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Neither Brain nor Ghost: A Nondualist Alternative to the Mind-Brain Identity Theory

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Abstract

In this highly original work, Teed Rockwell rejects both dualism and the mind-brain identity theory. He proposes instead that mental phenomena emerge not merely from brain activity but from an interacting nexus of brain, body, and world. The mind can be seen not as an organ within the body, but as a "behavioral field" that fluctuates within this brain-body-world nexus. If we reject the dominant form of the mind-brain identity theory—which Rockwell calls "Cartesian materialism" (distinct from Daniel Dennett's concept of the same name)—and accept this new alternative, then many philosophical and scientific problems can be solved. Other philosophers have flirted with these ideas, including Dewey, Heidegger, Putnam, Millikan, and Dennett. But Rockwell goes further than these tentative speculations and offers a detailed alternative to the dominant philosophical view, applying pragmatist insights to contemporary scientific and philosophical problems. Rockwell shows that neuroscience no longer supports the mind-brain identity theory because the brain cannot be isolated from the rest of the nervous system; moreover, there is evidence that the mind is hormonal as well as neural. These data, and Rockwell's reanalysis of the concept of causality, show why the borders of mental embodiment cannot be neatly drawn at the skull, or even at the skin. Rockwell then demonstrates how his proposed view of the mind can resolve paradoxes engendered by the mind-brain identity theory in such fields as neuroscience, artificial intelligence, epistemology, and philosophy of language. Finally, he argues that understanding the mind as a "behavioral field" supports the new cognitive science paradigm of dynamic systems theory (DST). Bradford Books imprint
... From the perspective of enactivism, perceptions are not the brain's representation of pre-given reality, they are the agent's phenomenal experience of an embodied engagement with reality (see esp. . Since perception emerges from the dynamic coupling of the perceptual capacities of embodied agents and aspects of the environment, there is no need to internalize and represent that external reality Rockwell, 2005;Thompson, 2007;. ...
... These are the ways organisms actively engage with and co-construct-i.e., enact-a world. The fundamental problem with the cognitivist/representational approach to cognition is that it treats as distinct and linear, phases of cognition that are, in fact, non-decomposable elements of a dynamic system (Chemero, 2011;Gallagher, 2017;Rockwell, 2005;. 14 ...
... 1. Species-specific refers to the evolved, biological parameters of sensation, and mobility of an organism. This should not be read to deny specific individual patterns of SMC. 2. See Rockwell, 2005, for a compelling, empirically detailed account of the Cartesian/homuncular implications of cognitivist/representational models of cognition. ...
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To secure the scientific credibility of its theoretical foundations, CSR needs to update its cognitive model. Seminal work in CSR, and much contemporary research, employs a model of cognition that is subject to mounting criticism (i.e., cognitivism). The most significant of these critiques come from 4E cognition. This paper focuses on enactive cognition, arguing that reconstructing CSR along the lines of enactivism will put the field on firmer scientific grounding and can resolve long standing debates within the field. Beginning with an in-depth critique of a key component of the cognitivist model, representationalism, the paper also argues that a non-representational enactive cognitive model fits better with the evolutionary commitments of CSR. Next, it considers a case study in an enactive reconstruction of CSR: agency detection. This foundational concept has come under scrutiny due to lack of empirical support, raising concerns that it may need to be abandoned. Enactivism recasts the concept as "embodied agency-attunement." This allows a cognitive sensitivity to agency to continue its foundational role in CSR, while addressing empirical critiques leveled against it. The enactive approach is also compared to the predictive processing model. The paper concludes with suggestions about next steps towards an embodied CSR. ARTICLE HISTORY
... We take inspiration from the broad epistemological framework of the Embodied Dynamism Approach (EDA) (Shapiro, 2014;Thompson, 2007;Varela et al., 1993) to analyse self-organizational processes (Rockwell, 2005;Thelen & Smith, 1994). This epistemological approach is consistent with the notion of the situation as a means of analysis, as featured in situation analysis. ...
... Thus, on the one hand, SA seeks a temporary unity through which a part of reality can be epistemologically grasped and analysed as a single situation; on the other hand, this unity is constantly open to change and is therefore not trapped in advance within a preconceived static system of its parts. It is this manifestation of self-organizing processes that causes organisms, like human institutions, to transform themselves and their environment, thus finding a dynamic equilibrium (Damasio, 2018;Rockwell, 2005;Thelen & Smith, 1994;Thompson, 2007). ...
... This entire process leading to the harmony of all components will then allow the child to establish and continuously reinforce a new behavioural pattern (Smith & Thelen, 2003). If the self-organising principle is successful, it will become a longterm sustainable structure for the child (Rockwell, 2005;Thelen & Smith, 1994). ...
Article
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This text presents an innovation that expands the methodological possibilities of situational analysis (SA), a framework often used to research complex institutions. Our innovation features the use of 3D visualization, a strategy which makes it easier to analyse the self-organizing processes of institutions. In the introductory part of the article, we describe how and for what reasons the successors of A. Strauss transformed Grounded Theory into SA. Our main focus is on the analytical significance of visualization, a central feature of SA methodology. In the second and third parts, we characterize the role of visualization to enhance the understanding of research phenomena using examples from the development of non-Euclidean geometry as well as the well-known A-not-B error research schema. In the next part, we explain in detail the innovation using an example from a three-year research project of ours during which the innovation was established. At the end, we discuss the importance of our innovation against the background of identifying self-organizing processes as well as reducing the amount of so-called dark data.
... I argue, however, that many of these accounts on pro-environmental behavior -important as they are for understanding the complexities of human practices -suffer from a very fundamental a priori assumption, which limit cognition 'to the brain' (Rockwell, 2005). In this paradigm, often implicit in environmental psychology, contextual factors, if considered at all, have usually been 'introduced in the form of subjectively perceived environment, ' and not as systemic ecological situations (Hunecke et al., 2001). ...
