Enactivism presents itself as a decisive break from representational and dualist traditions in cognitive science. In the work associated with Francisco Varela, and later developed by Evan Thompson and Alva Noë, cognition is reframed not as internal computation over symbolic representations, but as something enacted through embodied engagement with an environment.
On its surface, this aligns with a relational orientation.
But alignment at the level of vocabulary does not guarantee compatibility at the level of ontology.
What must be examined is not whether enactivism talks about relations, but whether its account of relation remains intact when the usual supporting assumptions are removed.
1. The Standard Enactivist Picture
In its canonical form, enactivism is often expressed through several tightly connected claims:
- Cognitive agents are autopoietic systems that maintain their own organisation.
- Cognition arises through structural coupling between organism and environment.
- Meaning is constituted through sense-making, grounded in embodied interaction.
- The organism and environment co-evolve through a history of reciprocal influence.
Taken together, these claims describe cognition as neither purely internal nor purely external, but as emerging from ongoing interaction across a coupled system.
Crucially, however, this formulation presupposes:
- distinct but interacting entities (organism and environment),
- a domain within which interaction occurs,
- and a temporal continuity that allows coupling to unfold.
It is precisely these presuppositions that must be placed under constraint.
2. Reframing the Question Under Constraint
Under a relational ontology organised around the logic of the cut, several background assumptions are no longer available:
- There is no pre-given substrate in which entities exist prior to relation.
- There is no shared domain in which interaction takes place.
- There is no process that unfolds across time as a sequence of events.
This does not deny distinction, relation, or stability.
It removes the idea that these are grounded in a prior medium that supports them.
So the question becomes:
what remains of “coupling” if there is no domain in which coupled systems interact?
3. Coupling Without a Shared Domain
In enactivist accounts, “coupling” typically implies:
- two or more systems,
- a medium of interaction,
- and a history of mutual perturbation.
This suggests a picture in which organism and environment are distinct entities that meet within a common space.
Under constraint, this picture cannot be maintained.
If there is no shared domain, then:
- coupling cannot be an interaction within a field,
- nor a process that links independently existing systems,
- nor a dynamic relation mediated by a common substrate.
What remains must be reinterpreted.
Coupling, in this context, cannot be something that happens between already-formed entities.
Instead:
what is described as “coupling” must itself be understood as a way in which distinctions are co-constituted under the cut.
This shifts the explanatory direction.
Rather than:
- independently existing systems becoming coupled,
we must consider:
- systems and environments as distinguishable only through the conditions that allow such distinctions to hold.
Coupling, then, does not connect pre-existing relata.
It is a description of the non-independence of their determinations.
4. Autonomy Revisited
Autopoiesis is central to enactivism’s account of autonomy: a system is autonomous insofar as it produces and maintains itself.
But this raises a question under constraint:
what is a self-maintaining system if there is no substrate in which maintenance occurs?
Without a medium, maintenance cannot be a process acting on material components over time.
So autonomy cannot be grounded in causal self-production within a physical system understood as prior.
Instead, autonomy must be reconsidered as:
the stability of a distinction under conditions where its identity is not derived from an underlying support.
This does not deny stability.
It reframes it as something that holds at the level of construal rather than as something that persists through material self-repair.
5. Sense-Making Without a World
Enactivism often characterises cognition as sense-making: the organism enacts a meaningful world through its interactions.
But this notion typically assumes:
- a world that is encountered,
- and an organism that brings forth meaning through engagement with that world.
Under constraint, “world” cannot be treated as a pre-existing domain that is disclosed or enacted.
There is no domain in which meaning is generated through interaction.
Instead, what is called “world” must be understood as:
the outcome of a distinction that is already operative in the determination of experience.
Meaning does not arise through interaction with a world.
Rather, what counts as “world” is already structured by the conditions under which distinctions are made possible.
This removes the idea that sense-making is a process that bridges organism and environment.
It becomes instead a way of describing how determinate perspectives are constituted.
6. The Hidden Import: Continuity
A recurring feature across enactivist accounts is an appeal to continuity:
- continuity of organism over time,
- continuity of interaction history,
- continuity of coupling relations.
This continuity often functions as an explanatory glue.
It allows:
- identity to persist,
- relations to accumulate,
- and cognition to be framed as development rather than discrete occurrence.
Under the logic of the cut, however, continuity cannot be taken as a primitive.
Continuity itself is a way of construing stability across distinctions.
It does not underwrite those distinctions.
So when enactivism appeals to history or development, it is not merely describing a sequence of events.
It is invoking a narrative that presupposes the very identities it seeks to explain.
7. What Survives the Constraint?
If we strip away:
- shared domains,
- pre-given entities,
- temporal processes as explanatory primitives,
- and substrate-based interaction,
what remains of enactivism?
At minimum, the following can be preserved under reinterpretation:
- The rejection of internal representations as primary explanatory constructs.
- The emphasis on relational dependence rather than isolated cognition.
- The recognition that cognition cannot be reduced to static structure alone.
However, these survive only when detached from:
- the idea of interaction within a common environment,
- and the assumption that coupling is a process occurring between independently existing systems.
8. Reframing the Core Tension
The central tension is not that enactivism is wrong in its emphasis on relation.
The tension lies in how relation is grounded.
Enactivism tends to preserve:
- relata (organism, environment),
- a domain (their shared world),
- and a process (coupling over time),
while reinterpreting cognition as emergent from their interaction.
The constraint-based approach removes the need for:
- a domain in which interaction occurs,
- and a process that connects pre-existing entities.
This leads to a different formulation:
distinctions are not produced by interaction within a domain; rather, what counts as entities, relations, and domains is itself dependent on the conditions under which distinctions are constituted.
9. Closing Orientation
This is not a rejection of enactivism in the usual sense.
It is an attempt to read enactivism under conditions where its implicit supports are no longer available.
What remains is not a competing theory of cognition in the same register.
It is a test:
whether a relational account of cognition can dispense with shared domains, temporal processes, and substrate-based interaction without losing coherence.
If it can, enactivism is partially re-described within a stricter ontology.
If it cannot, its points of failure will indicate exactly where those hidden supports are doing essential work.
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