To some, purposiveness is the core of the enactive approach. Others, however, view the notion of purposes as a pre-scientific crutch – one that will eventually be replaced by mathematical analyses of the kind of dynamical systems that we are. Yet advances in cognitive neuroscience have not vanquished the problem of purpose, only driven it underground. Rather than explicitly confronting this problem, in attempting to uncover the true aims of a target system, contemporary cognitive scientists implicitly rely upon their own aims in informing the construction of experimental procedures, measurements, and models. Such aims are essential for making choices of relevance vs irrelevance or signal vs noise, by means of which essential principles are abstracted from a disorderly biological substrate. Pragmatism is all the rage – why should cognitive science buck the trend? Well, precisely because the targets of cognitive science are the very purposive agents upon which the pragmatist stance depends. The promise of enactive cognitive science is an account of this purposiveness – yet such a project cannot rely solely on dynamical formalisms that are inadequate to the task. Instead, it depends upon the organicist critique of these abstractions and proposal for a thermodynamically-grounded account of the purposive agency that underpins them.

There is no doubt that tools have played a central role in the evolutionary history of hominins, from early species like Australopithecus to the genus Homo . Inspired by the French philosopher Bernard Stiegler, this paper explores the Homo species from a Heideggerian perspective, focusing on two central ideas: (i) tools as ready-to-hand versus tools as present-at-hand, and (ii) technologies (tools) versus Technology (technological mode of being). According to Heidegger, focusing solely on tools fails to capture the deeper essence of T echnology, which is not just a tool or a set of devices, but a distinct mode of being that shapes how we perceive and act in the world. This paper argues that tools are essential for understanding the evolution of hominins not just because they reflect cognitive development or facilitate tasks like cutting thick skins, but more crucially because they signify the emergence of a distinct technological mode of being. This technological mode of being represents a fundamentally different way of being-in-the-world—perceiving the world through, and as, T echnology. Within this framework, everything is understood and valued as standing reserve. The paper addresses the issue from an evolutionary perspective, examining both the tools themselves and the ways in which chimpanzees and later extinct species, such as Australopithecus , Homo habilis , and Homo erectus , used them. The paper argues that a technological mode of being began to develop before the emergence of the Homo species and became more pronounced over time. It proposes that human development should be understood not merely as a growing dependence on tools, but as a transformation in how the world itself is disclosed—namely, within a comprehensive technological mode of being in which everything appears as standing reserve. This perspective reflects a shift in how we understand and treat our environment—not as nature (in which we dwell), but as a resource: As one progresses along the evolutionary tree from chimpanzees to humans, nature is perceived less as a living environment and more as something that stands ready for use.

Less-is-more describes a principle underlying decision making. Embodiment, on the other hand, argues that the body plays an important role in processes that have classically been characterized as mental. We argue that decision making is facilitated by reducing the amount of mental information processing (less-is-more) through the exploitation of the constant stream of rich sensorimotor information (embodiment), a concept we call LIME. LIME argues that, via embodiment, information processing is “constrained” by and “off-loaded” into the body. Constraining involves the body reducing the input or generated options before they enter into mental information processing. Off-loading involves the body or the environment performing the information processing. LIME underlies cognition generally, but is most accessibly demonstrated in sport phenomena, and we use this domain to sketch out the breadth of this concept in four case studies. LIME connects first principles of cognition to real-life phenomena, providing explanatory insights into ecological rationality and frameworks explaining adaptive behavior.

Collective biological systems can exhibit surprisingly rich macroscopic adaptive behaviors from their relatively simple components. These behaviors often resemble sensing, cognition, and ecological interaction, as in higher-order organisms. Unfortunately, a normative model explaining cognitive behaviors from the interactions of simple elements is not yet available. We hypothesize here that minimal self-knowledge can be observed from local interactions between simple components if two conditions are given: (i) self-generated, globally shared information and (ii) higher-order feedback loops emerging from the actions of simple elements. To evaluate the hypothesis, a discrete-time, discrete-space computational simulation is developed, modeling simple particles discharging a chemical-like substance (pheromone). The results indicate that unstructured variations introduced through random movements of particles across the arena enabled the formation of clusters with complex, emergent behaviors. Under the hypothesized conditions, these results indicate that a minimal form of self-knowledge emerges, representing a primitive self-definition.

