Colombetti G. & Thompson E. (2008) The feeling body: Towards an enactive approach to emotion. In: W. F. Overton, U. Müller & J. Newman (eds.) Developmental perspectives on embodiment and consciousness. Lawrence Erlbaum, Hillsdale NY: 45–68. https://cepa.info/777
Our aim in this chapter is to bring emotion theory and the embodied view of cognition closer to each other. We first present an overview of classical (pre-Jamesian) theories of emotion and show that they were all psychosomatic. We then turn to the disembodied stance of cognitivism and trace how and why emotion theory came to lose the body. We argue that cognitivism not only neglected the body, but also tended to classify previous theories of emotion as either cognitive or physiological. This tendency has fostered a tension between these two features of emotion that exists to this day. The main manifestation of this tension in current emotion theory is the tendency to see cognitive and bodily processes as separate aspects or constituents of emotions. Finally, in the remainder of the article, we sketch an embodied approach to emotion, drawing especially on the “enactive approach” in cognitive science. Relevance: It develops ideas for an enactive approach to emotion.
Fingerhut J. & Heimann K. (2017) Movies and the mind: On our filmic body. In: Durt C., Fuchs T. & Tewes C. (eds.) Embodiment, enaction, and culture: Investigating the constitution of the shared world. MIT Press, Cambridge MA: 353–377. https://cepa.info/5081
Excerpt: Given that the average American citizen now spends one-fifth of her lifetime engaging with real and fictional worlds via moving images (U. S. Bureau of Labor Statistics 2014), we need a deeper understanding of how this medium influences our habits of perceiving, thinking, and feeling. 4EA cognitive science has already made ample reference to interactions between organisms and technologies (such as virtual realities or sensory substitution devices); yet film has largely been neglected. Here we will argue that an embodied approach to film can deepen our understanding of this medium, while at the same time providing the necessary means to understanding how film has already altered our embodied habits of perceiving and experiencing.
Heras-Escribano M. (2020) Author’s Response: Affordances as a Basis for a Post-Cognitivist Approach to the Mind. Constructivist Foundations 15(3): 231–237. https://cepa.info/6599
Abstract: I offer a response to some criticisms raised by the commentators on the basis of the following claims: (a) Disagreements and publicness are not counterexamples to my view on normativity, but cases that are explained by appealing to its social basis. (b) It is possible to offer a general view of experience from a situated and embodied approach based on the concept of affordance but without perverting its scientific basis. (c) The Rylean-inspired dispositionalism that I offer can explain why the concept of affordance is based on the organism-environment complementarity explained in nomological or causal terms without committing to substance ontology. I also try to find a common ground that could work for establishing the conceptual basis of a post-cognitivist, affordance-based approach to the mind.
Hutto D. D. & Myin E. (2013) Radicalizing enactivism: Basic minds without content. MIT Press, Cambridge MA. Reviewed in Constructivist Foundations 8(3)
Most of what humans do and experience is best understood in terms of dynamically unfolding interactions with the environment. Many philosophers and cognitive scientists now acknowledge the critical importance of situated, environment-involving embodied engagements as a means of understanding basic minds – including basic forms of human mentality. Yet many of these same theorists hold fast to the view that basic minds are necessarily or essentially contentful – that they represent conditions the world might be in. In this book, Daniel Hutto and Erik Myin promote the cause of a radically enactive, embodied approach to cognition that holds that some kinds of minds – basic minds – are neither best explained by processes involving the manipulation of contents nor inherently contentful. Hutto and Myin oppose the widely endorsed thesis that cognition always and everywhere involves content. They defend the counter-thesis that there can be intentionality and phenomenal experience without content, and demonstrate the advantages of their approach for thinking about scaffolded minds and consciousness.
Loor P. M. A. & Réguigne-Khamassi M. (2015) Intelligence artificielle: L’apport des paradigmes incarné. Intellectica 64: 27–52. https://cepa.info/7340
This article has a double objective. The first is to present various proposals concerning an embodied approach to cognition make by the community of computer scientists and robotics. The second aim is to introduce a debate on their contributions and their limits, concerning the highly delicate questions of the construction of meaning, phenomenal consciousness or yet again the relations between mind, matter and organization. The first part of the article draws up a historical reminder of the initial aims of Artificial Intelligence, as well as the various orientations that have subsequently been adopted by this community. The next part positions the debate concerning the fundamental questions that Artificial Intelligence can, or cannot, study in order to reply to the hard questions in cognitive science, and in particular the interest or the limitations related to the use of an embodied approach in order to reply. The third part consists of detailing the embodied approach according to a structure in terms of families, defined by the domains or the various focal points of the neurosciences, psychology or biology. We provide a description of the principles on which each of them rests, and we identify the limits and the possibilities relative to the debate in question. The whole is synthesized by a conclusion which puts the presented research in perspective.
Short W. M., Shearin W. & Welchman A. (2014) Deleuze and the enaction of non-sense. In: Cappuccio M. & Froese T. (eds.) Enactive cognition at the edge of sense-making: Making sense of non-sense.. Palgrave Macmillan, Houndmills: 238–265. https://cepa.info/2491
This chapter examines the ways in which French philosopher Gilles Deleuze offers conceptual resources for an enactive account of language, in particular his extensive consideration of language in The Logic of Sense. Specifically Deleuze’s distinction between the nonsense of Lewis Carroll’s portmanteau creations and that of Antonin Artaud’s “translation” of Carroll’s Jabberwocky highlights the need for an enactive, rather than merely embodied, approach to sense-making, particularly with regard to the general category of what Jakobson and Halle (1956) call “sound symbolism”.
