enactivism

Enactivism is one of a cluster of related theories sometimes known as the 4Es. As described by Mark Rowlands, mental processes are:

• Embodied involving more than the brain, including a more general involvement of bodily structures and processes.
• Embedded functioning only in a related external environment.
• Enacted involving not only neural processes, but also things an organism does.
• Extended into the organism's environment.

Enactivism proposes an alternative to dualism as a philosophy of mind, in that it emphasises the interactions between mind, body and the environment, seeing them all as inseparably intertwined in mental processes. The self arises as part of the process of an embodied entity interacting with the environment in precise ways determined by its physiology. In this sense, individuals can be seen to "grow into" or arise from their interactive role with the world.

:"Enaction is the idea that organisms create their own experience through their actions. Organisms are not passive receivers of input from the environment, but are actors in the environment such that what they experience is shaped by how they act."

In The Tree of Knowledge Maturana & Varela proposed the term enactive "to evoke the view of knowledge that what is known is brought forth, in contraposition to the more classical views of either cognitivism or connectionism. They see enactivism as providing a middle ground between the two extremes of representationalism and solipsism. They seek to "confront the problem of understanding how our existence-the praxis of our living- is coupled to a surrounding world which appears filled with regularities that are at every instant the result of our biological and social histories.... to find a via media: to understand the regularity of the world we are experiencing at every moment, but without any point of reference independent of ourselves that would give certainty to our descriptions and cognitive assertions. Indeed the whole mechanism of generating ourselves, as describers and observers tells us that our world, as the world which we bring forth in our coexistence with others, will always have precisely that mixture of regularity and mutability, that combination of solidity and shifting sand, so typical of human experience when we look at it up close."[Tree of Knowledge, p. 241] Another important notion relating to enactivism is autopoiesis. The word refers to a system that is able to reproduce and maintain itself. Maturana & Varela describe that "This was a word without a history, a word that could directly mean what takes place in the dynamics of the autonomy proper to living systems"{{Cite book|last1=Maturana|first1=Humberto R.|last2=Varela|first2=Francisco|url=https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/5726379|title=Autopoiesis and cognition : the realization of the living|date=1980|publisher=D. Reidel Pub. Co.|isbn=90-277-1015-5|location=Dordrecht, Holland|oclc=5726379}} Using the term autopoiesis, they argue that any closed system that has autonomy, self-reference and self-construction (or, that has autopoietic activities) has cognitive capacities. Therefore, cognition is present in all living systems. This view is also called autopoietic enactivism.

Radical enactivism is another form of enactivist view of cognition. Radical enactivists often adopt a thoroughly non-representational, enactive account of basic cognition. Basic cognitive capacities mentioned by Hutto and Myin include perceiving, imagining and remembering.{{Cite book|last1=Hutto|first1=Daniel D.|last2=Myin|first2=Erik|url=https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/988028776|title=Evolving enactivism: basic minds meet content|isbn=978-0-262-33977-3|location=Cambridge, MA|oclc=988028776}}{{Cite journal|last1=Schlicht|first1=Tobias|last2=Starzak|first2=Tobias|date=2019-09-07|title=Prospects of enactivist approaches to intentionality and cognition|url=http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11229-019-02361-z|journal=Synthese|volume=198|pages=89–113|language=en|doi=10.1007/s11229-019-02361-z|s2cid=201868153|issn=0039-7857}} They argue that those forms of basic cognition can be explained without positing mental representations. With regard to complex forms of cognition such as language, they think mental representations are needed, because there needs explanations of content. In human being's public practices, they claim that "such intersubjective practices and sensitivity to the relevant norms comes with the mastery of the use of public symbol systems" (2017, p. 120), and so "as it happens, this appears only to have occurred in full form with construction of sociocultural cognitive niches in the human lineage" (2017, p. 134). They conclude that basic cognition as well as cognition in simple organisms such as bacteria are best characterized as non-representational.{{Cite book|last1=Hutto|first1=Daniel D.|last2=Myin|first2=Erik|url=https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/822894365|title=Radicalizing enactivism : basic minds without content|date=2013|publisher=MIT Press|isbn=978-0-262-31217-2|location=Cambridge, Mass.|oclc=822894365}}

Enactivism also addresses the hard problem of consciousness, referred to by Thompson as part of the explanatory gap in explaining how consciousness and subjective experience are related to brain and body. "The problem with the dualistic concepts of consciousness and life in standard formulations of the hard problem is that they exclude each other by construction". Instead, according to Thompson's view of enactivism, the study of consciousness or phenomenology as exemplified by Husserl and Merleau-Ponty is to complement science and its objectification of the world. "The whole universe of science is built upon the world as directly experienced, and if we want to subject science itself to rigorous scrutiny and arrive at a precise assessment of its meaning and scope, we must begin by reawakening the basic experience of the world of which science is the second-order expression" (Merleau-Ponty, The phenomenology of perception as quoted by Thompson, p. 165). In this interpretation, enactivism asserts that science is formed or enacted as part of humankind's interactivity with its world, and by embracing phenomenology "science itself is properly situated in relation to the rest of human life and is thereby secured on a sounder footing."

Enaction has been seen as a move to conjoin representationalism with phenomenalism, that is, as adopting a constructivist epistemology, an epistemology centered upon the active participation of the subject in constructing reality. However, 'constructivism' focuses upon more than a simple 'interactivity' that could be described as a minor adjustment to 'assimilate' reality or 'accommodate' to it. Constructivism looks upon interactivity as a radical, creative, revisionist process in which the knower constructs a personal 'knowledge system' based upon their experience and tested by its viability in practical encounters with their environment. Learning is a result of perceived anomalies that produce dissatisfaction with existing conceptions.

Shaun Gallagher also points out that pragmatism is a forerunner of enactive and extended approaches to cognition.{{Cite journal|last=Gallagher|first=Shaun|date=October 2014|title=Pragmatic Interventions into Enactive and Extended Conceptions of Cognition: Pragmatic Interventions into Enactive and Extended Conceptions of Cognition|url=http://doi.wiley.com/10.1111/phis.12027|journal=Philosophical Issues|language=en|volume=24|issue=1|pages=110–126|doi=10.1111/phis.12027}} According to him, enactive conceptions of cognition can be found in many pragmatists such as Charles Sanders Peirce and John Dewey. For example, Dewey says that "The brain is essentially an organ for effecting the reciprocal adjustment to each other of the stimuli received from the environment and responses directed upon it" (1916, pp. 336–337).{{Cite journal|last1=Hoernle|first1=R. F. Alfred|last2=Dewey|first2=John|date=July 1917|title=Essays in Experimental Logic|url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/2178488|journal=The Philosophical Review|volume=26|issue=4|pages=421|doi=10.2307/2178488|jstor=2178488|hdl=2027/hvd.32044005126057|hdl-access=free}} This view is fully consistent with enactivist arguments that cognition is not just a matter of brain processes and brain is one part of the body consisting of the dynamical regulation.{{Cite book|last1=Cosmelli|first1=Diego|last2=Thompson|first2=Evan|date=2010-11-24|editor-last=Stewart|editor-first=John|editor2-last=Gapenne|editor2-first=Olivier|editor3-last=Di Paolo|editor3-first=Ezequiel A.|title=Embodiment or Envatment?: Reflections on the Bodily Basis of Consciousness|url=https://m.mitpress.universitypressscholarship.com:443/mobile/view/10.7551/mitpress/9780262014601.001.0001/upso-9780262014601-chapter-14|publisher=The MIT Press|pages=360–385|doi=10.7551/mitpress/9780262014601.003.0014|isbn=978-0-262-01460-1}} Robert Brandom, a neo-pragmatist, comments that "A founding idea of pragmatism is that the most fundamental kind of intentionality (in the sense of directedness towards objects) is the practical involvement with objects exhibited by a sentient creature dealing skillfully with its world" (2008, p. 178).{{Cite book|last1=Brandom|first1=Robert|url=https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/258378350|title=Between saying and doing: towards an analytic pragmatism|date=2008|publisher=Oxford University Press|isbn=978-0-19-156226-6|location=Oxford|oclc=258378350}}

