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Abstract

The cognitive revolution of the 1950's spawned development of the Turing Machine model of Mind (TMM) entailing both the formalism and practice of casting human cognition in the image of a digital computer. With the TMM, the mechanism of knowing (processing over internal knowledge states) could be integrated with the content of what is known (the mental products of histories of social living). This integration promoted the division of labor among psychologists and anthropologists which persists in many modern studies of mind and culture. This paper presents an alternative model of mind -- the Distributed Cognition model of Mind (DCM) -- based upon a reconstruction of the natures of, and relationships between, culture and cognition. The DCM is founded upon the notions that (1) cognition is built out of interactions among structures, (2) these interactions (instances of processes which employ and create structures) are not limited to events internal to individuals, but distribute across diverse media, social space, and time, and (3) culture is itself such a process, generating many of the structures and processes constituting cognition and human intelligence. The model is supported by data collected during ethnographic fieldwork among fishermen of an island community off the west coast of Sweden. Data analysis demonstrates the negotiated, distributed, and experientially grounded nature of language employed to communicate about sonar images of herring which mediate fishermen's understandings and practice.

@inproceedings{hazlehurst_dotsSprinkles,
  author={Brian Hazlehurst},
  title={Dots, sprinkles, and flecks: sonar talk and the distributed cognition model of mind},
  year={1996},
  booktitle={American Anthropological Association Meetings 1996},
  url={http://www.isrl.uiuc.edu/~amag/langev/paper/hazlehurst_dotsSprinkles.html}
}