Sloman A. (2011) Comments on “The Emulating Interview… with Rick Grush”. Avant. The Journal of the Philosophical-Interdisciplinary Vanguard 2/2011: 35–44. https://cepa.info/411
The conception of emulation is crucial for one for most important ideas about constructing self, body, and reality. The author comments on Rick Grush’s statements about emulation and the embodied approach to representation. Many theorists of embodied cognition ignore the variety of types of functions for which physical action can be used and the variety of types of reflective cognition that can precede, accompany or succeed physical action. The author proposes his modification of Grush’s definition of emulation, criticizing the notion of “standing in for.” He defends the notion of representation. He thinks that radical embodied theories may be a good approximation to many sorts of insect cognition and microbe cognition, but not to all cognition. In his opinion, interactions with models when reasoning, or planning, are very different from interactions with the things they are models of. Whether representation and cognition occur fully internally or make use of external representations to reason with, what is going on is different from what goes on when an animal (or robot) merely acts on the environment or when a computer game engine simulates some portion of a physical world to produce consequences of a simulated action.
Thompson E. (2006) Neurophenomenology and Contemplative Experience. In: Clayton P. (ed.) The Oxford Handbook of Science and Religion. Oxford University Press,: 226–235. https://cepa.info/2356
Any discussion of the relationship between cognitive science and religion for different theoretical perspectives in cognitive science can combine with different scientific approaches to religion. This article proposes that certain contemplative wisdom traditions – Buddhism most notably, though not exclusively – and certain approaches in cognitive science – the embodied approach and neurophenomenology – are mutually informative and enlightening. Through back-and-forth circulation, each approach can reshape the other, leading to new conceptual and practical understandings for both. At stake in this possibility is nothing less than the prospect of a mature science of the mind that can begin to do justice to the rich and diverse traditions of human contemplative experience.
Valenzuela-Moguillansky C. & Vásquez-Rosati A. (2019) An Analysis Procedure for the Micro-Phenomenological Interview. Constructivist Foundations 14(2): 123–145. https://cepa.info/5759
Context: The advent of the embodied approach to cognition produced a paradigm shift giving experience a primary place in the different fields of inquiry. This gave rise to the need to develop methodologies for the study of experience from a first-person perspective. In this context, micro-phenomenology emerges as a methodological tool that allows the study of experience in a systematic and rigorous way. Problem: To reproduce and share the micro-phenomenological analysis - crucial for the intersubjective validation of micro-phenomenological research - it is relevant to have a procedure that allows us to trace the different steps of the analysis. As many of the stages of the micro-phenomenological analysis remain implicit, a step-by-step description has not yet been produced. We describe the procedure of analysis of the micro-phenomenological interview, step by step, thus complementing the micro-phenomenological analysis method. Method: In order to specify the analysis procedure, we used the micro-phenomenological interview to explore our experience of abstracting, developing the example of an analysis carried out in the context of a specific investigation. Results: We propose an analysis procedure organized in a concertina-shaped structure. It has fifteen stages organized into five sections. Each surface of the concertina corresponds to one stage of the analysis. We identified grouping as an abstraction operation that participates in the very early stages of the categorization process. This operation participates in the categorization mechanism we called “iterative interrogation.” Moreover, we propose that the refinement of the structures results from a process that involves recursively contrasting the description of the experience, the understanding we have gained from it throughout the analysis and the resulting structures. Implications: The proposed procedure allows the tracing not only of the different steps of the analysis, but also of the criteria used to solve the numerous issues that arise throughout it. The iterative interrogation mechanism makes it possible to reveal, in an orderly manner, the principles used by the analyst to establish the diachronic and synchronic units. This greatly facilitates the communication of a process that is highly implicit. We hope this procedure will contribute to the establishment of standards in micro-phenomenological research, facilitating the exchange between researchers and thus consolidating the intersubjective validation procedures that make it possible to evaluate the quality of neuro- and micro-phenomenological research.
Venturelli A. N. (2012) Dewey on the reflex arc and the dawn of the dynamical approach to the study of cognition. Pragmatism Today 3(1): 132–143. https://cepa.info/768
I assess the relevance of John Dewey’s well-known article, “The reflex arc concept in psychology”, for a historical revision of the emergence of the recent embodied approach in the cognitive sciences. In particular, I try to identify its specific contribution in the shift from Dewey’s conceptual analysis to the way in which, during recent years, certain research programs have developed their methodological profile and put it to work in experimental and modeling practices. My hypothesis is that, under a certain interpretation, Dewey’s article plays the role of the main intellectual precursor in the development of embodied cognitive science and, specifically, the related dynamical approach. Relevance: The article assesses the historical roots of the recent group of research programs in “embodied cognitive science,” with particular attention to the underlying shift in methodological profile. Among the conglomerate of programs that can be included within the general denomination of embodied cognitive science, the article focuses on the dynamical approach, which stands out, on the one hand, for its radical character vis-à-vis classical approaches and, on the other hand, for its characteristic brand of cognitive-scientific approach.