Chapter 4 demonstrates how the Radical Enactive Cognition (REC) framework can be applied to two existing nonrepresentational approaches to cognition: Autopoietic-Adaptive Enactivism and Ecological Dynamics. By 'RECtifying' these approaches, the chapter shows that REC can combine their resources to explain basic minds in naturalistic terms. The chapter concludes by addressing the need to explain how basic, contentless minds can develop into contentful minds—a process called REConnecting. This is necessary because REC holds that some cognition involves content and that organisms acquire content-involving cognition by mastering specific sociocultural practices.
The chapter introduces the 'E-turn' in cognitive science—the shift toward enactive, embodied, extended, and ecological views of cognition—and the empirical and theoretical developments that prompted it. It contrasts E-approaches with classical cognitivism, particularly in how far they depart from commitments to representationalism, computationalism, and mechanistic explanation. Against this backdrop, the chapter argues that REC's proposal is not merely revisionary but revolutionary. It also outlines the basic rules of naturalistic play, cautioning that dismissing REC based on a priori intuitions about cognition's essence violates naturalistic methodological principles.