Ecological-Enactive Cognition as engaging with a field of relevant affordances

2018 ◽  
pp. 40-70 ◽  
Author(s):  
Erik Rietveld ◽  
Damiaan Denys ◽  
Maarten Van Westen
Keyword(s):  
Conceptual Framework ◽  
Cognitive Science ◽  
Ecological Psychology ◽  
Philosophical Approach ◽  
Enactive Cognition ◽  
Concrete Situation ◽  
Enactive Approach ◽  
4E Cognition ◽  
Skilled Intentionality ◽  
Skilled Action

The topic of this Oxford handbook is “4E cognition”: cognition as embodied, embedded, enactive, and extended. However, one important “E” is missing: an E for ecological. We sketch an ecological-enactive approach to cognition that presents a framework for bringing together the embodied/enactive program with the ecological program originally developed by James Gibson, in which affordances are central. We call this framework the skilled intentionality framework. The skilled intentionality framework is a philosophical approach to understanding the situated and affective embodied mind. It is a new conceptual framework for the field of 4E cognitive science that focuses on skilled action and builds upon an enriched notion of affordances. We define skilled intentionality as the selective engagement with multiple affordances simultaneously in a concrete situation. The skilled intentionality framework clarifies how complementary insights on affordance responsiveness from philosophy/phenomenology, ecological psychology, emotion psychology, and neurodynamics hang together in an intertwined way.

scholarly journals Neither mindful nor mindless, but minded: habits, ecological psychology, and skilled performance

Synthese ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Miguel Segundo-Ortin ◽  
Manuel Heras-Escribano
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Processes ◽  
Motor Behavior ◽  
Mental Representations ◽  
Ecological Psychology ◽  
Context Sensitive ◽  
Skilled Performance ◽  
New Information ◽  
Skilled Action ◽  
Conscious Attention ◽  
Computational Processes

AbstractA widely shared assumption in the literature about skilled motor behavior is that any action that is not blindly automatic and mechanical must be the product of computational processes upon mental representations. To counter this assumption, in this paper we offer a radical embodied (non-representational) account of skilled action that combines ecological psychology and the Deweyan theory of habits. According to our proposal, skilful performance can be understood as composed of sequences of mutually coherent, task-specific perceptual-motor habits. Such habits play a crucial role in simplifying both our exploration of the perceptual environment and our decision-making. However, we argue that what keeps habits situated, precluding them from becoming rote and automatic, are not mental representations but the agent's conscious attention to the affordances of the environment. It is because the agent is not acting on autopilot but constantly searching for new information for affordances that she can control her behavior, adapting previously learned habits to the current circumstances. We defend that our account provides the resources needed to understand how skilled action can be intelligent (flexible, adaptive, context-sensitive) without having any representational cognitive processes built into them.

Characterizing Autopoiesis in the Game of Life

2015 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-19 ◽  
Author(s):  
Randall D. Beer
Keyword(s):  
Cellular Automaton ◽  
Cognitive Science ◽  
Formal Analysis ◽  
Initial Step ◽  
Spatiotemporal Patterns ◽  
Living Systems ◽  
Game Of Life ◽  
Enactive Approach ◽  
Conway’S Game Of Life ◽  
Over Time

Maturana and Varela's concept of autopoiesis defines the essential organization of living systems and serves as a foundation for their biology of cognition and the enactive approach to cognitive science. As an initial step toward a more formal analysis of autopoiesis, this article investigates its application to the compact, recurrent spatiotemporal patterns that arise in Conway's Game-of-Life cellular automaton. In particular, we demonstrate how such entities can be formulated as self-constructing networks of interdependent processes that maintain their own boundaries. We then characterize the specific organizations of several such entities, suggest a way to simplify the descriptions of these organizations, and briefly consider the transformation of such organizations over time.

scholarly journals A experiência perceptual na perspectiva da teoria da percepção direta

2017 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 223-233
Author(s):  
Mariana Claudia Broens
Keyword(s):  
Theory Of Mind ◽  
Mental Models ◽  
Perceptual Experience ◽  
Ecological Psychology ◽  
Direct Perception ◽  
Internal Representations ◽  
Skilled Action

The objective of this paper is to analyse the concept of skilful action underlying the studies of perceptual experience, especially the visual one, from the perspective of the theory of direct perception. The problem we propose to investigate can be formulated as follows: what are the possible contributions of the concept of affordance to understand the nature of skilful actions generally attributed to processes resulting from internal representations or mental models? In particular, we will try to investigate to what extent the concept of social affordance (as a possibility of action that the bodies of the organisms offer directly to other organisms) can help to understand aspects of complex skilful actions that involve capacities considered as deriving from the possession of a Theory of Mind. We will try to show that the perspective of the ecological psychology of direct perception (Gibson 1986, Turvey 1992, Petrusz & Turvey 2010) allows to understand aspects of human skilled action, especially of a collaborative nature, from a conception of perceptual experience that involves information intrinsically significant.

