Keyword: enaction

Keynote speakers: Daniel Hutto (University of Wollogong), Inês Hipólito (HU Berlin), Antonio Bicchi (Italian Institute of Technology), S​teven M. LaValle (University if Oulu), Julian Kiverstein (University of Amsterdam). Organizers invite extended abstract of approximately 250-500 words (excluding references) on the following topics: For more information visit the event page.

Published open access on Topoi Abstract: The rise of mechanistic science in the seventeenth century helped give rise to a heated debate about whether teleology—the appearance of purposive activity in life and in mind—could be naturalized. At issue here were both what is meant by “teleology” as well as what is meant “nature”. I shall […]

Frontiers in Psychology is inviting Research articles, Systematic reviews, Methods, Perspectives, Case reports, Conceptual analyses, and Empirical studies to their forthcoming special issue. Abstract Submission Deadline 24 January 2023Manuscript Submission Deadline 23 May 2023 For more information, see the CFA.

Published in Biosystems Abstract: Enaction is an increasingly influential approach to cognition that grew out of Maturana and Varela’s earlier work on autopoiesis and the biology of cognition. As with any relatively new scientific discipline, the enactive approach would benefit greatly from a careful analysis of its theoretical foundations. Here we initiate such an analysis […]

Published open access in Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences Abstract: While developments of a shared intellectual tradition, the enactivist approach and the organizational account proffer importantly different accounts of organismic normativity. Where enactivists tend to follow Hans Jonas, Andres Weber, and Francisco Varela in grounding intrinsic affordance norms in existential concern, organizational theorists such as […]

Published in Frontiers in Psychology Abstract: Enactivists frequently argue their account heralds a revolution in cognitive science: enactivism will unseat cognitivism as the dominant paradigm. We examine the lines of reasoning enactivists employ in stirring revolt, but show that none of these prove compelling reasons for cognitivism to be replaced by enactivism. First, we examine […]

In an unpublished manuscript datable to 1956-1957, La vision comme modèle de la connaissance[1] (Vision as a model of knowledge), the philosopher of medicine and biology Georges Canguilhem referred to specific biological-adaptive mechanisms compensating for some human vision anomalies, particularly hemianopic anomalies. In individuals in whom it tends to occur, hemianopsia (or hemianopia) involves the loss of one half of a […]

Published open-access on Philosophy and the Mind Sciences Abstract: Several authors have made claims about the compatibility between the Free Energy Principle (FEP) and theories of autopoiesis and enaction. Many see these theories as natural partners or as making similar statements about the nature of biological and cognitive systems. We critically examine these claims and […]

The question of the place of mind in nature is one of the oldest and deepest questions in philosophy and the sciences. If the physical sciences to tell us ‘what nature is’, what happens to mental phenomena: thoughts, beliefs, desires, emotions, memories, and ideals? For centuries, philosophers, theologians, and scientists argued about what a “science […]

In the first part I have claimed that dialectical thinking is part and parcel of the enactive approach. I will now try to substantiate this claim. In the 1991 book The Embodied Mind, Varela, Thompson, and Rosch draw on developmental and evolutionary biology to prepare the reader for the idea of embodied action as a […]