Advertisement

Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences

, Volume 8, Issue 1, pp 95–133 | Cite as

Hume and the enactive approach to mind

  • Tom FroeseEmail author
Article
First Online:

Abstract

An important part of David Hume’s work is his attempt to put the natural sciences on a firmer foundation by introducing the scientific method into the study of human nature. This investigation resulted in a novel understanding of the mind, which in turn informed Hume’s critical evaluation of the scope and limits of the scientific method as such. However, while these latter reflections continue to influence today’s philosophy of science, his theory of mind is nowadays mainly of interest in terms of philosophical scholarship. This paper aims to show that, even though Hume’s recognition in the cognitive sciences has so far been limited, there is an opportunity to reevaluate his work in the context of more recent scientific developments. In particular, it is argued that we can gain a better understanding of his overall philosophy by tracing the ongoing establishment of the enactive approach. In return, this novel interpretation of Hume’s ‘science of man’ is used as the basis for a consideration of the current and future status of the cognitive sciences.

Keywords

Enactivism Hume Phenomenology Life Mind Enactive Cognitive science Human nature 
This is a preview of subscription content, log in to check access.

Notes

Acknowledgements

Many thanks to Mike Beaton, Ezequiel Di Paolo, Joel Parthemore, Tom Ziemke, Charles Wolfe and two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on an earlier draft of this paper. Much of this paper was written during a stay in 2007 at the University of Skövde funded by the euCognition network (www.eucognition.org), as part of the European Cognitive Systems initiative.

