The affective and normative intentionality of skilled performance: a radical embodied approach

Abstract

In this paper, we argue that the intentionality at play in skilled performance is not only inherently normative but also inherently affective. We take a radically embodied approach to the mind in which we conceive of cognitive agents as sensorimotor systems moved to maintain their biological and sociocultural identity, whose perception is direct and occurs in terms of affordances. Within this framework, we define skilled performance as the enactment of action and perception patterns in which the agent is intentionally oriented towards specific features in the environment. We propose that (i) skillful intentionality is guided by normative constraints involving the material and social conditions of the agent but is ultimately determined by the intrinsic purpose of maintaining the agent's identity, and (ii) skilled intentionality is inherently affective because it is a specific occurrence arising from a general sense of care to maintain one's identity which is realized by orienting oneself towards the right aspects of the environment in the right way. Skilled performance thus requires agents to establish a normative and affective intentionality towards aspects of their material environment. We show that, since sociocultural practices shape human identities, sociocultural practices play a crucial role in shaping human intentionality of skilled performance both in their normative and affective dimensions. Maintaining a human identity, we argue, amounts to routinely carrying out activities that form a historical pattern which is shared with and recognized by others.

Perceiving and creating atmospheres: how ecological-enactive cognition can explain and inform architectural practice

“…So construed, sense-making is the link between biological maintenance and cognition (Thompson, 2007). Crucially for our purposes, it has been linked to affectivity (Colombetti, 2014; 2017; Mojica & Gastelum Vargas, 2021), for the continuous strive for self-maintenance involves the affective characteristic of concern for itself .…”

“…For EEC, meaning emerges from our concern for ourselves as living beings—and, in the human case, our socio cultural inheritance carries a meaning of its own, but which is nevertheless not entirely decoupable from our fundamental, biological concern for ourselves. In other words, new levels of organization and individuation, such as the sensorimotor and the socio-cultural one, take place from our biological autonomy (Mojica & Gastelum Vargas, 2021). Each level has their own relations and properties, but in the human case they are all deeply interwoven.…”