A novel theoretical framework for an embodied, non-representational approach to language that ext... more A novel theoretical framework for an embodied, non-representational approach to language that extends and deepens enactive theory, bridging the gap between sensorimotor skills and language.
How accurate is the picture of the human mind that has emerged from studies in neuroscience, psyc... more How accurate is the picture of the human mind that has emerged from studies in neuroscience, psychology, and cognitive science? Anybody with an interest in how minds work - how we learn about the world and how we remember people and events - may feel dissatisfied with the answers contemporary science has to offer. Sensorimotor Life draws on current theoretical developments in the enactive approach to life and mind. It examines and expands the premises of the sciences of the human mind, while developing an alternative picture closer to people's daily experiences. Enactive ideas are applied and extended, providing a theoretically rich, naturalistic account of meaning and agency. The book includes a dynamical systems description of different types of sensorimotor regularities or sensorimotor contingencies; a dynamical interpretation of Piaget's theory of equilibration to ground the concept of sensorimotor mastery; and a theory of agency as organized networks of sensorimotor schemes, as well as its implications for embodied subjectivity. Written for students and researchers of cognitive science, the authors offer a fuller view of the mind, a view better attuned to the experiences of people who live, work, love, struggle, and age, thrown into a world of meaningful relations they help create. Additionally, the book is of interest to neuroscientists, psychiatrists, and philosophers of science.
This book elaborates a series of contributions to a non–representational theory of action and per... more This book elaborates a series of contributions to a non–representational theory of action and perception. It is based on current theoretical developments in the enactive approach to life and mind. These enactive ideas are applied and extended to provide a theoretically rich, naturalistic account of sensorimotor meaning and agency. This account supplies non–representational extensions to the sensorimotor approach to perceptual experience based on the notion of the living body as a self–organizing dynamic system in coupling with the environment. The enactive perspective entails the use of world–involving explanations, in which processes external to an agent co–constitute mental phenomena in ways that cannot be reduced to the supply of information for internal processing. These contributions to sensorimotor theories are a dynamical–systems description of different types of sensorimotor regularities or sensorimotor contingencies, a dynamical interpretation of Piaget's theory of equilibration to ground the concept of sensorimotor mastery, and a theory of agency as organized networks of sensorimotor schemes, with its implications for sensorimotor subjectivity. New tools are provided for examining the organization, development, and operation of networks of sensorimotor schemes that compose regional activities and genres of action with their own situated norms. This permits the exploration of new explanations for the phenomenology of agency experience that are favorably contrasted with traditional computational approaches and lead to new empirical predictions. From these proposals, capabilities once beyond the reach of enactive explanations, such as the possibility of virtual actions and the adoption of socially mediated abstract perceptual attitudes, can be addressed.
It has been recognized that the sensorimotor approach needs to be extended to account for not onl... more It has been recognized that the sensorimotor approach needs to be extended to account for not only the pragmatic aspects of perception but also the subjective phenomenology that characterizes experiences of the world and the self. In this chapter, the notion is proposed that sensorimotor agency can serve as the basis for a non-representational, world-involving theory of how agents perceive themselves as being the authors and in control of their actions. Both intentional and movement-related aspects in the phenomenology of agency experience are linked to processes of sensorimotor scheme selection and enactment in a self-sustaining network of interdependent sensorimotor schemes. The proposal is contrasted with traditional computational models in the context of various cases of pathological agency experience, and the ontological status of the sense of agency it implies is clarified in comparison with philosophical alternatives that deny its distinct experiential character.
An enactive sensorimotor approach to perception places the agent at the center of the engagements... more An enactive sensorimotor approach to perception places the agent at the center of the engagements that constitute a perceptual act. The notion of agency required, however, cannot be based solely on an organism’s biological well-being. Interests beyond mere survival guide many activities that animals with rich sensorimotor lives engage in. It is proposed that the processes that individuate a sensorimotor agent are the very acts that it performs, and that a network of precarious but mutually stabilizing sensorimotor schemes can satisfy the conditions of agency. Compatibility is demonstrated with dynamical approaches to behavioral development, as well as with psychological theories that support the view of a networked behavioral organization. The interdependence of agency at the organismic, sensorimotor, and social levels is discussed, as well as the relevance of sensorimotor agency, to understand the inherent meaningfulness of perception for the perceiver, as well as her subjectivity.
