Making Sense of the 4E Cognition Turn in Mental Health Research
Miguel Núñez De Prado-gordillo, Pablo López-silva
Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology June 1, 2025 Peer reviewed DOI: 10.1353/ppp.2025.a964179
Summary
4E Cognition approaches challenge the view that mental disorders are solely brain disorders by emphasizing their situated, embodied, embedded, and enactive features. This paper classifies these approaches into two main strands: strongly situated or extended views, which apply the extended mind hypothesis, and strongly embodied and enactive views, which draw on autopoietic enactivism. It examines how each addresses the location problem (whether disorders reside in individuals, social contexts, or their relation) and the boundary problem (distinguishing psychopathology from non-pathological diversity). The paper also outlines practical implications for mental health research.
Study at a glance
| Design | theoretical or philosophical paper |
|---|---|
| Key finding | 4E approaches to mental health can be classified into strongly situated or extended views and strongly embodied and enactive views, each offering different solutions to the location and boundary problems. |
Abstract
Abstract: Over the last years, 4E Cognition approaches have emerged in an attempt to overcome the limitations of neuro-reductionism about mental disorders, that is, the view that mental disorders can be fully explained as brain disorders. Instead, 4E approaches emphasize in varying degrees the situated, embodied, embedded, and enactive features of psychopathological conditions. Despite its growing popularity, the development of this alternative framework is not characterized by a distinguishable conceptual unity. This paper examines and classifies the main current 4E approaches to mental health, outlining their core commitments, differences, and implications. Two main strands are distinguished: strongly situated or extended views, comprising applications of the classical and social versions of the extended mind hypothesis, and strongly embodied and enactive views, involving applications of the so-called autopoietic enactivism. We examine the main claims of such approaches regarding two conceptual issues: i) the location problem , that is, whether mental disorders are predicable of individuals, social contexts, or the relation between them, and ii) the boundary problem , that is, how to distinguish psychopathology from non-pathological diversity such as cases of mere social deviance and the like. In the final section, we offer an overview of some of the main practical implications of the 4E turn in mental health research.