Radical Embodied Cognitive Science
Abstract
A proposal for a new way to do cognitive science argues that cognition should be described in terms of agent-environment dynamics rather than computation and representation.
While philosophers of mind have been arguing over the status of mental representations in cognitive science, cognitive scientists have been quietly engaged in studying perception, action, and cognition without explaining them in terms of mental representation. In this book, Anthony Chemero describes this nonrepresentational approach (which he terms radical embodied cognitive science), puts it in historical and conceptual context, and applies it to traditional problems in the philosophy of mind. Radical embodied cognitive science is a direct descendant of the American naturalist psychology of William James and John Dewey, and follows them in viewing perception and cognition to be understandable only in terms of action in the environment. Chemero argues that cognition should be described in terms of agent-environment dynamics rather than in terms of computation and representation. After outlining this orientation to cognition, Chemero proposes a methodology: dynamical systems theory, which would explain things dynamically and without reference to representation. He also advances a background theory: Gibsonian ecological psychology, “shored up” and clarified. Chemero then looks at some traditional philosophical problems (reductionism, epistemological skepticism, metaphysical realism, consciousness) through the lens of radical embodied cognitive science and concludes that the comparative ease with which it resolves these problems, combined with its empirical promise, makes this approach to cognitive science a rewarding one. “Jerry Fodor is my favorite philosopher,” Chemero writes in his preface, adding, “I think that Jerry Fodor is wrong about nearly everything.” With this book, Chemero explains nonrepresentational, dynamical, ecological cognitive science as clearly and as rigorously as Jerry Fodor explained computational cognitive science in his classic work The Language of Thought.
Bradford Books imprint
... In the third section, we then offer reasons to doubt this view, arguing that perceptual skill is not only about movement error perception because 1) motor learning is about developing functional movement rather than particular movement forms, 2) observation by PE teachers is aimed at more than assessing or improving the motor skills of students, and 3) perception is primarily about what the environment affords the observer for action rather than about detecting environmental forms, such as movement patterns. In the fourth section, we subsequently argue the case for an alternative, ecological approach in which perceptual skill is defined in terms of the perception of possibilities for action, or affordances (Chemero, 2009;Gibson, 1979Gibson, /2014Rietveld & Kiverstein, 2014). Specifically, we argue that, besides movement errors, PE teachers need to perceive teaching affordances-the possibilities for action to change their students' individual and collective behaviours during a lesson. ...
... 121). In other words, affordances are ecological properties of animal-environment relationships (Chemero, 2003(Chemero, , 2009Stoffregen, 2003). 10 For instance, whether a surface is step-on-able depends on the relationship between the properties of the surface and one's leg length (Mark, 1987;Mark & Vogele, 1987;Warren, 1984), leg extensor strength and hip flexibility (Konczak et al., 1992), and current distance from the surface (Cesari et al., 2003). ...
... A post box affords letter-mailing not merely because it is a container with an opening wide enough to fit letters, nor because humans can generally grasp and manipulate letters. This affordance emerges from its role in the sociocultural practices of people writing and reading letters, and postmen delivering them (see also Chemero, 2009;Costall, 1995;. 13 Rietveld and Kiverstein (2014) have furthermore argued that the skills necessary for the human niche "are generally acquired through training and experience in sociocultural practices" (p. ...
Quality physical education (PE) promotes physical activity and, consequently, children’s health and wellbeing. The provision of quality PE depends largely on the interactions between PE teachers and students. PE teachers use observation to guide these interactions and, therefore, require perceptual skill. Perceptual skill in PE teachers is traditionally viewed as the accurate perception of students’ movement errors—deviations from a normative movement pattern. However, this view has three major limitations: motor learning is more about movement function than form, PE is about more than motor learning, and perception is more about the environment’s functions—its possibilities for action, or affordances—than its forms. We present a novel, ecological approach in which perceptual skill in PE teachers is instead considered in terms of the field of teaching affordances—the dynamic set of possibilities for teaching students within a situation. Perceptual skill, we argue, is a PE teacher’s tendency to perceive a more differentiated field of affordances: a broader range of affordances, extending further into the future, with greater variation in their relevance. Compared with accurate perception of movement errors, this tendency better aids a PE teacher in interacting with students, navigating towards their educational goals, and, ultimately, providing quality PE.
... Procedural training in VR allows learners to simulate gestures and body movements in interaction with the environment (Johnson et al., 2022;Numfu et al., 2020). The embodied cognition approach (Chemero, 2011;Corris & Chemero, 2022) considers that it is essential to integrate mental simulations, environments, situated actions, and bodily states in instructional design, as they play a pivotal role in human cognition (Barsalou, 2010). Embodied learning can be fostered through the enactment of real movement execution (Chaker et al., 2021) and hand gestures (Chaker, 2023). ...
