Enaction (Psychology) Research Papers - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

I think we can say that, rather than just an interactive turn, we are witnessing an intersubjective turn in research on social understanding. A lot of current research is not only concerned with quantifying interaction dynamics, but also with understanding individuals and their experience, in interaction. The impetus for this double advancement comes in part from the fact that much of the criticism of cognitivist social cognition research is inspired by phenomenological insights.
This chapter provides evidence from different fields to support the idea of an intersubjective turn. Moreover, I argue that the framework of participatory sense-making can provide conceptual tools for the inter-disciplinary probing, discussion, analysis, and coherence needed to support the intersubjective turn in research on social understanding.

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- Social Cognition, Social Interaction, Intersubjectivity, Enaction (Psychology)

L'hypnose ericksonienne est une pratique thérapeutique induisant ce que l'on appelle classiquement une transe (i.e. forme de veille paradoxale ou « rêve éveillé », par opposition au sommeil paradoxal) à partir de laquelle, le patient guidé du thérapeute, peut orienter son attention vers un but spécifique ; l'objectif étant défini selon les besoins du patient, les visées de cette thérapeutique sont potentiellement infinies -- en tant qu'elles respectent, bien-entendu, sa nature profonde (i.e. ses convictions et sa sensibilité).
Élaborée dans les années vingt et développée sur plus d'un demi-siècle par le psychiatre américain Milton H. Erickson, elle porte la filiation d'un usage remontant à l'Égypte ancienne et qui, pourtant, millénaires après millénaires, siècles après siècles, ne bénéficie toujours pas de l'éclairage scientifique nécessaire à sa normalisation ; c'est un fait, l'hypnose résiste au principe de sa naturalisation (i.e. de son appropriation par les sciences de la Nature).
Face à ce constat, on peut continuer d'alimenter les oppositions, s'enfermant dans les digressions infinies du débat : hypnose, état psychique quelconque (i.e. minimise le rôle de la relation et donc du thérapeute, voire de la démarche) vs dramatisation spectaculaire de la suggestion (i.e. la relation est centrale mais elle fait du patient, un faible d'esprit, et du thérapeute, un manipulateur) ; ou, sur un mode plus palo-altien, lui opposer une troisième perspective consistant à « sortir du cadre » trop étroit auquel on aura tenté de la soumettre jusque-là, tout en la fondant sur des principes moins déterministes mais non-moins rigoureux. L'objet de cet article est de soumettre une articulation possible de la pratique de l'hypnose thérapeutique avec une appréhension complexe des critères de scientificité.

- by Olivier Penelaud
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- Cognitive Psychology, Cognitive Science, Epistemology, Quantum Information

La caractérisation de la valeur fonctionnelle de la résistance dans l’interaction haptique exige la prise en vue de la manière dont l’opération d’auxiliarisation qui confère à cette résistance le statut de support ou d’articulation externe se réalise dans la concrétude de l’activité humaine. Partant du principe que le terrain d’observation offert par certains dispositifs haptiques peut être particulièrement opportun pour cela, nous avons réalisé une étude expérimentale visant à mettre à jour, sur le cas d’une tâche de suivi de contour avec un bras à retour d’effort augmenté d’une matrice de stimulateurs tactiles, la fonction de la résistance des structures explorées dans le contrôle de l’activité. Après avoir présenté différents travaux actuellement réalisés dans le domaine des IHM haptiques, à l’intersection de la psychologie cognitive et de l’ergonomie des interfaces, nous présentons et discutons les résultats de cette étude.

- by Gunnar Declerck
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- Experimental Psychology, Wireless Communications, Haptics, Haptic Perception
- by Hanne De Jaegher and +2
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- Social Cognition, Social Interaction, Enaction (Psychology), Enaction

Samenvatting: Voor systeemtherapeuten is het werken met mensen-in-interacties dagelijkse kost, maar in de cognitie- en geesteswetenschappen is het een relatief nieuw idee. Daar wordt er meestal van uitgegaan dat cognitie, intelligentie en gedrag individuele aangelegenheden zijn, bovendien terug te brengen tot hersenfuncties. Deze focus heeft ervoor gezorgd dat het moeilijk wetenschappelijk te onderbouwen is hoe en waarom psychotherapie werkt. Net om op deze vragen te antwoorden, helpt het om sociale interacties te kunnen onderzoeken. Hier introduceer ik een filosofisch-wetenschappelijke benadering die bestudeert hoe mensen deelnemen aan sociale interacties, en hoe ze elkaar en de wereld daarin en daardoor samen begrijpen. In deze theorie, genaamd participatory sense-making – vertaald 'deelnemend zin-geven,' spelen lichaam, context, en beleving een centrale rol, alsook het feit dat zowel mensen als sociale interacties voortdurend aan zelf-behoud doen. Aan de hand van voorbeelden leg ik de theorie en haar relevantie voor de systeemtherapie uit. — In de introductie tot het Handboek Systeemtherapie schrijven de redacteurs dat " theorie kan gezien worden als het conceptueel instrumentarium van een systeemtherapeut " (Savenije et al. 2014, p. 17). In dit artikel stel ik een nieuwe theorie binnen de cognitiewetenschappen en de filosofie van de geest voor die de systeemtherapeutische theorie en praktijk kan ondersteunen. Ik belicht hieruit een aantal elementen die hopelijk systeemtherapeuten kunnen inspireren.

This interdisciplinary work draws on phenomenology, Indian philosophy, Tibetan Buddhism, cognitive neurosciences and a variety of personal and literary examples of conscious phenomena. Thompson proposes a view of consciousness and self as dynamic embodied processes, co-dependent with the world. According to this view, dreaming is a process of spontaneous imagination and not a delusional hallucination. This work aims at laying the ground for systematic neurophenomenological investigation of first-person experience.

