Philosophy of Biology and Cognitive Sciences

Do we all explore the same world, or do we each construct our own? This is the question that divides 4E cognition1, a group of approaches within cognitive science and its philosophy that includes embodied, embedded, extended, and enactive perspectives, as well as ecological psychology. This division raises two distinct but tightly related questions on the levels of theory and meta-theory, respectively: do cognizing, organismic subjects each inhabit their own experiential worlds, or different parts within the same perceptual (and action) space? And do theorists of ecological psychology and enactivism operate within disjunct conceptual spaces, or merely different areas of the same conceptual space? A paper forthcoming in Synthese by Edward Baggs and Anthony Chemero under the title “Radical embodiment in two directions” makes a compelling case for the latter conclusion to both questions by making use of Jakob von Uexküll’s notion of Umwelt—the meaningful environment which is experienced and acted on by each individual organism. Employing this concept of Umwelt, Baggs and Chemero set out to solve several long-standing issues within ecological psychology and, at the same time, to show its compatibility with enactivist approaches. Their paper claims to move the debate beyond its current status, in which ecological psychology and enactivism are held as separate, potentially even incompatible, endeavors, thus heralding the beginning of a joint ecological-enactive approach that “promises perhaps the most complete alternative to cognitivism as a working metatheory for the study of minds” (Baggs & Chemero forthcoming: 11).

 

I claim that the authors are correct in considering Uexküll’s concept of Umwelt to be a powerful conceptual tool; one which might fruitfully be used to gain clarity about central philosophical issues dividing the various strains of 4E cognition. I aim to demonstrate, however, that the insights we gain from Uexküll are quite opposed to the conclusions Baggs and Chemero draw: rather than showing us that 4E cognition is less internally divided than we thought, I argue that the concept of Umwelt highlights—rather than bridges—an underlying conceptual schism that is the source of much discord within 4E cognition. I will support this position by showing that Baggs and Chemero’s introduction of the term Umwelt into debates within ecological psychology fails to resolve the tension between the Gibsonian notion of objective affordances and subjective experience. A brief analysis of the concept of Umwelt in Uexküll’s most important works will reveal that the scientific investigation of the physiological makeup and behavior of living organisms belongs to a fundamentally different domain than their individual experiences from the first-person perspective. Building upon Uexküll’s insights, I propose a theory predicated on his notion of Umwelt which clearly and carefully differentiates between an exo-domain, pertaining to everything we can say about minded organisms based on their physical makeup and their verbal and bodily behavior, and an endo-domain, which concerns the world of phenomenal experience that each living subject inhabits. I demonstrate the utility of this conceptual innovation by pointing out several scenarios in which various positions from ecological psychology and enactivism fail to make headway on fundamental questions in neglecting to distinguish between endo- and exo-domains. This intervention is meant to show both that Baggs and Chemero fall short of their stated goal, and to provide a more nuanced Umwelt theory which allows us to see how much conceptual work still remains to be done before 4E cognition can earn its place as a unified, non-cognitivist “metatheory for the study of minds” (Baggs & Chemero forthcoming: 11).

 

Footnotes

(1) Baggs and Chemero refer to ecological psychology and enactivism as two competing strains of “Radical Embodied Cognitive Science.” The term Radical Embodied Cognitive Science, however, is also the title of Chemero’s 2009 book, which is part of his long-term project within the tradition of ecological psychology. To avoid confusion, I will use 4E cognition as the umbrella term.

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References
Baggs, Edward & Chemero, Anthony (forthcoming), “Radical embodiment in two directions” in Synthese.