... Theories of embodied cognition hold that cognitive processes are not isolated brain activities but involve the whole body and environment (Chemero, 2011;Clark, 1998) and are grounded in the sociomaterial and sensorimotor conditions of its emergence (Barsalou, 2010). Sensory and motor information from the body and environment are used to structure and control cognitive processes (Hollan et al., 2000;Versace et al., 2021), exploiting our environments to reduce cognitive workload (Wilson, 2002). ...
... Our bodies are immersed in environmental dynamics, beginning at the earliest stages of life. And these dynamics involve histories of interaction with people, things, places, and events that shape our possibilities for thought and action as well as our socio-cultural presence (see Chemero, 2009). The co-dependencies between living systems and the environment have been studied both ontogenetically and phylogenetically (see Malafouris, 2013;Oyama, 2000), leading to richer understandings of how brainbody systems function when coupled with a given ecological niche. ...
... Some consider the body as an important mediating domain between inner and outer realities, as it provides the basis for instantiation of the corporeally-based representations in the brain that are fundamental to cognition (Shapiro, 2010). Others see the body as a cognitive domain in its own right, arguing that the role of mental representation has been overemphasised ( Chemero, 2009). Additionally, there is ongoing discussion over the degree to which cognition can be properly understood as extended. ...
Psychology of Music is a flourishing area of research in the Western Balkans. However, much of its findings and insights have remained relatively unknown outside the region. Psychological Perspectives on Musical Experiences and Skills features recent research from the Western Balkans, foregrounding its specific topics, methods, and influences, and bringing it into productive conversation with complementary research from Western Europe and further afield.
The essays in this collection investigate the psychology of listening and performance and their relevance to music practice. Employing a range of research methodologies, they address divergent themes, from a cross-cultural understanding of aesthetic experiences and innovations to attract new audiences, to developmental perspectives on musical growth and the challenges of mastering performance skills. Authors reflect independently and collaboratively on how these psychological processes are shaped by the different traditions and geopolitical conditions inside and outside the Western Balkans. The result is a volume that emphasizes how musical experiences and practices happen not in isolation but in socio-cultural environments that contribute to their definition. This work will appeal to musicians, music educators, students, researchers, and psychologists with an interest in the psychology of music and exemplify ways forward in decolonizing academia.
... In the context of skill research, examples include arguments predicated on the idea of mental representations (e.g., Schack & Frank, 2021), divisions between cognitive and motor skills (e.g., Christensen, 2019), or "computationalist" or "instructionalist" perspectives that argue that internal explicit instructions direct the performance of the human agent (e.g., Jeannerod, 2006). MET adopts an enactive-ecological view of embodied cognition that can be understood as "hard" or "radical" (Baber, 2021;Baber et al., 2019;Chemero, 2009;Clark, 1997;Gallagher, 2017;Rietveld & Kiverstein, 2014). This contrasts with "simple" or "weak" perspectives on embodiment, which can be considered restating some of the established failings of cognitivism that understand the mind to be localized or identifiable solely with the brain and that there exist hidden mental operations (Malafouris, 2016, pp. ...
... Diagram by Lambros Malafouris. Relating to the move away from human-centred conceptions of agency in many anthropological studies (Ingold, 2017;Latour, 1992;Malafouris, 2013), MET adopts a process ontology (Whitehead, 1929(Whitehead, /1978 of material culture, appealing to an antirepresentationalist enactive view of embodied cognition (Baber, 2021;Chemero, 2009;Gallagher, 2017;Malafouris, 2021a;Malafouris & Gosden, 2015). The potter does not use their body to execute and externalize a preconceived mental plan from inside their skull to the world through clay -but instead bodily acts and prosthetic gestures generate and constitute them (Koukouti & Malafouris, 2021;Malafouris, 2020aMalafouris, , 2021bMalafouris & Koukouti, 2022). ...
... For example, some proponents argue that affordances are properties of the animal-environment system that provide opportunities for action (Chemero, 2003;Stoffregen, 2000aStoffregen, , 2000bWarren, 1984), while others believe that affordances are dispositional properties of the environment that afford particular actions or interactions (Heras-Escribano, 2019;Scarantino, 2003;Turvey, 1992); in both cases, affordances are considered to be real and capable of creating information (Golonka & Wilson, 2012). It has also been discussed whether affordances are normative (Chemero, 2009;Heras-Escribano & de Pinedo, 2016) and linked to global tasks, or if they operate at a more local level (Kimmel, 2012;van Dijk & Rietveld, 2020). ...
The affordances of objects in music education, such as tablets or musical toys, necessitate a domain-specific conceptual understanding to guide perception and bodily action, extending utilitarian values toward musical and educational goals. This article explores the concept of affordances in music education and elucidates the application of various types of affordances—specifically, cognitive, educational, mental, affective, and social—in the contexts of teaching and learning music. Several characteristics of affordances in music education were observed: (1) music serves as a form of communication, enabling learners to transcend established protocols in human interactions; (2) music is intertwined with the transmission of sociocultural and aesthetic values, as evidenced by historically informed musical practices and traditions; (3) engagement in music-making nurtures learners’ creativity and personal growth, fostering experiences that can be transferable; (4) music learning reveals individuals’ emotional capacities and expressiveness; and (5) music-making entails collaborative work, facilitating the development of interpersonal relationships and the construction of a community rooted in the values of equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI). Practical recommendations for enhancing affordances in music education can heighten its awareness to music educators and foster explicit learning design in the development of educational tools. These suggestions have the potential to unlock possibilities that may otherwise remain unrealized.
