UM CAMINHO DO MEIO ENTRE TRADIÇÃO E RADICALISMO EM COGNIÇÃO

Abstract

While the cognitivist theory of the mind presents the brain as the exclusive locus of cognition, working isolated manipulating its representations, in the descriptions of radical enactivism the roles of brain, body and environment get confused in the total dynamics that characterise the embodied embedded behavior. Putting the phenomenon of learning in focus, our middle way approach finds an equilibrium between the two opposing positions: in an interactive process, where the body and the elements of the environment are in direct contact with each other, the brain encounters opportunities to give form to a behavior that is capable to reach the goal. We analyze and develop this idea with the help of an análogo between the intelligent behavior and the operation of a machine, and between learning and the construction of the machine. The first result we obtain is the identification of fundamental gaps in the cognitivist and enactivist explanations. The most interesting result, however, consists in the observation that the cognivist and enactivist projects are working on the same problem: the construction and operation of cognitive machines. Not only that, but that which missing on each of them seems to be offered by the other — which allows us to portray the two in continuity.