Abstract
Recent enactive accounts of cognition have begun to disentangle social and normative aspects of the human mind. In this paper, we will contribute to this debate by developing an enactive account of moral development, i.e. the learning of ethical norms, and critical engagement with these norms through social affordances, participatory sense-making, and moral concern. The difficulty in articulating such an account is in reconciling the affective embodied aspects of moral experiences with the more orthodox aspects of ethics like critical reflection. In order to respond to this difficulty, we bring Ricoeur’s hermeneutics into dialogue with enactivism. Complementing the enactive tradition, we frame critical ethical learning as embodied interaction with diverse ethical dimensions allowing us to incorporate moral values in the form of critical narratives and the social imaginary. We agree with enactivist theories that participation and democratic dialogue are essential parts of critical reflection on ethical norms. Yet, we also contend that this kind of critical reflection benefits from hermeneutical interpretation, challenging larger participatory networks, such as social institutions, which nourish inequality and maintain unethical values.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
We use “rational” as a broad category of cognitive processes that are supposedly free from affectivity, subjectivity, and relationality and are thus claimed to be superior for a broad range of moral cognizing. It is not our contention that cognitive capacities that are often labeled as rational do not exist, rather it is our contention that these capacities more organically scaffold onto and include affective, social, and relational dynamics.
To be sure, we do not claim in this paper that hermeneutics would provice a full explanation of how critical learning of ethical values works. Nor does our paper claim to offer a fully-fledged account of critical ethical learning, which is not possible in one paper. Explaining into more detail critical learning—how human beings are capable of critically distancing themselves from prevailing values and norms—would require further research in developmental psychology. Our focus is not on developmental psychology, however, but on how certain hermeneutical concepts (e.g., narrative identity) invite to reflect on some of the issues an enactive understanding of critical ethical learning may run into.
Those unfamiliar with participatory sense-making may imagine the simple example of two people in a canoe. They may start out learning to be reactive to each other, i.e., keeping the canoe from spinning as a result of uneven paddling. When the canoe breaks out to one side they may switch the side they are paddling on or correct with more forceful strokes. But as they get more skillful they begin to perceive their activity more of a joint activity. They become more attuned to smaller differences in the movement of the other and the canoe, and find a suitable rhythm and strength. As a result successful canoers will act in a way that their actions complement each other to maintain speed and course of the canoe. The magic of participatory sense-making is that they begin to negotiate a shared perspective on their environment. A particularly strong stroke by the other is no longer unexpected but understood as an indication to speed up or change direction. These kinds of interactions are ubiquitous as people negotiate areas of mutual activity with others: from simply steering a canoe to raising a child together.
Noë provides an interesting account of aesthetics and critical engagement, arguing that “[a]esthetic experience happens against the background of criticism.” (Noë 2012, p. 126) Noë’s considerations may be partially transferable to the realm of morality. For example he concludes (ibid. 126–127) that “[…] the critical inquiry that the art work occasions and requires is the very means by which we exercise the understanding that brings the work of art into focus and so allows us to feel it, to be sensitive to it.” A conclusion that we would be sympathetic to in the realm of morality. However, Noë’s aspirations appear neither to work in the confines of enactive logic, nor to extend his considerations to morality, thus his account is only tangentially relevant to this paper. It is noteworthy, however, that Noë appears to rely very little on notions of participation or intersubjectivity, which are so critical to most approaches to enactive ethics. He also does not discuss the concept of social institutions, which as we will argue is also critical for an enactive understanding of ethics.
We would like to point out again that it is not our intention in this paper to clain that hermeneutics offers a full account of how people are able to critically understand and distance themselves from existing social values. In order to develop such an account, psychological theories of moral development are needed. We nonetheless emphasize at this point that hermeneutics points out the importance of variations of and a critical attitude toward social imaginaries, in particular variations on opprossing imaginaries that are defended by ruling ideologies.
References
Adams S (2017) Ricoeur and Catoriadis in Discussion: On Human Creation, Historical Novelty, and the Social Imaginary. Rowman and Littlefield, London and New York
Barrett NF (2017) The normative turn in enactive theory: An examination of its roots and implications. Topoi 36(3):431–443
Bayliss AP, Frischen A, Fenske MJ, Tiper SP (2007) Affective evaluations of objects are influenced by observed gaze direction and emotional expression. Cognition 104(3):644–653
Bergmann LT (2019) Emotions, experiments and the moral brain. The failure of moral cognition arguments against moral sentimentalism. Rivista internazionale di Filosofia e Psicologia 10(1):16–32
Bergmann LT, Wagner J (2020) When push comes to shove—the moral fiction of reason-based situational control and the embodied nature of judgment. Front Psychol. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.00203
Caracciolo M (2012) Narrative, meaning, interpretation: an enactivist approach. Phenomenol Cogn Sci 11(3):367–384
Caracciolo M (2013) Blind Reading: Toward an Enactivist Theory of the Reader’s Imagination. In: Bernaerts L, De Geest D, Herman L, Vervaeck B (eds) Stories and Minds: Cognitive Approaches to Literary Narrative. University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln, NE, pp 81–106
Caracciolo M (2014) The Experientiality of Narrative: An Enactivist Approach. De Gruyter, Berlin and Boston
Chemero A (2009) Radical Embodied Cognitive Science. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA
Colombetti G, Torrance S (2009) Emotion and ethics: an inter-(en) active approach. Phenomenol Cogn Sci 8(4):505–526
De Jaegher H (2013) Rigid and fluid interactions with institutions. Cogn Syst Res 25:19–25
De Jaegher H (2015) How we affect each other: Michel Henry’s “pathos-with” and the enactive approach to intersubjectivity. J Conscious Stud 21(1–2):112–132
De Jaegher H, Di Paolo E (2007) Participatory sense-making: an enactive approach to social cognition. Phenomenol Cogn Sci 6(4):485–507
Di Paolo E, Buhrmann T, Barandiaran XE (2017) Sensorimotor Life: An enactive proposal. Oxford University Press, Oxford
Di Paolo EA, Cuffari EC, De Jaegher H (2018) Linguistic Bodies: On the Continuity between Life and Language. The MIT Press, Cambridge (MA)
Dierckxsens, G. (2020) The Ambiguity of Justice: New Perspectives on Paul Ricoeur’s Theory of Justice, Leiden: Brill.