... Especially when it comes to cross-modal associations from sound to things. For example, the "bouba" utterance is to some degree iconic of a rounded shape and "kiki" to some degree iconic of a spiked utterance, which seems only explainable by some contrived mental gymnastics (Chemero, 2009). After all, how can things have similarity if they are crossing a modality? ...
Iconicity is a term used in cognitive science and gesture studies to denote an informative relation between the form of an utterance and the meaning of that utterance. With good iconic design, the form of an utterance can directly invite a suitable perceiver with a certain degree of initiation, to grasp a meaning in the right direction. Despite the now increasingly touted importance of iconicity for understanding human languages, it proves difficult to define more formally. When the term is defined, researchers tend to base iconicity on resemblances, such that A is iconic of B, if A resembles B in some relevant respect. In the philosophy of depiction fundamental issues have been raised against resemblance-based accounts. Even when barring such metaphysical issues, it has recently been argued that for all practical research purposes, a 'state-of-the-art' definition of iconicity should also do away with resemblances. Instead iconicity is in the eye of the beholder (mind-to-world relation) as opposed to a property of the environment (world-to-mind relation). In this paper I suggest for all practical purposes that there is an alternative explanatory route available to us, which is paved more broadly by 4E approaches (embodied, embedded, enactive, extended) and the philosophy of depiction. Taking this road should lead to a "distributed" view, where iconicity arises in a niche-constructed organism-environment system. This paper provides the bare bones for such a view, broadening the discussion, and hopefully drawing other perspectives in so that a distributed view of iconicity can become fully fleshed out.
... dragging and dropping icons on a computer desktop allows us to move and delete files in the computer. This might sound similar to theories of the embodied mind (Chemero, 2009), sensori-motor contingency (O'Regan and Noë, 2001), or active inference (Clark, 2017;Parr et al., 2022). But other than those theories, ITP goes one step further and seeks to undermine our belief in physical objects that serve as embodiments, as substrates of sensory and motor processes, or as basis for inference. ...
The current stage of consciousness science has reached an impasse. We blame the physicalist worldview for this and propose a new perspective to make progress on the problems of consciousness. Our perspective is rooted in the theory of conscious agents. We thereby stress the fundamentality of consciousness outside of spacetime, the importance of agency, and the mathematical character of the theory. For conscious agent theory (CAT) to achieve the status of a robust scientific framework, it needs to be integrated with a good explanation of perception and cognition. We argue that this role is played by the interface theory of perception (ITP), an evolutionary-based model of perception that has been previously formulated and defended by the authors. We are specifically interested in what this tells us about the possibility of AI consciousness and conclude with a somewhat counter-intuitive proposal: we live inside a simulation instantiated, not digitally, but in consciousness. Such a simulation is just an interface representation of the dynamics of conscious agents for a conscious agent. This paves the way for employing AI in consciousness science through customizing our interface.
Bayesian decision theory is a mathematical framework that models reasoning and decision-making under uncertain conditions. The Bayesian paradigm originated as a theory of how people should operate, not a theory of how they actually operate. Nevertheless, cognitive scientists increasingly use it to describe the actual workings of the human mind. Over the past few decades, cognitive science has produced impressive Bayesian models of mental activity. The models postulate that certain mental processes conform, or approximately conform, to Bayesian norms. Bayesian models offered within cognitive science have illuminated numerous mental phenomena, such as perception, motor control, and navigation. This Element provides a self-contained introduction to the foundations of Bayesian cognitive science. It then explores what we can learn about the mind from Bayesian models offered by cognitive scientists.
The 4E approach in (philosophy of) cognitive science—based on ideas that the mind is embodied, embedded, extended, and enacted—is so diverse that it defies straightforward explanation. This paper considers the most ecumenical explanation of the extant concept of the 4E approach. Purported explanations of 4E based on contested definitions of cognition, contrasts with non-4E approaches, or essential and unifying features (including embodiment) either fail to capture the correct extension for the concept of 4E or lead to incoherence. The incoherence is generated by a failure to abide by several desiderata for non-revisionist conceptual explanations: informativeness, non-contentiousness, and identification of any unifying features if they exist. By contrast, a family resemblance conception of 4E constrained by ties of historical influence satisfies these desiderata. The 4E approach should be understood as a set of family resemblances of overlapping ideas, hypotheses, theories and conceptual frameworks about the mind, as well as methods for its study. The family resemblances span several dimensions, including but not limited to a rejection of dualism, non-representational explanations of the mind, phenomenological methods, the importance of embodiment, a dynamical systems perspective, and an evolutionary perspective on the mind. This family resemblance conception is complemented by a historical dimension: the concept of 4E cognitive science emerged in the period following the cognitive revolution of the 1950s. The advantages of this explanation are that it abides by the established use of ‘4E’, explains 4E’s apparent diversity, and warns against reductive explanations.
