Enactive cognitive science combines questions in epistemology, ontology, and ethics by conceiving of bodies as open-ended and mutually transforming through activity. While enaction is not a theory of ethics, it can contribute to its foundations. We present a schematization of enactive ideas that underlie traditional distinctions between Being, Knowing, and Doing. Ethics in this scheme begins in the relation between knowing and becoming. Critical of dichotomous thinking, we approach the questions of alterity and ethical reality. Alterity is relevant to the (...) enactive approach, but not in the radical sense of transcendental arguments. We propose difference, instead, as a more generative concept. Following Simondon, we see norms and values manifest in webs of past and future acts together with their potentialities for becoming. We propose a transindividual concept of moral attunement that includes ethical know-how and consciousness raising. Through generative difference and attunement to configurations of becoming, enaction underpins an ethics of participation linking virtue ethics and ethics of care. (shrink)

One of the pressing issues in philosophy of technology is the role of human creativity in human-technology relations. We first observe that a techno-centric orientation of philosophy of technology leaves open the role and contribution of human creativity in technological evolution, while an anthropocentric orientation leaves open the role of the technical milieu in technological evolution. Subsequently, we develop a concept of creation as deviation and responsiveness in response to affordances in the environment, inspired by the affordance theory by James (...) Gibson. With this concept of creation as deviative responsiveness, we articulate the human contribution to human-technology creation, namely, our intentional deviation of the inhibiting forces of the currently dominant niche or meaningful world of human-technology relations, in order to become responsive to new affordances in human-technology creation that constitute a new niche or world of human-technology relations. (shrink)

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)

Title - Gender in distributed cognitive systems: Possible conceptualizations. Abstract - There is a mismatch between social and biological approaches in the studies on sex and gender. Neurofeminist researchers critically examine gendered impacts of research in neuroscience and cognitive science, as well as develop more adequate and gender‑appropriate neuroscientific studies. However, they still seem to be focused on the brain and its relationship with the environment. Moreover, there are a little ‘science‑phobic’ feminist approaches based on actor‑network theory, and social science (...) and technology studies. In this context, I would like to suggest another account of gender. My account is not centered on individual selves, minds or brains, but it is based on concept of distributed cognitive system and cultural ecosystem developed in the cognitive science. The potential integrational role of the approach seems worthy of attention. On the one hand, there are no contradictions between more important assumptions of distributed cognition theory and social studies. On the other hand, it is not necessarily limited to human beings and their minds. I pay particular attention to distinction between the distributed cognition theory and the extended mind theory. Ones of the most important elements of the ‘gender‑sensitive’ distributed system are artifacts and their affordances, most of all — cultural and canonical ones. In this light, the gender relations seem not only distributed, but also able to be designed. (shrink)

A promising recent approach for understanding complex phenomena is recognition of anticipatory behavior of living organisms and social organizations. The anticipatory, predictive action permits learning, novelty seeking, rich experiential existence. I argue that the established frameworks of anticipation, adaptation or learning imply overly passive roles of anticipatory agents, and that a fictionalist standpoint reflects the core of anticipatory behavior better than representational or future references. Cognizing beings enact not just their models of the world, but own make-believe existential agendas as (...) well. Anticipators embody plausible scripts of living, and effectively assume neo-Kantian or pragmatist perspectives of cognition and action. It is instructive to see that anticipatory behavior is not without mundane or loathsome deficiencies. Appreciation of ferally fictionalist anticipation suggests an equivalence of semiosis and anticipation. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to compare various meditative states, such as Buddhist dhyāna‐s, yogic nirbīja samādhi and nondual awareness (Tib. gñis‐med). The primary sour‐ ce texts I refere to are Yogasūtras of Patañjali, Ānāpānasmṛtisūtra (MN 118), Samādhisūtra (AN 41), The Tibetan Yogas of Dream and Sleep. I also discuss some relevant claims of contemporary empirical studies. First, I define the key terms used in Eastern meditation studies as well as in neurophenomenology, a contemporary method applied to examining the (...) meditative states of mind, such as samādhi, dhyāna, and śamatha. Inspired by Shinzen Young, I distinguish three groups of meditative states that might be identified with nondual awareness. These three groups are: the second, the third and fourth Buddhist dhyāna being equivalent to nirvicāra samādhi and nirānanda samādhi in the classical Indian yoga; nirbīja samādhi and nondual awareness, typical to the Mahayāna contemplative traditions. I explain why we can recognize each of the above states as nondual awareness and how they differ from each other. Then, I make a comparison between meditation practice explained in Ānāpānasmṛtisūtra and nondual awareness presented in the Tibetan Buddhism. Besides, I discuss the above kinds of mental states in terms of recent neurophenomenological findings. While doing so, I am trying to demonstrate that our understanding of meditation can benefit from the empirical studies which help us to objective this kind of subjective experience, to some degree, if they are given an adequate place in our study. (shrink)

