The Material, Cultural, and Relational Environment in the New Cognitive Sciences

The environment has been reconceptualized in cognitive science from a passive backdrop to an active, co-constitutive element of cognition. Drawing on 4E cognition (Embodied, Embedded, Enacted, Extended) and thinkers such as Bernard, von Uexküll, Gibson, Lewin, and enactivists Varela, Thompson, and Rosch, the paper reviews how traditional mind/body and subject/object dichotomies are dismantled. The environment is presented as a relational, open process shaped by sensorimotor activity and embodied action. Integrating Malafouris’ Material Engagement Theory with findings in epigenetics and neuroplasticity, the argument shows cognition as a relational process shaped across ontogenetic and developmental scales by material, affective, and cultural environments.

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Abstract

The paper addresses the epistemological reconfiguration in contemporary cognitive science of the notion of environment, which has shifted from passive backdrop to an active, co-constitutive dimension of cognition. It reviews the dismantling of traditional dichotomies (mind/body, subject/object) through the lens of the model of 4E cognition (Embodied, Embedded, Enacted, Extended), that, drawing on Bernard, von Uexküll, Gibson, Lewin and the enactivits Varela, Thompson and Rosch, emphasizes the dynamical interaction of the organism with its environment. The environment is recast as a relational and open process, shaped by sensorimotor activity and embodied action. Finally, through the integration of Malafouris’ Material Engagament Theory with recent findings in epigenetics and neuroplasticity, it is underscored how cognition, as a relational process, is shaped at different ontogenetic and developmental scales by material, affective and cultural environments.