The past twenty years have seen an increase in the importance of the body in psychology, neuroscience, and philosophy of mind. This ‘embodied’ trend challenges the orthodox view in cognitive science in several ways: it downplays the traditional ‘mind-as-computer’ approach and emphasizes the role of interactions between the brain, body, and environment. In this article, I review recent work in the area of embodied cognitive science and explore the approaches each takes to the ideas of consciousness, computation and representation. Finally, I look at the current relationship between orthodox cognitive science and the study of mental disorder, and consider the implications that the embodied trend could have for issues in psychopathology.

Key words: cognition, computation, consciousness, dynamical systems, embodiment, enactivism, extended mind, phenomenology, representation.

Excerpt: It may be that Piaget has for several decades suffered an extreme of misunderstanding of his position – or it may be that in his direct approach to the growth of perceptual organization, he has been applying new principles without having organized them into an “official” statement. The subject of this chapter is another approach that has converged to the same general conclusions from a totally different starting point: cybernetics. In this case the epistemological principles have emerged in an explicit form simply as a consequence of following out the logic of a behavioral model. The model on which I have been working is an offshoot of cybernetics using almost the oldest and least sophisticated of cybernetic concepts: feedback of behavioral outputs to sensory inputs, through the environment. Through a rigorous, and some might say obsessive, application of a simple control-system unit of behavioral organization, I have constructed what seems on first inspection to be a purely hardware model of how behavior works, the kind of model that would make any engineer feel secure.

The uniqueness of each viewpoint, each point of effect, can be “overcome” only by changing the viewpoint to other viewpoints and returning. Such an alternation, which can also appear as constant change, makes up the unity of the world. The wholeness of an alternation, however, is a consciousness structure because of the special relationship between the circumscribing periphery and the infinitesimal center. This process structure unites determinacy and indeterminacy at every point also totally. We are dealing, therefore, with forms of consciousness everywhere, with more or less freedom of choice and an increasingly unknown depth. We live in a world of choosing consciousness or better: awareness. In this respect, our environment expresses a deep truth about ourselves. Relevance: Outlines the concept of infinitesimality structure to explain first, second, and third person experience as well as free will at once.

Key words: consciousness, free will, awareness, individual, reality

Several authors have made claims about the compatibility between the Free Energy Principle (FEP) and theories of autopoiesis and enaction. Many see these theories as natural partners or as making similar statements about the nature of biological and cognitive systems. We critically examine these claims and identify a series of misreadings and misinterpretations of key enactive concepts. In particular, we notice a tendency to disregard the operational definition of autopoiesis and the distinction between a system’s structure and its organization. Other misreadings concern the conflation of processes of self-distinction in operationally closed systems and Markov blankets. Deeper theoretical tensions underlie some of these misinterpretations. FEP assumes systems that reach a non-equilibrium steady state and are enveloped by a Markov blanket. We argue that these assumptions contradict the historicity of sense-making that is explicit in the enactive approach. Enactive concepts such as adaptivity and agency are defined in terms of the modulation of parameters and constraints of the agent-environment coupling, which entail the possibility of changes in variable and parameter sets, constraints, and in the dynamical laws affecting the system. This allows enaction to address the path-dependent diversity of human bodies and minds. We argue that these ideas are incompatible with the time invariance of non-equilibrium steady states assumed by the FEP. In addition, the enactive perspective foregrounds the enabling and constitutive roles played by the world in sense-making, agency, development. We argue that this view of transactional and constitutive relations between organisms and environments is a challenge to the FEP. Once we move beyond superficial similarities, identify misreadings, and examine the theoretical commitments of the two approaches, we reach the conclusion that far from being easily integrated, the FEP, as it stands formulated today, is in tension with the theories of autopoiesis and enaction.

Key words: agency, autopoiesis, enaction, free energy principle, sense-making.

What people gain through sensation and cognition make up the individuals’ experiences and knowledge. Individuals benefit from previous experiences when resolving problems. Knowledge is constructed from the meanings one attributes to nature and the environment. In theories, it means that constructers depend on observation and when directly translated, the theory has the meaning of observation. In other words, we construct our own reality with those belonging to our social circle. For us, there is the world and we can’t disregard that; however, the relationship between us and the outside world is a joining as materialistic and structural as in a social environment. In this article, while the foundation of constructivism is being thoroughly analysed, Vico’s ideas in the 18th century and the neurobiological studies of scientific knowledge have been utilized. In light of constructivist learning, Dewey’s opinion on “Experience and Education,” Piaget’s cognitive schema theory in “cognitive development,” and Montessori’s ideas on “Decentring the Teacher” have been examined. Finally, the ideas of the three names on constructivist learning have been interpreted.

