Conference Agenda

The claim that “adaptivity is a prerequisite for cognition” has been central to enactivism (Di Paolo 2005, Thompson 2007), a framework aimed at explaining how cognition arises from the dynamics of life. However, there is a substantiated worry that adaptivity functions as a "Trojan horse," subtly reintroducing representational assumptions into an ostensibly anti-representational framework (Villalobos 2013). Adaptivity in its current conceptualisation undermines enactivism’s promise as a revolutionary alternative to representational cognitive science. Enactivists describe adaptivity as involving self-monitoring, anticipatory regulation, and meta-adaptation—processes traditionally aligned with representationalist cognitive science. This tension is particularly evident in anticipatory regulation, where embodied prediction, though framed as emergent and situated, risks collapsing into a form of representationalism. Unfortunately, enactivists fail to provide a non-representational explanation for how these adaptive mechanisms operate. Thus, if enactivism is to uphold its non-representationalist commitment, it must offer a clearer account of how adaptive capacities emerge solely through dynamic, embodied interactions. As a potential solution, I propose reconceptualising anticipation as temporally extended, implicitly predictive interaction patterns. On this account, anticipation that seemingly trades in internal representations is explained as mechanisms of learned lagged-response mechanisms. This explanation preserves the anticipatory and yet non-representational character of adaptivity.

Internalist and pluralist accounts of what gender a person has, particularly those that rest their case on an ameliorative methodology, require a normatively acceptable concept of gender identity. But many existing accounts of gender identity, I suspect, risk legitimizing pernicious social views. I argue that this is the case because there is a broad consensus among emancipatory ameliorative theorists that holds that accounts of gender identity should secure First-Person Authority (FPA) over one’s gender. I break from this consensus and argue that our concept of gender identity should be such that it allows for individuals to be wrong – and perhaps even for it to be ethical to correct them – about their gender (identity) in some cases where they have harmful beliefs (e.g., when they are transphobic). I introduce and defend my ameliorative account of gender identity, which I call the Cognitive Disposition View (CDV). According to CDV, to have a certain gender identity is to be disposed to desire and experience as intrinsic a certain gender categorization (concerning a given class system of gender) when one holds a sufficiently small amount of pernicious social beliefs.

McDowell unterscheidet bekanntlich zwischen einer biologischen ersten Natur und einer kulturellen zweiten Natur des Menschen, mit dem Ziel, die Natürlichkeit der Vernunft zu sichern, indem sie im Sinne der zweiten Natur als ein Kulturphänomen ausgewiesen wird. Was aber berechtigt McDowell, die Kultur als eine zweite Natur zu fassen? Er selbst betrachtet beide Naturen als zwei Arten eines Genus, deren Einheit er rein negativ durch ihre gemeinsame Abgrenzung vom Übernatürlichen bestimmt. Dies ist jedoch unzureichend, da es noch eine zweite Art des Nicht-Natürlichen gibt, die McDowell vernachlässigt: das Künstliche. Um dieses Defizit zu beheben, verorte ich daher die zweite Natur zunächst im Spannungsverhältnis von Natur und Artefakt bei Aristoteles, um zu zeigen, dass sie sich von der ersten darin unterscheidet, dass sie zwar ebenso ein inneres Bewegungsprinzip ist, aber kein angeborenes, sondern ein erworbenes. Hierin liegt eine Analogie zu Artefakten, die ihre Form ebenfalls erwerben, indem sie durch eine äußere Ursache in Form gebracht werden. Um Artefakt und zweite Natur voneinander abzugrenzen, bedarf es daher eines anderen Sinns von 'erworben', den nur der Begriff der Erziehung bereitstellen kann. McDowells szientistische Konzeption der ersten Natur gestattet ihm aber letztlich nur einen Begriff von Erziehung als Abrichtung, als kausale Konditionierung durch den Erzieher.

The linguistic relativity hypothesis posits that languages shape non-linguistic cognition, leading to divergent thought patterns among speakers of different languages. Recently, linguistic relativity has gained significant traction in contemporary philosophy of mind, enactivism, and cognitive science. I argue that the focus on this hypothesis has led to a reductive conception of cognition, where linguistic elements are isolated from other cultural influences. This partitive conception of the mind is implausible, and I propose that a more promising approach is to investigate the mind’s action in ecologically valid real-life conditions. To achieve this, philosophers of mind should adopt an interdisciplinary approach, incorporating insights from anthropology and cognitive linguistics, and recognizing the interdependence of quantitative and qualitative research methods. My presentation will critically examine the internal logic of the linguistic relativity hypothesis and its methodological challenges, drawing on debates at the intersection of philosophy of mind and anthropology. I will argue that a more nuanced understanding of the relationship between language, culture, and cognition is necessary to fully comprehend the complex dynamics of human cognition.