- by Elizaveta Solomonova
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- Neuroscience, Embodiment, Consciousness, Enaction (Psychology)

This book is addressed to all those in the field of education or related fields, including teachers, teacher-trainers, consultants, and researchers, who are interested in exploring the question, What does it mean to know, to learn and to teach? Contrary to popular conceptions, an enactive perspective assumes that knowing and learning are not disembodied operations that take place solely in a person's head. Rather, they are a function of the whole person who is firmly situated in the world and who acts in the world to transform it, just as she is transformed by it. The dynamic and transformational nature of knowing and learning are reflected in the relationship between the person and her world, a relationship that evolves through acting in and with the world rather than abstracting oneself from it. Knowing develops as a function of the person's availability, that is, her full involvement and presence in the here- and-now. The aim of education is thus to foster the development of this relationship in a never-ending quest for deep interiority with the world. Drawing on their experiences as teachers, curriculum developers, students, Zen practitioners, karateka, bicyclists, hobby mathematicians, and gardeners, the authors provide many concrete examples of what it means to think about knowing and learning in terms of enaction and how teachers and curriculum developers who take enactivism seriously might go about designing and implementing lessons.

- by Domenico Masciotra, PhD and +1
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- Distributed Cognition, Situated Cognition, Situated Learning, Situated learning (Learning And Teaching)

Esitare, incespicare sulle proprie parole, riprenderle e ricominciare. Dire una parola per un'altra, interrompersi e tacere, oppure correg-gersi, riavviare il discorso e bloccarsi all'intoppo successivo. Parlare è faticoso: è colmare lacune che affiorano nell'esercizio quotidiano del gesto verbale. Eppure si parla, anche fluentemente. E parlare è sentir-si parlare: magari «si può non farci attenzione, ma è certo che si ode il suono delle proprie parole». Così affermava Lacan, e con Lacan tutti gli autori che si sono misurati con quest'aspetto dell'attività di linguaggio. Diversi per tradizione e sensibilità, studiosi di enuncia-zione, psicoanalisti e scienziati cognitivi hanno identificato la presen-za di una «funzione muta del linguaggio» nella figura stessa del par-lante. Da taluni chiamata «auto-ricezione», da altri «auto-ascolto» o «intesa silenziosa», questa funzione è sincronicamente operante nel gesto verbale, è il rimedio provvisorio che il parlare procaccia alle proprie lacune: se vi è un margine di ripresa in ciò che fa buco nel discorso, lo si deve alla funzione muta del linguaggio.

- by Francesco La Mantia
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- Jacques Lacan, Enaction (Psychology), Enactivism, Ferdinand de Saussure

Resumo O presente artigo se propõe a ser uma introdução ao estudo dos processos cognitivos segundo uma perspectiva incorporada da cognição. Para isso, abordamos a teoria enativa, do biólogo chileno Francisco Varela, a partir de cinco conceitos principais: autonomia, adaptatividade, incorporação, emergência e experiência. Destacamos a forma como esses conceitos se alinham de modo a contrapor proposições hegemônicas no campo dos estudos cognitivos, tais como a metáfora do funcionamento da mente como um processamento computacional e a redução dos processos cognitivos à atividade neuronal. Abstract The following article presents an introdutory study of cognitive processes from an incorporated cognition perspective. The Enactive Theory, from the Chilean biologist Francisco Varela, is then approached in five of its main concepts: autonomy, adaptivity, incorporation, emergency and experience. We bring forth the way these concepts are aligned in countering hegemonic propositions in the cognitive studies field, such as the metaphor of mind functioning as a computational process and the reduction of cognitive processes to neural activity.

- by Carlos Baum and +1
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- Enaction (Psychology), Enactivism, Enação

Si les mutations économiques et sociétales impactent effectivement tous les âges de la vie, elles n'en réinterrogent pas moins la pertinence des activités professionnelles jusqu'alors bien établies pour tenter de cerner une relation formation-orientation/emploi en délitement. Le métier de conseiller en orientation, le « métier » de bénéficiaire de Plan Social d'Entreprise se trouvent l'un comme l'autre face à l'imprédictibilité. La pérennité de compétences professionnelles stabilisées sur des gammes de métiers pourtant clairement décrits n'offre plus les garanties suffisantes de retour à l'emploi. Comme chaque fois, face à l'inattendu, les organisations sociales, les acteurs sociaux ont reconfiguré stratégiquement leur modèle dans une perspective du moindre mal. Aujourd'hui, la demande sociale, contrainte par la raréfaction massive de l'emploi salarié d'une part, et l'apparition quasi spontanée de gammes d'emplois inédits, requérant des compétences multiples pour faire face à l'accélération des mutations tous azimuts de l'activité économique, rencontre une offre qui donne le vertige à ceux qui souhaitent une reconversion professionnelle et composée de peu de repères pour les nouveaux entrants sur le marché de travail. Ainsi la question de l'orientation peut se traduire en termes topographiques : quelles cartes pour quels territoires ? Et avec quels points cardinaux, quelle boussole ? Les instruments, leur étalonnage, les repères traditionnels, mesurables et objectivés suffisent-ils ? Dans quelle mesure les sujets qualifiés de « demandeurs d'emploi » ne se leurrent-ils pas en nourrissant leurs espoirs d'orientation scolaire, d'insertion sociale, d'évolution professionnelles à l'aune de méthodes d'objectivation, qui bien que cohérentes et valides, se voient rattrapées par leur obsolescence ? Le texte suivant se compose d'une partition en deux mouvements, le premier concerne l'émergence d'un sujet-intuitif capable de réguler ses conduites en congruence avec les messages de son corps pour mieux l'orienter selon son écologie propre, le deuxième consécutif 1 LaLex Laboratoire de recherche en métropole lilloise, pour promouvoir et prolonger les travaux du GREX, Groupe de

