Existence and Enaction: A Critical Review of the Encounter between Existential Philosophy and Enactive Cognitive Science
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research) July 14, 2026 Guo Chen
This article critically reviews the relationship between existential philosophy and enactive approaches to cognition, distinguishing three routes of influence: Merleau-Pontian embodiment, Heideggerian being-in-the-world, and Jonasian philosophical biology. It evaluates the encounter against three burdens: accounting for cognition of absent or abstract possibilities without requiring internal representations; explaining the development of the enculturated person; and relating the genesis of norms to their authority. The review finds that contemporary work on affectivity, selfhood, social interaction, language, and psychiatry achieves substantial integration but not a complete organism-to-person theory. The proposed framework of transformative continuity holds that later personal organizations remain embodied and continuous with living autonomy while introducing novelty not reducible to biological terms, rejecting both reductive deflation and unexplained discontinuity.