How does constructivism relate to enactivism? From the above remarks it can be seen that Glasersfeld expresses an interactivity between the knower and the known quite acceptable to an enactivist, but does not emphasize the structured probing of the environment by the knower that leads to the "perturbation relative to some expected result" that then leads to a new understanding. It is this probing activity, especially where it is not accidental but deliberate, that characterizes enaction, and invokes affect, that is, the motivation and planning that lead to doing and to fashioning the probing, both observing and modifying the environment, so that "perceptions and nature condition one another through generating one another." The questioning nature of this probing activity is not an emphasis of Piaget and Glasersfeld.

Sharing enactivism's stress upon both action and embodiment in the incorporation of knowledge, but giving Glasersfeld's mechanism of viability an evolutionary emphasis, is evolutionary epistemology. Inasmuch as an organism must reflect its environment well enough for the organism to be able to survive in it, and to be competitive enough to be able to reproduce at sustainable rate, the structure and reflexes of the organism itself embody knowledge of its environment. This biology-inspired theory of the growth of knowledge is closely tied to universal Darwinism, and is associated with evolutionary epistemologists such as Karl Popper, Donald T. Campbell, Peter Munz, and Gary Cziko. According to Munz, "an organism is an embodied theory about its environment... Embodied theories are also no longer expressed in language, but in anatomical structures or reflex responses, etc."

One objection to enactive approaches to cognition is the so-called "scale-up objection". According to this objection, enactive theories only have limited value because they cannot "scale up" to explain more complex cognitive capacities like human thoughts. Those phenomena are extremely difficult to explain without positing representation.{{Cite journal|last1=Clark|first1=Andy|last2=Toribio|first2=Josefa|date=December 1994|title=Doing without representing?|url=http://link.springer.com/10.1007/BF01063896|journal=Synthese|language=en|volume=101|issue=3|pages=401–431|doi=10.1007/BF01063896|hdl=1842/1301|s2cid=17136030|issn=0039-7857|hdl-access=free}} But recently, some philosophers are trying to respond to such objection. For example, Adrian Downey (2020) provides a non-representational account of Obsessive-compulsive disorder, and then argues that ecological-enactive approaches can respond to the "scaling up" objection.{{Cite journal|last=Downey|first=Adrian|date=September 2020|title=It Just Doesn't Feel Right: OCD and the 'Scaling Up' Problem|url=http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11097-019-09644-3|journal=Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences|language=en|volume=19|issue=4|pages=705–727|doi=10.1007/s11097-019-09644-3|s2cid=214154577|issn=1568-7759}}

McGann & others{{cite journal |author1=Marek McGann |author2=Hanne De Jaegher |author3=Ezequiel Di Paolo |year= 2013 |title=Enaction and psychology |journal=Review of General Psychology |volume=17 |issue=2 |pages=203–209 |url= https://www.academia.edu/4993021 |doi= 10.1037/a0032935|s2cid=8986622 }}

argue that enactivism attempts to mediate between the explanatory role of the coupling between cognitive agent and environment and the traditional emphasis on brain mechanisms found in neuroscience and psychology. In the interactive approach to social cognition developed by De Jaegher & others,{{cite journal |author=Shaun Gallagher |year=2001 |title=The practice of mind |journal=Journal of Consciousness Studies |volume=8 |issue=5–7 |pages=83–107 |url=http://www.ummoss.org/Gallagher01.pdf}}

{{cite book |author=Shaun Gallagher |isbn=978-0199204168 |edition=Paperback |year=2006 |title=How the Body Shapes the Mind |publisher=Oxford University Press |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=zhv5F-GYm98C}}

{{cite book |author=Matthew Ratcliffe |year=2008 |title=Rethinking Commonsense Psychology: A Critique of Folk Psychology, Theory of Mind and Simulation |publisher=Palgrave Macmillan |isbn=978-0230221208 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=-JNyQgAACAAJ}}

the dynamics of interactive processes are seen to play significant roles in coordinating interpersonal understanding, processes that in part include what they call participatory sense-making.

{{cite journal |author1=Hanne De Jaegher |author2=Ezequiel Di Paolo |url=http://www.enactionschool.com/resources/papers/DeJaegherDiPaolo2007.pdf |year=2007 |title=Participatory Sense-Making: An enactive approach to social cognition |journal=Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences |volume=6 |issue=4 |pages=485–507 |doi=10.1007/s11097-007-9076-9|s2cid=142842155 }}

{{cite journal |author1=Hanne De Jaegher |author2=Ezequiel Di Paolo |author3=Shaun Gallagher |year=2010 |title=Can social interaction constitute social cognition? |journal=Trends in Cognitive Sciences |volume=14 |issue=10 |pages=441–447 |url=http://ezequieldipaolo.files.wordpress.com/2011/10/dejaegher_dipaolo_gallagher_tics_2010.pdf |doi=10.1016/j.tics.2010.06.009 |pmid=20674467|s2cid=476406 }}

Recent developments of enactivism in the area of social neuroscience involve the proposal of The Interactive Brain Hypothesis

{{cite journal |author1=Ezequiel Di Paolo |author2=Hanne De Jaegher |date=June 2012 |title= The Interactive Brain Hypothesis |journal=Frontiers in Human Neuroscience |volume=7 |issue=6 |pages=163 |doi=10.3389/fnhum.2012.00163|pmid = 22701412|pmc=3369190 |doi-access=free }} where social cognition brain mechanisms, even those used in non-interactive situations, are proposed to have interactive origins.

In the enactive view, perception "is not conceived as the transmission of information but more as an exploration of the world by various means. Cognition is not tied into the workings of an 'inner mind', some cognitive core, but occurs in directed interaction between the body and the world it inhabits."

{{cite book |title=Consciousness & Emotion: Agency, conscious choice, and selective perception |page=184 |author1=Marek McGann |author2=Steve Torrance |chapter=Doing It and Meaning It: And the relation between the two |isbn=9789027294616 |publisher=John Benjamins Publishing |year=2005 |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=LZk6AAAAQBAJ&pg=PA184 |editor1=Ralph D. Ellis |editor2=Natika Newton }}

Alva Noë in advocating an enactive view of perception

{{cite book |author=Alva Noë |title= Action in Perception |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=kFKvU2hPhxEC&pg=PA1 |pages=1 ff |chapter=Chapter 1: The enactive approach to perception: An introduction |isbn=9780262140881 |year=2004 |publisher=MIT Press}}

sought to resolve how we perceive three-dimensional objects, on the basis of two-dimensional input. He argues that we perceive this solidity (or 'volumetricity') by appealing to patterns of sensorimotor expectations. These arise from our agent-active 'movements and interaction' with objects, or 'object-active' changes in the object itself. The solidity is perceived through our expectations and skills in knowing how the object's appearance would change with changes in how we relate to it. He saw all perception as an active exploration of the world, rather than being a passive process, something which happens to us.

