Beyond Single-Mindedness: A Figure-Ground Reversal for the Cognitive Sciences

All minds are steeped in situated interaction, and, with this view, interaction complicates cognition. This article explores the more radical stance that interaction co-constitutes cognition: that we benefit from looking beyond single minds toward cognition as a process involving interacting minds.

All around the cognitive sciences, there are approaches that put interaction center stage. Their diverse and pluralistic origins may obscure the fact that collectively, they harbor insights and methods that can respecify foundational assumptions and fuel novel interdisciplinary work. The benefits that the cognitive sciences could reap from building stronger foundations in interaction are one of the key questions for the future.

Writing as a transdisciplinary collective assembled from across the classic cognitive science hexagon and beyond, this article highlights the opportunity for a figure-ground reversal that puts interaction at the heart of cognition. The interactive stance is a way of seeing that deserves to be a key part of the conceptual toolkit of cognitive scientists.