Enactivist Interventions is an interdisciplinary work that explores how theories of embodied cognition illuminate many aspects of the mind, including perception, affect, and action. Gallagher argues that the brain is not secluded from the world or isolated in its own processes, but rather is dynamically connected with body and environment.

This is a precis of my book Enactivist Interventions (Oxford 2017), published with commentaries by Louise Barrett, Amanda Corris and Anthony Chemero, and Daniel Hutto, plus my replies.

Culture has traditionally been considered as a set of knowledge, beliefs, arts, laws, norms, and morals, acquired by a human being as a member of a group. Some anthropologists interpret this as a set of abstract representations, such as information or knowledge, while others interpret it as behavioral control mechanisms. These views assume that the contents of a particular culture must be processed by the minds of individuals, either in a direct way or by resorting to learned mental structures in (...) processes of symbolic socialization. Some critics suggest a problem with these perspectives since they do not provide a convincing explanation of the enculturation process beyond metaphorical images of transfer or internalization of symbolic cultural contents through linguistic transmission. The new embodied theories of cognition, especially enactivism, could give new ideas about what enculturation processes are like, through the concept of participatory sense-making in material culture environments. In this essay, we discuss how an enactive vision of culture could be, and what advantages it would have, as well as the challenges and weaknesses in explaining the culture and its learning processes. (shrink)

This paper considers some foundational concepts in ecological psychology and in enactivism, and traces their developments from their historical roots to current preoccupations. Important differences stem, we claim, from dissimilarities in how embodied experience has been understood by the ancestors, founders and followers of ecological psychology and enactivism, respectively. Rather than pointing to differences in domains of interest for the respective approaches, and restating possible divisions of labor between them in research in the cognitive and psychological sciences, we (...) call for a deeper analysis of the role of embodiment in agency that we also undertake. Awareness of the differences that exist in the respective frameworks and their consequences, we argue, may lead to overcoming some current divisions of responsibility, and contribute to a more comprehensive and complementary way of dealing with a broader range of theoretical and practical concerns. While providing some examples of domains, such as social cognition and art reception, in which we can observe the relative usefulness and potential integration of the theoretical and methodological resources from the two approaches, we demonstrate that such deeper synergy is not only possible but also beginning to emerge. Such complementarity, as we envisage, conceives of ecological psychology that allows felt experience as a crucial dynamical element in the explanations and models that it produces, and of an enactive approach that takes into consideration the ubiquitous presence of rich directly perceived relations among variables arising from enactments in the social and physical world. (shrink)

The enactive and ecological approaches to embodied cognitive science are on a collision course. While both draw inspiration from similar views in psychology and phenomenology, the two approaches initially held seemingly contradictory views and points of focus. Early enactivists saw value in the ecological approach but insisted that the two schools remain distinct. While ecological psychology challenged the common foes of mental representation and mind-body dualism, it seemingly did so at the cost of the autonomy of the agent. This is (...) evidence that the early enactive and ecological approaches told different stories about how agents and environments interact. Whereas the enactive approach broadly focuses on agency and the organism’s resilience to environmental perturbations, the ecological approach insists that organisms are best understood in terms of the organism–environment system and at the ecological scale. Historically, this tension created space for harsh criticisms from both sides and for some ecological psychologists to dismiss enactivism altogether. Despite their differences, both approaches use dynamic systems theory to explain the interactions between embodied agents and the environment or contextual milieu in which they are embedded. This has led some scholars to focus on the complementary elements of each approach and argue that the two schools are allies, thus rejecting the historical disagreements between the two approaches and calling for an ecological–enactive synthesis. The attempts to synthesize the approaches are noteworthy and should be considered steps in the right direction but are potentially problematic. If the two schools are merely synthesized to some form of ecological–enactivism, then something of value from both approaches could be lost. This is analogous to the hasty comparison between two seemingly similar schools of thought found in early attempts at East-West comparative philosophy. I argue that the relationship between the enactive and ecological approaches is both complementary and contrary and is thus best understood in terms of complementarity. Given the complexity of complementarity I will unpack the notion in steps. I will begin with the exploration of analogous concepts in Japanese Philosophy and gradually build a lens through which both agent environment and ecological enactive complementarities can be understood. (shrink)

An extended argument that cognitive phenomena—perceiving, imagining, remembering—can be best explained in terms of an interface between contentless and content-involving forms of cognition. -/- Evolving Enactivism argues that cognitive phenomena—perceiving, imagining, remembering—can be best explained in terms of an interface between contentless and content-involving forms of cognition. Building on their earlier book Radicalizing Enactivism, which proposes that there can be forms of cognition without content, Daniel Hutto and Erik Myin demonstrate the unique explanatory advantages of recognizing that only (...) some forms of cognition have content while others—the most elementary ones—do not. They offer an account of the mind in duplex terms, proposing a complex vision of mentality in which these basic contentless forms of cognition interact with content-involving ones. -/- Hutto and Myin argue that the most basic forms of cognition do not, contrary to a currently popular account of cognition, involve picking up and processing information that is then used, reused, stored, and represented in the brain. Rather, basic cognition is contentless—fundamentally interactive, dynamic, and relational. In advancing the case for a radically enactive account of cognition, Hutto and Myin propose crucial adjustments to our concept of cognition and offer theoretical support for their revolutionary rethinking, emphasizing its capacity to explain basic minds in naturalistic terms. They demonstrate the explanatory power of the duplex vision of cognition, showing how it offers powerful means for understanding quintessential cognitive phenomena without introducing scientifically intractable mysteries into the mix. (shrink)