Précis of Behaviorism: A conceptual reconstruction

1986 ◽  
Vol 9 (4) ◽  
pp. 687-699 ◽  
Author(s):  
G. E. Zuriff
Keyword(s):  
Conceptual Framework ◽  
Cognitive Science ◽  
Natural Science ◽  
Language Theory ◽  
Theory Construction ◽  
Logical Scheme ◽  
Stimulus Response ◽  
Complex Processes ◽  
History Of Behaviorism ◽  
History Of

AbstractThe conceptual framework of behaviorism is reconstructed in a logical scheme rather than along chronological lines. The resulting reconstruction is faithful to the history of behaviorism and yet meets the contemporary challenges arising from cognitive science, psycholinguistics, and philosophy. In this reconstruction, the fundamental premise is that psychology is to be a natural science, and the major corollaries are that psychology is to be objective and empirical. To a great extent, the reconstruction of behaviorism is an elaboration of behaviorist views of what it is for a science to be objective and empirical. The reconstruction examines and evaluates behaviorist positions on observation and the rejection of introspection, the behavioral data language, theory construction, stimulus-response psychology, the organization of behavior, complex processes, agency, and the interpretation of mentalistic language. The resulting reconstruction shows behaviorism to be a pragmatic psychological version of positivism based on a behavioral epistemology.

scholarly journals BASIS EPISTEMOLOGIS PARADIGMA RASIONAL DALAM ILMU HUKUM: SEBUAH DESKRIPSI TENTANG ASUMSI-ASUMSI DASAR TEORI HUKUM MURNI-HANS KELSEN

2014 ◽  
Vol 14 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Kelik Wardiono ◽  
Khudzaifah Dimyati
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Science ◽  
Rule Of Law ◽  
Legal Norm ◽  
Empirical Reality ◽  
Philosophical Approach ◽  
Pure Theory ◽  
The Rule Of Law ◽  
Basic Assumptions ◽  
Hans Kelsen ◽  
Theory Of Law

Based on the philosophical approach, it is known basic assumptions of rational paradigm as seen in Hans Kelsen's pure theory of law that consists of: human assumptions based on the quasi-transcendental along with its characters and aurea aetas; ontological assumptions based on empirical reality and equating sein reality with sollen, and normativity created as logico transcendental conditions; epistemological assumption that underlying the science of law as cognitive science, creating the rule of law as a whole object, and reconstructing legal norm as the relation between non-causal and non-metaphysical facts; axiological assumption that reconstructs norm as the object of legal science and equating the basic norms with natural laws.Key words: basic assumptions, rational paradigm, the theory pure of law, jurisprudance.

Distributed Cognition and the Humanities

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-17
Author(s):  
Miranda Anderson ◽  
Michael Wheeler ◽  
Mark Sprevak
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Mind ◽  
Distributed Cognition ◽  
Methodological Approach ◽  
Cognitive Approach ◽  
Cognitive Sciences ◽  
Enactive Cognition ◽  
Arts And Humanities ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Actual Nature ◽  
4E Cognition

The general introduction, which is replicated across all four volumes, aims to orientate readers unfamiliar with this area of research. It provides an overview of the different approaches within the distributed cognition framework and discussion of the value of a distributed cognitive approach to the humanities. A distributed cognitive approach recognises that cognition is brain, body and world based. Distributed cognition is a methodological approach and a way of understanding the actual nature of cognition. The first section provides an overview of the various competing and sometimes conflicting theories that make up the distributed cognition framework and which are also collectively known as 4E cognition: embodied, embedded, extended and enactive cognition. The second section examines the ways in which humanities topics and methodologies are compatible with, placed in question or revitalised by new insights from philosophy of mind and the cognitive sciences on the distributed nature of cognition, and considers what the arts and humanities, in turn, offer to philosophy and cognitive science.

Cognition in Practice

1996 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 79-101 ◽  
Author(s):  
Louis Quéré
Keyword(s):  
Conceptual Framework ◽  
Cognitive Science ◽  
Social Process ◽  
Alternative View ◽  
Theories Of Action ◽  
Recent Trends ◽  
Embodied Agency ◽  
Do So

How may we conceive of cognition in practice? What kind of thinking and reflection animate the accomplishment of action? These problems are usually settled by an intellectualist argument: to perform an action is mainly to execute decisions, to carry out plans or intentions, or to follow instructions. According to that view, cognition produces action, but it does not take place in the accomplishment of action itself Such an intellectualist view has been taken up again and developed by recent trends in cognitive science. Why focus on such a view? Because, by its systematizing of current assumptions in most of (he theories of action, it makes the conceptual framework of those theories very clear and allows one to see the inconsistencies of its underpinning. The alternative view outlined in this paper is based on an externalist and pragmatic conception of mind. It considers cognition as a social process and reintegrates it into the performance of situated actions. To do so, it grasps performance as a genuine praxis and specifies the thinking and reflection which animate it in relation to the phenomenon of 'embodied agency.'

