Enactivism Meets Mechanism: Tensions & Congruities in Cognitive Science

Cognition arises from the dynamic interaction between an embodied agent and its environment, according to enactivism, while new mechanism explains cognition by identifying the organized components that underlie cognitive abilities. Although mechanistic explanations often focus on localizable, decomposable neural mechanisms that seem to conflict with enactivist views, this paper argues they are compatible because mechanistic explanations need not be narrow or reductive and can incorporate ideas like emergence and downward causation. Enactivist ideas may also guide mechanistic investigations. However, the two approaches diverge in assumptions about cognition's constitutive boundaries.

Study at a glance

Abstract

Enactivism advances an understanding of cognition rooted in the dynamic interaction between an embodied agent and their environment, whilst new mechanism suggests that cognition is explained by uncovering the organised components underlying cognitive capacities. On the face of it, the mechanistic model’s emphasis on localisable and decomposable mechanisms, often neural in nature, runs contrary to the enactivist ethos. Despite appearances, this paper argues that mechanistic explanations of cognition, being neither narrow nor reductive, and compatible with plausible iterations of ideas like emergence and downward causation, are congruent with enactivism. Attention to enactivist ideas, moreover, may serve as a heuristic for mechanistic investigations of cognition. Nevertheless, I show how enactivism and approaches that prioritise mechanistic modelling may diverge in starting assumptions about the nature of cognitive phenomena, such as where the constitutive boundaries of cognition lie.