El enfoque enactivo en las ciencias cognitivas

Resumen

The enactive approach in in the cognitive sciences.

Francisco Varela puts forward a new approach in cognitive sciences that he called “enactive”. This new approach defends that cognition is enaction, that is, a history of structural coupling that brings forth a world. Varela claims that the mind is an autonomous system and, to explain this idea, proposes the example of a cellular automata dubbed ”Bittorio”, which has become the new paradigm in cognitive sciences. The world of Bittorio is not given in advance and then recovered by a representation, therefore the enactive approach appears as anti-representationalist. I claim that there are several shortcomings in this enactive approach. Firstly, although Varela speaks against representations he accepts representations as interpretations. Secondly, he uses ideas from Rodney Brooks, but whereas this scientist should adopt a naïve realism, Varela presents himself as an anti-realist. Thirdly, Varela refuses James Gibson’s ecological psychology since, as an anti-realist, he thinks that the environment is enacted. Finally, Varela set up his theory of evolution as natural drift against theory of evolution by adaptation, again stating his anti-realism.

Key words: Francisco Varela, enaction, “Bittorio,” anti-representationalism, anti-realism, Rodney Brooks, ecological psychology , natural drift, adaptation, environment.