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{{Cleanup|date=September 2007}}
{{Cleanup|date=September 2007}}
'''Enactivism''' argues that cognition depends on a dynamic interaction between the cognitive agent and its environment: "Organisms do not passively receive information from their environments, which they then translate into internal representations. Natural cognitive systems...participate in the generation of meaning ...engaging in transformational and not merely informational interactions: ''they enact a world''.<ref name=DiPaolo/> The term ''enaction'' was introduced by [[Francisco Varela]], [[Evan Thompson]], and [[Eleanor Rosch]],<ref name=Varela/> and further developed by Thompson and others,<ref name=Thompson/> to place emphasis upon the idea that experience of the world is a result of mutual interaction between the sensorimotor capacities of the organism and its environment.<ref name=RWilson/>
⚫
'''Enactivism''' is a theoretical approach to understanding the mind proposed by [[Francisco Varela]], [[Evan Thompson]], and [[Eleanor Rosch]].<ref name = "Varela" >Varela, F. J., Thompson, E., & Rosch, E. (1991). The embodied mind: cognitive science and human experience. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.</ref> It emphasizes the way that organisms and the human mind organize themselves by interacting with their environment. It is closely related to [[situated cognition]] and [[embodied cognition]], and is presented as an alternative to [[cognitivism (psychology)|cognitivism]], [[computationalism]] and [[Cartesian dualism]]. The most important recent publications in the field are arguably Evan Thompson's (2007) ''Mind in Life'',<ref>{{cite book|last=Thompson|first=Evan|title=Mind in Life: Biology, Phenomenology, and the Sciences of Mind|year=2007|publisher=The Belknap Press|location=Cambridge, MA|isbn=0674057511}}</ref> Daniel Hutto and Erik Myin's (2013) ''Radicalizing Enactivism'',<ref>{{cite book|last=Hutto, D., & Myin, E.|title=Radicalizing Enactivism: Basic Minds Without Content|year=2013|publisher=The MIT Press|location=Cambridge, MA|isbn=0262018543}}</ref> the edited volume ''Enaction: Toward a New Paradigm for Cognitive Science'',<ref>{{cite book|title=Enaction: Towards a New Paradigm for Cognitive Science|year=2010|publisher=The MIT Press|location=Cambridge, MA|isbn=9780262014601|url=http://www.amazon.com/Radicalizing-Enactivism-Basic-without-Content/dp/0262018543|editor=Stewart, J., Gapenne, O., & Di Paolo, E.}}</ref> and [[Alva Noë]]'s (2011) ''Varieties of Presence''.<ref>{{cite book|last=Noë|first=Alva|title=Varieties of Presence|year=2012|publisher=Harvard University Press|location=Cambridge, MA|isbn=9780674062146}}</ref>

The initial emphasis of enactivism upon sensorimotor skills has been criticized as "cognitively marginal",<ref name=DiPaolo/><ref name=AClark/> but it has been extended to apply to higher level cognitive activities, such as social interactions.<ref name=DiPaolo/> "In the enactive view,... knowledge is constructed: it is constructed by an agent through its sensorimotor interactions with ts environment, co-constructed between and within living species through their meaningful interaction with each other. In its most abstract form, knowledge is co-constructed between human individuals in socio-linguistic interactions...Science is a particular form of social knowledge construction...[that] allows us to perceive and predict events beyond our immediate cognitive grasp...and also to construct further, even more powerful scientific knowledge."<ref name=Rohde/>

⚫
Enactivism is closely related to [[situated cognition]] and [[embodied cognition]], and is presented as an alternative to [[cognitivism (psychology)|cognitivism]], [[computationalism]] and [[Cartesian dualism]]. The most important recent publications in the field are arguably Evan Thompson's (2007) ''Mind in Life'',<ref>{{cite book|last=Thompson|first=Evan|title=Mind in Life: Biology, Phenomenology, and the Sciences of Mind|year=2007|publisher=The Belknap Press|location=Cambridge, MA|isbn=0674057511}}</ref> Daniel Hutto and Erik Myin's (2013) ''Radicalizing Enactivism'',<ref>{{cite book|last=Hutto, D., & Myin, E.|title=Radicalizing Enactivism: Basic Minds Without Content|year=2013|publisher=The MIT Press|location=Cambridge, MA|isbn=0262018543}}</ref> the edited volume ''Enaction: Toward a New Paradigm for Cognitive Science'',<ref>{{cite book|title=Enaction: Towards a New Paradigm for Cognitive Science|year=2010|publisher=The MIT Press|location=Cambridge, MA|isbn=9780262014601|url=http://www.amazon.com/Radicalizing-Enactivism-Basic-without-Content/dp/0262018543|editor=Stewart, J., Gapenne, O., & Di Paolo, E.}}</ref> and [[Alva Noë]]'s (2011) ''Varieties of Presence''.<ref>{{cite book|last=Noë|first=Alva|title=Varieties of Presence|year=2012|publisher=Harvard University Press|location=Cambridge, MA|isbn=9780674062146}}</ref>


