Making Sense of the 4E Cognition Turn in Mental Health Research

4E Cognition approaches—emphasizing embodied, embedded, extended, and enactive features—have emerged to challenge the view that mental disorders are solely brain disorders. This paper examines and classifies these approaches into two main strands: strongly situated or extended views, based on the extended mind hypothesis, and strongly embodied and enactive views, based on autopoietic enactivism. It analyzes how each strand addresses the location problem (whether disorders reside in individuals, social contexts, or their relation) and the boundary problem (distinguishing psychopathology from non-pathological diversity like social deviance). The paper also outlines practical implications of the 4E turn in mental health research.

Study at a glance

Abstract

Abstract: Over the last years, 4E Cognition approaches have emerged in an attempt to overcome the limitations of neuro-reductionism about mental disorders, that is, the view that mental disorders can be fully explained as brain disorders. Instead, 4E approaches emphasize in varying degrees the situated, embodied, embedded, and enactive features of psychopathological conditions. Despite its growing popularity, the development of this alternative framework is not characterized by a distinguishable conceptual unity. This paper examines and classifies the main current 4E approaches to mental health, outlining their core commitments, differences, and implications. Two main strands are distinguished: strongly situated or extended views, comprising applications of the classical and social versions of the extended mind hypothesis, and strongly embodied and enactive views, involving applications of the so-called autopoietic enactivism. We examine the main claims of such approaches regarding two conceptual issues: i) the location problem , that is, whether mental disorders are predicable of individuals, social contexts, or the relation between them, and ii) the boundary problem , that is, how to distinguish psychopathology from non-pathological diversity such as cases of mere social deviance and the like. In the final section, we offer an overview of some of the main practical implications of the 4E turn in mental health research.