A commentary on  "An enquiry concerning the nature of conceptual categories: a case-study on the social dimension of human cognition", by John Stewart (2014)in 'Frontiers in Psychology', Vol.5

Loader, Paul

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Commodities and Cognition

Paul Loader

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GENERAL COMMENTARY
published: 04 November 2014
doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2014.01181
Commodities and cognition
Paul Loader*
Informatics, University of Sussex, Brighton, UK
*Correspondence: P.Loader@sussex.ac.uk
Edited by:
Hanne De Jaegher, University of the Basque Country, Spain
Reviewed by:
Ezequiel Alejandro Di Paolo, Ikerbasque - Basque Foundation for Science, Spain
Keywords: Sohn-Rethel, cognition, commodities, apriorism, empiricism
A commentary on
An enquiry concerning the nature of con-
ceptual categories: a case-study on the
social dimension of human cognition
by Stewart, J. (2014). Front. Psychol. 5:654.
doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2014.00654
John Stewart’s paper examines arguments
for a social explanation of the concep-
tual categories which Kant and others have
posited as the pre-requisite for abstract
cognition. Such an explanation would
have the advantage of providing a sat-
isfactory alternative to both empiricism,
which cannot tell us how we get from the
particular to the universal, and Kantian
apriorism which does not really offer an
explanation (p. 2).
Stewart looks first at Durkheim’s (1915)
account which, focusing on ethnographic
studies of Australian aborigines, argues
that abstract concepts used in these
societies had their origins in (essen-
tially social) religious categories. Stewart
spends the bulk of the paper, however,
examining Sohn-Rethel’s (1978) account.
Combining Marx’s twin insights that ideas
are “sublimates” of the “material life
process” (Marx, 1844, p. 104) and that
the “mystical character” of the commod-
ity is such that “not an atom of mat-
ter” (Marx, 1867, p. 138) enters into its
existence as an exchange value, Sohn-
Rethel argues that the “enigmatic cog-
nitive faculties of civilized man” (1978,
p. 34) have their roots in commod-
ity exchange. In particular abstract non-
empirical concepts are derived ultimately
from the “real abstraction” of commodity
exchange. Stewart selects some of Sohn-
Rethel’s own “homologies” to demon-
strate this relation: solipsism corresponds
to the situation of the agent in exchange
wherein “the action is social, the mind is
private” (p. 43); Parmenidean “oneness”
derives from the universal equivalence
between commodities expressed through
exchange value; “abstract quantity” from
the “non-dimensional quantity” which the
act of exchange attributes to objects as
commodities; “abstract time” from the
immutability of the object considered as
commodity, and so on.
Stewart makes a good case for Sohn-
Rethel as presenting an account of
cognition which is “social” in a more
thoroughgoing way than is typically coun-
tenanced by embodied, extended, and
distributed approaches. Moreover in high-
lighting Sohn-Rethel’s work within this
context, Stewart’s paper may serve to
generate discussion in other, equally illu-
minating, directions. In particular we
might note Sohn-Rethel’s rejection of
the traditional view that “abstraction is
the inherent activity and the exclusive
privilege of thought” (p. 19), in favor of
a conception whereby abstraction ini-
tially manifests itself through action. With
“real abstraction,” says Sohn-Rethel, “only
the action is abstract, the consciousness
of the actors is not” (p. 30). Thus, we
would seem to have an instance of a
higher form of cognition constituting itself
enactively (and collectively). This perhaps
provides the germs for an interesting chal-
lenge to accounts which, whilst embracing
various elements of an embodied, embed-
ded, outlook, still reserve a non-enactive
space for |offline cognition,” with the lat-
ter characterized solely in terms of the
inner representational states of individual
agents, decoupled from real-time interac-
tion with the world (e.g., Clark and Grush,
1999; Wheeler, 2005).
We might add that Stewart is to be
commended for introducing an unam-
biguously Marxian theorist into the arena
of cognitive science. Marx has had some
significant influence on recent currents in
cognitive science, via intermediaries such
as Vygotsky, Merleau-Ponty, and Levins
and Lewontin but the Marxian charac-
ter of this influence is rarely acknowl-
edged. Here the relevance of at least
one strand of Marxian theory is made
explicit.
Insofar as there may be difficulties
with aspects of Stewart’s account, these
perhaps have less to do with Stewart’s
own admirably lucid summary and anal-
ysis of Sohn-Rethel’s book, and more to