References

  1. Ashby, W. R. (1947). The nervous system as physical machine: With special reference to the origin of adaptive behavior. Mind, 56(221), 44–59.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  2. Ayer, A. J. (1980). Hume. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2000.Google Scholar
  3. Beer, R. D. (2000). Dynamical approaches to cognitive science. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 4(3), 91–99.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  4. Beer, R. D. (2003). The dynamics of active categorical perception in an evolved model agent. Adaptive Behavior, 11(4), 209–243.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  5. Biro, J. (1993). Hume’s new science of the mind. In D. F. Norton (Ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Hume (pp. 33–63). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
  6. Bitbol, M. (2002). Science as if situation mattered. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 1, 181–224.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  7. Boden, M. A. (2008). Autonomy: What is it? BioSystems, 91(2), 305–308.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  8. Brooks, R. A. (1991). Intelligence without representation. Artificial Intelligence, 47(1–3), 139–160.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  9. Buckle, S. (2001). Hume’s enlightenment tract: The unity and purpose of ‘an enquiry concerning human understanding. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
  10. Chalmers, D. J. (1996). The conscious mind: In search of a fundamental theory. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
  11. Chrisley, R., & Ziemke, T. (2002). Embodiment. In L. Nadel, et al. (Ed.), Encyclopaedia of cognitive science (pp. 1102–1108). London, UK: Macmillan.Google Scholar
  12. Clark, A. (1997). Being there: Putting brain, body, and world together again. Cambridge, MA: MIT.Google Scholar
  13. Clark, A., & Toribio, J. (1994). Doing without representing? Synthese, 101(3), 401–431.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  14. Cliff, D. (1991). Computational neuroethology: A provisional manifesto. In J.-A. Meyer, & S. W. Wilson (Eds.), From animals to animats: Proc. of the 1st Int. Conf. on Simulation of Adaptive Behavior (pp. 29–39). Cambridge, MA: MIT.Google Scholar
  15. Collier, M. (1999). Filling the gaps: Hume and connectionism on the continued existence of unperceived objects. Hume Studies, 25(1–2), 155–170.Google Scholar
  16. Collier, M. (2005). Hume and cognitive science: The current status of the controversy over abstract ideas. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 4(2), 197–207.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  17. Colombetti, G. (2008). Enaction, sense-making and emotion. In J. Stewart, O. Gapenne & E. A. Di Paolo (Eds.), Enaction: Towards a new paradigm for cognitive science. Cambridge, MA: MIT, in press.Google Scholar
  18. Copley, S., & Edgar, A. (1998). Introduction. In S. Copley, & A. Edgar (Eds.), David Hume: Selected essays (pp. vii–xxii). New York, NY: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
  19. Damasio, A. R. (1994). Descartes’ error: Emotion, reason, and the human brain. New York, NY: Putnam.Google Scholar
  20. Davie, G. (1977). Edmund Husserl and ‘the as yet, in its most important respect, unrecognized greatness of Hume. In G. P. Morice (Ed.), David Hume: Bicentenary papers (pp. 69–76). Edinburgh, UK: Edinburgh University Press.Google Scholar
  21. De Jaegher, H., & Di Paolo, E. A. (2007). Participatory sense-making: An enactive approach to social cognition. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 6(4), 485–507.Google Scholar
  22. Deleuze, G. (1953). Empirisme et subjectivité: Essai sure la Nature Humaine selon Hume, trans. by: C. V. Boundas, Empiricism and Subjectivity: An Essay on Hume’s Theory of Human Nature. New York, NY: Columbia University Press, (1991).Google Scholar
  23. Dennett, D. C. (1978). Brainstorms: Philosophical essays on mind and psychology. Montgomery, VT: Bradford Books.Google Scholar
  24. Dennett, D. C. (1984). Cognitive wheels: The frame problem of AI. In C. Hookway (Ed.), Minds, machines, and evolution: Philosophical studies (pp. 129–151). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
  25. Depraz, N., Varela, F. J., & Vermersch, P. (2003). On becoming aware: A pragmatics of experiencing. The Netherlands, Amsterdam: Benjamins.Google Scholar
  26. Di Paolo, E. A. (2003). Organismically-inspired robotics: homeostatic adaptation and teleology beyond the closed sensorimotor loop. In K. Murase, & T. Asakura (Eds.), Dynamical systems approach to embodiment and sociality (pp. 19–42). Adelaide, Australia: Advanced Knowledge International.Google Scholar
  27. Di Paolo, E. A. (2005). Autopoiesis, adaptivity, teleology, agency. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 4(4), 429–452.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  28. Di Paolo, E. A., Rohde, M., & De Jaegher, H. (2008). Horizons for the enactive mind: Values, social interaction, and play. In J. Stewart, O. Gapenne & E. A. Di Paolo (Eds.), Enaction: Towards a new paradigm for cognitive science. Cambridge, MA: MIT, in press.Google Scholar