Noë's idea of the role of 'expectations' in three-dimensional perception has been opposed by several philosophers, notably by Andy Clark. Clark points to difficulties of the enactive approach. He points to internal processing of visual signals, for example, in the ventral and dorsal pathways, the two-streams hypothesis. This results in an integrated perception of objects (their recognition and location, respectively) yet this processing cannot be described as an action or actions. In a more general criticism, Clark suggests that perception is not a matter of expectations about sensorimotor mechanisms guiding perception. Rather, although the limitations of sensorimotor mechanisms constrain perception, this sensorimotor activity is drastically filtered to fit current needs and purposes of the organism, and it is these imposed 'expectations' that govern perception, filtering for the 'relevant' details of sensorimotor input (called "sensorimotor summarizing").

These sensorimotor-centered and purpose-centered views appear to agree on the general scheme but disagree on the dominance issue – is the dominant component peripheral or central. Another view, the closed-loop perception one, assigns equal a-priori dominance to the peripheral and central components. In closed-loop perception, perception emerges through the process of inclusion of an item in a motor-sensory-motor loop, i.e., a loop (or loops) connecting the peripheral and central components that are relevant to that item.Ahissar, E. and E. Assa (2016) Perception as a closed-loop convergence process. eLife 5:e12830.DOI: https://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.12830 The item can be a body part (in which case the loops are in steady-state) or an external object (in which case the loops are perturbed and gradually converge to a steady state). These enactive loops are always active, switching dominance by the need.

Another application of enaction to perception is analysis of the human hand. The many remarkably demanding uses of the hand are not learned by instruction, but through a history of engagements that lead to the acquisition of skills. According to one interpretation, it is suggested that "the hand [is]...an organ of cognition", not a faithful subordinate working under top-down instruction, but a partner in a "bi-directional interplay between manual and brain activity."

{{cite book |title= Radicalizing Enactivism: Minds without content |author=Daniel D Hutto, Erik Myin |pages=46 ff |chapter=A helping hand |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=pAj-96LlBuMC&pg=PA46 |isbn= 9780262018548 |year=2013 |publisher=MIT Press}}

According to Daniel Hutto: "Enactivists are concerned to defend the view that our most elementary ways of engaging with the world and others - including our basic forms of perception and perceptual experience - are mindful in the sense of being phenomenally charged and intentionally directed, despite being non-representational and content-free."

{{cite book |title= Radicalizing Enactivism: Minds without content |author1=Daniel D Hutto |author2=Erik Myin |pages=12–13 |chapter=Chapter 1: Enactivism: The radical line |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=pAj-96LlBuMC&pg=PA12 |isbn= 9780262018548 |year=2013 |publisher=MIT Press}}

Hutto calls this position 'REC' (Radical Enactive Cognition): "According to REC, there is no way to distinguish neural activity that is imagined to be genuinely content involving (and thus truly mental, truly cognitive) from other non-neural activity that merely plays a supporting or enabling role in making mind and cognition possible."

Hanne De Jaegher and Ezequiel Di Paolo (2007) have extended the enactive concept of sense-making into the social domain. The idea takes as its departure point the process of interaction between individuals in a social encounter.{{cite journal |author1=Hanne De Jaegher |author2=Ezequiel Di Paolo |author3=Shaun Gallagher |title= Can social interaction constitute social cognition? |journal=Trends in Cognitive Sciences |year=2010 |volume=14 |issue=10 |pages=441–447 |doi=10.1016/j.tics.2010.06.009 |pmid=20674467|s2cid=476406 }}

De Jaegher and Di Paolo argue that the interaction process itself can take on a form of autonomy (operationally defined). This allows them to define social cognition as the generation of meaning and its transformation through interacting individuals.

The notion of participatory sense-making has led to the proposal that interaction processes can sometimes play constitutive roles in social cognition (De Jaegher, Di Paolo, Gallagher, 2010). It has been applied to research in social neuroscience''

{{cite journal |author1=Leonhard Schilbach |author2=Bert Timmermans |author3=Vasudevi Reddy |author4=Alan Costall |author5=Gary Bente |author6=Tobias Schlicht |author7=Kai Vogeley |title= Toward a second-person neuroscience |journal=Behavioral and Brain Sciences |year=2013 |volume=36 |issue=4 |pages=393–414 |doi=10.1017/S0140525X12000660|pmid=23883742 |citeseerx=10.1.1.476.2200 |s2cid=54587375 }} and autism.{{cite journal |author= Hanne De Jaegher |title= Embodiment and sense-making in autism|journal=Frontiers in Integrative Neuroscience |year=2012 |volume=7 |pages=15 |doi=10.3389/fnint.2013.00015|pmid= 23532205|pmc= 3607806|doi-access= free}}

''

In a similar vein, "an inter-enactive approach to agency holds that the behavior of agents in a social situation unfolds not only according to their individual abilities and goals, but also according to the conditions and constraints imposed by the autonomous dynamics of the interaction process itself".

{{cite journal |title=An Inter-Enactive Approach to Agency: Participatory Sense-Making, Dynamics, and Sociality |author1=Steve Torrance |author2=Tom Froese |url=https://www.researchgate.net/publication/229001783 |journal=Human Mente |volume=15 |pages=21–53 |year=2011 }}

According to Torrance, enactivism involves five interlocking themes related to the question "What is it to be a (cognizing, conscious) agent?" It is:

:1. to be a biologically autonomous (autopoietic) organism

:2. to generate significance or meaning, rather than to act via...updated internal representations of the external world

:3. to engage in sense-making via dynamic coupling with the environment

:4. to 'enact' or 'bring forth' a world of significances by mutual co-determination of the organism with its enacted world

:5. to arrive at an experiential awareness via lived embodiment in the world.

Torrance adds that "many kinds of agency, in particular the agency of human beings, cannot be understood separately from understanding the nature of the interaction that occurs between agents." That view introduces the social applications of enactivism. "Social cognition is regarded as the result of a special form of action, namely social interaction...the enactive approach looks at the circular dynamic within a dyad of embodied agents."

{{cite book |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Olm10GVwV74C&pg=PA206 |page=206 |chapter=Non-representational intersubjectivity |author1=Thomas Fuchs |author2=Hanne De Jaegher |isbn=9783794527915 |year=2010 |publisher=Schattauer Verlag |title=The Embodied Self: Dimensions, Coherence and Disorders |editor1=Thomas Fuchs |editor2=Heribert C. Sattel |editor3=Peter Henningsen }}

In cultural psychology, enactivism is seen as a way to uncover cultural influences upon feeling, thinking and acting.{{cite book |chapter=Chapter 8: Enactivism |author1=Cor Baerveldt |author2=Theo Verheggen |title=The Oxford Handbook of Culture and Psychology |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=WljI1r2e-SUC&pg=PA165 |pages=165ff |doi=10.1093/oxfordhb/9780195396430.013.0009 |isbn=9780195396430 |date=May 2012 |quote= Whereas the enactive approach in general has focused on sense-making as an embodied and situated activity, enactive cultural psychology emphasizes the expressive and dynamically enacted nature of cultural meaning.}} Baerveldt and Verheggen argue that "It appears that seemingly natural experience is thoroughly intertwined with sociocultural realities." They suggest that the social patterning of experience is to be understood through enactivism, "the idea that the reality we have in common, and in which we find ourselves, is neither a world that exists independently from us, nor a socially shared way of representing such a pregiven world, but a world itself brought forth by our ways of communicating and our joint action....The world we inhabit is manufactured of 'meaning' rather than 'information'.

