books — The Brains Blog

Evolving Enactivism: Neurodynamics sans content

In a direct challenge to radical, anti-representational proposals about how to conceive of cognition, Aizawa (2015) asks “If the brain does not contribute information processing or symbol manipulation or the transformation of representations … then what does it do?” (2015, 761–762). Given that REC embraces precisely such radicalisms, what alternative …

Evolving Enactivism: Ur-Intentionality – What’s it All About?

Daniel Hutto and Erik Myin January 24, 2018 January 28, 2018 Daniel Hutto and Erik Myin: Evolving Enactivism / Intentionality / Philosophy of Mind

In our previous instalment to this blog series, we alluded to a subtle but pivotal adjustment that our Radically Enactive account of Cognition, REC, recommends making to what, in analytic circles, is the standard conception of minds. The recommendation is that we conceive of the intentional and phenomenal aspects of …

Evolving Enactivism: An Introduction

Daniel Hutto and Erik Myin January 22, 2018 January 28, 2018 Action / Cognition / Daniel Hutto and Erik Myin: Evolving Enactivism / Philosophy of Mind / reduction

Thanks to John Schwenkler for inviting us to guest-blog this week about our new book Evolving Enactivism: Basic Minds Meet Content (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2017). It is often said that two minds are better than one. Though ‘mind’ is a count noun, we don’t imagine that people really have …

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John Schwenkler January 22, 2018 January 29, 2018 books

Many thanks to Daniel Hutto and Erik Myin for blogging this week on Evolving Enactivism: Basic Minds Meet Content (MIT Press, 2017). To view all their posts on a single page, please click here.

Consciousness is something you do

Sebastian Watzl January 19, 2018 January 19, 2018 Attention / Consciousness / Mental Action / metaphysics of mind / Philosophy of Mind / Sebastian Watzl: Structuring Mind / Self-consciousness

Many parents who look into the eyes of their newborn baby encounter something wonderful, and awe inspiring. There in those eyes they get a glimpse of a new perspective, a new point of view on the world. A new consciousness. The idea that consciousness is the subjective perspective we each …

How attention shapes consciousness

Sebastian Watzl January 18, 2018 January 18, 2018 Attention / Consciousness / Intentionality / Phenomenology / Philosophy of Mind / Sebastian Watzl: Structuring Mind

There is a subjective way you experience the world. This is way it is like for you to listen to Jazz, to look around curiously, or to taste dark chocolate. It is hard to know about what it is like for you to experience these things simply by observing your …

Earthworms, Google servers, and an important kind of freedom

Sebastian Watzl January 17, 2018 January 17, 2018 Attention / Cognition / evolution / Intentionality / Mental Action / metaphysics of mind / Neuroscience; Philosophy of Science / perception / Psychology / Sebastian Watzl: Structuring Mind

Yesterday, I sketched the priority structure framework: attention consists in the activity of regulating priority structures, which order the parts of the subject’s on-going mental life by their relative priority. Why would we organize our mind in this way? In other words, what is the function of attention? The answer, …