In recent years, a central debate in the philosophy of mind and cognitive science concerns the role of the body in perception and cognition. For many contemporary philosophers, not only cognition but also perception is connected mainly with the brain, where the processing of input from the senses takes place; whereas for the proponents of ‘embodied cognition’ other aspects of the body beyond the brain, including the environment, play a constitutive role in cognitive processes. In terms of perception, a new (...) theory has emerged which stresses perception’s active character and claims that the embodied subject and the environment, with which it interacts, form a dynamic system. Supporters of ‘enactive perception’ such as Susan Hurley and Alva Noë maintain that the physical substrate or the supervenience basis of perceptual experience and phenomenal consciousness may include besides the brain and the nervous system other bodily and environmental features. Yet, it will be argued in this paper that the interaction between the subject and the environment forms a system of causal relations, so we can theoretically interfere in the causal chains and create hallucinations, which cannot be distinguished from veridical perception, or a virtual reality as in the film Matrix (1999). This kind of argument and its related thought experiments aim to stress the primacy of the brain in determining phenomenal states, and show that the body and certain interactions with the environment have a causal, but not a constitutive or essential role, in forming phenomenal consciousness. (shrink)

The concepts and powerful mathematical tools of Dynamical Systems Theory (DST) yield illuminating methods of studying cognitive processes, and are even claimed by some to enable us to bridge the notorious explanatory gap separating mind and matter. This article includes an analysis of some of the conceptual and empirical progress Dynamical Systems Theory is claimed to accomodate. While sympathetic to the dynamicist program in principle, this article will attempt to formulate a series of problems the proponents of the approach in (...) question will need to face if they wish to prolong their optimism. The main points to be addressed involve the reductive tendencies inherent in Dynamical Systems Theory, its somewhat muddled position relative to connectionism, the metaphorical nature DST-C exhibits which hinders its explanatory potential, and DST-C's problematic account of causality. Brief discussions of the mathematical and philosophical backgrounds of DST, seminal experimental work and possible adaptations of the theory or alternative suggestions (dynamicist connectionism, neurophenomenology, R&D theory) are included. (shrink)

This study clarifies the need for a renewed account of the body in physiotherapy to fill sizable gaps between physiotherapeutical theory and practice. Physiotherapists are trained to approach bodily functioning from an objectivist perspective; however, their therapeutic interactions with patients are not limited to the provision of natural-scientific explanations. Physiotherapists’ practice corresponds well to theorisation of the body as the bearer of original bodily intentionality, as outlined by Merleau-Ponty and elaborated upon by enactivists. We clarify how physiotherapeutical practice corroborates Merleau-Ponty’s (...) critical arguments against objectivist interpretations of the body; particularly, his analyses demonstrate that norms of optimal corporeal functioning are highly individual and variable in time and thus do not directly depend on generic physiological structures. In practice, objectively measurable physical deviations rarely correspond to specific subjective difficulties and, similarly, patients’ reflective insights into their own motor deficiencies do not necessarily produce meaningful motor improvements. Physiotherapeutical procedures can be understood neither as mechanical manipulations of patients’ machine-like bodies by experts nor as a process of such manipulation by way of instructing patients’ explicit conscious awareness. Rather, physiotherapeutical practice and theory can benefit from the philosophical interpretation of motor disorders as modifications of bodily intentionality. Consequently, motor performances addressed in physiotherapy are interpreted as relational features of a living organism coupled with its environment, and motor disorders are approached as failures to optimally manage the motor requirements of a given situation owing to a relative loss of the capacity to structure one’s relation with their environment through motor action. Building on this, we argue that the process of physiotherapy is most effective when understood as a bodily interaction to guide patients towards discovering better ways of grasping a situation as meaningful through bodily postures and movements. (shrink)

In this paper, I suggest that some tales developed in the literature of embodied and radical embodied cognitive science can contribute to the solution of two longstanding issues in the cognitive neuroscience of perception and action. The two issues are the fundamental problem of perception, or how to bridge the gap between sensations and the environment, and the fundamental problem of motor control, or how to better characterize the relationship between brain activity and behavior. In both cases, I am going (...) to propose that cognitive neuroscience could incorporate embodied insights—coming from the sensorimotor approach to perception and action, and from ecological psychology—to advance the solution for each issue without the need for abandoning or undergoing a substantial revision of its core assumptions. Namely, cognitive neuroscience could incorporate the forgotten tales of embodiment without undergoing through a complete revolution. In this sense, I am proposing not a call but a farewell to arms. (shrink)

In this paper, I compare various theories of perception in relation to the question of the epistemological and ontological status of the qualities that appear in perceptual experience. I group these theories into two main views: quality externalism and quality internalism, and I highlight their contrasting problems in accounting for phenomena such as perceptual relativity, illusions and hallucinations. Then, I propose an alternative view, which I call qualitative relationism and which conceives of the subject and the object of perceptual experience (...) as essentially related to one another in a process of co-constitution out of fundamental qualities. I lend support to this view by drawing on Husserl’s genetic phenomenology, which I complement with a form of neutral monism. I argue that the investigation of the temporal structure of perceptual experience leads us to find at its heart a qualitative process that is more fundamental than the two relata of perception and that gives rise to them. Then, I extend this account of perception into a general theory of intentionality and experience and I develop its implications into a neutral monist metaphysics. (shrink)