{{cite journal |title=Enactivism and the experiential reality of culture: Rethinking the epistemological basis of cultural psychology |author1=Cor Baerveldt |author2=Theo Verheggen |url=https://docs.google.com/file/d/0Bz8cVS8LoO7OTk9ZUkVqazFiU1U/edit |journal=Culture & Psychology |volume=5 |issue=2 |pages=183–206 |year=1999 |doi=10.1177/1354067x9952006|s2cid=145397218 }}

Luhmann attempted to apply Maturana and Varela's notion of autopoiesis to social systems.

{{cite book |title=Social systems |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=zVZQW4gxXk4C&pg=PA34 |isbn= 9780804726252 |year=1995 |publisher=Stanford University Press |author=Niklas Luhmann}}

"A core concept of social systems theory is derived from biological systems theory: the concept of autopoiesis. Chilean biologist Humberto Maturana come up with the concept to explain how biological systems such as cells are a product of their own production." "Systems exist by way of operational closure and this means that they each construct themselves and their own realities."

{{cite book |chapter=Part 1: A new way of thinking about society |pages= 12 ff |author=Hans-Georg Moeller |year=2011 |isbn= 978-0812695984 |publisher=Open Court |title=Luhmann Explained: From Souls to Systems |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=tuKsEvpcj9MC&pg=PA12}}

The first definition of enaction was introduced by psychologist Jerome Bruner,

{{cite book |title=Intelligent Virtual Agents |chapter=A framework for motion based bodily enaction with virtual characters; §2.1 Enaction |author1=Roberto Pugliese |author2=Klaus Lehtonen |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=QU9b_IjVMF4C&pg=PA163 |page=163 |isbn=9783642239731 |publisher=Springer |year=2011}}

{{cite book |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=8V9BAAAAQBAJ&pg=PA104 |page=104 |title=From Diagnostics to Learning Success: Proceedings in Vocational Education and Training |isbn=978-9462091894 |edition=Paperback |year=2013 |publisher=Springer Science & Business |author=Stephanie A Hillen |chapter=Chapter III: What can research on technology for learning in vocational educational training teach media didactics? |editor1=Klaus Beck |editor2=Olga Zlatkin-Troitschanskaia }}

who introduced enaction as 'learning by doing' in his discussion of how children learn, and how they can best be helped to learn.{{cite book |author=Jerome Bruner|year=1966 |title=Toward a theory of instruction |url=https://archive.org/details/towardtheoryofin00brun|url-access=registration|publisher=Belknap Press of Harvard University Press |isbn=978-0674897007|author-link=Jerome Bruner }}{{cite book |author=Jerome Bruner |year=1968 |title=Processes of cognitive growth: Infancy |publisher= Crown Pub |isbn= 978-0517517482 |oclc=84376}} He associated enaction with two other ways of knowledge organization: Iconic and Symbolic.Quote from

{{cite book |title=Toward a Theory of Instruction |author=Jerome Seymour Bruner |url=http://h.uib.no/examplewiki/en/images/5/5a/Bruner_1966_Theory_of_Instruction.pdf |isbn=9780674897014 |publisher=Harvard University Press |year=1966 |page=44 |access-date=2014-05-01 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140502001724/http://h.uib.no/examplewiki/en/images/5/5a/Bruner_1966_Theory_of_Instruction.pdf |archive-date=2014-05-02 |url-status=dead }} as quoted from {{cite book |title=Fundamental Constructs in Mathematics Education |author=J Bruner |editor1=John Mason |editor2=Sue Johnston-Wilder |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=EA3LtKYTa7YC&pg=PA260 |page=260 |chapter=Chapter 10: Sustaining mathematical activity |year=2004 |publisher=Taylor & Francis |isbn= 978-0415326988 |edition=Paperback}}

:"Any domain of knowledge (or any problem within that domain of knowledge) can be represented in three ways: by a set of actions appropriate for achieving a certain result (enactive representation); by a set of summary images or graphics that stand for a concept without defining it fully (iconic representation); and by a set of symbolic or logical propositions drawn from a symbolic system that is governed by rules or laws for forming and transforming propositions (symbolic representation)"

The term 'enactive framework' was elaborated upon by Francisco Varela and Humberto Maturana.

{{cite book |title=The Praeger Handbook of Education and Psychology, Volume 1 |author=Jeanette Bopry |chapter=Providing a warrant for constructivist practice: the contribution of Francisco Varela |quote=Varela's enactive framework beginning with his collaboration on autopoiesis theory with his mentor Humberto Maturana [and the development of] enaction as a framework within which these theories work as a matter of course. |editor1=Joe L. Kincheloe |editor2=Raymond A. Horn |year=2007 |publisher=Greenwood Publishing Group |isbn=9780313331237 |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=O1ugEIEid6YC&pg=PA474 |pages=474 ff}}

Sriramen argues that enactivism provides "a rich and powerful explanatory theory for learning and being."

{{cite book |title=Theories of Mathematics Education: Seeking New Frontiers |author1=Bharath Sriraman |author2=Lyn English|author2-link=Lyn English |isbn=978-3642007422 |year=2009 |publisher=Springer |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Kd_LgW2AXIoC&pg=PA42 |pages=42 ff |chapter=Enactivism}} and that it is closely related to both the ideas of cognitive development of Piaget, and also the social constructivism of Vygotsky. Piaget focused on the child's immediate environment, and suggested cognitive structures like spatial perception emerge as a result of the child's interaction with the world.

{{cite book |title=Geometry as Objective Science in Elementary School Classrooms: Mathematics in the Flesh |author=Wolff-Michael Roth |isbn=978-1136732201 |year=2012 |publisher=Routledge |pages=41 ff |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=cXSsAgAAQBAJ&pg=PT41 |chapter=Epistemology and psychology: Jean Piaget and modern constructivism}}

According to Piaget, children construct knowledge, using what they know in new ways and testing it, and the environment provides feedback concerning the adequacy of their construction.

{{cite book |title=Without Miracles: Universal Selection Theory and the Second Darwinian Revolution |author=Gary Cziko |chapter=Chapter 12: Education; The provision and transmission of truth, or the selectionist growth of fallible knowledge? |page=222 |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=v1JEypylerUC&pg=PA222 |year=1997 |isbn=9780262531474 |publisher=MIT Press}}

In a cultural context, Vygotsky suggested that the kind of cognition that can take place is not dictated by the engagement of the isolated child, but is also a function of social interaction and dialogue that is contingent upon a sociohistorical context.

{{cite book |title=The Praeger Handbook of Education and Psychology, Volume 1 |chapter=Interpretivists drawing on the power of enactivism |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=O1ugEIEid6YC&pg=PA24 |pages=24 ff |publisher=Greenwood Publishing Group |year=2007 |editor1=Joe L. Kincheloe |editor2=Raymond A. Horn |author=Joe L Kincheloe |isbn=978-0313331237}}

Enactivism in educational theory "looks at each learning situation as a complex system consisting of teacher, learner, and context, all of which frame and co-create the learning situation."

