Introduction

Abstract

This chapter introduces some of the questions and issues that are explored in more depth in later chapters. It starts with a brief review of some internalist conceptions of cognition and then specifies, in contrast, the assumptions that define enactivist approaches to specific issues. The chapter includes a discussion of one of the main objections against enactivist and extended conceptions of cognition, the causal-constitution fallacy, and initiates a discussion of the role of representation and inference, especially in recent predictive coding approaches in neuroscience. It concludes by arguing that enactivism is best conceived as a philosophy of nature rather than a scientific research agenda.