In this paper I aim to develop a largely non-empirical case for the compatibility of phenomenology and naturalism. To do so, I will criticise what I take to be the standard construal of the relationship between transcendental phenomenology and naturalism, and defend a ‘minimal’ version of phenomenology that is compatible with liberal naturalism in the ontological register and with weak forms of methodological naturalism, the latter of which is understood as advocating ‘results continuity’, over the long haul, with the relevant (...) empirical sciences. Far from such a trajectory amounting to a Faustian pact in which phenomenology sacrifices its soul, I contend that insofar as phenomenologists care about reigning in the excesses of reductive versions of naturalism, the only viable way for this to be done is via the impure and hybrid account of phenomenology I outline here. (shrink)

Intentionality (?directedness?, ?aboutness?) is both a central topic in contemporary philosophy of mind, phenomenology and the cognitive sciences, and one of the themes with which both analytic and Continental philosophers have separately engaged starting from Brentano and Edmund Husserl?s ground-breaking Logical Investigations (1901) through Roderick M. Chisholm, Daniel C. Dennett?s The Intentional Stance, John Searle?s Intentionality, to the recent work of Tim Crane, Robert Brandom, Shaun Gallagher and Dan Zahavi, among many others. In this paper, I shall review recent discussions (...) of intentionality, including some recent explorations of the history of the concept (paying particular attention to Anselm), and suggest some ways the phenomenological approach of Husserl and Heidegger can still offer insights for contemporary philosophy of mind and consciousness. (shrink)

Since John Locke, regnant conceptions of personhood in Western philosophy have focused on individual capabilities for complex forms of consciousness that involve cognition such as the capability to remember past events and one’s own past actions, to think about and identify oneself as oneself, and/or to reason. Conceptions of personhood such as Locke's qualify as cognition-oriented, and they often fail to acknowledge the role of embodiment for personhood. This article offers an alternative conception of personhood from within the tradition of (...) phenomenology of the body. The article presents a phenomenological analysis of joint musical activity in dementia care and outlines an intercorporeal conception of personhood based on this analysis. It also provides a philosophical basis for the idea that others can hold us in personhood, and it questions a strict one-body-one-person logic that has pertained in much personhood debate. (shrink)

A study of the interactions between mathematics and cognitive science, carried out within a historical perspective, is important for a better understanding of mathematics education in the present. This is evident when analysing the contribution made by the epistemological theories of Ernst Mach. On the basis of such theories, a didactic method was developed, which was used in the teaching of mathematics in Austria at the beginning of the twentieth century and applied to different subjects ranging from simple operations in (...) arithmetic to calculus. Besides the relevance of this method—also named the “Jacob method” after Josef Jacob who proposed it—to teaching practice, it could also be considered interesting in a wider context with reference to the mind-body problem. In particular, the importance that Jacob gives to “muscular activity” in the process of forming and elaborating mathematical concepts, derived from Mach, resounds in the current debate on embodied cognition, where cognitive processes are understood not as expressions of an abstract and merely computational mind but as based on our physicality as human beings, equipped not just with a brain but also a body. This model has been applied to mathematics in the “theory of embodied mathematics”, the objective of which is to study, with the methods and apparatus of embodied cognitive science, the cognitive mechanisms used in the human creation and conceptualisation of mathematics. The present article shows that the “Jacob method” may be considered a historical example of didactical application of analogous ideas. (shrink)

Underlying the recent focus on embodied and interactive aspects of social understanding are several intuitions about what roles the body, interaction processes, and interpersonal experience play. In this paper, we introduce a systematic, hands-on method for investigating the experience of interacting and its role in intersubjectivity. Special about this method is that it starts from the idea that researchers of social understanding are themselves one of the best tools for their own investigations. The method provides ways for researchers to calibrate (...) and to trust themselves as sophisticated instruments to help generate novel insights into human interactive experience. We present the basics of the method, and two empirical studies. The first is a video-study on autism, which shows greater refinement in the way people with autism embody their social interactions than previously thought. The second is a study of thinking in live interactions, which provides insight into the common feeling that too much thinking can hamper interaction, and into how this kind of interactional awkwardness might be unblocked. (shrink)

An influential view in cognitive science is that computation in cognitive systems is semantic, conceptually depending on representation: to compute is to manipulate representations. I argue that accepting the non-semantic teleomechanistic view of computation lays the ground for a promising alternative strategy, in which computation helps to explain and naturalise representation, rather than the other way around. I show that this computation-based approach to representation presents six decisive advantages over the semantic view. I claim that it can improve the two (...) most influential current theories of representation, teleosemantics and structural representation, by providing them with precious tools to tackle some of their main shortcomings. In addition, the computation-based approach opens up interesting new theoretical paths for the project of naturalising representation, in which teleology plays a role in individuating computations, but not representations. (shrink)

