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...
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...
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...
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...
We suggest that the influence of biology in 'biologically inspired robotics' can be embraced at a deeper level than is typical, if we adopt an enactive approach that moves the focus of interest from how problems are solved to how problems emerge in the first place. In addition to being inspired by mechanisms found in natural systems or by evolutionary design principles directed at solving...
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...
According to the sensorimotor approach, perception is a form of embodied know-how, constituted by lawful regularities in the sensorimotor flow or in sensorimotor contingencies (SMCs) in an active and situated agent. Despite the attention that this approach has attracted, there have been few attempts to define its core concepts formally. In this paper, we examine the idea of SMCs and argue that...
Despite the increase of both dynamic and embodied/situated approaches in cognitive science, there is still little research on how coordination dynamics under a closed sensorimotor loop might induce qualitatively different patterns of neural oscillations compared to those found in isolated systems. We take as a departure point the Haken-Kelso-Bunz (HKB) model, a generic model for dynamic...
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...