The concept of “autonomy,” once at the core of the original enactivist proposal in The Embodied Mind (Varela et al. in The embodied mind: cognitive science and human experience. MIT Press, Cambridge, 1991), is nowadays ignored or neglected by some of the most prominent contemporary enactivists approaches. Theories of autonomy, however, come to fill a theoretical gap that sensorimotor accounts of cognition cannot ignore: they provide a naturalized account of normativity and the resources to ground the identity of a cognitive subject in its specific mode of organization. There are, however, good reasons for the contemporary neglect of autonomy as a relevant concept for enactivism. On the one hand, the concept of autonomy has too often been assimilated into autopoiesis (or basic autonomy in the molecular or biological realm) and the implications are not always clear for a dynamical sensorimotor approach to cognitive science. On the other hand, the foundational enactivist proposal displays a metaphysical tension between the concept of operational closure (autonomy), deployed as constitutive, and that of structural coupling (sensorimotor dynamics); making it hard to reconcile with the claim that experience is sensorimotorly constituted. This tension is particularly apparent when Varela et al. propose Bittorio (a 1D cellular automata) as a model of the operational closure of the nervous system as it fails to satisfy the required conditions for a sensorimotor constitution of experience. It is, however, possible to solve these problems by re-considering autonomy at the level of sensorimotor neurodynamics. Two recent robotic simulation models are used for this task, illustrating the notion of strong sensorimotor dependency of neurodynamic patterns, and their networked intertwinement. The concept of habit is proposed as an enactivist building block for cognitive theorizing, re-conceptualizing mental life as a habit ecology, tied within an agent’s behaviour generating mechanism in coordination with its environment. Norms can be naturalized in terms of dynamic, interactively self-sustaining, coherentism. This conception of autonomous sensorimotor agency is put in contrast with those enactive approaches that reject autonomy or neglect the theoretical resources it has to offer for the project of naturalizing minds.

Key words: Autonomy, enactivism, operational closure of the nervous system, sensorimotor constitution of experience, mental life, habit, sensorimotor autonomous agency, autonomist sensorimotor enactivism.

This paper traces the development of enactive concepts of value and normativity from their roots in the canonical work of Varela et al. (Embodied mind: cognitive science and human experience. MIT Press, Cambridge, 1991) through more recent works of Ezequiel Di Paolo and others. It aims to show the central importance of these concepts for enactive theory while exposing a potentially troublesome ambiguity in their definition. Most definitions of enactive normativity are purely proscriptive, but it seems that enactive theories of cognitive agency and experience demand something more. On the other hand, it is not clear that anything other than proscriptive normativity can be made compatible with the enactive tenet of autonomy and the rejection of representations.

Key words: Enactive theory, Value, Normativity, Adaptivity, Cognition

In this paper I advance an enactive view of affectivity that does not imply that affectivity must stop at the boundaries of the organism. I first review the enactive notion of “sense-making”, and argue that it entails that cognition is inherently affective. Then I review the proposal, advanced by Di Paolo (Topoi 28:9–21, 2009), that the enactive approach allows living systems to “extend”. Drawing out the implications of this proposal, I argue that, if enactivism allows living systems to extend, then it must also allow sense-making, and thus cognition as well as affectivity, to extend – in the specific sense of allowing the physical processes (vehicles) underpinning these phenomena to include, as constitutive parts, non-organic environmental processes. Finally I suggest that enactivism might also allow specific human affective states, such as moods, to extend.

Key words: enactivism, extended mind, extended life, affectivity, emotion, mood.

The sensorimotor theory of perceptual consciousness offers a form of enactivism in that it stresses patterns of interaction instead of any alleged internal rep-resentations of the environment. But how does it relate to forms of enactivism stressing the continuity between life and mind (and more particularly autopoiesis, autonomy, and valence)? We shall distinguish sensorimotor enactivism, which stresses perceptual capacities themselves, from autopoietic enactivism, which claims an essential connection between experience and autopoietic processes or associated background capacities. We show how autopoiesis, autonomous agency, and affective dimensions of experience may fit into sensorimotor enactivism, and we identify differences between this interpretation and autopoietic enactivism. By taking artificial consciousness as a case in point, we further sharpen the distinction between sensorimotor enactivism and autopoietic enactivism. We argue that sensorimotor enactivism forms a strong default position for an enactive account of perceptual consciousness.