Two major philosophical movements have sought to fundamentally rethink the relationship between humans and their environment: environmental ethics and enactivism. Surprisingly, they virtually never refer to or seek inspiration from each other. The goal of this analysis is to bridge the gap. Our main purpose, then, is to address, from the enactivist angle, the conceptual backbone of environmental ethics, namely the concept of intrinsic value. We argue that intrinsic value does indeed exist, yet its "intrinsicality" does not boil down to (...) being independent of the interests and needs of humans. Rather, it is brought forth by what we call shared enaction of an axiological domain. The latter is built upon such core posits of enactivism as autonomy, enaction, participatory sense-making as well as the most recent concept of loving as knowing proposed by Hanne De Jaegher. (shrink)

Autism research is increasingly moving to a view centred around sensorimotor atypicalities instead of traditional, ethically problematical, views predicated on social-cognitive deficits. We explore how an enactivist approach to autism illuminates how social differences, stereotypically associated with autism, arise from such sensorimotor atypicalities. Indeed, in a state space description, this can be taken as a skewing of sensorimotor variables that influences social interaction and so also enculturation and habituation. We argue that this construal leads to autism being treated on a (...) par with other sensorimotor atypicalities such as blindness or atypical height. This leads to our conclusion that, insofar there is an ethical call to inclusion in our public sphere regardless of contingent bodily difference, an enactivist take on autism naturally leads to extending such inclusion to autism. Moreover, our analysis suggests a concrete way forward to achieve inclusion of autistics: by being more attentive to autistic sensorimotor specifics. (shrink)

It is sometimes said that humans are unlike other animals in at least one crucial respect. We do not simply form beliefs, desires and other mental states, but are capable of caring about our mental states in a distinctive way. We can care about the justification of our beliefs, and about the desirability of our desires. This kind of observation is usually made in discussions of free will and moral responsibility. But it has profound consequences, or so I shall argue, (...) for our conception of the very nature of beliefs and other mental states. Suitably developed, it allows us to draw a line between two distinct ways in which a creature may possess a belief, represent a scene, and fall into error. The first way (which I shall call the 'mindless' way) involves little more than an encoding of information in some way designed to guide appropriate response. This is the common heritage of humans, and many other animals. The second way (which I shall call the 'mindful' way) requires that the creature be capable in addition of a special kind of second-order reflection, and (importantly) be expert at detecting the kinds of situation in which such reflection is called for. The differences between these two ways of 'believing that P' are sufficiently deep and significant to warrant (or so I claim) our treating them as two distinct classes of mental states. For it is only courtesy of the second layer of complexity, I shall argue, that it becomes proper to hold someone accountable for their beliefs or other mental states, and it is this fact of (something like) accountability that in turn raises the most significant challenge for philosophical attempts to give naturalized accounts of meaning, belief, and mentality. (shrink)

The notion of intelligence is relevant to several fields of research, including cognitive and comparative psychology, neuroscience, artificial intelligence, and philosophy, among others. However, there is little agreement within and across these fields on how to characterise and explain intelligence. I put forward a behavioural, operational characterisation of intelligence that can play an integrative role in the sciences of intelligence, as well as preserve the distinctive explanatory value of the notion, setting it apart from the related concepts of cognition and (...) rationality. Finally, I examine a popular hypothesis about the underpinnings of intelligence: the capacity to manipulate internal representations of the environment. I argue that the hypothesis needs refinement, and that so refined, it applies only to some forms of intelligence. (shrink)

I propose a systematic survey of the various attitudes proponents of enaction (or enactivism) entertained or are entertaining towards representationalism and towards the use of the concept “mental representation” in cognitive science. For the sake of clarity, a set of distinctions between different varieties of representationalism and anti-representationalism are presented. I also recapitulate and discuss some anti-representationalist trends and strategies one can find the enactive literature, before focusing on some possible limitations of eliminativist versions of enactive anti-representationalism. These limitations are (...) here taken as opportunities for reflecting on the fate of enactivism in its relations with representationalism and anti-representationalism. (shrink)

A revitalized practice of natural philosophy can help people to live a better life and promote a flourishing ecosystem. Such a philosophy is natural in two senses. First, it is natural by seeking to understand the whole of nature, including mental phenomena. Thus, a comprehensive natural philosophy should address the phenomena of sentience by embracing first- and second-person methods of investigation. Moreover, to expand our understanding of the world, natural philosophy should embrace a full panoply of explanations, similar to Aristotle’s (...) four causes. Second, such a philosophy is natural by being grounded in human nature, taking full account of human capacities and limitations. Future natural philosophers should also make use of all human capacities, including emotion and intuition, as well as reason and perception, to investigate nature. Finally, since the majority of our brain’s activities are unconscious, natural philosophy should explore the unconscious mind with the aim of deepening our relation with the rest of nature and of enhancing well-being. (shrink)