... Integrative approaches, which take to account the dynamical coupling between internal and external behavior variables, have traditionally been scarce (however, see Guagnano et al., 1995;Stern, 2000;Hunecke et al., 2001;Jackson, 2005). This is, of course, traceable to a long tradition of Cartesian materialistic thinking, often implicit in the psychological and cognitive sciences (Heft, 2001;Rockwell, 2005;Chemero, 2013;Ch. 7 in Reed, 1996). ...
... As used in this text, ecological psychology should not be confused with environmental psychology or other strains of research going by the name of ecological psychology (such as Roger Barker's), although many similarities between these fields exist (see Heft, 2001 for a useful overview). I argue that ecological psychology and its more recent descendants in radical embodied cognition theories (e.g., Chemero, 2003Chemero, , 2009Chemero, , 2013 as well as Rockwell, 2005) should be revisited in order to understand more comprehensively the role our everyday and urban environments play in shaping our environmental behavior. This is elaborated in detail in sections "A Theory of Affordances" and "Affording Sustainability" in the form of a theory of affordances. ...
Article
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Human behavior is an underlying cause for many of the ecological crises faced in the 21st century, and there is no escaping from the fact that widespread behavior change is necessary for socio-ecological systems to take a sustainable turn. Whilst making people and communities behave sustainably is a fundamental objective for environmental policy, behavior change interventions and policies are often implemented from a very limited non-systemic perspective. Environmental policy-makers and psychologists alike often reduce cognition ‘to the brain,’ focusing only to a minor extent on how everyday environments systemically afford pro-environmental behavior. Symptomatic of this are the widely prevalent attitude–action, value–action or knowledge–action gaps, understood in this paper as the gulfs lying between sustainable thinking and behavior due to lack of affordances. I suggest that by adopting a theory of affordances as a guiding heuristic, environmental policy-makers are better equipped to promote policies that translate sustainable thinking into sustainable behavior, often self-reinforcingly, and have better conceptual tools to nudge our socio–ecological system toward a sustainable turn. Affordance theory, which studies the relations between abilities to perceive and act and environmental features, is shown to provide a systemic framework for analyzing environmental policies and the ecology of human behavior. This facilitates the location and activation of leverage points for systemic policy interventions, which can help socio–ecological systems to learn to adapt to more sustainable habits. Affordance theory is presented to be applicable and pertinent to technically all nested levels of socio–ecological systems from the studies of sustainable objects and households to sustainable urban environments, making it an immensely versatile conceptual policy tool. Finally, affordance theory is also discussed from a participatory perspective. Increasing the fit between local thinking and external behavior possibilities entails a deep understanding of tacit and explicit attitudes, values, knowledge as well as physical and social environments, best gained via inclusive and polycentric policy approaches.
... However, the research produced no conclusive results because in higher primates the amygdala is mainly an 'organ' of neuro-hormonal social coordination, which was excluded by the very setup of the experiment (cf. Rockwell, 2005, pp 107-109). ...
... With awareness of this network causality, interlacing and mutual influence, the dy- namic system theory is slowly gaining support (cf. e.g. Thelen & Smith, 1994;Rockwell, 2005;Clark, 2001, pp. 120-139). ...
... We became aware of this tradition only after the first draft of this chapter had been written. However, Rockwell's (2005) or Dreyfus and Wrathall's (2006, pp. 289-599) texts suggested we are on the right path. ...
Book
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The book focuses on pre-service teachers’ tacit knowledge in the second stage of their studies. It deals with the theoretical background and highlights the need for a radical turn in the methodology when we want to explore this concept. Drawing on this, a qualitative method of data collection called "clean language", is described in detail. The empirical part of the book presents studies concerning topics connected to pre-service teachers’ tacit knowledge – unexpected situations, student teachers’ beliefs or explicit and tacit knowledge sharing.
... Utifrån ett pragmatiskt, handlingsorienterat perspektiv på språk, vilket prövas i den här artikeln, syftar kommunikation i grunden i stället att uppfylla de behov vi som levande organismer har av att åstadkomma förändringar i en gemensam rörelse. Med detta perspektiv avlägsnar man sig delvis från de traditioner som tolkat det kommunikativa syftet kognitivt det vill säga som att uppnå en utökad förståelse förlagd i "mind" hos de individer som deltar (jfr Rockwell, 2005). Bara det att vi smyckat detta med begreppet 'förstå' är dock att åstadkomma en reifiering av alla de aktiviteter det ordet ursprungligen syftar till. ...
... När vi i nästa steg också placerar den samlade företeelsen i mind har det kallats för ett kategorimisstag (Lundegård & Hamza, 2013;Ryle, 1949;Wittgenstein, 1967). Kort sagt; i stället för att betrakta det som att våra språkliga utsagor utgår från representation, visar ett pragmatiskt perspektiv på hur de uppfyller vårt behov av att åstadkomma ömsesidiga samordnade handlingar (Dewey, 1925(Dewey, /1958Garrison, 2003Garrison, , 2009Rockwell, 2005;Rorty, 1979;Wittgenstein, 1967Wittgenstein, , 1969. När filosofen Ludwig Wittgenstein (1967;1969) undersöker hur människor tar sig fram i kommunikativa sammanhang kallar han sina analysenheter för språkspel. ...
Article
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Allt oftare omnämns att planetens tillstånd befinner sig i en ny tidsepok; Antropocen – människans tidsålder. Förutom den geologiska lydelsen pekar tillståndet även på det paradigmskifte i tänkande mänskligheten nu befinner sig i. Vår färdväg definieras som alltmer akut ohållbar. Från ett samlat vetenskapssamhälle framförs nu nödvändigheten av att på kort tid åstadkomma omvälvande förändringar, i en omfattning vi tidigare inte skådat. I det sammanhanget lyfts också ofta utbildningens centrala roll. I den här artikeln lutar vi oss främst mot den franska filosofen Bruno Latours resonemang om de konsekvenser antropocen har för människans behov av relationsskapande och tillhörighet. Eller formulerat som en utmaning att konfronteras med i undervisningen: Hur kan undervisningen skapa relationer med ”det mer än mänskliga” där människan utgör en integrerad del i biosfärens levande och materiella processer? Med hjälp av tre konkreta exempel från två skolor och med teori och analytiskt fokus hämtat frånpragmatiska perspektiv på kommunikation, utforskar vi Latours efterfrågan av ”The terrestrial”. I den argumentativa texten visar vi hur detta kan identifieras i termer av öppna naturmöten, i relationsskapande och i demokratiska processer, vilka synliggör hur vi människor är sammankopplade med biosfären. I artikeln pekar vi också på några didaktiska riktningsgivare vilka kan vara till hjälp för lärare att skapa en undervisning som möjliggör för det omedelbara naturmötet, öppnar för det relationella utrymmet och stödjer genomlevandet av demokrati som en form av liv.
