The Lazy Eye of Enactivism and Other Tales of Horror From the Bleeding Edge of Cognitive Science

A vision of Cognitive Science emerged in the 1980s and 1990s and has achieved relatively wide acceptance. According to this view, Cognitive Science characterizes its explicanda as inferentially characterizable capacities, and formulates theories serving as explanatory models depicting cognizers as semantic engines. In short, cognition becomes inferences and cognizers become inference mechanisms. This conception of Cognitive Science also includes a broad depiction of the overall relational structure and ultimate goals of the theoretic, individual, and disciplinary contributions to Cognitive Science. Individuals within disciplines focus upon specific inferentially characterizable capacities at one or more specific levels of abstraction (or component elements thereof), such as visual object recognition. Ultimately progress in Cognitive Science will combine individual efforts into a unified characterization of cognition at a specific level of abstraction by integrating these individual cognitive capacities. Different disciplines (and sometimes different individuals within a discipline) formulate these same capacities at different levels of abstraction. Ultimately progress in Cognitive Science will combine the various level-specific accounts of cognitive capacities into a unified inter-level characterization of cognition from metacognition to neurophysiology via inter-level reduction or supervenience.

I have previously suggested that the above view neglects or conflates more the fundamental and pervasive epistemic explicanda of Cognitive Science with those of semantics and inference. In this paper, I review some recent work in cognitive science that has gone tragically wrong in order to motivate an alternative view of the overall relational structure and ultimate goals of the theoretic, individual, and disciplinary contributions to Cognitive Science. Of primary significance for this conference, I note that the above outlined "received view" of cognitive science depicts relatively simple, homogeneous relationships between theoretic levels of abstraction, individuals, and disciplines, thereby allowing for easy and relatively superficial inter-level and inter-disciplinary cooperation and integration. The alternative view I suggest depicts typically complex, heterogeneous relationships between theoretic levels of abstraction, individuals, and disciplines, resulting in a much more complex and challenging model of inter-level and inter-disciplinary cooperation as well as a far less integrated end-product. Theorists in such intensely inter-disciplinary and inter-level research areas, like well-being, who allow themselves to be ensorcelled by the received view will, I suggest, inevitably suffer the curse of the lazy eye.