Between philosophy and cultural psychology: Pragmatist and semiotic reflections on the thresholds of sense

Abstract

Cultural psychology has multiple points of intersection with some of the central themes and issues of philosophy, especially a philosophy that is not self-absorbed with problems purely of its own making or over which it claims exclusive rights even if they clearly need multiple analytical approaches. The “problems of philosophy” should be, and are, our problems, vitally important issues embedded in what John Dewey called “problematic situations” that bear upon what for the pragmatist tradition are the defining matrices for “the conduct of life.” Like such a pragmatist philosophy and other traditions that look outward over the broad landscape of life, cultural psychology is concerned with the manifold “ways of knowing and acting” that mark the intentional bonds and webs of transactions between us and what we call “the world.” It recognizes a plurality of forms of apprehension and patterns of meaningful action especially in their social contexts and conditions. It further recognizes, in line with the semiotic turn in philosophy, that the defining feature of human beings is rooted in (a) differentiated processes of the production and interpretation of signs, a meaning-making power unmatched in nature that unfolds at both the upper and lower thresholds of sense-giving and sense-reading and (b) the systematic production and use of material tools, instruments, and objects to modify the environment and the producers themselves and which embody or exemplify existential stances, values, and ends-in-view.

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