==Accounts of enactivism==
==Accounts of enactivism==
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Specific implications of enactivism for psychology have been summarized in a recent article on ''Enaction and Psychology''<ref>McGann, M., De Jaegher, H., & Di Paolo, E. A. (2013). Enaction and psychology, ''Review of General Psychology'', 17(2). http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/a0032935</ref> by Marek McGann, Hanne De Jaegher and [[Ezequiel Di Paolo]]. They argue that enactivism attempts to equalize the explanatory role of the coupling between cognitive agent and environment with the traditional emphasis on brain mechanisms found in neuroscience and psychology. This move can be witnessed in the enactive approach to social cognition developed by De Jaegher, Di Paolo and others where the dynamics of interactive processes can play significant roles in coordinating interpersonal understanding, a view that they describe as ''Participatory Sense-Making''.<ref>De Jaegher, H. and Di Paolo, E. A. (2007) Participatory Sense-Making: An enactive approach to social cognition, ''Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences'', 6(4), 485-507. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11097-007-9076-9</ref><ref>De Jaegher H, Di Paolo E, and Gallagher S (2010). Can social interaction constitute social cognition? ''Trends in Cognitive Sciences'', 14(10), 441-447. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2010.06.009</ref> Recent developments of enactivism in the area of social neuroscience involve the proposal of ''The Interactive Brain Hypothesis''<ref>Di Paolo, E., De Jaegher, H. (2012) The Interactive Brain Hypothesis, ''Frontiers in Human Neuroscience'', 6:163. http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.2012.00163</ref> where social cognition brain mechanisms, even those used in non-interactive situations, are proposed to have interactive origins.
Specific implications of enactivism for psychology have been summarized in a recent article on ''Enaction and Psychology''<ref>McGann, M., De Jaegher, H., & Di Paolo, E. A. (2013). Enaction and psychology, ''Review of General Psychology'', 17(2). http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/a0032935</ref> by Marek McGann, Hanne De Jaegher and [[Ezequiel Di Paolo]]. They argue that enactivism attempts to equalize the explanatory role of the coupling between cognitive agent and environment with the traditional emphasis on brain mechanisms found in neuroscience and psychology. This move can be witnessed in the enactive approach to social cognition developed by De Jaegher, Di Paolo and others where the dynamics of interactive processes can play significant roles in coordinating interpersonal understanding, a view that they describe as ''Participatory Sense-Making''.<ref>De Jaegher, H. and Di Paolo, E. A. (2007) Participatory Sense-Making: An enactive approach to social cognition, ''Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences'', 6(4), 485-507. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11097-007-9076-9</ref><ref>De Jaegher H, Di Paolo E, and Gallagher S (2010). Can social interaction constitute social cognition? ''Trends in Cognitive Sciences'', 14(10), 441-447. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2010.06.009</ref> Recent developments of enactivism in the area of social neuroscience involve the proposal of ''The Interactive Brain Hypothesis''<ref>Di Paolo, E., De Jaegher, H. (2012) The Interactive Brain Hypothesis, ''Frontiers in Human Neuroscience'', 6:163. http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.2012.00163</ref> where social cognition brain mechanisms, even those used in non-interactive situations, are proposed to have interactive origins.


==Similar Theories of the Growth of Knowledge==
==Similar theories of the growth of knowledge==
Another current of biology-inspired theories of the growth of knowledge that are even more closely tied to [[Universal Darwinism]] in comparison to enactivism are those of [[evolutionary epistemology|evolutionary epistemologists]], such as [[Karl Popper]] and [[Donald T. Campbell]].<ref>Gary Cziko (1995) [http://faculty.ed.uiuc.edu/g-cziko/wm/ Without Miracles: Universal Selection Theory and the Second Darwinian Revolution] (MIT Press)</ref> In common with enactivism is their emphasis on both action and embodiment as sources of that knowledge which must reflect the environment well enough for the organism to be able to survive in it and which makes them competitive enough to be able to reproduce at sustainable rate in their environment.
Another current of biology-inspired theories of the growth of knowledge that are even more closely tied to [[Universal Darwinism]] in comparison to enactivism are those of [[evolutionary epistemology|evolutionary epistemologists]], such as [[Karl Popper]] and [[Donald T. Campbell]].<ref>Gary Cziko (1995) [http://faculty.ed.uiuc.edu/g-cziko/wm/ Without Miracles: Universal Selection Theory and the Second Darwinian Revolution] (MIT Press)</ref> In common with enactivism is their emphasis on both action and embodiment as sources of that knowledge which must reflect the environment well enough for the organism to be able to survive in it and which makes them competitive enough to be able to reproduce at sustainable rate in their environment.


