Any adequate account of emotion must accommodate the fact that emotions, even those of the most basic kind, exhibit intentionality as well as phenomenality. This article argues that a good place to start in providing such an account is by adjusting Prinz’s (2004) embodied appraisal theory (EAT) of emotions. EAT appeals to teleosemantics in order to account for the world-directed content of embodied appraisals. Although the central idea behind EAT is essentially along the right lines, as it stands Prinz’s proposal (...) needs tweaking in a number of ways. This article focuses on one—the need to free it from its dependence on teleosemantics. EAT, so modified, becomes compatible with a truly enactivist understanding of basic emotions. (shrink)

Recent work in neurophilosophy has either made reference to the work of John Dewey or independently developed positions similar to it. I review these developments in order first to show that Dewey was indeed doing neurophilosophy well before the Churchlands and others, thereby preceding many other mid-twentieth century European philosophers’ views on cognition to whom many present day philosophers refer (e.g., Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty). I also show that Dewey’s work provides useful tools for evading or overcoming many issues in contemporary neurophilosophy (...) and philosophy of mind. In this introductory review, I distinguish between three waves among neurophilosophers that revolve around the import of evolution and the degree of brain-centrism. Throughout, I emphasize and elaborate upon Dewey’s dynamic view of mind and consciousness. I conclude by introducing the consciousness-as-cooking metaphor as an alternative to both the consciousness-as-digestion and consciousness-as-dancing metaphors. Neurophilosophical pragmatism—or neuropragmatism—recognizes the import of evolutionary and cognitive neurobiology for developing a science of mind and consciousness. However, as the cooking metaphor illustrates, a science of mind and consciousness cannot rely on the brain alone—just as explaining cooking entails more than understanding the gut—and therefore must establish continuity with cultural activities and their respective fields of inquiry. Neuropragmatism advances a new and promising perspective on how to reconcile the scientific and manifest images of humanity as well as how to reconstruct the relationship between science and the humanities. (shrink)

In this paper, we examine Shaun Gallagher’s project of “naturalizing” phenomenology with the cognitive sciences: front-loaded phenomenology. While we think it is a productive proposal, we argue that Gallagher does not employ genetic phenomenological methods in his execution of FLP. We show that without such methods, FLP’s attempt to locate neurological correlates of conscious experience is not yet adequate. We demonstrate this by analyzing Gallagher’s critique of cognitive neuropsychologist Christopher Frith’s functional explanation of schizophrenic symptoms. In “constraining” Gallagher’s FLP program, (...) we discuss what genetic phenomenological method is and why FLP ought to embrace it. We also indicate what types of structures a genetically modified FLP will consider, and how such an approach would affect the manner in which potential neurological correlates of conscious experience are conceptually understood and experimentally investigated. (shrink)

A recent paradigm shift in music research has allowed scholars to examine the macro- and micro-processes taking place within musical performance and underlying cognitive processes. Tying in with phenomenological theories of embodied perception and cognition, this paper focuses on bodily musical activity relevant to the acquisition of instrumental musical skills—the process of learning music. Dynamic interaction with musical instruments, accompanied by the interplay of action and passion, involves body image and body schema, whose status oscillates in different phases of the (...) acquisition of instrumental musical skills; this interaction allows humans to direct attention from their bodily states—the proximal—to the quality of musical sounds and a unity of musical experience—the distal. It is thus argued that shaping music by means of playing a musical instrument can be conceived of as an embodied process, of understanding the forms of one’s own experience as related to the musical world that is created by one’s bodily activity. (shrink)