- by Supiot Olivier
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- Embodied Cognition, Phenomenology, Alexander Technique, Conscience
- by Richard Menary
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- Cognitive Science, Neuropsychology, Evolutionary Psychology, Human Evolution

OUVERTURE DES PROCHAINES INSCRIPTIONS : MARS 2023
Une constellation de recherches récentes en neurosciences et en psychologie montre le rôle crucial de l’engagement du corps en mouvement et des émotions dans les apprentissages et renouvelle le questionnement mutuel entre arts et sciences.
Le parcours art’enact est le premier diplôme professionnel en France à proposer une formation transdisciplinaire s’adressant aux artistes, médiateurs, éducateurs et enseignants de toutes disciplines.
Il s’appuie sur des ateliers de création artistique pour développer une pédagogie énactive reliant les connaissances abstraites à l’action et à la perception sensible du monde. L’énaction est une philosophie relationnelle (Varela) qui offre un cadre pédagogique à l’urgence écologique à laquelle l’humanité est confrontée et qui permet de se préparer aux transformations du 21e siècle dans l’esprit de l’agenda 2030 de l’UNESCO. Une approche énactive en éducation et en formation s’appuie sur les fondements biologiques de la connaissance, l’interdépendance de l’homme et de son environnement et le
respect des écosystèmes. Elle reconnaît les besoins essentiels à l’émergence du désir d’apprendre: la reconnaissance, l’amitié, la solidarité, la curiosité et la poésie du monde. Ce parcours vise à développer des compétences professionnelles favorisant la collaboration, la confiance, l’empathie et la créativité.

- by Joelle Aden
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- Performing Arts, Teacher Education, Science Education, Educational Research

How accurate is the picture of the human mind that has emerged from studies in neuroscience, psychology, and cognitive science? Anybody with an interest in how minds work - how we learn about the world and how we remember people and events - may feel dissatisfied with the answers contemporary science has to offer.
Sensorimotor Life draws on current theoretical developments in the enactive approach to life and mind. It examines and expands the premises of the sciences of the human mind, while developing an alternative picture closer to people's daily experiences. Enactive ideas are applied and extended, providing a theoretically rich, naturalistic account of meaning and agency. The book includes a dynamical systems description of different types of sensorimotor regularities or sensorimotor contingencies; a dynamical interpretation of Piaget's theory of equilibration to ground the concept of sensorimotor mastery; and a theory of agency as organized networks of sensorimotor schemes, as well as its implications for embodied subjectivity.
Written for students and researchers of cognitive science, the authors offer a fuller view of the mind, a view better attuned to the experiences of people who live, work, love, struggle, and age, thrown into a world of meaningful relations they help create. Additionally, the book is of interest to neuroscientists, psychiatrists, and philosophers of science.

- by Ezequiel Di Paolo and +1
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- Cognitive Science, Philosophy of Agency, Cognition, Embodied Cognition

As yet, there is no enactive account of social cognition. This paper extends the enactive concept of sense-making into the social domain. It takes as its departure point the process of interaction between individuals in a social encounter. It is a well-established finding that individuals can and generally do coordinate their movements and utterances in such situations. We argue that the interaction process can take on a form of autonomy. This allows us to reframe the problem of social cognition as that of how meaning is generated and transformed in the interplay between the unfolding interaction process and the individuals engaged in it. The notion of sense-making in this realm becomes participatory sense-making. The onus of social understanding thus moves away from strictly the individual only.

- by Hanne De Jaegher and +1
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- Embodied Cognition, Social Cognition, Social Interaction, Embodiment
- by Hanne De Jaegher
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- Philosophy of Mind, Social Cognition, Theory of Mind, Phenomenology
- by Domenico Masciotra, PhD
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- Reflective Practice, Metacognition, Enaction (Psychology), Competence

La compétence est définie comme un pouvoir adaptatif développé par la personne en situation durant toute son existence. Les liens entre compétence et situation ne sont pas suffisamment explicités dans la littérature. La notion de compétence est donc revisitée dans le cadre de diverses perspectives situées : action située, cognition située, cognition distribuée, intelligence distribuée, intelligence collective et énaction. Chacune de ces perspectives permet de reconnaître des caractéristiques de la compétence : elle peut être individuelle ou collective; elle est aussi distribuée, en ce sens qu’elle n’est pas exclusivement cognitive mais relève aussi des éléments de la situation; elle est enfin énactée.

Mind sciences have undergone a decidedly "embodied" or "enactive" turn in the past two decades. In its original conception, put forward by Varela et al., this radical shift of perspective was depicted as a continuation of a research program founded by Merleau-Ponty, and was said to encompass two levels. On a theoretical level it consisted of a move away from the cerebrocentric, information-processing, and representational models of mind and cognition towards the corporeal, enactive, and world-involving models. On a (meta)epistemological and (meta)methodological level it argued for the need to expand the methodological array of mind sciences to include the disciplined study of lived experience, and it laid the foundations for a fruitful exchange between scientific and phenomenological investigations. However, the progressive popularization of the enactive-embodied narrative has made us witness the narrowing of its far-reaching scope, whereby changes on the theoretical level are being extricated from their broader philosophical framework and wedded to more traditional epistemologies and methodologies. In this paper I try to shed some critical light on some of these developments, focusing particularly on two neglected themes of Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology that are highly relevant for contemporary enactive/embodied approaches: the unsurpasability of lived experience (cf. 'behaviorist fork') and the need to radically rethink the nature and dynamics of our reflective inquiries (cf. 'radical reflection').

