Enactive

Enactive cognition, or enactivism, is a set of theories in cognitive science and philosophy of mind that argues cognition arises through an organism’s active engagement with its environment. Rather than treating perception as a passive intake of internal representations, enactive approaches hold that knowledge is enacted through sensorimotor activity and bodily interaction. Perception is seen as sense-making: the creation of meaning through ongoing action that is adapted to an organism’s needs and capacities, rather than a direct decoding of external stimuli.

Core ideas include autopoiesis and structural coupling, drawn from Maturana and Varela, which describe living systems as self-producing and continually co-adjusting with their surroundings. The body and its sensorimotor capabilities are central to cognition; there is no strict boundary between perception, action, and cognition. In social contexts, enactivism emphasizes participatory sense-making, the notion that meaning emerges through interactive engagements with others.

Historically, the term and project were developed by Francisco Varela, Evan Thompson, and Eleanor Rosch in The Embodied Mind (1991). The framework builds on Maturana and Varela’s work on autopoiesis and has been advanced by researchers such as Hanne De Jaegher and Ezequiel Di Paolo, who articulated participatory sense-making, as well as by scholars applying enactive principles to robotics and artificial intelligence.

Impact and critique: Enactive approaches influence cognitive science, phenomenology, robotics, and education, highlighting embodied interaction and the inseparability of agent and world. Critics argue the framework can underplay internal representations or biological constraints, and that formalizing predictions can be challenging. Proponents respond that enactivism complements traditional views by stressing process, development, and social dynamics, offering a broad platform for integrating perception, action, and environment.