The paper presents some results of the project that analyzed the prospects for a synthesis of naturalism and sociocentrism in cognitive studies. It is shown that this synthesis can take place within the context of the biocultural co-constructivism idea, which implies a holistic approach to the study of the system "brain—society—culture". It is proved, that through the lens of this idea we can study the processes associated with the functioning of neural mechanisms, which are connected with the neurodetermination of culture and brain acculturation. The project draws attention to the role of these mechanisms for the functions expressed in brain plasticity and the existence of knowledge deanthropologization limits.
The article briefly outlines the idea of biocultural co-constructivism and, through its lens, provides insights into the interaction of society, culture and the brain as a holistic system with active mutual impacts of each component, which allows talking about the phenomenon of "social brain". It is shown that socio-cultural factors have a significant impact on the functions of neural structures, their activity and the restructuring of the architectonics of the brain even at the macroscopic level. The paths of natural and cultural development are expressed in co-creation, co-generation of meanings; these trajectories cross and form a system that ensures their active interaction and interdetermination. Culture defines the perspective of classification, outlook and the modes of its evaluation; it sort of filters out fragments of reality that do not fit into the cultural "grid of categories". This helps to conclude that the idea of a "cognitive and versatile" subject of cognition should be rethought in view of new empirical material provided by cultural neuroscience. The subject of cognition in the context of biocultural co-constructivism is "linked" to a specific situation that characterizes the relationship of society, culture and the brain. The modern neuroscience makes the need for naturalism and sociocentrism obvious, suggests the shift towards revising the rigorous attitudes of logocentrism and the prospects for knowledge deanthropologization.
The article analyzes the phenomenon of reproducibility (repeatability, replication), its terminological variations and grounds for assessing the current stage of development of science as a crisis in terms of reproducibility (verification) of scientific research results and their acquisition of intersubjective status. Attention is drawn to the fact that judgments about the crisis of reproducibility apply to almost all areas of science, including such (often called exact) sciences such as physics and chemistry. We claim that understanding the phenomenon of reproducibility directly affects decision-making policy towards science (regulation of the activity of scientific directions and their funding). At the same time, the situation in the social, humanitarian and biomedical sciences is of particular concern, since the level of reproducibility here is quite low. This applies to modern neuroscience as well. From the point of view of epistemological view, it is proposed to interpret reproducibility procedures as an attempt to overcome fundamental limitations associated with measurement processes. It is shown that understanding the meaning and significance of these procedures depends on the opinion of the disciplinary scientific communities, which differ in their approaches to the criteria of reproducibility and follow different cognitive traditions and attitudes. It is emphasized that in the social and humanitarian fields of knowledge it is necessary to take into account the "contextuality" of the measurement process, the constant and inevitable dynamics of the characteristics of society, culture and the person himself. All this push us to think about the problem of defining the boundaries of de-anthropologization of scientific knowledge. An attempt is made to comprehend the phenomenon of reproducibility through the lens of the interval approach, and it is stated that reproducibility (ontologically) is limited by the "pervasive inaccuracy of the real world" (L. Zadeh).
The article presents the attempt to consider the Kantian research program in modern neuroscience in its part, which relates to the representation of the "number" and the mechanisms for processing numerical information by neural structures. We claim that Kantian ideas about the a priori nature of certain mathematical categories related to the status of space and time [geometry and arithmetic], which were subjected to doubt as a result of the discovery of non-Euclidean geometries, proved to be highly demanded and reassessed as a result of the intensive progress of modern cognitive and cultural neuroscience. The discovery of the subitizing phenomena, "sense of number" and "sense of place" (analogous to the navigation system of the brain) push us to recall the old Kantian judgments concerning certain a priori constructions of mathematics. The ontogenetic foundations of such phenomena, their conditionality by the features of the functioning of the brain, reveal not the metaphorical, but the strategic nature of the Kantian research program in modern neuroscience. In the context of these studies, it also turned out that in the case of living systems, one can speak about their proto-arithmetic traits, and in the case of humans, mathematical abilities that are largely independent of the language, and their systematic development from an early age significantly increases the likelihood of successful mathematical activity in future. Attention drawn to the interdependence of the activity of the developing brain, social and cultural contexts, which intersects and expressed in the process of acculturation of the brain and vice versa – neural determination of culture. This kind of interaction support the idea of the possibility of expanding original Kantian idea and introducing the idea related to the transcendentalism of the activity type
From the standpoint of biocultural co-constructivism methodology, the article analyzes the phenomenon of musicality, which is understood as a set of intonation-rhythmic patterns that can act as predictors of a number of cognitive traits already in the process of neurogenesis. The authors claim that this phenomenon has the status of a universal of human existence, which is an integral neurophysiological factor in the formation of analytical, verbal-logical and linguistic components of reasoning. Analysis of the numerical nature of the rhythmic component of innate ontogenetic structures makes it possible to show the general points of growth of artistic, proto-mathematical and mathematical cognitive abilities in the process of ontogenesis. It is shown that synchronization, expressed in resonance (or asynchronization) of mental processes at the level of neural systems in which ideas about beauty are genetically "tuned", is associated with the status of the golden ratio and Fibonacci numbers. The processes of synchronization can be assessed as indicators of the harmonious relationships of nature, humans, and particular features of cognitive potential, aesthetic perception, and the formation of musical tastes. This may be considered as an argument in favor of the numerical nature of music being a relatively autonomous cognitive activity in the process of self-organization of mental systems, in the field of which the functional and structural patterns of the golden ratio play the role of the fundamental creative and hedonistic components. The article substantiates the correlative relationship between harmony and the golden ration in the context of the search for factors of optimality for the functioning of physiological parameters of living systems. The nature of this relationship speaks in favor of the conceptual enrichment of methodology in the field of modern cognitive research, which is associated with a revision of the reductionist type of fundamental concepts and attitudes towards holism, the ratio of the intuitive and discursive components of the cognitive process.