The question of specific properties of life compared to nonliving things accompanied biology throughout its history. At times this question generated major controversies with largely diverging opinions. Basically, mechanistic thinkers, who tried to understand organismic functions in terms of nonliving machines, were opposed by those who tried to describe specific properties or even special forces being active within living entities. As this question included the human body, these controversies always have been of special relevance to our self-image and also touched (...) practical issues of medicine. During the second half of the twentieth century, it seemed to be resolved that organisms are explainable basically as physicochemical machines. Especially from the perspective of molecular biology, it seemed to be clear that organisms need to be explained solely by the chemical functions of their component parts, although some resistance to this view never ceased. This research program has been working quite successfully, so that science today knows a lot about the physiological and chemical processes within organisms. However, again new doubts arise questioning whether the mere continuation of this analytical approach will finally generate a fundamental understanding of living entities. At the beginning of the twenty-first century the quest for a new synthesis actually comes from analytical empiricists themselves. The hypothesis of the present paper is that empirical research has been developed far enough today, that it reveals by itself the materials and the prerequisites to understand more of the specific properties of life. Without recourse to mysterious forces, it is possible to generate answers to this age-old question, just using recent, empirically generated knowledge. This view does not contradict the results of reductionistic research, but rather grants them meaning within the context of organismic systems and also may increase their practical usefulness. Although several of these properties have been discussed before, different authors usually concentrated on a single one or some of them. The paper describes ten specific properties of living entities as they can be deduced from contemporary science. The aim is to demonstrate that the results of empirical research show both the necessity as well as the possibility of the development of a new conception of life to build a coherent understanding of organismic functions. (shrink)

Bennett and Hacker criticize a number of neuroscientists and philosophers for attributing capacities which belong to the human being as a whole, like perceiving or deciding, to a “part” of the human being, viz. the brain. They call this type of mistake the “mereological fallacy”. Interestingly, the authors say that these capacities cannot be ascribed to the mind either. They reject not only materialistic monism but also Cartesian dualism, arguing that many predicates describing human life do not refer to physical (...) or mental properties, nor to the sum of such properties. I agree with this important principle and with the critique of the mereological fallacy which it underpins, but I have two objections to the authors’ view. Firstly, I think that the brain is not literally a part of the human being, as suggested. Secondly, Bennett and Hacker do not offer an account of body and mind which explains in a systematic way how the domain of phenomena which transcends the mental and the physical relates to the mental and the physical. I first argue that Helmuth Plessner’s philosophical anthropology provides the kind of account we need. Then, drawing on Plessner, I present an alternative view of the mereological relationships between brain and human being. My criticism does not undercut Bennett and Hacker’s diagnosis of the mereological fallacy but rather gives it a more solid philosophical–anthropological foundation. (shrink)

Hutto and Myin famously argue that basic minds are not contentful and content exists only as far as it is scaffolded with social and linguistic practices. This view, however, rests on a troublesome distinction between basic and scaffolded minds. Since Hutto and Myin have to account for language purely in terms of joint action guidance, there is no reason why simpler communication systems, such as cellular signaling pathways, should not give rise to scaffolded content as well. This conclusion remains valid (...) even if one rejects the view of language as mediated through public symbols and embraces global antirepresentationalism. Content evolves spontaneously in complex regulatory systems, such as human, animal, and cellular communication. (shrink)

Mascolo successfully defends a relational, developmental approach to emotions. I draw parallels between his perspective and the enactive approach, in particular with the concept of participa...

The ‘scaling up’ objection says non-representational ecological-enactive accounts will be unable to explain ‘representation hungry’ cognition. Obsessive-compulsive disorder presents a paradigmatic instance of this objection, marked as it is by ‘representation hungry’ obsessive thoughts and compulsive behavior organized around them. In this paper I provide an ecological-enactive account of OCD, thereby demonstrating non-representational frameworks can ‘scale up’ to explain ‘representation hungry’ cognition. First, I outline a non-representational account of mind— a predictive processing operationalization of Sean Kelly’s theory of perception. This (...) account explains the ‘tensions’ and ‘pulls’ which guide and constrain our action-oriented and affect-laden perceptual ‘grip’ upon the world to be underwritten by an imperative to minimize prediction error. I then argue that OCD is best understood as ‘grip gone awry’— malformed predictive models signal inappropriately high error, and this results in extremely strong ‘tensions’ and ‘pulls’ which prescribe actions. Thus, I arrive at the idea that OCD is primarily constituted by ‘not just right’ feelings caused by high error signaling. Finally, I explain that this account provides a causal explanation of the non-representational existential feeling fundamental to OCD. Compulsions are considered manifestations of non-representational grip responsive to this feeling, whilst obsessions are explained to play a meta-role in the condition, being formulated by subjects in a bid to make their ‘not just right’ feeling intelligible. I explain that the meta-role obsessions play makes their representational status largely irrelevant to OCD, and so leave this an open question. Consequently, I provide a non-representational account of OCD, thereby demonstrating that ecological-enactive approaches can respond to the ‘scaling up’ objection. (shrink)