When I fiddle with my hair, or adjust my posture, it is plausible that these activities fall well below my cognitive radar. Some have argued that these are examples of ‘sub‐intentional actions’, actions which are not intentional under any description at all. If true, they are direct counterexamples to the dominant view on which the difference between actions and other events is their intentionality. In this paper, I argue that the case for sub‐intentional actions fails. Firstly, I show that the main argument for the sub‐intentionality of these actions has a structural fault. Secondly, I argue that two apparently natural ways to remedy this fail. Thirdly, I argue that one of the main arguments for thinking of the phenomena as actions undermines thinking of them as sub‐intentional. Finally, I argue that a natural defensive move for the defender of sub‐intentional actions actually undermines the theoretical significance of the view. Ultimately, my aim is to show that although the case for sub‐intentional actions seemed both simple and compelling, it is in fact deeply troubled.
Theorists in the embedded, embodied, and enactive traditions have frequently proposed habit as a model for much or all of cognition. These proposals typically depict habit as a pervasive phenomenon with unique explanatory benefits. This paper contends, however, that the concept of habit, as applied in these debates, is more effectively understood not as a general principle explaining cognitive processes, but as an evocative picture of the mind that reorients our thinking. By examining popular self-improvement books on habits, we show that philosophical applications of ‘habit’ heavily rely on common everyday understandings of the term. We argue that this dependence casts doubt on its status as a unifying explanans. We further demonstrate that insufficient recognition of this dependence promotes a mistaken view of habits as constituting the grounds of mentality. In our conclusion, we discuss the implications of moving beyond a uniform explanatory framework for cognition, advocating for a greater emphasis on the contextual embedding of mental phenomena instead.
Joshua Greene has famously argued for two distinct processes of how humans make moral judgments. Despite a lively controversy around potential normative implications of this view, less attention has been paid to those philosophical assumptions that are fundamental to Greene’s dual-process theory itself. In this paper, I argue that Greene’s dual-process theory hinges on a modular account of cognition and the brain, and I critically discuss the plausibility of Greene’s view in light of increasing popularity of dynamical systems accounts in cognitive science. If we reject modularity and adopt a dynamical systems perspective instead, we can still hope to find relative differences in the functional specialization of dynamic brain networks within one interconnected system, but Greene’s original theory in terms of two asymmetrically independent processes will no longer be tenable. This imposes constraints on the kind of explanations that we can expect from an empirically informed ethics in that only non-exclusive dual-process theories would be compatible with a dynamical systems account. Ultimately, however, the controversy around the modularity of mind should not be misconceived as a purely empirical question, but rather as a matter of conflicting epistemic standards as to what qualifies as a good explanation in cognitive science.
Since the end of the twentieth century, cognitive science has been witnessing what is called a pragmatic turn, a change of perspective that considers pragmatists to be basically right about the nature of knowledge and experience (Engel et al., 2016; Madzia & Jung, 2016; Madzia, Santarelli, 2017; Schulkin, 2015). Generally speaking, the pragmatic turn paradigm suggests that cognition is fundamentally grounded in action; that is, fundamentally action-bound, “subserving the planning, selection, anticipation, and performance of actions” (Engel et al., 2013, p. 206).
The essays collected in this special issue on Pragmatism and Enactivism seek to determine the extent to which the encounter between pragmatism and enactivism can provide an opportunity to reflect upon the genesis and nature, limits, and potentialities of cognition, as well as the issue of how mind and world, nature and culture, experience and language coexist.
Opposing the inherited mindreading view, Zawidzki has defended the thesis that mindshaping, as the practice through which we regulate both our behavior and that of our fellows, constitutes the linchpin of social cognition. Mindshaping is taken to be a further development of the neobehaviorist program of naturalizing intentionality in the wake of Dennett’s intentional stance, for which intentional states help track behavioral patterns instead of being neurally-implemented mental states, as in teleosemantics neocartesianism. However, Zawidzki’s use of teleosemantics to explain how those behavior regulation processes are possible commits him to a form of representationalism that undermines his neobehaviorist program of naturalizing intentionality, and threatens his mindshaping thesis, for neurally-implemented mental states would render some form of mindreading priority for social cognition. Our aim here is to propose an anti-representationalist reading of mindshaping through ecological psychology, showing how it is not only sympathetic to Zawidzki’s ideas, but also that it offers a simpler, yet fruitful theory of radical embodied social cognition.
