Among the many ideas that go by the name of “enactivism” there is the idea that by “cognition” we should understand what is more commonly taken to be behavior. For clarity, label such forms of enactivism “enactivismb.” This terminology requires some care in evaluating enactivistb claims. There is a genu-ine risk of enactivist and non-enactivist cognitive scientists talking past one another. So, for example, when enactivistsb write that “cognition does not require representations” they are not necessarily denying what cognitivists claim when they write that “cognition requires representations.” This paper will draw attention to instances of some of these unnecessary confusions.

Both autonomy and agency play central roles in the emerging enactive vocabulary. Although some treat these concepts as practically synonymous, others have sought to be more explicit about the conditions required for agency over and above autonomy. I attempt to be self-conscious about the role of the ob-server (or scientist) in such discussions, and emphasise that the concept of agency, in particular, is deeply entwined with the nature of the observer and the framing of the observation. This is probably well known to enactivists, but runs the risk of being badly misunderstood if it is not made explicit. A height-ened awareness of the role of the observer in the attribution of agency may allow us to make advances in questions in which progress is hindered by as-suming a single split between subject and object. I argue that human experi-ence is characterized by our embedding in webs of meaning arising from our participation in systems of many sorts, and that this richness demands a cor-responding lightness of touch with respect to the identification of agentive subjects.

Key words: agency, autonomy, enactivism, cognition, mind.

The full scope of enactivist approaches to cognition includes not only a focus on sensory-motor contingencies and physical affordances for action, but also an emphasis on affective factors of embodiment and intersubjective af-fordances for social interaction. This strong conception of embodied cognition calls for a new way to think about the role of the brain in the larger system of brain-body-environment. We ask whether recent work on predictive coding offers a way to think about brain function in an enactive system, and we sug-gest that a positive answer is possible if we interpret predictive coding in a more enactive way, i.e., as involved in the organism’s dynamic adjustments to its environment.

The notion of affordance has been introduced by Gibson (1977, 1979) as the feature of an object or the environment that allows the observer to perform an action, a set of “environmental supports for an organism’s intentional activities” (Reybrouck 2005) Studied under very different perspectives, this concept has become a crucial issue not only for the ecological psychology, but also for cognitive sciences, artificial intelligence studies, and philosophy of mind. This variety of approaches has widened the already ambiguous definition originally provided by Gibson, contributing to the development of different standpoints in open contrast with each other (see Zipoli Caiani 2011) During the last two decades, moreover, many researchers tried to extend the notion also to musical experience, aiming to draw a coherent theory of musical affordances (e.g. Clarke 2005; Nussbaum 2007; Krueger 2011a; 2011b) In this paper, we will argue for a particular concept of musical affordances, that is, as we see it, one narrower and less ambiguous in scope and more closely related to its original. Taking the discovery of canonical neurons as our starting point, we will (i) introduce the general notion of affordance, (ii) discuss some significant contributions in this area of research, mostly focusing on musical affordances and (iii) propose a motor-based interpretation of musical affordances.

Key words: musical affordances, canonical neurons, motor intentionality, musical understanding, embodied music cognition.

The immune self is our reified way to describe the processes through which the immune system maintains the differentiated identity of the organism and itself. This is an interpretative process, and to study it in a scientifically constructive way we should merge a long hermeneutical tradition of asking questions about the nature of interpretation together with modern understanding of the immune system, emerging sensing technologies and advanced computational tools for analyzing the sensors’ data. Relevance: The author claims that our immune system is a meaning-making system in the context of biology of cognition as well as the hermeneutical tradition.

This article addresses the question of the coherence of enactivism as a research perspective by making a case study of enactivism in mathematics education research. Main theoretical directions in mathematics education are reviewed and the history of adoption of concepts from enactivism is described. It is concluded that enactivism offers a ‘grand theory’ that can be brought to bear on most of the phenomena of interest in mathematics education research, and so it provides a sufficient theoretical framework. It has particular strength in describing interactions between cognitive systems, including human beings, human conversations and larger human social systems. Some apparent incoherencies of enactivism in mathematics education and in other fields come from the adoption of parts of enactivism that are then grafted onto incompatible theories. However, another significant source of incoherence is the inadequacy of Maturana’s definition of a social system and the lack of a generally agreed upon alternative.

Key words: enactivism, biology of cognition, mathematics education, theories of learning, autopoiesis, cognitive systems, social systems.

I propose a systematic survey of the various attitudes proponents of enaction (or enactivism) entertained or are entertaining towards representationalism and towards the use of the concept “mental representation” in cognitive sci-ence. For the sake of clarity, a set of distinctions between different varieties of representationalism and anti-representationalism are presented. I also reca-pitulate and discuss some anti-representationalist trends and strategies one can find the enactive literature, before focusing on some possible limitations of eliminativist versions of enactive anti-representationalism. These limita-tions are here taken as opportunities for reflecting on the fate of enactivism in its relations with representationalism and anti-representationalism.

Key words: natural content, mental representation, representationalism, enactivism, anti-representationalism, theoretical terms, eliminativism