{{cite book |editor1=Renuka Vithal |editor2=Jill Adler |editor3=Christine Keitel |title=Researching Mathematics Education in South Africa: Perspectives, Practices and Possibilities |chapter=Chapter 9: Dilemmas of change: seeing the complex rather than the complicated? |page=240 |author=Chris Breen |isbn=978-0796920478 |publisher=HSRC Press |year=2005 |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=byWHt_NVUEgC&pg=RA6-PA240}}

Enactivism in education is very closely related to situated cognition,

{{cite book |title=The nexus between artificial intelligence and economics |chapter=§3.2.2 Enactive artificial intelligence |quote=Enactivism may be considered as the most developed model of embodied situated cognition...Knowing is inseparable from doing. |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=uek_AAAAQBAJ&pg=PA21 |page=21 |author=Ad J. W. van de Gevel, Charles N. Noussair |isbn=978-3642336478 |publisher=Springer |year=2013}}

which holds that "knowledge is situated, being in part a product of the activity, context, and culture in which it is developed and used."

{{cite journal |title=Situated cognition and the culture of learning |author1=John Seely Brown |author2=Allan Collins |author3=Paul Duguid |url=http://www.exploratorium.edu/ifi/resources/museumeducation/situated.html |journal=Educational Researcher |volume=18 |number=1 |pages=32–42 |date=Jan–Feb 1989 |doi=10.3102/0013189x018001032 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20141008045228/http://www.exploratorium.edu/ifi/resources/museumeducation/situated.html |archive-date=2014-10-08 |hdl=2142/17979 |s2cid=9824073 |hdl-access=free }}

This approach challenges the "separating of what is learned from how it is learned and used."

{{main|Enactive interfaces}}

The ideas of enactivism regarding how organisms engage with their environment have interested those involved in robotics and man-machine interfaces. The analogy is drawn that a robot can be designed to interact and learn from its environment in a manner similar to the way an organism does,

{{cite book |chapter=The iCub cognitive humanoid robot: An open-system research platform for enactive cognition |author1=Giulio Sandini |author2=Giorgio Metta |author3=David Vernon |title=50 Years of Artificial Intelligence: Essays Dedicated to the 50th Anniversary of Artificial Intelligence |editor1=Max Lungarella |editor2=Fumiya Iida |editor3=Josh Bongard |editor4=Rolf Pfeifer |publisher=Springer |year=2007 |isbn= 9783540772958}}

and a human can interact with a computer-aided design tool or data base using an interface that creates an enactive environment for the user, that is, all the user's tactile, auditory, and visual capabilities are enlisted in a mutually explorative engagement, capitalizing upon all the user's abilities, and not at all limited to cerebral engagement.

{{cite book |title=Emotional Engineering: Service Development |chapter=§4.5.2 Design tools based upon enactive interfaces |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ow-UFDj15rUC&pg=PA78 |pages=78 ff |isbn=9781849964234 |year=2010 |publisher=Springer |author=Monica Bordegoni |editor=Shuichi Fukuda}}

In these areas it is common to refer to affordances as a design concept, the idea that an environment or an interface affords opportunities for enaction, and good design involves optimizing the role of such affordances.

{{cite book |title=The Design of Everyday Things |edition=Revised and expanded |quote=An affordance is a relationship between the properties of an object and the capabilities of the agent that determine just how the object could possibly be used. |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=nVQPAAAAQBAJ&pg=PT17 |year=2013 |page=11 |isbn=978-0465050659 |publisher=Basic Books |author=Don Norman |chapter=Affordances }}

{{cite book |title=Encyclopedia of human computer interaction |chapter=The use and evolution of affordance in HCI |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=h9iZh_I1YREC&pg=PA668 |pages=668 ff |isbn=9781591407980 |year=2006 |publisher=Idea Group Inc |author=Georgios S Christou |editor=Claude Ghaoui}}

{{cite journal |title=Enactive Systems and Enactive Media: Embodied Human-Machine Coupling beyond Interfaces |journal=Leonardo |volume=44 |pages=433–438 |date=October 2011 |issue=5 |doi=10.1162/LEON_a_00244 |author1=Mauri Kaipainen |author2=Niklas Ravaja |author3=Pia Tikka |s2cid=17294711 |display-authors=etal|url=http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:sh:diva-12214 }}

{{cite book |title=Orchestrating Human-Centered Design |author=Guy Boy |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=I5gCTZCIL3AC&pg=PA118 |isbn=9781447143383 |year=2012 |publisher=Springer |page=118 |quote=The organization producing the system can itself be defined as an autopoietic system in Maturana and Varela's sense. An autopoietic system is producer and product at the same time. HCD [Human Centered Design] is both the process of design and the design itself.}}

{{cite journal |title=An autopoietic approach for knowledge management systems in manufacturing enterprises |author1=Markus Thannhuber |author2=Mitchell M Tseng |author3=Hans-Jörg Bullinger |url=https://www.researchgate.net/publication/223035600 |journal=Annals of the CIRP-Manufacturing Technology |volume=50 |issue=1 |year=2001 |pages=313 ff |doi=10.1016/s0007-8506(07)62129-5}}

The activity in the AI community has influenced enactivism as a whole. Referring extensively to modeling techniques for evolutionary robotics by Beer,

{{cite journal |author=Randall D Beer |year=1995 |title=A dynamical systems perspective on agent-environment interaction.

|journal= Artificial Intelligence |volume=72 |issue=1–2 |pages=173–215 |doi=10.1016/0004-3702(94)00005-l}}

the modeling of learning behavior by Kelso,

{{cite book |author=James AS Kelso |year=2009 |chapter=Coordination dynamics |editor=R. A. Meyers |title= Encyclopedia of complexity and system science |pages= 1537–1564 |isbn=978-0-387-75888-6 |doi=10.1007/978-0-387-30440-3_101 }}

and to modeling of sensorimotor activity by Saltzman,

{{cite book |author=Eliot L. Saltzman |year=1995 |chapter=Dynamics and coordinate systems in skilled sensorimotor activity |editor1=T. van Gelder |editor2=R. F. Port |title=Mind as motion: Explorations in the dynamics of cognition |publisher=MIT Press |isbn=9780262161503 |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=e6HUM6V8QbQC&pg=PA151 |page=[https://archive.org/details/mindasmotionexpl0000unse/page/151 151 ff] |url-access=registration |url=https://archive.org/details/mindasmotionexpl0000unse/page/151 }}

McGann, De Jaegher, and Di Paolo discuss how this work makes the dynamics of coupling between an agent and its environment, the foundation of enactivism, "an operational, empirically observable phenomenon."{{cite journal |author1=Marek McGann |author2=Hanne De Jaegher |author3=Ezequiel Di Paolo |year= 2013 |title=Enaction and psychology |journal=Review of General Psychology |volume=17 |issue=2 |pages=203–209 |url= https://www.academia.edu/4993021 |doi= 10.1037/a0032935 |s2cid=8986622 |quote=Such modeling techniques allow us to explore the parameter space of coupling between agent and environment...to the point that their basic principles (the universals, if such there are, of enactive psychology) can be brought clearly into view.}}

That is, the AI environment invents examples of enactivism using concrete examples that, although not as complex as living organisms, isolate and illuminate basic principles.

