The Oxford Handbook of 4E Cognition
October 9, 2018
Albert Newen, Shaun Gallagher, Leon De Bruin
129 citations
Abstract The Introduction starts with offering definitions of the central 4E features, that is, the features of embodied, embedded, enacted, and extended cognition. To set the stage, we sketch the conceptual distinction that characterizes the role of these features: are they only causally influencing a mental phenomenon or are some of them constituting it? We suggest that we can no longer...
The Oxford Handbook of 4E Cognition
October 9, 2018
Erik Rietveld, Damiaan Denys, Maarten Van Westen
104 citations
Abstract The topic of this Oxford handbook is “4E cognition”: cognition as embodied, embedded, enactive, and extended. However, one important “E” is missing: an E for ecological. We sketch an ecological-enactive approach to cognition that presents a framework for bringing together the embodied/enactive program with the ecological program originally developed by James Gibson, in which...
The Oxford Handbook of 4E Cognition
October 9, 2018
Ezequiel A. Di Paolo
55 citations
Abstract Enactivism offers research in embodied cognition an alternative to functionalism. It does so by theorizing the individuation of organic, sensorimotor, and social bodies in their material precariousness. In this chapter, we discuss the concepts of autonomy, agency, and sense-making as they emerge from a dialectical analysis of the notion of autopoiesis. Each of the requirements of...
The Oxford Handbook of 4E Cognition
October 9, 2018
Joel Krueger
49 citations
Abstract Defenders of a view called “direct social perception” (DSP) argue that our social-cognitive capacities rest on our ability to directly perceive others’ mental states—their emotions, desires, intentions, etc.—embodied in their expressive, goal-directed behavior. DSP thus challenges the widespread assumption that mental states are intracranial phenomena, perceptually inaccessible to...
The Oxford Handbook of 4E Cognition
October 9, 2018
Jakob Hohwy
26 citations
Abstract Prediction may be a central concept for understanding perceptual and cognitive processing. Contemporary theoretical neuroscience formalizes the role of prediction in terms of probabilistic inference. Perception, action, attention, and learning may then be unified as aspects of predictive processing in the brain. This chapter first explains the sense in which predictive processing is...
The Oxford Handbook of 4E Cognition
October 9, 2018
Louise Barrett
22 citations
Abstract 4E cognition offers a viable alternative to the viewpoint of classic cognitivism, providing a coherent, biologically grounded theory of cognitive evolution, which recognizes that bodies evolved before brains, and argues that whatever cognition might be, it must be grounded in the ability of organisms to coordinate and control action in a dynamic environment. In this chapter, I first...
The Oxford Handbook of 4E Cognition
October 9, 2018
Lambros Malafouris
20 citations
Abstract Human intelligence and its evolution have always been inextricably linked with the material forms people make. Archaeology and anthropology may well testify that human beings are not merely embedded in a rich and changing universe of things; rather, human cognitive and social life is a process genuinely mediated and often constituted by them. The specific details, varieties, and forms...
The Oxford Handbook of 4E Cognition
October 9, 2018
Shaun Gallagher
20 citations
Abstract After reviewing some disagreements and worries about embodied cognition (EC) as a research field, I focus on the distinction between weak EC, which focuses on brain-based, body-related representations, and strong EC, which takes the extraneural body and environment to be more central to cognition. An important aspect of weak EC is its reliance on the neural reuse hypothesis. I argue...
The Oxford Handbook of 4E Cognition
October 9, 2018
Hanne De Jaegher
17 citations
Abstract I outline five criteria for an enactive account of intersubjectivity. First, it should do justice to social interaction processes and to subjectivity in its experiential, bodily, existential, and historico-sociocultural complexity. Second, an integrative intersubjectivity framework should connect physiological, neural, interactional, linguistic, and societal aspects and levels of...
The Oxford Handbook of 4E Cognition
October 9, 2018
Daniel D. Hutto, Erik Myin
15 citations
Abstract E-approaches to cognition—enactive, embodied, ecological—conceive of minds as fundamentally relational and interactive. They are often heralded as offering a new paradigm for thinking about the mental. Yet only the most radical versions of E-approaches—those that seek not to complement but to replace traditional cognitivist accounts of mind—have any prospect of ushering in a truly...
The Oxford Handbook of 4E Cognition
October 9, 2018
Dan Zahavi, John Michael
12 citations
Abstract When considering the current debate on empathy, it quickly becomes evident that a diversity of definitions of and approaches to the topic are available, and that no consensus seems forthcoming. The aim of our contribution is not to resolve these disputes or to argue in favor of any one particular way of conceptualizing empathy. Instead, our aim is to open up a new perspective by...
The Oxford Handbook of 4E Cognition
October 9, 2018
Giovanna Colombetti
11 citations
Abstract The enactive approach to mind and cognition has several important implications for our understanding of affectivity. It entails that cognition is inherently affective and, relatedly, that the process of cognitive appraisal is not “purely brainy” but embodied. It also entails that a dynamical systems approach is more suitable than other conceptual frameworks to account for the...