- by Sebastjan Vörös
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- Embodied Cognition, Embodiment, Phenomenology, Maurice Merleau-Ponty

Consciousness is a virtual-reality display, created by an internal executive agent, which human beings experience as the self. This display serves to monitor and manage the state of the organism in relation to the world. Conscious experience serves a different function than unconscious processing. It is therefore not superfluous but has limited causal powers within the organism: the causality of agency, rather than the passive (efficient) causality of physics.

- by Dan Bruiger
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- Cognitive Psychology, Neuropsychology, Evolutionary Psychology, Epistemology

RESUMEN
El presente artículo se propone dar cuenta del elusivo fenómeno de la conciencia desde la original perspectiva de la neurofenomenología de Francisco Varela, quien a partir de nociones tales como neuroplasticidad, enacción y emergencia, explica, cómo ocurren los procesos cerebrales que fundan la conciencia y la “unidad” de la vivencia. Describiendo como la conciencia aparece en el vivir encarnado: en la regulación con el cuerpo entero; en sus relaciones sensorio-motoras con el mundo y en una red ínter-subjetiva de acciones y de lenguaje.
Dr. Adolfo Vásquez Rocca
Keywords: Neurociencias, ciencias cognitivas, ética, yo, cuerpo, neuroplasticidad, enacción, acciones corporeizadas, biología cultural, saber-cómo.
Neuroscience, cognitive science, ethics, self, body, neuroplasticity, enaction, actions embodied experiences, cultural biology, know-how.
-Francisco Varela: neurophenomenology, enactive approach to cognition, minds without me and the elusive phenomenon of consciousness.
DR. ADOLFO VÁSQUEZ ROCCA

- by Adolfo Vasquez Rocca
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- Critical Theory, Neuroscience, Sociology, Cultural Studies

This is a survey of some of the dominant ideas about 'the body' in the phenomenological literature. To appear in : D. De Santis, B. Hopkins, and C. Majolino (Eds.): Routledge Handbook of Phenomenology and Phenomenological Philosophy... more

- by Maxime Doyon and +1
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- Philosophy of Mind, Feminist Theory, Feminist Philosophy, Embodied Cognition

For diverse reasons, the problem of phenomenal consciousness is persistently challenging. Mental terms are characteristically ambiguous, researchers have philosophical biases, secondary qualities are excluded from objective description, and philosophers love to argue. Adhering to a regime of efficient causes and third-person descriptions, science as it has been defined has no place for subjectivity or teleology. A solution to the " hard problem " of consciousness will require a radical approach: to take the point of view of the cognitive system itself. To facilitate this approach, a concept of agency is introduced along with a different understanding of intentionality. Following this approach reveals that the autopoietic cognitive system constructs phenomenality through acts of fiat, which underlie perceptual completion effects and " filling in " —and, by implication, phenomenology in general. It creates phenomenality much as we create meaning in language, through the use of symbols that it assigns meaning in the context of an embodied evolutionary history that is the source of valuation upon which meaning depends. Phenomenality is a virtual representation to itself by an executive agent (the conscious self) tasked with monitoring the state of the organism and its environment, planning future action, and coordinating various sub-agencies. Consciousness is not epiphenomenal, but serves a function for higher organisms that is distinct from that of unconscious processing. While a strictly scientific solution to the hard problem is not possible for a science that excludes the subjectivity it seeks to explain, there is hope to at least psychologically bridge the explanatory gulf between mind and matter, and perhaps hope for a broader definition of science. CONTENTS

- by Dan Bruiger
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- Evolutionary Psychology, Cognition, Embodied Cognition, Embodiment

""In this article, I sketch an enactive account of autism. For the enactive approach to cognition, embodiment, experience, and social interaction are fundamental to understanding mind and subjectivity. Enaction defines cognition as sense-making: the way cognitive agents meaningfully connect with their world, based on their needs and goals as self-organizing, self-maintaining, embodied agents. In the social realm, the interactive coordination of embodied sense-making activities with others lets us participate in each other's sense-making (social understanding = participatory sense-making). The enactive approach provides new concepts to overcome the problems of traditional functionalist accounts of autism, which can only give a piecemeal and disintegrated view because they consider cognition, communication, and perception separately, do not take embodied into account, and are methodologically individualistic. Applying the concepts of enaction to autism, I show:
(1) How embodiment and sense-making connect, i.e., how autistic particularities of moving, perceiving, and emoting relate to how people with autism make sense of their world. For instance, restricted interests or preference for detail will have certain sensorimotor correlates, as well as specific meaning for autistic people.
(2) That reduced flexibility in interactional coordination correlates with difficulties in participatory sense-making. At the same time, seemingly irrelevant “autistic behaviors” can be quite attuned to the interactive context. I illustrate this complexity in the case of echolalia.
An enactive account of autism starts from the embodiment, experience, and social interactions of autistic people. Enaction brings together the sensorimotor, cognitive, social, experiential, and affective aspects of autism in a coherent framework based on a complex non-linear multi-causality. This foundation allows to build new bridges between autistic people and their often non-autistic context, and to improve quality of life prospects."""

