Language and Enactivism:

A normative reply to scope objection and hard problem of content

Marcos Silva

Philosophy Department
Federal University of Pernambuco

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Language does not have to be held as a problem for radical enactivists. The scope objection usually presented to criticize enactivist explanations is a problem only if we have a referentialist and representationalist view of the nature of language. Here we present a normative hypothesis for the great question concerning the hard problem of content, namely, on how linguistic practices develop from minds without content. We carry representational content when we master inferential relations and we master inferential relations when we master normative relations, especially when we are introduced into frameworks of authorizations and prohibitions. Inspired by the anti-intellectualism of the later Wittgenstein and Brandom’s inferentialism, we present the hypothesis that language emerges from inferentially articulated action from normative elements and not from manipulation in internal mental states of contents fixed by reference to external things.

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The second-person and the simulation theory: an enactivist point of view

Leonardo Lana de Carvalho

Federal University of Jequitinhonha and Mucuri Valleys (UFVJM)

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The simulation theory (ST) claims that our understanding of the other is based on self-simulating their beliefs, desires, intentions, or emotions. Some simulationists argue that the simulation in question involves conscious imagination and deliberative inference, others claim that the simulation is explicit and non-inferential, and finally some insist that simulation is implicit and sub-personal. From an enactivist point of view, I shall investigate the second-person based on our common pragmatic or socially contextualized interactions, with no cognitive simulation required.

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The radical view of embodied consciousness

Marco Aurélio Sousa Alves

Federal University of São João del-Rei

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Radical embodied views on cognition have become increasingly influential. I call “radical” the views that deny both representationalism and vehicle-internalism, including some trendy versions of enactivism. The views I am interested in conceives consciousness as also intrinsically embodied, going beyond the brain and reaching the whole body and the environment. The radical move from cognition to consciousness includes body and world as necessarily constitutive of phenomenal experiences. First, I try to elucidate what exactly this radical move is committed to. Then I criticize its plausibility, given current empirical evidence and a few reasonable metaphysical assumptions.