This paper argues that it is possible to combine enactivism and ecological psychology in a single post-cognitivist research framework if we highlight the common pragmatist assumptions of both approaches. These pragmatist assumptions or starting points are shared by ecological psychology and the enactive approach independently of being historically related to pragmatism, and they are based on the idea of organic coordination, which states that the evolution and development of the cognitive abilities of an organism are explained by appealing to the history of interactions of that organism with its environment. It is argued that the idea of behavioral or organic coordination within the enactive approach gives rise to the sensorimotor abilities of the organism, while the ecological approach emphasizes the coordination at a higher-level between organism and environment through the agent’s exploratory behavior for perceiving affordances. As such, these two different processes of organic coordination can be integrated in a post-cognitivist research framework, which will be based on two levels of analysis: the subpersonal one (the neural dynamics of the sensorimotor contingencies and the emergence of enactive agency) and the personal one (the dynamics that emerges from the organism-environment interaction in ecological terms). If this proposal is on the right track, this may be a promising first step for offering a systematized and consistent post-cognitivist approach to cognition that retain the full potential of both enactivism and ecological psychology.

Key words: pragmatism, enactivism, ecological psychology, affordances, cognitive science.

Predictive Processing accounts of Cognition, PPC, promise to forge productive alliances that will unite approaches that are otherwise at odds (see Clark, A. Surfing uncertainty: prediction, action and the embodied mind. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2016). Can it? This paper argues that it can’t – or at least not so long as it sticks with the cognitivist rendering that Clark (2016) and others favor. In making this case the argument of this paper unfolds as follows: Sect. 1 describes the basics of PPC – its attachment to the idea that we perceive the world by guessing the world. It then details the reasons why so many find cognitivist interpretations to be inevitable. Section 2 examines how prominent proponents of cognitivist PPC have proposed dealing with a fundamental problem that troubles their accounts – the question of how the brain is able to get into the great guessing game in the first place. It is argued that on close inspection Clark’s (2016) solution, which he calls bootstrap heaven is – once we take a realistic look at the situation of the brain – in fact bootstrap hell. Section 3 argues that it is possible to avoid dwelling in bootstrap hell if one adopts a radically enactive take on PPC. A brief sketch of what this might look like is provided.

Key words: predictive processing, cognitivism, enactivism, learning, information

Radical and autopoietic enactivists disagree concerning how to understand the concept of sense-making in enactivist discourse and the extent of its distribution within the organic domain. I situate this debate within a broader conflict of commitments to naturalism on the part of radical enactivists, and to phenomenology on the part of autopoietic enactivists. I argue that autopoietic enactivists are in part responsible for the obscurity of the notion of sense-making by attributing it univocally to sentient and non-sentient beings and following Hans Jonas in maintaining a phenomenological dimension to life-mind continuity among all living beings, sentient or non-sentient. I propose following Merleau-Ponty instead, who offers a properly phenomenological notion of sense-making for which sentience is a necessary condition. Against radicalist efforts to replace sense-making with a deflationary, naturalist conception of intentionality, I discuss the role of the phenomenological notion of sense-making for understanding animal behavior and experience.

Key words: enactivism, phenomenology, naturalism, naturalized phenomenology, sense-making, autopoiesis, life-mind continuity thesis, maurice merleau-ponty, hans jonas, wolfgang köhler.

In this paper, we consider how certain longstanding philosophical questions about mental representation may be answered on the assumption that cognitive and perceptual systems implement hierarchical generative models, such as those discussed within the prediction error minimization (PEM) framework. We build on existing treatments of representation via structural resemblance, such as those in Gładziejewski (Synthese 193(2):559–582, 2016) and Gładziejewski and Miłkowski (Biol Philos, 2017), to argue for a representationalist interpretation of the PEM framework. We further motivate the proposed approach to content by arguing that it is consistent with approaches implicit in theories of unsupervised learning in neural networks. In the course of this discussion, we argue that the structural representation proposal, properly understood, has more in common with functional-role than with causal/informational or teleosemantic theories. In the remainder of the paper, we describe the PEM framework for approximate Bayesian inference in some detail, and discuss how structural representations might arise within the proposed Bayesian hierarchies. After explicating the notion of variational inference, we define a subjectively accessible measure of misrepresentation for hierarchical Bayesian networks by appeal to the Kullbach–Leibler divergence between posterior generative and approximate recognition densities, and discuss a related measure of objective misrepresentation in terms of correspondence with the facts.