A novel theoretical framework for an embodied, non-representational approach to language that ext... more A novel theoretical framework for an embodied, non-representational approach to language that extends and deepens enactive theory, bridging the gap between sensorimotor skills and language.
How accurate is the picture of the human mind that has emerged from studies in neuroscience, psyc... more How accurate is the picture of the human mind that has emerged from studies in neuroscience, psychology, and cognitive science? Anybody with an interest in how minds work - how we learn about the world and how we remember people and events - may feel dissatisfied with the answers contemporary science has to offer. Sensorimotor Life draws on current theoretical developments in the enactive approach to life and mind. It examines and expands the premises of the sciences of the human mind, while developing an alternative picture closer to people's daily experiences. Enactive ideas are applied and extended, providing a theoretically rich, naturalistic account of meaning and agency. The book includes a dynamical systems description of different types of sensorimotor regularities or sensorimotor contingencies; a dynamical interpretation of Piaget's theory of equilibration to ground the concept of sensorimotor mastery; and a theory of agency as organized networks of sensorimotor schemes, as well as its implications for embodied subjectivity. Written for students and researchers of cognitive science, the authors offer a fuller view of the mind, a view better attuned to the experiences of people who live, work, love, struggle, and age, thrown into a world of meaningful relations they help create. Additionally, the book is of interest to neuroscientists, psychiatrists, and philosophers of science.
This book elaborates a series of contributions to a non–representational theory of action and per... more This book elaborates a series of contributions to a non–representational theory of action and perception. It is based on current theoretical developments in the enactive approach to life and mind. These enactive ideas are applied and extended to provide a theoretically rich, naturalistic account of sensorimotor meaning and agency. This account supplies non–representational extensions to the sensorimotor approach to perceptual experience based on the notion of the living body as a self–organizing dynamic system in coupling with the environment. The enactive perspective entails the use of world–involving explanations, in which processes external to an agent co–constitute mental phenomena in ways that cannot be reduced to the supply of information for internal processing. These contributions to sensorimotor theories are a dynamical–systems description of different types of sensorimotor regularities or sensorimotor contingencies, a dynamical interpretation of Piaget's theory of equilibration to ground the concept of sensorimotor mastery, and a theory of agency as organized networks of sensorimotor schemes, with its implications for sensorimotor subjectivity. New tools are provided for examining the organization, development, and operation of networks of sensorimotor schemes that compose regional activities and genres of action with their own situated norms. This permits the exploration of new explanations for the phenomenology of agency experience that are favorably contrasted with traditional computational approaches and lead to new empirical predictions. From these proposals, capabilities once beyond the reach of enactive explanations, such as the possibility of virtual actions and the adoption of socially mediated abstract perceptual attitudes, can be addressed.
It has been recognized that the sensorimotor approach needs to be extended to account for not onl... more It has been recognized that the sensorimotor approach needs to be extended to account for not only the pragmatic aspects of perception but also the subjective phenomenology that characterizes experiences of the world and the self. In this chapter, the notion is proposed that sensorimotor agency can serve as the basis for a non-representational, world-involving theory of how agents perceive themselves as being the authors and in control of their actions. Both intentional and movement-related aspects in the phenomenology of agency experience are linked to processes of sensorimotor scheme selection and enactment in a self-sustaining network of interdependent sensorimotor schemes. The proposal is contrasted with traditional computational models in the context of various cases of pathological agency experience, and the ontological status of the sense of agency it implies is clarified in comparison with philosophical alternatives that deny its distinct experiential character.
