Contro le rappresentazioni? Per una proposta corporificata e intersoggettiva della rappresentazione mentale
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.4396/2025SFL07Parole chiave:
representation, embodied cognition, enactivism, evo-devo, biological constraints, interactionAbstract
In Philosophy of mind and language, the debate on the notion of mental representation has been reignited. In particular, the enactivist perspective has produced a series of arguments to demonstrate that representation is only a philosophical construct. With this contribution, we want to investigate the validity of this critique. The goal is to understand how the centrality of the body in cognitive processes does not demonstrate the insubstantiality of representation, but rather reinforces it. Starting from studies that demonstrate the embodiment of representations, we propose to characterize the notion of representation from a biological point of view. We accept part of the enactivist criticism in order to recalibrate a naturalistic account that maintains the construct of representation and has its inevitable epistemological development in the Theory of Biological Constraints: structure determines function. In this sense, the body constrains the functional capacities of the cognitive agent, its possibilities for action. The optimization of agentive interaction with the world, in particular intersubjective (agent-agent) interaction, is the principle of the emergent property of cognition that we call “representation.” The sensorimotor patterns that are established in the interaction between two or more agents constitute the selective environment of the fundamental property of mental representation.
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