How Not to Argue about the Compatibility of Predictive Processing and 4E Cognition
Organon F November 29, 2021 Yavuz Recep Başoğlu
Arguments that Predictive Processing and 4E (embodied, embedded, extended, enactive) approaches to cognition are compatible often claim either that Predictive Processing is nonrepresentational or that 4E approaches are representational. Such arguments are inadequate because they overlook the variety of representational posits in Predictive Processing, the diverse attitudes of 4E practitioners toward representations, and the unconstrained use of the term 'representation' in cognitive science. No single argument depending on representational 4E approaches or nonrepresentational Predictive Processing can encompass this heterogeneity. The paper illustrates this criticism by analyzing similar arguments from Jacob Hohwy and Michael Kirchhoff.