An enactive sensorimotor approach to perception places the agent at the center of the engagements... more An enactive sensorimotor approach to perception places the agent at the center of the engagements that constitute a perceptual act. The notion of agency required, however, cannot be based solely on an organism’s biological well-being. Interests beyond mere survival guide many activities that animals with rich sensorimotor lives engage in. It is proposed that the processes that individuate a sensorimotor agent are the very acts that it performs, and that a network of precarious but mutually stabilizing sensorimotor schemes can satisfy the conditions of agency. Compatibility is demonstrated with dynamical approaches to behavioral development, as well as with psychological theories that support the view of a networked behavioral organization. The interdependence of agency at the organismic, sensorimotor, and social levels is discussed, as well as the relevance of sensorimotor agency, to understand the inherent meaningfulness of perception for the perceiver, as well as her subjectivity.
The idea of lawful relations between sensory and motor patterns, or sensorimotor contingencies (S... more The idea of lawful relations between sensory and motor patterns, or sensorimotor contingencies (SMCs), lies at the heart of sensorimotor approaches to perception. Yet despite the concept’s importance, surprisingly few attempts have been made to define it formally. On closer inspection, the notion admits different interpretations. In this chapter, a dynamical formalization of agent–environment interaction serves as the starting point to identify four kinds of SMCs, which are defined in operational terms. These are the notions of sensorimotor environment (open-loop motor-induced sensory variations), sensorimotor habitat (closed-loop sensorimotor trajectories), sensorimotor coordination (reliable sensorimotor patterns playing a functional role), and sensorimotor scheme (normative organization of sensorimotor coordination events). The definitions are put to the test in a simple simulated object-discrimination task and their effect on the conceptual development and empirical, as well as model-based testing of the claims of the sensorimotor approach is discussed.
We summarize some of the main proposals of the enactive approach to social understanding and disc... more We summarize some of the main proposals of the enactive approach to social understanding and discuss some common misreadings of the notion of participatory sense-making. The emphasis on the role played by social interaction in the enactive perspective is sometimes misinterpreted as the adoption of an interactionist stance, whereby individual processes are less relevant. This is not the case, and we proceed to explain and exemplify the central role played by individual agency, subpersonal processes and subjective personal experience in the framework of participatory sense-making. This is clear from how social interaction is defined as involving the co-arising of autonomous relational patterns, not under the full control of any participant, but without loss of individual autonomy of those engaged in the social encounter. We discuss how interactive patterns can sustain a deep entanglement between brain, body and interactive dynamics during social engagement, as well as the functional role played in some case by collective dynamics. The enactive approach is neither individualistic, nor interactionist. However, we express skepticism regarding the usefulness of hybrid approaches, which perpetuate dualistic distinctions between mind and body. Instead, the tensions in the notion of participatory sense-making are elaborated dialectically, demonstrating how complex forms of social agency, including language, develop from the primordial tension in participatory sense-making.
Keywords. Enactive approach. Intersubjectivity. Participatory sense-making. Social cognition. Social interaction.
Almost two decades since the publication of The Embodied Mind (Varela, Thompson, and Rosch 1991),... more Almost two decades since the publication of The Embodied Mind (Varela, Thompson, and Rosch 1991), the term enactive has moved out of relative obscurity to become a fashionable banner in many regions of cognitive science. It has found its way into diverse areas, from education and humancomputer interaction, to autonomous robotics and consciousness studies.
I discuss the notion of bodies proposed by Villalobos and Razeto-Barry. I consider it a good move... more I discuss the notion of bodies proposed by Villalobos and Razeto-Barry. I consider it a good move in a direction away from overly formal aspects of autopoietic theory, but in need of refinement. I suggest that because organismic boundaries are dialectical processes and not immanent walls, some autopoietic bodies can extend by incorporating parts of their environment as in the case of insects that use trapped air bubbles to breathe underwater.
