other than science
leads to the mis-recognition of fundamental rights related
to the identity and cultural traditions of a community.
The theory of social representations has the potential
to address these issues through two concepts:
Representation
epistemic, emotional
and social structure
enables all knowledge
systems
who, how, what,
why and what for
of representation
Cognitive Polyphasia
different forms of
knowing co-exist side by
side
different forms of
knowing express
different needs and fulfil
different functions
Cognitive Polyphasia
(Moscovici, 1973)
Concept was introduced in the study about the
reception of psychoanalysis in France
Different types of rationality were involved in the
construction of knowledge about psychoanalysis.
This different rationalities co-existed side by side
in the same group, and mutatis mutantis in the
same individual.
People draw one form of knowledge or another,
depending on their specific circumstances in a
given time and context.
The collective intellect: Babel Tower or
diversity well ordained?
"The coexistence of cognitive systems should be the rule
rather than the exception () the same group, and mutatis
mutandis, the same individual are capable of employing
different logical registers in the domains they relate with
perspectives, information and values that are distinctive to
each. () In a general way, one can say that the dynamic
coexistence - interference or specialisation - of different
modalities of knowledge corresponding to specific relations
between man and his social context determine a state of
cognitive polyphasia." (Moscovici, 1976:285-286, my
translation).
Comparing different knowledges
Putting different knowledges in a hierarchical scale is part
and parcel of the inaugural corpus of the social sciences and
its subsequent development.
In psychology, research on the development and education
of reason was based on the idea of a progressive scale:
lower forms of knowing progress to higher forms, which
once achieved displace the higher forever.
This research juxtaposed the individual adult to children,
primitives, lay people, the mad and the crowd. The former
holds knowledge, all the latter are sites of irrationality.
Knowledge versus ignorance, superstition, myth, common
sense, beliefs, etc.
Antecedents
Durkheim versus Lvy-Bruhl
Piaget versus Vygotsky
Societies progress by stages; primitive classification is a primitive stage of
scientific classification (Durkheim, 1905);
Human reason progresses by stages towards a fully rational epistemic subject
The rational unity of the thinking being, which is taken-for-granted by most
philosophers, is a desideratum, not a fact. () as a matter of fact our mental
activity is both rational and irrational. The prelogical and the mystic are co-
exitent with the logical. (Lvy-Bruhl, 1910)
Transformation in knowledge is discontinous and there is no substitution of
forms of knowing but co-existence (Vygotsky and Luria, 1993)
The controversy:1
There are no fundamental differences in human
thinking across cultures: logical process are the
same all over.
Basic thought processes are the same everywhere
and if left alone all human communities would
independently pass through the same intellectual
stages.
Human thinking progresses from lower to higher
forms of thinking.
Elementary forms should be isolated primarily so
as to facilitate a better understanding of higher
forms.
The Controversy: 2
The differences in human thinking across cultures
are fundamental for understanding human thinking
itself.
Different types of interaction and culture lead to
different types of knowing and thinking.
Logic itself is a malleable category and different
logics are no less logic then ones own.
Different logics are not mutually exclusive (either
science or common sense but both)
Polifasia Cognitiva
Formas diferentes e por vezes contraditrias de
saber coexistem no mesmo sistema de
conhecimento;
Constitui o estado predominante do saber na
contemporaneidade
Constitui padro cognitivo bsico da episteme
humana
Desenvolvimento do argumento:
a) Saber e contexto: expressividade
b) Modalidades de Encontro: dialgico/no-dialgico
Subjetivo
Self (Eu)
Experincia
Intersubj
Comunicao
Interao
Objetivo
Proposies
de mundo
Leitura do
mundo
A Expressividade do Saber
Tempos
Contextos
Studying Knowledge Encounters
Science and common sense
Biomedical and local knowledge
Historiography and lay representations of
history
Ex:
Health Beliefs of the Chinese community in London
(Jovchelovitch and Gervais, 1999)
Communication between two spheres: experts and lay public
(Castro and Batel, 2009)
Cognitive Polyphasia
It refers to the co-existence of different modalities
of representation in the minds of individuals and
in the thinking of communities.
Adaptation and diversification
Evolved socio-cognitive capacity
Situated cognition
Human communities construct a wide, plastic and
flexible reservoir of representations, that can be
used to fulfil different function in different
contexts.
The diversity and co-existence of representations
is a major cognitive asset of humans.
Dimensions Constituents Levels of
Contradiction
Content Semantic/Symbolic What an object means
Process Logic/Reasoning How people think
Emotion Affective What people feel
Cognitive Polyphasia: Dimensions, constituents
and levels of contradiction
Self-Other Relations Recognition of the Other Non-recognition of the Other Level of Analysis
Argumentative styles Transformative Monologising (Aveling, 2011) Individuals (children and
adults) and collectives
(groups, communities)
Consensus Reification (Batel & Castro, 2008)
Semantic promoters Semantic barriers (Gillespie, 2008)
Multi-perspective/polyvocality
Non-imposing
Single perspective/one-voiced (univocal)
Imposition of response (coerciveness)
(Linell,2009)
Thematisation Conventionalisation (Mouro & Castro, 2012)
Genres of communication Persuasion
Argumentation
Propaganda
Political Confession (Markov, 2007, 2008,
2012)
Propagation
Diffusion
Propaganda Moscovici (2008)
OUTCOMES: Varieties of
Cognitive Polyphasia
Selective prevalence Hybridisation Displacement Individuals and collectives
Empirical and theoretical
support
Separation Hybridisation Pluralism (Arthi, 2012) Individuals
Mixed representations Hybrid representations (Gervais & Jovchelovitch,
1998)
Individuals and collectives
Hybridisation (cognitive polyphasia) Segregation/destruction (monological cognition)
(Jovchelovitch,2007)
Individuals and collectives
Target-dependent thinking
Integrative thinking
Synthetic thinking
Integrative thinking (Legare et. al., 2012)
Individuals
Polyphasic Non-polyphasic (Mouro & Castro, 2012) Individuals
Dynamic coexistence Hybridity Coercive supplantation (Priego-Hernndez, 2011) Individuals and collectives
Cognitive polyphasia Cognitive monophasia (Provencher, 2011) Individuals
Bounded point of view Open point of view Closed point of view(Sammut & Gaskell, 2010) Collectives
Cognitive closure (Kruglanski et.al., 2006;
Webster & Kruglanski, 1997)
Cognitive dissonance (Festinger, 1957)
Individuals and collectives
DIAGNOSTIC
INSTATIATIONS
Democratic political systems
Healer shopping
Tokenistic participation
International policy
Syncretism
Totalitarian regimes
Intolerance to contradiction
Asymmetric doctor/patient relations
Racial discrimination
Individuals and collectives
(political sphere, health
and illness, social
development, social
identities)
States of Coexistence and Varieties of Cognitive Polyphasia