... Assim, a meu ver, a razão dada por Noë para seu disclaimer em relação ao behaviorismo não se justifica. , Noë (2009) e Rockwell (2005) sustentam que a mente, de modo mais geral, é composta por dinâmicas de interação do organismo como um todo com o ambiente (físico ou social). A mente envolve, segundo essa perspectiva, a participação do cérebro, mas também do corpo de modo mais amplo atuando no ambiente: "A unidade explicativa da cognição [. . . ...
... Pode-se destacar a esse respeito justamente as abordagens de Noë (2009) e Rockwell (2005) com respeito aos fenômenos mentais de outras categorias além da categoria de fenômenos perceptuais, bem como a abordagem Rowlands (1999) sobre processos cognitivos em geral (além de fenômenos perceptuais, também outros como os de raciocínio e memória). Como mencionei na subseção anterior, Noë (2009) e Rockwell (2005), como Gallagher (2017), defendem que a mente está nas interações do organismo inteiro com elementos do ambiente ao longo do tempo 13 : ...
Article
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It is common to find depictions of behaviorist approaches to the mind as approaches according to which mental (or psychological) events are “dispositions for behavior.” Moreover, it is sometimes said that for these approaches the dispositions are for publicly observable (external) behaviors, or even “purely physical movements,” thereby excluding from being constitutive of mental events any internal (e.g., physiological) bodily happening, besides any movement not taken as “purely physical.” In this paper I aim to (i) pinpoint problems in such widespread depictions of behaviorism about the mind, by arguing that they turn out to be too restrictive or too broad, as the case may be. In addition, (ii) I put forward an alternative, more balanced characterization, which wards off such problems. Based upon this alternative characterization, I attempt to (iii) classify some of the embodied mind theories as behavioral, non-behavioral, or borderline cases between behavioral and non-behavioral perspectives.
... 27. See Rockwell, 2005, for a compelling, empirically detailed account of the Cartesian/homuncular implications of cognitivist/representational models of cognition. ...
Article
Reply to Commentaries on Toward an embodied CSR The commentaries revealed several recurring themes, most prominent being my arguments against Representationalism and Predictive Processing. These require a more extensive treatment, but I will begin with a general, yet foundational topic: the evolutionary context of both cognition and religion. A failure to appreciate the role of the evolutionary context in the reconstructive project could contribute to a misreading of some discussions.
... Something reminiscent of the enactivist debate in cognitive sciences [286,196,287]. In terms of allied views, we can mention several philosophers that share an anti-Cartesian view [149,157,465,158,403,141,484,253], like Gallagher [195], Merleau-Ponty [399], J. J. Gibson [209], and Martin Heidegger [253]. However, it will be on our own terms that we shall subscribe to Dynamism and seek to apply it to the normative realm. ...
Thesis
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The critical inquiry pervading the realm of Philosophy, and perhaps extending its influence across all Humanities disciplines, revolves around the intricacies of morality and normativity. Surprisingly, in recent years, this thematic thread has woven its way into an unexpected domain, one not conventionally associated with pondering "what ought to be": the field of artificial intelligence (AI) research. Central to morality and AI, we find "alignment", a problem related to the challenges of expressing human goals and values in a manner that artificial systems can follow without leading to unwanted adversarial effects. More explicitly and with our current paradigm of AI development in mind, we can think of alignment as teaching human values to non-anthropomorphic entities trained through opaque, gradient-based learning techniques. This work addresses alignment as a technical-philosophical problem that requires solid philosophical foundations and practical implementations that bring normative theory to AI system development. To accomplish this, we propose two sets of necessary and sufficient conditions that, we argue, should be considered in any alignment process. While necessary conditions serve as metaphysical and metaethical roots that pertain to the permissibility of alignment, sufficient conditions establish a blueprint for aligning AI systems under a learning-based paradigm. After laying such foundations, we present implementations of this approach by using state-of-the-art techniques and methods for aligning general-purpose language systems. We call this framework Dynamic Normativity. Its central thesis is that any alignment process under a learning paradigm that cannot fulfill its necessary and sufficient conditions will fail in producing aligned systems.
... Something reminiscent of the enactivist debate in cognitive sciences [286,196,287]. In terms of allied views, we can mention several philosophers that share an anti-Cartesian view [149,157,465,158,403,141,484,253], like Gallagher [195], Merleau-Ponty [399], J. J. Gibson [209], and Martin Heidegger [253]. However, it will be on our own terms that we shall subscribe to Dynamism and seek to apply it to the normative realm. ...
Preprint
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The critical inquiry pervading the realm of Philosophy, and perhaps extending its influence across all Humanities disciplines, revolves around the intricacies of morality and normativity. Surprisingly, in recent years, this thematic thread has woven its way into an unexpected domain, one not conventionally associated with pondering "what ought to be": the field of artificial intelligence (AI) research. Central to morality and AI, we find "alignment", a problem related to the challenges of expressing human goals and values in a manner that artificial systems can follow without leading to unwanted adversarial effects. More explicitly and with our current paradigm of AI development in mind, we can think of alignment as teaching human values to non-anthropomorphic entities trained through opaque, gradient-based learning techniques. This work addresses alignment as a technical-philosophical problem that requires solid philosophical foundations and practical implementations that bring normative theory to AI system development. To accomplish this, we propose two sets of necessary and sufficient conditions that, we argue, should be considered in any alignment process. While necessary conditions serve as metaphysical and metaethical roots that pertain to the permissibility of alignment, sufficient conditions establish a blueprint for aligning AI systems under a learning-based paradigm. After laying such foundations, we present implementations of this approach by using state-of-the-art techniques and methods for aligning general-purpose language systems. We call this framework Dynamic Normativity. Its central thesis is that any alignment process under a learning paradigm that cannot fulfill its necessary and sufficient conditions will fail in producing aligned systems.