Key words: constructivism, knowledge in constructivism, some constructivist approachers, learning

Constructivism is undoubtedly one of the most influential philosophies in education in the twenty-first century. It is, however, one that is frequently misunderstood, has diverse meanings ascribed to it, and is often used by advocates to caricature other approaches inaccurately. The learning theory of constructivism and pedagogical theory of constructivism do not necessitate one another although educators frequently consider them one and the same. This paper underscores how educators in the twenty-first century are increasingly compelled to accept constructivist pedagogy. It further reflects on a challenges this poses for learning, concerns regarding constructivism as the dominant pedagogical tool, and clarity with respect to the consideration of alternative approaches while offering specific reflections for classroom teachers throughout.

Key words: constructivism, cognitive science, pedagogy, direct instruction, student-centered education.

Constructivism has emerged as a very powerful model for explaining how knowledge is produced in the world as well as how students learn. Moreover, constructivist teaching practices are becoming more prevalent in teacher education programs and public schools across the nation, while demonstrating significant success in promoting student learning. In this essay, the author takes a serious look at constructivist teaching practices highlighting both the promises and potential problems of these practices. The author argues that constructivist teaching has often been misinterpreted and misused, resulting in learning practices that neither challenge students nor address their needs. He outlines some of the ways in which constructivism has been misconstrued and analyzes several ways in which constructivist teaching has been misused. The author also presents two examples that illustrate the effective use of constructivist teaching and explains what makes them successful.

Key words: constructivism, teaching, learning, misuse, effective use.

Functional brain imaging studies reveal the complexity of brain activity during pain. The marked explanatory gaps that separate such research from classical neurophysiology and perceptual psychology raise the challenge of integrating knowledge gleaned at multiple levels of investigation into a coherent multidisciplinary account of pain. A conceptual framework from consciousness research, grounded in the concept of self-organization, can address this challenge through nonlinear dynamical systems and related models. We propose a constructivist model that construes pain, not as the passive registration of sensory information that traditional research would presume, but rather an active process of generating and shaping awareness. If pain is a dynamic product of a self-organizing brain, then pain research needs a theoretical framework to address the observations that functional brain imaging yields.

Key words: consciousness, pain, nonlinear dynamical systems, constructivism, functional brain imaging.

This paper targets the constitutive basis of social cognition. It begins by describing the traditional and still dominant cognitivist view. Cognitivism assumes internalism about the realisers of social cognition; thus, the embodied and embedded elements of intersubjective engagement are ruled out from playing anything but a basic causal role in an account of social cognition. It then goes on to advance and clarify an alternative to the cognitivist view; namely, an enactive account of social cognition. It does so first by articulating a diachronic constitutive account for how embodied engagement can play a constitutive role in social cognition. It then proceeds to consider an objection; the causal-constitutive fallacy (Adams & Aizawa, 2001, 2008; Block, 2005) against enactive social cognition. The paper proceeds to deflate this objection by establishing that the distinction between constitution and causation is not co-extensive with the distinction between internal constitutive elements and external causal elements. It is then shown that there is a different reason for thinking that an enactive account of social cognition is problematic. We call this objection the ‘poverty of the interactional stimulus argument’. This objection turns on the role and characteristics of anticipation in enactive social cognition. It argues that anticipatory processes are mediated by an internally realised model or tacit theory (Carruthers, 2015; Seth, 2015). The final part of this paper dissolves this objection by arguing that it is possible to cast anticipatory processes as orchestrated as well as maintained by sensorimotor couplings between individuals in face-to-face interaction.

Key words: Social cognition, enactivism, intersubjectivity, diachronic constitution, theory of mind, sensorimotor contingencies, causal-constitutive fallacy

A common assumption in teaching mathematical modelling and applications is that mind and world are ontologically distinct. This dualist view give rise to an explanatory gap as to how these two realms connect. An alternate view where mind and world are ontologically identical is explored here. This alternate view, grounded in a monist ontology of embodied cognition, undermines and attempts to fill this explanatory gap. Embodied cognition presents challenges of its own, but it also presents new pedagogical opportunities.