Placebos are commonly defined as ineffective treatments. They are treatments that lack a known mechanism linking their properties to the properties of the condition on which treatment aims to intervene. Given this, the fact that placebos can have substantial therapeutic effects looks puzzling. The puzzle, we argue, arises from the relationship placebos present between culturally meaningful entities, our intentional relationship to the environment and bodily effects. How can a mere attitude toward a treatment result in appropriate bodily changes? We argue (...) that an ‘enactive’ conception of cognition accommodates and renders intelligible the phenomenon of placebo effects. Enactivism depicts an organism’s adaptive bodily processes, its intentional directedness, and the meaningful properties of its environment as co-emergent aspects of a single dynamic system. In doing so it provides an account of the interrelations between mind, body and world that demystifies placebo effects. (shrink)

Upon first reading, the beginning of Chapter 2 of Difference and Repetition, with its talk of ―contemplative souls‖ and ―larval subjects,‖ seems something of a bizarre biological panpsychism. Actually it does defend a sort of biological panpsychism, but by defining the kind of psyche Deleuze is talking about, I‘ll show here how we can remove the bizarreness from that concept. First, I will sketch Deleuze‘s treatment of ―larval subjects,‖ then show how Deleuze‘s discourse can be articulated with Evan Thompson‘s biologically (...) based intervention into cognitive science, the ―mind in life‖ or ―enaction‖ position. Then I will then show how each in turn fits with contemporary biological work on E. coli chemotaxis (movement in response to changes in environment). (shrink)

Normality, for Husserl, is said in many ways. While the most detailed treatments of this technical Husserlian concept are usually found in discussions concerning the constitutive dimension of the lived body and intersubjectivity, little attention has been paid to the notion of normality understood as the tacit regularity of nature. Indeed, the normal can also be understood as the causal background which is presupposed, tentatively, in the anticipation of uniform processes of change, as well as in poieticinstrumental experiences, that is, (...) in experiences involving the production and use of objects. The subject that elaborates, manipulates or uses objects is installed in nature. Hence, in our productive-instrumental confrontation with objects in the world, we operate under the assumption that the potentially mutable causal scene surrounding our acting life will retain its style. This assumption of normality is the world, in one of the many ways in which Husserl characterizes this concept. The world qua background of normality becomes thematic, retrospectively, precisely when it ceases to cooperate with the agent’s initiatives. This, on my view, is what lies behind Husserl’s assertion that the world is a “super-object” or “higher-level theme”. (shrink)

Following the levels of intentionality and semiosis distinguished by the Semiotic Hierarchy, and the distinction between original agency and enhanced agency, we propose a model of an agency hierarchy, consisting of six layers. Consistent with the phenomenological orientation of cognitive semiotics, a central claim is that agency and subjectivity are complementary aspects of intentionality. Hence, there is no agency without at least the minimal sense/feeling of agency. This perspective rules out all artefacts as genuine agents, as well as simple organisms, (...) since it is highly unlikely that e.g. bacteria have any first-person perspective. Using this model, we review and assess recent proposals on the nature of agency from cognitive science, and neuroscience, and draw conclusions on how to incorporate aspects of them within a synthetic cognitive-semiotic framework. (shrink)

