Enactive Cognition in Place: Sense-Making as the Development of Ecological Norms (New Directions in Philosophy and Cognitive Science)

This book aims to enrich our understanding of the role the environment plays in processes of life and cognition, from the perspective of enactive cognitive science. Miguel A. Sepúlveda-Pedro offers an unprecedented interpretation of the central claims of the enactive approach to cognition, supported by contemporary works of ecological psychology and phenomenology. The enactive approach conceives cognition as sense-making, a phenomenon emerging from the organizational nature of the living body that evolves in human beings through sensorimotor, intercorporeal, and linguistic interactions with the environment. From this standpoint, Sepúlveda-Pedro suggests incorporating three new theses into the theoretical body of the enactive approach: sense-making and cognition fundamentally consist of processes of norm development; the environment, cognitive agents actually interact with, is an active ecological field enacted in their historical past; and sense-making occurs in a domain consisting of multiple normative dimensions that the author names enactive place. Acknowledgments 7 Contents 9 List of Figures 13 List of Tables 14 Chapter 1: Introduction: From the Embodied Mind to the Emplacement of the Living Body 15 1.1 The Enactive Approach: Biological Autonomy and Sense-making 17 1.2 The Missing Ecological Dimension of Sense-making 20 1.3 Book Outline 24 References 27 Chapter 2: Worlds Apart: Are We Enclosed Inside Our Heads? 29 2.1 Brain-Centered Cognitive Science 30 2.1.1 Cognitivism 30 2.1.2 Connectionism 32 2.1.3 Predictive Processing 34 2.2 The Prejudice of the Mind–World Dichotomy 37 2.2.1 What Computers Could Not Do 37 2.2.2 Non-Neurocentric Computational Models 40 2.2.3 The Mind–World Dichotomy 42 2.3 The Philosophical Problems of Neurocentrism 43 2.3.1 Representationalism 44 2.3.2 The Explanatory Gap 47 2.3.3 Cognition in the Lab 49 2.4 Embodied Cognition: From Neurocentrism Revised to World-Involving Cognition 51 2.4.1 Weak Embodied Cognition 52 2.4.2 Moderate Embodied Cognition 54 2.4.3 Radical Embodied Cognition 56 2.4.4 Cognition without Dichotomies 59 References 61 Chapter 3: Enactive Cognition: From Sensorimotor Interactions to Autonomy and Normative Behavior 68 3.1 The Philosophical Foundations of Enactive Cognition 69 3.1.1 A World Without Egos, Egos Without Worlds 70 3.1.2 Embodied Subjectivity 73 3.2 The Divergent Paths of Enactive Cognition 76 3.2.1 Weak Enactivism 76 3.2.2 Strong Enactivism 78 3.3 Radical Enactivism as Weak Enactivism 80 3.3.1 Anti-Representationalism and Teleofunctionalism 82 3.3.2 The Blind Watchmaker 83 3.3.3 The Missing Mark of the Cognitive in Radical Enactivism 85 3.3.4 The Missing Mark of the Living in Radical Enactivism 88 3.4 The Enactive Approach as Strong Enactivism 91 3.4.1 Biological Autonomy 91 3.4.2 Sense-Making 94 3.4.3 Enactive Evolution 95 3.4.4 Groundless Grounds 97 References 100 Chapter 4: Body–World Entanglement: On Sense-Making as Norm Development 105 4.1 The Thesis of Significance as a Surplus 106 4.1.1 Stage One: The Environment as Umwelt and as Umgebung 107 4.1.2 Stage Two: The Dual Aspect of the Environment 110 4.1.3 Stage Three: Mutual Enlightenment 113 4.2 The Thesis of Norm-Development 115 4.2.1 The Body–World Entanglement of Living Organisms 116 4.2.2 Sensorimotor Norms: Sense-Making as Norm Development 118 4.3 The Phenomenology of Norm Development 122 4.3.1 Husserl’s Theory of Perception: Temporality and Horizonality 124 4.3.2 The Body–World Entanglement 128 4.3.3 Perception, Sense-Making, and Temporality 129 References 132 Chapter 5: The Ecological Dimension of Sense-Making: The Environment as an Active Ecological Field 136 5.1 The Broom Dancing Metaphor 137 5.1.1 The Couple Dancing Metaphor 138 5.1.2 Dancing with Others 139 5.1.3 Dancing Alone 141 5.2 The Environment as an Ecological Field of Action 143 5.2.1 Causal Laws and Normative Constraints 144 5.2.2 Sense-Making as Creative Improvisation 147 5.2.3 Environmental Structures 148 5.3 The Ecological Dimension of Sense-Making 150 5.3.1 Gibson’s Theory of Direct Visual Perception 150 5.3.2 Enactive or Ecological Information? 152 5.3.3 Are Affordances Normative? 155 5.4 The Self-Transformation of the Body–World Entanglement 157 5.4.1 Chemero’s Dynamical Account of Affordances 159 5.4.2 Ex-Corporations: The Horizons of the Ecological Field 162 5.4.3 Spatial Levels and the Self-Transformation of the Body–World Entanglement 164 References 169 Chapter 6: Sense-Making as Place-Norms: Inhabiting the World with Others 173 6.1 An Enactive Theory of Place 174 6.1.1 From Space to Place 175 6.1.2 An Enactive Description of Place 177 6.1.3 Place and Levels of Situated Normativity 181 6.2 Ecological Situated Normativity and Norm Attunement 183 6.2.1 Situated Normativity 184 6.2.2 Skilled Intentionality 186 6.2.3 Norm Attunement 187 6.3 Place-Norms as Enactive Situated Normativity 190 6.3.1 The Emergence of Linguistic Bodies 191 6.3.2 From Social to Enactive Situated Normativity 193 6.4 From Social to Natural Places 195 6.4.1 Intersubjectivity, Intercorporeality, and Interanimality 196 6.4.2 A Jointly Enacted Objectivity 200 References 203 Chapter 7: Finale: Situating the Enactive Approach 209 7.1 The Fundamental Circularity of Enactive Cognition 211 7.2 Emplacing Bodies 215 7.3 Situating and Enlightening 218 7.4 Studying Bodies in Place 223 References 225 Index 228 This book aims to enrich our understanding of the role the environment plays in processes of life and cognition, from the perspective of enactive cognitive science. Miguel A. Sepúlveda-Pedro offers an unprecedented interpretation of the central claims of the enactive approach to cognition, supported by contemporary works of ecological psychology and phenomenology. The enactive approach conceives cognition as sense-making, a phenomenon emerging from the organizational nature of the living body that evolves in human beings through sensorimotor, intercorporeal, and linguistic interactions with the environment. From this standpoint, Sepúlveda-Pedro suggests incorporating three new theses into the theoretical body of the enactive approach: sense-making and cognition fundamentally consist of processes of norm development; the environment, cognitive agents actually interact with, is an active ecological field enacted in their historical past; and sense-making occurs in a domain consisting of multiple normative dimensions that the author names enactive place. Miguel A. Sepúlveda-Pedro is a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow at the Institute for Philosophical Research at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM)