Abstract
In this paper, I present the idea of “enlanguaged experience” as a radicalization of the Pragmatists’ approach to the continuity between language and experience in the human world as a concept that can provide a significant contribution to the current debate within Enactivism. The first part of the paper explores some new conceptual tools recently developed by enactivist scholarship, namely linguistic bodies, enlanguaged affordances, and languaging. In the second part, the notion of enlanguaged experience is introduced as involving two main interrelated ideas. The first is the idea that human experience is contingently, yet irreversibly, embedded from each person’s birth within contexts made up of linguistic practices that contribute to continuously redefining what happens. Consequently, the development of individuals’ motor, perceptual, affective, selective, and cognitive capacities does not take place in a silent vacuum, but in a context of linguistic practices that are already there: such practices already operate in, and are shared by, the human groups in which individuals begin their experiences. The second key idea is that enlanguaged experience implies the claim that humans primarily meet language as part of their experience of the world, rather than as an independent system of words and grammar. In the third part of the paper, I argue that the conception of human experience as enlanguaged can fruitfully contribute to the enactivist debate, particularly with reference to three main points: firstly, the idea of a circular continuity, which is to say the claim that the advent of language in human life caused a re-configuration of previously existing forms of sensibility both ontogenetically and phylogenetically; secondly, an ecological view of language, according to which humans find themselves embedded in already operating linguistic practices and habits that are a constitutive part of their naturally social world; and, thirdly, a richer view of language “in the wild”, capable of retrieving the qualitative, affective, or aesthetic components of human enlanguaged experience.
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Notes
This statement does not deny that there is an ambiguity in James’ treatment of language because of his criticism of language as favoring an atomistic conception of thought as primarily composed of discrete units, insofar as language itself is manly conceived of as consisting in an association of names. Sometimes this critical approach coexists in the same text with a more dynamic view of language and meanings, as is the case in the famous chapter on the stream of thought in the Principles (James 1981, Ch. IX). Moreover, James seems to adopt a dichotomous understanding of the relation between concepts and experience (see the treatment of the deaf-mute case in James 1983) and consistently supports the claim of the priority of experience over thought (cf. James 1976). I have dealt with this issue extensively in Author.
See Bernstein 2020 for a picture of Dewey’s “pragmatic naturalism”.
For limitations in terms of space and expertise, here I will not discuss Charles Peirce’s insights on the subject and how they might contribute to the current debate in Enactivism. For an in-depth treatment of semiotics and the application of cognitive science to the study of signs, mind, and language see Paolucci 2021, whose research approach combines both Peirce’s and Eco’s legacy.
For an in-depth analysis of the meanings of affordance and its functions, see Manuel Heras-Escribano 2019.
Although for the purposes of this paper, I am dealing with the various scholarly approaches to “languaging” as essentially convergent, they actually form a complex constellation of thought, insofar as they support at least two main views. One group of scholars restricts “languaging” to bio-logic (Raimondi 2019), linguistic techniques (Bottineau 2017) and practices (Cowley 2011) providing a new reconceptualization of language. Other scholars reject “language” by stressing that practices (not just communication) presuppose the logic of languaging, thereby adopting a quasi-transcendental approach. For example, radical ecolinguists, inspired by Becker's (1988) anthropology, challenge linguistics by drawing on Heidegger, Wittgenstein, and a reading of Maturana's work. I am grateful to one of the anonymous reviewer for pointing out this important caveat.
In writing this paper, I wondered whether it might be appropriate to characterize the Pragmatists’ view of experience as ‘externalist’. It is, of course, if by ‘externalist’ one means ‘non-internalist’. However, it is not an externalist view in standard behaviorist terms, namely a view exclusively focused on directly observable actions and behavior. For Dewey and Mead, even brain processes and memories, i.e. so-called internal events, are part of experience insofar as they flow into organic-environmental interactions. The point is that they should not be thought of as the main, and possibly causal, features of experience, because – as Dewey already noted in his criticism of brain-centrism – it is not a brain that thinks, perceives, and acts, but an organism interacting with specific situations and contexts (cf. Boyles & Garrison 2017).
From what has been argued so far, it should be evident that the claim that human experience is enlanguaged is developed within a naturalistic framework, implying that experience contingently derives from the reorganization of previously existing organic and environmental resources. Coherently with the pragmatist legacy, this view remains distant from quasi-transcendentalist approaches to language as the enabling condition of human experience, such as those adopted by Apel, McDowell, and Brandom (see Author, Ch. 5).
For a more detailed account of Frank Lorimer’s picture of language, its relation to reason, and their common roots in living processes, see Dreon forthcoming.
George Herbert Mead made at least another important contribution to the study of the continuity between affective experience and linguistic interactions, by providing some interesting insights into the emergence of linguistic conversations out of emotion-based interactions. In Mead’s view, emotions serve as a means to mutually regulate social conduct while still maintaining a crucial role in verbal communication (see Dreon 2019). See Guido Baggio’s paper in the current issue of the journal for a comprehensive discussion of Mead’s theory of gestures as an attempt to overcome the dichotomic view of lower and higher level cognition (Baggio 2023).
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Dreon, R. Enlanguaged experience. Pragmatist contributions to the continuity between experience and language. Phenom Cogn Sci (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11097-023-09950-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11097-023-09950-x