Studies in history and philosophy of science
February 1, 2019
Miguel Segundo-Ortin, Paco Calvo
54 citations
Contrary to F. Adams' claim that plants and bacteria lack cognition because they respond inflexibly to immediate stimuli, empirical evidence from plant neurobiology shows that plant behavior is often analogous to animal behavior. Plants exhibit adaptive behavior, decision-making, anticipation, learning, and memory, and possess a 'phyto-nervous' system. This evidence supports describing plants as cognitive agents in a non-metaphorical way, aligning with enactive and ecological approaches in cognitive science. The article aims to advance public understanding of plant intelligence by challenging anthropocentric assumptions.
Consciousness and cognition
November 1, 2019
Anco Peeters, Miguel Segundo-Ortin
48 citations
The memory palace technique is powerful for remembering but poorly understood and difficult to use. Virtual reality devices have been proposed as a solution but have not yet delivered. An embodied, enactive approach to memory better explains why the technique works than traditional information-processing accounts. The authors offer design recommendations for a virtual memory palace, addressing both the theoretical gap and practical challenges.
Frontiers in psychology
January 1, 2020
Miguel Segundo-Ortin
39 citations
Agency—the capacity to act—remains a puzzle for non-representationalist theories of mind. Ecological psychologists and enactivists both locate agency in the organism–environment relation but emphasize different aspects. This theoretical paper proposes a radical embodied account that merges the two approaches: enactivism explains how acquired sensorimotor schemes and habits mutually equilibrate, biasing which affordances an agent acts upon, while ecological psychology shows how perceptual information actualizes those schemes without requiring internal representations, inferences, or computations. The account suggests that socio-cultural norms shape agency by influencing this ecological-enactive dynamic.
Consciousness and cognition
March 1, 2020
Nick Brancazio, Miguel Segundo-Ortin
27 citations
Non-representational approaches to cognition, such as ecological-enactivism, have difficulty explaining long-term planning without invoking mental representations. Recent ecological-enactivist proposals attempt to account for such high-level capacities, but they overlook the role of long-term intentions in action coordination and perception. Drawing on enactive theories of language, the authors argue for a non-representational conception of intentions: rather than being actual cognitive entities, intentions are taken up as a practice through linguistically scaffolded attitudes. They introduce the skill of distal engagement to explain how present actions are coordinated toward distant goals without relying on representations.