Filippo Batisti, Ca’ Foscari University of Venice

1.       The Study of Language from Behaviorism to the Cognitive Revolution (1+2 hrs)

1.1. The origins of modern psychology and how language determined its crisis
1.2. Classic cognitive science and its view of language

2.       Postcognitivist Challenges to the Mainstream (1.5+1.5 hrs)

2.1. Language according to Grounded Cognition and to Extended Mind
2.2. Language according to Ecological Psychology and to Enaction

This module offers a brief critical history of the conceptualization of language throughout the changes in the main psychological paradigms in the last 120 years. The philosophical underpinnings of each view will be highlighted. Students will be given the essential theoretical elements to understand how “language” as an object of study changed its meaning from one paradigmatic revolution to the next.

The cognitive revolution of the 1950s is still central to today’s mainstream view of the mind. Interestingly, while a problematic theory of language accelerated the fall of behaviorism (Chomsky’s famous review of Skinner), today, satisfying accounts of language are proving to be serious obstacles for (at least some of) the post-cognitivist 4E approaches that challenge classic cognitive science.