: The article outlines some similarities between the perspectives adopted by Shaun Gallagher and William James. In particular, assuming that the issue of representation in cognitive systems provides a valuable starting point and testing ground for verifying James’ possible contribution to enactivism, we argue that there is a considerable degree of similarity between Gallagher’s and James’ non-representational models of direct perception. Furthermore, we propose that by combining James’s theory of time and spatial perception with Gallagher’s Husserlian-inspired theory of retentional-protentional (...) structure, we can strengthen the theoretical assumptions of enactivism, integrating elements taken from phenomenology and aspects of Jamesian pragmatics. Understood in this way, James’ enactive theory of action and perceptual causality provides a promising opportunity for an innovative and coherent enactivist research program. Keywords: Enactivism; Pragmatism; 4E Cognition; William James; Shaun Gallagher Rendere l’enattivismo ancora più pragmatico: l’eredità jamesiana nell’approccio enattivista alla cognizione di Shaun Gallagher Riassunto: In questo lavoro si pongono in evidenza alcune somiglianze tra la prospettiva enattivista di Shaun Gallagher e la psicologia di William James. In particolare, assumendo che il tema della rappresentazione nei sistemi cognitivi fornisca un valido punto di partenza e un terreno di prova per verificare il possibile contributo di James all’enattivismo, ritengo che esista una notevole assonanza tra l’anti-rappresentazionalismo di Gallagher e la teoria della percezione diretta di James. Sostengo inoltre che attraverso una combinazione della teoria del tempo e della percezione spaziale di James con la teoria di Gallagher della struttura ritentivo-protensiva di ispirazione husserliana sia possibile rafforzare i presupposti teorici dell’enattivismo, integrando elementi tratti dalla fenomenologia con aspetti pragmatisti. La teoria jamesiana dell’azione e della causalità percettiva sembra fornire una promettente opportunità per un innovativo programma di ricerca in ambito enattivista. Parole chiave: Enattivismo; Pragmatismo; 4E Cognition; William James; Shaun Gallagher. (shrink)

Enactivists seek to revolutionize the new sciences of the mind. In doing so, they promote adopting a thoroughly anti-intellectualist starting point, one that sees mentality as rooted in engaged, embodied activity as opposed to detached forms of thought. In advocating the so-called embodied turn, enactivists touch on recurrent themes of central importance in Wittgenstein's later philosophy. More than this, today's enactivists characterize the nature of minds and how they fundamentally relate to the world in ways that not only echo but (...) fully agree with many of the later Wittgenstein's trademark philosophical remarks on the same topics. (shrink)

This paper explores the enactive approach in cognitive science with an eye on the later Wittgenstein’s philosophy. The aim is not that of answering the question: was Wittgenstein an ante litteram enactivist? He was not, because he was not an ante litteram (cognitive) scientist of any kind. The aim, conversely, is that of answering the question: can enactivism be Wittgensteinian? In answering positively, it will be argued that a Wittgensteinian framework can help enactive cognitive scientists in dissolving certain old (...) problems which they sometimes seem not to be able to get rid of. After the Introduction, the first two sections of the paper concern the Wittgensteinian standpoint on psychological concepts (Section 2) and the enactivist approach in its general terms (Section 3). Section 4 attempts a closer examination of some key concepts – chiefly representations, the inner, the “explanatory gap”, the “hard problem” of consciousness – considering both the enactivists’ and Wittgenstein’s attitude towards them. The Conclusion surmises the benefits of a Wittgensteinian perspective also hinting at some other problems which it can help to clarify. (shrink)

Olfactory perception provides a promising test case for enactivism, since smelling involves actively sampling our surrounding environment by sniffing. Smelling deploys implicit skillful knowledge of how our movement and the airflow around us yield olfactory experiences. The hybrid nature of olfactory experience makes it an ideal test case for enactivism with its esteem for touch and theoretical roots in vision. Olfaction is like vision in facilitating the perception of distal objects, yet it requires us to breath in and (...) physically contact the sensory object in a manner similar to touch. The paper offers an analysis of the central theoretical components of enactivism, whose soundness and empirical viability are tested using the empirical literature on sniffing. It will be shown that even if sniffing is an essential component of olfaction, the motoric component is not necessary for perceiving smells, which is contrary to the most crucial tenet of enactivism. Thus, the paper concludes that the theory cannot account for olfactory perception. (shrink)

Radical enactive and embodied approaches to cognitive science oppose the received view in the sciences of the mind in denying that cognition fundamentally involves contentful mental representation. This paper argues that the fate of representationalism in cognitive science matters significantly to how best to understand the extent of cognition. It seeks to establish that any move away from representationalism toward pure, empirical functionalism fails to provide a substantive “mark of the cognitive” and is bereft of other adequate means for individuating (...) cognitive activity. It also argues that giving proper attention to the way the folk use their psychological concepts requires questioning the legitimacy of commonsense functionalism. In place of extended functionalism—empirical or commonsensical—we promote the fortunes of extensive enactivism, clarifying in which ways it is distinct from notions of extended mind and distributed cognition. (shrink)

