Abstract
Many authors have identified a link between later Wittgenstein and enactivism. But few have also recognised how Wittgenstein may in fact challenge enactivist approaches. In this paper, I consider one such challenge. For example, Wittgenstein is well known for his discussion of seeing-as, most famously through his use of Jastrow’s ambiguous duck-rabbit picture. Seen one way, the picture looks like a duck. Seen another way, the picture looks like a rabbit. Drawing on some of Wittgenstein’s remarks about seeing-as, I show how Wittgenstein poses a challenge for proponents of Sensorimotor Enactivism, like O’Regan and Noë, namely to provide a sensorimotor framework within which seeing-as can be explained. I claim that if these proponents want to address this challenge, then they should endorse what I call Sensorimotor Identification, according to which visual experiences can be identified with what agents do.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
Examples of such challenges are the following. Heras-Escribano et al. (2014) claim that Wittgenstein’s account of rule-following supports the view that normativity is scaffolded by our social practices. The authors argue that this then challenges the mind/life enactive claim that primitive organisms, like bacteria, can engage in “sense-making”, that is, normatively charged interactions. Steiner (2018), on the other hand, argues that enactivists display a tendency to view mentality in terms of processes, a view that later Wittgenstein explicitly challenges.
Stern (2006) divides commentators on Wittgenstein into (at least) two camps. On the one side, there are those who favour what can be called a “pyrrhonian” reading of Wittgenstein’s philosophical method. Pyrrhonian readers view Wittgenstein as someone profoundly skeptical of the remit of philosophy. That is, while philosophical concerns reveal “deep disquietudes” (Wittgenstein 2009, 111), the job of the philosopher nonetheless remains fundamentally negative, namely to exorcise those disquietudes and in doing so bring philosophy to an end. On the other side, “non-pyrrhonian” readers, while agreeing that Wittgenstein’s approach has therapeutic elements, insist that the outcome of this therapy is substantive. For example, Wittgenstein’s reminders can provide new insight into our language games and form of life. Crucially, this insight is new, not in the sense of revealing some previously unheard of theory or explanation (Wittgenstein is not in the business of providing any theories or explanations), but rather in the sense of enabling us to see what is missed because it is always before our eyes (ibid, 129). In the text, I read Wittgenstein’s method as non-pyrrhonian.
Since O’Regan and Noës’ original formulation of Sensorimotor Enactivism, there has been extensive development of this theory, both by O’Regan and Noë in separate publications, and by other commentators (see Bishop and Martin 2014 for a summary). For example, O’Regan (2011, 2014) has since claimed that explaining phenomenal experiences (including visual experiences) requires appealing to what he calls “cognitive access”. On the other hand, Noë (2016) claims that phenomenal experience stems from a more fundamental link between mind and life, which he cashes out as the claim that sensorimotor interactions are, as he puts it, “expressions of consciousness” (ibid, p. 78). In the text, however, I only focus on O’Regan and Noë (2001a, b) and Noë (2004) formulation of Sensorimotor Enactivism.
Sensorimotor Enactivism’s insistence on the importance of embodiment has led some commentators to read this view as a version of embodied mind, which is the claim that mentality is not some thing locked away inside our heads but rather a fully embodied phenomenon e.g. see Rowlands (2010), Loughlin (2014a). My account of Sensorimotor Identification (see Sect. 4 of the this paper) supports such an assessment.
Krebs (2010) offers a detailed account of internal relations. According to Krebbs, “Wittgenstein suggests that the kind of understanding involved in seeing internal relations is not only conceptual but also sensible and mimetic—or perhaps better said: that the conceptual is at the same time, and sometimes primarily, sensible and mimetic”. As such, seeing such relations is thus tied, in some non-eliminable fashion, to what we do. Krebs then applies this view of internal relations to seeing aspects. He states: “The concept of seeing aspects thus highlights the importance of bodily awareness in language and perception” (ibid). I take Krebs’ account to be consistent with the account of seeing-as I have offered in the text.
My aim in Sect. 4 of this paper is only to convince proponents of Sensorimotor Enactivism that they can handle the challenge posed by Wittgenstein. I shall thus set to one side the issue as to whether or not Wittgenstein himself would have accepted a proposal like Sensorimotor Identification.
Johnston (1993) writes: “What aspect perception brings out..is the special nature of our relationship to pictures. The importance of aspect dawning [i.e., an aspect lighting up] is that it draws attention to the wider phenomenon of continuous aspect perception. Against the background of the latter, the former loses its mystery, for the change in aspect in an ambiguous drawing is simply the correlate of the unchanged aspect in an unambiguous drawing” (ibid, p. 43). In line with Johnston’s interpretation, I also emphasize the role of our relationship to pictures and how this relationship involves seeing aspects.
This distinction between an agent’s practical knowledge of the contingencies available within the wider practice and exhibiting or enacting internal relations allows that an agent could possess such knowledge but, on a particular occasion, fail to exhibit or enact such relations, that is, fail to see the aspects of the drawing or picture, perhaps due to bad lighting, tired eyes etc.
References
Aizawa, K. (2007). Understanding the embodiment of perception. Journal of Philosophy, 104(1), 5–25.
Baz, A. (2015). Review of: Campbell and O’Sullivan (eds): Wittgenstein and Perception. Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews. Retrieved January 16th 2018 from https://ndpr.nd.edu/news/wittgenstein-and-perception/.
Bishop, J. M., & Martin, A. (2014). Contemporary sensorimotor theory, studies in applied philosophy, epistemology and rational ethics. Berlin: Springer.
