RECtifying and REConnecting

Chapter 4 demonstrates how the Radical Enactive Cognition (REC) framework can be applied to two existing nonrepresentational approaches to cognition: Autopoietic-Adaptive Enactivism and Ecological Dynamics. By 'RECtifying' these approaches, the chapter shows that REC can combine their resources to explain basic minds in naturalistic terms. The chapter concludes by addressing the need to explain how basic, contentless minds can develop into contentful minds—a process called REConnecting. This is necessary because REC holds that some cognition involves content and that organisms acquire content-involving cognition by mastering specific sociocultural practices.

Study at a glance

Abstract

Chapter 4 provides further examples of RECtification, this time with the aim of showing how REC can fruitfully ally with and strengthen two prominent nonrepresentational E-approaches to cognition—Autopoietic-Adaptive Enactivism and Ecological Dynamics. These examples of RECtification reveal REC’s capacity to marshal and combine powerful resources for explaining basic minds in naturalistic terms. The chapter concludes by discussing the need to show how to basic, contentless minds can meet contentful minds in REC terms – namely, to explicate how REConnecting is possible. Doing so is necessary in light of REC’s commitment to two ideas: that some cognition is content-involving and that organisms become capable of content-involving cognition by mastering special sociocultural practices.