{{main|artificial general intelligence}}

Enactive cognition has been formalised in order to address subjectivity in artificial general intelligence.

A mathematical formalism of AGI is an agent proven to maximise a measure of intelligence.{{cite thesis |last=Legg |first=Shane |date=2008 |title=Machine Super Intelligence |publisher=University of Lugano |url=http://www.vetta.org/documents/Machine_Super_Intelligence.pdf}} Prior to 2022, the only such formalism was AIXI, which maximised “the ability to satisfy goals in a wide range of environments”.{{cite book |last=Hutter |first=Marcus |date=2005 |title=Universal Artificial Intelligence: Sequential Decisions Based on Algorithmic Probability |series=Texts in Theoretical Computer Science an EATCS Series |url=https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/b138233 |publisher=Springer |doi=10.1007/b138233 |isbn= 978-3-540-26877-2}} In 2015 Jan Lieke and Marcus Hutter showed that "Legg-Hutter intelligence is measured with respect to a fixed UTM. AIXI is the most intelligent policy if it uses the same UTM", a result which "undermines all existing optimality properties for AIXI", rendering them subjective.{{cite conference | conference=The 28th Conference on Learning Theory | last1=Leike | first1=Jan | last2=Hutter | first2=Marcus | title = Bad Universal Priors and Notions of Optimality | date=2015 | eprint= 1510.04931 | url = https://proceedings.mlr.press/v40/Leike15.html}}

One of the essential theses of this approach is that biological systems generate meanings, i.e. they are semiotic systems, engaging in transformational and not merely informational interactions. Since this thesis raised the problems of beginning cognition for organisms in the developmental stage of only simple reflexes (the binding problem and the problem of primary data entry{{Cite journal |last=Val Danilov |first=Igor |date= 2023|title=Low-Frequency Oscillations for Nonlocal Neuronal Coupling in Shared Intentionality Before and After Birth: Toward the Origin of Perception |url=https://www.lidsen.com/journals/neurobiology/neurobiology-07-04-192 |journal=OBM Neurobiology |language=en |volume=7 |issue=4 |pages=1–17 |doi=10.21926/obm.neurobiol.2304192|doi-access=free }}{{Cite journal |last=Val Danilov |first=Igor |date= 2023|title=Shared Intentionality Modulation at the Cell Level: Low-Frequency Oscillations for Temporal Coordination in Bioengineering Systems |url=https://www.lidsen.com/journals/neurobiology/neurobiology-07-04-185 |journal=OBM Neurobiology |language=en |volume=7 |issue=4 |pages=1–17 |doi=10.21926/obm.neurobiol.2304185|doi-access=free }}), enactivists proposed the concept of embodied information that serves to start cognition. However, critics highlight that this idea requires introducing the nature of intentionality before engaging embodied information.Val Danilov, I. (2023). "Theoretical Grounds of Shared Intentionality for Neuroscience in Developing Bioengineering Systems." OBM Neurobiology 2023; 7(1): 156; doi:10.21926/obm.neurobiol.2301156. https://www.lidsen.com/journals/neurobiology/neurobiology-07-01-156 . In a natural environment, the stimulus-reaction pair (causation) is unpredictable due to many irrelevant stimuli claiming to be randomly associated with the embodied information. While embodied information is only beneficial when intentionality is already in place, enactivists introduced the notion of the generation of meanings by biological systems (engaging in transformational interactions) without introducing a neurophysiological basis of intentionality.

{{cols|colwidth=25em}}

• {{annotated link|Action-specific perception}}
• {{annotated link|Autopoesis}}
• {{annotated link|Biosemiotics}}
• {{annotated link|Cognitive science}}
• {{annotated link|Cognitive psychology}}
• {{annotated link|Computational theory of mind}}
• {{annotated link|Connectivism}}
• {{annotated link|Cultural psychology}}
• {{annotated link|Distributed cognition}}
• {{annotated link|Embodied cognition}}
• {{annotated link|Embodied embedded cognition}}
• {{annotated link|Enactive interfaces}}
• {{annotated link|Extended cognition}}
• {{annotated link|Extended mind}}
• {{annotated link|Externalism#Enactivism and embodied cognition}}
• {{annotated link|Mind–body problem}}
• {{annotated link|Phenomenology (philosophy)}}
• {{annotated link|Representationalism}}
• {{annotated link|Situated cognition}}
• {{annotated link|Social cognition}}

{{colend}}

{{Reflist |group=Note |refs=

Cognition as information processing like that of a digital computer. From {{cite book |author=Evan Thompson |title=Mind in Life |isbn=978-0674057517|date=2010-09-30 |publisher=Harvard University Press }} Cognitivism, p. 4; See also {{cite encyclopedia |title=The computational theory of mind |author=Steven Horst |encyclopedia= The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2011 Edition) |editor=Edward N. Zalta |url=http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2011/entries/computational-mind/ |date=December 10, 2009}}

Cognition as emergent patterns of activity in a neural network. From {{cite book |author=Evan Thompson |title=Mind in Life |isbn=978-0674057517|date=2010-09-30 |publisher=Harvard University Press }} Connectionism, p. 8; See also {{cite journal |title=Connectionism |author=James Garson |journal= The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2011 Edition) |editor=Edward N. Zalta |url=http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2012/entries/connectionism/ |date=July 27, 2010}}

}}

{{Reflist|30em|refs=

{{cite book |author=Thomas Baldwin |title=Maurice Merleau-Ponty: Basic Writings |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=OS8FM-AFvvsC&pg=PA65 |chapter=Part One: Merleau-Ponty's prospectus of his work |page=65 |quote=Science has not and never will have, by its nature, the same significance qua form of being as the world which we perceive, for the simple reason that it is a rationale or explanation of that world. |isbn= 978-0415315869 |year=2003 |publisher=Routledge|title-link=Maurice Merleau-Ponty }}

{{cite journal |author=Jeremy Trevelyan Burman |year=2006 |journal=Journal of Consciousness Studies |title=Book reviews: Consciousness & Emotion |url=http://www.imprint.co.uk/pdf/13_12_br.pdf |volume=13 |issue=12 |pages=115–124 |access-date=2006-12-30 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070927033803/http://www.imprint.co.uk/pdf/13_12_br.pdf |archive-date=2007-09-27 |url-status=dead }} From a review of {{cite book |title=Consciousness & Emotion: Agency, conscious choice, and selective perception |editor1=Ralph D. Ellis |editor2=Natika Newton |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=LZk6AAAAQBAJ |isbn=9789027294616 |year=2005 |publisher=John Benjamins Publishing }}

{{cite encyclopedia |title=Constructivism |author1=Gabriele Chiari |author2=M. Laura Nuzzo |encyclopedia=The Internet Encyclopaedia of Personal Construct Psychology |url=http://www.pcp-net.org/encyclopaedia/constructivism.html}}

{{cite journal |author1=Andy Clark |author2=Josefa Toribio |title=Doing without representing |journal =Synthese |volume=101 |issue=3 |pages=401–434 |year=1994 |url=http://www.philosophy.ed.ac.uk/people/clark/pubs/DoingW-O-rep.pdf |doi=10.1007/bf01063896|hdl=1842/1301 |s2cid=17136030 }}

