Cognitive Science and Anti Representationalism

Document Type:Thesis

Subject Area:Philosophy

Document 1

The 4E theories are more systematic as they encompass the brain, body and the external environment as equal partners. The 4E theories postulate that cognition is embodied, embedded, enacted and extended. As such, it cannot be said to be restricted to the head. The fundamental view in these theories is that perception and cognition is dependent on the cognizing organism skillful interactions with the environment. It then follows that cognition is essentially embodied and embedded. The 4E cognitivism converge with basic representationalism at the point where they both argue that there is indeed the existence of mental representations and they can be built and used on the go, context –dependent. embodied, analogue or distributed. Anti- representationalism is grounded on the fact that most cognitive systems do not involve the use, retrieval or manufacture of mental representations.

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This is the most significant difference between the two the 4E cognitive science and anti- representationalism. 4e cognitive theories support the idea that there are some representational properties found within some classes of cognitive phenomena. From this cognitive activity, there are bodily movements demonstrated through the output from world to mind which are called agency. Anti representationalism rejects the view that there is need for intervention between perception and action to create a representation of the environment on which practical deliberation can take place (Foglia & Grush 2011). This intervention would be from cognitive processes. In their view, perception is the ability to grasp what is afforded by the sensible environment to inform the organism’s plans and deliberations. 4E cognitivism opposes the assumption of the perceptual experiences of individuals requiring an independent faculty of cognition to work raw data into a form which is intelligible and meaningful for the organism.

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It is based on the claim that explicit representations of behavior knowledge cannot be based on embodied solutions. It should be based on the agent-environment dynamics as opposed to representation or computation. Within the sensorimotor theory, the central feature of the perception is the manipulation of the environment. The 4E cognitivism claims that a grasp of the practical possibilities held by the environment for the perceiver is the primary form of perceptual attunement (Colombetti 2009). However, this approach also adds that the organisms’ perceptual experience of the world offers objects, features and properties which are more than the momentary window. Cognitive properties and performances are affected by the facts about an organism’s relationship to the external environment which surrounds the organism (Charles 2011).

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Further, this view holds that perception is primarily embodied. The type of bodily agents that individuals are is the determining factor for the categories and structure of perception and in essence cognition. For successful interaction between individuals and the world, there must be a clear presentation of the world in thought and experience in a particular way. As such, the cognizing individual’s activity has a crucial place in the constitution of the world since it is accessible to them in perception and cognition.  A new look at New Realism: The psychology and philosophy of EB Holt (Vol. Transaction Publishers. Colombetti, G. Enaction, sense-making and emotion. In: Stewart J, Gapenne O, di Paolo E (eds) Enaction: towards a new paradigm for cognitive science.

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