... At the same time, it must be emphasised that the concept of the embodied mind is directly rooted in Dewey's philosophy. This concept is developed in philosophy mainly in the pragmatist tradition represented by figures such as Lakoff, Johnson, and Rockwell (Johnson, 2017;Rockwell, 2005). ...
Chapter
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This book comprehensively explores immersive virtual reality (iVR) in educational settings. The beginning of the book sets out in detail the objectives of the “Education in Collaborative Immersive Virtual Environment” (EduINCIVE) project. It emphasises the development of the eDIVE platform, designed for collaborative education in immersive virtual reality. The project mainly focuses on developing software tailored to specific educational needs, particularly in languages and geography. The text also offers an empirical investigation into the implementation of iVR in libraries. The text highlights the importance of considering the limitations and strengths of iVR, advocating a balanced and critical approach to the adoption of technology. The intent is to complement rather than replace traditional educational methods, with a strong emphasis on creating a user-centric experience that adapts to the unique capabilities of iVR.
... At the same time, it must be emphasised that the concept of the embodied mind is directly rooted in Dewey's philosophy. This concept is developed in philosophy mainly in the pragmatist tradition represented by figures such as Lakoff, Johnson, and Rockwell (Johnson, 2017;Lakoff & Johnson, 1999;Rockwell, 2005). ...
Book
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This book comprehensively explores immersive virtual reality (iVR) in educational settings. The beginning of the book sets out in detail the objectives of the “Education in Collaborative Immersive Virtual Environment” (EduINCIVE) project. It emphasises the development of the eDIVE platform, designed for collaborative education in immersive virtual reality. The project mainly focuses on developing software tailored to specific educational needs, particularly in languages and geography. The text also offers an empirical investigation into the implementation of iVR in libraries. The text highlights the importance of considering the limitations and strengths of iVR, advocating a balanced and critical approach to the adoption of technology. The intent is to complement rather than replace traditional educational methods, with a strong emphasis on creating a user-centric experience that adapts to the unique capabilities of iVR.
... Phenomenal consciousness is nothing but consciousness-of or intentionality. Essentially the same view is held by contemporary defenders of the "first-order representational theory of consciousness" (see, e.g., Carruthers, 1998) and, even more radically, by defenders of the "extended conscious mind thesis" (see, e.g., Rockwell, 2005). All of these later affinities shows how radical and philosophically prescient Kant's doctrine really is. ...
Article
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By “essentially embodied Kantian selves,” I mean necessarily and completely embodied rational conscious, self-conscious, sensible (i.e., sense-perceiving, imagining, and emoting), volitional or willing, discursive (i.e., conceptualizing, judging, and inferring) animals, or persons, innately possessing dignity, and fully capable not only of free agency, but also of a priori knowledge of analytic and synthetic a priori truths alike, with egocentric centering in manifestly real orientable space and time. The basic theory of essentially embodied Kantian selves was spelled out by Kant over the course of slightly less than two decades, between 1768 and 1787, but above all, it flows from an empirical realist and metaphysical reading of the “Refutation of Idealism” that Kant inserted into the Postulates of Empirical Thought section in the 1787 edition of the first Critique. In my opinion, all rational but also “human, all-too-human” creatures like us are, synthetic a priori necessarily, essentially embodied Kantian selves. Let’s call that the essentially embodied Kantian selves thesis, or for short, EEKST. If EEKST is true, then it’s synthetic a priori impossible for the selves of creatures like us to exist independently of our own living organismic animal bodies or beyond the deaths of those bodies, whether temporarily or permanently, by any means whatsoever. Indeed, the very ideas of disembodied selves, their survival after death, and of human immortality, while minimally logically consistent, are in fact conceptually empty and incoherent, even over and above the synthetic a priori impossibility of such things, since the term “myself” indexically picks out an essentially embodied Kantian self, all of whose core features require grounding in a particular living organismic animal body. According to the recent and contemporary movement of transhumanism, the selves of creatures like us can not only exist independently of our bodies, as functional systems of representational content that are inherently able to be implemented or realized in digital-mechanical technology and uploadable to servers, but also to survive accidental or natural human death in server-limbo, then be downloaded into technologically enhanced partially mechanical humanoid bodies or even into wholly artificially-created completely mechanical non-humanoid bodies, survive in these new implementations or realizations for an indefinitely long time, repeat that process, and possibly even become immortal. Transhumanism is in fact metaphysically equivalent to Swedenborgianism, which Kant so effectively criticizes and wittily derides in his 1766 book, Dreams of a Spirit-Seer Elucidated by Dreams of Metaphysics. Moreover, and more importantly, if EEKST is true, then, just like Swedenborgianism, transhumanism is not only conceptually empty and incoherent, but also synthetic a priori impossible. And what’s more, it’s also existentially and morally reprehensible. In short, then, the belief in transhuman selves is nothing but a reprehensible noumenal fantasy or Hirngespinst.
... Second, by naturalist I intend to place the discussion in the tradition of various key ideas introduced by Dewey's "cultural naturalism"; 1 namely, his rejection of physicalism and reductionism in favor of a continuistic stance based on the idea that "rational operations grow out of organic activities, without being identical with that from which they emerge" (Dewey, 1938: 19). This cultural naturalism aims to replace a linear conception of causality with a more complex view of mutually conditioning processes that, in some way, can be regarded as a forerunner of enactive and other embodied and situated frameworks of cognition such as ecological psychology (Rockwell, 2005;Gallagher, 2017). Finally, by stating my pluralist point of view, I want to make clear that I do not believe in the existence of a unitary type of aesthetic experience. ...