We call those gestures “instrumental” that can enhance certain thinking processes of an agent by offering him representational models of his actions in a virtual space of imaginary performative possibilities. We argue that pointing is an instrumental gesture in that it represents geometrical information on one’s own gaze direction, and provides a ritualized template for initiating gaze coordination and joint attention. We counter two possible objections, asserting respectively that the representational content of pointing is not constitutive, but derived from language, (...) and that pointing directly solicits gaze coordination, without representing it. We consider two studies suggesting that attention and spatial perception are actively modified by one’s own pointing activity: the first study shows that pointing gestures help children link sets of objects to their corresponding number words; the second, that adults are faster and more accurate in counting when they point. (shrink)

Many philosophers hold that phenomenally conscious experiences involve a sense of mineness, since experiences like pain or hunger are immediately presented as mine. What can be said about this mineness, and does acceptance of this feature commit us to the existence of a subject or self? If yes, how should we characterize this subject? This paper considers the possibility that, to the extent that we accept this feature, it provides us with a minimal notion of a subject of experience, and (...) that the phenomenological subject of experience, as it is represented in conscious experience, is the organism. While many philosophers agree that the metaphysical subject of experience is the animal, this claim is much less widespread, maybe even counterintuitive. The argument for this claim alludes to the structure of phenomenal consciousness and to recent work in cognitive science concerning the embodied character of consciousness and cognition. To illustrate the problems of current controversies, not only several recent rejections of a subject of experience are critically discussed, but also Hume’s famous rejection of a subject is criticized making use of epistemological aspects from Kant’s philosophy of mind. The final section situates the present discussion in the context of recently popular predictive coding accounts of perception and perceptual experience. (shrink)

Nowadays, aesthetics are generally considered as a crucial aspect that affects the way we confront things, events, and states of affairs. However, the functional role of aesthetics in the interaction between agent and environment has not been addressed effectively. Our objective here is to provide an explanation concerning the role of aesthetics, and especially, of the aesthetic experience as a fundamental bodily and emotional activity in the respective interactions. An explanation of the functional role of the aesthetic experience could offer (...) new orientations to our understanding of embodied cognition and of aesthetics as a fundamental part of it. We argue that aesthetic experience, especially its emotional dimension, is an evaluative process that influences the anticipation for stable and successful interactions with the environment. In other words, aesthetics facilitates sense-making as they affect what might be anticipated by an action tendency with respect to an environment. (shrink)

In this article, we address the case of self-tracking as a practice in which two meaningful backgrounds play an important role as the spatial dimension of human practices. Using a phenomenological approach, we show how quantification multiplies backgrounds, while at the same time generating data about the user. As a result, we can no longer speak of a unified background of human activity, but of multiple dimensions of this background, which, additionally, is perceived as having no pivotal role in the (...) process, often being hidden, situated beyond human consciousness, or taken for granted. Consequently, the phenomenological experience of the background turns into a hermeneutic practice focused on the interpretation of representations and descriptions. By adopting a phenomenological approach, we show the problems and limitations of quantification of human activities occurring in self-tracking and the theoretical problems associated with the scheme of human-technology relations. (shrink)

Many people believe that only humans have the cognitive and behavioral capacities needed for suicidal behavior, such as reflexive subjectivity, free will, intentionality, or awareness of death. Three counterarguments — based on (i) negative emotions and psychopathologies among nonhuman animals, (ii) the nature of self-destructive behavior, and (iii) the problem of model fidelity in suicide research — suggest that self-destructive and self-injurious behaviors among human and nonhuman animals vary along a continuum.

Symbol Grounding Problem is commonly considered one of the central challenges in the philosophy of artificial intelligence as its resolution is deemed necessary for bridging the gap between simple data processing and understanding of meaning and language. SGP has been addressed on numerous occasions with varying results, all resolution attempts having been severely, but for the most part justifiably, restricted by the Zero Semantic Commitment Condition. A further condition that demands explanatory power in terms of machine-to-human communication is the Non-Stupidity (...) Condition that demands an SG approach to be able to account for plausibility of higher-level language use and understanding, such as pragmatics. In this article, we undertake the endeavour of attempting to explain how merging certain early requirements for SG, such as embodiment, environmental interaction, and compliance with the Z-Condition with symbol emergence rather than direct attempts at symbol grounding can help emulate human language acquisition. Along with the presumption that mind and language are both symbolic and computational, we argue that some rather abstract aspects of language can be logically formalised and finally, that this melange of approaches can yield the explanatory power necessary to satisfy the Non-Stupidity Condition without breaking any previous conditions. (shrink)

