Autonomist and Radical Enactivism: whither now?
Giovanni Rolla (UFBA)
In his eleventh chapter, Myin discusses Enactivism, beginning with what is sometimes called Autonomist Enactivism and its implications for mind and life. Here, I explore partial continuities—that are sometimes called “kinks”—in the evolutionary trajectory, which poses a challenge to Autonomist Enactivism. Building on Radical Enactivism, I reject the view that equates biological processes with cognition, focusing instead on the conceptual bridges needed to connect these domains. The first partial continuity, between life and mind, is explored through the framework of biological autonomy, understood as "closure of constraints". The second partial continuity is the transition from basic to higher cognition, where Radical Enactivism commits to pervasive know-how. This practical, non-representational knowledge links the active exploration of environmental settings and symbolic cognition, offering a unified yet non-reductive account of cognition. I move on to the role of autonomy in sociocultural practices, showing how collective constraints on symbol use mirror biological self-organization.
On Myin’s view of linguistic recursion
César Meurer (UENF)
In “Of a Different Mind”, Myin frames linguistic recursion as a structural feature that emerges organically from complex social actions and dialogic interactions. I will outline three concerns to prompt a deeper examination of how this framework accounts for the mechanics of recursion. First, while Myin’s model provides a plausible origin for tail recursion (e.g., social reporting), it may struggle to account for center-embedding. This highly specific type of linguistic recursion relies heavily on the constraints of short-term working memory rather than dialogic social norms. Second, by grounding recursion in the structure of everyday actions, Myin’s account faces a comparative biological challenge: highly social animals, such as chimpanzees and bonobos, exhibit complex, hierarchical action planning and nested tool use, yet they do not exhibit linguistic recursion. If recursion "follows naturally" from the complexification of social interaction, explaining its uniquely human manifestation remains a challenge. Finally, I propose that Myin over-intellectualizes the social act itself. Rather than deploying a deep, nested structural logic during social reporting, human speakers might simply be probabilistically stringing together flat, memorized chunks of language for cognitive economy. Ultimately, these concerns invite further elaboration on how we can address the specific cognitive and evolutionary mechanics of recursive language without falling back into the cognitivist camp.
On the nature of ecological laws in the context of humanoid robotics
Maria Eunice Gonzalez (UNESP)
In Chapter 3 of Philosophical Psychology, Erik Myin presents, with great expertise, the Cartesian mind and body distinction, highlighting the mechanical nature of the animal body, in contrast to the human mind endowed with soul. Inspired by Erik’s book, I will firstly discuss the Cartesian test of Action and Language, which, according to Descartes, would allow us to distinguish humans from machines. In the case of the Language test, I argue that advances in AI seem to challenge the Cartesian human-machine distinction. However, the Action test, in the context of advanced humanoid robotics, despite allowing the performance of tasks with some precision, similar to humans, still leaves alive the Cartesian assumption of the human/machine distinction. To conclude, I will focus on aspects of Erik’s summary, in Chapter 10, of Gibson’s Ecological Psychology concerning perception-action, especially his hypothesis that in the study of perception we should not start by imposing the categories of physics on animal perception, given that it involves the complex interaction of organism-environment. Questions related to the specific nature of ecological laws will be addressed in the context of contemporary humanoid robotics.
From Affordances to Inference: Ecology, Normativity, and the Space of Reasons
Marcos Silva (UFPE/CNPq)
This presentation explores the epistemic, ecological, and normative nature of inference through a dialogue with Erik Myin’s work. Drawing on neo-pragmatist inferentialism, ecological psychology, and enactivism, it argues for a naturalization of the space of reasons through the notions of inferential niches and language games. Rather than treating rationality as an exclusively human and disembodied capacity, the talk defends a continuity between human inferential practices and the normative abilities of other complex animal species. In this framework, reasoning emerges from embodied interactions within ecological and social environments, where inferential affordances guide and solicit different forms of normative responsiveness. The presentation also examines how logical practices function as techniques for making implicit inferential norms explicit, revisable, and publicly negotiable.
John Dewey’s critique of Metaphysics and the stimulus-response model according to Erik Myin
Mariana C. Broens (UNESP)
In his book *Of a Different Mind*, Erik Myin analyzes two significant contributions of John Dewey to the Philosophy of Psychology: the notion of the "reflex arc," through which Dewey (1896) problematizes the stimulus-response model, arguing that perception-action relationships constitute a continuous flow in a non-neutral environment. Furthermore, Myin addresses Dewey's (1909) analyses of the influence of evolutionary theses on Philosophy, highlighting that a significant contribution of Dewey was to denounce the epistemic arrogance of traditional metaphysics in understanding itself as self-sufficient. Considering these two contributions from Erik Myin's work, I would like to emphasize that it would have been relevant to focus the pioneering interdisciplinary perspective underlying John Dewey's approaches in the cited texts, a perspective currently considered central in Psychology and Cognitive Science. It is important to highlight that the contemporary interdisciplinary approach seeks to study a problem cooperatively, aiming to establish dialogues between different disciplines and create a common vocabulary. Above all, interdisciplinarity recognizes the limitations of disciplinary approaches for the adequate study of complex problems, as put into practice by John Dewey.
References
Dewey, John. The Reflex Arc Concept in Psychology. Review 3, (1896): 357-370.
Dewey, John. The influence of Darwin on Philosophy. New York: Henri Hold and Company, 1910. Available at: https://archive.org/details/cu31924012730820/page/n5/mode/2up
Breedlove, S. M. Principles of Psychology. Oxford: Oxford University Press; 2015.
Myin, Erik. Of a diferente mind. (In press).
