4E’s Are Too Many Why Enactive World-Making Does Not Need The Extended Mind Thesis

The 4E approach to cognition (embodied, embedded, enacted, extended) replaces the idea that the mind mirrors the world with an active process of world-making, rejecting mental representation and distributing cognition across body, brain, and environment. Critics note that extended cognition is not enactive and that embodied cognition lacks a definition of body, raising doubts about whether a postcognitivist approach to experience requires 4E's. This contribution argues it does not, instead discussing the enactive body as a moving sense-making system informed by phenomenology and pragmatism, and its role in constituting the distinctive quality of an experience.

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Abstract

4E’s cognition – embodied, embedded, enacted, extended – replaces the cognitivist notion of world-mirroring with an active process of world-making: cognition needs no mental representation and is distributed over body, brain and environment. In recent years, the remark that extended cognition is not enactive and that the embodied approach to cognition fails to provide a definition of body raise the question of whether a postcognitivist approach to experience needs 4E’s. This contribution suggests that it does not. The enactive body as a moving sense-making-system informed by phenomenology and pragmatism and its role in the constitution of the distinctive quality of an experience are discussed.