Social enactivism is a philosophical theory which, through the analysis of discursive practice, aims at explaining how high-level cognitive conditions and processes emerge. The fundamental tenets of this theory are based on enactivist and pragmatist principles. Therefore, the emphasis is not on the purely linguistic understanding of discourse but on its structural interaction with technology, that is created by man himself, in the context of which the discursive performance takes place. This perspective addresses not only a blind spot in (...) the international debate about "situated cognition" but also a current problem in the philosophy of mind. (shrink)

According to the view that has become known as the extended mind , some token mental processes extend into the cognizing organism’s environment in that they are composed (partly) of manipulative, exploitative, and transformative operations performed by that subject on suitable environmental structures. Enactivist models understand mental processes as (partly) constituted by sensorimotor knowledge and by the organism’s ability to act, in appropriate ways, on environmental structures. Given the obvious similarities between the two views, it is both tempting and common (...) to regard them as essentially variations on the same theme. In this paper, I shall argue that the similarities between enactivist and extended models of cognition are relatively superficial, and the divergences are deeper than commonly thought. (shrink)

This paper starts by considering an argument for thinking that predictive processing (PP) is representational. This argument suggests that the Kullback–Leibler (KL)-divergence provides an accessible measure of misrepresentation, and therefore, a measure of representational content in hierarchical Bayesian inference. The paper then argues that while the KL-divergence is a measure of information, it does not establish a sufficient measure of representational content. We argue that this follows from the fact that the KL-divergence is a measure of relative entropy, which can (...) be shown to be the same as covariance (through a set of additional steps). It is well known that facts about covariance do not entail facts about representational content. So there is no reason to think that the KL-divergence is a measure of (mis-)representational content. This paper thus provides an enactive, non-representational account of Bayesian belief optimisation in hierarchical PP. (shrink)

Seeing, according to the enactive approach, is not something that happens inside our brain, rather it is something we do, but, as I will argue thanks to the performance art, it is something we do together. The performing arts, with their characteristics – autopoietic feed-back loop, spectator/performer exchange, oscillation of the dichotomous subject-object pair - constitute a model through which to investigate the nature of our perception, which is constitutively relational, participative, and transformative.

In this paper, I compare the original version of the enactive view—autopoietic enactivism—with Husserl’s phenomenology, regarding the issue of the relationship between consciousness and nature. I refer to this issue as the “problem of naturalism.” I show how the idea of the co-determination of subject and object of cognition, which is at the heart of autopoietic enactivism, is close to the phenomenological form of correlationism. However, I argue that there is a tension between an epistemological reading of the (...) subject-object correlation that renounces to search for its metaphysical ground, and the enactivist focus on the biological basis of cognition, which seems to imply a view of nature as the metaphysical ground of the conscious mind. A similar problem arises in Husserl’s phenomenology in the contrast between the idea of the fundamental subject-object correlation, the concept of nature as a correlate of transcendental constitution, and the investigation of the corporeal and material grounding of consciousness. I find a way out of this problem by drawing on the distinction between static and genetic phenomenology. I argue that the investigation of the temporality of experience in genetic phenomenology leads us to investigate the metaphysical ground of the subject-object correlation, understood dynamically as co-constitution and co-origination. Then I propose to complement phenomenology and enactivism with a form of neutral monism, which conceives of the co-constitution of subject and object as grounded in a flow of fundamental, pre-phenomenal qualities. (shrink)

Enactivism interprets conscious experiences as interaction between the subject’s body and the physical environment (i.e., the body-environment interaction). During dreaming states, however, the body-environment interaction is largely limited. In this case, the phenomenal similarity between dreaming and waking experiences poses a significant challenge to enactivism. This paper proposes an enactivist account of dreaming experiences as a response to this challenge. In particular, this enactivist account explains the phenomenal similarity between dreaming and waking perceptual experiences as an illusion resulting (...) from the disrupted subjective perspective embedded in dreaming experiences due to the limited body-environment interaction. The phenomenal consequence of this disrupted subjective perspective makes dreaming subjects experience the self-generated mental imagery during dreaming states as more realistic and perceptual than the self-generated mental imagery during waking states. In this case, the dreaming experiences are distinguished from waking perceptual experiences in terms of the phenomenal content and distinguished from waking experiences of mental imagery in terms of the phenomenal conceptualization process. The enactivist account of dreaming experiences I propose in this paper manages to explain the illusory phenomenal similarity between dreaming and waking perceptual experiences with the level of body-environment interaction, which makes it more advantageous than previous attempts to make enactivism congruous with dreaming experiences. (shrink)

Among the many ideas that go by the name of “enactivism” there is the idea that by “cognition” we should understand what is more commonly taken to be behavior. For clarity, label such forms of enactivism “enactivismb.” This terminology requires some care in evaluating enactivistb claims. There is a genuine risk of enactivist and non-enactivist cognitive scientists talking past one another. So, for example, when enactivistsb write that “cognition does not require representations” they are not necessarily denying what (...) cognitivists claim when they write that “cognition requires representations.” This paper will draw attention to instances of some of these unnecessary confusions. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that enactivism and computationalism—two seemingly incompatible research traditions in modern cognitive science—can be fruitfully reconciled under the framework of the free energy principle. FEP holds that cognitive systems encode generative models of their niches and cognition can be understood in terms of minimizing the free energy of these models. There are two philosophical interpretations of this picture. A computationalist will argue that as FEP claims that Bayesian inference underpins both perception and action, it entails (...) a concept of cognition as a computational process. An enactivist, on the other hand, will point out that FEP explains cognitive systems as constantly self-organizing to non-equilibrium steady-state. My claim is that these two interpretations are both true at the same time and that they enlighten each other. (shrink)

