Rethinking theories of change in the light of enactive cognitive science: Contributions to community-scale local sustainability initiatives

This collection of works is a contribution to the current debates on the mind-body-problem. It discusses how mind and body make contact in sense-making processes from the point of view of enactive cognitive science and 4E approaches to cognition. It also offers a critical view on non-representational approaches to cognition. The book covers sociology, philosophy of mind, aesthetics, computer science and HRI, media studies, literature and cognitive science. It offers cutting-edge research both for students and for junior and senior researchers in the fields mentioned above.

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Mark Making and Human Becoming

Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory ◽

10.1007/s10816-020-09504-4 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 28 (1) ◽

pp. 95-119 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Lambros Malafouris

Keyword(s):

Cognitive Science ◽

Human Intelligence ◽

Material Engagement Theory ◽

Human Becoming ◽

Engagement Theory ◽

Potential Index ◽

Enactive Cognitive Science ◽

Single Discipline ◽

Blombos Cave ◽

Opening Up

AbstractThis is a paper about mark making and human becoming. I will be asking what do marks do? How do they signify? What role do marks play in human becoming and the evolution of human intelligence? These questions cannot be pursued effectively from the perspective of any single discipline or ontology. Nonetheless, they are questions that archaeology has a great deal to contribute. They are also important questions, if not the least because evidence of early mark making constitutes the favoured archaeological mark of the ‘cognitive’ (in the ‘modern’ representational sense of the word). In this paper I want to argue that the archaeological predilection to see mark making as a potential index of symbolic representation often blind us to other, more basic dimensions of the cognitive life and agency of those marks as material signs. Drawing on enactive cognitive science and Material Engagement Theory I will show that early markings, such as the famous engravings from Blombos cave, are above all the products of kinesthetic dynamics of a non-representational sort that allow humans to engage and discover the semiotic affordances of mark making opening up new possibilities of enactive material signification. I will also indicate some common pitfalls in the way archaeology thinks about the ‘cognitive’ that needs overcome.

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Can role-playing be wrong? An analysis of the normativity of play from the perspective of enactive cognitive science

10.4324/9781003122289-5 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 51-70

Author(s):

Zuzanna Rucińska

Keyword(s):

Cognitive Science ◽

Role Playing ◽

Enactive Cognitive Science

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Enactive Ethics: Difference Becoming Participation

Topoi ◽

10.1007/s11245-021-09766-x ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Ezequiel A. Di Paolo ◽

Hanne De Jaegher

Keyword(s):

Cognitive Science ◽

Virtue Ethics ◽

Ethics Of Care ◽

Consciousness Raising ◽

Transcendental Arguments ◽

Know How ◽

Enactive Approach ◽

Norms And Values ◽

Enactive Cognitive Science ◽

Dichotomous Thinking

AbstractEnactive cognitive science combines questions in epistemology, ontology, and ethics by conceiving of bodies as open-ended and mutually transforming through activity. While enaction is not a theory of ethics, it can contribute to its foundations. We present a schematization of enactive ideas that underlie traditional distinctions between Being, Knowing, and Doing. Ethics in this scheme begins in the relation between knowing and becoming. Critical of dichotomous thinking, we approach the questions of alterity and ethical reality. Alterity is relevant to the enactive approach, but not in the radical sense of transcendental arguments. We propose difference, instead, as a more generative concept. Following Simondon, we see norms and values manifest in webs of past and future acts together with their potentialities for becoming. We propose a transindividual concept of moral attunement that includes ethical know-how and consciousness raising. Through generative difference and attunement to configurations of becoming, enaction underpins an ethics of participation linking virtue ethics and ethics of care.

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Embodied Cognition and Perception: Dewey, Science and Skepticism

Contemporary Pragmatism ◽

10.1163/18758185-01401007 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 14 (1) ◽

pp. 112-134 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Matthew Crippen

Keyword(s):

Cognitive Science ◽

Embodied Cognition ◽

Scientific Inquiry ◽

Human Beings ◽

Enactive Cognitive Science ◽

Theories Of Mind

This article examines how Modern theories of mind remain even in some materialistic and hence ontologically anti-dualistic views; and shows how Dewey, anticipating Merleau-Ponty and 4E cognitive scientists, repudiates these theories. Throughout I place Dewey’s thought in the context of scientific inquiry, both recent and historical and including the cognitive as well as traditional sciences; and I show how he incorporated sciences of his day into his thought, while also anticipating enactive cognitive science. While emphasizing Dewey’s continued relevance, my main goal is to show how his scientifically informed account of perception and cognition combats skepticism propagated by certain scientific visions, exacerbated by commonplace notions about mind, that jointly suggest that human beings lack genuine access to reality.

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