•  40
    Predictive Processing and Some Disillusions about Illusions
    Review of Philosophy and Psychology 13 (4): 999-1017. 2022.
    A number of perceptual (exteroceptive and proprioceptive) illusions present problems for predictive processing accounts. In this chapter we’ll review explanations of the Müller-Lyer Illusion (MLI), the Rubber Hand Illusion (RHI) and the Alien Hand Illusion (AHI) based on the idea of Prediction Error Minimization (PEM), and show why they fail. In spite of the relatively open communicative processes which, on many accounts, are posited between hierarchical levels of the cognitive system in order t…Read more
  •  77
    Enactivism
    Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 2023.
    Enactivism The term ‘enaction’ was first introduced in The Embodied Mind, co-authored by Varela, Thompson, and Rosch and published in 1991. That seminal work provides the first original contemporary formulation of enactivism. Its authors define cognition as enaction, which they in turn characterize as the ‘bringing forth’ of domains of significance through organismic activity that … Continue reading Enactivism →
  •  7
    Enactivism: Why be Radical?
    In Horst Bredekamp & John Michael Krois (eds.), Sehen und Handeln, Akademie Verlag. pp. 21-44. 2011.
  •  17
    Relaxed naturalism and liberal naturalism both invite us to adopt a philosophy of nature that includes a range of non-scientific phenomena in its inventory while nevertheless keeping the supernatural at bay. This paper considers the question of how relaxed naturalism relates to liberal naturalism and what refinements are required if they are to succeed in their joint cause of developing a tenable alternative to scientific naturalism. Particular attention is given to what might be added to the na…Read more
  •  481
    Similarity-based cognition is commonplace. It occurs whenever an agent or system exploits the similarities that hold between two or more items—e.g., events, processes, objects, and so on—in order to perform some cognitive task. This kind of cognition is of special interest to cognitive neuroscientists. This paper explicates how similarity-based cognition can be understood through the lens of radical enactivism and why doing so has advantages over its representationalist rival, which posits the e…Read more
  •  28
    Similarity-based cognition is commonplace. It occurs whenever an agent or system exploits the similarities that hold between two or more items—e.g., events, processes, objects, and so on—in order to perform some cognitive task. This kind of cognition is of special interest to cognitive neuroscientists. This paper explicates how similarity-based cognition can be understood through the lens of radical enactivism and why doing so has advantages over its representationalist rival, which posits the e…Read more
  •  7
    Similarity-based cognition is commonplace. It occurs whenever an agent or system exploits the similarities that hold between two or more items—e.g., events, processes, objects, and so on—in order to perform some cognitive task. This kind of cognition is of special interest to cognitive neuroscientists. This paper explicates how similarity-based cognition can be understood through the lens of radical enactivism and why doing so has advantages over its representationalist rival, which posits the e…Read more
  •  33
    Against intellectualism about skill
    Synthese 201 (4): 1-20. 2023.
    This paper will argue that intellectualism about skill—the contention that skilled performance is without exception guided by proposition knowledge—is fundamentally flawed. It exposes that intellectualists about skill run into intractable theoretical problems in explicating a role for their novel theoretical conceit of practical modes of presentation. It then examines a proposed solution by Carlotta Pavese which seeks to identify practical modes of presentation with motor representations that gu…Read more
  •  5
    XIII*—Making Sense of Nonsense: Kierkegaard and Wittgenstein
    Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 98 (1): 263-286. 1998.
    John Lippitt, Daniel Hutto; XIII*—Making Sense of Nonsense: Kierkegaard and Wittgenstein, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 98, Issue 1, 1 June 19.
  •  14
    Getting real about pretense
    Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 21 (5): 1157-1175. 2022.
    This paper argues that radical enactivism (RE) offers a framework with the required nuance needed for understanding of the full range of the various forms of pretense. In particular, its multi-storey account of cognition, which holds that psychological attitudes can be both contentless and contentful, enables it to appropriately account for both the most basic and most advanced varieties of pretense. By comparison with other existing accounts of pretense, RE is shown to avoid the pitfalls of rep…Read more
  •  23
    What are we doing when we perceive numbers?
    Behavioral and Brain Sciences 44. 2021.
    Clarke and Beck rightly contend that the number sense allows us to directly perceive number. However, they unnecessarily assume a representationalist approach and incur a heavy theoretical cost by invoking “modes of presentation.” We suggest that the relevant evidence is better explained by adopting a radical enactivist approach that avoids characterizing the approximate number system as a system for representing number.
  •  856
    The roots of remembering: Radically enactive recollecting
    In Kourken Michaelian, Dorothea Debus & Denis Perrin (eds.), New Directions in the Philosophy of Memory, Routledge. pp. 97-118. 2018.
    This chapter proposes a radically enactive account of remembering that casts it as creative, dynamic, and wide-reaching. It paints a picture of remembering that no longer conceives of it as involving passive recollections – always occurring wholly and solely inside heads. Integrating empirical findings from various sources, the chapter puts pressure on familiar cognitivist visions of remembering. Pivotally, it is argued, that we achieve a stronger and more elegant account of remembering by aband…Read more
  •  3
    Understanding Reasons Without Reenactment
    Emotion Review 4 (1): 66-67. 2012.
    This comment on Stueber’s article clarifies the nature of the core disagreement between his approach to understanding reasons and mine. The purely philosophical nature of the dispute is highlighted. It is argued that understanding someone’s narrative often suffices for understanding the person’s reasons in ordinary cases. It is observed that Stueber has yet to provide a compelling counter case. There is also a brief clarification of some of the empirical commitments of the narrative practice hyp…Read more
  •  3
    The extended mind * edited by Richard menary (review)
    Analysis 71 (4): 785-787. 2011.