This chapter explores the intersection of postcognitivism and sensory substitution, introducing the concept of affordance within ecological psychology. It posits that the risks associated with expanding the concept of affordance outweigh those of maintaining specificity, which fosters the perception of a direct process. The chapter showcases five devices explicitly embracing a post-cognitivist approach to sensory substitution (enactive or ecological devices). The discussion encompasses three key features for an affordance-based approach to sensory substitution: tactile stimulation contingent on distance to surfaces, the acknowledgment of perception as an active process, and the recognition of perceptual training as a valuable tool for enhancing perceptual learning. The chapter culminates in a proposal outlining how affordances substantiate a sensory substitution approach that surpasses mere functional replacement of sensory modalities. This proposal is also intricately linked to observed behavior concerning distal attribution. By exploring these facets, the chapter contributes to a deeper understanding of the intersection between postcognitivism, affordances, and sensory substitution, emphasizing the nuanced dynamics and potential advancements in this interdisciplinary realm.
The standard explanation model in neuroscience operates under the idea of the computational metaphor. With this in mind, the main motivation of this article is to undertake a review exercise prompted by a series of empirical evidence challenging the standard version from within the explanatory model itself. This leads us to consider that perhaps a conceptual revolution in neuroscience explanatory models may be plausible, with its conceptual foundations found in ecological psychology. The work will conclude by presenting some of the characteristics that ecological neuroscience should possess, in addition to offering some personal reflections on where this emerging research program should continue to evolve.
The capacity to distinguish reliable or rationally believable claims from a huge pool of views available within the public arena has never been as critical an issue as it is today. We live in a world full of bizarre, unwarranted beliefs and conspiracy theories, some of which may seem, at least on the face of it, quite well justified. Moreover, some of them may even turn out to be true. This poses a significant social-epistemological as well as practical problem. Here I propose to single out a group of beliefs known as confined truths. These are true beliefs belonging to a pathological question-answer system. The paper first provisionally articulates this idea and then makes the case for an ecological account of questioning and answering, thought of as social pursuits made possible by the capacity for problematization. The latter shall be characterized as part of cognitive engineering or niche construction. In the final part of the paper, various possible dysfunctionalities of the social/ecological pursuit of problematization are elicited and suitable examples thereof are briefly discussed.
About 30 years ago, the Dynamical Hypothesis instigated a variety of insights and transformations in cognitive science. One of them was the simple observation that, quite unlike trial‐based tasks in a laboratory, natural ecologically valid behaviors almost never have context‐free starting points. Instead, they produce lengthy time series data that can be recorded with dense‐sampling measures, such as heartrate, eye movements, EEG, etc. That emphasis on studying the temporal dynamics of extended behaviors may have been the trigger that led to a rethinking of what a “representation” is, and then of what a “cognitive agent” is. This most recent and perhaps most revolutionary transformation is the idea that a cognitive agent need not be a singular physiological organism. Perhaps a group of organisms, such as several people working on a joint task, can temporarily function as one cognitive agent – at least while they're working adaptively and successfully.
This article presents a comprehensive and detailed survey of ecolinguistics, defined as an enterprise oriented to how language plays a role in the interactions between human beings, other species, and the natural environment. Since the early 1990s, ecolinguistics has been driven by a concern for life on Earth and as such it comprises the linguistic study of the current ecological crisis. Through a detailed close reading of the literature, in combination with the bibliometric tool of VOSviewer, it surveys eleven subfields of contemporary ecolinguistics. The eleven surveyed subfields of ecolinguistics are: discourse-oriented ecolinguistics, corpus-assisted ecolinguistics, ecostylistics, narratological ecolinguistics, identity-oriented ecolinguistics, ethno-lexical ecolinguistics, ecological discourse analysis, harmonious discourse analysis, cognitive ecolinguistics, educational ecolinguistics, and decolonial/transdisciplinary ecolinguistics. In the conclusion, the article discusses two challenges that face contemporary ecolinguistics: the repetition of certain tropes and narratives about the field, even in the absence of empirical evidence, and the lack of internal debate and critique.
The free energy principle is a formal theory of adaptive self-organising systems that emerged from statistical thermodynamics, machine learning and theoretical neuroscience and has since been translated into biologically plausible ‘process theories’ of cognition and behaviour, which fall under the banner of ‘active inference’. Despite the promise this theory holds for theorising, research and practical applications in psychology and psychiatry, its impact on these disciplines has only now begun to bear fruit. The aim of this treatment is to consider the extent to which active inference has informed theoretical progress in psychology, before exploring its contributions to our understanding and treatment of psychopathology. Despite facing persistent translational obstacles, progress suggests that active inference has the potential to become a new paradigm that promises to unite psychology’s subdisciplines, while readily incorporating the traditionally competing paradigms of evolutionary and developmental psychology. To date, however, progress towards this end has been slow. Meanwhile, the main outstanding question is whether this theory will make a positive difference through applications in clinical psychology, and its sister discipline of psychiatry.
The target article argues that embodied cognitive neuroscience converges on a mechanistic approach to explanation. We argue that it does not. Even some of the article's paradigms for embodied cognitive neuroscience are explicitly non- or anti-mechanistic.