{{cite journal |author=Andy Clark |title=Vision as Dance? Three Challenges for Sensorimotor Contingency Theory |journal= Psyche: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Research on Consciousness |volume=12 |issue=1 |date=March 2006 |url= https://journalpsyche.org/files/0xaaea.pdf}}

{{cite book |author=Olaf Diettrich |chapter=The biological boundary conditions for our classical physical world view |title=Evolutionary Epistemology, Language and Culture |page=88 |year=2006 |publisher=Springer |editor1=Nathalie Gontier |editor2=Jean Paul van Bendegem |editor3=Diederik Aerts |isbn=9781402033957 |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=hp2JiTDBbWkC&pg=PA88}}

"The notion of 'truth' is replaced with 'viability' within the subjects' experiential world." From {{cite book |title= The handbook of evolution: The evolution of human societies and culture |author=Olaf Diettrich |chapter=Cognitive evolution; footnote 2 |page=61 |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Ex5c_pyOsTwC&pg=PA61 |editor1=Franz M. Wuketits |editor2=Christoph Antweiler |year=2008 |publisher=Wiley-Blackwell|isbn=9783527620333 }} and in Evolutionary Epistemology, Language and Culture cited above, p. 90.

Mark Rowlands (2010, p. 3) attributes the term 4Es to Shaun Gallagher.

{{cite book |author= Ernst von Glasersfeld |title=Epistemology and education |chapter=Report no. 14: Piaget and the Radical Constructivist Epistemology |chapter-url=http://www.vonglasersfeld.com/034 |editor1=CD Smock |editor2=E von Glaserfeld |publisher=Follow Through Publications |pages=1–24 |year=1974}}

{{cite journal |author= Ernst von Glasersfeld |url=http://www.univie.ac.at/constructivism/EvG/papers/118.pdf |title=Cognition, construction of knowledge and teaching |journal=Synthese |volume=80 |issue=1 |pages=121–140 |year=1989 |doi=10.1007/bf00869951|s2cid=46967038 }}

{{cite encyclopedia |author=Nathalie Gontier |title=Evolutionary Epistemology |url=http://www.iep.utm.edu/evo-epis/ |encyclopedia=Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy |year=2006}}

{{cite book |title=Cognition in the Wild |author=Edwin Hutchins |isbn=9780262581462 |year=1996 |page=428 |publisher=MIT Press }} Quoted by {{cite book |title=Cognitive, embodied or enacted? :Contemporary perspectives for HCI and interaction |url=http://trans-techresearch.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/Rocha-01.pdf |author=Marcio Rocha |year=2011 |publisher=Transtechnology Research Reader |isbn=978-0-9538332-2-1 |access-date=2014-05-23 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140524022911/http://trans-techresearch.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/Rocha-01.pdf |archive-date=2014-05-24 |url-status=dead }}

{{cite book |author1=Ezequiel A Di Paolo |author2=Marieke Rhohde |author3=Hanne De Jaegher |chapter=Horizons for the enactive mind: Values, social interaction, and play |title=Enaction: Toward a New Paradigm for Cognitive Science |editor1=John Stewart |editor2=Oliver Gapenne |editor3=Ezequiel A Di Paolo |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=UtFDJx-gysQC&pg=PA39 |pages=33 ff |isbn= 978-0262526012 |publisher=MIT Press |year=2014}}

A collection of papers on this topic is introduced by {{cite journal |title=Agency: From embodied cognition to free will |author1=Duccio Manetti |author2=Silvano Zipoli Caiani |journal=Humana Mente |volume=15 |date=January 2011 |pages=V–XIII |url=http://www.humanamente.eu/PDF/Issue15_CompletePDF.pdf |access-date=2014-05-07 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180409214116/http://www.humanamente.eu/PDF/Issue15_CompletePDF.pdf |archive-date=2018-04-09 |url-status=dead }}

{{cite book |author1=Humberto R Maturana |author2=Francisco J Varela |year=1992 |title= The tree of knowledge: the biological roots of human understanding |edition=Revised |publisher=Shambhala Publications Inc |chapter=Afterword |page=255 |isbn=978-0877736424}}

{{cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=tMuIAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA154 |page=154 |author=Peter Munz |title=Philosophical Darwinism: On the Origin of Knowledge by Means of Natural Selection |year=2002 |isbn=9781134884841 |publisher=Routledge}}

{{cite journal |title=Radical constructivism seen with Edmund Husserl as starting point |author=Edmond Mutelesi |url=http://www.univie.ac.at/constructivism/journal/2/1/006.mutelesi |journal=Constructivist Foundations |volume=2 |issue=1 |pages=6–16 |date=November 15, 2006}}

{{cite book |title=Enaction, Embodiment, Evolutionary Robotics: Simulation Models for a Post-Cognitivist Science of Mind |chapter= §3.1 The scientist as observing subject |pages=30 ff |author=Marieke Rohde |isbn=978-9078677239 |publisher=Atlantis Press |year=2010 |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=LlpZjLMPiHYC&pg=PA30}}

{{cite book |author=Mark Rowlands |chapter=Chapter 3: The mind embedded §5 The mind enacted |pages=70 ff |year=2010 |isbn=978-0262014557 |publisher=MIT Press |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=AiwjpL-0hDgC&pg=PA70 |title=The new science of the mind: From extended mind to embodied phenomenology}} Rowlands attributes this idea to {{cite book |author=D M MacKay |year=1967 |chapter=Ways of looking at perception |title=Models for the perception of speech and visual form (Proceedings of a symposium) |editor=W Watthen-Dunn |publisher=MIT Press |pages=25 ff |isbn=9780262230261 |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Ts9JAAAAMAAJ&q=MacKay+Ways+of+looking+at+perception}}

{{cite book |title= Mind in life |chapter=The enactive approach |author=Evan Thompson |isbn=978-0674057517 |edition=Paperback |pages=13 ff |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=OVGna4ZEpWwC&pg=PA13 |publisher=Harvard University Press |year=2007 }} ToC, first 65 pages, and index [http://lchc.ucsd.edu/MCA/Mail/xmcamail.2012_03.dir/pdf3okBxYPBXw.pdf found here]

{{cite book |title= Mind in life |chapter=Autonomy and emergence |author=Evan Thompson |isbn=978-0674057517 |edition=Paperback |pages=37 ff |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=OVGna4ZEpWwC&pg=PA13 |publisher=Harvard University Press |year=2007}} See also the Introduction, p. x.

{{cite book |title= Mind in life |chapter=Chapter 8: Life beyond the gap |author=Evan Thompson |isbn=978-0674057517 |edition=Paperback |page=225 |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=OVGna4ZEpWwC&pg=PA225 |publisher=Harvard University Press |year=2007}}

{{cite book |title= Mind in life |chapter=Life can be known only by life |author=Evan Thompson |isbn=978-0674057517 |edition=Paperback |page=165 |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=OVGna4ZEpWwC&pg=PA165 |publisher=Harvard University Press |year=2007}}

{{cite book |title=Mind in life:Biology, phenomenology, and the sciences of mind |author=Evan Thompson |chapter-url=http://lchc.ucsd.edu/MCA/Mail/xmcamail.2012_03.dir/pdf3okBxYPBXw.pdf |publisher=Harvard University Press |isbn= 978-0674057517 |chapter=Chapter 1: The enactive approach |year=2010}} ToC, first 65 pages, and index [http://lchc.ucsd.edu/MCA/Mail/xmcamail.2012_03.dir/pdf3okBxYPBXw.pdf found here].

