Must cognitive anthropology be mentalistic? Moving towards a relational ontology of social reality

摘要: Maurice Bloch’s Anthropology and the Cognitive Challenge (Bloch 2012) is a luminous essay about tumultuous relationships between cultural anthropology disciplines more oriented towards natural sciences. In theoretical tour-de-force, clear writing allows reader to better understand why most anthropologists are so reluctant take into account naturalistic attempts specify what makes us human. According Bloch, one of best ways reduce gap cognitive sciences architecture human cognition seriously. This constituted by deepest, universal level that inherited ‘from our very remote pre-mammalian ancestors’ higher levels ‘unique specializations ofour species’. Bloch argues thatsuch an architecturealsounderlies identity, which he calls ‘blob’ in order avoid confusion with any relevant existing theories. The blob can be separated several ‘organically united’ each other. ‘core self’ characterised pre-reflective experience one’ sb ody as agent located space differentiated from other entities. ‘minimal self’, particularly developed social species, involves sense continuity oneself others time requires episodic, short-term memory process information past behaviours plan future behaviours. Last but not least, the‘narrative involvesautobiographicalmemorythatismoreorlessreflexively‘sustained’bynarratives create invariant over contexts. Because this narrative self infusedwithlanguageandmetarepresentations,itiseasilycaughtupinthepublicdiscourses onwhichanthropologiststendtofocus.But,toBloch,focusingonthese‘publicselves’,so readily accessible anthropological gaze, might misleading. multilayered phenomenon results two-way process, going settings core layers blob, neuro-psychological processes high-level self-narratives. While we applaud admire proposal reconcile sciences, sceptical way tends up mentalistic framing theory mind psychologists tend favour. Indeed, after characterising blobs naturally entities, defines interactions mutual reading, penetrating or colonising minds ‘blobs’ others. world thus based on ‘interpenetration’ go out other’s bodies minds. Admittedly, interpenetration has different scales