Sense-making, within enactive theories, provides a novel way of understanding how a comprehensible and manageable world arises for a subject. Elaboration of the concept of sense-making allows a fundamental reframing of the notion of perception that does not rely on the pick up of information about a pre-given world. In rejecting the notion of the subject as an input/output system, it is also necessary to reframe the scientific account of skilled action. Taking speech as an exemplary domain, I here present the outline of an enactive account of skilled action that is continuous with the concept of sense-making. Extending this account to the rich domain of joint or synchronous speaking allows many of the principal themes of the emerging enactive account to be considered as they relate to a familiar and important human practice.

Key words: synchronization, sense-making, speech, joint action, joint speaking.

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.

Open peer commentary on the article “Interactivity and Enaction in Human Cognition” by Matthew Isaac Harvey, Rasmus Gahrn-Andersen & Sune Vork Steffensen. Upshot: Enaction, as a paradigm, is still negotiating its position with respect to science done in an objective key. Some of the problems identified by the authors arise by treating enactive descriptions as if they were realist accounts. Negotiating a resolution here will demand progress all round.

Open peer commentary on the article “Coordination Produces Cognitive Niches, not just Experiences: A Semi-Formal Constructivist Ontology Based on von Foerster” by Konrad Werner. Upshot: The eigenforms of von Foerster, like the concept of invariants in ecological psychology, have proved useful in stimulating both theory and empirical work in the study of perceptually guided action. The target article offers a novel elaboration of the core idea of invariance in flux. I offer two brief sketches that suggest how the novel formalism might provide a useful stimulus to thought in specific domains: the use of names in dyadic conversation and Buddhist accounts of perception.

Open peer commentary on the article “What Is a Cognizing Subject? Construction, Autonomy and Original Causation” by Niall Palfreyman & Janice Miller-Young. Upshot: The goal of Palfreyman & Miller-Young is to characterize a particular kind of self-determining subject in a way that attempts to resolve divergence between realist, constructivist and enactive accounts. The divergences exist for a reason, and the subject in a realist framework cannot be equated with the subject as it features in an enactive account.

The reflexive character of enactive theory is spelled out, in an effort to make explicit that which is usually implicit in debate: that we are responsible for the distinctions we draw, and that ultimately, the world that we collectively characterize is a joint production. Enaction, as treated here, is not a positivist scientific field, but an epistemologically self-conscious way to ground our understanding of the value-saturated lives of embodied beings. This stance is seen as entirely congruent with the scientific field of ecological psychology, which is itself then cast as a specific example of the kind of science that can be done in an enactive mode.

Key words: enaction, laws of form, ecological psychology, reflexivity, adaptivity

Open peer commentary on the article “The Organization of the Living: Maturana’s Key Insights” by Fritjof Capra. Abstract: Maturana’s radically innovative concept of autopoiesis can, and should, trouble existing accounts of embodied cognition. Just how this concept can be further developed is still uncertain, as witnessed by ongoing confusion in the literature on embodied cognition, with its uncomfortable vacillation between describing embodied beings as humans, organisms, animals, or systems.

The enactive turn in cognitive science fundamentally changes how questions about experience and behaviour are addressed. We propose that there exists a suite of core concepts within enaction that are suited to the characterisation of many kinds of intentional subjects, including and especially animals, plants, collectivities and artefacts. We summarise some basic concerns of enactive theory and show how the common illustration of the single cell ascending a chemotactic gradient serves as a focus point for discussion of important topics such as identity, perspective, value, agency and life-mind continuity. We also highlight two important deficits of this example: the cell is ahistorical and asocial. Historicity and sociality are defining characteristics of living beings and are addressed within enactive theory by the concepts of structural coupling and participatory sense-making, respectively. This strongly biological framework is to be distinguished from scientific psychology which is, we argue, necessarily anthropomorphic. We propose a constrained bio-enactive framework that remains true to its biological foundations and that would allow us to negotiate consensus-based understanding in contested domains, where incompatible value systems enacted by competing systems are in conflict. A consensual ‘we’ is, we contend, a matter of negotiation, not of fixed essence. A bio-enactive framework may serve as a jumping off point for consensus-based discussion within contested domains.