Meaning and Cognition: A Unified Approach to Meaning-Making

Abstract

Sociological approaches to culture are divided into interpretive, representational, and embodied perspectives, each grounded in distinct ontologies and causal logics derived from realism and interpretivism. This article aims to bridge embodied and representational approaches and their concomitant philosophies of science. It proposes a concept of meaning-making that unifies representational approaches and embodied approaches to culture and cognition. The article argues that meaning is not solely a result of conscious association of stimuli with concepts. Instead, meaning emerges from iterative unconscious, intuitive, and conscious inferences. This comprehensive view of meaning-making emphasizes the interconnectedness of lower-level and top-down cognitive processes, highlighting the active role of both the body and brain in creating meaning. By framing meaning-making in this way, the article demonstrates how interpretive approaches can incorporate insights from cognitive sciences, building on a common ontological foundation without contradiction.