RECtifying and REConnecting
Evolving Enactivism May 19, 2017 Peer reviewed DOI: 10.7551/mitpress/9780262036115.003.0004
Summary
Chapter 4 demonstrates how the Radical Enactive and Embodied (REC) approach to cognition can strengthen and ally with Autopoietic-Adaptive Enactivism and Ecological Dynamics, two nonrepresentational E-approaches. These examples show REC's capacity to combine resources for explaining basic minds naturalistically. The chapter concludes by addressing the need to explain how basic, contentless minds can meet contentful minds—termed REConnecting—given REC's commitment that some cognition involves content and that organisms become capable of it through mastering sociocultural practices.
Study at a glance
| Design | theoretical or philosophical paper |
|---|---|
| Key finding | REC can fruitfully ally with and strengthen Autopoietic-Adaptive Enactivism and Ecological Dynamics to explain basic minds, and must show how contentless minds can become contentful through sociocultural practices. |
Abstract
Chapter 4 provides further examples of RECtification, this time with the aim of showing how REC can fruitfully ally with and strengthen two prominent nonrepresentational E-approaches to cognition—Autopoietic-Adaptive Enactivism and Ecological Dynamics. These examples of RECtification reveal REC’s capacity to marshal and combine powerful resources for explaining basic minds in naturalistic terms. The chapter concludes by discussing the need to show how to basic, contentless minds can meet contentful minds in REC terms – namely, to explicate how REConnecting is possible. Doing so is necessary in light of REC’s commitment to two ideas: that some cognition is content-involving and that organisms become capable of content-involving cognition by mastering special sociocultural practices.