Collection
Pragmatism and Enactivism
Since the end of the twenty-first century, cognitive science has been witnessing what has been called a pragmatist turn, a change of perspective which considers that pragmatists were basically right about the nature of knowledge and experience (Engel et al. 2015; Madzia, Jung 2016; Madzia, Santarelli 2017; Schulkin 2015). Generally speaking, the pragmatist turn paradigm suggests that cognition is fundamentally grounded in action, that is, fundamentally action-bound, “subserving the planning, selection, anticipation, and performance of actions” (Engel et al. 2013, p. 206). In this respect, the enactivist theories of cognition are among the primary references of the pragmatist turn. Enactivism overlaps with various approaches to understanding embodied, embedded, extended, and affective minds as action-oriented (4EA). The recent appeal of pragmatist authors emerges precisely to respond to a possible integration of the different, sometimes conflicting, approaches into a unified inquiry program. More specifically, the pragmatist turn allows enactivism to emphasize the organism-environment sensorimotor interaction, the organic nature of the relationship between means (sensory stimuli) and ends (performance of conduct), and the active role of emotional tendencies as co-constitutive conditions of cognitive processes. Indeed, an increasing number of authors agree that the roots of enactivism lay not only in phenomenology and ecological psychology but also in pragmatism (Johnson 2007; Chemero 2009; Menary 2011; Di Paolo et al. 2017; Gallagher 2017; Crippen & Schulkin 2020). In fact, as for phenomenologically inspired enactivism (Varela et al. 1991; Thompson 2007; Gallagher and Zahavi 2007), a pragmatist non-reductionist approach to cognition allows the rethinking of the meaning of mind and brain and the very concept of nature, not accepting a mechanistic definition of nature as presupposed by science.
The Special Issue aims to ask to what extent the encounter of pragmatism and enactivism can offer the opportunity to reflect upon the genesis and nature, limits and the potentialities of cognition, and the problem as to how mind and world, nature and culture stay together. Authors are encouraged to submit papers on topics such as (but not limited to) the relationship between action and perception, social practices and epistemology, the nature of mind, meaning and language, habits, and self-identity.
Editors
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Guido Baggio
Guido Baggio (guido.baggio@uniroma3.it) is an Associate Professor in Philosophy at the University of Roma Tre. He principally works in Pragmatism and American philosophy, the philosophy of psychology, the philosophy of cognitive science, and the philosophy of literature. His current research on the potential connections between pragmatist psychological and philosophical theories and the variety of enactivisms aims to develop an enactivist cognitive ontology pragmatistically informed.
