Enactivist approach as a way out of the “trap of cognitivism”: rehabilitation of subjectness

Abstract

The article substantiates the importance of the subjectness position in the study of cognitive processes. The subject cannot be either eliminated or considered as a mere “carrier” and “mediator” of cognitive abilities; it is necessary to study the whole variety of subjective ex­perience and the possibilities of its empirical fixation and measurability discovered by phe­nomenology. The article argues that the radical separation of cognitive processes from con­sciousness creates a kind of explanatory gap in scientific theories. According to the author, the “trap of cognitivism” arises if the cognitive process is viewed as the solution of predeter­mined tasks (assigned to the system from the outside), where the mind is essentially a cogni­tive unconscious, which deepens the gap between “computational” and phenomenological mind and leaves no room for subjectness. The article proves the productivity of the enac­tivist approach from the position of coherence of the concept of mind as a dynamic system and phenomenological explanation of the experience of subjectness, since autonomous agents create their own cognitive domains, which allows them to endow information with new meanings and perform situational actions relevant to the environment.