
Structure and Thought
Toward a Materialist Theory of Representational Cognition
Daniel Sacilotto(Author)
Northwestern University Press
Published on 28. February 2024
Book
Paperback/Softback
304 pages
978-0-8101-4663-1 (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
Weight
272 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-8101-4663-1 (9780810146631)
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