Although enactive approaches to cognition vary in terms of their character and scope, all endorse several core claims. The first is that cognition is tied to action. The second is that cognition is composed of more than just in-the-head processes; cognitive activities are externalized via features of our embodiment and in our ecological dealings with the people and things around us. I appeal to these two enactive claims to consider a view called “direct social perception” : the idea that we (...) can sometimes perceive features of other minds directly in the character of their embodiment and environmental interactions. I argue that if DSP is true, we can probably also perceive certain features of mental disorders as well. I draw upon the developmental psychologist Daniel Stern’s notion of “forms of vitality”—largely overlooked in these debates—to develop this idea, and I use autism as a case study. I argue further that an enactive approach to DSP can clarify some ways we play a regulative role in shaping the temporal and phenomenal character of the disorder in question, and it may therefore have practical significance for both the clinical and therapeutic encounter. (shrink)

Enactivism has, perhaps, come to mean different things to different people. The version of enactivism that I am going to build on in this paper is that defended in my book The New Science of the Mind (henceforth NSM). That view is, I think, recognizably enactivist. Others might disagree, and I myself not only characterized it in other terms but was careful to distinguish it from other views that fall under the rubric "enactivist." However, the view I defended (...) is, I think, recognizably enactivist to the extent it regards cognition as, in part, made up of processes whereby an individual manipulates, transforms, and/or exploits structures in its environment. These structures carry information that is relevant to the cognitive task in which the individual is engaged, and the processes are ones that transform this information from information that is merely present to information that is available to the individual. This was a common theme of all my ruminations on this topic, all the way back to The Body in Mind. (shrink)

I support much of Maiese and Hanna’s (M&H) account of the ways social institutions “mindshape” people’s cognition (values, meanings, affective framings, and habits of bodily comportment), and of the ways neoliberal individualism can be resisted and progressive social change can be enacted. But the overall approach can be augmented, I argue, if M&H would embrace an enactivist account of socially distributed and collective cognition, and action, in which cognitive systems include but are not limited to individuals. Complementing M&H’s focus on (...) top-down “repressive” forms of power, with also “ideological” forms of power that are distributed throughout social communities and their discursive practices, symbolic resources, and shared meanings would enable M&H to see not just top-down mindshaping by institutions, but also peer-to-peer mindshaping between members of distributed normative social practices. This analysis also entails that diverse institutions are often composed of many differing communities and practices, such that institutions are not wholly destructive and deforming nor wholly constructive and enabling. It also augments their largely top-down account of social change with the kinds of social change enacted through peer-to-peer interactions between members of different communities, whose iterated interactions over time embody competition (differing distributions of repressive and ideological power) between different normative communities with different practices, especially through heterodox communities of resistance, offering liberatory and “enabling” social practices as alternatives to dominant orthodox “deforming” social practices. (shrink)

Over the course of the past few decades 4E approaches that theorize cognition and agency as embodied, embedded, extended, and/or enactive have garnered growing support from figures working in philosophy of mind and cognitive science. Correspondingly, there has been a rising interest in the wider conceptual and practical implications of 4E views. Several proposals have for instance been made regarding 4E’s bearing on ethical theory, 505–526, 2009; Cash, Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 9, 645–671 2010). In this paper I contribute (...) to this trend by critically examining the enactive contribution made by Colombetti and Torrance, Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 8, 505–526 and by laying the foundations for an alternative enactive approach. Building off recent enactive approaches to social interaction, Colombetti and Torrance, Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 8, maintain that many of our actions and intentions “and in particular the ethical significance of what we do and mean” are “emergent from the interactions in which we participate”. Taking this seriously, they argue, entails a radical shift away from moral theory’s traditional emphasis on individual or personal responsibility. I challenge their suggestion that accepting a broadly enactive 4E approach to cognition and agency entails the kind of wholesale shift they propose. To make my case I start by revisiting some of the general theoretical commitments characteristic of enactivism, including some relevant insights that can be gathered from Vasudevi Reddy’s broadly enactive approach to developmental psychology. After that I examine both the arguments internal to Colombetti and Torrance’s proposal and, in an effort to sketch the beginnings of an alternative view, I draw some connections between enactivism, the ethics of care and P.F. Strawson’s work on personal responsibility. I believe that a consideration of the commonalities but also the differences between these views helps advance the important conversation concerning the link between enactivism and questions of personal responsibility in ethical theory that Colombetti and Torrance have undeniably helped jumpstart. (shrink)

In their recent book Radicalizing Enactivism. Basic minds without content, Dan Hutto and Erik Myin make two important criticisms of what they call autopoietic enactivism. These two criticisms are that AE harbours tacit representationalists commitments and that it has too liberal a conception of cognition. Taking the latter claim as its main focus, this paper explores the theoretical underpinnings of AE in order to tease out how it might respond to H&M. In so doing it uncovers some reasons (...) which not only appear to warrant H&M’s initial claims but also seem to point to further uneasy tensions within the AE framework. The paper goes beyond H&M by tracing the roots of these criticisms and apparent tensions to phenomenology and the role it plays in AE’s distinctive conception of strong life-mind continuity. It is highlighted that this phenomenological dimension of AE contains certain unexamined anthropomorphic and anthropogenic leanings which do not sit comfortably within its wider commitment to life-mind continuity. In light of this analysis it is suggested that AE will do well to rethink this role or ultimately run the risk of remaining theoretically unstable. The paper aims to contribute to the ongoing theoretical development of AE by highlighting potential internal tensions within its framework which need to be addressed in order for it to continue to evolve as a coherent paradigm. (shrink)