Article
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This paper explores various notions of aesthetic affordance recently developed through embodied, situated and enactive approaches to aesthetic experience by Maria Brincker and Shaun Gallagher, and the similarities and differences between them and the idea of affective affordance put forward by Joel Krueger and Giovanna Colombetti. This discussion is a way to try to offer some answers to the question of what aesthetic affordances particularly afford compared to affective affordances. I will focus on the affordances that we perceive during various aesthetic experiences in which we find ourselves more moved by the object, event or person(s) causing the experience than we had anticipated. I will argue that these experiences emerge as opportunities to carry out an active exploration of aspects of the narrative self that we feel is related to features of the experience; and that one particular brain network likely to be involved in these experiences – i.e. the default network – might help us to understand how these experiences meaningfully change our relationship with ourselves and with the social context of which we are a part.
... The argument put forward in this paper is precisely that a cut is not something inherent to reality but something actively enforced. The philosopher John Stuart Mill already observed that the distinction between causes and background conditions was spurious: "The real cause is the whole of these antecedents; and we have, philosophically speaking, no right to give the name of cause to one of them exclusively of the others" (as discussed in Rockwell, 2016). We hypothesize therefore that we should bring these background conditions to the front: Not only will this provide a fuller picture of the causal processes at work but it also might provide other avenues, perhaps novel ones, to intervene and transform a system. ...
Article
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Interest in causality is growing in sustainability science and it has been argued that a multiplicity of approaches is needed to account for the complexities of social-ecological dynamics. However, many of these approaches operate within perspectives that establish a separation between what has causal agency and all the rest, which is relegated to the role of background conditions. We argue that the distinction between causal elements and background conditions is by no means a necessary one, and that the causal agency of background conditions is worthy of investigation. We argue that such conditions correspond to what Karen Barad has called a “cut”: a specific determination of the world (or part of it) respective to another part, for which it becomes intelligible. In this sense, most approaches to causality so far operate from “within” particular cuts. To illustrate this, we focus on the paradigmatic case of the Baltic cod collapse in the eighties. This case has been extensively studied, and overfishing has been identified as a key cause explaining the collapse. We dig deeper into the conditions which characterized fishing practices in the run-up to the collapse and uncover the separation between the social and the ecological that they enforce by encouraging policies to increase productivity under the rationale of national “development”. We then re-examine the case from a process-relational perspective, rejecting the separation of nature from society. A process-relational perspective allows us to consider relations as constitutive of processes through which what exists becomes determinate. For this purpose we use the concepts of intra-action (co-constitution of processes) and of performativity (determination of language and matter within processes). We complete our conceptual framework by drawing inspiration from pragmatist philosophers and suggest that the concept of intuition can constitute an alternative to untangle causal dynamics and explain social-ecological phenomena beyond the cause/condition dichotomy. This article seeks to fulfil two objectives: firstly, to question the thick boundaries between conditions and causal elements that explain the processes in which social-ecological systems evolve; secondly, to provide a different approach to transforming a social-ecological system.
... At times, this might involve the blurring of the traditionally accepted boundaries of things-as is illustrated in Article 1 with the case of the coastline paradox-and at others, it involves pragmatic choice and agency in defining systems boundaries for some particular practical purpose. Processes, by their fundamental nature, are causally incomplete (Rockwell 2016): unlike traditional 'objects' or 'things', they, or rather their emergence from interconnected systems, can be traced in back in time and out in space, to the point where this can become rather cumbersome. As Humboldt, an early advocate of wholistic science, observed (see quote above), the whole can quickly become too heavy to study rigorously. ...
Thesis
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This transdisciplinary doctoral thesis presents various theoretical, methodological and empirical approaches that together form an ecological approach to the study of social sciences. The key argument follows: to understand how sustainable behaviours and cultures may emerge, and how their development can be facilitated, we must further learn how behaviours emerge as a function of the person and the material and social environment. Furthermore, in this thesis the sustainability crises are framed as sustain-ability crises. We must better equip our cultures with abilities to deal with the complexity and uncertainty of socio-ecological systems, and use these cultural skillsets to survive in and adapt to an increasingly unpredictable world. This thesis employs a plurality of ecological social sciences and related methodologies—such as ecological psychology, ecological rationality and agent-based modelling—to enlighten the question of how the collective adoption of sustainable behaviours can be leveraged, particularly by changing the affordances in the material environment. What is common to these ecological approaches is the appreciation of ‘processes’ over ‘products’: we must understand the various processes through which sustainable forms of behaviour or decision-making emerge to truly locate leverage points in social systems. Finally, this thesis deals extensively with uncertainty in complex systems. It proposes that we can look to local and traditional knowledge in learning how to deal adaptively with uncertainty.
... If we thus re-conceptualize the disembodied mind, which is still the predominant concept of present-day Cartesian materialism (Rockwell, 2005;Knowles, 2014), then the mindbody problem has to be recast. It is no longer a question of how the mind is related to the brain but how the lived or subject body on the one hand is related to the living or object body on the other; in short, it becomes the "body-body problem, " as Hanna and Thompson (2003) and Thompson (2007) have termed it. ...
Article
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From an embodied and enactive point of view, the mind–body problem has been reformulated as the relation between the lived or subject body on the one hand and the physiological or object body on the other (“body–body problem”). The aim of the paper is to explore the concept of circularity as a means of explaining the relation between the phenomenology of lived experience and the dynamics of organism–environment interactions. This concept of circularity also seems suitable for connecting enactive accounts with ecological psychology. It will be developed in a threefold way: (1) As the circular structure of embodiment, which manifests itself (a) in the homeostatic cycles between the brain and body and (b) in the sensorimotor cycles between the brain, body, and environment. This includes the interdependence of an organism’s dispositions of sense-making and the affordances of the environment. (2) As the circular causality, which characterizes the relation between parts and whole within the living organism as well as within the organism–environment system. (3) As the circularity of process and structure in development and learning. Here, it will be argued that subjective experience constitutes a process of sense-making that implies (neuro-)physiological processes so as to form modified neuronal structures, which in turn enable altered future interactions. On this basis, embodied experience may ultimately be conceived as the integration of brain–body and body–environment interactions, which has a top-down, formative, or ordering effect on physiological processes. This will serve as an approach to a solution of the body–body problem.
