Enactivism and Ecological Psychology: The Role of Bodily Experience in Agency

Abstract

This paper considers some foundational concepts in ecological psychology and in enactivism, and traces their developments from their historical roots to current preoccupations. Important differences stem, we claim, from dissimilarities in how embodied experience has been understood by the ancestors, founders and followers of ecological psychology and enactivism, respectively. Rather than pointing to differences in domains of interest for the respective approaches, and restating possible divisions of labor between them in research in the cognitive and psychological sciences, we call for a deeper analysis of the role of embodiment in agency that we also undertake. Awareness of the differences that exist in the respective frameworks and their consequences, we argue, may lead to overcoming some current divisions of responsibility, and contribute to a more comprehensive and complementary way of dealing with a broader range of theoretical and practical concerns. While providing some examples of domains, such as social cognition and art reception, in which we can observe the relative usefulness and potential integration of the theoretical and methodological resources from the two approaches, we demonstrate that such deeper synergy is not only possible but also beginning to emerge. Such complementarity, as we envisage, conceives of ecological psychology that allows felt experience as a crucial dynamical element in the explanations and models that it produces, and of an enactive approach that takes into consideration the ubiquitous presence of rich directly perceived relations among variables arising from enactments in the social and physical world.

A Growing Body of Knowledge

“…However, there is a growing commitment among philosophers, psychologists, and cognitive scientists that we should understand our knowledge and our means of arriving at knowledge in terms of the relationships between mind, body, and environment (Anderson, 2003;Hutto & McGivern, 2015;Jensen & Greve, 2019;Varela et al, 2016;Wilson, 2002). Rejecting a Cartesian divide between body and mind, proponents of embodied cognition understand the mind and the world not as two pre-given entities but as mutually constituted in dynamic relationships (Popova & Rączaszek-Leonardi, 2020).…”

“…At the most basic level, the study of embodiment entails the view that our knowledge of the world is inseparable from our experiences of and through the bodies that we are (Popova & Rączaszek-Leonardi, 2020). This focus on embodied being and acting in the world promises a more holistic approach to knowledge, experience, and learning than what has traditionally been the case within cognitive science, philosophy, and psychology.…”

“…J. Varela et al, 2016). At its core, phenomenology is the direct study of our lived experiences that are guided by intentionality: all acts of consciousness, be it perceptions, feelings, moods, decisions, memories, or imaginations, are experiences of something (Popova & Rączaszek-Leonardi, 2020).…”

“…For Husserl, the lived body is involved in intentional acts and as a subject that is reflectively aware of itself (Husserl, 1965). Although Husserl's work can be considered a first phenomenology of embodiment, the role of the body remains mostly implicit (Moran, 2017;Popova & Rączaszek-Leonardi, 2020).…”

“…(Gibson, 1979, p. 127) In ecological psychology, embodied experiences and the embodied nature of cognition stem from an understanding of cognition as being for a body's action. The active body shapes perceptual categories, and ultimately, activity serves as the starting point for cognition (Popova & Rączaszek-Leonardi, 2020). Thus, in the ecological view, cognition emerges in and through an organism's actions in its environment.…”