On Experience, Socio-Cultural Practices, and Technology

This is episode #28 of the podcast and it’s Thursday, the 26th of December, 2022.

My invited speaker is Dr. Erik Myin, professor of philosophy at the University of Antwerp. He has published extensively on philosophy of mind and cognition, sometimes alone, sometimes with scientists or other philosophers. With Dan Hutto he wrote "Radicalizing Enactivism" and "Evolving Enactivism", both published with MIT Press. In these books, they defend the point that cognition is embodied interaction rather than being necessarily computational or representational. Currently, Erik has just finished writing a co-authored book in Dutch on embodiment and technology, and has started a solo work titled "Of a Different Mind".

The focus of our discussion is REC, the Radical Enactive or Embodied view of Cognition, and the ways in which it departs from traditional intellectual positions. Specifically, Erik debates the idea of contextual mental representations and the fact that one can explain cognition in terms of mental representations inside the brain. Instead, all these ways of representing are embodied, the result of socio-cultural practices.

The second part of the interview covered the future of digital technologies (including immersive technologies like mixed reality and artificial intelligence) — and if/how they can be (re)shaped by embodied cognitive science.

Here is the show.

Show Notes:
- What is REC (the Radical Enactive or Embodied view of Cognition)
- Contentful mental representations and traditional views on cognition
- The normatively of memory and the Information Processing Theory
- The role of REC in the future of technology

Erik Myin’s website:
https://www.uantwerpen.be/en/staff/erik-myin/