Agency From a Radical Embodied Standpoint: An Ecological-Enactive Proposal

Segundo-Ortin, Miguel

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2020.01319

Cited by 20 publications

(19 citation statements)

References 58 publications

(120 reference statements)

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“…This is clear, for instance, in Chemero's (2009) work, but not as clear in the arguments against mental representations put forth by radical enactivists (Hutto & Myin, 2013. 3 Others have used the names 'ecological-enactive' (Kiverstein & Rietveld, 2018;Segundo-Ortin, 2020;van den Herik, 2018van den Herik, , 2020 and 'enactive-ecological' (Carvalho & Rolla, 2020) in order to refer to the same core ideas as we do here. However, our conception of the EE approach does not rely specifically on those authors' characterizations, but on the one we present above.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Ecological-enactive scientific cognition: modeling and material engagement

Rolla

Novaes

2020

Phenom Cogn Sci

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Ecological-enactive approaches to cognition aim to explain cognition in terms of the dynamic coupling between agent and environment. Accordingly, cognition of one's immediate environment (which is sometimes labeled "basic" cognition) depends on enaction and the picking up of affordances. However, ecological-enactive views supposedly fail to account for what is sometimes called "higher" cognition, i.e., cognition about potentially absent targets, which therefore can only be explained by postulating representational content. This challenge levelled against ecological-enactive approaches highlights a putative explanatory gap between basic and higher cognition. In this paper, we examine scientific cognition-a paradigmatic case of higher cognition-and argue that it shares fundamental features with basic cognition, for enaction and affordance selection are central to the scientific enterprise. Our argument focuses on modeling, and on how models promote scientific understanding. We base our argument on a non-representational account of scientific understanding and on the material engagement theory, for models are hereby conceived as material objects designed for scientific engagements. Having done so, we conclude that the explanatory gap is significantly less threatening to the ecological-enactive approach than it might appear.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Ecological-enactive scientific cognition: modeling and material engagement

Rolla

Novaes

2020

Phenom Cogn Sci

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“…We argue that this is a too simplistic reading of the situation (see Segundo-Ortin, 2020). In particular, such a reading overlooks the fact that for affordances to attract or repel action they have to be perceived, and perception is in itself an active process according to ecological psychology.…”

Section: Considering Different Objectionsmentioning

confidence: 94%

“…Even though Deweyan habits have been previously proposed to be compatible with the principles of ecological psychology (see Heras-Escribano, 2019a, pp. 191-202, 2019bSegundo-Ortin, 2020), our aim in this section is to show how this notion of habit can complement the ecological approach to skilled motor behavior we are defending. 17 To fully grasp the notion of habit advanced by Dewey, it is important to start clarifying the relationship between acts and experience he envisaged.…”

Section: The Importance Of Habits For An Ecological Theory Of Skilled Motor Behaviormentioning

confidence: 99%

Neither mindful nor mindless, but minded: habits, ecological psychology, and skilled performance

Segundo-Ortin

Heras–Escribano

2021

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A widely shared assumption in the literature about skilled motor behavior is that any action that is not blindly automatic and mechanical must be the product of computational processes upon mental representations. To counter this assumption, in this paper we offer a radical embodied (non-representational) account of skilled action that combines ecological psychology and the Deweyan theory of habits. According to our proposal, skilful performance can be understood as composed of sequences of mutually coherent, task-specific perceptual-motor habits. Such habits play a crucial role in simplifying both our exploration of the perceptual environment and our decision-making. However, we argue that what keeps habits situated, precluding them from becoming rote and automatic, are not mental representations but the agent's conscious attention to the affordances of the environment. It is because the agent is not acting on autopilot but constantly searching for new information for affordances that she can control her behavior, adapting previously learned habits to the current circumstances. We defend that our account provides the resources needed to understand how skilled action can be intelligent (flexible, adaptive, context-sensitive) without having any representational cognitive processes built into them.

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“…There has recently been an increase in the number of papers published linking enactivism and ecological psychology. This is evidence of the scientific community's growing interest in these methodological concepts and proposals (e.g., Segundo-Ortin, 2020). This trend encourages us to envisage a confluence between these embodied approaches in today's post-cognitive era (Lobo, 2019).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 93%

How Enaction and Ecological Approaches Can Contribute to Sports and Skill Learning

et al. 2020

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The purpose of this paper is to explain learning in sports and physical education (PE) from the perspective of enactive and ecological psychology. The learning process is first presented from the enactive perspective, and some relevant notions such as sensemaking and sensorimotor schemes are developed. Then, natural learning environments are described, and their importance in the human development process is explained. This is followed by a section devoted to the learner's experience in which some research methods are explained, such as neurophenomenology, in addition to self-confrontation, interviews aimed at bringing out the meaning, sensations, and emotions that performers experience when they are immersed in their sport or a PE class. The sections on the ecological approach deal with the attunement, calibration, the education of intention, and the importance of representative experimental designs. The last section addresses the main similarities and differences between the two approaches. Finally, we state our theoretical position in favor of a common project that brings together the main elements of both post-cognitive approaches.

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Agency From a Radical Embodied Standpoint: An Ecological-Enactive Proposal

Cited by 20 publications

References 58 publications

Ecological-enactive scientific cognition: modeling and material engagement

Ecological-enactive scientific cognition: modeling and material engagement

Neither mindful nor mindless, but minded: habits, ecological psychology, and skilled performance

How Enaction and Ecological Approaches Can Contribute to Sports and Skill Learning

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