NDLI: On the role of social interaction in social cognition: a mechanistic alternative to enactivism

Content Provider	Springer Nature Link
Author	Herschbach, Mitchell
Copyright Year	2011
Abstract	Researchers in the enactivist tradition have recently argued that social interaction can constitute social cognition, rather than simply serve as the context for social cognition. They contend that a focus on social interaction corrects the overemphasis on mechanisms inside the individual in the explanation of social cognition. I critically assess enactivism’s claims about the explanatory role of social interaction in social cognition. After sketching the enactivist approach to cognition in general and social cognition in particular, I identify problems with an enactivist taxonomy of roles for social interaction in the explanation of social cognition (contextual, enabling, and constitutive). In particular, I show that this enactivist taxonomy does not clearly distinguish between enabling conditions and constitutive elements, which would make them in danger of committing the coupling-constitution fallacy found in some attempts to extend cognition. I explore resources enactivism has to more clearly demarcate constitutive parts of a cognitive system, but identify problems in applying them to some of the main cases of social cognition enactivists characterize as being constituted by social interaction. I offer the mechanistic approach to explanation as an alternative that captures much of what enactivists want to say about the relations between social and individual levels, but views social interactions from the perspective of embedded cognition rather than as being constitutive of social cognition.
Starting Page	467
Ending Page	486
Page Count	20
File Format	PDF
ISSN	15687759
Journal	Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences
Volume Number	11
Issue Number	4
e-ISSN	15728676
Language	English
Publisher	Springer Netherlands
Publisher Date	2011-05-28
Publisher Place	Dordrecht
Access Restriction	One Nation One Subscription (ONOS)
Subject Keyword	Social cognition Social interaction Enactivism Mechanism Explanation Constitution Extended cognition Embedded cognition Artificial Intelligence (incl. Robotics) Interdisciplinary Studies Phenomenology Philosophy of Mind
Content Type	Text
Resource Type	Article
Subject	Philosophy Cognitive Neuroscience

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