REC or radical enactive (or embodied) cognition involves the claim that certain forms of mentality do not involve informational content and are instead to be equated with temporally and spatially extended physical interactions between an agent and the environment. REC also claims however that other forms of mentality do involve informational content and are scaffolded by socially and linguistically enabled practices. This seems to raise what can be called a cognitive gap question, namely, how do non-contentful behaviours give rise to contentful behaviours? In this paper, I show how REC can tackle a certain understanding of this question. I argue that if REC were to endorse claims made by the later Wittgenstein, then REC could deny that there is any (synchronous) gap in our intelligent behaviour.

Key words: rec, radical enactivism, hutto and myin, wittgenstein, cognitive gap.

Many authors have identified a link between later Wittgenstein and enactivism. But few have also recognised how Wittgenstein may in fact challenge enactivist approaches. In this paper, I consider one such challenge. For example, Wittgenstein is well known for his discussion of seeing-as, most famously through his use of Jastrow’s ambiguous duck-rabbit picture. Seen one way, the picture looks like a duck. Seen another way, the picture looks like a rabbit. Drawing on some of Wittgenstein’s remarks about seeing-as, I show how Wittgenstein poses a challenge for proponents of Sensorimotor Enactivism, like O’Regan and Noë, namely to provide a sensorimotor framework within which seeing-as can be explained. I claim that if these proponents want to address this challenge, then they should endorse what I call Sensorimotor Identification, according to which visual experiences can be identified with what agents do.

Key words: wittgenstein, enactivism, o’regan and noë, sensorimotor know-how, sensorimotor identity

Excerpt: This chapter will be devoted to unpacking the sensorimotor thesis that experience is something we do, and explicating how it helps to deal with the philosophical problem of consciousness. The key to understanding the sensorimotor position, so we propose, is to recognize it as a form of identity theory. Like the early mind/brain identity theorists, the sensorimotor approach holds that the solution to the philosophical problem of phenomenal experience lies in realizing that phenomenal experience is identical with something which, while at first sight might seem different, turns out not to be different after all. Like the classical identity theorists, sensorimotor theorists reject the claim that identities can and need to be further explained once identification is made. Sensorimotor theorists consequently oppose the idea that there is a genuine scientific issue with the identity relation between experience and what perceivers do. However, unlike other identity positions, the identification proposed by the sensorimotor approach is wide. That is, conscious experience is identified, not with internal or neural processes, but instead with bodily (including neural) processes in spatially and temporally extended interactions with environments.