This aim of this paper is two-fold: it critically analyses and rejects accounts blending active inference as theory of mind and enactivism; and it advances an enactivist-dynamic understanding of social cognition that is compatible with active inference. While some social cognition theories seemingly take an enactive perspective on social cognition, they explain it as the attribution of mental states to other people, by assuming representational structures, in line with the classic Theory of Mind. Holding both enactivism and ToM, we argue, (...) entails contradiction and confusion due to two ToM assumptions widely known to be rejected by enactivism: that social cognition reduces to mental representation and social cognition is a hardwired contentful ‘toolkit’ or ‘starter pack’ that fuels the model-like theorising supposed in. The paper offers a positive alternative, one that avoids contradictions or confusion. After rejecting ToM-inspired theories of social cognition and clarifying the profile of social cognition under enactivism, that is without assumptions and, the last section advances an enactivist-dynamic model of cognition as dynamic, real-time, fluid, contextual social action, where we use the formalisms of dynamical systems theory to explain the origins of socio-cognitive novelty in developmental change and active inference as a tool to demonstrate social understanding as generalised synchronisation. (shrink)

Current research in human–robot interaction often focuses on rendering communication between humans and robots more ‘natural’ by designing machines that appear and behave humanlike. Communication, in this human-centric approach, is often understood as a process of successfully transmitting information in the form of predefined messages and gestures. This article introduces an alternative arts-led, movement-centric approach, which embraces the differences of machinelike robotic artefacts and, instead, investigates how meaning is dynamically enacted in the encounter of humans and machines. Our design approach (...) revolves around a novel embodied mapping methodology, which serves to bridge between human–machine asymmetries and socioculturally situate abstract robotic artefacts. Building on concepts from performativity, material agency, enactive sense-making and kinaesthetic empathy, our Machine Movement Lab project opens up a performative-relational model of human–machine communication, where meaning is generated through relational dynamics in the interaction itself. (shrink)