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==References==
==References==
{{reflist |refs=
<references/>
<ref name=AClark>
{{cite journal |author=Andy Clark, Josefa Toribio |title=Doing without representing |journal =Synthese |volume=101 |pages=401–434 |year=1994 |url=http://www.philosophy.ed.ac.uk/people/clark/pubs/DoingW-O-rep.pdf}}
</ref>

<ref name=DiPaolo>
{{cite book |author=Ezequiel A Di Paolo, Marieke Rhohde, Hanne De Jaegher |chapter=Horizons for the enactive mind: Values, social interaction, and play |title=Enaction: Toward a New Paradigm for Cognitive Science |editor=John Stewart, Oliver Gapenne, Ezequiel A Di Paolo, eds |url=http://books.google.com/books?id=UtFDJx-gysQC&pg=PA39 |pages=33 ''ff'' |isbn= 978-0262526012 |publisher=MIT Press |year=2014}}
</ref>

<ref name=Rohde>
{{cite book |title=Enaction, Embodiment, Evolutionary Robotics: Simulation Models for a Post-Cognitivist Science of Mind |chapter= §3.1 The scientist as observing subject |pages=30 ''ff'' |author=Marieke Rohde |isbn=978-9078677239 |publisher=Atlantis Press |year=2010 |url=http://books.google.com/books?id=LlpZjLMPiHYC&pg=PA30}}
</ref>

<ref name=RWilson>
{{cite web |author=Robert A Wilson, Lucia Foglia |title=Embodied Cognition: §2.2 Enactive cognition |work=The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2011 Edition) |editor=Edward N. Zalta, ed |url = http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2011/entries/embodied-cognition/#EnaCog |date=July 25, 2011}}
</ref>

<ref name=Thompson>
{{cite book |title=Mind in life:Biology, phenomenology, and the sciences of mind |author=Evan Thompson |url=http://lchc.ucsd.edu/MCA/Mail/xmcamail.2012_03.dir/pdf3okBxYPBXw.pdf |publisher=Harvard University Press |isbn= 978-0674057517 |chapter=Chapter 1: The enactive approach |year=2010}}
</ref>

<ref name=Varela>
{{cite book |title=The embodied mind: Cognitive science and human experience |author=Francisco J Varela, Evan Thompson, Eleanor Rosch |url=http://books.google.com/books?id=QY4RoH2z5DoC&printsec=frontcover |year=1992 |publisher=MIT Press |page=9 |quote=We propose as a name the term ''enactive'' to emphasize the growing conviction that cognition is not the representation of a pregiven world by a pregiven mind but is rather the enactment of a world and a mind on the basis of a history of the variety of actions that a being in the world performs |isbn=978-0262261234}}
</ref>

}}


[[Category:Enactive cognition]]
[[Category:Enactive cognition]]

Revision as of 14:03, 18 April 2014

Enactivism argues that cognition depends on a dynamic interaction between the cognitive agent and its environment: "Organisms do not passively receive information from their environments, which they then translate into internal representations. Natural cognitive systems...participate in the generation of meaning ...engaging in transformational and not merely informational interactions: they enact a world.[1] The term enaction was introduced by Francisco Varela, Evan Thompson, and Eleanor Rosch,[2] and further developed by Thompson and others,[3] to place emphasis upon the idea that experience of the world is a result of mutual interaction between the sensorimotor capacities of the organism and its environment.[4]

The initial emphasis of enactivism upon sensorimotor skills has been criticized as "cognitively marginal",[1][5] but it has been extended to apply to higher level cognitive activities, such as social interactions.[1] "In the enactive view,... knowledge is constructed: it is constructed by an agent through its sensorimotor interactions with ts environment, co-constructed between and within living species through their meaningful interaction with each other. In its most abstract form, knowledge is co-constructed between human individuals in socio-linguistic interactions...Science is a particular form of social knowledge construction...[that] allows us to perceive and predict events beyond our immediate cognitive grasp...and also to construct further, even more powerful scientific knowledge."[6]