- by Hanne De Jaegher
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- Philosophy of Mind, Autism, Dance/Movement Therapy, Autism Spectrum Disorders

The problem of intrinsic teleology is that of generating a scientific explanation of purposive (goal-directed) behavior in nature. It is far from clear, however, how purposive behavior could possibly arise in a purely causal universe. The popular approach within the biological and cognitive sciences is reductive in that it explains purposiveness in non-purposive terms. This thesis finds the reductive approach unsatisfying and offers a philosophical argument for a non-reductive alternative, delivered across six chapters. Chapter I introduces the problem of teleology and argues that the way in which the problem ought to be addressed is philosophically. Chapter II offers additional insight into the nature of the problem by situating it in a discussion of its historical context: it traces the beginnings of the reduction of teleology in the writings of René Descartes and locates the problem of teleology in its modern framing in the philosophy of Immanuel Kant. Chapter III explicates and critiques neo-Darwinism and cognitivism—two modern inheritors of Kantian philosophy—which act to jointly ground the reductive approach to teleology. Upon clearing the way for a non-reductive alternative, Chapter IV introduces the “enactive approach” to cognitive science and argues that it is able to leverage a non-reductive position with respect to teleology. Accordingly, Chapter V constitutes the theory-building element of this thesis and shows how exactly enactivism can act to leverage such a non-reductive position. Finally, Chapter VI summarizes the findings of this thesis and discusses some general applications for future research in cognitive science and psychopathology.

- by Garri Hovhannisyan
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- Psychology, Cognitive Science, Philosophy, Philosophy of Mind

> Context • The notion of " enaction, " as originally expounded by Varela and his colleagues, was introduced into cogni-tive science as part of a broad philosophical framework combining science, phenomenology, and Buddhist philosophy. Its intention was to help the researchers in the field avoid falling prey to various dichotomies (mind/body, self/ world, self/other) bedeviling modern philosophy and science, and serve as a " conceptual evocation " of " non-duality " or " groundlessness " : an ongoing and irreducible circulation between the flux of lived experience (being) and the search of reason for conceptual invariants (knowing).
> Problem • It seems that, within the burgeoning field of " enactivism, " these far-reaching dimensions of the original proposal are often either dismissed or simply ignored. For this reason, the article tries to answer the following questions: Does the move away from the original exposition of enaction matter? What, if anything, has been lost along the way? What are the implications of the elements that have been discarded?
> Method • By drawing on some of the less well-known works of Varela, we spell out and elucidate some of the more radical aspects of the notion of enaction and the broader philosophical framework into which it was originally embedded.
> Results • We argue that this broader philosophical framework is of utmost importance, as it shows that enaction is only one part of the multi-layered " change in the context " that Varela felt was needed to successfully instantiate a move towards the non-dual. This " change of context " involves not only a change in the way we think about dualities, but also a change in the way we experience them. The role of new scientific metaphors, such as enac-tion (but also autopoiesis, embodiment, etc.), is to function as conceptual evocations of this back-and-forth exchange between knowing and being. However, if this overall framework is discarded, as is often the case in contemporary accounts, enaction loses its radical impetus and becomes mellowed down to yet another version of naturalized epis-temology.
> Implications • Taking the notion of enaction seriously implies a radical shift in our conceptions of science and knowledge, as it encompasses a theoretical and existential move away from a detached observer to embedded and engaged cognizer. Thus, our manner of thinking can no longer be considered in isolation from our manner of being , which indicates a deep interconnection between epistemology and ethics, and may entail profound changes in the definition of the aims, methods, and values of the research community: self-transformation as a consequence of, and condition for, understanding.
> Constructivist content • The target article advocates a critical approach to realist presuppositions in contemporary science and philosophy, and emphasizes a deep interrelation between being and knowing, between ethics and epistemology.

- by Sebastjan Vörös and +1
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- Buddhism, Phenomenology, Dialectic, Wisdom Traditions

Underlying the recent focus on embodied and interactive aspects of social understanding are several intuitions about what roles the body, interaction processes, and interpersonal experience play. In this paper, we introduce a systematic, hands-on method for investigating the experience of interacting and its role in intersubjectivity. Special about this method is that it starts from the idea that researchers of social understanding are themselves one of the best tools for their own investigations. The method provides ways for researchers to calibrate and to trust themselves as sophisticated instruments to help generate novel insights into human interactive experience. We present the basics of the method, and two empirical studies. The first is a video-study on autism, which shows greater refinement in the way people with autism embody their social interactions than previously thought. The second is a study of thinking in live interactions, which provides insight into the common feeling that too much thinking can hamper interaction, and into how this kind of interactional awkwardness might be unblocked.

- by Hanne De Jaegher and +1
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- Research Methodology, Autism, Qualitative methodology, Autism Spectrum Disorders

What makes possible the co-creation of meaningful action? In this paper, we go in search of an answer to this question by combining insights from interactional sociology and enaction. Both research schools investigate social interactions as such, and conceptualize their organization in terms of autonomy. We ask what it could mean for an interaction to be autonomous, and discuss the structures and processes that contribute to and are maintained in the so-called interaction order. We also discuss the role played by individual vulnerability as well as the vulnerability of social interaction processes in the co-creation of meaningful action. Finally, we outline some implications of this interdisciplinary fraternization for the empirical study of social understanding, in particular in social neuroscience and psychology, pointing out the need for studies based on dynamic systems approaches on origins and references of coordination, and experimental designs to help understand human co-pres...

