If cognition is participation, learning is perspectival shift, and symbols are stabilised participation, then cognitive failure cannot be what the dominant models assume.
They are all phenomena of breakdown in participation — moments where a field can no longer sustain coherent action.
This post makes that claim explicit and unavoidable.
1. Why the traditional account of breakdown fails
Standard cognitive theory treats breakdown as:
-
faulty internal representations,
-
missing or incorrect information,
-
biased or irrational processing.
But these explanations presuppose exactly what this series has dismantled:
-
cognition as internal,
-
meaning as carried by symbols,
-
learning as acquisition.
If cognition is not inside heads, breakdown cannot be either.
2. Breakdown as first-order phenomenon
It shows up as:
-
“I don’t know what to do next,”
-
“nothing makes sense anymore,”
-
“the rules don’t apply,”
-
“I can’t see what matters.”
What has failed is not a belief, but a structure of relevance.
3. What field integrity means
A field has integrity when:
-
distinctions are stable,
-
actions have predictable consequences,
-
participation flows without constant repair,
-
symbols reliably orient action.
4. Breakdown as loss of affordances
Breakdown occurs when:
-
affordances vanish,
-
cues no longer guide action,
-
previously reliable moves misfire.
5. Confusion is not lack of information
One of the most persistent educational errors is to treat confusion as a knowledge gap.
But confusion arises most often when:
-
too many distinctions compete,
-
norms conflict,
-
relevance hierarchies fracture.
Adding information often worsens confusion because it further destabilises the field.
What is needed is not more content, but re-stabilisation.
6. Breakdown, expertise, and fragility
Experts are highly attuned to particular fields, which makes them:
-
extraordinarily effective within those fields,
-
and surprisingly fragile when fields shift.
This explains why:
-
experts struggle outside their domains,
-
paradigm shifts feel catastrophic,
-
institutional change produces widespread cognitive distress.
7. Collective breakdown
Because fields are collective, breakdown is often collective.
We see this in:
-
organisational paralysis,
-
cultural disorientation,
-
public discourse collapsing into noise,
-
institutions losing legitimacy.
When no stable participation is possible, cognition fragments.
8. Repair before explanation
One of the deepest errors of modern cognition theory is its reflex to explain breakdown before repairing it.
Repair involves:
-
re-establishing distinctions,
-
re-aligning norms of relevance,
-
restoring viable trajectories of action.
9. Rationality reconsidered
-
fields fracture,
-
stabilisations conflict,
-
and no coherent path forward exists.
This reframing dissolves centuries of misplaced moral judgement around “bad thinking.”
10. Where this leaves cognition
With this post, cognition has been fully relocated.
-
From minds to fields
-
From representations to participation
-
From knowledge to orientation
-
From error to breakdown
-
From learning to reconfiguration
What remains is not a theory of thinking, but a theory of situated intelligibility.
And this immediately raises the next unavoidable question:
If cognition depends on field integrity, who maintains the fields?
That question takes us beyond cognition itself — into institutions, power, and the political organisation of attention.
No comments:
Post a Comment