Body, Mind, and Order: Local Memory and the Control of Mental Representations in Medieval and Renaissance Sciences of Self

Abstract

Historical cognitive science works between two projects. One is the analysis of other and older theories of mind, of how they relate to and differ from current approaches, and of wh at forgotten or neglected explananda they bring into focus. The other, relating to cognitive practices rather than theories, is the task of working out how such views about mind and self reflect or partly cause different historical forms of mental activity. The delicate equilibrium to be maintained is between allowing for the plasticity in human cognition which anthropological and historical data can suggest, and yet remaining not just aware of but embedded in the diversity of approaches in contemporary theories of mind, in order to make the history effective and utilisable in the growing interdisciplinary environment. In specific domains, such as visual perception, dreams, emotion, inductive reasoning, or (as he re) memory and learning, the shifting interdependencies of cognition and culture can be traced from two directions. Firstly, tensions can be addressed in many periods between social or moral norms and theoretical commitments concerning body, brain, and mind; then, more self-consciously present-centred inquiry can employ polemically, within cognitive science, the extra breadth, context-sensitivity, and attention to discontinuity which historical work requires. This paper, then, is a tentative step, at a very general level, towards the proposal of one set of analytical devices for historical cognitive science. The domain is an area of problems about memory and personal identity which cross levels between philosophy of mind, 'psychology', neurophysiology and medicine. The case, crudely, is that embroiled with these problems have often been aseries of related conceptual dichotomies or, better, continua between G. Freeland and A. Corones (eds.), 1543 and All ThaI. 117-150