Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Making Sense of Sense-Making: Reflections on Enactive and Extended Mind Theories

  • Published:
Topoi Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

This paper explores some of the differences between the enactive approach in cognitive science and the extended mind thesis. We review the key enactive concepts of autonomy and sense-making. We then focus on the following issues: (1) the debate between internalism and externalism about cognitive processes; (2) the relation between cognition and emotion; (3) the status of the body; and (4) the difference between ‘incorporation’ and mere ‘extension’ in the body-mind-environment relation.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

Notes

  1. The notion of precarious conditions comes from Ezequiel di Paolo: “By precarious we mean the fact that in the absence of the organization of the system as a network of processes, under otherwise equal physical conditions, isolated component processes would tend to run down or extinguish” (De Jaegher and Di Paolo 2007, p. 487). See also Di Paolo’s paper in this special issue.

  2. For discussion of how autonomy pertains to these systems, see Thompson (2007) and the further references contained therein.

  3. See Di Paolo, this issue, for an excellent critical discussion showing how the parity principle “relies both on simple prejudices about inner and outer as well as on intuitions about cognition” that “are inevitably tied to the boundaries between inner and outer that it wishes to undermine.”

  4. Here we are speaking at the level of individual cognition/emotion. For social cognition and its dynamics, see De Jaegher and Di Paolo (2007).

References

  • Adams F, Aizawa K (2008) The bounds of cognition. Blackwell, Malden, MA

    Google Scholar 

  • Berlucchi G, Aglioti S (1997) The body in the brain: neural bases of corporeal awareness. Trends Neurosci 20:560–564

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bitbol M, Luisi PL (2005) Autopoiesis with or without cognition: defining life at its edge. J R Soc Interface 1:99–107

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bourgine P, Stewart J (2004) Autopoiesis and cognition. Artif Life 20:327–345

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Clark A (2007) Curing cognitive hiccups: a defense of the extended mind. J Philos 104:163–192

    Google Scholar 

  • Clark A (2008) Pressing the flesh: a tension in the study of the embodied, embedded mind? Philos Phenomenol Res 76:37–59

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Clark A, Chalmers D (1998) The extended mind. Analysis 58:7–19

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Colombetti G (2005) Appraising valence. In: Colombetti G, Thompson E (eds) Emotion experience. Imprint Academic, Thorverton, UK, pp 103–126. Also published in Journal of Consciousness Studies 12:103–126

  • Colombetti G (2007) Enactive appraisal. Phenomenol Cogn Sci 6:527–546

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Colombetti G (2009) Enaction, sense-making and emotion. In: Stewart J, Gapenne O, di Paolo E (eds) Enaction: towards a new paradigm for cognitive science. The MIT Press, Cambridge, MA

    Google Scholar 

  • Colombetti G, Thompson E (2005) Enacting emotional interpretations with feeling. Behav Brain Sci 28:200–201

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Colombetti G, Thompson E (2007) The feeling body: toward an enactive approach to emotion. In: Overton W, Mueller U, Newman J (eds) Body in mind, mind in body: developmental perspectives on embodiment and consciousness. Lawrence Erlbaum, New Jersey

    Google Scholar 

  • Cosmelli D, Thompson E (2009) Embodiment or envatment? Reflections on the bodily basis of consciousness. In: Stewart J, Gapenne O, di Paolo E (eds) Enaction: towards a new paradigm for cognitive science. The MIT Press, Cambridge, MA

    Google Scholar 

  • Damasio AR (1999) The feeling of what happens: body and emotion in the making of consciousness. Harcourt Brace, New York

    Google Scholar 

  • De Jaegher H, Di Paolo E (2007) Participatory sense-making: an enactive approach to social cognition. Phenomenol Cogn Sci 6:485–507

    Google Scholar 

  • De Preester H (2008) On corporeal prostheses as an essential human characteristic. Presented at ESPRA 2: subjectivity and the body, 29 January–1 February 2008, Copenhagen. http://espra.risc.cnrs.fr/ESPRA2Home.htm

  • Di Paolo EA (2005) Autopoiesis, adaptivity, teleology, agency. Phenomenol Cogn Sci 4:429–452

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Di Paolo EA (this issue) Extended life. Topoi. doi:10.1007/s11245-008-9042-3

  • Di Paolo EA, Iizuka H (2008) How (not) to model autonomous behaviour. Biosystems 91:409–423

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Freeman WJ (2000) Emotion is essential to all intentional behaviors. In: Lewis MD, Granic I (eds) Emotion development, and self-organization. Dynamic systems approaches to emotional development. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp 209–235

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Heidegger M (1995) The fundamental concepts of metaphysics: world, finitude, solitude (trans: McNeill W, Walker N). Indiana University Press, Bloomington

