Distributed thinking symposium Stephen J. Cowley University of Hertfordshire, UK & University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa

Human thinking  Language constrains how we think ‘thinking’. (1) Language constrains thinking about thinking. How do we to construe this? What are the implications for method?

Points of view  Language is symbolic (i.e. can be analysed as verbal units in manifest constructional relations);  Language spreads (i.e crosses bodies, changing what people do in historical space-time).

The DLG  Set out to transform the language sciences in  Is a community –currently +/-80.  Has held 5 interdisciplinary international meetings –linguistics psychology, robotics, philosophy, sociology, biology.

Dialogical, directed, distributed  First-order language is intrinsic to action and perception.  Can be analysed in terms of second- order language.

Historically,  Cognitive psychology/science took a (purely) symbolic view.  Focus fell on putative mechanisms for (a) language/ speech processing/ production; (b) problem solving (c) working memory; (d) consciousness; (e) etcetera.  Since the 1990s, increasing interest has been given to dynamical, embodied and cultural aspects of cognition.

In rethinking thinking  We concert real-time thinking across artefacts and/or people.  The activities are integrated with silent rehearsal.  What are the results? How are they achieved?

Methodological issues  Let’s re-examine thinking (a) as an intrinsic part of how we do things (together). (b) as something that we also do alone.  We call this thinking in action.