Enactive Cognition in Place: Sense-Making as the Development of Ecological Norms

Description

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 Contents List of Figures List of Tables Chapter 1: Introduction: From the Embodied Mind to the Emplacement of the Living Body 1.1 The Enactive Approach: Biological Autonomy and Sense-making 1.2 The Missing Ecological Dimension of Sense-making 1.3 Book Outline References Chapter 2: Worlds Apart: Are We Enclosed Inside Our Heads? 2.1 Brain-Centered Cognitive Science 2.1.1 Cognitivism 2.1.2 Connectionism 2.1.3 Predictive Processing 2.2 The Prejudice of the Mind–World Dichotomy 2.2.1 What Computers Could Not Do 2.2.2 Non-Neurocentric Computational Models 2.2.3 The Mind–World Dichotomy 2.3 The Philosophical Problems of Neurocentrism 2.3.1 Representationalism 2.3.2 The Explanatory Gap 2.3.3 Cognition in the Lab 2.4 Embodied Cognition: From Neurocentrism Revised to World-Involving Cognition 2.4.1 Weak Embodied Cognition 2.4.2 Moderate Embodied Cognition 2.4.3 Radical Embodied Cognition 2.4.4 Cognition without Dichotomies References Chapter 3: Enactive Cognition: From Sensorimotor Interactions to Autonomy and Normative Behavior 3.1 The Philosophical Foundations of Enactive Cognition 3.1.1 A World Without Egos, Egos Without Worlds 3.1.2 Embodied Subjectivity 3.2 The Divergent Paths of Enactive Cognition 3.2.1 Weak Enactivism 3.2.2 Strong Enactivism 3.3 Radical Enactivism as Weak Enactivism 3.3.1 Anti-Representationalism and Teleofunctionalism 3.3.2 The Blind Watchmaker 3.3.3 The Missing Mark of the Cognitive in Radical Enactivism 3.3.4 The Missing Mark of the Living in Radical Enactivism 3.4 The Enactive Approach as Strong Enactivism 3.4.1 Biological Autonomy 3.4.2 Sense-Making 3.4.3 Enactive Evolution 3.4.4 Groundless Grounds References Chapter 4: Body–World Entanglement: On Sense-Making as Norm Development 4.1 The Thesis of Significance as a Surplus 4.1.1 Stage One: The Environment as Umwelt and as Umgebung 4.1.2 Stage Two: The Dual Aspect of the Environment 4.1.3 Stage Three: Mutual Enlightenment 4.2 The Thesis of Norm-Development 4.2.1 The Body–World Entanglement of Living Organisms 4.2.2 Sensorimotor Norms: Sense-Making as Norm Development 4.3 The Phenomenology of Norm Development 4.3.1 Husserl’s Theory of Perception: Temporality and Horizonality 4.3.2 The Body–World Entanglement 4.3.3 Perception, Sense-Making, and Temporality References Chapter 5: The Ecological Dimension of Sense-Making: The Environment as an Active Ecological Field 5.1 The Broom Dancing Metaphor 5.1.1 The Couple Dancing Metaphor 5.1.2 Dancing with Others 5.1.3 Dancing Alone 5.2 The Environment as an Ecological Field of Action 5.2.1 Causal Laws and Normative Constraints 5.2.2 Sense-Making as Creative Improvisation 5.2.3 Environmental Structures 5.3 The Ecological Dimension of Sense-Making 5.3.1 Gibson’s Theory of Direct Visual Perception 5.3.2 Enactive or Ecological Information? 5.3.3 Are Affordances Normative? 5.4 The Self-Transformation of the Body–World Entanglement 5.4.1 Chemero’s Dynamical Account of Affordances 5.4.2 Ex-Corporations: The Horizons of the Ecological Field 5.4.3 Spatial Levels and the Self-Transformation of the Body–World Entanglement References Chapter 6: Sense-Making as Place-Norms: Inhabiting the World with Others 6.1 An Enactive Theory of Place 6.1.1 From Space to Place 6.1.2 An Enactive Description of Place 6.1.3 Place and Levels of Situated Normativity 6.2 Ecological Situated Normativity and Norm Attunement 6.2.1 Situated Normativity 6.2.2 Skilled Intentionality 6.2.3 Norm Attunement 6.3 Place-Norms as Enactive Situated Normativity 6.3.1 The Emergence of Linguistic Bodies 6.3.2 From Social to Enactive Situated Normativity 6.4 From Social to Natural Places 6.4.1 Intersubjectivity, Intercorporeality, and Interanimality 6.4.2 A Jointly Enacted Objectivity References Chapter 7: Finale: Situating the Enactive Approach 7.1 The Fundamental Circularity of Enactive Cognition 7.2 Emplacing Bodies 7.3 Situating and Enlightening 7.4 Studying Bodies in Place References Index