Do We (or Our Brains) Actively Represent or Enactively Engage with the World?
Do We (or Our Brains) Actively Represent or Enactively Engage with the World?
This chapter reviews scientific discussions of several problems (free will, social cognition, perception) that reflect a representational approach to cognitive science, and contrasts them with embodied, enactive approaches. It asks whether predictive coding models can adjudicate between these different views, and suggests that predictive coding models can go either way. The chapter then offers an interpretation designed to push such models toward the enactive camp. It concludes by considering the suggestion that enactivism, rather than a scientific research program, is a philosophy of nature (as defined by Godfrey-Smith), and suggests that enactivism’s attempt to rethink the nature of mind and brain also involves rethinking the concept of nature.
Keywords: Strüngmann Forum Reports, embodied cognition, enactivism, free will, social cognition, perception, philosophy of time, pragmatism, predictive coding models, theory of mind
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