Humanistic cognitive science.

Abstract

This article ventures to explore the conceptual space where humanistic psychology and enactive cognitive science meet so as to lay out the practical and philosophical foundations for a "humanistic cognitive science"-an emerging interdisciplinary program that augments the insights of enactivism with those of humanistic psychology in order to further ground and enrich the latter's overall explanatory potential. The structure of this article is organized into 4 sections. In the first section, I explicate the utility of and need for a humanistic cognitive science by proposing 5 arguments. In the second section, I provide a historical-philosophical overview of the emerging confluence of humanism and cognitive science and trace it to the rise of the enactive approach within embodied cognitive science. In the third section, I review the centrality of the problem of normativity to psychological science and identify it as an adequate point of entry for humanistic cognitive science; for circumventing this problem requires direct theoretical contact with the current enactive literature on the very notion of normativity. In the fourth section, I synthesize such a criterion and argue that it meets the minimal requirements for a naturalistic theory of normativity in psychology. Before concluding, I highlight some of the key implications of this article for humanistic psychology and psychopathology.

Order against the tide of entropy: Self-distancing in expressive writing explained.

“…In conclusion, our explanatory model demonstrates the potential contribution of the humanistic cognitive science project (Hovhannisyan, 2018) to psychology in general and humanistic psychology in particular on multiple accounts: First, it demonstrates the potential of such a project to go beyond the question of "does it work?" to address some so far unexplored questions-such as the connection between language use, emotion, and health, as well as the potential of writing instructions to weaken or strengthen the constraint in expressive writing.…”

“…the most probable, least ordered states, constraint signifies the fact that living organisms tend to "promote" themselves (Hovhannisyan, 2018, p. 44), against all the odds of entropy, into the far-from-equilibrium conditions of order and structure. To Hovhannisyan's (2018) notion of self-promotion, constraint adds two important details: First, successful self-promotion, as evidenced by sustained order or structure, requires thermodynamic work, which entails the transformation of heat and other forms of energy into orderly, useful energy. Second, work/constraint buffers entropy which is associated with disorderly heat or wasteful energy.…”

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Extending the humanistic cognitive science project as envisioned by Hovhannisyan (2018), this article proposed and tested an explanatory model of expressive writing, which has been found to increase self-distancing-a form of processing emotional information that is widely recognized to be beneficial to health. The key principle of our model is constraint, which refers to the far from equilibrium conditions (i.e., order) made possible by thermodynamic work that staves off the eventuality of entropy, in the thermodynamic equilibrium of which all things collapse to the most probable, least ordered states.

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“…The purpose and intent of this paper is to extend and implement the humanistic cognitive science project (Hovhannisyan, 2018). We agree with the following premises of the humanistic cognitive science as proposed by Hovhannisyan (2018): That it behooves humanistic psychology to make use of the resources in cognitive science to enrich its own program; that nonreductive cognitive science can be used to ground and enrich the explanatory potential of humanistic psychology; and that this engagement with cognitive science might result in a transformation of the theoretical landscape of humanistic psychology in particular and psychology in general. The task of this article is to showcase such a humanistic cognitive science.…”

“…Blueprint for grounding the humanistic vision in cognitive science has already been worked out by Hovhannisyan (2018). Hovhannisyan (2018) addresses the issue of agency and teleology by asking the question: How do living organisms create their own norms? The answer is “self-production through self-promotion” (p. 44).…”