In recent decades, several ecologically inclined authors have adopted the Gestalt idea of demand characters. Yet, James Gibson, the founder of the ecological approach, although being inspired by Koffka, was critical of many of his ideas, including the contention that the environment calls for certain actions. This article examines why Gibson was so reluctant to accept this concept of demand characters. To that end, the relationship between Gibson’s ecological approach and Gestalt psychology is scrutinized. After an exploration of the parallels between the frameworks of Gibson and Koffka, Gibson’s critique of Koffka’s masterpiece Principles of Gestalt Psychology is evaluated. It is argued that although Gibson’s claim about the mind–world dualism in which Koffka’s perspective is rooted is arguably valid, neither Gibson nor some of his recent devotees take Koffka’s insights into the qualities of experience sufficiently seriously in their theorizing.
Recent work within the tradition of 4E cognitive science and philosophy of mind has drawn attention to the ways that our technological, material, and social environments can act as hostile, oppressive, and harmful scaffolding. These accounts push back against a perceived optimistic bias in the wider literature, whereby, according to the critics, our engagements with technology are painted as taking place on our terms, to our benefit, in ways uncomplicated by political realities. This article enters into that conversation, and aims to highlight a specific form of threat from emerging technology: the threat of the ‘techno-wanton. ’ Drawing on classic work on personhood by Harry Frankfurt, I argue that emerging forms of adaptive technology threaten to degrade the depth and reflexivity of our economy of preferences. Techno-wantonness is a wanton-like state of diminished agency and personhood, whereby adaptive technology facilitates the wanton satisfaction of shallow preferences and the weakening of higher order volition. I argue that the concept of ‘mind invasion’, within the context of the hostile scaffolding literature has been applied too broadly, to the detriment of our analysis, and argue that the notion of ‘techno-wantonness’ should replace ‘mind invasion’ in regard to a specific class of case. In short, the new concept allows for a more subtle distinction between scaffolding impinging on an unwilling mind and technology that panders to the preferences of initially often very willing users.
The idea of representation is central to many theories for embodied skillful action. Representation-centric cognition has been questioned in light of the prominence of E-cognition in the past two decades, including ecological psychology, sensorimotor theory, dynamical systems, and 4E cognition. The paper expands on the critique by offering alternate explanations for the information processing model of skill learning and embodied action. Mental representation plays a fundamental role in information processing explanations of embodied skillful action. The skilled activity is considered discretely in information-theoretic approaches, consisting of a linear model of information input-process-output. According to the paper, the beginning, emergence, acquisition, performance, and mastery of an embodied skilled activity are all part of a human experience continuum. Using vehicle driving as an example, the paper examines diverse viewpoints on embodied skillful action.
We live in troubling times. Amongst global political instability, rising economic inequality and a rapacious Western consumerist lifestyle, we face the impending risks of global warming and ecological collapse. In this short opinion paper, we bring this topic to the agenda of ecological psychology in the hope of stimulating fruitful conversation. To do so, we ask how ecological psychologists should conceptualize the environment in these precarious times. We will argue that the current ecological catastrophe shows that the environment should not be described simply in terms of affordances, but as an ecosystem on which many affordances depend. Not only does this conceptualization hold scientific implications, it speaks to an active morality that could help us change our ways, and play our part in holding open a just future for all.
The paper attempts to show that Predictive Processing (PP), despite recent attempts by its proponents to ward off accusations that lead to skepticism (Clark, A. (2016). Surfing uncertainty: prediction, action and the embodied mind. Oxford University Press, Clark, A. (2019). Replies to critics: In search of the embodied, extended, enactive predictive (EEE-P) mind. In M. Colombo, E. Irvine, & M. Stapleton (Eds.), Andy Clark and his critics (pp. 266–302). Oxford University Press), is susceptible to undesirable skeptical consequences of a Kantian (rather than Cartesian) character. Specifically, I shall argue that Clark’s version of PP is susceptible to a particularly Kantian version of skepticism in which the external world directly revealed by PP generative models is a phenomenal one in the Kantian sense: A world perceived and conceived as external, but at the same time essentially ‘internal’ in its categorial form, where this ‘internality’ only diverges from Kant in that it is a consequence of evolution. It will be suggested that these skeptical consequences can be avoided by articulating a more nuanced notion of the boundary between mind and world in PP, namely, one that differentiates an ontological from an epistemological understanding of the boundary between mind (generative model) and world. Moreover, it will be argued that in order to avoid Kantian skepticism, we must construe the very distinction between the phenomenal world and the world as it is in itself in non-metaphysical, pragmatic terms, as a framework condition for epistemically coordinating empirical inquiry within an ever-changing and unpredictable world. As a bonus, this view seems capable of accommodating the insights of autopoietic enactivism without buying into the latter’s controversial ‘transcendental idealist’ organism-relative ontology.
