BOOK REVIEW ENACTIVISM

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UIJT BOOK REVIEW ENACTIVISM Introduction 194 we are linguistic bodies and relate to languaging activities all human bodies repur« 1 » “You, dear reader, are a linguistic pose, it gives them new meanings and goals, body” is the starting line of this fascinat- and challenges the frame of nonlinguistic ing, ambitious and challenging book. The human life (134). « 3 » To understand language means question that Ezequiel A. Di Paolo, Elena Clare Cuffari and Hanne De Jaegher want to to understand what it is to be human, and answer is that of how bodies do language? this is the main theme of the book. Language is not another skill They want to establish that adds to all the other that it is possible to un5P
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#FMHJVN CONSTRUCTIVIST FOUNDATIONs vol. 15, N°2 Review of Linguistic Bodies: The Continuity between Life and Language by Ezequiel A. Di Paolo, Elena Clare Cuffari and Hanne De Jaegher. MIT Press, Cambridge MA, 2018. ISBN 978-0262038164 · 414 pages. in several ways but never disappears entirely. The primordial tension originates in the material messiness of bodies and their world. Because of their materiality, it is not possible to neatly separate individual acts and interactive moves. The book introduces a dialectical method that shows that it is possible to construct new categories out of previous ones without deflating or reducing language: Starting from the general and relatively ab“stract situation of embodied agents acting and making sense together during social interactions, we will see how each move toward a concept of linguistic agency in turn affects and even redefines the previous moves. (9) ” What they call a move is more than an act, because it redefines the previous ones. Enactivism Bringing Forth Languages Melina Gastelum « 5 » Linguistic Bodies adds to radical embodied cognitive science theories by constructing a response to the sceptics who challenge enactivism to connect “lower-level” sense-making with sophisticated “higher-order” activities such as those commonly ascribed to language. Its main goal is to contribute to a non-reductionist account of language and to explain how we live as linguistic bodies from the enactive perspective. « 6 » As Tom Froese (2016) points out, all strands of enactivism jointly face a cognitive gap, i.e., the challenge of scaling up their theories from basic minds to specifically human minds. Linguistic Bodies is a clear and ambitious attempt at building a radical embodied cognitive science that claims to bridge this gap. There are appeals to various forms of autonomous social dynamics (Froese & Di Paolo 2011) and cultural scaffolding (Gallagher 2013), in particular, those that enable organisms to go beyond immediate biological sense-making so as to navigate the arbitrary symbol systems that are regulated by conventional norms (Cappuccio & Froese 2014). The authors show that it is possible to understand what makes human beings particularly different from other sensorimotor beings without invoking representations. They also show that what lies between sensorimotor action and words and utterances, is what makes us different: our linguistic bodies. Dimensions of embodiment « 7 » The first of three parts in this book is called “Bodies” and contains four chapters. This part is the first significantly innovative aspect of the book: in order to understand human beings, we need to think about bodies rather than merely acknowledge the body as an abstract entity, like functionalist approaches do. However, what are those bodies, and how do they coexist? « 8 » In these four chapters the enactive approach to the life-mind continuity thesis is explained. The authors argue for an enactive theory of bodies and discuss three dimensions of embodiment: ƒ the organic body; ƒ the sensorimotor body; and ƒ the intersubjective body, and expand on their entanglement, historicity and diversity. « 9 » According to the authors, we, and cooking, etc. In other words, the authors all organisms, are autopoietic systems. In explain how, in this approach, habits are autopoiesis there are two processes that co- self-sustaining precarious sensorimotor exist and contradict each other: schemes, and sensorimotor agency consists ƒ self-production, which establishes the of clusters of self-sustaining sensorimotor conditions by which the flows of matter schemes achieving closure and fulfilling the and energy present in the environment requirements for agency at the sensorimocan be used in the regeneration of meta- tor level. Sensorimotor bodies differ from bolic processes; and organic bodies because they organize themƒ self-distinction, which means that the selves differently. They are constituted by beautopoietic system constitutes itself as a ing enacted in particular environments and well-delimited unity. embedded in networks of practices, formed The tension between, they call “life’s pri- by sets of habits.1 « 12 » Finally, we are also intersubjective mordial tension” (37). Its dialectical resolution can only be understood if the tension bodies, i.e., precarious processes of self-inis extended over time. The solution to this dividuation in relations with others. In this manner, we have arrived primordial tension is "MM
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IUUQTDPOTUSVDUJWJTUJOGPHBTUFMVN 195 together, there is no universal body, but billions of them, each with its own particular trajectories. BOOK REVIEW ENACTIVISM The dialectical model: From embodied language to linguistic bodies 196 « 14 » The second part of the book is called “Linguistic Bodies.” It is the core of the book and consists of three chapters, which (a) describe the development of the dialectical model, (b) find the missing categories from participatory sense-making to linguistic bodies, and (c) trace the missing steps from the enactive categories developed in the first part in order to get to understand what linguistic bodies are. This last step builds an important construction within the enactive theory because it gives an account of language and its related activities, or what in other theories is called “higher” cognition, which presents a constant challenge to enactive theories. « 15 » The dialectical method is used for unfolding these missing categories and concepts that go from participatory sensemaking in the interaction of bodies and the tensions and