Extended Skill Learning

Within the ecological and enactive approaches in cognitive science, a tension exists in how the process of skill learning is understood. Skill learning can be understood in a narrow sense, as a process of bodily change over time, or in an extended sense, as a change in the structure of the animal-environment system. We propose to resolve this tension by rejecting the first understanding in favor of the second. We thus defend an extended approach to skill learning. An extended understanding of skill learning views bodily changes as being embedded in a larger process of interaction between the organism and specific structures in the environment. Such an extended approach is committed to the claims that (1) the appropriate unit of analysis for understanding skill learning is not the body but the activity and (2) learning consists in the establishment and adaptive organization of enabling constraints on that activity. We focus on two example cases: maintaining upright posture and walking. In both cases, environmental structures play a constitutive role in the activity throughout learning, but the specific environmental structures that are involved in the activity change over time. At an early stage, the child makes use of an environmental "support"-for example, holding onto furniture to maintain upright posture. Later, once further constraints have been established, the child is able to let go of the furniture and remain upright. We argue that adopting an extended understanding of skill learning offers a promising strategy for unifying ecological and enactive approaches and can also potentially ground a radically embodied approach to higher cognition.

A tale of two densities: active inference is enactive inference

The aim of this article is to clarify how best to interpret some of the central constructs that underwrite the free-energy principle (FEP) - and its corollary, active inference - in theoretical neuroscience and biology: namely, the role that generative models and variational densities play in this theory. We argue that these constructs have been systematically misrepresented in the literature, because of the conflation between the FEP and active inference, on the one hand, and distinct (albeit closely related) Bayesian formulations, centred on the brain - variously known as predictive processing, predictive coding or the prediction error minimisation framework. More specifically, we examine two contrasting interpretations of these models: a structural representationalist interpretation and an enactive interpretation. We argue that the structural representationalist interpretation of generative and recognition models does not do justice to the role that these constructs play in active inference under the FEP. We propose an enactive interpretation of active inference - what might be called enactive inference. In active inference under the FEP, the generative and recognition models are best cast as realising inference and control - the self-organising, belief-guided selection of action policies - and do not have the properties ascribed by structural representationalists.

Defining the Environment in Organism-Environment Systems

Enactivism and ecological psychology converge on the relevance of the environment in understanding perception and action. On both views, perceiving organisms are not merely passive receivers of environmental stimuli, but rather form a dynamic relationship with their environments in such a way that shapes how they interact with the world. In this paper, I suggest that while enactivism and ecological psychology enjoy a shared specification of the environment as the cognitive domain, on both accounts, the structure of the environment, itself, is unspecified beyond that of contingent relations with the species-typical sensorimotor capacities of perceiving organisms. This lack of specification creates a considerable gap in theory regarding the organization of organisms as coupled with their environments. I argue that this gap can be filled by drawing from resources in developmental systems theory, namely, specifying the environmental state-space as a developmental niche that shapes and is shaped by individual organisms over developmental and, on a population scale, evolutionary time. Defining the environment as an organism’s developmental niche makes it clearer how and why certain contingencies have arisen, in turn, strengthening a joint appeal to both enactivism and ecological psychology as theories asserting complementarity between organisms and their environments.

A tale of two densities: active inference is enactive inference

The aim of this article is to clarify how best to interpret some of the central constructs that underwrite the free-energy principle (FEP) - and its corollary, active inference - in theoretical neuroscience and biology: namely, the role that generative models and variational densities play in this theory. We argue that these constructs have been systematically misrepresented in the literature, because of the conflation between the FEP and active inference, on the one hand, and distinct (albeit closely related) Bayesian formulations, centred on the brain - variously known as predictive processing, predictive coding or the prediction error minimisation framework. More specifically, we examine two contrasting interpretations of these models: a structural representationalist interpretation and an enactive interpretation. We argue that the structural representationalist interpretation of generative and recognition models does not do justice to the role that these constructs play in active inference under the FEP. We propose an enactive interpretation of active inference - what might be called enactive inference. In active inference under the FEP, the generative and recognition models are best cast as realising inference and control - the self-organising, belief-guided selection of action policies - and do not have the properties ascribed by structural representationalists.

Between Ecological Psychology and Enactivism: Is There Resonance?

