Phenomenological constraints: a problem for radical enactivism

Abstract

This paper does two things. Firstly, it clarifies the way that phenomenological data is meant to constrain cognitive science according to enactivist thinkers. Secondly, it points to inconsistencies in the 'Radical Enactivist' handling of this issue, so as to explicate the commitments that enactivists need to make in order to tackle the explanatory gap. I begin by sketching the basic features of enactivism in sections 1-2, focusing upon enactive accounts of perception. I suggest that enactivist ideas here rely heavily upon the endorsement of a particular explanatory constraint that I call the structural resemblance constraint (SRC), according to which the structure of our phenomenology ought to be mirrored in our cognitive science. Sections 3-5 delineate the nature of, and commitment to, SRC amongst enactivists, showing SRC's warrant and implications. The paper then turns to Hutto and Myin's (2013) handling of SRC in sections 6-7, highlighting irregularities within their programme for Radical Enactivism on this issue. Despite seeming to favour SRC, I argue that Radical Enactivism's purported compatibility with the narrow (brain-bound) supervenience of perceptual experience is in fact inconsistent with SRC, given Hutto and Myin's phenomenological commitments. I argue that enactivists more broadly ought to resist such a concessionary position if they wish to tackle the explanatory gap, for it is primarily the abidance to SRC that ensures progress is made here. Section 8 then concludes the paper with a series of open questions to enactivists, inviting further justification of the manner in which they apply SRC.

Anhedonia and the Affectively Scaffolded Mind

“…Though I do not go so far as proponents of the extended mind, since I do not claim that extra-neural 2. For helpful discussions of the distinction between horizontal and vertical explanations in Psychology more generally, see Roberts (2017) and Drayson (2012). things (partially) constitute anhedonia, I do claim that good vertical explanations of anhedonia will involve extra-neural phenomena.…”

Naturalizing Phenomenology: A Must Have?

“…Then there is a wide set of embodied enactivists (a review in Ward et al, 2017 ), from those grounding in neurophysiology their negation of the representationalist viewpoint in perception, such as autopoietic enactivism ( Varela et al, 1991 ; Varela, 1996 ; Thompson and Varela, 2001 ; Thompson, 2004 , 2007 ; Thompson et al, 2005 ; Thompson and Zahavi, 2007 ), radical enactivism ( Hutto and Myin, 2013 ), sensori-motor enactivism ( Di Paolo et al, 2017 ), etc. (see Roberts, 2018 ). Finally, those highlighting the role played by social interactions in cognition ( Ramstead et al, 2016 ; Gallagher, 2017 ), and those interpreting neuronal activities (the data) in terms of phenomenological categories such as intentionality ( Rizzolatti et al, 2001 ; Gallese and Lakoff, 2005 ).…”

Ecological Psychology and Enactivism: Perceptually-Guided Action vs. Sensation-Based Enaction1

“…In this section, we discuss the ecological concept of mutualism in direct contrast to the enactivist idea that to perceive is to be “in interactive relationship with the world” (Roberts, 2018 ). In other words, mutualism is not interaction (cf.…”

“…In the exchanges between Ecological Psychology and Enactivism some significant questions and critiques have surfaced on both sides. In a simplified summary, the major questions about Ecological Psychology on the enactivist side are the following (based on the target article and the commentaries in 2016 Special Issue of Constructivist Foundations): (1) Ecological Psychology puts too much load and emphasis on symmetry principles in organism—environment mutuality; (2) Thereby Ecological Psychology does not do justice to the autonomy, subjectivity, perceptual consciousness, historicity of the agent side, which is necessary to account for an active agent with a self; (3) In Ecological Psychology descriptions of the environment (affordances, specification) refer to pre-existing structures that are not dependant on experience and, therefore, are not truly relational; (4) Ecological Psychology ignores the subpersonal level of emergent processes, that is, the level of the physical basis of perceptual experience (on the distinction between personal and subpersonal see Thompson and Cosmelli, 2011 ; Roberts, 2018 ). The major questions on the ecological side are the following: (1) Enactivism embraces subjectivity and constructive processes and thereby opens up the door to dualism; (2) Enactivism takes sensorimotor functioning as the starting point which retains the idea of the “poverty of the stimulus” and does not explain how meaning emerges from something non-meaningful; (3) Thereby Enactivism also fails to establish how the organism/agent is in direct epistemic contact with its environment; (4) Enactivism does not treat the organismic level as a distinguished level of analysis, and, thereby, does not satisfy truly ecological mutualism.…”