In this article, I demonstrate the value of the pathological complexity thesis for comparative consciousness research. I discuss how Ristau’s piping plover research illuminates links between life-history complexity and intentionality. How Sinha’s bonnet macaque studies demonstrate how social drivers of pathological complexity predict self-awareness and mindreading capacities. And how Ross’s discussion of elephant life histories and consciousness allows us to compare the phenomenology if humans and elephants. Finally, I address Yilmaz’s discussion of the case for plant consciousness.

Recent proposals distinguish scientific enactivism , which operationalizes enactive concepts in empirical research, from utopian enactivism , conceived as a broad philosophy of nature. This paper questions that divide by showing how enactive principles can fruitfully guide human–computer interaction (HCI) research. We argue that enactivism offers a dialectical alternative to both cognitivist models, which reduce behavior to utility optimization and internal representations, and Heideggerian accounts, which stress situated embodied coping but often neglect the social and transformative dimensions of collective sense-making. Emphasizing participatory sense-making as the enactment of ecological norms, we propose a framework that shifts HCI from preference optimization to the co-creation of collective norms. A case study of an AI-mediated energy community illustrates how enactive principles inform empirical design. Participants interacted for 1 month with an AI-integrated interface while coordinating domestic energy use, incorporating the sociotechnical system into everyday routines and orienting to neighbors’ activities. We show that an enactive framework enables analysis of interaction across multiple temporalities and spheres of experience. The study demonstrates a concrete continuity between enactive theorizing and empirical implementation, suggesting that the enactive approach can be fruitfully mobilized in the study of sociotechnical environments.

Purpose: This study investigates the relationship between phase characteristics of horse-riders and subjective harmony scores evaluated by dressage judges. We aim to enhance understanding of how motion patterns reflect harmony perception, hypothesizing that adaptive anti-persistent motion improves subjective evaluations. Methods: Nine elite dressage riders and their horses participated. Accelerometer data from the rider’s centre of gravity were collected during passage and extended trot. Signals were processed using detrended fluctuation analysis ( H ) and Shannon entropy (Ɛ). Subjective harmony scores were correlated with H and Ɛ using Spearman’s rank correlation. Significance was set at p < .05. Results: In passage , H positively correlated with harmony scores (r = 0.77, p < .01, H = 1.07 ± 0.06), suggesting riders exhibiting greater persistence were evaluated as more harmonious. Conversely, in extended trot, H negatively correlated with scores (r = −0.71, p < .02, H = 1.04 ± 0.06), indicating anti-persistent motion correlated with higher ratings. Shannon entropy correlated negatively with scores in passage (r = −0.62, p < .03, Ɛ = 9.28 ± 0.25) and positively in extended trot (r = 0.61, p < .05, Ɛ = 9.46 ± 0.12). Conclusions: Harmony perception in dressage varies by gait. Collected movements benefit from stable and persistent motion, while extended gaits demand adaptive, anti-persistent patterns. Training should focus on stability for precision-oriented gaits and flexibility for dynamic tasks. Objective metrics like detrended fluctuation analysis and entropy may enhance harmony evaluation, though interpretation requires further refinement to address subjectivity in scoring practices.

Enactivism has recently faced criticism for either leaning too heavily on philosophical speculation without clear scientific grounding, or relying on quite old empirical work in cognitive science, especially concerning sensorimotor actions. While one can push back against such charges, in this paper we take a different approach. We will use metabolic and microbiome research as a case study to help make this problem vivid, and to outline a path forward. First, we contend that a closer look at metabolism and microbiota-host interactions places pressure upon some of the core ‘autopoietic’ concepts of enactivism, including self-production, autonomy, and operational closure. This research instead appears to emphasise heteronomy and symbiosis in cognitive, developmental, and evolutionary processes, posing in effect an ontological challenge. Second, it also raises some questions about enactivism’s traditional avoidance of reductionist explanations, suggesting that there is an epistemic need for a philosophy of science that clarifies how to integrate more reductive biological programs within holistic enactivist frameworks. To meet these challenges, we argue that enactivism needs to moderate its commitments to autopoietic theory.