  • Hurley SL (in press) Varieties of externalism. In: Menary R (ed) The extended mind. Ashgate, Aldershot

  • Legrand D (2006) The bodily self: the sensori-motor roots of pre-reflexive self-consciousness. Phenomenol Cogn Sci 5:89–118

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Legrand D (2007a) Pre-reflective self-as-subject from experiential and empirical perspectives. Conscious Cogn 16:583–589

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Legrand D (2007b) Pre-reflective self-consciousness: on being bodily in the world. Janus Head 9:493–519

    Google Scholar 

  • Lewis MD (2005) Bridging emotion theory and neurobiology through dynamic systems modeling. Behav Brain Sci 28:169–194

    Google Scholar 

  • Maravita A, Iriki A (2004) Tools for the body (schema). Trends Cogn Sci 8:79–86

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Maravita A, Spence C, Driver J (2003) Multisensory integration and the body schema: close to hand and within reach. Curr Biol 13(13):531–539

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Maturana HR, Varela FJ (1980) Autopoiesis and cognition: the realization of the living. Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, vol 42. D. Reidel, Dordrecht

  • Maturana HR, Varela FJ (1987) The tree of knowledge. The biological roots of human understanding. Shambala Press/New Science Library, Boston

    Google Scholar 

  • Merleau-Ponty M (1962) Phenomenology of perception (trans: Smith C). Routledge Press, London

  • Merleau-Ponty M (1963) The structure of behavior (trans: Fisher A). Dusquene University Press, Pittsburgh, PA

  • Murray CD (2005) The social meaning of prosthesis use. J Health Psychol 10:425–441

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Pessoa L (2008) On the relationship between emotion and cognition. Nat Rev Neurosci 9:148–158

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ruiz-Mirazo K, Moreno A (2004) Basic autonomy as a fundamental step in the synthesis of life. Artif Life 10:235–259

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Shapiro LA (2004) The mind incarnate. The MIT Press, Cambridge, MA

    Google Scholar 

  • Thompson E (2004) Life and mind: from autopoiesis to neurophenomenology. A tribute to Francisco Varela. Phenomenol Cogn Sci 3:381–398

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Thompson E (2007) Mind in life: biology, phenomenology, and the sciences of mind. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA

    Google Scholar 

  • Tsakiris M, Prabhu G, Haggard P (2006) Having a body versus moving your body: how agency structures body-ownership. Conscious Cogn 15:423–432

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Varela FJ (1979) Principles of biological autonomy. Elsevier North Holland, New York

    Google Scholar 

  • Varela FJ (1991) Organism: a meshwork of selfless selves. In: Tauber A (ed) Organism, the origin of self. Kluwer, Dordrecht, pp 79–107

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Varela FJ (1997) Patterns of life: intertwining identity and cognition. Brain Cogn 34:72–87

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Varela FJ, Bourgine P (eds) (1991) Toward a practice of autonomous systems. In: Proceedings of the first European conference on artificial life, the MIT Press, Cambridge, MA

  • Varela FJ, Depraz N (2005) At the source of time: valence and the constitutional dynamics of affect. In: Colombetti G, Thompson E (eds) Emotion experience. Imprint Academic, Thorverton, UK, pp 64–81. Also published as a special issue of Journal of Consciousness Studies 12:64–81

  • Varela FJ, Maturana HR, Uribe R (1974) Autopoiesis: the organization of living systems, its characterization and a model. Biosystems 5:187–196

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Varela FJ, Thompson E, Rosch E (1991) The embodied mind: cognitive science and human experience. The MIT Press, Cambridge, MA

    Google Scholar 

  • Wheeler M (in press) Minds, things, and materiality. In: Renfrew C, Malafouris L (eds) The cognitive life of things: recasting the boundaries of the mind. McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, Cambridge

Download references

Acknowledgment

The work of the second author was supported by the AHRC (Grant Number ESF/AH/E511139/1) and forms a part of the CONTACT (Consciousness in Interaction) Project. The CONTACT project is a part of the ESF EuroCORES Consciousness in the Natural and Cultural Context scheme.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Philosophy, University of Toronto, 170 St. George Street, Toronto, ON, Canada, M5R 2M8

    Evan Thompson

  2. Department of Philosophy, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, EH8 9AD, Scotland, UK

    Mog Stapleton

Authors
  1. Evan Thompson
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Mog Stapleton
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Evan Thompson.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Thompson, E., Stapleton, M. Making Sense of Sense-Making: Reflections on Enactive and Extended Mind Theories. Topoi 28, 23–30 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11245-008-9043-2

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11245-008-9043-2

Keywords

Search

Navigation