We review some of the main implications of the free-energy principle (FEP) for the study of the self-organization of living systems – and how the FEP can help us to understand (and model) biotic self-organization across the many temporal and spatial scales over which life exists. In order to maintain its integrity as a bounded system, any biological system - from single cells to complex organisms and societies - has to limit the disorder or dispersion (i.e., the long-run entropy) of (...) its constituent states. We review how this can be achieved by living systems that minimize their variational free energy. Variational free energy is an information theoretic construct, originally introduced into theoretical neuroscience and biology to explain perception, action, and learning. It has since been extended to explain the evolution, development, form, and function of entire organisms, providing a principled model of biotic self-organization and autopoiesis. It has provided insights into biological systems across spatiotemporal scales, ranging from microscales (e.g., sub- and multicellular dynamics), to intermediate scales (e.g., groups of interacting animals and culture), through to macroscale phenomena (the evolution of entire species). A crucial corollary of the FEP is that an organism just is (i.e., embodies or entails) an implicit model of its environment. As such, organisms come to embody causal relationships of their ecological niche, which, in turn, is influenced by their resulting behaviors. Crucially, free-energy minimization can be shown to be equivalent to the maximization of Bayesian model evidence. This allows us to cast natural selection in terms of Bayesian model selection, providing a robust theoretical account of how organisms come to match or accommodate the spatiotemporal complexity of their surrounding niche. In line with the theme of this volume; namely, biological complexity and self-organization, this chapter will examine a variational approach to self-organization across multiple dynamical scales. (shrink)

This paper considers questions about continuity and discontinuity between life and mind. It begins by examining such questions from the perspective of the free energy principle (FEP). The FEP is becoming increasingly influential in neuroscience and cognitive science. It says that organisms act to maintain themselves in their expected biological and cognitive states, and that they can do so only by minimizing their free energy given that the long-term average of free energy is entropy. The paper then argues that there (...) is no singular interpretation of the FEP for thinking about the relation between life and mind. Some FEP formulations express what we call an independence view of life and mind. One independence view is a cognitivist view of the FEP. It turns on information processing with semantic content, thus restricting the range of systems capable of exhibiting mentality. Other independence views exemplify what we call an overly generous non-cognitivist view of the FEP, and these appear to go in the opposite direction. That is, they imply that mentality is nearly everywhere. The paper proceeds to argue that non-cognitivist FEP, and its implications for thinking about the relation between life and mind, can be usefully constrained by key ideas in recent enactive approaches to cognitive science. We conclude that the most compelling account of the relationship between life and mind treats them as strongly continuous, and that this continuity is based on particular concepts of life (autopoiesis and adaptivity) and mind (basic and non-semantic). (shrink)

The contact hypothesis has dominated work on prejudice reduction and is often described as one of the most successful theories within social psychology. The hypothesis has nevertheless been criticized for not being applicable in real life situations due to unobtainable conditions for direct contact. Several indirect contact suggestions have been developed to solve this “application challenge.” Here, we suggest a hybrid strategy of both direct and indirect contact. Based on the second-person method developed in social psychology and cognition, we suggest (...) working with an engagement strategy as a hybrid hypothesis. We expand on this suggestion through an engagement-based intervention, where we implement the strategy in a theater performance and investigate the effects on prejudicial attitudes toward people with physical disabilities. Based on the results we reformulate our initial engagement strategy into the Enact hypothesis. To deal with the application challenge, this hybrid hypothesis posits two necessary conditions for prejudice reduction. Interventions should: work with engagement to reduce prejudice, and focus on the second-order level of attitudes formation. Here the aim of the prejudice reduction is not attitude correction, but instead the nuancing of attitudes. (shrink)

New and radically reformative thinking about the enactive and embodied basis of cognition holds out the promise of moving forward age-old debates about whether we learn and how we learn. The radical enactive, embodied view of cognition (REC) poses a direct, and unmitigated, challenge to the trademark assumptions of traditional cognitivist theories of mind—those that characterize cognition as always and everywhere grounded in the manipulation of contentful representations of some kind. REC has had some success in understanding how sports skills (...) and expertise are acquired. But, REC approaches appear to encounter a natural obstacle when it comes to understanding skill acquisition in knowledge-rich, conceptually based domains like the hard sciences and mathematics. This paper offers a proof of concept that REC’s reach can be usefully extended into the domain of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) learning, especially when it comes to understanding the deep roots of such learning. In making this case, this paper has five main parts. The section “Ancient Intellectualism and the REC Challenge” briefly introduces REC and situates it with respect to rival views about the cognitive basis of learning. The “Learning REConceived: from Sports to STEM?” section outlines the substantive contribution REC makes to understanding skill acquisition in the domain of sports and identifies reasons for doubting that it will be possible to apply the same approach to knowledge-rich STEM domains. The “Mathematics as Embodied Practice” section gives the general layout for how to understand mathematics as an embodied practice. The section “The Importance of Attentional Anchors” introduces the concept “attentional anchor” and establishes why attentional anchors are important to educational design in STEM domains like mathematics. Finally, drawing on some exciting new empirical studies, the section “Seeing Attentional Anchors” demonstrates how REC can contribute to understanding the roots of STEM learning and inform its learning design, focusing on the case of mathematics. (shrink)

