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Enactivism is a theoretical approach to understanding the mind proposed by Francisco Varela, Evan Thompson, and Eleanor Rosch. It emphasizes the way that organisms and the human mind organize themselves by interacting with their environment. It is closely related to situated cognition and embodied cognition, and is presented as an alternative to cognitivism, computationalism and Cartesian dualism.
Accounts of enactivism
A book reviewer, Jeremy Trevalyan Burman, in reviewing Consciousness & Emotion, vol 1., concluded:
...the importance of this first book was not immediately clear: future volumes will need to telegraph their implications more explicitly if they are to be successfully received.
However, in a review of the book Consciousness & Emotion Book Series 2 edited by Richard Menary, Evan Thompson, the book reviewer, stated the view:
Enactivists criticize representational views of the mind and emphasize the importance of embodiment and action to cognition.
- -Evan Thompson, Dept. of Philosophy, University of Toronto.
At a fundamental level, enactivism is anti-dualist. The self arises as part of the process of an embodied entity interacting with the environment in precise ways determined by its physiology. In this sense, individuals can be seen to "grow into" or arise from, their interactive role with the world. The self does not represent the world, but produces it through the nature of its unique way of interacting with its environment, stated the authors of The embodied mind: Cognitive science and human experience.
Francisco Varela, in 'The Tree of knowledge' proposed the term enactive "to designate this view of knowledge, to evoke the view that what is known is brought forth, in contraposition to the more classical views of either cognitivism or connectionism." Within the book, the analogies of the Razor's Edge and the Scylla and Charybdis are used to describe the "epistemologic Odyssey" between the notions of solipsism and representationalism. Enactivism, therefore is the middle ground between the two extremes . Maturana and Varela use this term to "confront the problem of understanding how our existence-the praxis of our living- is coupled to a surrounding world which appears filled with regularities that are at every instant the result of our biological and social histories.... to find a via media: to understand the regularity of the world we are experiencing at every moment, but without any point of reference independent of ourselves that would give certainty to our descriptions and cognitive assertions. Indeed the whole mechanism of generating ourselves, as describers and observers tells us that our world, as the world which we bring forth in our coexistence with others, will always have precisely that mixture of regularity and mutability, that combination of solidity and shifting sand, so typical of human experience when we look at it up close."
Similar Theories of Growth of Knowledge
Another current of biology inspired theories of growth of knowledge which are even more tied to Universal Darwinism in comparison to enactivism are those of evolutionary epistemologists, such as Karl Popper and Donald T. Campbell. In common with enactivism is their emphasis on both action and embodiment as sources of the knowledge which must reflect the environment well enough for the organism to be able to survive in it and which make them competitive enough to be able to reproduce at sustainable rate in their environment.
Scholars with sympathetic ideas
Other related scholars
Yet other authors of similar "Natural Growth of Knowledge" theories
See also
Further reading
- McGann, M. & Torrance, S. (2005). Doing it and meaning it (and the relationship between the two). In R. D. Ellis & N. Newton, Consciousness & Emotion, vol. 1: Agency, conscious choice, and selective perception. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. ISBN 1-58811-596-8
- Hutto, D. D. (Ed.) (in press). Radical Enactivism: Intentionality, phenomenology, and narrative. In R. D. Ellis & N. Newton (Series Eds.), Consciousness & Emotion, vol. 2. ISBN 90-272-4151-1
References
- ^ Varela, F. J., Thompson, E., & Rosch, E. (1991). The embodied mind: cognitive science and human experience. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
- Ellis, R. D., & Newton, N. (2005). Consciousness & emotion: agency, conscious choice, and selective perception. Amsterdam [etc.: Benjamins.
- ^ Burman, J. T. (2006). , Journal of Consciousness Studies, 13(12), pp. 115-119. Full-text
- Radical Enactivism
- Maturana, H. R., & Varela, F. J. (1992). The tree of knowledge: the biological roots of human understanding (Rev. ed.). Boston: Shambhala ; p255.
- Gary Cziko (1995) Without Miracles: Universal Selection Theory and the Second Darwinian Revolution (MIT Press)
- Riccardo Manzotti
- Teed Rockwell
- Ezequiel Di Paolo