Our perception of the world and our relationships with other people are not, I argue, distinct activities. Focusing, first, on Merleau-Ponty’s description in the Phenomenology of Perception of his playful interaction with an infant, and, second, on contemporary research on the phenomena referred to as neonate imitation, joint attention, and mutual gaze, I argue that perception can be a collaborative endeavor. Moreover, this collaborative endeavor, which is definitive of both infant and adult perception, entails trust; our trust in others is (...) not simply a feeling that we perceive but also a way of perceiving. As infants, our trust in others is our perception of the world we share with our caregivers as the world we will also share with others; it is our perception of the world we share with our caregivers as real. As adults, we live our trust in others by perceiving the objects that surround us in ways that protect, rather than damage, the shared worlds that we create in our relationships with them. (shrink)

According to sensorimotor theory perceiving is a bodily skill involving exercise of an implicit know-how of the systematic ways that sensations change as a result of potential movements, that is, of sensorimotor contingencies. The theory has been most successfully applied to vision and touch, while perceptual modalities that rely less on overt exploration of the environment have not received as much attention. In addition, most research has focused on philosophically grounding the theory and on psychologically elucidating sensorimotor laws, but the (...) theory’s ramifications for neuroscience still remain underexamined. Here we sketch the beginnings of a research program that could address these two outstanding challenges in terms of auditory perception. We review the neuroscience literature on passive listening, which is defined as listening without overt bodily movement, and conclude that sensorimotor theory provides a unique perspective on the consistent finding of motor system activation. In contrast to competing theories, this activation is predicted to be involved not only in the perception of speech- and action-related sounds, but in auditory perception in general. More specifically, we propose that the auditory processing associated with supplementary motor areas forms part of the neural basis of the exercise of sensorimotor know-how: these areas’ recognized role in facilitating spontaneous motor responses to sound and supporting flexible engagement of sensorimotor processes to guide auditory experience and enable auditory imagery, can be understood in terms of two key characteristics of sensorimotor interaction, its “alerting capacity” and “corporality”, respectively. We also highlight that there is more to the inside of the body than the brain: there is an opportunity to develop sensorimotor theory into new directions in terms of the still poorly understood active processes of the peripheral auditory system. (shrink)

This paper looks to phenomenology and enactive cognition in order to shed light on the self and sense of self of patients with locked-in syndrome. It critically discusses the concept of the minimal self, both in its phenomenological and ontological dimension. Ontologically speaking, the self is considered to be equal to a person’s sensorimotor embodiment. This bodily self also grounds the minimal sense of self as being a distinct experiential subject. The view from the minimal bodily self presupposes that sociality (...) comes after the self, or that in other words, the essence of self remains independent of our social interactions and relations. In this paper, I rely on the idea of enactive autonomy and Heidegger’s and Merleau-Ponty’s views of human existence as primordially social, to argue for the contrary. The self is fundamentally relational and this is also reflected at the level of the subjective experience of being a self. I indicate how a strong relational view of selfhood can serve as a preliminary heuristic to make sense of the situation of the patient with LIS and conclude with some practical implications concerning patient autonomy, our ethical responsibility toward the patient, and the possibilities for improving the life of patients with LIS. (shrink)

