Converging enactivisms: radical enactivism meets linguistic bodies

We advance a critical examination of two recent branches of the enactivist research program, namely, Radically Enactive Cognition and Linguistic Bodies. We argue that, although these approaches may look like diverging views within the wider enactivist program, when appraised in a conciliatory spirit, they can be interpreted as developing converging ideas. We examine how the notion of know-how figures in them to show an important point of convergence, namely, that the normativity of human cognitive capacities rests on shared know-how. Radical enactivism emphasizes the diachronic dimension of shared know-how, and linguistic bodies emphasize the synchronic one. Given that know-how is a normative notion, it is subject to success conditions. We then argue it implies basic content, which is the content of the successful ongoing interactions between agent(s) and environment. Basic content does not imply accuracy conditions and representational content, so it evades Hutto and Myin’s Hard Problem of Content. Moreover, this account is amenable to the central claim by Di Paolo et al. that the participatory sense-making relations at play in linguistic exchanges are explained in continuity with explanations of biological organization and sensorimotor engagements.

LINGUAGEM E ENATIVISMO

Language does not have to be held as a problem for radical enactivists. The scope objection usually presented to criticize enactivist explanations is a problem only if we have a referentialist and representationalist view of the nature of language. Here we present a normative hypothesis for the great question concerning the hard problem of content, namely, on how linguistic practices develop from minds without content. We carry representational content when we master inferential relations and we master inferential relations when we master normative relations, especially when we are introduced into frameworks of authorizations and prohibitions. Inspired by the anti-intellectualism of the later Wittgenstein and Brandom’s inferentialism, we present the hypothesis that language emerges from inferentially articulated action from normative elements and not from manipulation in internal mental states of contents fixed by reference to external things.

Going Radical

E-approaches to cognition—enactive, embodied, ecological—conceive of minds as fundamentally relational and interactive. They are often heralded as offering a new paradigm for thinking about the mental. Yet only the most radical versions of E-approaches—those that seek not to complement but to replace traditional cognitivist accounts of mind—have any prospect of ushering in a truly revolutionary rethink of the nature of cognition. This chapter considers whether such a conceptual revolution might really be in the cards. It identities the major options proposed by E-theorists, rating each in terms of degree of radicality. It reminds readers of the hard problem of content and reviews the range of options for handling it. It argues that “going radical” is one of the most attractive ways of dealing with the hard problem of content and that it is worth exploring the positive research program that going radical opens up.

Epilogue: Missing Information?

The epilogue takes a last look at the possibility that REC may be leaving out something explanatorily important because it says nothing about how the brain processes informational content. Focusing on a prominent case, it is demonstrated that REC has the resources to understand the groundbreaking research on positioning systems in rat brains. It is argued that rat brains can be informationally sensitive without processing informational content. No explanatory power is lost in adopting REC’s deflated explanation; but much is gained by doing so since it avoids the Hard Problem of Content. The chapter concludes by showing how REC’s proposed vision of neurodynamics is wholly compatible with its dynamical and extensive account of cognition; a vision of cognition that opens the door to broader lines of research in the cognitive sciences that taking into account the ways in which culture can permeate cognition.

Continuity: Kinks Not Breaks

Chapter 6 sets out to show REC can allow for content-involving cognition in nature without itself falling foul of the Hard Problem of Content and without introducing unbridgeable evolutionary discontinuity or gaps in nature. Thus it crucially defuses critical concerns about REC’s NOC program in order to establish that it is a tenable way of explaining the how content-involving cognition arose and arises naturally, and where content can be found in nature. It then lays out the broad outlines of REC’s proposed explanation for the Natural Origins of Content – its NOC program that draws on Neo-Pragmatist resources and advocates the adoption of a Relaxed as opposed to Strict Scientific Naturalism. It advances a multi-storey explanation, involving kinks not breaks. This explains how content-involving cognition could have arisen through the mastery of special socio-cultural practices, providing new resources but without changing the fundamental character of cognition. Its basic sketch of how the NOC program might be pursued paves the way for further research.

Reasons to REConceive

Chapter 2 introduces REC’s Equal Partner Principle, according to which invoking neural, bodily, and environmental factors all make equally important contributions when it comes to explaining cognitive activity. In line with that principle, it is made clear how REC can accept that cognitive capacities depend on structural changes that occur inside organisms and their brains, without understanding such changes in information processing and representationalist terms. This chapter explicates the Hard Problem of Content, aka the HPC, as basis for a compelling argument for REC. The HPC is a seemingly intractable theoretical puzzle for defenders of unrestricted CIC. A straight solution to the HPC requires explaining how it is possible to get from informational foundations that are noncontentful to a theory of mental content using only the resources of a respectable explanatory naturalism that calls on the resources of the hard sciences. It is revealed how the need to deal with the HPC can be avoided by adopting REC’s revolutionary take on basic cognition, and why going this way has advantages over other possible ways of handling the HPC.

Continuity Skepticism in Doubt: A Radically Enactive Take

Radically Enactive Cognition, REC, holds that not all forms of cognition are content involving and, especially, not root forms. According to radical enactivists, only minds that have mastered special kinds of socio-cultural practice are capable of content involving forms of cognition. This paper addresses criticisms that have been leveled at REC’s vision of how content-involving cognition may have come on the scene. It responds, in the first section, to the charge that REC faces a fatal dilemma when it comes to accounting for the origins of content in naturalistic terms—a dilemma that arises from REC’s own acknowledgment of the existence of a Hard Problem of Content. In subsequent sections, the paper addresses the charge that REC entails continuity skepticism, reviewing this charge in its scientific and philosophical formulations. It is concluded that REC is not at odds with evolutionary continuity, when both REC and evolutionary continuity are properly understood. It is also concluded that although REC cannot completely close the imaginative gap that is required to answer the philosophical continuity skeptic it is, in this respect, in no worse a position than its representationalist rivals and their naturalistic proposals about the origins of content.

The Hard Problem Of Content: Solved (Long Ago)

In this paper, I argue that even if the Hard Problem of Content, as identified by Hutto and Myin, is important, it was already solved in naturalized semantics, and satisfactory solutions to the problem do not rely merely on the notion of information as covariance. I point out that Hutto and Myin have double standards for linguistic and mental representation, which leads to a peculiar inconsistency. Were they to apply the same standards to basic and linguistic minds, they would either have to embrace representationalism or turn to semantic nihilism, which is, as I argue, an unstable and unattractive position. Hence, I conclude, their book does not offer an alternative to representationalism. At the same time, it reminds us that representational talk in cognitive science cannot be taken for granted and that information is different from mental representation. Although this claim is not new, Hutto and Myin defend it forcefully and elegantly.