- by Hanne De Jaegher
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- Sociology, Epistemology, Conversation Analysis, Social Interaction

• Context • Distributed language and interactivity are central members of a set of concepts that are rapidly developing into rigorous, exciting additions to 4E cognitive science. Because they share certain assumptions and methodological commitments with enactivism, the two have sometimes been confused; additionally, while enactivism is a well-developed paradigm, interactivity has relied more on methodological development and on a set of focal examples. • Problem • The goal of this article is to clarify the core conceptual commitments of both interactivity-based and enactive approaches to cognitive science by contrasting the two and highlighting their differences in assumptions, focus, and explanatory strategies. • Method • We begin with the shared commitments of interactivity and enactivism – e.g., antirepresentationalism, naturalism, interdisciplinarity, the importance of biology, etc. We then give an overview of several important varieties of enactivism, including sensorimotor and anti-representationalist enactivism, and then walk through the history of the “core” varieties, taking care to contrast Maturana’s approach with that of Varela and the current researchers following in Varela’s footsteps. We then describe the differences between this latter group and interactivity-based approaches to cognitive science. • Results • We argue that enactivism’s core concepts are explanatorily inadequate in two ways. First, they mis-portray the organization of many living systems, which are not operationally closed. Second, they fail to realize that most epistemic activity (i.e., “sense-making”) depends on engagement with non-local resources. Both problems can be dealt with by adopting an interactivity-based perspective, in which agency and cognition are fundamentally distributed and involve integration of non-local resources into the local coupling of organism and environment. • Implications • The article’s primary goal is theoretical clarification and exposition; its primary implication is that enactive concepts need to be modified or extended in some way in order to explain fully many aspects of cognition and directed biological activity. Or, read another way, the article’s primary implication is that interactivity already provides a rich set of concepts for doing just that, which, while closely allied with enactivism in several ways, are not enactivist concepts. • Constructivist content • The article consists entirely of a comparison between two constructivist fields of theory.

- by Matthew Isaac Harvey and +2
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- Cognitive Science, Philosophy of Mind, Philosophy Of Language, Distributed Cognition

Context • In the past three decades, the work of Varela has had an enormous impact on current developments in contemporary science.
Problem • Varela's thought was extremely complex and multifaceted, and while some aspects – notably his contributions to the autopoietic theory of living and enactivist approach to cognition – have gained widespread acclaim, others have been ignored or watered down.
Method • We identify three dimensions of Varela's thought: (a) anti-realism of the " middle way " ; (b) anti-foundationalism of the circular onto-epistemology; and (c) ethical/social implications of the circularity. The discussion of these dimensions is followed by a concise overview of the individual target articles in this issue and the topics they cover. Finally, we discuss in what ways the articles extend and relate to Varela's work. We do this by means of a concrete example: the relation between " enac-tion " and " enactivism. "
Results • We show that the ignoring-cum-watering-down process of Varela's contributions to science is at least partly linked to these three dimensions of Varela's thought. On the basis of our examination, we also find that the more narrow research topics are always interrelated with broader philosophical reflection. Researching into ignored and watered-down aspects of Varela's work enables us to not only gain fresh insights into Varela's overall philosophy and rekindle interest in the topics and themes that have been brushed aside, but also cast a fresh light on those that are currently flourishing.
Implications • Reviving interest in Varela's work in toto could lead to fruitful research and discussion in numerous scientific fields. To illustrate this idea, we delineate, tentatively, three domains – theoretical, empirical, and existential – where Varela's contribution to philosophy and science could instigate a productive exchange of views.
Constructivist content • All three dimensions of Varela's philosophy have strong affinities with the radical constructivist critique of realism and some of its epistemological and ethical implications.

- by Sebastjan Vörös
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- Embodied Cognition, Embodiment, Phenomenology, Embodied Mind and Cognition

In search of our highest capacities, cognitive scientists aim to explain things like mathematics, language, and planning (and while explaining them, they often imagine computers at work). But are these really our most sophisticated forms of knowing? In this paper, I point to a different pinnacle of cognition. Our most sophisticated human knowing, I think, lies in how we engage with each other, in our relating. Cognitive science and philosophy of mind have largely ignored the ways of knowing at play here. At the same time, the emphasis on discrete, rational knowing to the detriment of engaged, human knowing pervades societal practices and institutions, often with harmful effects on people and their relations. There are many reasons why we need a new, engaged-or even engaging-epistemology of human knowing. The enactive theory of participatory sense-making takes steps towards this, but it needs deepening. Kym Maclaren's (2002) idea of letting be invites such a deepening. Characterizing knowing as a relationship of letting be provides a nuanced way to deal with the tensions between the knower's being and the being of the known, as they meet in the process of knowing-and-being-known. This meeting of knower and known is not easy to understand. However, there is a mode of relating in which we know it well, and that is: in loving relationships. I propose to look at human knowing through the lens of loving. We then see that both knowing and loving are existential, dialectic ways in which concrete and particular beings engage with each other.

- by Hanne De Jaegher
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- Cognitive Science, Epistemology, Dementia, Cognition

New approaches in the philosophy of mind defend the idea that basic forms of cognition and human intersubjectivity are deeply and inextricably embodied and embedded. In its more extreme forms this approach to mind and cognition opposes the idea that cognition is always or primarily a matter of forming mental representations of that environment (Gallagher & Hutto, 2008; Hutto & Myin, 2013). Taking these ideas seriously in the context of therapy directs us to the way therapy can be enhanced by modifying environmental and social affordances and the way clients interact with them as opposed to how they represent them. These conceptual and methodological paradigms encourage a rethinking of existing applications, inspired by reformulating the theoretical foundation that underpins practice in body psychotherapy (BPT; e.g. Geuter, in press). Given the emerging evidence base for BPT in the treatment of severe mental health problems (e.g. Röhricht, 2009) it is timely to question whether its intervention strategies can be better understood as a kind of applied embodied cognition. In this paper we only explore BPT practice from a framework of its more radical variants. We explore new ways that effective therapeutic embodied engagements might be realised, while casting fresh light on how therapists can successfully venture into the everyday life of their patients and their interactions with significant others. This includes discussing a revised version of encounter groups and “marathon” workshops as well as experimental solutions such as “Virtual Reality” clinics.

