Process and Individuation: The Development of Sensorimotor Agency

Abstract

I discuss some central ideas of the enactive approach in cognitive science, including the concepts of autonomy, sense-making, and agency, and show the way they are grounded in dynamical systems theory, organizational approaches to biology, and phenomenology. I highlight known and potentially new connections between enactive cognitive science and dynamical and relational perspectives on human development. Taking the notion of sensorimotor know-how or mastery as a particular case, I describe a dynamical formalization of Piaget’s theory of equilibration that serves to clarify this notion. The dynamical interpretation also lays the groundwork for a novel concept of sensorimotor agency based on self-sustaining networked relations between sensorimotor schemes. Some of the tools that are used in fleshing out this idea, such as a network representation of sensorimotor repertoires, can be of use for clarifying the processes that underlie developmental variability, apparent developmental jumps, and the role of socially induced disequilibrium in enabling developmental change during adult-infant interactions. The exercise serves to clarify the ontological and epistemological commitments of enactive theory.