{{cite book |title=A Dictionary of Continental Philosophy |editor=John Protevi |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=kRUZ61uISUMC&pg=PA169 |pages=169–170 |chapter = Enaction |isbn=9780300116052 |publisher=Yale University Press |year=2006}}

{{cite book |title=The embodied mind: Cognitive science and human experience |author1=Francisco J Varela |author2=Evan Thompson |author3=Eleanor Rosch |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=QY4RoH2z5DoC |year=1992 |publisher=MIT Press |page=9 |isbn=978-0262261234}}

"The underpinnings of cognition are inextricable from those of affect, that the phenomenon of cognition itself is essentially bound up with affect.." See p. 104: {{cite book |author1=Dave Ward |author2=Mog Stapleton |year=2012 |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Y1E7FogqvJ0C&pg=PA89 |chapter=Es are good. Cognition as enacted, embodied, embedded, affective and extended |editor= Fabio Paglieri |title=Consciousness in Interaction: The role of the natural and social context in shaping consciousness |publisher=John Benjamins Publishing |pages=89 ff |isbn=978-9027213525}} [http://philpapers.org/archive/WAREAG.pdf On-line version here].

{{cite encyclopedia |author1=Robert A Wilson |author2=Lucia Foglia |title=Embodied Cognition: §2.2 Enactive cognition |encyclopedia=The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2017 Edition) |date=25 July 2011 |editor=Edward N. Zalta |url = http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2017/entries/embodied-cognition/#EnaCog}}

}}

• {{cite book |last=Clark |first=Andy |date=2015 |title=Surfing uncertainty: Prediction, action, and the embodied mind |publisher=Oxford University Press |isbn=9780190217013 |author-link=Andy Clark }}
• {{cite journal |author1=De Jaegher H. |author2=Di Paolo E. A. | year = 2007 | title = Participatory sense-making: An enactive approach to social cognition | journal = Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences | volume = 6 | issue = 4| pages = 485–507 | doi=10.1007/s11097-007-9076-9|s2cid=142842155 }}
• Di Paolo, E. A., Rohde, M. and De Jaegher, H., (2010). Horizons for the Enactive Mind: Values, Social Interaction, and Play. In J. Stewart, O. Gapenne and E. A. Di Paolo (eds), Enaction: Towards a New Paradigm for Cognitive Science, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, pp. 33 – 87. {{ISBN|9780262014601}}
• Gallagher, Shaun (2017). Enactivist Interventions: Rethinking the Mind. Oxford University Press. {{ISBN|978-0198794325}}
• Hutto, D. D. (Ed.) (2006). Radical Enactivism: Intentionality, phenomenology, and narrative. In R. D. Ellis & N. Newton (Series Eds.), Consciousness & Emotion, vol. 2. {{ISBN|90-272-4151-1}}
• McGann, M. & Torrance, S. (2005). Doing it and meaning it (and the relationship between the two). In R. D. Ellis & N. Newton, Consciousness & Emotion, vol. 1: Agency, conscious choice, and selective perception. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. {{ISBN|1-58811-596-8}}
• Merleau-Ponty, Maurice (2005). Phenomenology of Perception. Routledge. {{ISBN|9780415278416}} (Originally published 1945)
• Noë, Alva (2010). Out of Our Heads: Why You Are Not Your Brain, and Other Lessons from the Biology of Consciousness. Hill and Wang. {{ISBN|978-0809016488}}
• {{cite journal |title=The enactive approach: Theoretical sketches from cell to society |author1=Tom Froese |author2=Ezequiel A DiPaolo |citeseerx = 10.1.1.224.5504 |journal=Pragmatics & Cognition |volume=19 |issue=1 |year=2011 |pages=1–36 |doi=10.1075/pc.19.1.01fro}}
• {{cite journal |author1=Steve Torrance |author2=Tom Froese |title=An inter-enactive approach to agency: participatory sense-making, dynamics, and sociality. |journal=Humana. Mente |volume=15 |year=2011 |pages=21–53 |citeseerx = 10.1.1.187.1151}}
• (fr) Domenico Masciotra (2023). Une approche énactive des formations, Théorie et Méthode. En devenir compétent et connaisseur. ASCAR Inc.

• {{IEP|/enactivism/}}
• {{cite web |title=Consciousness as the emergent property of the interaction between brain, body, & environment: the crucial role of haptic perception |author=Pietro Morasso |url=http://www.consciousness.it/iwac2005/Material/Morasso.pdf |year=2005 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060508002438/http://www.consciousness.it/iwac2005/Material/Morasso.pdf |archive-date=2006-05-08 }} Slides related to a chapter on haptic perception (recognition through touch): {{cite book |editor1=Antonio Chella |editor2=Riccardo Manzotti |author=Pietro Morasso |chapter=Chapter 14: The crucial role of haptic perception |page=234 ff |title= Artificial Consciousness |publisher= Academic |year=2007 |isbn=978-1845400705 |chapter-url=https://www.google.com/search?q=isbn:1845400704}}
• {{cite web |title=Questioning Life and Cognition: Some Foundational Issues in the Paradigm of Enaction |url=http://www.enactionseries.com/library/bookjs/co/Original_book_JS.html#Pk1qsEYBVxgUwAM6tVeiff |author=John Stewart |work=Enaction Series: Online Collaborative Publishing |editor1=Olivier Gapenne |editor2=Bruno Bachimont |publisher=Enaction Series |access-date=April 27, 2014 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140427191657/http://www.enactionseries.com/library/bookjs/co/Original_book_JS.html#Pk1qsEYBVxgUwAM6tVeiff |archive-date=April 27, 2014 |url-status=dead }}
• {{cite web |title=Educational Multimedia Task Force – MM 1045, REPRESENTATION |url=http://halshs.archives-ouvertes.fr/docs/00/00/18/64/PDF/REPRDel1.pdf |author1=George-Louis Baron |author2=Eric Bruillard |author3=Christophe Dansac |date=January 1999}} An overview of the rationale and means and methods for the study of representations that the learner constructs in his/her attempt to understand knowledge in a given field. See in particular §1.2.1.4 Toward social representations (p. 24)
• {{cite web |author=Randall Whittaker |year=2001 |title=Autopoiesis and enaction |url=http://www.enolagaia.com/AT.html |publisher=Observer Web |access-date=2014-05-23 |archive-date=2007-08-24 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070824093246/http://www.enolagaia.com/AT.html |url-status=dead }} An extensive but uncritical introduction to the work of Francisco Varela and Humberto Maturana
• {{cite journal|title=Enactivism: Arguments & Applications.|journal=Avant|date=Autumn 2014|volume= V| issue = 2/2014|doi=10.12849/50202014.0109.0002|url=http://avant.edu.pl/en/22014-2|access-date=27 November 2014|doi-broken-date=1 November 2024}} Entire journal issue on enactivism's status and current debates.

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Category:Action (philosophy)

Category:Behavioral neuroscience

Category:Cognitive science

Category:Consciousness

Category:Educational psychology

Category:Emergence

Category:Epistemology of science

Category:Knowledge representation

Category:Metaphysics of mind

Category:Motor cognition

Category:Neuropsychology

Category:Philosophy of perception

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Category:Philosophy of psychology

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Category:Psychological theories

Category:Sociology of knowledge