The long standing and still highly influential mindreading framework claims that social cog- nition is best understood as an ability to predict and explain others’ behavior in terms of their mental states. This ability is explained by appealing to mental representations and inferential reasoning via rule-based knowledge. However, recent enactive work on social cognition questions most, if not all, of the main assumptions on which mindreading is founded. Enac- tivism’s emphasis on the structural coupling of the brain-body-world constitutes the foundation (...) of the framework, which rejects the representational and inferential reasoning claims of the mindreading framework. For enactivists, social cognition is best explained in terms of the direct embodied and embedded interactions an agent has with her socio-material world. In continuing this work, the thesis provides new developments of the enactive project for investigating and explaining social cognition. The thesis utilizes two approaches to achieve this goal. First, it dialectally defends enactivism vis-a-vis the mindreading framework. It does this by both securing established enactive claims from criticism, and by developing new objections against the mindreading framework. Secondly, the thesis offers new enactive interpretations of empirical developmental data, and presents new ways of investigating three central areas of debate within the field of social cognition: the metaphysical basis of social cognitive processes, the false-belief test literature, and the concept of empathy in relation to therapeutic practices and autism. The thesis is composed of five different, but thematically intertwined papers. The first paper targets the constitutive basis of social cognition by attempting to dissolve the causal-constitutive fallacy through appealing to a diachronic conception of constitution. This move both secures established enactive claims and develops a more thorough account of what is meant by enactive constitutive claims. The second paper then examines infant social cognitive capacities, arguing cognitivist explanations of these capacities rely on fallacious as- sumptions regarding the nature of perception. The paper then offers an alternative enactive and ecological account of these capacities. The third paper argues both innate and construc- tivist mindreading accounts of the folk psychological know-how required to reliably succeed on false-belief tests fall prey to an infinite regress problem. The paper ends by briefly pre- senting an alternative enactive, narrative explanation of the empirical data. The fourth paper then shifts focus to examine the concept empathy and practice of empathizing. It argues there are advantages to conceiving of empathy as enactive and exploratory, in the sense that when we empathize with others we understand them in a deeper and richer way, through exploring their self-authored narratives. Finally, the fifth paper re-examines our understand- ing of autism by integrating the enactive framework with a neurodiversity approach to cognition. It argues this integration can help us better understand how neurotypical social practices and institutions effect the development, and well-being, of autistic individuals. Through these substantial expansions of established enactivist accounts, and by offering new objections to the mindreading framework, the thesis provides reasons to prefer an enactivist framework in exploring human abilities for social cognition. (shrink)

This paper reflects on the qualities of living and learning in digital cultures, the design of digital technologies and the philosophical history that has informed that design. It takes as its critical perspective the field of embodied cognition as it has developed over the last three decades, in concert with emerging neurophysiology and neurocognitive research. From this perspective the paper considers cognitive, neurological and physiological effects that are increasingly becoming noticed in user populations, especially young populations. I call this class (...) of conditions ‘sensorimotor debility’, to distinguish it from other psychological, social, cultural and political symptoms associated with computer, internet and social media use. (shrink)

Phenomenology is explored as a way of helping students and educators open up to music as a creative and transformative experience. I begin by introducing a simple exercise in experimental phenomenology involving multi-stable visual phenomena that can be explored without the use of complex terminology. Here, I discuss how the “phenomenological attitude” may foster a deeper appreciation of the structure of consciousness, as well as the central role the body plays in how we experience and form understandings of the worlds (...) we inhabit. I then explore how the phenomenological attitude may serve as a starting point for students and teachers as they begin to reflect on their involvement with music as co-investigators. Here I draw on my teaching practice as a percussion and drum kit instructor, with a special focus on multi-stable musical phenomena. To conclude, I briefly consider how the phenomenological approach might be developed beyond the practice room to examine music’s relationship to the experience of culture, imagination and “self.”. (shrink)

Volume 2, Issue 2, June 2018, Page 119-124.

Biological organisms appear to have agency, goals, and meaningful behaviour. One possibility is that this is mere appearance, where such properties are not real, but only ‘as if’ consequences of the physiological structure of organisms. Another possibility is that these properties are real, as emerging from the organism's structure and from how the organism interacts with its environment. Here I will discuss a recent theory showing that the latter position is most likely correct, and argue that the theory is largely (...) consistent with the basics of the field of biosemiotics. The theory can be represented as a triad that resembles the semiotic triad proposed by Peirce, which connects a sign with its object through a process of interpretation. In the theory presented, the sign is an internalized version of fitness which refers to the true fitness through a feedback loop that in effect produces interpretation. The feedback loop entangles deterministic and stochastic forms of causation in such a way that genuine agency, goal-directedness, and their associated meaning emerge. It produces a strong form of emergence not reducible to its constituents. The result is that novel phenomena arise that are real and necessary components for a complete understanding of living organisms. (shrink)