Enactivist accounts of language use generally treat concrete words in terms of motor intentionality systems and affordances for action. There is less consensus, though, regarding how abstract words are to be understood in enactivist terms. I draw on Merleau-Ponty’s later philosophy to argue, against the representationalist paradigm that has dominated the cognitive scientific and philosophical traditions, that language is fundamentally a mode of participation in our world. In particular, language orients us within our milieus in a manner that extends into (...) the depth of the idea-endowed world. This conceptualization of language allows us to see that abstract words orient us bodily just as surely as concrete words do, albeit in a manner that is more diffuse across the entirety of given situations, as I will show with an example of abstract language use in Don DeLillo’s novel Underworld. These insights are applied to some of the recent enactivist discourse to suggest some ways in which representationalism maintains a latent presence in this discourse. I conclude by pointing to developments in conceptual metaphor theory that can enrich our sense of how abstract language is involved in embodied understanding. (shrink)

Open peer commentary on the article “Perception-Action Mutuality Obviates Mental Construction” by Martin Flament Fultot, Lin Nie & Claudia Carello. Upshot: The authors of the target article seem on the one hand to want to reprimand enactivists for not embracing ecological psychology, and on the other, to criticise them for taking on board some - but not all - of the principles of ecological psychology. In this commentary, I argue that the claim that enactivists have not embraced ecological psychology is (...) false, and that it is coherent for enactivists to take on only some of the principles of ecological psychology, as the two research frameworks have different overall projects. Furthermore, I argue that there is an enactivism-friendly stream of ecological psychology research that is currently yielding exciting results that both broaden the depth of ecological psychology research and bring it into dialogue with enactivism-inspired approaches to understanding perception and experience. (shrink)

Although the enactive approach has been very successful in explaining many basic social interactions in terms of embodied practices, there is still much work to be done when it comes to higher forms of social cognition. In this article, we discuss and evaluate two recent proposals by Shaun Gallagher and Daniel Hutto that try to bridge this ‘cognitive gap’ by appealing to the notion of narrative practice. Although we are enthusiastic about these proposals, we argue that (i) it is difficult (...) to see them as continuous with the enactivist notion of direct coupling, and (ii) the failure to account for folk psychological action interpretation suggests that the enactive approach should adopt a broader notion of coupling. (shrink)

The purpose of this article is to start a dialogue between the so-called autopoietic enactivism and the semiotic pragmatism of C. S. Peirce, in order to re-examine both action and representation under a Peircean light. The focus lays on autopoietic enactivism because this approach offers a wider theoretical scope to cognition based on the continuity of life and mind, embodiment, dynamic and non-linear interaction between a system and its environment which are compatible ideas with Peirce’s semiotic pragmatism. The (...) term ‘pragmatic’ has been introduced in cognitive science to reinforce the idea that cognition is a form of practice and to help action-oriented viewpoints to escape representationalism. In this paper, I shall try to demonstrate that Peirce’s semiotic pragmatism can be a meaningful methodological path to guide a reconciliation between not only anti-Cartesianism and representation but also representation and action. In order to accomplish this purpose, Peirce’s account to action, habit, thought and mind will be addressed through some of the guiding principles of his semiotic—sign and sign action. What follows is the re-examining of the problem of representation—as refuted by autopoietic enactivism—under the light of Peirce’s semiotic pragmatism. (shrink)

The full scope of enactivist approaches to cognition includes not only a focus on sensory-motor contingencies and physical affordances for action, but also an emphasis on affective factors of embodiment and intersubjective affordances for social interaction. This strong conception of embodied cognition calls for a new way to think about the role of the brain in the larger system of brain-body-environment. We ask whether recent work on predictive coding offers a way to think about brain function in an enactive system, (...) and we suggest that a positive answer is possible if we interpret predictive coding in a more enactive way, i.e., as involved in the organism’s dynamic adjustments to its environment. (shrink)

Our target article concerns the direction and growth of enactivism, a framework portrayed as a revolutionary shift in understanding cognition. While enactivism continues to be a lively position, it is unclear how its contributions relate to the cognitive sciences. Despite some empirical successes, enactivism remains somewhat insulated as a theoretical position and as a research program. There exists a discrepancy between enactivist aims and delivery. The basis of this problem, we argue, is that the overall objective of (...) enactive theorising is not clear, which has led to diverging strategies for implementation and integration with the cognitive sciences. We review contributions from different strains of enactivism – autopoietic, sensorimotor and radical – and their research goals, both tacit and explicit. We show that enactivism is productively understood as two projects we term utopian enactivism and scientific enactivism. Utopian enactivism aims to develop a philosophically defensible lens through which cognitive science is to be viewed. Scientific enactivism intervenes in scientific practice by contributing to the implementation of enactive ideas. Once disentangled, the utopian and scientific projects have important but independent tasks. Utopian enactivism is useful for building a coherent and defensible enactive philosophy of nature, while scientific enactivism is free to draw upon and contribute to non-enactive approaches in the cognitive sciences. We aim to motivate discussions that will enhance enactivism’s progress, and our reappraisal also offers a clear and explicit roadmap for renewing advances in enactivist philosophy and cognitive science. (shrink)

Radicalizing Enactivism: Basic Minds without Content. . ???aop.label???. doi: 10.1080/09515089.2013.804645.

