Beyond Agency

A Reply to Miriam Kyselo

Author

Alva Noë

noe @ berkeley.edu

University of California,

Berkeley, CA, U.S.A.

Commentator

Miriam Kyselo

miriam.kyselo @ gmail.com

Vrije Universiteit

Amsterdam, Netherlands

Editors

Thomas Metzinger

metzinger @ uni-mainz.de

Johannes Gutenberg-Universität

Mainz, Germany

Jennifer M. Windt

jennifer.windt @ monash.edu

Monash University

Melbourne, Australia

In this paper I respond to Kyselo’s (this collection) claim that actionism, and other versions of the enactive embodied approach to mind, fail to accord social relations a constitutive role in making up the human mind. I argue that actionism can meet this challenge—the view makes relations to others central to an account of human experience—but I also question whether the challenge is clear enough. I ask: what exactly does it mean to say that social relations play this sort of constitutive role?

Keywords

Actionism | Body-social problem | Concept pluralism | Concepts | Consciousness | Enactive account | Enactive self | Evans | Fragility | Frege | Individualism | Intellectualism | Kant | Organized activity | Perception | Plato | Presence | Sensorimotor account | Socially enacted autonomy | Socially extended mind​ | The intellectualist insight | The intellectualist thesis | Understanding | Wittgenstein