This paper continues efforts to establish a mutually informative dialogue between psychology and ... more This paper continues efforts to establish a mutually informative dialogue between psychology and evolutionary robotics in order to investigate the dynamics of social interaction. We replicate a recent simulation model of a minimalist experiment in perceptual crossing and confirm the results with significantly simpler artificial agents.A series of psycho-physical tests of their behaviour informs a hypothetical circuit model of their internal operation. However, a detailed study of the actual internal dynamics reveals this circuit model to be unfounded, thereby offering a tale of caution for those hypothesising about subpersonal processes in terms of behavioural observations. In particular, it is shown that the behaviour of the agents largely emerges out of the interaction process itself rather than being an individual achievement alone. We also extend the original simulation model in two novel directions in order to test further the extent to which perceptual crossing between agents can self-organise in a robust manner. These modelling results suggest new hypotheses that can become the basis for further psychological experiments.
The life-mind continuity thesis holds that mind is prefigured in life and that mind belongs to li... more The life-mind continuity thesis holds that mind is prefigured in life and that mind belongs to life. The biggest challenge faced by proponents of this thesis is to show how an explanatory framework that accounts for basic biological processes can be systematically extended to incorporate the highest reaches of human cognition. We suggest that this apparent „cognitive gap‟ between minimal and human forms of life appears insurmountable largely because of the methodological individualism that is prevalent in cognitive science. Accordingly, a two-fold strategy is used to show how a consideration of sociality can address both sides of the cognitive gap: (i) it is argued from a systemic perspective that inter-agent interactions can extend the behavioral domain of even the simplest agents, and (ii) it is argued from a phenomenological perspective that the cognitive attitude characteristic of adult human beings is essentially intersubjectively constituted, in particular with respect to the possibility of perceiving objects as detached from our own immediate concerns. These two complementary considerations of the constitutive role of inter-agent interactions for mind and cognition indicate that sociality is an indispensable element of the life-mind continuity thesis and of cognitive science more generally.
There is a small but growing community of researchers spanning a spectrum of disciplines which ar... more There is a small but growing community of researchers spanning a spectrum of disciplines which are united in rejecting the still dominant computationalist paradigm in favor of the enactive approach. The framework of this approach is centered on a core set of ideas, such as autonomy, sense-making, emergence, embodiment, and experience. These concepts are finding novel applications in a diverse range of areas. One hot topic has been the establishment of an enactive approach to social interaction. The main purpose of this paper is to serve as an advanced entry point into these recent developments. It accomplishes this task in a twofold manner: (i) it provides a succinct synthesis of the most important core ideas and arguments in the theoretical framework of the enactive approach, and (ii) it uses this synthesis to refine the current enactive approach to social interaction. A new operational definition of social interaction is proposed which not only emphasizes the cognitive agency of the individuals and the irreducibility of the interaction process itself, but also the need for jointly co-regulated action. It is suggested that this revised conception of ‘socio-cognitive interaction’ may provide the necessary middle ground from which to understand the confluence of biological and cultural values in personal action.
Enactive/08: Proceedings of the Fifth International Conference on Enactive Interfaces, 2008
This paper reports an exploratory study designed to clarify whether the Enactive Torch, a custom-... more This paper reports an exploratory study designed to clarify whether the Enactive Torch, a custom-built minimalist distance-to-tactile perceptual supplementation device, can be used to investigate the role of embodied action in the perception of external spatiality. By constraining the kind of exploratory movements available to the participants, we create an experimental setup in which it is possible to study the relationship between bodily degrees of freedom and spatial perception. We present a preliminary investigation of the strategies used by minimally trained participants to locate various objects placed in front of them by engaging in active exploration under constrained conditions.
Advances in Artificial Life. Darwin Meets von Neumann: 10th European Conference, ECAL 2009, 2011
We report on a set of minimalist modeling experiments that extends previous work on the dynamics ... more We report on a set of minimalist modeling experiments that extends previous work on the dynamics of social interaction. We used an evolutionary robotics approach to fine-tune the design of a recent psychological experiment,as well as to synthesize a solution that gives clues about how humans might perform under these novel conditions. In this manner we were able to generate a number of hypotheses that are open to verification by future experiments in social psychology. In particular, the results indicate some of the advantages and disadvantages of relying on social factors for solving behavioral tasks.
