Current theories of addiction try to explain what addiction is, who experiences it, why it occurs, and how it develops and persists. In this article, I explain why none of these theories can be accepted as a comprehensive model. I argue that current models fail to account for differences in embodiment, interaction processes, and the experience of addiction. To redress these limiting factors, I design a proposal for an enactive account of addiction that follows the enactive model of autism proposed by Hanne De Jaegher.

This paper discusses different approaches in cognitive science and artificial intelligence research from the perspective of radical constructivism, addressing especially their relation to the biologically based theories of von Uexküll, Piaget as well as Maturana and Varela. In particular recent work in ‘New AI’ and adaptive robotics on situated and embodied intelligence is examined, and we discuss in detail the role of constructive processes as the basis of situatedness in both robots and living organisms.

Key words: adaptive robotics, artificial intelligence, embodied cognition, radical constructivism, situatedness

Embodiment has become an important concept in many areas of cognitive science. There are, however, very different notions of exactly what embodiment is and what kind of body is required for what type of embodied cognition. Hence, while many nowadays would agree that humans are embodied cognizers, there is much less agreement on what kind of artifact could be considered embodied. This paper identifies and contrasts six different notions of embodiment which can roughly be characterized as (1) structural coupling between agent and environment, (2) historical embodiment as the result of a history of struct ural coupling, (3) physical embodiment, (4) organismoid embodiment, i.e. organismlike bodily form (e.g., humanoid robots), (5) organismic embodiment of autopoietic, living systems, and (6) social embodiment.