The Oxford Handbook of 4E Cognition
October 9, 2018
Amy Cook
9 citations
Abstract The arts and humanities move us and change our minds—not just metaphorically but literally. This chapter provides a snapshot of some of the work that has occurred at the intersection of cognitive science and theater and literature. I provide a description and analysis of a theatrical experience that staged a challenge to traditional theories of cognition, demonstrating how artists are...
The Oxford Handbook of 4E Cognition
October 9, 2018
Tom Froese
6 citations
Abstract Enactivists are searching for the conditions of genuine intersubjectivity. Theory of mind approaches to social cognition have come a long way from folk psychological theorizing by paying more attention to neuroscientific evidence and phenomenological insights. This has led to hybrid accounts that incorporate automatic processing and allow an instrumental role for perception and...
The Oxford Handbook of 4E Cognition
October 9, 2018
Michael D Kirchhoff
5 citations
Abstract This chapter considers the possible convergence of predictive processing and embodied cognition. It is argued that the embodied view of cognition comprises a subset (if not all) of the following theses: (1) the constitutive thesis, (2) the nonrepresentational thesis, (3) the cognitive-affective inseparability thesis, and (4) the metaplasticity thesis. It is then argued that predictive...
The Oxford Handbook of 4E Cognition
October 9, 2018
Kai Vogeley
5 citations
Abstract Theoretical positions in cognitive sciences either emphasize the role of internal representations within the cognitive system of the person or focus on the person’s interaction with the environment. The latter position has been recently explicated in different ways under the formula of 4E cognition (extended, embodied, enactive, embedded). Focusing on the aspect of socially embedded...
The Oxford Handbook of 4E Cognition
October 9, 2018
Frédérique De Vignemont
5 citations
Abstract According to the extended mind hypothesis, “There is nothing sacred about skull and skin” for our cognitive abilities (Clark and Chalmers 1998). Is this also true for bodily awareness? In this chapter I consider several versions of what we can call the extended body hypothesis. According to a weak version, bodily awareness is not limited by the biological boundaries of our body. In...
The Oxford Handbook of 4E Cognition
October 9, 2018
Leon De Bruin
2 citations
Abstract Mindreading accounts of social cognition have been increasingly challenged over the past couple of decades. Proponents of 4E cognition have argued that social cognition is not (primarily) about reading another agent’s mental states in order to predict or explain his or her behavior. A large part of their criticism has focused on the empirical findings on false-belief understanding,...
The Oxford Handbook of 4E Cognition
October 9, 2018
Andreas Roepstorff, Tobias Starzak
Abstract How can approaching the topic of 4E cognition from an evolutionary perspective shed light on aspects of cultural and biological evolution, the nature of cognition in general, and of human nature in particular? The four papers in this section offer a temporal analysis that puts cognition into a context of larger processes that span historical and indeed evolutionary time, and they embed...
The Oxford Handbook of 4E Cognition
October 9, 2018
Elisabeth Pacherie
Abstract In his book Phenomenology of Perception, the French philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty first coined the phrase “motor intentionality.” At the same time he highlighted the contrast between motor and cognitive intentionality, he also emphasized their generally smooth interplay in normal agents. An account of motor intentionality should thus aim at elucidating not just what distinguishes...
The Oxford Handbook of 4E Cognition
October 9, 2018
Kim Sterelny
Abstract This chapter takes up the links between Dawkins’s concept of the extended phenotype and that of the extended mind. More specifically, it has three aims: (1) it argues that the extended mind effects are a special case of niche construction; (2) it identifies the cognitive foundations that made it possible for hominins to amplify their cognitive powers with material supports; in...
The Oxford Handbook of 4E Cognition
October 9, 2018
Mark I Johnson
Abstract Analytic philosophy of language was originally based on a fundamentally disembodied view of meaning and language. In contrast, research in cognitive linguistics and neuroscience emphasizes the central role of the body and brain in shaping meaning, concepts, and thought. Meaning is not, in the first instance, linguistic. Instead, language depends on and recruits prior sensory, motor,...
The Oxford Handbook of 4E Cognition
September 13, 2018
T. Tollefsen, Rick Dale
6 citations
Over past thirty years there has been an increased interest in studying joint action across a number of different disciplines including psychology, sociology, cognitive anthropology, cognitive science, and philosophy. In this chapter we canvas recent philosophical and empirical research on joint action. Along the way we highlight embedded, embodied, extended, and enactive approaches and the...
The Oxford Handbook of 4E Cognition
January 15, 2018
M. Hoffmann, R. Pfeifer
32 citations
A large body of compelling evidence has been accumulated demonstrating that embodiment—the agent’s physical setup, including its shape, materials, sensors, and actuators—is constitutive for any form of cognition, and, as a consequence, models of cognition need to be embodied. In contrast to methods from empirical sciences to study cognition, robots can be freely manipulated and virtually all...