Block, N. (2005). Review of Alva Noë, action in perception. Journal of Philosophy, 102, 259–272.
Boncompagni, A. (2013). Enactivism and the explanatory trap. A Wittgensteinian perspective. Methode, 2, 27–49.
Chambers, D., & Reisberg, D. (1985). Can mental images be ambiguous? Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, II, 3, 317–328.
Clark, A. (2009). Spreading the joy: Why the machinery of consciousness is still probably inside your head. Mind, 118(472), 963–993.
Heras-Escribano, M., Noble, J., & de Pinedo, M. (2014). Enactivism, action and normativity: A Wittgensteinian analysis. Adaptive Behavior. https://doi.org/10.1177/1059712314557364.
Hutto, D. (2005). Knowing what? Radical versus conservative enactivism. Phenomenology and Cognitive Sciences, 4(4), 389–405.
Hutto, D. (2013). Enactivism, from a Wittgensteinian point of view. American Philosophical Quarterly, 50(3), 281–302.
Hutto, D., Kirchhoff, M., & Myin, E. (2014). Extensive enactivism: Why keep it all in? Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 8, Article 706.
Hutto, D., & Myin, E. (2013). Radicalising enactivism: Basic minds without content. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Hutto, D., & Myin, E. (2017). Evolving enactivism: Basic minds meet content. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
Johnston, P. (1993). Wittgenstein: Rethinking the inner. Abingdon: Routledge.
Krebs, V. (2010). The bodily root: Seeing aspects and inner experience. In V. Krebs & W. Day (Eds.), Seeing Wittgenstein Anew, new essays on aspect-seeing. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Loughlin, V. (2014a). Sensorimotor knowledge and the radical alternative. In J. M. Bishop & A. O. Martin (Eds.), Contemporary sensorimotor theory, studies in applied philosophy, epistemology and rational ethics. Berlin: Springer.
Loughlin, V. (2014b). Radical enactivism, Wittgenstein and the cognitive gap. Adaptive Behaviour, 22(5), 350–359.
Loughlin, V. (2018). Sensorimotor theory, cognitive access and the ‘absolute’ explanatory gap. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 17, 611.
McGinn, M. (2013). The Routledge Guidebook to Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations (2nd ed.). Abingdon: Routledge.
Moyal-Sharrock, D. (2013). Wittgenstein’s razor: The cutting edge of enactivism. American Philosophical Quarterly, 50(3), 263–279.
Myin, E. (2016). Perception as something we do. Journal of Consciousness Studies, 23(5–6), 80–104.
Myin, E., & Loughlin, V. (2018). Sensorimotor enactive approaches to consciousness. In R. J. Gennaro (Ed.), Routledge handbook of consciousness (pp. 202–215). Abingdon: Routledge.
Myin, E., & Zahnoun, F. (2018). Reincarnating the identity theory. Frontiers in Psychology, 9, 2044.
Noë, A. (2004). Action in perception. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
Noë, A. (2016). Sensations and situations: A sensorimotor integrationist approach. Journal of Consciousness Studies, 23(5–6), 66–79.
O’Regan, K. (2011). Why red doesn’t sound like a bell: Understanding the feel of consciousness. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
O’Regan, K. (2014). The explanatory status of the sensorimotor approach to phenomenal consciousness and its appeal to cognition. In J. M. Bishop & A. O. Martin (Eds.), Contemporary sensorimotor theory, studies in applied philosophy, epistemology and rational ethics. Berlin: Springer.
O’Regan, K., & Noë, A. (2001a). A sensorimotor account of vision and visual consciousness. Behavioural and Brain Sciences, 24(5), 939–1031.
O’Regan, K., & Noë, A. (2001b). What it is like to see: A sensorimotor theory of perceptual experience. Synthese, 129, 79–83.
Prinz, J. (2006). Putting the brakes on enactive perception. Psyche, 12(1), 1–19.
Rowlands, M. (2010). The new science of the mind: From extended mind to embodied phenomenology. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Shapiro, L. (2011). Embodied cognition. Abingdon: Routledge, Taylor and Francis Group.
Steiner, P. (2018). Reading and understanding: On some differences between Wittgenstein and 4E cognitive science. Revista Italiana di Filosofia del Linguaggio (RIFL), 13(2), 124–137.
Stern, D. (2006). How many Wittgensteins? In A. Pichler & S. Saatela (Eds.), Wittgenstein: The philosopher and his works (pp. 205–229). Berlin: De Gruyter Online.
Thompson, E. (2007). Mind in life: Biology, phenomenology, and the sciences of the mind. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Varela, F. J., Thompson, E., & Rosch, E. (1991). The embodied mind: Cognitive science and human experience. Cambridge: The MIT Press.
Wittgenstein L (2009). Philosophical investigations. (G. M. Anscombe, P. M. S. Hacker and J. Schulte, Trs). Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.
Acknowledgements
Thanks to two anonymous reviewers whose comments helped develop and improve this paper. Thanks also to Erik Myin for his insightful comments and to the audience at the Naturally Evolving Minds conference at the University of Wollongong, Australia, where an earlier version of this paper was presented. I am a postdoctoral research fellow with the Research Foundation Flanders (FWO) (Project: Removing the Mind from the Head: A Wittgensteinian perspective, 1209616N).
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
Publisher's Note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Loughlin, V. Wittgenstein’s challenge to enactivism. Synthese 198 (Suppl 1), 391–404 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-019-02244-3
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-019-02244-3