In this paper, we start exploring the affective and ethical dimension of what De Jaegher and Di Paolo (Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 6:485–507, 2007) have called ‘participatory sense-making’. In the first part, we distinguish various ways in which we are, and feel, affectively inter-connected in interpersonal encounters. In the second part, we discuss the ethical character of this affective inter-connectedness, as well as the implications that taking an ‘inter-(en)active approach’ has for ethical theory itself.

Key words: Participatory sense-making, enaction, emotion, empathy, ethics

In the decade and a half since the appearance of Varela, Thompson and Rosch’s workThe Embodied Mind,enactivism has helped to put experience and consciousness, conceived of in a distinctive way, at the forefront of cognitive science. There are at least two major strands within the enactive perspective: a broad view of what it is to be an agent with a mind; and a more focused account of the nature of perception and perceptual experience. The relation between these two strands is discussed, with an overview of the papers presented in this volume.

Key words: Enactivism, experience, embodiment, sensorimotor contingency, autonomy, autopoiesis.

Excerpt: Appeals to definitions, or to conceptual analysis, to settle disputes about the essential or core components in our concept of consciousness may seem attractive. Definitional or conceptual issues look as though they should be able to be settled a priori, and indeed definitively (isn’t that the point of definitions after all?). But perhaps there are definitional or conceptual disputes which are not like that. In the 1950s W. B. Gallie suggested that there are disputes which concern concepts that are, in his words, ‘essentially contested’ (Gallie, 1956). These are concepts that raise core issues which are matters of continuing hot dispute, and for which, in principle, no clearly ‘right’ resolution can be given. Whether ‘consciousness’ is an essentially contested concept in Gallie’s sense is not clear. But if it is, then there would seem to be little room for further discussion, at least if we are expecting ‘objectivity’. I think that consciousness is such a concept, and that there are certain core elements in the notion which are open to argument only of a persuasive kind. The results of any such discussion will not be demonstrative or conclusive. They will, nevertheless, be of value.

Open peer commentary on the article “Lived Experience and Cognitive Science Reappraising Enactivism’s Jonasian Turn” by Mario Villalobos & Dave Ward. Upshot: Jonas was not defending an unrestrained anthropomorphism but, rather, a “zoomorphism,” which offered a rigorous, considered view of the deep phylogenetic origins of purpose and mind. Jonas did not reject science per se, but an alienated, rigid conception of the latter. His work helped pave the way to a richer science of mind.

An inter-enactive approach to agency holds that the behavior of agents in a social situation unfolds not only according to their individual abilities and goals, but also according to the conditions and constraints imposed by the autonomous dynamics of the interaction process itself. We illustrate this position with examples drawn from phenomenological observations and dynamical systems models. On the basis of these examples we discuss some of the implications of this inter-enactive approach to agency for our understanding of social phenomena in a broader sense, and how the inter-enactive account provided here has to be taken alongside a theory of larger-scale social processes.