The enactive approach to cognition is developed in the context of music and music education. I discuss how this embodied point of view affords a relational and bio-cultural perspective on music that decentres the Western focus on language, symbol and representation as the foundations of cognition and meaning. I then explore how this 'life-based' approach to cognition and meaning-making offers a welcome alternative to standard Western academic approaches to music education. More specifically, I consider how the enactive perspective may aid in developing deeper ecological understandings of the transformative, extended and interpenetrative nature of the embodied musical mind; and thus help (re)connect students and teachers to the lived experience of their own learning and teaching. Following this, I examine related concepts associated with Buddhist psychology in order to develop possibilities for a contemplative music pedagogy. To conclude, I consider how an enactive-contemplative perspective may help students and teachers awaken to the possibilities of music education as ontological education. That is, through a deeper understanding of ‘music as a manifestation of life’ rediscover their primordial nature as autopoietic and world-making creatures and thus engage more deeply with musicality as a means of forming richer and more compassionate relationships with their peers, their communities and the ‘natural’ and cultural worlds they inhabit.

- by Dylan van der Schyff
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- Music, Music Education, Musicology, Education

Enactive approaches foreground the role of interpersonal interaction in explanations of social understanding. This motivates, in combination with a recent interest in neuroscientific studies involving actual interactions, the question of how interactive processes relate to neural mechanisms involved in social understanding. We introduce the Interactive Brain Hypothesis (IBH) in order to help map the spectrum of possible relations between social interaction and neural processes. The hypothesis states that interactive experience and skills play enabling roles in both the development and current function of social brain mechanisms, even in cases where social understanding happens in the absence of immediate interaction. We examine the plausibility of this hypothesis against developmental and neurobiological evidence and contrast it with the widespread assumption that mindreading is crucial to all social cognition. We describe the elements of social interaction that bear most directly on this hypothesis and discuss the empirical possibilities open to social neuroscience. We propose that the link between coordination dynamics and social understanding can be best grasped by studying transitions between states of coordination. These transitions form part of the self-organization of interaction processes that characterize the dynamics of social engagement. The patterns and synergies of this self-organization help explain how individuals understand each other. Various possibilities for role-taking emerge during interaction, determining a spectrum of participation. This view contrasts sharply with the observational stance that has guided research in social neuroscience until recently. We also introduce the concept of readiness to interact to describe the practices and dispositions that are summoned in situations of social significance (even if not interactive). This latter idea links interactive factors to more classical observational scenarios.

- by Hanne De Jaegher and +1
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- Social Cognition, Social Interaction, Social Neuroscience, Intersubjectivity

The topic of this Oxford handbook is “4E cognition”: cognition as embodied, embedded, enactive, and extended. However, one important “E” is missing: an E for ecological. We sketch an ecological-enactive approach to cognition that presents a framework for bringing together the embodied/enactive program with the ecological program originally developed by James Gibson, in which affordances are central. We call this framework the skilled intentionality framework. The skilled intentionality framework is a philosophical approach to understanding the situated and affective embodied mind. It is a new conceptual framework for the field of 4E cognitive science that focuses on skilled action and builds upon an enriched notion of affordances. We define skilled intentionality as the selective engagement with multiple affordances simultaneously in a concrete situation. The skilled intentionality framework clarifies how complementary insights on affordance responsiveness from philosophy/phenomenology, ecological psychology, emotion psychology, and neurodynamics hang together in an intertwined way.

- by Erik Rietveld
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- Ecological Psychology, Enaction (Psychology), Affordances, Metastability

Storytelling has successfully been used in language teaching at all levels of proficiency. This paper commences with suggestions of the kinds of tales that can be employed in the classroom, story selection criteria, practical tips, techniques as well as other recommendations illustrated with concrete tried and tested examples, and the numerous advantages of such activities.
Subsequently we consider the dualistic Cartesian approach that has characterised much of even twentieth-century thought: in this ‘traditional’ view, going back to Descartes, cognition has been seen as manipulation of symbolic, mental representations, with the brain conceived of as an input-output processor running abstract, generalised computational programs which enable us to process incoming data into a perception and interpretation of the outside world. Language, too, has for a long time been viewed as a system operating largely independently from the body (articulatory-perceptual organs notwithstanding).
A rich and diverse inventory of heterogeneous evidence against such a view is finally presented, addressing the issue of the link between cognition, language, body, and environment. The paper ends with implications for language instruction that enhances acquisition and retention thanks to storytelling which invites learner to actively use their body in the process, or at least observe the teacher doing so, thus activating their mirror neurons.

- by Michał B. Paradowski
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- Cognitive Science, Philosophy of Action, Gesture Studies, Gesture

