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A Methodological Response to the Motley Crew Argument: Explaining Cognitive Phenomena Through Enactivism and Ethology

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Life and Mind

Part of the book series: Interdisciplinary Evolution Research ((IDER,volume 8))

Abstract

The enactive approach to cognition is presented as an attractive alternative to mainstream paradigms in the cognitive sciences, rejecting notions such as the ones of information processing, representation, and computation. However, notwithstanding the growing interest received in contemporary debates, enactivism is confronted with critical methodological challenges. One of these challenges is the so-called “Motley-Crew Argument.” It makes the critical point that if cognition has to be studied as spanning across brains, bodies, and environment, then enactivists automatically rely on a definition of cognition that is too broad and ultimately amenable to rigorous scientific scrutiny. In this text, we pave the way for a methodological answer to this worry and argue for an interdisciplinary connection between biological ethology and enactivism. We show that both approaches share theoretical commitments and that the methodical repertoire of ethology fits the theoretical perspective of enactivism. An ethological case study on risk evaluation in gregarious birds is presented as an example of how a cognitive phenomenon can simultaneously be approached from an enactivist and ethological perspective.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Here, with “sensorimotor approach,” we are just referring to the work of O’Regan and Noë (2001) which can be mostly related to a theory of sensory consciousness. We are aware that the tools of sensorimotor enactivism have been employed and implemented into autopoietic enactivism and extended to a large number of cognitive domains (see Di Paolo et al. 2017).

  2. 2.

    In the context of cognitive ethology, it is useful to understand the “term” functional in a similar fashion of the tradition of William James in which cognitive capacities, habits, emotions and behavior more generally are studied in terms of their evolutionary or temporary adaptation towards an environment in flux (see Käufer and Chemero 2021).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Philosophy, University of Kassel, Kassel, Germany

    Mark-Oliver Casper & Giuseppe Flavio Artese

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  1. Mark-Oliver Casper
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  2. Giuseppe Flavio Artese
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Correspondence to Mark-Oliver Casper .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Logic and Philosophy of Science, Autonomous University of Madrid, Madrid, Spain

    José Manuel Viejo

  2. Department of Logic and Philosophy of Science, Autonomous University of Madrid, Madrid, Spain

    Mariano Sanjuán

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Casper, MO., Artese, G.F. (2023). A Methodological Response to the Motley Crew Argument: Explaining Cognitive Phenomena Through Enactivism and Ethology. In: Viejo, J.M., Sanjuán, M. (eds) Life and Mind. Interdisciplinary Evolution Research, vol 8. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-30304-3_3

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