... Atmosphere arises not from the action-directed narrative organization but instead functions as a kind of orientation that emerges from habit and memory. This mode of perception blurs the boundaries between body schema and environment, in what W. Terence Rockwell (2005) has termed the brain-body-world nexus. ...
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... L'autore pragmatista che forse più di altri è stato preso a riferimento nella renaissance pragmatista all'interno delle science cognitive è John Dewey. In particolare, le nozioni deweyane di 'esperienza' e di 'relazione organica' sono considerate da Johnson (2007), Chemero (2009), Rockwell (2005) Gallagher (2016) e altri 4 come fondamentali per cercare di dirimere alcune questioni che le differenti prospettive sulla cognizione presentano. Anthony Chemero (2009), ad esempio, ha sostenuto la possibilità di elaborare una scienza cognitiva incarnata radicale a partire dal pragmatismo di Dewey e James. ...
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... & Hence, if the mind is internal, it must be extended and, therefore, material. & By the same token, a mind situated partly outside the skin, as the extended-mind theory propounds (Clark & Chalmers, 1998;Dror & Harnad, 2008;Rockwell, 2005), must also be physical. ...
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Leading scholars respond to the famous proposition by Andy Clark and David Chalmers that cognition and mind are not located exclusively in the head. Where does the mind stop and the rest of the world begin? In their famous 1998 paper "The Extended Mind," philosophers Andy Clark and David J. Chalmers posed this question and answered it provocatively: cognitive processes "ain't all in the head." The environment has an active role in driving cognition; cognition is sometimes made up of neural, bodily, and environmental processes. Their argument excited a vigorous debate among philosophers, both supporters and detractors. This volume brings together for the first time the best responses to Clark and Chalmers's bold proposal. These responses, together with the original paper by Clark and Chalmers, offer a valuable overview of the latest research on the extended mind thesis. The contributors first discuss (and answer) objections raised to Clark and Chalmers's thesis. Clark himself responds to critics in an essay that uses the movie Memento's amnesia-aiding notes and tattoos to illustrate the workings of the extended mind. Contributors then consider the different directions in which the extended mind project might be taken, including the need for an approach that focuses on cognitive activity and practice. Bradford Books imprint
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The aim of the article is to outline several valuable elements of Mead's pragmatist theory of perception in action developed in his The Philosophy of the Act (1938), in order to strengthen the pragmatist legacy of the enactivist approach. In particular, Mead's theory of perception in action turns out to be a forerunner of sensorimotor enactivist theory. Unlike the latter, however, Mead explicitly refers to imagery as an essential capacity for agency. Nonetheless, the article argues that the ways in which Mead refers to this capacity do not necessarily place it in opposition to enactivist non-representationalism. On the contrary, as a synthetic process of representing of present and past sensorimotor elements, imagery can be seen as the hallmark of a pragmatically inspired sensorimotor enactivist approach that bypasses the opposition between representationalists and non-representationalists.
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Author: Thomas Fuchs Italian Translation by F. Brencio in F. Brencio (a cura di/ed.), Dal corpo oggetto alla mente incarnata - From the object body to the embodied mind, in “InCircolo – Rivista di Filosofia e Culture”, 11, pp. 21-59 ISSN 2531-4092 http://www.incircolorivistafilosofica.it/la-circolarita-della-mente-incarnata/
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Gilbert Ryle’s The Concept of Mind (1949/2002. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press) is generally considered a landmark in the quest to refute Cartesian dualism. The work contains many inspirational ideas and mainly posits behavioral disposition as the referent of mind in order to refute mind–body dualism. In this article, I show that the Buddhist theory of ‘non-self’ is also at odds with the belief that a substantial soul exists distinct from the physical body and further point out similarities between the Buddhist outlook and Ryle’s ideas in three parts. First, I illustrate that Ryle’s ‘category mistake’ has certain points in common with the Buddhist refutation of ‘self’. Within the Buddhist framework, referents such as ‘mind’ and ‘self’ are merely imputed terms. The presumed existence of an independent substance such as a ‘soul’, when considered in isolation from the expedient usage of the term ‘mind’, can therefore also be viewed as a ‘category mistake’. Second, attempting to solve the questions of ‘what mind is’ and ‘how mind operates’ are two entirely different approaches to the study of mind. I argue that it is necessary to focus on ‘knowing-how’ rather than ‘knowing-that’, if we are to gain a more comprehensive understanding of mind and avoid any kind of category mistake such as those that follow from isolating the physical properties of brain or drawing inferences from a mystical soul. Third, I aim to show why investigating mind from the perspective of ‘dispositions’ of behavior is a valid approach. The Buddhist concept of karma-vāsanā elucidates the habitual tendency to act or not act in various situations. Based on this theory, I argue that the workings of the human mind bears strong links to the formation of karma and as such have important axiological implications that cannot be ignored. I conclude by pointing out that Ryle’s insightful ideas could in certain ways be complemented by the Buddhist theory of mind. In my view, his philosophy is not only a mediator between Analytic Philosophy and Phenomenology, but could perhaps also be seen as a mediator between traditional Eastern systems of thought and contemporary philosophies of mind.
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The article outlines some similarities between the perspectives adopted by Shaun Gallagher and William James. In particular, assuming that the issue of representation in cognitive systems provides a valuable starting point and testing ground for verifying James' possible contribution to enactivism, we argue that there is a considerable degree of similarity between Gallagher's and James' non-representational models of direct perception. Furthermore, we propose that by combining James's theory of time and spatial perception with Gallagher's Husserlian-inspired theory of retentional-protentional structure, we can strengthen the theoretical assumptions of enactivism, integrating elements taken from phenomenology and aspects of Jamesian pragmatics. Understood in this way, James' enactive theory of action and perceptual causality provides a promising opportunity for an innovative and coherent enactivist research program.