Artificial intelligence, the "science and engineering of intelligent machines", still has yet to create even a simple "Advice Taker" [McCarthy, 1959]. We have previously argued [Waser, 2011] that this is because researchers are focused on problem-solving or the rigorous analysis of intelligence (or arguments about consciousness) rather than the creation of a "self" that can "learn" to be intelligent. Therefore, following expert advice on the nature of self [Llinas, 2001; Hofstadter, 2007; Damasio, 2010], we embarked upon an effort to design (...) and implement a self-understanding, self-improving loop as the totality of a (seed) AI. As part of that, we decided to follow up on Richard Dawkins' [1976] speculation that "perhaps consciousness arises when the brain's simulation of the world becomes so complete that it must include a model of itself" by defining a number of axioms and following them through to their logical conclusions. The results combined with an enactive approach yielded many surprising and useful implications for further understanding consciousness, self, and "free-will" that continue to pave the way towards the creation of safe/moral autopoiesis. (shrink)

In this explorative study, we investigated motives of autonomous learners to participate in an online course, and how these motives are related to gameplay motivations, engagement in the course experience, and learning outcomes. The guiding premise for the study has been the idea that learning and game playing carry phenomenal similarities that could be revealed by scrutinizing motives for participating in a massive open online course that does not involve any intentionally game-like features. The research was conducted by analyzing survey (...) data collected from individuals who had voluntarily participated in an open online course about artificial intelligence and its societal impact. The survey included an explorative Motives for Autonomous Learning inventory. Exploratory factor analysis suggested that the MAL inventory consisted of six dimensions out of which four were consistent with factors that earlier research has associated with motives to engage with video games. Of the identified factors, the dimension that most clearly described autonomous and playful predispositions was found to be a main precedent for both experienced gamefulness of the learning experience and positive learning outcomes. In all, the results of this study demonstrated that playfulness and autonomy were both prominent and significant factors across the whole learning process. (shrink)

(2013). The modal breadth of consciousness. Philosophical Psychology. ???aop.label???. doi: 10.1080/09515089.2013.776476.

Dem Alltagsverständnis zufolge bringt uns die Wahrnehmung in einen Kontakt mit der Wirklichkeit. Die Stabilisierung der Wahrnehmungsgewissheit ist tief im subjektiven Bildungsprozess verankert, hat sich alltagspraktisch bewährt und in der Sprache sedimentiert. Andererseits hat sich durch Erfahrungen kultureller Diversität und sozialer Differenz auch die Auffassung verbreitet, dass die Welt nur gleichsam durch die Brille spezifischer Herkünfte und Zugehörigkeiten wahrgenommen wird. Die Spannung zwischen realistischen und konstruktivistischen Interpretationen des menschlichen Weltbezugs bildet die Ausgangssituation, mit der sich die Beiträge zu dem geplanten (...) Sammelband In Kontakt mit der Wirklichkeit. Interdisziplinäre Beiträge zur Situiertheit der Wahrnehmung auseinandersetzen. Ziel ist es, die Wahrnehmungsgewissheit des direkten Realismus zu verteidigen, ohne die berechtigten Einwände außer Acht zu lassen. Nicht nur der Begriff der Wahrnehmung wird dabei einer grundlegenden Prüfung unterzogen, sondern auch der Begriff der Wirklichkeit und mit ihm ein angemessenes Verständnis davon, als leiblich verkörperte Individuen in einer gemeinsam geteilten Welt zu sein. (shrink)

The hard problem of consciousness lies in explaining what constitutes the subjectivity of consciousness. I argue that significant headway can be made on the problem from an embodied mind view, and particularly if we turn to William James’ theory of emotions. The challenge is one of explaining how bodily subjectivity arises from biological processes. I argue that the solution to this problem lies in our sense of interoception, and James’ theory which suggests emotional feelings are the cascade of changing bodily (...) states. Through James’ account, I show how the biological body can give rise to a bodily subjectivity in experiential consciousness, and thus move towards a solution of the hard problem. (shrink)

