What Is Enactivism?
Adaptive Behavior May 20, 2026 DOI: 10.1177/10597123261450094 via OpenAlex
Summary
AI-generated from the abstractEnactivism is often treated as a broad category that includes any approach stressing sensorimotor activity for understanding mind in nature. The author argues this view is distorting because it overlooks three core commitments from Varela, Thompson, and Rosch's original work: life/mind continuity, experiential primacy, and the reciprocity between science and self-understanding. These commitments distinguish the enactive approach from other embodied cognition variants and make it especially timely and valuable.
Study at a glance
| Characteristics | Theoretical or philosophical paper Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Keywords | Embodied cognition Reciprocity cultural anthropology Experiential learning Natural archaeology Natural kind |
| Key finding | The enactive approach is defined by three central commitments—life/mind continuity, experiential primacy, and reciprocity between science and self-understanding—that set it apart from other embodied cognition approaches. |
Abstract
‘Enactivism’ is usually taken to be an umbrella term encompassing any approach that emphasises the importance of recurrent loops of sensorimotor activity to adequate philosophical and scientific understandings of how minds fit into the natural world. Under this umbrella different variants can then be distinguished. I argue that this is a distortive and unhelpful understanding insofar as it ignores three central commitments of the enactive approach as originally set out in Varela, Thompson & Rosch’s The Embodied Mind. These commitments to life/mind continuity, experiential primacy, and the reciprocity between science and self-understanding set the enactive approach apart from other variants of embodied cognition in science and philosophy, and do so in ways that make it distinctively timely and valuable.