Keyword: linguistic bodies

Abstract. This paper examines the relation between embodiment and sociality within the enactive approach, highlighting the continuity between biological autonomy and social normativity. The central claim is that, while enactivism offers the conceptual resources to address the complexity of social cognition, doing so requires the integration of dialectical tools into the theory of the embodied […]

Already in the early 2000s, Francisco Varela and Evan Thompson emphasized that the notion of autonomy should be understood as scaffolded along multiple, entangled, and overlapping dimensions—namely, biological regulation, sensorimotor coupling, and social interaction. Since then, various developments of the autonomy framework have sought to articulate this multidimensionality. The enactive approach, particularly the version proposed […]

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 […]