In the thesis I offer an analysis of the metaphysical underpinnings of the extended cognition thesis via an examination of standard views of metaphysical building (or, dependence) relations. -/- In summary form, the extended cognition thesis is a view put forth in naturalistic philosophy of mind stating that the physical basis of cognitive processes and cognitive processing may, in the right circumstances, be distributed across neural, bodily, and environmental vehicles. As such, the extended cognition thesis breaks substantially with the still (...) widely held view in cognitive science and philosophy of mind, namely that cognitive processes and cognitive processing take place within the skin-and-skull of individual organisms. The standard view of metaphysical building relations can be expressed as the conjunction of two theses. First, that a metaphysical building relation – such as composition, constitution, realization, supervenience or emergence – is a relation of ontological dependence, because if a metaphysical building relation holds between X (or the Xs) and Y, then it is in virtue of X (or the Xs) that Y exists. Second, metaphysical building relations are synchronic (durationless) relations of ontological dependence. In the thesis, I propose an alternative diachronic framework by which to extend the standard synchronic accounts of metaphysical dependence relations, and by which to reformulate the metaphysical foundation of the extended cognition thesis. The project fills an important gap between analytical metaphysics (in particular, the metaphysics of dependence relations) and naturalistic philosophy of mind (especially the extended cognition thesis). To my knowledge there has been no attempt to establish a robust diachronic account of metaphysical building (or, dependence) relations such as, e.g., composition and constitution. However, this is precisely what I argue is required to properly advance and ground the metaphysics of extended cognition. Ultimately, my aim of reformulating the metaphysics of extended cognition consists in taking several steps toward a third-wave of extended cognition. (shrink)

A recent turn in the cognitive sciences has deepened the attention on embodied and situated dynamics for explaining different cognitive processes such as perception, emotion, and social cognition. This has fostered an extensive interest in the social and ‘intersubjective’ nature of moral behavior, especially from the perspective of enactivism. In this paper, I argue that embodied and situated perspectives, enactivism in particular, nonetheless require further improvements with regards to their analysis of the social nature of human morality. In brief, enactivist (...) proposals still do not define what features of the social-relational context, or which kind of processes within social interactions, make an evaluation or action morally relevant or distinctive from other types of social normativity. As an alternative to this proclivity, and seeking to complement the enactive perspective, I present a definition of the process of moral sense-making and offer an empirically-based ethical distinction between different domains of social knowledge in moral development. For doing so, I take insights from the constructivist tradition in moral psychology. My objective is not to radically oppose embodied and enactive alternatives but to expand the horizon of their conceptual and empirical contributions to morality research. (shrink)

This work addresses the autonomous organization of biological systems. It does so by considering the boundaries of biological systems, from individual cells to Home sapiens, in terms of the presence of Markov blankets under the active inference scheme—a corollary of the free energy principle. A Markov blanket defines the boundaries of a system in a statistical sense. Here we consider how a collective of Markov blankets can self-assemble into a global system that itself has a Markov blanket; thereby providing an (...) illustration of how autonomous systems can be understood as having layers of nested and self-sustaining boundaries. This allows us to show that: (i) any living system is a Markov blanketed system and (ii) the boundaries of such systems need not be co-extensive with the biophysical boundaries of a living organism. In other words, autonomous systems are hierarchically composed of Markov blankets of Markov blankets—all the way down to individual cells, all the way up to you and me, and all the way out to include elements of the local environment. (shrink)

This PhD thesis concerns introspective approaches to the study of the mind. Across three standalone papers, I examine the significance of introspective data and advise on appropriate kinds of training for the production of such data. An overview document first introduces major themes, methods and arguments of the thesis. Paper 1 then begins the argumentative work, interrogating the constraining function of introspection in cognitive science. Here, I evaluate “enactivist” claims about the significance of introspection, clarifying central enactivist suggestions to draw (...) out the broader importance of introspection in science and philosophy. Paper 2 then examines the proposed employment of Buddhist meditation practices in the production of rigorous introspective data. I defend such proposals against concerns that meditators yield ungeneralizable data, given the transformative character of these attention-training techniques. I argue that some meditation-trained transformations are actually epistemically-beneficial, undermining popular associations between transformation and “distortion”. Paper 3 then reviews difficulties involved in integrating meditative training into research. I emphasise the importance of specific contextual supports to meditation as critical ingredients of introspective proficiency, showing how difficulties replicating these threaten to limit the scope of meditation’s scientific benefits. I layout methodological responses to this that can maximise meditation’s positive impact going forwards. (shrink)