In this research I have asked; what do we see when we see a virtual set - do we see pixels in a two dimensional picture, or three dimensional environments? As a starting point I assume that every virtual set deludes our senses, or in other words creates an illusion. In this sense the virtual set continues the tradition of production design illusion technologies, however it is not necessarily similar to those kinds of illusion as realized with traditional illusion techniques, such as trompe l’oeil painting. This assumption has been important in my research and has led to the question of how the virtual set differs from earlier illusions. Furthermore, it asks how the virtual set meets the challenges that every production design has to conquer in order to be able to create a world of cinema.
My research is conducted in the light of two virtual set productions: L’Enfant et les Sortilèges (Kroma Productions 2004) and Luonnotar (Kroma Productions 2011). Both of these productions have been shot entirely in a bluescreen studio with virtual sets. Practical examples from these productions are used as information, to show how the virtual set creates believable fictional environments. These productions have also been the test bed for artistic ‘making and matching’, as they form a research result part of their own, for instance when the experiences gained in the making of L’Enfant were utilized in the making of Luonnotar. As such, my research is an example of a case study, in which practice-based knowledge is utilized.
The theoretical framework of my thesis is formulated by cognitive and ecological psychology, especially the work of ecological psychologist James J. Gibson. His idea of ecological vision comprising an ambient optic array forms a basis of my research. This approach emphasizes the perception of surfaces in the environment. According to Gibson, we don’t live in space - instead we live in an environment consisting of substances and a medium. The medium is a gaseous atmosphere and surfaces separate the substances from this medium. In addition to Gibson’s work, a variety of film research is emphasized, especially film researcher Richard Allen’s categories of illusion, which are applied within the research.
The central outcome of the research is that the virtual set is identified as a moving illusion, i.e. something alive. This is in contrast to previous illusion technologies, which were only able to create an impression of the three dimensional environment as still images (trompe l’oeil). Thus, a novel concept of the animate optic array is established to depict the kind of mobile illusion actualized by the virtual set. ‘Animate’ stands in opposition to Gibson’s concept of ‘frozen’. An animate optic array emphasizes that the virtual set is a vision of a digital picture that is ‘non-frozen’ and thus subject to constant change. Animate optic array also recognizes the nature of the virtual set as being formed by synthetic, moving surfaces.
The virtual set also puts in place a whole new series of rules for the fictional universe. Within the research, I have pointed out that the experience of production design is analogical to the experience of the real world. An understanding of such design needs to be based on the perceptual and cognitive processes of everyday life. However, the digital universe doesn’t behave like our everyday world; instead, it promotes unusual experiences. For instance, we can fluently transit from microcosmos to macrocosmos within single shot - spaces becomes navigable. Another example of this new logic is liquid scenery and in the digital universe, scenery surfaces can undergo transformations in an unlimited way.
I have further proposed that production design can also be interpreted through Gibson’s concept of affordance. As an example; a chair can have an affordance in the real world, it can be perceived as ‘sit-on-able’. Likewise in the production design context; the character is positioned in relationship to his environment which in turn is designed to meet the requirements of the story and its events. So, the design provides the chair for character on which to ‘sit’ and based on the character’s active behavior needs, the scenic elements can also be perceived as meaningful.
The research has provided much needed material in a field where there has little prior research. The use of two of my own productions has provided enlightening examples, on which to solidly base the research. The research results echo the tendencies in current film industry of digital effects and shows that there is much room for further exploration in the area of production design research. Ecological theory might well provide a valuable means to approach the subject and particularly, Gibson’s theoretical approach to the environment provides a good base from which to examine the theory of production design.
Key terms: virtual set, digital effects, production design, ecological psychology, illusion.

This paper addresses the issue of “being together,” and more specifically the issue of “being together in time.” We provide with an integrative framework that is inspired by phenomenology, the enactive approach and dynamical systems theories. To do so, we first define embodiment as a living and lived phenomenon that emerges from agent- world coupling. We then show that embodiment is essentially dynamical and therefore we describe experiential, behavioral and brain dynamics. Both lived temporality and the temporality of the living appear to be complex, multiscale phenomena. Next we discuss embodied dynamics in the context of interpersonal interactions, and briefly review the empirical literature on between-persons temporal coordination. Overall, we propose that being together in time emerges from the relational dynamics of embodied interactions and their flexible co-regulation.

We agree with commenters that enactivism incorporates a broad variety of methodologies, metaphysical stances, concepts, and investigative approaches, and that this is a good thing. However, we remain concerned that autonomy and sense-making are problematic concepts for post-Varelian enactivism, and that they form the foundations of a conceptual framework that may hamper the development of effective explanations for cognitive activity, as well as the paradigmatic aspirations of this particular enactivist approach.

- by Matthew Isaac Harvey and +1
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- Cognitive Science, Philosophy of Mind, Philosophy Of Language, Distributed Cognition

In response to the claim that our sense of will is illusory, some philosophers have called for a better understanding of the phenomenology of agency. Although I am broadly sympathetic with the tenor of this response, I question whether the positive-theoretic blueprint it promotes truly heralds a tenable undertaking. Marshaling a Schopenhauerian insight, I examine the possibility that agency might not be amenable to phenomenological description. Framing this thesis in terms of Charles S. Peirce’s semiotic framework, I suggest a way to integrate the idea of streaming experiences with that of bodily strivings, which, owing to their primitive structure, can never be represented.

- by Marc Champagne
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- Semiotics, American History, Cognitive Science, Sport Psychology
- by Reza Aditia
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- Enaction (Psychology)
- by Marieke Rohde and +1
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- Philosophy of Mind, Play, Social Interaction, Embodiment

The issue of minimal cognition or basic mentality concerns the elementary ingredients of cognitive processes. Within the larger discourse of enactive and embodied cognition, a current of research has emerged endorsing the radical proposal that basic minds neither represent nor compute, and, moreover, that the cognitive processes peculiar to them tend heavily (if not constitutively) to be both world-involving and to incorporate extra-neural bodily factors. Such a stance removes certain obstacles to a naturalistic view of basic minds and, at the same time, is more consistent with the idea of there being a deep continuity between life and mind. Here I suggest that the phenomenological tradition has resources for bolstering the case for radicalism about basic minds. Although the classical phenomenology of Husserl and Heidegger may be amenable to some form of representationalism, I propose a phenomenological corrective by appealing to the work of Levinas and Merleau-Ponty. Levinas ardently criticizes the representationalism of early phenomenology and places in its stead a non-representational account of “sensibility.” Merleau-Ponty, in addition, with his theory of (non-semantic) sense gives us a way of understanding basic minds synergistically, in terms of the perceiving organism’s embodied interactions with its surroundings, in a way supportive of the radical idea that basic minds are self-organizing dynamical systems.

- by Matt Bower
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- Perception, Mental Representation, Embodied Cognition, Embodiment