Summary
Enculturated cognition is the view that culture doesn’t only supply what we think about: learning its practices changes how we are able to think. It is Richard Menary’s account, built on his 2007 theory of ‘cognitive integration’ within ‘4E’ cognitive science, which treats thinking as embodied and bound up with its surroundings. Against the assumption that we’re born with our faculties intact, Menary argues that “a process of enculturation transforms our basic biological faculties”.
Reading, writing and mathematics are his worked examples: capacities built as long practice with symbols and tools redeploys older neural circuitry. Such tools become working parts of thinking, more than aids.
Rationale
Part 2 is built around enculturation; Menary gives it a cognitive footing. If learning a culture’s practices remakes the brain, dispositions can’t be “software in the head that we can uninstall and upgrade”.