Enactivism is closely related to situated cognition and embodied cognition, and is presented as an alternative to cognitivism, computationalism and Cartesian dualism. The most important recent publications in the field are arguably Evan Thompson's (2007) Mind in Life,[7] Daniel Hutto and Erik Myin's (2013) Radicalizing Enactivism,[8] the edited volume Enaction: Toward a New Paradigm for Cognitive Science,[9] and Alva Noë's (2011) Varieties of Presence.[10]

Accounts of enactivism

A book reviewer, Jeremy Trevalyan Burman, in reviewing Consciousness & Emotion, vol 1.,[11] concluded:[12]

...the importance of this first book was not immediately clear: future volumes will need to telegraph their implications more explicitly if they are to be successfully received.

However, in a review of the book Consciousness & Emotion Book Series 2 edited by Richard Menary, Evan Thompson, the book reviewer, stated the view:

Enactivists criticize representational views of the mind and emphasize the importance of embodiment and action to cognition.

-Evan Thompson, Dept. of Philosophy, University of Toronto.[13]

At a fundamental level, enactivism is anti-dualist. The self arises as part of the process of an embodied entity interacting with the environment in precise ways determined by its physiology.[2] In this sense, individuals can be seen to "grow into" or arise from,[12] their interactive role with the world. The self does not represent the world, but produces it through the nature of its unique way of interacting with its environment, stated the authors of The embodied mind: Cognitive science and human experience.[2]

Francisco Varela, in 'The Tree of knowledge'[14] proposed the term enactive "to designate this view of knowledge, to evoke the view that what is known is brought forth, in contra-position to the more classical views of either cognitivism or connectionism." Within the book, the analogies of The Razor's Edge and the Between Scylla and Charybdis are used to describe the "epistemologic Odyssey" between the notions of solipsism and representationalism. Enactivism, therefore is the middle ground between the two extremes [Tree of Knowledge, pgs. 133,134,253]. Maturana and Varela use this term to "confront the problem of understanding how our existence-the praxis of our living- is coupled to a surrounding world which appears filled with regularities that are at every instant the result of our biological and social histories.... to find a via media: to understand the regularity of the world we are experiencing at every moment, but without any point of reference independent of ourselves that would give certainty to our descriptions and cognitive assertions. Indeed the whole mechanism of generating ourselves, as describers and observers tells us that our world, as the world which we bring forth in our coexistence with others, will always have precisely that mixture of regularity and mutability, that combination of solidity and shifting sand, so typical of human experience when we look at it up close."[Tree of Knowledge, pg. 241]

Specific implications of enactivism for psychology have been summarized in a recent article on Enaction and Psychology[15] by Marek McGann, Hanne De Jaegher and Ezequiel Di Paolo. They argue that enactivism attempts to equalize the explanatory role of the coupling between cognitive agent and environment with the traditional emphasis on brain mechanisms found in neuroscience and psychology. This move can be witnessed in the enactive approach to social cognition developed by De Jaegher, Di Paolo and others where the dynamics of interactive processes can play significant roles in coordinating interpersonal understanding, a view that they describe as Participatory Sense-Making.[16][17] Recent developments of enactivism in the area of social neuroscience involve the proposal of The Interactive Brain Hypothesis[18] where social cognition brain mechanisms, even those used in non-interactive situations, are proposed to have interactive origins.

Similar theories of the growth of knowledge

Another current of biology-inspired theories of the growth of knowledge that are even more closely tied to Universal Darwinism in comparison to enactivism are those of evolutionary epistemologists, such as Karl Popper and Donald T. Campbell.[19] In common with enactivism is their emphasis on both action and embodiment as sources of that knowledge which must reflect the environment well enough for the organism to be able to survive in it and which makes them competitive enough to be able to reproduce at sustainable rate in their environment.