Ecological psychologists and enactivists agree that the best explanation for a large share of cognition is non-representational in kind. In both ecological psychology and enactivist philosophy, then, the task is to offer an explanans that does not rely on representations. Different theorists within these camps have contrasting notions of what the best kind of non-representational explanation will look like, yet they agree on one central point: instead of focusing solely on factors interior to an agent, an important aspect of cognition is found in the link or coupling between an agent and the external world. This link is fluid, dynamic, and active in a variety of ways, and we do not need to add any internal extra something in the perception-action-cognition process. At the same time, even devout defenders of ecological psychology and enactivism recognize that plenty happens inside an agent during cognition. In particular, no one denies that the brain plays an important role. What, then, is the role of the brain if it's not in the game of representing the environment? One possible option is to describe the brain as a resonant organ instead of a representational organ. In this paper we consider the history of resonance in more detail. Particular focus will be placed on two different sets of approaches that have developed the concept of resonance: a representational reading of resonance and a non-representational, dynamic account of resonance. We then apply these accounts to a case study on music performance, specifically in the context of standard tonal jazz. From this application, we propose that a non-representational resonance account consistent with both enactivism and ecological psychology is a viable way of explaining jazz performance. We conclude with future considerations on research regarding the brain as a resonant organ.

A phenomenological ethnography of radiology: exploring the enactive and intersubjective aspects of radiological praxis

This paper presents qualitative field research conducted at a radiology department in the USA. It examines 'the radiologist at work' and analyses the intersubjective ground for her individual diagnostic intentions and personalized strategies for enacting diagnostically-relevant experiences via imaging technology. The paper incorporates the radiologists' use of 'enactive proofs'-observations and professional memories made explicit through their interaction with medical imaging technology and other practitioners in the field. The observations strongly support the development of enactive phenomenology and provide a critique of representationalism and of the primacy of inference in cognition. The results demonstrate the crucial role of shared intentions, providing insight into expert performance in the form of concrete dealings with imaging technology, habituality, the origin of mistakes, multilayered communication, and discovering new ways for improving professional praxis. The findings have much to offer to philosophy, anthropology and radiological practice.

Agency From a Radical Embodied Standpoint: An Ecological-Enactive Proposal

Explaining agency is a significant challenge for those who are interested in the sciences of the mind, and non-representationalists are no exception to this. Even though both ecological psychologists and enactivists agree that agency is to be explained by focusing on the relation between the organism and the environment, they have approached it by focusing on different aspects of the organism-environment relation. In this paper, I offer a suggestion for a radical embodied account of agency that combines ecological psychology with recent trends in enactive cognitive science. According to this proposal, while enactivism focuses primarily on describing how our acquired sensorimotor schemes and habits mutually equilibrate, affecting our tendency to act upon some affordances instead of others, ecological psychology focuses on studying how perceptual information contributes to the actualization of the sensorimotor schemes and habits without mediating representations, inferences, and computations. The paper concludes by briefly exploring how this ecological-enactive theory of agency can account for how socio-cultural norms shape human agency.

Scale Matters: Temporality in the Perception of Affordances

In this paper I seek to unify enactive and ecological approaches to cognitive science by emphasizing the fact that both approaches view cognitive processes as being inherently temporally extended. My hypothesis is that characterizing the temporal scales in which perception of affordances occur, they can serve different purposes of explanation within the theories. Specifically, the paper brings together, on the one hand, Chemero’s (2009) dynamicist understanding of affordances, which he called affordances 2.0, with, on the other hand, a distinction originally made by Varela (1999), and later taken up by Shaun Gallagher (2011, 2017b), between three different timescales for understanding cognition: the elementary, the integrative, and the narrative. Varela’s three-fold distinction was originally intended as a way of identifying phenomenological events as being causally coupled to specific cellular events happening within the nervous system. The central claim of the present paper is that affordances, likewise, should be understood in terms of these three different timescales. I show that these temporal scales can be a useful toolkit for explaining the perception and learning of affordances and at the same time unifying enactivism and ecological psychology claiming that affordances serve a different explanatory role depending on which time scale you consider them at. If you are interested in explaining the embodied assemblies that form the always changing sensorimotor contingencies, then you see the elementary scale. If you’re interested in explaining perception at the integrative scale, then affordances are solicitations that get actualized and bear an umwelt at that same scale. The perception of affordances as such is constituted by the integration of these first two scales, and the experience of it can be characterized by the husserlian structure of experience with its intrinsic temporality. Finally, if you are interested in explaining change in the animal-environment system over developmental time, that is, learning, then affordances are roughly what Chemero proposed and they operate at the narrative scale. But it is important to say that the three scales are always intertwined because learning and perception are ongoing processes that in many senses are impossible to separate. Finally, I discuss the importance of scales from the macro to micro levels for understanding behavior through affordances, considering them as synergies, where abilities and aspects of the environment are understood as constraints on the potential trajectories of such systems.