This article explores emotions and their relationship to ‘somatic responses’, i.e., one’s automatic responses to sensations of pain, cold, warmth, sudden intensity. To this end, it undertakes a Husserlian phenomenological analysis of the first-hand experience of eight basic emotions, briefly exploring their essential aspects: their holistic nature, their identifying dynamic transformation of the lived body, their two-layered intentionality, their involuntary initiation and voluntary espousal. The fact that the involuntary tensional shifts initiating emotions are irreplicatable voluntarily, is taken to show that (...) all emotions have an innate core, a conclusion corroborated by their strong similarities to somatic responses in dynamics, hedonic tone, and topology. The fact that emotions may be culturally reworked, is shown to be explicable in terms of their complex nature: their dependence on belief, their voluntary espousal, and their ready social transmittability. Finally, it is argued that emotions may plausibly be deemed the evolutionary descendants of somatic responses. (shrink)

The introduction of digital games and simulations into science museums has prompted excitement about a new "post-museum" pedagogy emphasizing egalitarianism, interactivity, and personalized approaches to learning. However, many post-museums of science, this article aims to show, enact rhetorical performances that lead visitors to narrowly targeted answers and hide the authority of the expert in a play of tactile and affective activities, thus operating in opposition to many of the basic ideals of the post-museum. The Brain and Cognition Exhibit at the (...) Hong Kong Science Museum serves as a case study for how a post-museum exhibit, through embracing interactivity and visitor-centered tasks, becomes a site where science is tested on and performed through visitors' bodies such that institutional prescriptions are applied. Visitors are not merely encouraged at this exhibit to learn about the brain through doing but are trained to see functional and dysfunctional brains and to then diagnose themselves and their children by playing games and taking brain-measurement tests. As a result, the interactive engagement of the exhibit creates a new space of public medicalization. Reflections and suggestions are offered at the end of the article. (shrink)

Deacon develops a minimal model of a nonparasitic virus to explore how nucleotide sequences came to be characterized by a code-like informational at the origin of life. The model serves to problematize the concept of biological normativity because it highlights two common yet typically implicit assumptions: that life could consist as an inert form, were it not for extrinsic sources of physical instability, and that life could have originated as a singular self-contained individual. I propose that the origin of life, (...) the genetic code, and biological normativity more generally, lead us to reject this passive individualism. (shrink)

This paper argues for the importance of a passive form of embodiment for educational purposes to capture tacit environmental influences. G. Buck’s account of learning as experience is put in discussion with psychological approaches to reveal the limitation of what psychology can achieve, especially when it comes to situated experiences within educational environments. As a solution to overcome this problem a concept of passive embodiment is developed that allows for a body that is receptive to multisensory environmental influences. Böhme’s concept (...) of atmospheres in relation to Schmitz’ New Phenomenology provide a theoretical framework to understand how these situated experiences are evoked by certain situations. This allows for a new understanding of passive, embodied experiences within educational environments by incorporating the tacit influences of the setting. (shrink)

Valuation consists in a positive or negative response by a subject S to an entity X. Any positive or negative response has a structure that involves a cognitive and a non-cognitive component, as well as a reason relationship between these. This structure is shown to be present in the explicit value judgement 'Hans is a kraut', and then also pointed out in the reflex-like feeding behaviour of a frog, where S treats X as providing an affordance. The conclusion is that (...) valuation need not involve mental states. The article ends with a discussion of the elusive question: what makes a response positive or negative? (shrink)

The reflexive character of enactive theory is spelled out, in an effort to make explicit that which is usually implicit in debate: that we are responsible for the distinctions we draw, and that ultimately, the world that we collectively characterize is a joint production. Enaction, as treated here, is not a positivist scientific field, but an epistemologically self-conscious way to ground our understanding of the value-saturated lives of embodied beings. This stance is seen as entirely congruent with the scientific field (...) of ecological psychology, which is itself then cast as a specific example of the kind of science that can be done in an enactive mode. (shrink)

