Philosophizing Cognition: A Supplementary Response to Chemero&rsquo;s Enactivism Using Maurice Merleau &ndash; Ponty

Rodrigo Emil  Carreon,

Philosophizing Cognition: A Supplementary Response to Chemero’s Enactivism Using Maurice Merleau – Ponty

Discipline: social sciences (non-specific)

Abstract:

The recent developments in embodied and enactive approaches to cognition challenge the representational and computational assumptions of traditional cognitive science. The traditional view offers an analytic means of interpretation, not based on the individual's experience but rather on the processes of pure brain activity. Building on Anthony Chemero's radical embodied cognitive investigation of Enactivism, this paper offers a philosophical alternative by rejecting internal representations in favor of organism-environment circumstances and affordances. This paper argues that Maurice Merleau – Ponty's phenomenology, especially the Intentional Arc, Body Schema, and Lifeworld, can clarify and stabilize the premises of Enactivism. The paper further explicates how Merleau–Ponty complements and strengthens Chemero's account. These accounts are based on the concepts of explanatory mechanism, normativity, and world–involvement. Therefore, providing a framework for phenomenology, embodiment, perception, and situated action without falling into representationalism. The result is not a replacement for Chemero's view but a phenomenological assertion of what radical embodied cognition assumes in practice, with implications for how the cognitive sciences associate with lived experience and empirical manifestations.

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