Following the levels of intentionality and semiosis distinguished by the Semiotic Hierarchy, and the distinction between original agency and enhanced agency, we propose a model of an agency hierarchy, consisting of six layers. Consistent with the phenomenological orientation of cognitive semiotics, a central claim is that agency and subjectivity are complementary aspects of intentionality. Hence, there is no agency without at least the minimal sense/feeling of agency. This perspective rules out all artefacts as genuine agents, as well as simple organisms, (...) since it is highly unlikely that e.g. bacteria have any first-person perspective. Using this model, we review and assess recent proposals on the nature of agency from cognitive science, and neuroscience, and draw conclusions on how to incorporate aspects of them within a synthetic cognitive-semiotic framework. (shrink)

Shaun Gallagher’s [2019] ‘Rethinking Nature’ is an attempt to make conceptual space for the relevance of the phenomenological tradition of Husserl, Merleau-Ponty, etc., to cognitive scientific explanation within an embodied enactivist approach to cognition. Since cognitive science currently presupposes orthodox scientific naturalism—for which nature is nothing over and above the objective posits of successful science—it makes no allowance for the lived first-person experiences or intersubjective agency that are central to phenomenology; and so, renders them unavailable to Gallagher’s enactivism. Gallagher leading (...) idea is to qualify the scientific naturalist idea of nature as a totality of ‘objective’ physical objects in order to make allowance for subjects and their subjectivity in the scientific image of the world. In this proposal Gallagher continues to think within the scientific naturalist commitment to the completeness of the scientific image of the world. In this brief commentary, although I applaud Gallagher’s description of the problem of subjectivity in relation to science, and his general strategy of rethinking nature, I criticize the specific form this rethinking takes. I argue that a better way to include irreducible subjects and subjectivity in a reconception of nature is to drop the requirement that everything in nature must figure in the scientific image of the world. Thus, I propose the advantages of a liberal naturalism, and a retention of an objectivist conception of science, over Gallagher’s reformed scientific naturalism. (shrink)

The research was generally motivated by a dearth of studies on joy, and particularly inspired by a book of joy celebrating the inter-spiritual dialogue between the Dalai Lama and Desmond Tutu. Its aim was to investigate whether the direct contemplation of joy would be associated with improvements in psychophysiological coherence, spirituality and various positive emotions and feelings. Integrative quantitative and qualitative findings emerging from a small pilot study, including a convenience sample of six participants with a mean age of 42 (...) years and age range of 25-69 years, supported the research hypothesis. Significant quantitative increases in psychophysiological coherence, spirituality and positive feelings were coherently and consistently supported by participants' individual and collective experiences. Integrative discussion amplified the paradoxical theme of joy through suffering in human emotional and spiritual life. (shrink)

Michael Peters, Sonja Arndt & Marek TesarThis is a collective writing experiment of PESA members, including its Executive Committee, asking questions of the Philosophy of Education in a New Key. Co...

This article addresses the question of the coherence of enactivism as a research perspective by making a case study of enactivism in mathematics education research. Main theoretical directions in mathematics education are reviewed and the history of adoption of concepts from enactivism is described. It is concluded that enactivism offers a ‘grand theory’ that can be brought to bear on most of the phenomena of interest in mathematics education research, and so it provides a sufficient theoretical framework. It has particular (...) strength in describing interactions between cognitive systems, including human beings, human conversations and larger human social systems. Some apparent incoherencies of enactivism in mathematics education and in other fields come from the adoption of parts of enactivism that are then grafted onto incompatible theories. However, another significant source of incoherence is the inadequacy of Maturana’s definition of a social system and the lack of a generally agreed upon alternative. (shrink)

In this paper, we offer reasons to justify the explanatory credentials of dynamical modeling in the context of the metaplasticity thesis, located within a larger grouping of views known as 4E Cognition. Our focus is on showing that dynamicism is consistent with interventionism, and therefore with a difference-making account at the scale of system topologies that makes sui generis explanatory differences to the overall behavior of a cognitive system. In so doing, we provide a general overview of the interventionist approach. (...) We then argue that recent mechanistic attempts at reducing dynamical modeling to a merely descriptive enterprise fail given that the explanatory standard in dynamical modeling can be shown to rest on interventionism. We conclude that dynamical modeling captures features of nested and developmentally plastic cognitive systems that cannot be explained by appeal to underlying mechanisms alone. (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)

Philosophical accounts of the constitution relation have been explicated in terms of synchronic relations between higher‐ and lower‐level entities. Such accounts, I argue, are temporally austere or impoverished, and are consequently unable to make sense of the diachronic and dynamic character of constitution in dynamical systems generally and dynamically extended cognitive processes in particular. In this paper, my target domain is extended cognition based on insights from nonlinear dynamics. Contrariwise to the mainstream literature in both analytical metaphysics and extended cognition, (...) I develop a nonstandard, alternative conception of constitution, which I call “diachronic process constitution”. It will be argued that only a diachronic and dynamical conception of constitution is consistent with the nature of constitution in distributed cognitive processes. (shrink)