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Cognition is fundamentally shaped by a person's interactions with their environment. When this enactive view holds, cognition is necessarily embodied, embedded, and tied to affect, and may extend beyond the individual through skilled engagement with the world. The authors argue that enactivism provides a foundation for understanding these interconnected dimensions of cognition.

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Abstract

We present a specific elaboration and partial defense of the claims that cognition is enactive, embodied, embedded, affective and (potentially) extended. According to the view we will defend, the enactivist claim that perception and cognition essentially depend upon the cognizer’s interactions with their environment is fundamental. If a particular instance of this kind of dependence obtains, we will argue, then it follows that cognition is essentially embodied and embedded, that the underpinnings of cognition are inextricable from those of affect, that the phenomenon of cognition itself is essentially bound up with affect, and that the possibility of cognitive extension depends upon the instantiation of a specific mode of skillful interrelation between cognizer and environment. Thus, if cognition is enactive then it is also embodied, embedded, affective and potentially extended. Keywords: enactivism; embodied cognition; situated cognition; affective cognition