contradictions this brings. The starting point is participatory sense-making because, in it, two forms of autonomy are at play: individual, given by the entangled integration of sensorimotor and organic agency; and interactional, which emerges out of the relations between the bodies and their activities. The authors propose that “the demands that govern the joint enactment of these two different kind of autonomies, establish a primordial tension, at the core of the concept of participatory sense making” (140). « 16 » The steps of the dialectical method are extensive and to fully understand them one should thoroughly study chapters 7 and 8, as they are insightful and rich in information. Having said that, the steps could be summarized thus: Co-regulation goes beyond enabling or affecting the conditions for the enactment of sensorimotor schemes in others, it implies a joint regulation of sensorimotor coordinations. Coregulated social acts are acts whose completion requires more than one single agent (like shaking a hand). Partial acts are sedimented parts of social acts forming classes CONSTRUCTIVIST FOUNDATIONs vol. 15, N°2 of equivalence and complementarity. They incomplete by virtue of having to navigate a create repertoires that regulate other partial tension they have no sure means of resolvacts and these partial acts entail a normative ing, and consequently they are vulnerable. dimension, above the sensorimotor norma- Therefore, the authors say, languaging is tivity. Then, there is a recursive regulation inherently risky and as we need to manage of partial acts. This is important because those tensions, we need language in doing we can coordinate between different local so. « 19 » In sum, the dialectical method normativities. Then comes the next tension, with the dialogue and recognition of constructs and permits us to trace all the who regulates and who gets regulated. Each entanglements that come from language. of these moves are utterances: dialogic acts, Therefore, it is not a new dimension of emenacted through the actions of a mutually bodiment that is inaugurated with language, recognized producer and an audience. And but a radical alteration in how each and every dimension is enit all follows the dialectic acted (101). Something method, each tension -JOHVJTUJD
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IUUQTDPOTUSVDUJWJTUJOGPHBTUFMVN 197 BOOK REVIEW ENACTIVISM although they do not provide any evolutionary arguments for this. Since we have evolved from an autopoietic structure, the processes underlying our distinctively human capacities (including language) must also operate in accordance with it, even though it may seem extremely individualistic. If we rely only on the individual as a source of these different bodies, the social dimension of cognition is left out of the primitive tension in the organic and in the sensorimotor bodies, which could be very problematic because the social dimension that is clearly constitutive in the intersubjective body would be left out in the other two. And as many other organisms do not have the intersubjective body, this could be a difficulty if one expands enactive principles beyond human beings. « 29 » While this book should not to be taken as an introductory text to enactivism, Linguistic Bodies is a great resource for versed readers in providing both the historical context and an innovative proposal for discussing “higher-order” cognition issues. Those familiar with the enactive approach and the expression of the continuity between life and mind (Varela, Thompson & Rosch 1991) will find the book a pleasant yet challenging read. References Cappuccio M. & Froese T. (eds.) (2014) Enactive cognition at the edge of sense-making: Making sense of non-sense. Palgrave Macmillan, Houndmills. Reviewed by Patrick Hoburg in ▶ https://constructivist.info/10/3/422 Degenaar J. & O’Regan J. K. (2017) Sensorimotor theory and enactivism. Topoi 36(3): 393–407. ▶ https://cepa.info/4204 Di Paolo E. A., Buhrmann T. & Barandiaran X. E. (2017) Sensorimotor life: An enactive proposal. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Reviewed by Edward Baggs in ▶ https://constructivist.info/13/3/395 Froese T. (2016) Enactivism. Constructivist EPaper Archive. Version of 20 February 2016. ▶ https://cepa.info/approach/enactivism Froese T. & Di Paolo E. (2011) The enactive approach: Theoretical sketches from cell to society. Pragmatics and Cognition 19(1): 1–36. ▶ https://cepa.info/2367 Gallagher S. (2013) The socially extended mind. Cognitive Systems Research 25: 4–12. ▶ https://cepa.info/2483 Hutto D. D. & Myin E. (2013) Radicalizing enactivism: Basic minds without content. MIT Press, Cambridge MA. Reviewed by Jakub Ryszard Matyja in ▶ https://constructivist.info/8/3/362 Maturana H. R. & Varela F. J. (1980) Autopoiesis and cognition: The realization of the living. Reidel, Dordrecht. Taylor C. (2016) The language animal: The full shape of human linguistic capacity. Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Cambridge MA. Varela F. J., Thompson E. & Rosch E. (1991) The embodied mind: Cognitive science and human experience. MIT Press, Cambridge MA. Melina Gastelum is a physicist and has a PhD in philosophy of the cognitive sciences. She is a professor in the Philosophy Department in UNAM, Mexico, where she studies perception within radical embodied cognitive science, in particular affordances and temporal experience, learning and affectivity within enactivism and ecological psychology theories. Furthermore, she has published about enactive hermeneutics of space and time and phenomenology, and affordances and science, technology and material culture in multicultural environments. https://unam.academia.edu/MelinaGastelum Received: 16 January 2020 Accepted: 29 February 2020 198 { CONSTRUCTIVIST FOUNDATIONs vol. 15, N°2 OF RELATED INTEREST SENSORIMOTOR LIFE: AN ENACTIVE PROPOSAL “The authors offer a theory of agency that is general enough to apply to whole organisms and single cells, and meaningful enough to highlight problems that embodied cognition theory has overlooked. The authors insist that the interesting thing about minds is what goes on in between activities; this leaves unclear what a specifically enactivist empirical program could look like. But the book can be read as a contribution to a broader project of instituting a full-blown postcognitivist science of the mind.” Edward Baggs in https://constructivist.info/13/3/395