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In this chapter I argue that a Pragmatist framework can offer us a common ontological framework for both social and cognitive sciences, which represents a promising alternative to both internalist and methodological and ontological individualist approaches to sociality. Accordingly, social interaction is constitutive of cognitive phenomena both at the subpersonal and at the personal level, and at the individual and at the collective level. I reconstruct this model as a form of motor social ontology based on the notion of habit and criticize in this light intentionalist takes on social cognition. Finally, I assess recent arguments in favor of the rediscovery of the notion of ‘habit’ within cognitive sciences, and argue that habit ontology can play a foundational role in embodied cognitive sciences insofar as it can give a unified account of 4E cognition, that is of cognition understood as an embodied, enactive, embedded and extended phenomenon.
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The aim of this book is to evaluate the contribution that the notion of habit could make to current debate at the crossroads between philosophy, cognitive sciences, neurosciences, and social theory. This topic is addressed in a broad sense, dealing with the different aspects of the pragmatic turn involved by 4E (embodied, embedded, extended, and enactive) cognitive science, and tracing back the roots of such a pragmatic turn to both classical and contemporary pragmatism. Its aim is to explore the many facets of the notion of habit and to use it as the guiding thread for the theoretical reconstruction and critical reassessment of pragmatist arguments that are of great relevance to contemporary thought. In addressing such questions, the book gathers original contributions from philosophers, cognitive scientists, neuroscientists, and social theorists, aiming to offer an interdisciplinary account of “habit,” a notion whose importance is today receiving growing attention in different fields of research but whose different theoretical and historical aspects still need to be connected systematically. Notably, the common reference to the pragmatist approach to this concept is also crucial to ensure a consistent and coherent outcome, as it links together the single chapters in which the systematic project of the book is articulated
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Experts in Artificial Intelligence (AI) development predict that advances in the development of intelligent systems and agents will reshape vital areas in our society. Nevertheless, if such an advance is not made prudently and critically, reflexively, it can result in negative outcomes for humanity. For this reason, several researchers in the area have developed a robust, beneficial, and safe concept of AI for the preservation of humanity and the environment. Currently, several of the open problems in the field of AI research arise from the difficulty of avoiding unwanted behaviors of intelligent agents and systems, and at the same time specifying what we really want such systems to do, especially when we look for the possibility of intelligent agents acting in several domains over the long term. It is of utmost importance that artificial intelligent agents have their values aligned with human values, given the fact that we cannot expect an AI to develop human moral values simply because of its intelligence, as discussed in the Orthogonality Thesis. Perhaps this difficulty comes from the way we are addressing the problem of expressing objectives, values, and ends, using representational cognitive methods. A solution to this problem would be the dynamic approach proposed by Dreyfus, whose phenomenological philosophy shows that the human experience of being-in-the-world in several aspects is not well represented by the symbolic or connectionist cognitive method, especially in regards to the question of learning values. A possible approach to this problem would be to use theoretical models such as SED (situated embodied dynamics) to address the values learning problem in AI.
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Resumo: especialistas em desenvolvimento de Inteligência Artificial (IA) preveem que o avanço no desenvolvimento de sistemas e agentes inteligentes irá remo-delar áreas vitais em nossa sociedade. Contudo, se tal avanço não for realizado de maneira prudente e crítico-reflexiva, pode resultar em desfechos negativos para a humanidade. Por esse motivo, diversos pesquisadores na área têm de-senvolvido uma concepção de IA robusta, benéfica e segura para a preservação da humanidade e do meio-ambiente. Atualmente, diversos dos problemas em aberto no campo de pesquisa em IA advêm da dificuldade de evitar compor-tamentos indesejados de agentes e sistemas inteligentes e, ao mesmo tempo, especificar o que realmente queremos que tais sistemas façam, especialmente quando prospectamos a possibilidade de agentes inteligentes atuarem em vários domínios em longo prazo. É de suma importância que agentes inteligentes arti-ficiais tenham os seus valores alinhados com os valores humanos, dado ao fato de que não podemos esperar que uma IA desenvolva valores morais humanos por conta de sua inteligência, conforme é discutido na Tese da Ortogonalidade. Talvez tal dificuldade venha da maneira que estamos abordando o problema de expressar objetivos, valores e metas, utilizando métodos cognitivos representa-cionais. Uma solução para esse problema seria a abordagem dinâmica proposta por Dreyfus, que com base na filosofia fenomenológica mostra que a experiência humana do ser-no-mundo em diversos aspectos não é bem representada pelo método cognitivo simbólico ou conexionista, especialmente na questão de aprendizagem de valores. Uma possível abordagem para esse problema seria a utilização de modelos teóricos como Situated Embodied Dynamics (SED) para abordar o problema de aprendizagem de valores em IA.
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Full-text available
Experts in Artificial Intelligence (AI) development predict that advances in the development of intelligent systems and agents will reshape vital areas in our society. Nevertheless, if such an advance isn't done with prudence, it can result in negative outcomes for humanity. For this reason, several researchers in the area are trying to develop a robust, beneficial, and safe concept of artificial intelligence. Currently, several of the open problems in the field of AI research arise from the difficulty of avoiding unwanted behaviors of intelligent agents, and at the same time specifying what we want such systems to do. It is of utmost importance that artificial intelligent agents have their values aligned with human values, given the fact that we cannot expect an AI to develop our moral preferences simply because of its intelligence, as discussed in the Orthogonality Thesis. Perhaps this difficulty comes from the way we are addressing the problem of expressing objectives, values, and ends, using representational cognitive methods. A solution to this problem would be the dynamic cognitive approach proposed by Dreyfus, whose phenomenological philosophy defends that the human experience of being-in-the-world cannot be represented by the symbolic or connectionist cognitive methods. A possible approach to this problem would be to use theoretical models such as SED (situated embodied dynamics) to address the values learning problem in AI.