Dynamic Touch as Common Ground for Enactivism and Ecological Psychology

The main purpose of this article is to show that enactivism and ecological psychology share more aspects than is often recognized. Rather than debating about differences, commonalities between the approaches are illustrated with the example of dynamic touch. Dynamic touch is a form of touch that implies muscles and tendons and that allows the perception of hand-held objects that are wielded but not seen. Given that perceivers perform the wielding movements with effort, dynamic touch necessarily implies active exploration. The strength of dynamic touch as an example lies in the fact that it has been formalized and analyzed in detail at the level of the laws that govern the organism-environment system. The example provides empirically supported instantiations of sensorimotor contingencies, in enactivist terms, and of intentional exploration and information detection, in ecological terms. Moreover, dynamic touch is a practical example of the enactivist concepts of bringing-forth the world and sense-making. As a second purpose, we use the example of dynamic touch to clarify key concepts of the ecological approach. Specifically, we analyze the concepts of invariance and affordance, indicating the crucial difference between perceiving and actualizing affordances, and highlighting the importance of these concepts for the dialogue between enactivism and ecological psychology.

Thinking avant la lettre: A Review of 4E Cognition

The "4E" approach to cognition argues that cognition does not occur solely in the head, but is also embodied, embedded, enacted, or extended by way of extra-cranial processes and structures. Though very much in vogue, 4E cognition has received relatively few critical evaluations. By reflecting on two recent collections, this article reviews the 4E paradigm with a view to assessing its strengths and weaknesses.

An Enactive-Ecological Approach to Information and Uncertainty

Information is a central notion for cognitive sciences and neurosciences, but there is no agreement on what it means for a cognitive system to acquire information about its surroundings. In this paper, we approximate three influential views on information: the one at play in ecological psychology, which is sometimes called information for action; the notion of information as covariance as developed by some enactivists, and the idea of information as a minimization of uncertainty as presented by Shannon. Our main thesis is that information for action can be construed as covariant information, and that learning to perceive covariant information is a matter of minimizing uncertainty through skilled performance. We argue that the agent’s cognitive system conveys information for acting in an environment by minimizing uncertainty about how to achieve intended goals in that environment. We conclude by reviewing empirical findings that support our view by showing how direct learning, seen as an instance of ecological rationality at work, is how mere possibilities for action are turned into embodied know-how. Finally, we indicate the affinity between direct learning and sense-making activity.

Mind After Uexküll: A Foray Into the Worlds of Ecological Psychologists and Enactivists

For several decades, a diverse set of approaches to embedded, embodied, extended, enactive and affective cognition has been challenging the cognitivist orthodoxy. Recently, the prospect of a combination of ecological psychology and enactivism has emerged as a promising candidate for a single unified framework that could rival the established cognitivist paradigm as "a working metatheory for the study of minds" (Baggs and Chemero, 2018, p. 11). One obstacle to such an ecological-enactive approach is the conceptual tension between the firm commitment to realism of those following James Gibson's ecological approach and the central tenet of enactivism that each living organism enacts its own world, interpreted as a constructivist or subjectivist position. Baggs and Chemero (2018) forward the concept of Umwelt, coined by the biologist Jakob von Uexküll, as a conceptual bridge between the two approaches. Inspired by Kant, Uexküll's Umwelt describes how the physiology of an organism's sensory apparatus shapes its active experience of the environment. Baggs and Chemero use this link between the subject and its objective surroundings to argue for a strong compatibility between ecological psychology and enactivism. Fultot and Turvey on the other hand view Umwelt as steeped in representationalism, the rejection of which is a fundamental commitment of radical embodied cognition (Fultot and Turvey, 2019). Instead, they advance Uexküll's "compositional theory of nature" as a conceptual supplement for Gibson's ecological approach (von Uexküll, 2010, p. 171; Fultot and Turvey, 2019). In this paper, I provide a brief overview of Uexküll's thought and distinguish a crucial difference between two ways of using his term Umwelt. I argue that only one of these ways, the one which emphasizes the role of subjective experience, is adequate to Uexküll's philosophical project. I demonstrate how the two ways of using Umwelt are employed in the philosophy of cognitive science, show how this distinction matters to recent debates about an ecological-enactive approach, and provide some critical background to Uexküll's compositional theory of meaning.

