The notion of an enactive system requires thinking about the brain in a way that is different from the standard computationalrepresentational models. In evolutionary terms, the brain does what it does and is the way that it is, across some scale of variations, because it is part of a living body with hands that can reach and grasp in certain limited ways, eyes structured to focus, an autonomic system, an upright posture, etc. coping with specific kinds of environments, and with other people. Changes to any of the bodily, environmental, or intersubjective conditions elicit responses from the system as a whole. On this view, rather than representing or computing information, the brain is better conceived as participating in the action.

The binary divide between traditional cognitivist and enactivist paradigms is tied to their respective commitments to understanding cognition as based on knowing that as opposed to knowing how. Using O’Regan’s and Noë‘s landmark sensorimotor contingency theory of perceptual experience as a foil, I demonstrate how easy it is to fall into conservative thinking. Although their account is advertised as decidedly ‘skill-based’, on close inspection it shows itself to be riddled with suppositions threatening to reduce it to a rules-and-representations approach. To remain properly enactivist it must be purged of such commitments and indeed all commitment to mediating knowledge: it must embrace a more radical enactivism

Key words: Cognitivism, Consciousness, Enactivism, Experience, Knowledge, Perception

Intentionality and consciousness are the fundamental kinds of mental phenomena. Although they are widely regarded as being entirely distinct some philosophers conjecture that they are intimately related. Prominently it has been claimed that consciousness can be best understood in terms of representational facts or properties. Representationalist theories vary in strength. At their core they seek to establish that subjective, phenomenal consciousness (of the kind that involves the having of first-personal points of view or perspectives on the world – perspectives that incorporate experiences with specific phenomenal characters) is either exhausted by, or supervenes on, capacities for mental representation. These proposals face several serious objections.

Key words: enactivism, externalism, intentionality, internalism, methodological solipsism, misrepresentation, mode of presentation, narrow content, phenomenal character, psychosemantics, qualia, representational content, subjectivity, supervenience, teleofunctions

Excerpt: The core claim of this chapter is that mind minding of the sort required for the simplest forms of joint attentional activity can be understood and explained in nonrepresentational, enactivist terms.

This commentary will seek to clarify certain core features of Thompson’s proposal about the enactive nature of basic mentality, as best it can, and to bring his ideas into direct conversation with accounts of basic cognition of the sort favoured by analytical philosophers of mind and more traditional cognitive scientists – i.e. those who tend to be either suspicious or critical of enactive/embodied approaches (to the extent that they confess to understanding them at all). My proposed way of opening up this sort of dialogue is to concentrate on the close similarities between Thompson’s biologically-based proposal about non-representational forms of basic cognition and what I take to be a reasonable modification to the ambitions of teleosemantic theories of content. Insofar as today’s theories of mental representation are less concerned to understand content in properly semantic terms they are moving ever closer to the sorts of account proposed by enactivists of the Thompsonian stripe – close enough to have meaningful debates about the nature of basic mentality. It is against this backdrop that I put a spotlight on the true promise and value of enactivism, providing some compelling reasons for wanting to go Thompson’s way.

Excerpt: I defend an anti-intellectualist, non-representationalist account of what lies in the background of, and makes possible, our explicitly contentful speech, thought and action.

Any adequate account of emotion must accommodate the fact that emotions, even those of the most basic kind, exhibit intentionality as well as phenomenality. This article argues that a good place to start in providing such an account is by adjusting Prinz’s (2004) embodied appraisal theory (EAT) of emotions. EAT appeals to teleosemantics in order to account for the world-directed content of embodied appraisals. Although the central idea behind EAT is essentially along the right lines, as it stands Prinz’s proposal needs tweaking in a number of ways. This article focuses on one – the need to free it from its dependence on teleosemantics. EAT, so modified, becomes compatible with a truly enactivist understanding of basic emotions.

Key words: emotion, emotional appraisal theory, enactivism, teleosemantics

This paper reviews two main strategies for dealing with the threat posed by radically enactive/embodied cognition to traditional cognitive science. Both strategies invoke action oriented representations (AORs). They differ in emphasizing different features of AORs in their attempt to answer the REC threat – focusing on their contents and vehicles, respectively. The first two sections review the central motivations and rationales driving the ‘content’ and ‘format’ strategies in turn and raise initial concerns about the tenability of each. With respect to the ‘content’ strategy, these worries ought to make us suspicious about the explanatory value of positing AORs. Although the ‘format’ strategy has a way of answering this concern, it raises a more fundamental worry about the motivation for even believing in AORs in the first place. Although these worries cast doubt on the feasibility of invoking AORs as a means of dealing with the REC threat, they do not constitute conclusive reasons for eliminating AORs altogether. There are other, stronger reasons for supposing that we should. The third section provides a sketch of a master argument, developed elsewhere, which makes that case in full dress fashion. The final section – ‘Resurrection?’ – considers and rejects the possibility that AORs might be resurrected, even if it is agreed that the master argument cited in the third section succeeds.

Key words: radical enactivism, action oriented representations, foundations of cognitive science