Radical enactive cognition: how to account for the phenomenal aspects of consciousness

• Grant number: 16/20284-1
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships abroad - Research Internship - Doctorate
• Start date: March 01, 2017
• End date: February 28, 2018
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Philosophy
• Principal Investigator: Marco Antonio Caron Ruffino
• Grantee: Laura Machado Do Nascimento
• Supervisor: Erik Myin
• Host Institution: Instituto de Filosofia e Ciências Humanas (IFCH). Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Campinas , SP, Brazil
• Institution abroad: University of Antwerp (UA), Belgium
• Associated to the scholarship: 14/03029-2 - Evaluation of the enactivist view through the analysis of problems in the Philosophy of Mind, BP.DR

Abstract

The main aim of the project is to evaluate how enactivist accounts might lead to a better understanding of the problem of qualia, that means, how to relate the conscious aspects of experience to the physical events that underlie them (widely supposed to be located in the brain). Up until now, by means of available accounts, there is no prospect of having a solution or even a better comprehension of the issue. It has been argued that Enactivism provides a fresh view to such long-standing traditional and difficult issues in philosophy of mind. According to enactivist views, not only the brain, but also the rest of the body and its relationship to the environment need to be taken into account in order to achieve a proper understanding of mental phenomena. Enactivists argue that the difficulties in accounting for qualia arise because of the mistaken presuppositions that have been made in scientific and philosophical research about the mind. So, they propose that, instead of considering mental phenomena (including qualia) as a result from brain processing, mental phenomena are considered as activities that are performed by the subject as a whole, who is also situated in an environment and that also has an ontogenetic and phylogenetic history that enables her to successfully interact with the world. However, Hutto and Myin (2013) argue that not all proponents of enactivist approaches recognize the full consequences of holding an enactivist view. In order to be fully naturalistic, they claim, enactivist accounts should rely only on the specifiable relationships that happen between brain, body and environment, without presupposing unwarranted notions. One of such questionable notions is representational content, specially when applied to basic cognition (which includes, for example, perception). In light of their considerations, the aim of this BEPE project is to investigate how Hutto and Myin's account applies to qualia. (AU)

Scientific publications

(References retrieved automatically from Web of Science and SciELO through information on FAPESP grants and their corresponding numbers as mentioned in the publications by the authors)

. Review of HUTTO, Daniel and MYIN, Erik, Evolving Enactivism - Basic minds meet content (2017, MIT Press, xxvi + 328 p.). Manuscrito, n. ahead, p. -, 2018. (16/20284-1)

LAURA NASCIMENTO. Review of HUTTO, Daniel and MYIN, Erik, Evolving Enactivism - Basic minds meet content (2017, MIT Press, xxvi + 328 p.). Manuscrito, v. 41, n. 1, p. -, Jan. 2018. (16/20284-1)