From Animals to Animats 10: 10th International Conference on Simulation of Adaptive Behavior, SAB 2008, 2008
We used an evolutionary robotics methodology to generate pairs of simulated agents capable of rel... more We used an evolutionary robotics methodology to generate pairs of simulated agents capable of reliably establishing and maintaining a coordination pattern under noisy conditions. The agents were only evolved for this ability and not for their capacity to detect social contingency. However, when they were made to interact with a previously recorded, successful behavioral sequence, the coordination pattern could not be maintained. An analysis of the system’s underlying dynamics revealed (i) that stability of the coordination pattern requires mutuality of interaction, and (ii) that the interaction process is not only constituted by but also constitutive of individual behavior. We suggest that such termination of interaction is a general property of a certain class of interactively coupled dynamical systems, and conclude that psychological explanations of an individual’s sensitivity to social contingency need to take into account the role of the interaction process.
There are some signs that a resurgence of interest in modeling constitutive autonomy is underway.... more There are some signs that a resurgence of interest in modeling constitutive autonomy is underway. This paper contributes to this recent development by exploring the possibility of using evolutionary robotics, traditionally only used as a generative mechanism for the study of embodied-embedded cognitive systems, to generate simulation models of constitutively autonomous systems. Such systems, which are autonomous in the sense that they self-constitute an identity under precarious conditions, have so far been elusive. The challenges and opportunities involved in such an endeavor are explicated in terms of a concrete model. While we conclude that this model fails to fully satisfy all the organizational criteria that are required for constitutive autonomy, it nevertheless serves to illustrate that evolutionary robotics at least has the potential to become a valuable tool for generating such models.
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Books by Ezequiel Di Paolo
Sensorimotor Life draws on current theoretical developments in the enactive approach to life and mind. It examines and expands the premises of the sciences of the human mind, while developing an alternative picture closer to people's daily experiences. Enactive ideas are applied and extended, providing a theoretically rich, naturalistic account of meaning and agency. The book includes a dynamical systems description of different types of sensorimotor regularities or sensorimotor contingencies; a dynamical interpretation of Piaget's theory of equilibration to ground the concept of sensorimotor mastery; and a theory of agency as organized networks of sensorimotor schemes, as well as its implications for embodied subjectivity.
Written for students and researchers of cognitive science, the authors offer a fuller view of the mind, a view better attuned to the experiences of people who live, work, love, struggle, and age, thrown into a world of meaningful relations they help create. Additionally, the book is of interest to neuroscientists, psychiatrists, and philosophers of science.
Papers by Ezequiel Di Paolo
Sensorimotor Life draws on current theoretical developments in the enactive approach to life and mind. It examines and expands the premises of the sciences of the human mind, while developing an alternative picture closer to people's daily experiences. Enactive ideas are applied and extended, providing a theoretically rich, naturalistic account of meaning and agency. The book includes a dynamical systems description of different types of sensorimotor regularities or sensorimotor contingencies; a dynamical interpretation of Piaget's theory of equilibration to ground the concept of sensorimotor mastery; and a theory of agency as organized networks of sensorimotor schemes, as well as its implications for embodied subjectivity.
Written for students and researchers of cognitive science, the authors offer a fuller view of the mind, a view better attuned to the experiences of people who live, work, love, struggle, and age, thrown into a world of meaningful relations they help create. Additionally, the book is of interest to neuroscientists, psychiatrists, and philosophers of science.
The enactive approach is neither individualistic, nor interactionist. However, we express skepticism regarding the usefulness of hybrid approaches, which perpetuate dualistic distinctions between mind and body. Instead, the tensions in the notion of participatory sense-making are elaborated dialectically, demonstrating how complex forms of social agency, including language, develop from the primordial tension in participatory sense-making.
Keywords. Enactive approach. Intersubjectivity. Participatory sense-making. Social cognition. Social interaction.