Autism spectrum disorder is usually understood through deficits in social interaction and communication, repetitive patterns of behavior, and hyper- or hyporeactivity to sensory input. Affordance-based Skilled Intentionality that combines ecological-enactive views of cognition with Free Energy and Predictive Processing was proposed as the framework from which to view autism integrally. Skilled Intentionality distinguishes between a landscape of affordances and a field of affordances. Under the integrative Skilled Intentionality Framework, it can be shown that autistic differences in the field of affordances stem from aberrant precision estimation. Autistics over-rely on the precision afforded by the environment—a stable econiche they build. According to this approach, autism is understood as characterized by an atypical field of affordances. I will build on the ecological-enactive account of autism to suggest that one way to shape the neurotypical landscape of affordances in accordance with autistic needs is through the use of Ambient Smart Environments (ASEs). Taking the cue from autistic lived experience, ASEs could help minimize environmental uncertainty and afford affective scaffolding by supporting dynamic and flexible niche construction in accordance with individual autistic styles.
Trends and developments in recent behavioural and cognitive sciences demonstrate the need for a well-developed theoretical and empirical framework for examining the ecology of human behaviour. The increasing recognition of the role of the environment and interaction with the environment in the organization of behaviour within the cognitive sciences has not been met with an equally disciplined and systematic account of that environment (Heft 2018 Ecol. Psychol. 30, 99–123 (doi:10.1080/10407413.2018.1410045); McGann 2014 Synth. Philos. 29, 217–233). Several bodies of work in behavioural ecology, anthropology and ecological psychology provide some frameworks for such an account. At present, however, the most systematic and theoretically disciplined account of the human behavioural ecosystem is that of behaviour settings, as developed by the researchers of the Midwest Psychological Field Station (see Barker 1968 Ecological psychology: concepts and methods for studying the environment of human behavior). The articles in this theme issue provide a critical examination of these theoretical and methodological resources. The collection addresses their theoretical value in connecting with contemporary issues in cognitive science and research practice in psychology, as well as the importance of the methodological specifics of behaviour settings research. Additionally, articles diagnose limitations and identify points of potential extension of both theory and methods, particularly with regard to changes owing to the advance of technology, and the complex relationship between the individual and the collective in behaviour settings work.
This article is part of the theme issue ‘People, places, things, and communities: expanding behaviour settings theory in the twenty-first century’.
The problem of self-knowledge has been thoroughly discussed in the context of traditional epistemology. In parallel to that traditional approach, Ecological-Enactive Cognition (EEC) has emerged in the last 30 years as a genuine contender in the cognitive sciences. According to EEC, the unity of analysis of cognitive processes is the dynamics between brain, body and environment. In this paper, I advance an EEC approach to self-knowledge, which immediately suggests that knowing oneself is a matter of knowing what one’s body can do. I then turn to resistance training, particularly weightlifting, and argue that it offers a paradigmatic case of self-knowledge in EEC’s terms. I contend that periodically reaching the point of mechanical failure provides an important insight into self-knowledge. Thus, resistance training allows the trainee to achieve knowledge of themselves in a fundamentally practical manner—and doing so is transformative of the kind of actions they are capable of.
Where does enactivism fit on the question of realism or idealism for perception? In recent years all general positions have been argued to be adequate. I will argue that enactivism is neither realist nor idealist, and requires a completely different game altogether. In short: it is not idealist because it sees cognition as inherently world-involving, and isn’t realist because it emphasizes the agent’s role in shaping the world through our own historical, bodily activity. More generally, I argue that the question itself assumes a reified, abstract notion of perception. This introduces a wedge between organism and environment that is incompatible with enactivism’s view of organism and environment as mutually constitutive. This problematizes the intermediate position between realist and idealist extremes as has traditionally been argued for in enactivism. I also touch on the ethical implications of this question, and how enactivism provides a promising path to grapple with the contradiction of the objective, shared space and our individual, historically shaped encounters with it. In sum, I suggest it is time for enactivism to go off the beaten path, and lay its own path in walking again.
Different species of realism have been proposed in the scientific and philosophical literature. Two of these species are direct realism and causal pattern realism . Direct realism is a form of perceptual realism proposed by ecological psychologists within cognitive science. Causal pattern realism has been proposed within the philosophy of model-based science. Both species are able to accommodate some of the main tenets and motivations of instrumentalism. The main aim of this paper is to explore the conceptual moves that make both direct realism and causal pattern realism tenable realist positions able to accommodate an instrumentalist stance. Such conceptual moves are (i) the rejection of veritism and (ii) the re-structuring of the phenomena of interest. We will then show that these conceptual moves are instances of the ones of a common realist genus we name pragmatist realism .
In a recent issue of Psychological Research, Bock, O., Huang, J-Y., Onur, O. A., & Memmert, D. (2024). The structure of cognitive strategies for wayfinding decisions. Psychological Research Psychologische Forschung, 88, 476–486. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00426-023-01863-3.) investigated cognitive strategies purported to guide wayfinding decisions at intersections. Following experimentation in a virtualised maze, it was concluded that intersectional wayfinding decisions were based on a ‘generalized cognitive process’, in addition to ‘strategy-specific’ processes. The aim of our comment is not to challenge these findings or their methodological rigour. Rather, we note how the study of human wayfinding has been undertaken from entirely different metatheoretical perspectives in psychological science. Leaning on the seminal work of James Gibson and Harry Heft, we consider wayfinding as a continuous, integrated perception-action process, distributed across the entire organism-environment system. Such a systems-oriented, ecological approach to wayfinding remediates the organismic asymmetry pervasive to extant theories of human behaviours, foregrounding the possibility for empirical investigation that takes seriously the socio-cultural contexts in which inhabitants dwell.
