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Enactive-Dynamic Social Cognition and Active Inference

This aim of this paper is two-fold: it critically analyses and rejects accounts blending active inference as theory of mind and enactivism; and it advances an enactivist-dynamic understanding of social cognition that is compatible with active inference. While some social cognition theories seemingly...

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Autores principales: Hipólito, Inês, van Es, Thomas
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Frontiers Media S.A. 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9102990/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35572328
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.855074
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author Hipólito, Inês
van Es, Thomas
author_facet Hipólito, Inês
van Es, Thomas
author_sort Hipólito, Inês
collection PubMed
description This aim of this paper is two-fold: it critically analyses and rejects accounts blending active inference as theory of mind and enactivism; and it advances an enactivist-dynamic understanding of social cognition that is compatible with active inference. While some social cognition theories seemingly take an enactive perspective on social cognition, they explain it as the attribution of mental states to other people, by assuming representational structures, in line with the classic Theory of Mind (ToM). Holding both enactivism and ToM, we argue, entails contradiction and confusion due to two ToM assumptions widely known to be rejected by enactivism: that (1) social cognition reduces to mental representation and (2) social cognition is a hardwired contentful ‘toolkit’ or ‘starter pack’ that fuels the model-like theorising supposed in (1). The paper offers a positive alternative, one that avoids contradictions or confusion. After rejecting ToM-inspired theories of social cognition and clarifying the profile of social cognition under enactivism, that is without assumptions (1) and (2), the last section advances an enactivist-dynamic model of cognition as dynamic, real-time, fluid, contextual social action, where we use the formalisms of dynamical systems theory to explain the origins of socio-cognitive novelty in developmental change and active inference as a tool to demonstrate social understanding as generalised synchronisation.
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spelling pubmed-91029902022-05-14 Enactive-Dynamic Social Cognition and Active Inference Hipólito, Inês van Es, Thomas Front Psychol Psychology This aim of this paper is two-fold: it critically analyses and rejects accounts blending active inference as theory of mind and enactivism; and it advances an enactivist-dynamic understanding of social cognition that is compatible with active inference. While some social cognition theories seemingly take an enactive perspective on social cognition, they explain it as the attribution of mental states to other people, by assuming representational structures, in line with the classic Theory of Mind (ToM). Holding both enactivism and ToM, we argue, entails contradiction and confusion due to two ToM assumptions widely known to be rejected by enactivism: that (1) social cognition reduces to mental representation and (2) social cognition is a hardwired contentful ‘toolkit’ or ‘starter pack’ that fuels the model-like theorising supposed in (1). The paper offers a positive alternative, one that avoids contradictions or confusion. After rejecting ToM-inspired theories of social cognition and clarifying the profile of social cognition under enactivism, that is without assumptions (1) and (2), the last section advances an enactivist-dynamic model of cognition as dynamic, real-time, fluid, contextual social action, where we use the formalisms of dynamical systems theory to explain the origins of socio-cognitive novelty in developmental change and active inference as a tool to demonstrate social understanding as generalised synchronisation. Frontiers Media S.A. 2022-04-29 /pmc/articles/PMC9102990/ /pubmed/35572328 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.855074 Text en Copyright © 2022 Hipólito and van Es. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
spellingShingle Psychology
Hipólito, Inês
van Es, Thomas
Enactive-Dynamic Social Cognition and Active Inference
title Enactive-Dynamic Social Cognition and Active Inference
title_full Enactive-Dynamic Social Cognition and Active Inference
title_fullStr Enactive-Dynamic Social Cognition and Active Inference
title_full_unstemmed Enactive-Dynamic Social Cognition and Active Inference
title_short Enactive-Dynamic Social Cognition and Active Inference
title_sort enactive-dynamic social cognition and active inference
topic Psychology
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9102990/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35572328
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.855074
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