They have done something more restrictive:
They have examined what remains of enactivist concepts when a set of assumptions are no longer available:
- no shared domain in which systems interact
- no substrate in which systems are constituted or maintained
- no world as the container or correlate of meaning
- no temporal process that carries identity, development, or history
These removals are not optional refinements.
They eliminate the conditions under which enactivist explanations are typically formulated.
The question is therefore no longer whether enactivism is correct as a theory of cognition.
The question is:
what remains of enactivism when its explanatory supports are removed?
1. What Does Not Survive
Several core components of enactivist explanation cannot be retained in their standard form.
Structural coupling (as interaction)
Coupling cannot be:
- interaction within a domain
- reciprocal influence across a medium
- a process linking independent systems
Without a shared domain, there is no “between” in which interaction occurs.
Autopoiesis (as self-production)
Self-production cannot be:
- generation of components within a system
- maintenance of organisation through material processes
- closure achieved through ongoing internal dynamics
Without substrate, there is no medium in which production or maintenance takes place.
Sense-making (as enactment of a world)
Sense-making cannot be:
- the enactment of a meaningful world
- the constitution of meaning through engagement with an environment
- a relation of aboutness directed toward external objects
Without a world, there is no domain in which meaning is made.
Continuity (as temporal process)
Continuity cannot be:
- persistence through time
- accumulation of interaction history
- development as a sequence of transformations
Without process, there is no mechanism linking past and present.
These are not partial revisions.
They are eliminations.
2. What Can Be Retained—Under Reinterpretation
Despite these removals, enactivism is not left empty.
Several of its core intuitions survive—but only in altered form.
(a) Rejection of Representationalism
Enactivism’s refusal to treat cognition as internal representation remains intact.
There is no need to reintroduce:
- symbolic encoding
- inner models of an external world
- or mediation between mind and reality
Under constraint, this becomes even sharper:
meaning is not a representation of something else; it is intrinsic to determinacy within construal.
(b) Primacy of Relation (Without Domain)
Enactivism’s insistence that cognition is relational also survives.
But relation can no longer be:
- interaction between pre-existing entities
- or coupling within a shared environment
Instead:
relation is the non-independence of distinctions constituted under the same conditions of constraint.
This preserves relationality while removing the need for a connecting medium.
(c) Non-Isolation of the Cognitive
Enactivism rejects the idea of cognition as isolated within an internal system.
This remains valid.
But the alternative is not:
- embedding cognition in an environment
Rather:
what is distinguished as “cognitive,” “biological,” or “environmental” is itself co-constituted under constraint.
There are no independently grounded domains to embed one within another.
(d) Structured, Non-Arbitrary Experience
Enactivism emphasises that experience is structured, meaningful, and not arbitrary.
This also survives.
But not as:
- structure imposed through interaction with a world
- or meaning generated through engagement with an environment
Instead:
structure is intrinsic to the determinacy of construal.
Meaning does not arise through relation to a world.
It is already present in the conditions that make construal determinate.
3. What Changes in the Explanatory Regime
What has been removed is not explanatory ambition, but a specific kind of explanation.
Enactivism, in its standard form, explains cognition through:
- processes
- interactions
- histories
- and embodied dynamics
Under constraint, these cannot function as explanatory primitives.
What replaces them is a different regime:
- constraint instead of mechanism
- determinacy instead of process
- co-constitution instead of interaction
- construal instead of enactment
This is not a translation of enactivism into a new vocabulary.
It is a reparameterisation of what counts as explanation.
4. The Cost of Survival
What survives enactivism under constraint is not its original form.
It is a reduced and reinterpreted set of commitments.
What is lost includes:
- dynamic narratives of interaction
- process-based accounts of development
- substrate-grounded notions of embodiment
- and domain-based conceptions of world
What remains is more austere:
- no mechanism
- no medium
- no unfolding process
- no external domain
This is not a defect.
It is the cost of coherence under stricter conditions.
5. Final Formulation
We can now state, without qualification, what survives:
Enactivism persists only to the extent that it can be reformulated as a non-representational account of determinacy under constraint, without appeal to domain, substrate, or process.
Closing Remark
Enactivism began as an attempt to overcome:
- representationalism
- dualism
- and the separation of mind from world
Under constraint, this attempt is partially fulfilled.
But only by abandoning the very resources it used to articulate that overcoming:
- interaction
- embodiment as substrate
- and world as domain
What remains is not enactivism as originally formulated.
It is something more severe:
a relational account in which meaning, distinction, and organisation hold without being grounded in a world, sustained by a process, or realised within a substrate.
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