The endeavor to naturalize the philosophy of biology brings the problem of agency to the forefront, along with renewed attention to the organism and organicism. In this article, we argue for a mutualist approach to agency that starts to unravel layers of this complex issue by focusing on perception and action at the core of all biological agency. The mutuality of animals and their surroundings is seen as distinct from the typical concepts of organism, preexisting environment, and their interactions. Mutuality means a deep ontological and epistemological compatibility between the organism and its surround. We suggest that the concept of direct perception developed and empirically researched in the tradition of the ecological approach, launched by James J. Gibson, offers a promising path to approach agency within an ecological–mutuality framework. At the core of our definition of agency is the animal’s ability to self-initiate actions and activities. Animals are the source of their own actions and activities within the mutual, co-defining relation to their surround. The place of agency related to mutuality has not been elaborated sufficiently thus far, in either biology or ecological psychology. In this article, our goal is to argue for the necessity of placing agency into an ecological–mutuality framework and of further research in this direction in line with Marjorie Grene’s call to assimilate Gibson’s theory of knowledge into biology.
Structural representations are likely the most talked about representational posits in the contemporary debate over cognitive representations. Indeed, the debate surrounding them is so vast virtually every claim about them has been made. Some, for instance, claimed structural representations are different from indicators. Others argued they are the same. Some claimed structural representations mesh perfectly with mechanistic explanations, others argued they can’t in principle mash. Some claimed structural representations are central to predictive processing accounts of cognition, others rebuked predictive processing networks are blissfully structural representation free. And so forth. Here, I suggest this confusing state of affairs is due to the fact that the term “structural representations” is applied to a number of distinct conceptions of representations. In this paper, I distinguish four such conceptions, argue that these four conceptions are actually distinct, and then show that such a fourfold distinction can be used to clarify some of the most pressing questions concerning structural representations and their role in cognitive theorizing, making these questions more easily answerable.
Groundwork is established for a comparative psychology based in ecological psychology. The main focus is the theory of affordances and information pickup as common ground for comparison across species, kingdoms and domains. Two cases from the world of climbing plants, Monstera tenuis and members of Heteropsis, are explored in light of the ‘intentional dynamics framework’ as an example of how an ecological psychologist might approach the subject and the kinds of questions they might ask.
In recent decades, the neuroscientific community has moved from describing the neural underpinnings of mental phenomena—as characterized by experimental psychology and philosophy of mind—to attempting to redefine those mental phenomena based on neural findings. Nowadays, many are intrigued by the idea that neuroscience might provide the “missing piece” that would allow philosophers (and, to an extent, psychologists, too) to make important advances, generating new means that these disciplines lack to close knowledge gaps and answer questions like “What is Free Will?” and “Do humans have it?.” In this paper, we argue that instead of striving for neuroscience to replace philosophy in the ongoing quest to understanding human thought and behavior, more synergetic relations should be established, where neuroscience does not only inspire philosophy but also draws from it. We claim that such a collaborative coevolution, with the two disciplines nourishing and influencing each other, is key to resolving long‐lasting questions that have thus far proved impenetrable for either discipline on its own.
Everyday activities generally involve multiple kinds and scales of cognitive structures that are temporally integrated with the ongoing flow of actions. Some activities rest on specialized knowledge not widely shared among the general public. This chapter describes how reasonably skilled bartenders think through, and during, the process of taking orders and making drinks. As the example illustrates, bartenders’ active cognition involves several kinds of knowledge structures that are active at different times and in different ways in the production process, and bartenders and their customers do not need to think alike to interact successfully.
Affordances are opportunities for action for a given animal (or animals) in a given environment or situation. The concept of affordance has been widely adopted in the behavioral sciences, but important questions remain. We propose a new way of understanding the nature of affordances; in particular, how affordances are related to one another. We claim that many – perhaps most – affordances emerge from non-additive relations among other affordances, such that some affordances are of higher order relative to other affordances. That is, we propose that affordances form a continuous category of perceiveables that differ only in whether and how they relate to other affordances. We argue that: (1) opportunities for behaviors of all kinds can be described as affordances, (2) some affordances emerge from relations between animal and environment, whereas most affordances emerge from relations between other affordances, and (3) all affordances lawfully structure ambient energy arrays and, therefore, can be perceived directly. Our concept of higher order affordances provides a general account of behavioral phenomena that traditionally have been interpreted in terms of cognitive processes (e.g., remembering or imagining) as well as behavioral phenomena that have traditionally been interpreted in terms of cultural rules, such as conventions, or customs.
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