A twofold tale of one mind: revisiting REC's multi-storey story.

The Radical Enactive/Embodied view of Cognition (REC) holds that all cognition is skilled performance, but distinguishes basic cognition from content-involving cognition, claiming a developmental "kink" between them. Critics worry this creates an "interface problem"—how two minds could interact in the same activity—and an unjustified difference in kind between animal and human cognition. The authors argue that REC's emphasis on sociocultural practices resolves the interface problem by showing content-involving cognition requires specific practices. They clarify REC's notion of content to justify marking basic and content-involving cognition as a difference in kind, while maintaining both are forms of skilled performance, though genuinely different forms.

Study at a glance

Abstract

The Radical Enactive/Embodied view of Cognition, or REC, claims that all cognition is a matter of skilled performance. Yet REC also makes a distinction between basic and content-involving cognition, arguing that the development of basic to content-involving cognition involves a kink. It might seem that this distinction leads to problematic gaps in REC's story. We address two such alleged gaps in this paper. First, we identify and reply to the concern that REC leads to an "interface problem", according to which REC has to account for the interaction of two minds co-present in the same cognitive activity. We emphasise how REC's view of content-involving cognition in terms of activities that require particular sociocultural practices can resolve these interface concerns. The second potential problematic gap is that REC creates an unjustified difference in kind between animal and human cognition. In response, we clarify and further explicate REC's notion of content, and argue that this notion allows REC to justifiably mark the distinction between basic and content-involving cognition as a difference in kind. We conclude by pointing out in what sense basic and content-involving cognitive activities are the same, yet different. They are the same because they are all forms of skilled performance, yet different as some forms of skilled performance are genuinely different from other forms.