Enaction
Overview
This book presents the framework for a new, comprehensive approach to cognitive science. The proposed paradigm, enaction, offers an alternative to cognitive science's classical, first-generation Computational Theory of Mind (CTM). Enaction, first articulated by Varela, Thompson, and Rosch in The Embodied Mind (MIT Press, 1991), breaks from CTM's formalisms of information processing and symbolic representations to view cognition as grounded in the sensorimotor dynamics of the interactions between a living organism and its environment. A living organism enacts the world it lives in; its embodied action in the world constitutes its perception and thereby grounds its cognition. Enaction offers a range of perspectives on this exciting new approach to embodied cognitive science.
Some chapters offer manifestos for the enaction paradigm; others address specific areas of research, including artificial intelligence, developmental psychology, neuroscience, language, phenomenology, and culture and cognition. Three themes emerge as testimony to the originality and specificity of enaction as a paradigm: the relation between first-person lived experience and third-person natural science; the ambition to provide an encompassing framework applicable at levels from the cell to society; and the difficulties of reflexivity. Taken together, the chapters offer nothing less than the framework for a far-reaching renewal of cognitive science.
Contributors: Renaud Barbaras, Didier Bottineau, Giovanna Colombetti, Diego Cosmelli, Hanne De Jaegher, Ezequiel A. Di Paolo. Andreas K. Engel, Olivier Gapenne, Véronique Havelange, Edwin Hutchins, Michel Le Van Quyen, Rafael E. Núñez, Marieke Rohde, Benny Shanon, Maxine Sheets-Johnstone, Adam Sheya, Linda B. Smith, John Stewart, Evan Thompson
About the Editors
John Stewart is a Scientific Consultant at the University of Technology of Compiègne, France.
Olivier Gapenne is Assistant Professor at the University of Technology of Compiègne, France.
Ezequiel A. Di Paolo is Ikerbasque Research Professor at the University of the Basque Country, Spain.
Table of Contents
- Enaction
- Enaction
- Toward a New Paradigm for Cognitive Science
- Edited by John Stewart, Olivier Gapenne, and Ezequiel A. Di Paolo
- A Bradford Book
- The MIT Press
- Cambridge, Massachusetts
- London, England
- © 2010
- Massachusetts Institute of Technology
- All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by any electronic or mechanical means (including photocopying, recording, or information storage and retrieval) without permission in writing from the publisher.
- For information about special quantity discounts, please email special_sales@ mitpress.mit.edu
- This book was set in Stone Sans and Stone Serif by Toppan Best-set Premedia Limited. Printed and bound in the United States of America.
- Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
- Enaction : toward a new paradigm for cognitive science / edited by John Stewart, Olivier Gapenne, and Ezequiel A. Di Paolo.
- p. cm.
- “A Bradford book.”
- “Based on an International CNRS Summer School organized by the Association pour la Recherche Cognitive (ARC), held from 29 May to 03 June 2006, Ile d’Oléron, France”—Text.
- Includes bibliographical references and index.
- ISBN 978-0-262-01460-1 (alk. paper) 1. Cognition—Philosophy. 2. Philosophy and cognitive science. 3. Cognitive science. I. Stewart, John Robert, 1941– II. Gapenne, Olivier. III. Di Paolo, Ezequiel A. IV. Association pour la recherche cognitive (France) V. Ecole d’été du CNRS sur les sciences cognitives (2006 : Ile d’Oléron, France)
- BF311E495 2011
- 153—dc22
- 2010006930
- 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
- Contents
- Introduction vii
- John Stewart, Olivier Gapenne, and Ezequiel A. Di Paolo
- 1 Foundational Issues in Enaction as a Paradigm for Cognitive Science :
- From the Origin of Life to Consciousness and Writing 1
- John Stewart
- 2 Horizons for the Enactive Mind:
- Values, Social Interaction, and Play 33
- Ezequiel A. Di Paolo, Marieke Rohde, and Hanne De Jaegher
- 3 Life and Exteriority :
- The Problem of Metabolism 89
- Renaud Barbaras
- 4 Development through Sensorimotor Coordination 123
- Adam Sheya and Linda B. Smith
- 5 Enaction, Sense-Making, and Emotion 145
- Giovanna Colombetti
- 6 Thinking in Movement:
- Further Analyses and Validations 165
- Maxine Sheets-Johnstone
- 7 Kinesthesia and the Construction of Perceptual Objects 183
- Olivier Gapenne
- 8 Directive Minds: How Dynamics Shapes Cognition 219
- Andreas K. Engel
- 9 Neurodynamics and Phenomenology in Mutual Enlightenment:
- The Example of the Epileptic Aura 245
- Michel Le Van Quyen
- 10 Language and Enaction 267
- Didier Bottineau
- 11 Enacting Infinity:
- Bringing Transfinite Cardinals into Being 307
- Rafael E. Núñez
- 12 The Ontological Constitution of Cognition and the Epistemological Constitution of Cognitive Science:
- Phenomenology, Enaction, and Technology 335
- Véronique Havelange
- 13 Embodiment or Envatment?:
- Reflections on the Bodily Basis of Consciousness 361
- Diego Cosmelli and Evan Thompson
- 14 Toward a Phenomenological Psychology of the Conscious 387
- Benny Shanon
- 15 Enaction, Imagination, and Insight 425
- Edwin Hutchins
- List of Contributors 451
- Index 453