Myin Erik, van den Herik Jasper C
Centre for Philosophical Psychology, Department of Philosophy, University of Antwerp, Prinsstraat 13, 2000 Antwerpen, Belgium.
Department of Psychiatry, Amsterdam UMC, Meibergdreef 9, 1105 AZ Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
Synthese. 2021;198(12):12175-12193. doi: 10.1007/s11229-020-02857-z. Epub 2020 Sep 5.
The Radical Enactive/Embodied view of Cognition, or REC, claims that all cognition is a matter of skilled performance. Yet REC also makes a distinction between basic and content-involving cognition, arguing that the development of basic to content-involving cognition involves a kink. It might seem that this distinction leads to problematic gaps in REC's story. We address two such alleged gaps in this paper. First, we identify and reply to the concern that REC leads to an "interface problem", according to which REC has to account for the interaction of two minds co-present in the same cognitive activity. We emphasise how REC's view of content-involving cognition in terms of activities that require particular sociocultural practices can resolve these interface concerns. The second potential problematic gap is that REC creates an unjustified difference in kind between animal and human cognition. In response, we clarify and further explicate REC's notion of content, and argue that this notion allows REC to justifiably mark the distinction between basic and content-involving cognition as a difference in kind. We conclude by pointing out in what sense basic and content-involving cognitive activities are the same, yet different. They are the same because they are all forms of skilled performance, yet different as some forms of skilled performance are genuinely different from other forms.
激进的生成/具身认知观(REC)认为,所有认知都是熟练表现的问题。然而,REC也区分了基本认知和涉及内容的认知,认为从基本认知到涉及内容的认知的发展存在一个转折。似乎这种区分在REC的理论中导致了问题性的漏洞。在本文中,我们将探讨两个这样所谓的漏洞。首先,我们识别并回应一种担忧,即REC会导致一个“界面问题”,根据这一问题,REC必须解释在同一认知活动中共同存在的两种思维的相互作用。我们强调,REC关于涉及内容的认知是基于需要特定社会文化实践的活动的观点,如何能够解决这些界面问题。第二个潜在的问题性漏洞是,REC在动物认知和人类认知之间制造了一种不合理的本质区别。对此,我们澄清并进一步阐释REC的内容概念,并认为这一概念使REC能够合理地将基本认知和涉及内容的认知之间的区别标记为一种本质区别。我们最后指出,基本认知活动和涉及内容的认知活动在何种意义上既相同又不同。它们相同是因为它们都是熟练表现的形式,但不同是因为某些熟练表现形式与其他形式确实不同。