From Wide Cognition to Mechanisms: A Silent Revolution

In this paper, we argue that several recent ‘wide’ perspectives on cognition (embodied, embedded, extended, enactive, and distributed) are only partially relevant to the study of cognition. While these wide accounts override traditional methodological individualism, the study of cognition has already progressed beyond these proposed perspectives toward building integrated explanations of the mechanisms involved, including not only internal submechanisms but also interactions with others, groups, cognitive artifacts, and their environment. Wide perspectives are essentially research heuristics for building mechanistic explanations. The claim is substantiated with reference to recent developments in the study of “mindreading” and debates on emotions. We argue that the current practice in cognitive (neuro)science has undergone, in effect, a silent mechanistic revolution, and has turned from initial binary oppositions and abstract proposals toward the integration of wide perspectives with the rest of the cognitive (neuro)sciences.

Does Separating Intentionality From Mental Representation Imply Radical Enactivism?

Traditionally, intentionality is regarded as that feature of all and only mental states - paradigmatically beliefs and desires - in virtue of which they are directed at or are about something. The problem of intentionality is to explain how it fits into the natural order given the intuition that no physical entity can be intentionally directed in this sense. The basic assumption of this paper, proposed by enactivists, is that failure to naturalize intentionality and mental representation is partly due to the fact that most participants in the debate take intentionality and mental representation to be equivalent. In contrast, it is proposed to treat intentionality as a feature of whole embodied agents (paradigmatically organisms) who can be directed at objects and states of affairs in various ways, while representation should be regarded as a feature of mental states (and their respective vehicles or underlying mechanisms). The present paper develops and motivates the distinction, applies it to Metzinger's project of naturalizing phenomenal representation, and demonstrates the range of theoretical options with respect to a delineation of cognition given the enactive proposal. It is taken as problematic that enactivism takes the realm of cognition to be identical to the realm of biology. Instead, a constraint on a theory of intentionality and representation is that it should delineate the subject matter of cognitive science and distinguish it from other sciences, also to leave room for the possibility of artificial intelligence. One important implication of the present proposal is that there can be creatures which can be intentionally directed without having the capacity to represent. That is, their intentionality is restricted to being able to be directed at existent things. Only creatures in possession of the right kind of neurocognitive architecture can produce and sustain representations in order to be directed at non-existent things. It is sketched how this approach conceives of intentionality as a developmental and layered concept, allowing for a hierarchical model of varieties of intentionality, ranging from the basic pursuit of local environmental goals to thoughts about fictional objects.

How physiotherapists supervise to enhance practical skills in dedicated aides of toddlers with cerebral palsy: A qualitative observational study

BACKGROUND

Physiotherapy from an early age is considered important for children with cerebral palsy (CP). In preschool, dedicated aides are responsible for the daily follow-up and training under the supervision of a physiotherapist (PT). Knowledge is sparse regarding what is created and achieved in clinical practice involving triads (i.e. the PT, aide, and child) with respect to the enhancement of practical skills in dedicated aides. The study purpose was to explore form and content in supervision.

METHODS

Nonparticipating observations were performed on a purposive sample of seven triads, including seven PTs, seven dedicated aides, and seven preschool toddlers with CP with function level III-IV of the Gross Motor Function Classification System. Each triad was video-recorded once. Data consisted of 371 minutes of video recordings analyzed using content analysis and enactive theory on participatory sense-making.