Key words: problem of content, misrepresentation, functional role semantics, structural resemblance, prediction error minimization, generative model, recognition model, kullbach–leibler divergence, variational, bayesian inference, unsupervised learning

Extract: All the papers in this special issue sit at the intersection between work on predictive processing models in the neurosciences and embodied, enactive perspectives on mind. It is arguably one of the most cutting-edge and fast-moving intersections of research in the contemporary sciences of mind and brain. All contributions deal with questions of whether and how key assumptions of the predictive brain hypothesis can be reconciled with approaches to cognition that take embodiment and enaction as playing a central and constitutive role in our cognitive lives. While there is broad consensus that bodily and worldly aspects matter to cognition, predictive processing is often understood in epistemic, inferential and representational terms. Prima facie this makes is hard to see how it would be possible to square embodied and enactive views, many of which are in direct opposition to inferential and representational accounts of mind, with predictive processing models. Rather than stressing how these accounts differ, others such as Clark (2016) emphasize what they have in common, focusing on how predictive processing models provide “the perfect neuro-computational partner for work on the embodied mind.” (Clark 2016, p. 1; see also Bruineberg and Rietveld 2014; Kirchhoff 2015a, b, c, 2016, 2017) In this sense, the aim of this special issue is to nudge this particular area of research forward by examining how, if possible at all, to combine the best of these frameworks in a joint pursuit of the following question: how is the mind and its enabling conditions, respectively, characterized, and how are their relations to one another best understood?

The life–mind continuity thesis is difficult to study, especially because the relation between life and mind is not yet fully understood, and given that there is still no consensus view neither on what qualifies as life nor on what defines mind. Rather than taking up the much more difficult task of addressing the many different ways of explaining how life relates to mind, and vice versa, this paper considers two influential accounts addressing how best to understand the life–mind continuity thesis: first, the theory of autopoiesis (AT) developed in biology and in enactivist theories of mind; and second, the recently formulated free energy principle in theoretical neurobiology, with roots in thermodynamics and statistical physics. This paper advances two claims. The first is that the free energy principle (FEP) should be preferred to the theory of AT, as classically formulated. The second is that the FEP and the recently formulated framework of autopoietic enactivism can be shown to be genuinely continuous on a number of central issues, thus raising the possibility of a joint venture when it comes to answering the life–mind continuity thesis.

Key words: Life–mind continuity, free energy principle, autopoiesis, dark room, causal explanatory relations, biopsychism.

In compiling this bibliography – an idea first suggested by Reto Fetz – I have used ‘philosophical’ in the broadest sense of that term to include any kind of “conceptual analysis” devoted to key theoretical concepts, philosophical assumptions, substantial methodological questions, etc. What to include was often a matter of personal judgment but I have tried to be impartial and to include anything that might pass as being “philosophical.” I did not limit my choice of articles to those written by professional philosophers but also included the work of psychologists when it seemed appropriate. Undoubtedly I have overlooked work on Piaget that could be called philosophical; if so, I would appreciate being informed of this so that I may include it in the next revision.

The life–mind continuity thesis is difficult to study, especially because the relation between life and mind is not yet fully understood, and given that there is still no consensus view neither on what qualifies as life nor on what defines mind. Rather than taking up the much more difficult task of addressing the many different ways of explaining how life relates to mind, and vice versa, this paper considers two influential accounts addressing how best to understand the life–mind continuity thesis: first, the theory of autopoiesis (AT) developed in biology and in enactivist theories of mind; and second, the recently formulated free energy principle in theoretical neurobiology, with roots in thermodynamics and statistical physics. This paper advances two claims. The first is that the free energy principle (FEP) should be preferred to the theory of AT, as classically formulated. The second is that the FEP and the recently formulated framework of autopoietic enactivism can be shown to be genuinely continuous on a number of central issues, thus raising the possibility of a joint venture when it comes to answering the life–mind continuity thesis.

Key words: life–mind continuity, free energy principle, autopoiesis, dark room, causal explanatory relations, biopsychism

In this paper, I argue that enactivism and computationalism – two seemingly incompatible research traditions in modern cognitive science – can be fruitfully reconciled under the framework of the free energy principle (FEP). FEP holds that cognitive systems encode generative models of their niches and cognition can be understood in terms of minimizing the free energy of these models. There are two philosophical interpretations of this picture. A computationalist will argue that as FEP claims that Bayesian inference underpins both perception and action, it entails a concept of cognition as a computational process. An enactivist, on the other hand, will point out that FEP explains cognitive systems as constantly self-organizing to non-equilibrium steady-state. My claim is that these two interpretations are both true at the same time and that they enlighten each other.

Key words: Active inference, autopoiesis, computational theory of mind, enactivism, predictive processing, self-organization.

Although enactive approaches to cognition vary in terms of their character and scope, all endorse several core claims. The first is that cognition is tied to action. The second is that cognition is composed of more than just in-the-head processes; cognitive activities are (at least partially) externalized via features of our embodiment and in our ecological dealings with the people and things around us. I appeal to these two enactive claims to consider a view called “direct social perception” (DSP): the idea that we can sometimes perceive features of other minds directly in the character of their embodiment and environmental interactions. I argue that if DSP is true, we can probably also perceive certain features of mental disorders as well. I draw upon the developmental psychologist Daniel Stern’s notion of “forms of vitality” – largely overlooked in these debates – to develop this idea, and I use autism as a case study. I argue further that an enactive approach to DSP can clarify some ways we play a regulative role in shaping the temporal and phenomenal character of the disorder in question, and it may therefore have practical significance for both the clinical and therapeutic encounter.