On Embodying Decision-Making and the Endless Circularity of Understanding the Mind
Toma Strle
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Abstract
Open peer commentary on the article “Varela’s Radical Proposal: How to Embody and Open Up Cognitive Science” by Kristian Moltke Martiny. Upshot: To provide an illustration of some of the author’s theses, I firstly discuss contemporary accounts of embodied decision-making. I argue that they do not endorse the embodied cognition thesis in its essential (or radical) scope and thus cannot provide a meaningful account of decision-making. Secondly, I briefly discuss researchers’ intrinsic embeddedness in their scientific culture and life-world and the associated inseparability of the subject and the world. I end the essay with a question pertaining to the seemingly endless circularity of knowledge emergence in cognitive science which, arguably, entails that we cannot reveal the “invariants of the mind.”
Citation
Strle T. (2017) On embodying decision-making and the endless circularity of understanding the mind. Constructivist Foundations 13(1): 76–78. http://constructivist.info/13/1/076
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