Heidegger helps
Flores and Winograd’s Understanding Computers and Cognition (1986):
Meaning is fundamentally social and cannot be reduced to the meaning-giving activity of individual subjects. The rationalistic view of cognition is individual-centered. We look at language by studying the characteristics of an individual language learner or language user, and at reasoning by describing the activity of an individual’s deduction process. Heidegger argues that this is an inappropriate starting point—that we must take social activity as the ultimate foundation of intelligibility, and even of existence. A person is not an individual subject or ego, but a manifestation of Dasein within a space of possibilities, situated within a world and within a tradition. (p33)
I left Symbolic Systems frustrated that I was only getting one side of the story. The core assumptions of the program didn’t sit well with me, but I was unable to create or find a convincing alternative that satisfyingly rejects the cold, depressing objectivity of cognitive science. Six years later, working on the background section of my thesis, Hiroshi encouraged me to look at this old, classic Flores/Winograd book, mostly because of its use of speech act theory. I’m not far into it, but so far this book is a gem, and a really interesting introduction to Heidegger, who I never read in college and probably should have.
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