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In this paper, I would like to discuss the status of particular subclass of events in cognitive narratology: embodied events connected with bodily movements of fictional characters. I will refer to some possible interconnections between current issues in the study of social cognition and the latest debates in narrative studies. I will address opportunities for developing an enactive approach to processing narrative events, with particular reference to the corporeal motion and the concept of bodily simulation. Such an approach could help account for the representation and tracking of events by readers engaged in the embodied experience of reading. I find new approaches to cognition highly inspiring for future research on the intersubjective nature of narrative and for the further development of empirical studies on reader responses to literature. http://rcin.org.pl Event in literary theoryLet me begin with a quotation from Brian Boyd's On the Origin of Stories: "Language can report events so well because our overwhelming interest in human actions has itself shaped language." 1 This evolutionary approach to fictional events may be compared with current cognitive research on linguistic representations of eventfulness. Jeff Loucks and Eric Pederson explain the significance of event categorization in language:Motion events play a central role in people's representation of the world. Not only is our perception of motion events crucial for safely navigating through the world and key to our survival; our conceptual understanding of motion events is necessary for interpreting other people's behaviors, and for accurately communicating important aspects of an event to others. 2 These two quotations each correspond with two important premises of my stance: 1) linguistic event representations may be traced back to the preverbal experiences of humankind and 2) human action (intentional or not) is itself a prototypical model for an event. In this paper, I would like to discuss the status of events in cognitive narratology, since this will take us beyond the notion of an event as a set of formal units or devices within a story. In classical (I mean formal and structuralist) narratology, events were treated as a salient element of narrative, defined as a representation of change, dependent or not on humans and human agency 3 . Abstract qualities, in particular sequentiality and causality unfolding in time, were considered as basic features of narrative as

In visual science the term filling-in is used in different ways, which often leads to confusion. This target article presents a taxonomy of perceptual completion phenomena to organize and clarify theoretical and empirical discussion. Examples of boundary completion (illusory contours) and featural completion (color, brightness, motion, texture, and depth) are examined, and single-cell studies relevant to filling-in are reviewed and assessed. Filling-in issues must be understood in relation to theoretical issues about neural–perceptual isomorphism and linking propositions. Six main conclusions are drawn: (1) visual filling-in comprises a multitude of different perceptual completion phenomena; (2) certain forms of visual completion seem to involve spatially propagating neural activity (neural filling-in) and so, contrary to Dennett's (1991; 1992) recent discussion of filling-in, cannot be described as results of the brain's “ignoring an absence” or “jumping to a conclusion”; (3) in certain cases perceptual completion seems to have measurable effects that depend on neural signals representing a presence rather than ignoring an absence; (4) neural filling-in does not imply either “analytic isomorphism” or “Cartesian materialism,” and thus the notion of the bridge locus – a particular neural stage that forms the immediate substrate of perceptual experience – is problematic and should be abandoned; (5) to reject the representational conception of vision in favor of an “enactive” or “animate” conception reduces the importance of filling-in as a theoretical category in the explanation of vision; and (6) the evaluation of perceptual content should not be determined by “subpersonal” considerations about internal processing, but rather by considerations about the task of vision at the level of the animal or person interacting with the world.

This classic book, first published in 1991, was one of the first to propose the “embodied cognition” approach in cognitive science. It pioneered the connections between phenomenology and science and between Buddhist practices and science—claims that have since become highly influential. Through this cross-fertilization of disparate fields of study, the book introduced a new form of cognitive science called “enaction,” in which both the environment and first person experience are aspects of embodiment. However, enactive embodiment is not the grasping of an independent, outside world by a brain, a mind, or a self; rather it is the bringing forth of an interdependent world in and through embodied action. Although enacted cognition lacks an absolute foundation, the book shows how that does not lead to either experiential or philosophical nihilism. Above all, the book's arguments were powered by the conviction that the sciences of mind must encompass lived human experience and the possibilities for transformation inherent in human experience. This revised edition includes introductions that clarify central arguments of the work and discuss and evaluate subsequent research that has expanded on the themes of the book, including the renewed theoretical and practical interest in Buddhism and mindfulness. A preface by the originator of the mindfulness-based stress-reduction program, contextualizes the book and describes its influence on his life and work.

This paper explores some of the differences between the enactive approach in cognitive science and the extended mind thesis. We review the key enactive concepts of autonomy and sense-making. We then focus on the following issues: (1) the debate between internalism and externalism about cognitive processes; (2) the relation between cognition and emotion; (3) the status of the body; and (4) the difference between 'incorporation' and mere 'extension' in the body-mind-environment relation.

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Different explanations of color vision favor different philosophical positions: Computational vision is more compatible with objectivism (the color is in the object), psychophysics and neurophysiology with subjectivism (the color is in the head). Comparative research suggests that an explanation of color must be both experientialist (unlike objectivism) and ecological (unlike subjectivism). Computational vision's emphasis on optimally “recovering” prespecified features of the environment (i.e., distal properties, independent of the sensory-motor capacities of the animal) is unsatisfactory. Conceiving of visual perception instead as the visual guidance of activity in an environment that is determined largely by that very activity suggests new directions for research.

Abstract.The enactive approach offers a distinctive view of how mental life relates to bodily activity at three levels: bodily self-regulation, sensorimotor coupling, and intersubjective interaction. This paper concentrates on the second level of sensorimotor coupling. An account is given of how the subjectively lived body and the living body of the organism are related (the body-body problem) via dynamic sensorimotor activity, and it is shown how this account helps to bridge the explanatory gap between consciousness and the brain. Arguments by O'Regan, Noë, and Myin that seek to account for the phenomenal character of perceptual consciousness in terms of 'bodiliness' and 'grabbiness' are considered. It is suggested that their account does not pay sufficient attention to two other key aspects of perceptual phenomenality: the autonomous nature of the experiencing self or agent, and the pre-reflective nature of bodily self-consciousness. The Enactive ApproachThe name "the enactive approach" and the associated concept of enaction were introduced into cognitive science by Varela, Thompson, and Rosch (1991) in order to describe and unify under one heading several related ideas. 1The first idea is that living beings are autonomous agents that actively generate and maintain their identities, and thereby enact or bring forth their own cognitive domains. The second idea is that the nervous system is an autonomous system: it actively generates and maintains its own coherent and meaningful patterns of activity, according to its operation as an organizationally closed or circular and re-entrant sensorimotor network of interacting neurons. The nervous system does not process information in the computationalist sense, but creates meaning. The third idea is that cognition is a form of embodied action. Cognitive structures and processes emerge from recurrent sensorimotor patterns of perception and action. Sensorimotor coupling between organism and environment modulates, but does not determine, the formation of endogenous, dynamic patterns of neural activity, which in turn inform sensorimotor coupling. The fourth idea is that a cognitive being's world is not a pre-specified, external realm, represented internally by its brain, but a relational domain enacted or brought forth by that being's autonomous agency and mode of coupling with the environment. This