do with details of the latter’s own argu-
ment. It might be suggested, for example,
that “solipsism” is not really a conceptual
category on a par with “time,” “space,”
“oneness” etc. but is rather a kind of philo-
sophical aberration (albeit one that may
well have its roots in the alienation of com-
modity exchange.) Connectedly, some of
Sohn-Rethel’s arguments for a connection
between particular conceptual categories
and the exchange nexus seem more con-
vincing than others, a fact which perhaps
leaves the reader wishing for an inde-
pendent criterion by means of which the
correctness or otherwise of these correla-
tions can be assessed. There is also, for
this reader, at least, an apparent equivo-
cation (in Sohn-Rethel’s account) between
the idea that commodity exchange is the
source of conceptual abstraction per se
and the idea that commodity exchange is
the source of particular abstract concepts.
None of these points, however, should
be seen as detracting from the original-
ity and overall plausibility of Sohn-Rethel’s
position.
www.frontiersin.org November 2014 | Volume 5 | Article 1181 | 1
Loader Commodities and cognition
If there is one area of tension within
Stewart’s own analysis this is perhaps to
be found in his concern with the pre-
cise causal relation between social forms
and conceptual forms. He argues that “the
social forms and the thought forms come
about together; while there is a sense in
which it is the social forms which provide
the ground for the conceptual forms... it
is surely at least as much the other way
round: the cognitive capacity to think in
a certain way is a condition for the corre-
sponding form of social life to arise.” (p. 6)
Stewart’s predicament here is, in part, a
familiar one, recognizable both to dynam-
ically oriented cognitive scientists, and to
dialectically oriented Marxists alike. It is
the problem of how to elucidate reciprocal
causal relations in any particular instance
without appearing to give ground to either
side of the causal equation in isolation.
In this case, conceding that “a cognitive
capacity to think in a certain way” is a pre-
requisite for the forms of social life under
discussion, might be giving adherents of
apriorism too much to play with.
Sidestepping the causal logistical
aspects of this quandary, the problem
might be at least partly ameliorated
through recognition that the “cogni-
tive capacity” in question could be an
embodied one, and so not “a priori”
in any traditionally cognitivist sense.
Here it is worth remembering that, like
Sohn-Rethel’s “real abstraction,” Lakoff
and Johnson’s “embodied concepts” were
likewise an attempt to surmount the
apriorism/empiricism divide by ground-
ing elements of conceptual thought in
material being:
Reason is not, in any way, a tran-
scendent feature of the universe or of
disembodied mind. Instead it is shaped
crucially by the peculiarities of our
human bodies.
(Lakoff and Johnson, 1999, p. 4)
Perhaps a synthesis of Sohn-Rethel’s
and Lakoff and Johnson’s insights
might provide fruitful terrain for future
research.
REFERENCES
Clark, A., and Grush, R. (1999). “Towards a
Cognitive Robotics.” Adapt. Behav. 7, 5–16. doi:
10.1177/105971239900700101
Durkheim, E. (1915). The Elementary Forms of the
Religious Life. New York, NY: The Free Press.
Lakoff, G., and Johnson, M. (1999). Philosophy
In The Flesh: The Embodied Mind and Its
Challenge to Western Thought.New York, NY: Basic
Books.
Marx, K. (1844). “Economic and Philosophic
Manuscripts,” in Selected Writings, ed K. Marx
(Oxford: Oxford University Press), 75–111.
Marx, K. (1867). Capital – A Critique of Political
Economy, Vol. 1. London: Penguin edition 1976.
Sohn-Rethel, A. (1978). Intellectual and Manual
Labour. A Critique of Epistemology. Atlantic
Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press.
Wheeler, M. (2005). Reconstructing the Cognitive
World: The Next Step. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Conflict of Interest Statement: The author declares
that the research was conducted in the absence of any
commercial or financial relationships that could be
construed as a potential conflict of interest.
Received: 18 September 2014; accepted: 29 September
2014; published online: 04 November 2014.
Citation: Loader P (2014) Commodities and cognition.
Front. Psychol. 5:1181. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2014.01181
This article was submitted to Cognitive Science, a section
of the journal Frontiers in Psychology.
Copyright © 2014 Loader. This is an open-access arti-
cle distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons
Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or
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tion or reproduction is permitted which does not comply
with these terms.
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