Co-Reference Networks as Implicit Cognitive Social Structures

• In Event: 584 - Regular Session. Social Networks, Cognition, and Meaning

Abstract

There is great excitement over the possibility of analyzing cognitive representations of social structure. Existing studies have proposed many ways in which such cognitive representations influence individual action and thereby transform social structures. Cognitive social structures may also elucidate the development of knowledge by providing a footprint of the process by which philosophers construct new ideas via reference to other thinkers. These Implicit Cognitive Social Structures—images of philosophers’ relations to each other in the intellectual field—are the cornerstones of philosophical texts. How can we analyze how authors relate other thinkers to each other and how those representations change over time? How does examining these patterns reveal the development of ideas? This paper proposes that mining references from text corpuses and mapping them as networks offers an excellent way to examine shifting representations of the relationships between authors. Examining Frankfurt School philosophy, I show how analyzing implicit cognitive social structures can elucidate changes in a philosophical school’s ideas, as well as how members position their school vis-à-vis other philosophers. Investigating Karl Marx’s structural position over the course of three generations of Frankfurt School philosophy, I argue that Marx ascended from a subordinate to G.W.F. Hegel in the school’s early years, to Hegel’s superordinate in its later generations, ultimately replacing Hegel as one of the school’s main interlocutors. This exalted Marx was then constructed as the bridge between the Frankfurt School and other authors in the broader intellectual field, as well as the common thread binding the school’s disparate generations.

Author

• Monica Lee, University of Chicago