Froese T, Di Paolo EA (2009) Sociality and the life-mind continuity thesis. Phenomenol Cogn Sci 8(4):439–463
Gallagher S (2004) Hermeneutics and the cognitive sciences. J Conscious Stud 11(10–11):162–174
Gallagher S (2013) The socially extended mind. Cogn Syst Res 25–26:4–12
Gallagher S (2017) Enactivist Interventions: Rethinking the Mind. Oxford University Press, Oxford
Gallagher S, Crisafi A (2009) Mental institutions. Topoi 28(1):45–51
Greene JD (2014) Moral Tribes: Emotion, Reason, and the Gap Between us and Them. Penguin press, New York, NY
Greene JD (2015) Beyond point-and-shoot morality: why cognitive (neuro) science matters for ethics. Law Ethics Hum Rights 9:141–172
Habermas J (1996) Between Facts and Norms: Contributions to a Discourse Theory of Law and Democracy. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA
Haidt J (2001) The emotional dog and its rational tail: A social intuitionist approach to moral judgment. Psychol Rev 108:814–834
Hutto DD (2007) The narrative practice hypothesis: origins and applications of folk psychology. R Instit Philos Suppl 60:43–68
Hutto DD, Myin E (2013) Radicalizing Enactivism. Basic Minds without Content. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA
Hutto DD, Myin E (2017) Evolving Enactivism. Basic Minds Meet Content. The MIT Press, Cambridge, MA
Jonas H (1963) The phenomenon of life: Toward a philosophical biology. Harper and Row, New York City, NY
Kearney R, Treanor B (eds) (2015) Carnal Hermeneutics. Fordham University Press, New York
Maturana H, Varela F (1980) Autopoiesis and cognition. Reidel, Dordrecht, NL
McGann M (2014) Enacting a social ecology: radically embodied intersubjectivity. Front Psychol 5:1321
McGann M, De Jaegher H (2009) Self-other contingencies: Enacting social perception. Phenomenol Cogn Sci 8(4):417–437
Noë A (2012) Varieties of presence. Harvard University Press
Reddy V (2008) How Infants Know Minds. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA
Ricoeur P (1992) Oneself as Another. Chicago University Press, Chicago
Ricoeur P (2007a) From text to action: essays in hermeneutics II. Northwestern University Press, Evanston
Ricoeur P (2007b) From the moral to the ethical and to ethics. In: Pellauer D (ed) Reflections on the just. University of Chicago Press, Chicago, pp 45–57
Schmidt MFH, Rakoczy H (2018) Developing an understanding of normativity. In: Newen Albert, de Bruin Leon, Gallagher Shaun (eds) Oxford Handbook of Cognition: Embodied, Embedded, Enactive and Extended. Oxford University Press, Oxford
Slatman J (2012) Phenomenology of bodily integrity in disfiguring breast cancer. Hypatia 27(2):281–300
Sonnby-Borgström M (2002) Automatic mimicry reactions as related to differences in emotional empathy. Scandinavian J Psychol 43(5):433–443. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9450.00312
Strawson G (2004) Against narrativity. Ratio 17(4):428–452
Urban P (2014) Toward an expansion of an enactive ethics with the help of care ethics. Front Psychol. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2014.01354
Van Grunsven J (2018) Enactivism, second-person engagement and personal responsibility. Phenomenol Cogn Sci 17(1):131–156
Varela FJ (1999) Ethical Know-How: Action, Wisdom, and Cognition. Stanford University Press, Stanford, CA
Varela FJ, Thompson E, Rosch E (1991) The embodied mind: Cognitive science and human experience. The MIT Press, Cambridge, MA
von Uexkull J (1909) Umwelt und Innenwelt der Tiere. Springer, Berlin, DE
von Uexküll J (1934) Streifzüge durch die Umwelten von Tieren und Menschen. In: O’Neil Joseph D (ed) A foray into the worlds of animals and humans. University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, MN, p 2010
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
Publisher's Note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Dierckxsens, G., Bergmann, L.T. Enactive Ethics and Hermeneutics—From Bodily Normativity to Critical Ethics. Topoi 41, 299–312 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11245-021-09790-x
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11245-021-09790-x