In this special issue, our objective is to clarify what biosemioticians may mean insofar as they claim that living systems are capable of making choices or that biosemiotic interpretations are partially indeterminate. A number of different senses of the term “chance” are discussed as we move toward a consensus. We find that biosemiosic chance may arise out of conditions involving quantum indeterminacy, randomness, deterministic chaos, or unpredictability, but biosemiosic chance is mainly due to the fact that living entities invest their (...) environments with different meanings and values, which are not inherent in the material aspects. Accordingly, interpretive responses are in part self-determined. A self-determined interpretation may be thought of as a process in which localized biases constrain the probabilities of the outcomes of the interactions between an agent and its environment. The agent’s internal formal constraints that are defined by similarity and proximity are relative and, as such, vague, and thus interpretation may be somewhat underdetermined and involve an element of chance. (shrink)

In this paper, I combine the actor-network economic sociology of disability with recent developments in phenomenological, embodied cognitive science, to discuss how ability, calculative agency, and meaning are distributed throughout materially situated sociocognitive systems. I begin by outlining the actor-network approach to disability, market formation, and economic agency. Next, I turn to the cognitive sciences, and describe the emergence of consciousness and meaning in embodied human being. With an operative synthesis of the two projects in place, I turn to government-organized (...) disability savings plans in Canada. I suggest that the low uptake of these plans can be explained using the theoretical synthesis provided in the first two sections of this paper, giving a robust account of the threefold distribution of ability, calculative agency, and meaning. (shrink)

Autism is a neurodevelopmental disorder featuring severe social and communicative deficits. Cognitive impenetrability is the inability of systems to be affected by an individual’s beliefs and desires. Individuals with autism have delayed performance on "mindreading" tasks. Mindreading is the interpretation of others which enables successful social interactions. This task performance is not correlated with "everyday" social function in autism. These deficits are in contrast with general intelligence and reasoning abilities within the normal range, resistant to cognitive behavioral training, and partially (...) attributable to atypical social predispositions. This suggests individuals with autism perform social tasks differently than typicals. I argue that this mindreading deficit is cognitively impenetrable, then position this deficit within a theoretical framework, enactivism, emphasizing cognitive embodiment and inseparability of social comprehension and action. This framework helps explain the cognitive impenetrability of these social deficits by "locating" failure to penetrate in individuals' failure to properly interact with the environment. (shrink)

Meaning-making processes, understood hierarchically, in line with the Semiotic Hierarchy framework, change on various timescales. To account for and predict these changes, one can take a cognitive view on semiosis. I adopt an interdis-ciplinary approach combining semiotic studies and cognitive studies in an attempt to account for meaning-making activity and to predict the course of semiosis. In this context, I consider meaning-making activity as shaped by both “external” (to a semiotic system) as well as “internal” factors. I also show how (...) both the “external” and “internal” sources of the dynamicity of meaning-making should be framed in terms of studies on cognition.I start with a non-standard, 4e approach to meaning-making. According to this framework, meaning-making processes are constituted by (and not just depen-dent on) environmental and bodily factors. The dynamicity of semiosis can be accounted for in terms of an experiencing, embodied subject (agent) enacting her/his/its own domain of meaningful phenomena. As I argue, this perspective on meaning-making is the cognitive foundation of the first two levels of the Semiotic Hierarchy. In the following sections I present the Peircean view on signs and semiosis, according to which semiosis is a result of the very nature of a sign and a sign system. In this view, the dynamicity of semiosis has primarily “internal” sources: it stems from the unavoidable fallibility of interpretation and synechism of signs. As I show, this aspect of semiosis can be addressed by means of standard (cognitivist) cognitive science and by means of cognitive modelling. Ultimately, I sketch a proposal of an attempt to develop a uniform cognitive framework allowing for integration of the above-mentioned aspects of semiosis – a framework based on Rowlands’ idea of the Amalgamated Mind. (shrink)