Enaction, Sense-Making, and Emotion

Abstract

The theory of autopoiesis is central to the enactive approach.Recent works emphasize that the theory of autopoiesis is a theory of sense-making in living systems, i.e. of how living systems produce and consume meaning.In this chapter I first illustrate (some aspects of) these recent works, and interpret their notion of sense-making as a bodily cognitiveemotional form of understanding.Then I turn to modern emotion science, and I illustrate its tendency to over-intellectualize our capacity to evaluate and understand.I show that this overintellectualization goes hand in hand with the rejection of the idea that the body is a vehicle of meaning.I explain why I think that this over-intellectualization is problematic, and try to reconceptualize the notion of evaluation in emotion theory in a way that is consistent and continuous with the autopoietic notion of sense-making.