Enactive-Dynamic Social Cognition and Active Inference.
Frontiers in psychology January 1, 2022 Inês Hipólito, Thomas Van Es 22 citations
Social cognition should not be understood as attributing mental states to others via representational models. Holding both enactivism and Theory of Mind creates contradictions because Theory of Mind assumes social cognition reduces to mental representation and relies on an innate, contentful 'toolkit' for theorizing—both rejected by enactivism. The paper advances an enactivist-dynamic alternative: social cognition is dynamic, real-time, fluid, contextual social action. Using dynamical systems theory, it explains how socio-cognitive novelty arises in development, and active inference is used to show social understanding as generalized synchronization, avoiding representational assumptions.