Abstract
The aim of the article is to outline several valuable elements of Mead’s pragmatist theory of perception in action developed in his The Philosophy of the Act (1938), in order to strengthen the pragmatist legacy of the enactivist approach. In particular, Mead’s theory of perception in action turns out to be a forerunner of sensorimotor enactivist theory. Unlike the latter, however, Mead explicitly refers to imagery as an essential capacity for agency. Nonetheless, the article argues that the ways in which Mead refers to this capacity do not necessarily place it in opposition to enactivist non-representationalism. On the contrary, as a synthetic process of re-presenting of present and past sensorimotor elements, imagery can be seen as the hallmark of a pragmatically inspired sensorimotor enactivist approach that bypasses the opposition between representationalists and non-representationalists.
Highlights
Among the various versions of the recent pragmatic turn in second-generation cognitive science,1 many share the common background of assuming that cognition should be considered not as a producer of veridical representations but rather a form of practice, namely a skillful activity that implies a capacity to generate action structures
Unlike anti- or non-representationalist approaches, a pragmatist approach to perception in action gives the imagery a central role in explaining the ability of virtually re-presenting the ongoing continuation of an act. This approach to imagery seems to mediate between a radical anti-representationalist enactivist approach, a nonrepresentationalist approach that considers imagery as an act of visual experience, and a representationalist approach according to which we should keep some kind of representations
Mead’s theory of the act offers some valuable elements to contribute to a pragmatically inspired sensorimotor enactivist approach that gives the imagery a central role in explaining the ability of virtually re-presenting the ongoing continuation of an act. His approach to imagery seems, to mediate between a radical anti-representationalist enactivist approach, according to which perception is a process involving contributions from all and only sensorimotor systems, a non-representationalist approach that considers imagery as an act of visual experience, and a representationalist approach according to which we should keep some kind of representations
Summary
Among the various versions of the recent pragmatic turn in second-generation cognitive science, many share the common background of assuming that cognition should be considered not as a producer of veridical representations but rather a form of practice, namely a skillful activity that implies a capacity to generate action structures. They begin their book referring to James’ conception of the mind as not a mirror passively reflecting an order that exists out there, but rather as an active transformer of the world around us (James 1878).. Still more interesting, Di Paolo et al (2017: 33) include a lengthy quote from Mead’s essay on ‘The Physical Thing’ (1932) as a forerunner of the sensorimotor enactivist approach they are promoting Their reference to Mead’s work is worth noting because he is perhaps the least popular classical pragmatist among philosophers of mind and neuroscientists but most likely the most suitable for an integrated approach to different perspectives on cognition (Baggio, 2019a, 2019b; Madzia, 2016; 2013; Nungesser, 2016). This approach to imagery seems to mediate between a radical anti-representationalist enactivist approach, a nonrepresentationalist approach that considers imagery as an act of visual experience, and a representationalist approach according to which we should keep some kind of representations
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