RESULTS

From the analysis, three supervision approaches emerged: (1) the Cognitive Supervision approach; (2) the Joint Action Supervision approach; and (3) the Embodied Supervision approach. Each approach gives rise to different types of sense-making processes, ranging from merely reflective ways of knowing through verbal and visual conveyance to mutual embodied ways of knowing through joint actions and physical interplay. To make use of all approaches, PTs require incorporated handling skills and action competence.

CONCLUSION

Supervision is an emergent process where knowledge is transformed through interactions and shared sense-making processes.

IMPLICATIONS

Clinicians should be aware of the context-dependent and interactional factors that drive the supervision process.

Coordinated Interpersonal Behaviour in Collective Dance Improvisation: The Aesthetics of Kinaesthetic Togetherness

Collective dance improvisation (e.g., traditional and social dancing, contact improvisation) is a participatory, relational and embodied art form which eschews standard concepts in aesthetics. We present our ongoing research into the mechanisms underlying the lived experience of “togetherness” associated with such practices. Togetherness in collective dance improvisation is kinaesthetic (based on movement and its perception), and so can be simultaneously addressed from the perspective of the performers and the spectators, and be measured. We utilise these multiple levels of description: the first-person, phenomenological level of personal experiences, the third-person description of brain and body activity, and the level of interpersonal dynamics. Here, we describe two of our protocols: a four-person mirror game and a ‘rhythm battle’ dance improvisation score. Using an interpersonal closeness measure after the practice, we correlate subjective sense of individual/group connectedness and observed levels of in-group temporal synchronization. We propose that kinaesthetic togetherness, or interpersonal resonance, is integral to the aesthetic pleasure of the participants and spectators, and that embodied feeling of togetherness might play a role more generally in aesthetic experience in the performing arts.

The Clinical Concept of Opioid Addiction Since 1877: Still Wanting After All These Years

In 1877, the psychiatrist Edward Levinstein authored the first monograph on opioid addiction. The prevalence of opioid addiction prior to his publication had risen in several countries including England, France and Germany. He was the first to call it an illness, but doubted that it was a mental illness because the impairment of volition appeared to be restricted to opioid use: it was not pervasive, since it did not extend to other aspects of the individuals' life. While there has been huge progress in understanding the underlying neurobiological mechanisms, there has been little progress in the clinical psychopathology of addiction and in understanding how it relates to these neurobiological mechanisms. A focus on cravings has limited the exploration of other important aspects such as anosognosia and addiction-related behaviors like smuggling opioids into treatment and supporting the continued provision of co-patients. These behaviors are usually considered secondary reactions, but in clinical practice they appear to be central to addiction, indicating that an improved understanding of the complexity of the disorder is needed. We propose to consider an approach that takes into account the embodied, situated, dynamic, and phenomenological aspects of mental processes. Addiction in this context can be conceptualized as a habit, understood as a distributed network of mental, behavioral, and social processes, which not only shapes the addict's perceptions and actions, but also has a tendency to self-maintain. Such an approach may help to develop and integrate psychopathological and neurobiological research and practice of addictions.

Cognition from life: the two modes of cognition that underlie moral behavior

We argue that the capacity to live life to the benefit of self and others originates in the defining properties of life. These lead to two modes of cognition; the coping mode that is preoccupied with the satisfaction of pressing needs and the co-creation mode that aims at the realization of a world where pressing needs occur less frequently. We have used the Rule of Conservative Changes - stating that new functions can only scaffold on evolutionary older, yet highly stable functions - to predict that the interplay of these two modes define a number of core functions in psychology associated with moral behavior. We explore this prediction with five examples reflecting different theoretical approaches to human cognition and action selection. We conclude the paper with the observation that science is currently dominated by the coping mode and that the benefits of the co-creation mode may be necessary to generate realistic prospects for a modern synthesis in the sciences of the mind.

Enactive account of pretend play and its application to therapy

This paper informs therapeutic practices that use play, by providing a non-standard philosophical account of pretense: the enactive account of pretend play (EAPP). The EAPP holds that pretend play activity need not invoke mental representational mechanisms; instead, it focuses on interaction and the role of affordances in shaping pretend play activity. One advantage of this re-characterization of pretense is that it may help us better understand the role of shared meanings and interacting in systemic therapies, which use playing to enhance dialog in therapy rather than to uncover hidden meanings. We conclude with bringing together findings from therapeutic practice and philosophical considerations.