Open peer commentary on the article “Perception-Action Mutuality Obviates Mental Construction” by Martin Flament Fultot, Lin Nie & Claudia Carello. Upshot: Fultot, Nie, and Carello are correct that enactive researchers should be more aware of the research literature on ecological psychology, but their charge of mental construction is off-target. Enactivism and ecological psychology are compatible frameworks with different, complementary, emphases.

In this chapter, I examine how Dewey circumnavigated debates between empiricists and a priorists by showing that active bodies can perform integrative operations traditionally attributed to “inner” mechanisms, and how he thereby realized developments at which the artificial intelligence, robotics and cognitive science communities only later arrived. Some of his ideas about experience being constituted through skills actively deployed in cultural settings were inspired by ancient Greek sources. Thus in some of his more radical moments, Dewey refined rather than invented (...) the wheel, and I suggest that prominent embodiment figures have done the same, Dewey having anticipated them, particularly Noë and his version of enactivism. I urge that cognitive science may progress into relatively unexplored territory by traveling Dewey’s historically sensitive path. (shrink)

This paper contrasts two enactive theories of visual experience: the sensorimotor theory (O’Regan and Noë, Behav Brain Sci 24(5):939–1031, 2001; Noë and O’Regan, Vision and mind, 2002; Noë, Action in perception, 2004) and Susan Hurley’s (Consciousness in action, 1998, Synthese 129:3–40, 2001) theory of active perception. We criticise the sensorimotor theory for its commitment to a distinction between mere sensorimotor behaviour and cognition. This is a distinction that is firmly rejected by Hurley. Hurley argues that personal level cognitive abilities emerge (...) out of a complex dynamic feedback system at the subpersonal level. Moreover reflection on the role of eye movements in visual perception establishes a further sense in which a distinction between sensorimotor behaviour and cognition cannot be sustained. The sensorimotor theory has recently come under critical fire (see e.g. Block, J Philos CII(5):259–272, 2005; Prinz, Psyche, 12(1):1–19, 2006; Aizawa, J Philos CIV(1), 2007) for mistaking a merely causal contribution of action to perception for a constitutive contribution. We further argue that the sensorimotor theory is particularly vulnerable to this objection in a way that Hurley’s active perception theory is not. This presents an additional reason for preferring Hurley’s theory as providing a conceptual framework for the enactive programme. (shrink)

This paper is an investigation into the possibility of institutional agency and proceeds via the elaboration of two, nested claims. First, if genuine agency is attributable to certain social institutions, it would not be the full-blown, intentional agency that characterizes human activity, but would rather fall under a minimal modality of agency. Moreover, since enactivists aim to articulate minimal conceptions of agency that are applicable across the sphere of the living, this suggests that such accounts of minimal agency might additionally (...) be brought to bear onto some institutions. The second claim concerns which of two ideally typical enactivist accounts of minimal agency can more promisingly be applied to our institutions. Where some enactivists endorse a Jonasian account of minimal agency, which stresses a protentive, forward-looking orientation to a self-persistence goal, other enactivists apply a retentive ideal type of minimal agency, the norms of which are founded on a backward-looking responsiveness to precedent. By way of a critical analysis of structural functionalism, I argue that the retentive approach better explains the kind of agency that would be expressed by some institutions. I also claim that some philosophers, including Christian List, Philip Pettit and Ronald Dworkin, have independently come to the conclusion that institutional agency is retentive agency. (shrink)

Shaun Gallagher applies enactivist thinking to a staggeringly wide range of topics in philosophy of mind and cognitive science, even venturing into the realms of biological anthropology. One prominent point Gallagher makes that the holistic approach of enactivism makes it less amenable to scientific investigation than the cognitivist framework it seeks to replace, and should be seen as a “philosophy of nature” rather than a scientific research program. Gallagher also gives truth to the saying that “if you want new (...) ideas, read old books”, showing how the insights of the American pragmatists, particularly Dewey and Mead, offer a variety of resources and tools that can be brought to bear on modern day enactivism. Here, I suggest that the adoption of enactivist thinking would undermine the assumptions of certain scientific positions, requiring their abandonment, rather than simply making it more difficult to conduct research within an enactivist framework. I then discuss how Mead’s work has been used previously as a “pragmatist intervention” to help resolve problems in a related 4E endeavour, Gibson’s ecological psychology, and make a case for the inclusion of radical behaviorism as another pragmatist resource for 4E cognition. I conclude with a plea for further enactivist intervention in studies of comparative cognition. (shrink)