  29. Dreyfus, H. L. (2007). Why Heideggerian AI failed and how fixing it would require making it more Heideggerian. Philosophical Psychology, 20(2), 247–268.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  30. Dreyfus, H. L., & Dreyfus, S. E. (1988). Making a mind versus modelling the brain: artificial intelligence back at a branch-point. Daedalus, 117(1), 15–44.Google Scholar
  31. Fodor, J. A. (1975). The language of thought. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
  32. Fodor, J. A. (2003). Hume variations. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
  33. Gallagher, S. (2005). How the body shapes the mind. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
  34. Garrett, D. (1981). Hume’s self-doubts about personal identity. The Philosophical Review, 90(3), 337–358.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  35. Garrett, D. (1997). Cognition and commitment in Hume’s philosophy. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
  36. Harnish, R. M. (2002). Minds, brains, computers: An historical introduction to the foundations of cognitive science. Oxford, UK: Blackwell.Google Scholar
  37. Harvey, I. (2008). Misrepresentations. In S. Bullock, J. Noble, R. Watson, & M. Bedau (Eds.), Artificial life XI: Proc. of the 11th Int. Conf. on the simulation and synthesis of living systems (pp. 227–233). Cambridge, MA: MIT.Google Scholar
  38. Hume, D. (1739–1740a). In D. F. Norton, & M. J. Norton (Eds.), A treatise of human nature. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2000.Google Scholar
  39. Hume, D. (1739–1740b). An abstract of … A treatise of human nature. In D. F. Norton, & M. J. Norton (Eds.), David Hume: A treatise of human nature. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2000.Google Scholar
  40. Hume, D. (1741). Of the delicacy of taste and passion. In S. Copley, & A. Edgar (Eds.), David Hume: Selected essays (pp. 10–13). New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1998.Google Scholar
  41. Hume, D. (1748). In T. L. Beauchamp (Ed.), An enquiry concerning human understanding. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1999.Google Scholar
  42. Hume, D. (1757). Of the standard of taste. In S. Copley, & A. Edgar (Eds.), David Hume: Selected essays (pp. 133–154). New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1998.Google Scholar
  43. Hume, D. (1779). Dialogues concerning natural religion. In J. C. A. Gaskin (Ed.), David Hume: Principal writings on religion including dialogues concerning natural religion and the natural history of religion. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1998.Google Scholar
  44. Husserl, E. (1929). Formale und transzendentale Logik. Versuch einer Kritik der logischen Vernunft. In P. Janssen (Ed.), Husserliana XVII. The Hague, Netherlands: Martinus Nijhoff, 1974.Google Scholar
  45. Izquierdo, E., & Harvey, I. (2007). The dynamics of associative learning in an evolved situated agent. In F. Almeida e Costa, et al. (Ed.), ECAL 2007: Proc. of the 9th Euro. Conf. on Artificial Life (pp. 365–374). Berlin, Germany: Springer.Google Scholar
  46. Izquierdo-Torres, E., & Di Paolo, E. A. (2005). Is an embodied system ever purely reactive? In M. Capcarrere, et al. (Ed.), ECAL 2005: Proc. of the 8th Euro. Conf. on Artificial Life (pp. 252–261). Germany, Berlin: Springer.Google Scholar
  47. Jonas, H. (1966). The phenomenon of life: Toward a philosophical biology. Evanston,Illinois: Northwestern University Press, 2001.Google Scholar
  48. Kemp Smith, N. (1905). The naturalism of Hume (I.). Mind, 14(54), 149–173.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  49. Kemp Smith, N. (1935). Introduction. In N. K. Smith (Ed.), Hume’s dialogues concerning natural religion (pp. 1–153). London, UK: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
  50. Maturana, H. R., & Varela, F. J. (1980). Autopoiesis and cognition: The realization of the living. Dordrecht, Holland: Kluwer Academic.Google Scholar
  51. McCarthy, J., & Hayes, P. J. (1969). Some philosophical problems from the standpoint of artificial intelligence. In B. Meltzer, & D. Michie (Eds.), Machine intelligence 4 (pp. 463–502). Edinburgh, UK: Edinburgh University Press.Google Scholar
  52. McClelland, J. L., Rumelhart, D. E., & the PDP Research Group (1986). Parallel Distributed Processing: Explorations in the microstructure of cognition. Vol. 2: Psychological and biological models. Cambridge, MA: MIT.Google Scholar
  53. McGann, M. (2007). Enactive theorists do it on purpose: Toward an enactive account of goals and goal-directedness. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 6(4), 463–483.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  54. Moran, D. (2000). Introduction to phenomenology. London, UK: Routledge.Google Scholar
  55. Newell, A., & Simon, H. A. (1976). Computer science as empirical inquiry: Symbols and search. Communications of the Association for Computing Machinery, 19(3), 113–126.Google Scholar
  56. Noë, A. (2004). Action in perception. Cambridge, MA: MIT.Google Scholar
  57. O’Regan, J. K., & Noë, A. (2001). A sensorimotor account of vision and visual consciousness. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 24(5), 939–1031.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  58. Pylyshyn, Z. (1984). Computation and cognition: Toward a foundation for cognitive science. Cambridge, MA: MIT.Google Scholar