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The article argues that historical materialism is not only a theory of historical change but more generally a mediation between the natural foundations of human life and its meaningful symbolic expressions. The article begins with an interpretation of the general philosophical significance of the basic premises of historical materialism as they are sketched in the German Ideology. I argue that these premises point us in two different directions: down, towards a scientific understanding of the natural world, and up, towards interpretations of meaningful human expressions. Reductionist scientific models are appropriate for the understanding of natural forces, but these reveal their own limitations when applied to social life. Social life cannot be understood outside its symbolic expressions, but these are not free floating ideal abstractions, but remain connected to fundamental human purposes and must be understood as such.
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In the course of modern history, science and magic have gradually become separated into a pair of binary opposites. While acknowledging what the “pure reason” of modernity considered to be a supernatural action, science nevertheless attempted to explain the latter in terms of a regular method of a direct cause-effect connection as a method in natural science, promptly arriving at a conclusion of either anomalous effect (as in magic) or anomalous cause (as in mantic). But can what is called magic still be considered a science—a science of hidden relations that are nevertheless, and in accord with Charles S. Peirce’s pragmatic maxim, capable of producing real effects? Surely John Deely (2001) acknowledged Peirce’s vision as rooted in science rather than mysticism. This chapter uses one of the Tarot cards called the Magician as an index of overcoming a schism between the dual opposites when positioned in the conceptual framework of semiotics that allows us to elucidate the meaning of this sign (Fig. 12.1).
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Shaun Gallagher argues that we need a new philosophy of nature that accommodates the insights of existential phenomenology. On his view existential phenomenology needs a philosophy of nature that is holistic, relational, and non-reductionist. I argue that his reasoning is based on a misunderstanding of the difference between the manifest image and the scientific image. The reasons why we should prefer a non-reductionist philosophy of nature are internal to the historical development of the scientific image itself. We have good reasons for preferring enactivism over cognitivism as a research program for the cognitive sciences, but compatibility with the manifest image is not one of those reasons.
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Walking is an activity that always unfolds within a certain landscape. Tim Ingold has used the notion of “taskscape” to denote pragmatic uses of terrain. Whilst walking, we come to intersect with a variety of taskscapes. As Julia Tanney has highlighted, formal language can only get us so far when thinking about spontaneous, non-theoretical and non-representational activities. Borrowing Gilbert Ryle’s distinction between “knowing that” and knowing how”, I argue for a concept of walking that does not privilege intentions. When somebody walks, they melt into a taskscape not entirely of their own design. Mind is inherently ecological. It is enacted within a certain ecology, and is actually inseparable from its environment. Mind is the sum of intelligent enactments. According to the position I seek to advance in this article, walking may be approached in an object-oriented manner. Each form of behavior composes an enactment that meshes with a certain ecology, what W. Teed Rockwell has called a “behavioral field.” Mind is the inherently relational enactment of a set of behavioral dispositions which are always already enmeshed within a field. When these dispositions enter what, following Markus Gabriel, may be called “fields of sense”, mind and walking become independent objects in their own right.
Thesis
During daily activities, a walker interacts with their environment, especially the other walkers, avoiding any collision with them. The nature of visual information that is used for a collision-free interaction requires further understanding. Specifically, the thesis aims to answer the following questions: what are the visual cues an individual perceives from the movement of others? What are the possible interpretation mechanisms and models used for determining future predicted crossing distances? To answer these questions, we designed experiments considering collision avoidance interactions between two walkers in virtual reality, allowing detailed control of the visual environment and the available visual information. The first study of the thesis focused on the nature of visual information provided from another walker, investigating whether these visual cues are extracted from local body parts or from global perception of the body motion. The second study investigated the influence of the walker's path (straight or curved), which the participant is interacting with for the accurate estimation of future risk of collision. Finally, the third study investigated whether eye contact influences the interaction. Here we have demonstrated the coupling of perceived action-opportunities affordances from the nature of visual information and evidenced that walkers can detect future predicted collisions when another walker follows a path with constant acceleration.
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The classical pragmatists were the first philosophers to actively engage the modern science of the brain. Peirce was »perhaps the first experimental psychologist in America« (Schulkin 2015, 18–19). James not only studied with German physiologists but was to become the author of the majestic Principles of Psychology. »Dewey knew personally several prominent leaders of the so-called American School of neurology«, writes Thomas C. Dalton, »that included the psychiatrist Adolf Meyer, naturalists and neurologists C.L. Herrick and his brother C.J. Herrick. [...] Dewey dedicated his brief years at Chicago to absorbing and synthesizing available knowledge about the nervous system and attempting to put this knowledge to work in a Laboratory School he headed« (2002, 11). Dewey was engaged throughout his long career with thermodynamics and the brain, criticizing the reflex arc concept of stimulus-response endorsed by philosophers from at least Descartes to James, and relating advances in inquiry to social and child development as well as to ethics. Dewey’s criticism of the reflex arc concept paved the way for our contemporary understanding of the central nervous system as an integrative circuit, not a network of stimulus-response mechanisms (s. Kap. 28). The early pragmatists were not only engaged in the empirical study of neurons but also invested in the significance of the growing knowledge of brains and nervous systems for larger philosophical questions. These questions run the gamut in philosophy, from the relationship between the mind and the brain to the nature of ethics and morality.
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Predictive processing and its apparent commitment to explaining cognition in terms of Bayesian inference over hierarchical generative models seems to flatly contradict the pragmatist conception of mind and experience. Against this, I argue that this appearance results from philosophical overlays at odd with the science itself, and that the two frameworks are in fact well-poised for mutually beneficial theoretical exchange. Specifically, I argue: first, that predictive processing illuminates pragmatism’s commitment to both the primacy of pragmatic coping in accounts of the mind and the profound organism-relativity of experience; second, that this pragmatic, “narcissistic” character of prediction error minimization undermines its ability to explain the distinctive normativity of intentionality; and third, that predictive processing therefore mandates an extra-neural account of intentional content of exactly the sort that pragmatism’s communitarian vision of human thought can provide.
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