The application of Critical Theory to the study of cognition—examining how cognitive processes are understood, how cognitive science is shaped by culture, and how cognition is always situated in social contexts. Critical Theory of Cognition asks: How do cultural assumptions shape models of
mind? Why is individual cognition privileged over distributed, embodied, or social cognition? How do cognitive categories (rational/irrational,
normal/pathological) reflect
power relations? Drawing on situated cognition, embodied cognition, and critical neuroscience, it insists that thinking never happens in a vacuum—it's always shaped by
history, culture, and
power. Understanding cognition requires understanding the contexts that make thinking possible.
"They
study cognition in labs with undergraduates. Critical Theory of Cognition asks: whose cognition? In what context? Thinking in a lab differs from thinking in life. Models of mind often assume a universal thinker—but thinkers are always situated, always embodied, always cultural. Critical cognition insists on asking: what's left out when we
study thinking this
way? And whose thinking counts as 'cognitive'?"