  59. Rosenberg, A. (1993). Hume and the philosophy of science. In D. F. Norton (Ed.), The Cambridge companion to Hume (pp. 64–89). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
  60. Roy, J.-M., Petitot, J., Pachoud, B., & Varela, F. J. (1999). Beyond the gap: An introduction to naturalizing phenomenology. In J. Petitot, F. J. Varela, B. Pachoud, & J.-M. Roy (Eds.), Naturalizing phenomenology: Issues in contemporary phenomenology and cognitive science (pp. 1–80). Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
  61. Schliesser, E. (2007). Hume’s Newtonianism and Anti-Newtonianism. In E. N. Zalta (Ed.), The stanford encyclopedia of philosophy, Summer 2007 Edition, URL = http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2007/entries/hume-newton/.
  62. Sellars, W. (1956). Empiricism and the philosophy of mind. In H. Feigl, & M. Scriven (Eds.), The foundations of science and the concepts of psychology and psychoanalysis (pp. 253–329). Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
  63. Smith, B. C. (2007). The objectivity of tastes and tasting. In B. C. Smith (Ed.), Questions of taste: The philosophy of wine (pp. 41–77). New York, NY: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
  64. Smolensky, P. (1988). On the proper treatment of connectionism. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 11(1), 1–23.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  65. Stewart, J., Di Paolo, E. A., & Gapenne, O. (2008). Introduction. In J. Stewart, O. Gapenne, & E. A. Di Paolo (Eds.), Enaction: Towards a new paradigm for cognitive science. Cambridge, MA: MIT, in press.Google Scholar
  66. Stroud, B. (1977). Hume. New York, NY: Routledge.Google Scholar
  67. Thompson, E. (2004). Life and mind: From autopoiesis to neurophenomenology. A tribute to Francisco Varela. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 3(4), 381–398.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  68. Thompson, E. (2007). Mind in life: Biology, phenomenology, and the sciences of mind. Cambridge, MA: MIT.Google Scholar
  69. Torrance, S. (2005). In search of the enactive: Introduction to special issue on enactive experience. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 4(4), 357–368.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  70. Van Gelder, T. (1998). The dynamical hypothesis in cognitive science. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 21(5), 615–665.Google Scholar
  71. Van Gelder, T., & Port, R. F. (1995). It’s about time: An overview of the dynamical approach to cognition. In R. F. Port, & T. van Gelder (Eds.), Mind as motion: Explorations in the dynamics of cognition (pp. 1–43). Cambridge, MA: MIT.Google Scholar
  72. Varela, F. J. (1992). Un Know-How per l’Etica, trans. as: Ethical know-how: Action, wisdom, and cognition. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1999.Google Scholar
  73. Varela, F. J. (1996). Neurophenomenology: A methodological remedy for the hard problem. Journal of Consciousness Studies, 3(4), 330–349.Google Scholar
  74. Varela, F. J. (1997). Patterns of life: Intertwining identity and cognition. Brain and Cognition, 34(1), 72–87.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  75. Varela, F. J. (1999). The specious present: A neurophenomenology of time consciousness. In J. Petitot, F. J. Varela, B. Pachoud, & J.-M. Roy (Eds.), Naturalizing phenomenology: Issues in contemporary phenomenology and cognitive science (pp. 266–314). Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
  76. Varela, F. J., & Depraz, N. (2005). At the source of time: Valence and the constitutional dynamics of affect. Journal of Consciousness Studies, 12(8–10), 61–81.Google Scholar
  77. Varela, F. J., & Shear, J. (1999). First-person methodologies: What, Why, How? Journal of Consciousness Studies, 6(2–3), 1–14.Google Scholar
  78. Varela, F. J., Thompson, E., & Rosch, E. (1991). The embodied mind: Cognitive science and human experience. Cambridge, MA: MIT.Google Scholar
  79. Waxman, W. (1994). Hume’s theory of consciousness. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
  80. Weber, A., & Varela, F. J. (2002). Life after Kant: Natural purposes and the autopoietic foundations of biological individuality. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 1, 97–125.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  81. Wheeler, M. (2005). Reconstructing the cognitive world: The next step. Cambridge, MA: MIT.Google Scholar
  82. Zahavi, D. (1996). Husserl und die transzendentale Intersubjektivität: Eine Antwort auf die sprachpragmatische Kritik, trans. by: E. A. Behnke, Husserl and Transcendental Intersubjectivity: A response to the linguistic-pragmatic critique. Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 2001.Google Scholar

Copyright information

© Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2008

Authors and Affiliations

  1. 1.Centre for Computational Neuroscience and Robotics (CCNR), Centre for Research in Cognitive Science (COGS), Department of InformaticsUniversity of SussexFalmerUK

Personalised recommendations

Cite article

Buy options