In Which Sense Should We be Radical? On Two Radical Alternatives to Cognitivism

Abstract

Cognitivism, a framework strongly shaped by developments in computer and communication sciences, has dominated the study of cognition since the 1960s. From the 1990s onward, however, alternative frameworks have gained prominence. Among these, anti-cognitivism designates approaches that deliberately reject cognitivist assumptions, with some examples found in Radical Embodied Cognition, Radical Enactivism, and Autopoietic Enactivism. In this paper, a distinction between pluralist and eliminativist anti-cognitivism is proposed. Pluralists regard cognitivist and non-cognitivist approaches as, at least in principle, complementary, while eliminativists argue that cognitivism is misguided and should be discarded. The paper starts by clarifying cognitivism to avoid common misunderstandings. After that, focusing on enactive and embodied versions of anti-cognitivism, it analyzes its most influential arguments against cognitivism and concludes that eliminativism fails to provide a convincing case against cognitivism, and that pluralism better reflects the epistemological commitments of at least some versions of anti-cognitivism, namely those that adopt an ecological perspective.