Joint Action and 4E Cognition

2018 ◽  
pp. 260-280
Author(s):  
Torstein T. Tollefsen ◽  
Rick Dale
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Science ◽  
Empirical Research ◽  
Experimental Psychology ◽  
Joint Action ◽  
Complex Nature ◽  
Cognitive Anthropology ◽  
Low Level ◽  
4E Cognition ◽  
High Level ◽  
The Way

Over past thirty years there has been an increased interest in studying joint action across a number of different disciplines including psychology, sociology, cognitive anthropology, cognitive science, and philosophy. In this chapter we canvas recent philosophical and empirical research on joint action. Along the way we highlight embedded, embodied, extended, and enactive approaches and the challenges they pose for more orthodox approaches to joint action. We propose an ecumenical approach to the study of joint action. The cognitive science of joint action will have to integrate both high-level and low-level approaches across a variety of disciplines, including experimental psychology, neuroscience, and philosophy. A single unitary account is unlikely to capture the nuanced and complex nature of joint action. Instead, we argue that we should seek a better understanding of how various accounts coalesce into a tapestry of explanatory tools.

scholarly journals Knowing Groundlessness: An Enactive Approach to a Shift From Cognition to Non-Dual Awareness

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Meling
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Science ◽  
Lived Experience ◽  
Theoretical Framework ◽  
Context Dependency ◽  
Sense Making ◽  
Enactive Approach ◽  
Science Discourse ◽  
Theoretical Statement ◽  
Underlying Principle ◽  
Reflexive Analysis

The enactive approach has become an influential paradigm in cognitive science. One of its most important claims is that cognition is sense-making: to cognize is to enact a world of meaning. Thus, a world is not pregiven but enacted through sense-making. Most importantly, sense-making is not a fixed process or thing. It does not have substantial existence. Instead, it is groundless: it springs from a dynamic of relations, without substantial ground. Thereby, as all cognition is groundless, this groundlessness is considered the central underlying principle of cognition. This article takes that key concept of the enactive approach and argues that it is not only a theoretical statement. Rather, groundlessness is directly accessible in lived experience. The two guiding questions of this article concern that lived experience of groundlessness: (1) What is it to know groundlessness? (2) How can one know groundlessness? Accordingly, it elaborates (1) how this knowing of groundlessness fits into the theoretical framework of the enactive approach. Also, it describes (2) how it can be directly experienced when certain requirements are met. In an additional reflexive analysis, the context-dependency and observer-relativity of those statements themselves is highlighted. Through those steps, this article exhibits the importance of knowing groundlessness for a cognitive science discourse: this underlying groundlessness is not only the “ground” of cognition, but it also can be investigated empirically through lived experience. However, it requires a methodology that is radically different from classical cognitive science. This article ends with envisioning a future praxis of cognitive science which enables researchers to investigate not only theoretically but empirically the “foundationless foundation” of cognition: groundlessness.

scholarly journals Demystifying Disruptive Innovation Phenomenon: Economic and Societal Impacts

2019 ◽  
Vol 64 ◽  
pp. 9-24
Author(s):  
Roula TABBAH ◽  
Alex MARITZ
Keyword(s):  
Conceptual Framework ◽  
Deductive Reasoning ◽  
Secondary Data ◽  
Disruptive Innovation ◽  
Primary Data ◽  
Philosophical Approach ◽  
Case Study Analysis ◽  
Disruptive Innovation Theory ◽  
Societal Impacts

This research aims to demystify disruptive innovation phenomena and its economic and societal impacts. The study is investigative in nature and highlights the gap between the current endorsed disruptive innovation theory and the actual impacts of the phenomena as evident in markets, industries, and societies. The study adopts a positivism philosophical approach and deductive reasoning that builds on secondary data from literature across multiple disciplines that have a strong correlation with the research topic and case study analysis of five market-leading organizations that have significantly impacted their respective industries. The paper presents a comprehensive definition and a conceptual framework that provides an appropriate illustration of the term disruptive innovation based on the conceptual findings. The findings reveal that despite challenging mainstream incumbents, disruptive innovation yields positive impacts on economies, consumers and societies. The research concludes by advocating further research to empirically test the conceptual framework and validate it through primary data and assess its generalizability.

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