Society and Human Action: Technology Revisited

Abstract

The question of mind, long the preserve of philosophy, was claimed as alegitimate object of study by the human and social sciences in the 18thcentury. Two contrasting approaches have structured this field: thenaturalist explanation of the mental and the hermeneutical understandingof meaning. This debate has been renewed in the second part of the 20thcentury by the advent of cognitive science, which openly declares as itsaim the naturalization of the mind.The aim of this chapter is to present the current state of the art,emphasizing not only the contrasting premisses and implications, butalso the hidden affinities which are now, little by little, leading to areconciliation of these two paradigms. Cognitive science, initiallyphysicalist or functionalist, is progressively integrating a hermeneuticdimension; conversely, an intense reflection on the question of actionis leading the hermeneutic human and social sciences to elaborate arenewed concept of cognition.Finally, the concepts of a double hermeneutics and the relational natureof the social will call for completion by a material hermeneutics,taking into account the fact that human action in society is bothenabled and constrained by technical artifacts.