Enactive social cognition: the interplay of mind, language, and culture

The goal of the enactivists is to present a paradigm showing the development of our cognitive structures from the embodied processes with a history of recurrent interactions between organisms and their environment. In enactivism, interaction plays an important role in cognitive development since causes change for both organism and its environment. Autonomy, adaptivity, and sense-making are essential core ideas in enactivism, and without them, the whole cognitive process will break down. It is from this idea where Ezequiel Di Paolo and Hanne de Jaegher developed their concept of participatory sense-making, an enactive account of social cognition. My thesis will focus on the effect of linguistic and cultural differences in participatory sense-making. I will study how differences affect cognitive beings’ regulation of interaction with others in forming coupled system to generate meaning. In understanding participatory sense-making, it is always important to go back to this paradigm and see how we can apply the dynamics of an organism and its environment to enactive social cognition. In this thesis, I will illustrate the development of enactive social cognition or participatory sense-making. I will pay particular attention to autonomy, adaptivity, and sense-making since these elements play the vital role for the success of the process. Lastly, I will discuss the implication of this research and suggest possible solution to bridge the gap in multilingual and multicultural interaction.