CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2026
| Author | Goncalves, Henrique Mendes |
|---|---|
| Title | Enactivism and the cognitivist triad: Functional roles, representation, and computation |
| Summary | This dissertation critically examines the widely held assumption that enactivism, a prominent 4E approach to cognition, is fundamentally incompatible with the three core tenets of classical cognitive science: functionalism, representationalism, and computationalism. Challenging the prevailing narrative of a revolutionary paradigm shift, it argues for a more synthetic and integrative understanding. It proceeds by first clarifying the unique status of enactivism among other 4E theories (Chapter I) and then analyzing its internal diversity (Chapters II and III), positing that autopoietic enactivism offers a more robust framework than its sensorimotor counterpart by grounding cognition in biological principles of autonomy and sense-making. The dissertation then systematically tests the compatibility of this refined enactivist framework with each cognitivist tenet. Far from being antagonistic, autopoietic enactivism is shown to be a radical, biologically-grounded form of functionalism (Chapter III). The challenge of representationalism is met by adopting a deflationary account of subpersonal representation, which treats content not as an intrinsic property but as a pragmatic, heuristic tool for scientific modeling, thereby dissolving what the literature has called the “hard problem of content” (Chapter IV). Finally, compatibility with computationalism is established through a non-semantic, mechanistic framework, reframed through a perspectival lens where computational ascriptions are constrained by a system’s causal structure (Chapter V). Ultimately, the dissertation demonstrates that with careful conceptual refinement, a coherent version of enactivism can be reconciled with modified versions of the cognitivist triad, thus bridging a significant theoretical divide in the sciences of the mind. |
| Supervisor | Crane, Timothy Martin |
| Department | Philosophy PhD |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2026/goncalves_henrique.pdf |
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