Key words: Consciousness, Sensorimotor theory, Enactivism, Autopoiesis, Artificial consciousness

This paper reformulates some of the questions raised by extended mind theorists from an enactive, life/mind continuity perspective. Because of its reliance on concepts such as autopoiesis, the enactive approach has been deemed internalist and thus incompatible with the extended mind hypothesis. This paper answers this criticism by showing (1) that the relation between organism and cogniser is not one of co-extension, (2) that cognition is a relational phenomenon and thereby has no location, and (3) that the individuality of a cogniser is inevitably linked with the question of its autonomy, a question ignored by the extended mind hypothesis but for which the enactive approach proposes a precise, operational, albeit non-functionalist answer. The paper raises a perspective of embedded and intersecting forms of autonomous identity generation, some of which correspond to the canonical cases discussed in the extended mind literature, but on the whole of wider generality. In addressing these issues, this paper proposes unbiased, non-species specific definitions of cognition, agency and mediation, thus filling in gaps in the extended mind debates that have led to paradoxical situations and a problematic over-reliance on intuitions about what counts as cognitive.

This paper shows how a radical approach to enactivism provides a way of clarifying and unifying different varieties of enactivism and enactivist-friendly approaches so as to provide a genuine alternative to classical cognitivism. Section 1 reminds readers of the broad church character of the enactivism framework. Section 2 explicates how radical enactivism is best understood not as a kind of enactivism per se but as a programme for radicalizing and consolidating the many different enactivist offerings. The main work of radical enactivism is to RECtify, existing varieties of enactivism and other cognate approaches so as to strengthen and unify them into a single collective that can rival classical ways of thinking about mind and cognition. Section 3 shows how even seemingly non-enactivist explanatory offerings – such as predictive processing accounts of cognition – might be RECtified and brought within the enactivist explanatory fold. Section 4 reveals why, once RECtified, enactivist offerings, broadly conceived, qualify as genuine and revolutionary alternatives to classical ways of understanding cognition.

Key words: enactivism, radical enactivism, predictive coding, mental representations, mental content.

Abstract: According to the view that has become known as the extended mind, some token mental processes extend into the cognizing organism’s environment in that they are composed (partly) of manipulative, exploitative, and transformative operations performed by that subject on suitable environmental structures. Enactivist models understand mental processes as (partly) constituted by sensorimotor knowledge and by the organism’s ability to act, in appropriate ways, on environmental structures. Given the obvious similarities between the two views, it is both tempting and common to regard them as essentially variations on the same theme. In this paper, I shall argue that the similarities between enactivist and extended models of cognition are relatively superficial, and the divergences are deeper than commonly thought.

Key words: Ability, enactivism, extended mind, sensorimotor knowledge

This paper explores some of the differences between the enactive approach in cognitive science and the extended mind thesis. We review the key enactive concepts of autonomy and sense-making. We then focus on the following issues: (1) the debate between internalism and externalism about cognitive processes; (2) the relation between cognition and emotion; (3) the status of the body; and (4) the difference between ‘incorporation’ and mere ‘extension’ in the body-mind-environment relation.

Key words: Enaction, Extended mind, Autonomy, Sense-making, Emotion, Embodiment, Incorporation

Just over 25 years ago, Francisco Varela, Evan Thompson and Eleanor Rosch published The Embodied Mind: Cognitive Science and Human Experience (TEM). An ambitious synthesis of ideas from phenomenology, cognitive science, evolutionary biology, Buddhist philosophy and psychology, it attempted to articulate a new research programme: an enactive cognitive science, that would bridge the gap between the empirical study of the mind and the disciplined reflection on our lived experience that characterises phenomenological and Buddhist practices. This enactive approach to the study of mind represented a confluence of several streams of thought whose effect on the cognitive scientific landscape was becoming gradually more pronounced. A vision of cognition as active, embodied, and embedded was beginning to crystalise, and TEM consolidated and further strengthened existing trends. In the intervening years, the theoretical currents that flowed into TEM have only grown stronger within cognitive science and philosophy of mind. As a result, the ‘enactivist’ label has gained in currency, as different combinations of TEM’s main conceptual ingredients have been concocted and presented by different researchers. A consequence of this is the apparent existence of a variety of distinct but overlapping ‘enactivisms’, the relations between which are not always clear. This special issue aims to provide a clearer picture of the enactivist theoretical landscape, some of its distinctive landmarks, and the disputed borders between its main provinces. Each of the papers in this issue takes up and pursues a live theoretical issue for enactivist research, while at the same time shedding light on the conceptual geography of enactivism. In this introduction, we frame these contributions by providing a brief sketch of the streams of thought that flowed into TEM and the origins of enactivism, and the main theoretical channels that have emerged from it.