Frontiers in Psychology
January 1, 2018
Marcin Miłkowski, Robert W. Clowes, Zuzanna Rucińska et al.
82 citations
Several recent 'wide' perspectives on cognition—embodied, embedded, extended, enactive, and distributed—are only partially relevant because cognitive science has already moved beyond them toward integrated mechanistic explanations that include internal submechanisms, interactions with others, groups, cognitive artifacts, and the environment. These wide perspectives function as research heuristics for building such explanations. The argument draws on developments in the study of mindreading and debates on emotions, showing that cognitive neuroscience has undergone a silent mechanistic revolution, turning from binary oppositions toward integration with the broader field.
Synthese
January 1, 2021
Joel Krueger
55 citations
Cognition is tied to action and extends beyond the brain into the body and environment, according to enactive approaches. If we can directly perceive other people's mental states through their embodied actions and interactions, then we may also directly perceive features of mental disorders. Drawing on Daniel Stern's concept of "forms of vitality," which has been overlooked in debates about direct social perception, the author uses autism as a case study to develop this idea. An enactive account of direct social perception suggests that people play a regulative role in shaping the temporal and phenomenal character of a disorder, which may have practical significance for clinical and therapeutic encounters.
The Oxford Handbook of 4E Cognition
October 9, 2018
Joel Krueger
49 citations
Direct social perception (DSP) holds that people can directly perceive others' mental states—emotions, desires, intentions—through their expressive, goal-directed behavior, challenging the idea that mental states are hidden inside the head. This chapter traces DSP's roots in phenomenologists like Husserl, Scheler, and Merleau-Ponty, and draws on 4E cognition and empirical work suggesting that embodied expressions (facial expressions, gestures) may partly constitute emotions themselves. The author defends DSP against objections, arguing that social cognition does not require inference or simulation to access others' minds.
Behavioural Brain Research
February 1, 2021
Shane N Glackin, Tom Roberts, Joel Krueger
28 citations
Addiction involves causal factors at many levels—biomedical, neurological, social, and legal—making a simple reductive explanation unlikely. An integrative framework is needed to unify these diverse sciences while respecting their autonomy. The theory of 'Externalist' or '4E' cognition (extended, embodied, embedded, enactive) is proposed as such a framework, emphasizing the central role of the wider environment in mental processes. The paper outlines how this perspective applies to psychiatry generally, then dissolves the classic dichotomy between 'choice model' and 'disease model' of addiction, clarifies how an addict's brain interacts with her environment, and explains the success of some recovery strategies while suggesting new ones.
Voices in Psychosis
September 8, 2022
Sam Wilkinson, Joel Krueger
3 citations
The chapter examines how the term 'voice' in voice-hearing experiences can refer to two distinct concepts: a speech sound or a specific agent. It explores the relationship between these concepts in the context of psychosis, arguing that understanding this distinction is key to making sense of the varied experiences reported by participants.
Frontiers in Psychology
January 6, 2014
Joel Krueger
The mind can extend beyond the brain into music. Acts of musicking—engaging with music—grant access to emotional experiences that are otherwise inaccessible. Musical affordances, or possibilities for action offered by music, invite different forms of entrainment, which enhance the functionality of emotion-regulating processes. This draws out novel emotional experiences with expanded complexity and phenomenal character. Music should therefore be thought of as part of the vehicle needed to realize these emotional experiences, supporting a model of the musically extended mind.
Consciousness and Cognition
September 1, 2011
Joel Krueger
Social cognition may be partly constituted by physical interactions with the environment, not just neural processes. The extended mind thesis, which holds that cognitive processes can include manipulating environmental structures, is applied to social understanding. The author argues that social cognition is fundamentally an interactive form of space management—negotiating and managing "we-space"—and that expressive actions like gesture, touch, and facial expressions do genuine social-cognitive work. Drawing on gesture studies, developmental psychology, and Moebius Syndrome research, the paper challenges the Theory of Mind paradigm and suggests that social interaction is a kind of extended social cognition, driven by environmental scaffolding.