One of humans’ distinctive cognitive abilities is that they develop an array of capacities through an enculturation process. In “Cognition as a Social Skill,” Sally points to one of the dangers associated with enculturation: ideological oppression. To conceptualize how such oppression takes root, Haslanager appeals to notions of mindshaping and social coordination, whereby people participate in oppressive social practices unthinkingly or even willingly. Arguably, an appeal to mindshaping provides a new kind of argument, grounded in philosophy of mind, which supports (...) the claims that feminist and anti-racist want to defend. However, some theorists worry that Haslanger’s account does not shed much light on how individuals could exert their agency to resist oppression. I argue that enactivist conceptions of mindshaping and habit can help us to make sense of the power of social influences and how they have the potential to both enable and undermine cognition and agency. This moves us toward increased understanding of the workings of social oppression—distinguishing between constructive and enabling forms of heteronomy, and overdetermining and pernicious modes that lead to atrophied moral cognition and a narrowing of the field of affordances. (shrink)

This paper utilizes the enactivist notion of ‘sense-making’ to discuss the nature of depression and examine some implications for treatment. As I understand it, sensemaking is fully embodied, fundamentally affective, and thoroughly embedded in a social environment. I begin by presenting an enactivist conceptualization of affective intentionality and describing how this general mode of intentional directedness to the world is disrupted in cases of major depressive disorder. Next, I utilize this enactivist framework to unpack the notion of ‘temporal desituatedness,’ and (...) maintain that the characteristic symptoms of depression result from a disruption to the future-directed structure of affective intentionality. This can be conceptualized as a loss of “online intelligence” and a shrinking of the field of affordances. Then, I argue that two of the standard modes of treatments for depression, medication and cognitive behavioral therapy, are not fully sufficient means of restoring online intelligence, and that these limitations stem partly from the approaches’ implicit commitment to a brain-bound, overly cognitivist view of the mind. I recommend expressive arts interventions such as dance-movement therapy and music therapy as important supplementary treatment methods that deserve further consideration. Insofar as they revitalize subjects’ bodies and emotions, cultivate an openness to the future, and promote self-insight and social synchrony, these treatment modes not only reflect key insights of enactivism, but also offer great potential for lasting healing. (shrink)

In this book, Daniel Hutto and Erik Myin promote the cause of a radically enactive, embodied approach to cognition that holds that some kinds of minds -- basic minds -- are neither best explained by processes involving the manipulation of ...

We distinguish between three philosophical views on the neuroscience of predictive models: predictive coding, predictive processing and predictive engagement. We examine the concept of active inference under each model and then ask how this concept informs discussions of social cognition. In this context we consider Frith and Friston’s proposal for a neural hermeneutics, and we explore the alternative model of enactivist hermeneutics.

Enactivist (Embodied, Embedded, etc.) approaches in cognitive science and philosophy of mind are sometimes, though not always, conjoined with an anti-representational commitment. A weaker anti-representational claim is that ascribing representational content to internal/sub-personal processes is not compulsory when giving psychological explanations. A stronger anti-representational claim is that the very idea of ascribing representational content to internal/sub-personal processes is a theoretical confusion. This paper criticises some of the arguments made by Hutto & Myin (2013, 2017) for the stronger anti-representational claim and (...) suggests that the default Enactivist view should be the weaker non-representational position. (shrink)

Ecological Psychology and Enactivism both challenge representationist cognitive science, but the two approaches have only begun to engage in dialogue. Further conceptual clarification is required in which differences are as important as common ground. This paper enters the dialogue by focusing on important differences. After a brief account of the parallel histories of Ecological Psychology and Enactivism, we cover incompatibility between them regarding their theories of sensation and perception. First, we show how and why in ecological theory perception (...) is, crucially, not based on sensation. We elucidate this idea by examining the biological roots of work in the two fields, concentrating on Gibson and Varela and Maturana. We expound an ecological critique of any sensation-based approach to perception by detailing two topics: classic retinal image theories and perception in single-celled organisms. The second main point emphasizes the importance of the idea of organism-environment mutuality and its difference from structural coupling of sensations and motor behavior. We point out how ecological - phenomenological methods of inquiry grow out of mutualism and compare Gibson’s idea of visual kinesthesis to Merleau-Ponty’s idea of the lived body. Third, we conclude that Ecological Psychology and varieties of Enactivism are laying down different paths to pursue related goals. Thus, convergence of Ecological Psychology and Enactivism is not possible given their conflicting assumptions, but cross-fertilization is possible and desirable. (shrink)

We characterize Hegel’s stance on biological purposiveness as consisting in a twofold move, which conceives organisms as intrinsically purposive natural systems and focuses on their behavioral and cognitive abilities. We submit that a Hegelian stance is at play in enactivism, the branch of the contemporary theory of biological autonomy devoted to the study of cognition and the mind. What is at stake in the Hegelian stance is the elaboration of a naturalized, although non-reductive, understanding of natural purposiveness.

In this paper, we offer a criticism, inspired by Wittgenstein’s rule-following considerations, of the enactivist account of perception and action. We start by setting up a non-descriptivist naturalism regarding the mind and continue by defining enactivism and exploring its more attractive theoretical features. We then proceed to analyse its proposal to understand normativity non-socially. We argue that such a thesis is ultimately committed to the problematic idea that normative practices can be understood as private and factual. Finally, we offer (...) a characterization of normativity as an essentially social phenomenon and apply our criticisms to other approaches that share commitments with enactivism. (shrink)