  •  150
    An Ideal Solution to the Problems of Consciousness
    Journal of Consciousness Studies 5 (3): 328-43. 1998.
    This paper distinguishes three conceptual problems that attend philosophical accounts of consciousness. The first concerns the problem of properly characterizing the nature of consciousness itself, the second is the problem of making intelligible the relation between consciousness and the ‘physical’, and the third is the problem of creating the intellectual space for a shift in philosophical framework that would enable us to deal adequately with the first two problems. It is claimed that physica…Read more
  •  42
    Re-affirming experience, presence, and the world: setting the RECord straight in reply to Noë
    with Erik Myin
    Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 20 (5): 971-989. 2021.
    This paper responds to Alva Noë’s general critique of Radical Enactivism. In particular, it responds to his claim that Radical Enactivism denies experience, presence and the world. We clarify Radical Enactivism’s actual arguments and positive commitments in this regard. Finally, we assess how Radical Enactvism stands up in comparison with Noë’s own version of Sensorimotor Knowledge Enactivism.
  •  22
    This paper explicates how we might positively understand the distinctive, nonconceptual experience of our own actions and experiences by drawing on insights from a radically enactive take on phenomenal experience. We defend a late-developing relationalism about the emergence of explicit, conceptually based self-awareness, proposing that the latter develops in tandem with the mastery of self-reflective narrative practices. Focusing on the case of human newborns, Sect. 1 reviews and rejects claims…Read more
  •  23
    The cost of over-intellectualizing the free-energy principle
    Behavioral and Brain Sciences 43. 2020.
    This commentary raises a question about the target article's proposed explanation of what goes on when we think through other minds. It highlights a tension between non-mindreading characterizations of everyday social cognition and the individualist, cognitivist assumptions that target article's explanatory proposal inherits from the predictive processing framework it favours.
  •  596
    Culture in Mind - An Enactivist Account: Not Cognitive Penetration But Cultural Permeation
    In Laurence J. Kirmayer, Carol M. Worthman, Shinobu Kitayama, Robert Lemelson & Constance Cummings (eds.), Culture, Mind, and Brain: Emerging Concepts, Models, and Applications, Cambridge University Press. 2020.
    Advancing a radically enactive account of cognition, we provide arguments in favour of the possibility that cultural factors permeate rather than penetrate cognition, such that cognition extensively and transactionally incorporates cultural factors rather than there being any question of cultural factors having to break into the restricted confines of cognition. The paper reviews the limitations of two classical cognitivist, modularist accounts of cognition and a revisionary, new order variant o…Read more
  •  31
    From Radical Enactivism to Folk Philosophy
    The Philosophers' Magazine 88 75-82. 2020.
  •  27
    Re-doing the math: making enactivism add up
    Philosophical Studies 176 (3): 827-837. 2019.
    Mathematical cognition is widely regarded as the epitome of the kind of cognition that systematically eludes enactivist treatment. It is the parade example of abstract, disembodied cognition if ever there was one. As it is such an important test case, this paper focuses squarely on what Gallagher has to say about mathematical cognition in Enactivist Interventions. Gallagher explores a number of possible theories that he holds could provide useful fodder for developing an adequate enactivist acco…Read more
  •  924
    The mainstream view in cognitive science is that computation lies at the basis of and explains cognition. Our analysis reveals that there is no compelling evidence or argument for thinking that brains compute. It makes the case for inverting the explanatory order proposed by the computational basis of cognition thesis. We give reasons to reverse the polarity of standard thinking on this topic, and ask how it is possible that computation, natural and artificial, might be based on cognition and no…Read more
  •  884
    The Narrative Practice Hypothesis: Origins and Applications of Folk Psychology
    Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement 60 43-68. 2007.
    Psychologically normal adult humans make sense of intentional actions by trying to decide for which reason they were performed. This is a datum that requires our understanding. Although there have been interesting recent debates about how we should understand ‘reasons’, I will follow a long tradition and assume that, at a bare minimum, to act for a reason involves having appropriately interrelated beliefs and desires. He left the party because he believed the host had insulted him. She will head…Read more
  •  616
    Basic Emotion Theory, or BET, has dominated the affective sciences for decades (Ekman, 1972, 1992, 1999; Ekman and Davidson, 1994; Griffiths, 2013; Scarantino and Griffiths, 2011). It has been highly influential, driving a number of empirical lines of research (e.g., in the context of facial expression detection, neuroimaging studies and evolutionary psychology). Nevertheless, BET has been criticized by philosophers, leading to calls for it to be jettisoned entirely (Colombetti, 2014; Hufendiek,…Read more
  •  55
    Much ado about nothing? Why going non-semantic is not merely semantics
    with Erik Myin
    Philosophical Explorations 21 (2): 187-203. 2018.
    This paper argues that deciding on whether the cognitive sciences need a Representational Theory of Mind matters. Far from being merely semantic or inconsequential, the answer we give to the RTM-question makes a difference to how we conceive of minds. How we answer determines which theoretical framework the sciences of mind ought to embrace. The structure of this paper is as follows. Section 1 outlines Rowlands’s argument that the RTM-question is a bad question and that attempts to answer it, on…Read more
  •  28
    Making sense of each other's reasons is a cornerstone of human social life. It involves attributing beliefs, desires, and hopes in complex ways. Our capacity to do this is unique: we do not share it with animals or very young children. It is so deeply ingrained in our daily existence that we tend only to notice it, and its critical importance, when it is damaged or absent altogether. What is the basis of this competence? How do we come by it? In this lecture, Dr. Daniel Hutto introduces the idea…Read more