A fundamental challenge for enactive theory and other radical varieties of non-representational “E cognition” is to reconceive the end-directed character of cognitive activity in naturally emergent but also experientially adequate terms. In short, it is necessary to show how cognitive activity is motivated. In this article, I present a preliminary analysis of the nature of motivation and the challenge that it presents to cognitive science. I make the case that a theory of motivation is a critical desideratum for dynamical theories of cognition, especially insofar as they understand cognition as a self-organized and “soft assembled” process. Finally, I propose that a branch of ecological psychology that conceives of cognition as a special variety of “dissipative adaptation” offers a promising framework for confronting this challenge.
Cognitive science of the last half-century has been dominated by the computational theory of mind and its picture of thought as information processing. Taking this picture for granted, the most prominent evolutionary theories of religion of the last fifteen years have sought to understand human religiosity as the product or by-product of universal information processing mechanisms that were adaptive in our ancestral environment. The rigidity of such explanations is at odds with the highly context-sensitive nature of historical studies of religion, and thus contributes to the apparent tug-of-war between scientific and humanistic perspectives. This essay argues that this antagonism stems in part from a deep flaw of computational theory, namely its notion of information as pre-given and context-free. In contrast, non-computational theories that picture mind as an adaptive, interactive process in which information is jointly constructed by organism and environment offer an alternative approach to an evolutionary understanding of human religiosity, one that is compatible with historical studies and amenable to a wide range of inquiries, including some limited kinds of theological inquiry.
Much of recent scholarship on the Zhuangzi has focused on the distinctive picture of spiritual fulfillment offered by its various "knack" stories. These stories describe a special kind of skillful action marked by fine-tuned responsiveness, non-deliberative spontaneity, effortlessness, and enjoyment. Scholars agree that the Zhuangzian theme of effortless action, or wuwei , indicates an intimate relationship between spiritual satisfaction and skill. However, this emerging consensus has so far failed to produce a clear analysis of the transcendence of wuwei with respect to everyday instances of skillful spontaneity. This essay attempts to clarify the issue of transcendence by using the psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's theory of flow as a reference point. While flow may not provide a comprehensive theory of wuwei spirituality, it sharpens our thinking about the various kinds of transcendence that wuwei might entail. A comparison between wuwei and flow also helps to clarify more general questions about spirituality and its alleged separation from religious belief in the modern world.
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