Ecological psychologists and enactivists agree that the best explanation for a large share of cognition is nonrepresentational in kind. In both ecological psychology and enactivist philosophy, then, the task is to offer an explanans that does not rely on representations. Different theorists within these camps have contrasting notions of what the best kind of nonrepresentational explanation will look like, yet they agree on one central point: instead of focusing solely on factors interior to an agent, an important aspect of cognition (...) is found in the link or coupling between an agent and the external world. This link is fluid, dynamic, and active in a variety of ways, and we do not need to add any internal extra something in the perception-action-cognition process. At the same time, even devout defenders of ecological psychology and enactivism recognize that plenty happens inside an agent during cognition. In particular, no one denies that the brain plays an important role. What, then, is the role of the brain if it’s not in the game of representing the environment? One possible option is to describe the brain as a resonant organ instead of a representational organ. In this paper we consider the history of resonance in more detail. Particular focus will be placed on two different sets of approaches that have developed the concept of resonance: a representational reading of resonance and a nonrepresentational, dynamic account of resonance. We then apply these accounts to a case study on music performance, specifically in the context of standard tonal jazz. From this application, we propose that a nonrepresentational resonance account consistent with both enactivism and ecological psychology is a viable way of explaining jazz performance. We conclude with future considerations on research regarding the brain as a resonant organ. (shrink)

The paper presents a concise history of enactivism in education, especially in mathematics education. Cases described by Davis’s, Proulx and Simmt’s work showcase the idea that enactivism is a viable alternative to constructivism or to classical views both in terms of practical teaching and theoretical models related to the process of learning. The idea that the student should solve a fixed problem, discover the universally correct solution, and eventually store that correct solution to find many other universally correct (...) solutions to other fixed problems reduces the student to a very simple mechanism aimed at informational efficiency. This problem is met by the enactivistic tradition that began with Varela and Maturana’s work, now updated to the aforementioned researchers. Contra the classical perspective, enactivism proposes the idea that the student collaboratively produces the problem, being able to see multiple solutions, and eventually becoming a performer of knowledge. The article takes these ideas developed in mathematics education and finds their use in philosophical education. The article especially focuses on the student’s problem of being unable to link a new philosophical text discussed in class with their intuition. The last part of the article offers a lesson design example. The philosophical design focuses on making the students explore their own thinking regarding the topic about to be discussed by using a philosophy text before introducing the text. (shrink)

Though many of our social, scientific, and medical practices are shaped by technological artefacts, we lack a framework that adequately accounts for the cognitive role such artefacts play. Current approaches to mind and technology interaction often depart from the extended mind thesis, and are cashed out in terms of information-processing. While proposals for mind extension have generated daring new research programs, (post)phenomenologists have argued that the extended mind account of mind-technology interaction is flawed and incomplete. This paper contributes to this (...) debate by presenting a positive proposal for how we may understand mind-technology interaction from an enactive perspective. The proposal does justice to the shaping roles that artefacts play in cognitive processes and aligns with current approaches in philosophy of technology in general and the school of postphenomenology in particular. This provides enactivism with a toolkit that allows them to better understand mind-technology interaction, while simultaneously providing a cognitive underpinning for the postphenomenological framework. (shrink)

Enactivists frequently argue their account heralds a revolution in cognitive science: enactivism will unseat cognitivism as the dominant paradigm. We examine the lines of reasoning enactivists employ in stirring revolt, but show that none of these prove compelling reasons for cognitivism to be replaced by enactivism. First, we examine the hard sell of enactivism: enactivism reveals a critical explanatory gap at the heart of cognitivism. We show that enactivism does not meet the requirements to incite (...) a paradigm shift in the Kuhnian sense—there is no internal crisis in cognitivism. Nor does it provide inherently better explanations of cognition as some have claimed. Second, we consider the soft sell of enactivism: enactivism provides a more attractive, parsimonious, or clear-eyed lens on cognition. This move proves to boil down to a misunderstanding of how theories are selected in science. Instead we lend support to a broader and more desirable way to conceive of enactivism, the recent proposal that enactivism is a philosophy of nature. We explain how a philosophy of nature does more than support a single research paradigm by integrating scientific questions into a cohesive picture. (shrink)

“ is collection is a much-needed remedy to the confusion about which varieties of enactivism are robust yet viable rejections of traditional representationalism approaches to cognitivism – and which are not. Hutto’s paper is the pivot around which the expert commentators, enactivists and non-enactivists alike, sketch out the implications of enactivism for a wide variety of issues: perception, emotion, the theory of content, cognition, development, social interaction, and more. e inclusion of thoughtful replies from Hutto gives the volume (...) a further degree of depth and integration o en lacking in collections of essays. Anyone interested in assessing the current cutting-edge developments in the. (shrink)

According to Enactivism, cognition should be understood in terms of a dynamic interaction between an acting organism and its environment. Further, this view holds that organisms do not passively receive information from this environment, they rather selectively create this environment by engaging in interaction with the world. Radical Enactivism adds that basic cognition does so without entertaining representations and hence that representations are not an essential constituent of cognition. Some proponents think that getting rid of representations amounts to (...) a revolutionary alternative to standard views about cognition. To emphasize the impact, they claim that this ‘radicalization’ should be applied to all enactivist friendly views, including, another current and potentially revolutionary approach to cognition: predictive processing. In this paper, we will show that this is not the case. After introducing the problem, we will argue that ‘radicalizing’ predictive processing does not add any value to this approach. After this, we will analyze whether or not radical Enactivism can count as a revolution within cognitive science at all and conclude that it cannot. Finally, in section 5 we will claim that cognitive science is better off when embracing heterogeneity. (shrink)