Institutions as Cognitive Niches: A Dynamic of Knowledge and Ignorance. Werner, K. In Arfini, S. & Magnani, L., editors, Embodied, Extended, Ignorant Minds: New Studies on the Nature of Not-Knowing, of Synthese Library, pages 161–189. Springer International Publishing, Cham, 2022. ![Institutions as Cognitive Niches: A Dynamic of Knowledge and Ignorance [link]](https://bibbase.org/img/filetypes/link.svg "link")
Paper doi abstract bibtex Institutions have become fashionable. There is a growing field of institutional economics, as well as more abstract studies of institutions undertaken by socio-ontology. People have also recognized a morally troubling side of institutions, having to do with institutionalized (or systemic) racism or inequality. Two accounts of institutions are usually distinguished in the literature: institutions-as-rules and institutions-as-equilibria. I am not about to argue that these views are wrong, although I portray them as insufficient. Instead, institutions shall be characterized as products of certain situated, embodied cognitive endeavors – as cognitive niches. The latter’s purpose is to ease some aspects of our cognitive functioning, but first of all to render the world around us cognitively available. The role of ignorance as a constitutive ingredient of the cognitive niche is elicited, with references to relevant literature. I propose that within cognitive niches, ignorance has a somewhat paradoxical role of producing practical knowledge. With the latter in mind, I argue that institutions, conceived of as cognitive niches, also bring forth such knowledge-from-ignorance compounds at a higher level of social complexity, based on certain patterns of behavior and fixed infrastructural factors. Finally, institutions differ in terms of how much they succeed or fail in the task of making certain entities available as goods.
@incollection{werner_institutions_2022,
address = {Cham},
series = {Synthese {Library}},
title = {Institutions as {Cognitive} {Niches}: {A} {Dynamic} of {Knowledge} and {Ignorance}},
isbn = {978-3-031-01922-7},
shorttitle = {Institutions as {Cognitive} {Niches}},
url = {https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-01922-7_8},
abstract = {Institutions have become fashionable. There is a growing field of institutional economics, as well as more abstract studies of institutions undertaken by socio-ontology. People have also recognized a morally troubling side of institutions, having to do with institutionalized (or systemic) racism or inequality. Two accounts of institutions are usually distinguished in the literature: institutions-as-rules and institutions-as-equilibria. I am not about to argue that these views are wrong, although I portray them as insufficient. Instead, institutions shall be characterized as products of certain situated, embodied cognitive endeavors – as cognitive niches. The latter’s purpose is to ease some aspects of our cognitive functioning, but first of all to render the world around us cognitively available. The role of ignorance as a constitutive ingredient of the cognitive niche is elicited, with references to relevant literature. I propose that within cognitive niches, ignorance has a somewhat paradoxical role of producing practical knowledge. With the latter in mind, I argue that institutions, conceived of as cognitive niches, also bring forth such knowledge-from-ignorance compounds at a higher level of social complexity, based on certain patterns of behavior and fixed infrastructural factors. Finally, institutions differ in terms of how much they succeed or fail in the task of making certain entities available as goods.},
language = {en},
urldate = {2023-08-29},
booktitle = {Embodied, {Extended}, {Ignorant} {Minds}: {New} {Studies} on the {Nature} of {Not}-{Knowing}},
publisher = {Springer International Publishing},
author = {Werner, Konrad},
editor = {Arfini, Selene and Magnani, Lorenzo},
year = {2022},
doi = {10.1007/978-3-031-01922-7_8},
keywords = {Cognitive niche, Ignorance, Institution, OA, PRINTED (Fonds papier), Socio-ontology},
pages = {161--189},
}
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