
Structure and Thought
Toward a Materialist Theory of Representational Cognition
Daniel Sacilotto(Author)
Northwestern University Press
Will be published approx. on 28. February 2024
Book
Hardback
304 pages
978-0-8101-4661-7 (ISBN)
Description
Offers a new understanding of representational cognition that synthesizes postwar philosophical approaches to the question of objective knowledge
This study develops a novel account of representational cognition, explaining how cognitive systems progressively come to map the structure of their worlds. Daniel Sacilotto offers a constructive response to the critique of representation formulated throughout the post-Kantian philosophical tradition. Rather than a skepticism or idealism whereby thinking can grasp appearances but never the real, representation, Sacilotto shows, is a constitutive dimension of cognitive systems' creative capacity to know and intervene in the world of which they are part.
Structure and Thought: Toward a Materialist Theory of Representational Cognition integrates various lines in contemporary philosophy, including those often seen as incommensurable or in irresolvable tension with one another. Sacilotto thus advances a productive synthesis of a materialist ambition to provide a creative and historical understanding of cognition with a structural realist account of representation. He shows how the different forms of sensory, discursive, and theoretical mediation that characterize human cognition are conducive to a realist epistemological framework that explains how the possibility of knowledge about a mind-independent reality is conceivable.
This study develops a novel account of representational cognition, explaining how cognitive systems progressively come to map the structure of their worlds. Daniel Sacilotto offers a constructive response to the critique of representation formulated throughout the post-Kantian philosophical tradition. Rather than a skepticism or idealism whereby thinking can grasp appearances but never the real, representation, Sacilotto shows, is a constitutive dimension of cognitive systems' creative capacity to know and intervene in the world of which they are part.
Structure and Thought: Toward a Materialist Theory of Representational Cognition integrates various lines in contemporary philosophy, including those often seen as incommensurable or in irresolvable tension with one another. Sacilotto thus advances a productive synthesis of a materialist ambition to provide a creative and historical understanding of cognition with a structural realist account of representation. He shows how the different forms of sensory, discursive, and theoretical mediation that characterize human cognition are conducive to a realist epistemological framework that explains how the possibility of knowledge about a mind-independent reality is conceivable.
Reviews / Votes
"I know of no other work with the sheer scope of this one. The range of ideas on display, and their synthesis into one narrative, is astonishing, sometimes even dizzying." -Danielle Macbeth, author of Realizing Reason: A Narrative of Truth and KnowingMore details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
Evanston
United States
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Illustrations
29 b&w figures
Dimensions
Height: 229 mm
Width: 152 mm
ISBN-13
978-0-8101-4661-7 (9780810146617)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions

E-Book
02/2024
1st Edition
Northwestern University Press
€96.99
Available for download
Person
Daniel Sacilotto is a professor of critical studies at the California Institute of the Arts.
Ray Brassier is a professor of philosophy at the American University of Beirut.
Ray Brassier is a professor of philosophy at the American University of Beirut.
Content
Foreword, by Ray Brassier
Introduction - The Kantian Shadow
Part 1. Post-Critical Structuralist Materialisms and the Critique of Representation
Chapter I - The Heraclitean Empiricists: Experience Against the Concept
Chapter II - The Parmenidean Rationalists I: Formalization Against Experience
Chapter III - The Parmenidean Rationalists II: Puncturing the Circle of Correlation
Part 2. Structural Representational Realism
Chapter IV - The Return to the Abyss: A Promethean Kant
Chapter V - Thinking Between the Empirical and Transcendental: Function, Computation, and Information
Chapter VI - A Thought Disincarnate: A Pragmatic Cognitive Hierarchy of Representational Cognition
Chapter VII - On Natural Reason: The Dialectics of Revision and Integration
Works Cited
Endnotes
Introduction - The Kantian Shadow
Part 1. Post-Critical Structuralist Materialisms and the Critique of Representation
Chapter I - The Heraclitean Empiricists: Experience Against the Concept
Chapter II - The Parmenidean Rationalists I: Formalization Against Experience
Chapter III - The Parmenidean Rationalists II: Puncturing the Circle of Correlation
Part 2. Structural Representational Realism
Chapter IV - The Return to the Abyss: A Promethean Kant
Chapter V - Thinking Between the Empirical and Transcendental: Function, Computation, and Information
Chapter VI - A Thought Disincarnate: A Pragmatic Cognitive Hierarchy of Representational Cognition
Chapter VII - On Natural Reason: The Dialectics of Revision and Integration
Works Cited
Endnotes