Enactive social cognition: Diachronic constitution & coupled anticipation.

The paper argues against the cognitivist view that social cognition is realized solely inside the head. It develops an enactive account in which embodied, face-to-face interaction plays a constitutive, not merely causal, role in social understanding. The authors first explain how diachronic embodied engagement can constitute social cognition. They then refute the causal-constitutive fallacy objection by showing that the constitution–causation distinction does not map onto an internal–external divide. A second objection—the poverty of the interactional stimulus argument—claims that anticipation requires an internal model or tacit theory. The paper dissolves this by proposing that anticipatory processes can be orchestrated and maintained by sensorimotor couplings between interacting individuals.

Study at a glance

Abstract

This paper targets the constitutive basis of social cognition. It begins by describing the traditional and still dominant cognitivist view. Cognitivism assumes internalism about the realisers of social cognition; thus, the embodied and embedded elements of intersubjective engagement are ruled out from playing anything but a basic causal role in an account of social cognition. It then goes on to advance and clarify an alternative to the cognitivist view; namely, an enactive account of social cognition. It does so first by articulating a diachronic constitutive account for how embodied engagement can play a constitutive role in social cognition. It then proceeds to consider an objection; the causal-constitutive fallacy (Adams & Aizawa, 2001, 2008; Block, 2005) against enactive social cognition. The paper proceeds to deflate this objection by establishing that the distinction between constitution and causation is not co-extensive with the distinction between internal constitutive elements and external causal elements. It is then shown that there is a different reason for thinking that an enactive account of social cognition is problematic. We call this objection the 'poverty of the interactional stimulus argument'. This objection turns on the role and characteristics of anticipation in enactive social cognition. It argues that anticipatory processes are mediated by an internally realised model or tacit theory (Carruthers, 2015; Seth, 2015). The final part of this paper dissolves this objection by arguing that it is possible to cast anticipatory processes as orchestrated as well as maintained by sensorimotor couplings between individuals in face-to-face interaction.