It’s a (Mis)match!: a Dialogical Model of Reflexivity in Cognitive Sociology

Cognitive sociology is supposed to join the ranks of those behavioral sciences that have already become part of the cognitive turn (e.g.: psychology, philosophy, linguistics). The basic idea of this research area is to recognize the social nature of thinking, cognition, and memory processes. The present work aims to add a cognitive dimension to the classic sociological question of social action. The theory of social action, inspired by theses borrowed from the cognitive sciences, discerns between the two types of practical beliefs: non-reflexive and reflexive. The former denotes automatic bodily «knowing-how», or habitual patterns of action, while the latter is defined as deliberative «knowing-what», or discursive ideas and judgments. The purpose of this study is to explicate the transition from one level to the other, from automaticity to deliberation. The conventional explanation assumes that a necessary condition for reflexivity is a certain kind of difficulty. Conversely, the routine realization of an action does not require additional reflection. These kinds of judgments are common but not inclusive enough: they do not theorize every-day, habitual action as a possible trigger of deliberation. The conceptualization of the transition to reflexivity presented in this paper considers both «problematic» and «routine» as potential reflexivity locuses. For this purpose, a dialogical model of the cognitive and affective reflexivity bases is constructed in this paper. The paper consists of several parts. First, the cognitive basis of reflexivity is derived from the theory of practices and classical pragmatism through the concept of interest. Then, an affective ground for reflexivity is proposed, which is responsible for the object of reflection’s emotional significance. Functionally different dialogical combinations of cognition and affect are assembled into a four-part typology of reflexivity. The latter is intended to point to the epistemic potential of cognitive sociology in the study of social action.