Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences
August 26, 2026
Xabier E. Barandiaran, Tiago Rama
Abstract Teleosemantics explains meaning by appealing to the biological norms that make error possible, but most work in the field still anchors those norms in evolutionary “selected-effect” functions. We develop an organismic alternative grounded in the self-maintenance of autonomous systems. Elaborating upon and within sensorimotor theory and enactivism, we reconceptualise goals as higher...
Ai & Society
2026
Pablo González Torre, Marta Pérez-verdugo, Xabier E. Barandiaran
This paper critically analyses the “attention economy” within the framework of cognitive science and techno-political economics, as applied to both human and machine interactions. We explore how current business models, particularly in digital platform capitalism, harness user engagement by strategically shaping attentional patterns. These platforms utilize advanced AI and massive data...
December 9, 2025
Xabier E. Barandiaran, Tiago Rama
1 citation
This chapter calls for an “organismic” approach to teleosemantics, integrating insights from the 4E cognition paradigm (Embodied, Enactive, Extended, and Ecological) and deeply transforming one of the strongest naturalizing projects in analytic philosophy. Classical teleosemantics traditionally explains mental intentionality through evolutionary selection, positing that the function of...
Synthese
January 16, 2025
Enara García, Xabier E. Barandiaran
In recent years, (autonomy-centered) enactivism has been used to provide an integrative and relational account of mental conditions. A significant advancement lies in its naturalized and pluralistic treatment of normativity, which transcends traditional objectivist and normativist dichotomies. This article explores the varieties of normativity within this paradigm and their implications for...
Front Neurorobot
December 21, 2022
Matthew D. Egbert, Xabier E. Barandiaran
Using enactive robotics to think outside of the problem-solving box: How sensorimotor contingencies constrain the forms of emergent autononomous habits.
Topoi
September 1, 2017
Xabier E. Barandiaran
126 citations
Abstract The concept of “autonomy”, once at the core of the original enactivist proposal in The Embodied Mind (Varela et al. in The embodied mind: cognitive science and human experience. MIT Press, Cambridge, 1991), is nowadays ignored or neglected by some of the most prominent contemporary enactivists approaches. Theories of autonomy, however, come to fill a theoretical gap that sensorimotor...
Adaptive Behavior
June 1, 2006
Xabier E. Barandiaran, Álvaro Moreno
131 citations
Dynamicism has provided cognitive science with important tools to understand some aspects of “how cognitive agents work” but the issue of “what makes something cognitive” has not been sufficiently addressed yet and, we argue, the former will never be complete without the latter. Behavioristic characterizations of cognitive properties are criticized in favor of an organizational approach focused...