Scholars with sympathetic ideas

Yet other authors of similar "Natural Growth of Knowledge" theories

See also

Further reading

  • De Jaegher, H., and Di Paolo, E. A. (2007). Participatory sense-making: An enactive approach to social cognition. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 6(4), 485 – 507.
  • Di Paolo, E. A., Rohde, M. and De Jaegher, H., (2010). Horizons for the Enactive Mind: Values, Social Interaction, and Play. In J. Stewart, O. Gapenne and E. A. Di Paolo (eds), Enaction: Towards a New Paradigm for Cognitive Science, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, pp. 33 – 87. ISBN 9780262014601
  • Hutto, D. D. (Ed.) (2006). Radical Enactivism: Intentionality, phenomenology, and narrative. In R. D. Ellis & N. Newton (Series Eds.), Consciousness & Emotion, vol. 2. ISBN 90-272-4151-1
  • McGann, M. & Torrance, S. (2005). Doing it and meaning it (and the relationship between the two). In R. D. Ellis & N. Newton, Consciousness & Emotion, vol. 1: Agency, conscious choice, and selective perception. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. ISBN 1-58811-596-8

References

  1. ^ a b c Ezequiel A Di Paolo, Marieke Rhohde, Hanne De Jaegher (2014). "Horizons for the enactive mind: Values, social interaction, and play". In John Stewart, Oliver Gapenne, Ezequiel A Di Paolo, eds (ed.). Enaction: Toward a New Paradigm for Cognitive Science. MIT Press. pp. 33 ff. ISBN 978-0262526012. {{cite book}}: |editor= has generic name (help)CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  2. ^ a b c Francisco J Varela, Evan Thompson, Eleanor Rosch (1992). The embodied mind: Cognitive science and human experience. MIT Press. p. 9. ISBN 978-0262261234. We propose as a name the term enactive to emphasize the growing conviction that cognition is not the representation of a pregiven world by a pregiven mind but is rather the enactment of a world and a mind on the basis of a history of the variety of actions that a being in the world performs{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  3. ^ Evan Thompson (2010). "Chapter 1: The enactive approach". Mind in life:Biology, phenomenology, and the sciences of mind (PDF). Harvard University Press. ISBN 978-0674057517.
  4. ^ Robert A Wilson, Lucia Foglia (July 25, 2011). Edward N. Zalta, ed (ed.). "Embodied Cognition: §2.2 Enactive cognition". The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2011 Edition). {{cite web}}: |editor= has generic name (help)
  5. ^ Andy Clark, Josefa Toribio (1994). "Doing without representing" (PDF). Synthese. 101: 401–434.
  6. ^ Marieke Rohde (2010). "§3.1 The scientist as observing subject". Enaction, Embodiment, Evolutionary Robotics: Simulation Models for a Post-Cognitivist Science of Mind. Atlantis Press. pp. 30 ff. ISBN 978-9078677239.
  7. ^ Thompson, Evan (2007). Mind in Life: Biology, Phenomenology, and the Sciences of Mind. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press. ISBN 0674057511.
  8. ^ Hutto, D., & Myin, E. (2013). Radicalizing Enactivism: Basic Minds Without Content. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. ISBN 0262018543.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  9. ^ Stewart, J., Gapenne, O., & Di Paolo, E., ed. (2010). Enaction: Towards a New Paradigm for Cognitive Science. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. ISBN 9780262014601.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: editors list (link)
  10. ^ Noë, Alva (2012). Varieties of Presence. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. ISBN 9780674062146.
  11. ^ Ellis, R. D., & Newton, N. (2005). Consciousness & emotion: agency, conscious choice, and selective perception. Amsterdam [etc.: Benjamins.
  12. ^ a b Burman, J. T. (2006). [Review of the book Consciousness & Emotion, vol. 1: Agency, conscious choice, and selective perception.], Journal of Consciousness Studies, 13(12), pp. 115-119. Full-text
  13. ^ Radical Enactivism
  14. ^ Maturana, H. R., & Varela, F. J. (1992). The tree of knowledge: the biological roots of human understanding (Rev. ed.). Boston: Shambhala ; p255.
  15. ^ McGann, M., De Jaegher, H., & Di Paolo, E. A. (2013). Enaction and psychology, Review of General Psychology, 17(2). http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/a0032935
  16. ^ De Jaegher, H. and Di Paolo, E. A. (2007) Participatory Sense-Making: An enactive approach to social cognition, Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 6(4), 485-507. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11097-007-9076-9
  17. ^ De Jaegher H, Di Paolo E, and Gallagher S (2010). Can social interaction constitute social cognition? Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 14(10), 441-447. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2010.06.009
  18. ^ Di Paolo, E., De Jaegher, H. (2012) The Interactive Brain Hypothesis, Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 6:163. http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.2012.00163
  19. ^ Gary Cziko (1995) Without Miracles: Universal Selection Theory and the Second Darwinian Revolution (MIT Press)
  20. ^ Hanne De Jaegher
  21. ^ Daniel Hutto
  22. ^ Riccardo Manzotti
  23. ^ Erik Myin
  24. ^ Marek McGann
  25. ^ Teed Rockwell
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