Situated Problem Solving to Skilled Performance: A Perspective from Ecological-

Enactive Complementarity

Abstract

My main idea in the paper is to shed light on how skillful action or performance emerges
from situated problem solving. The assumption in the paper about the mutuality of ecological
psychology and enactivism is that working with the complementarity of conceptual tools of
both the approaches has better explanatory currency to unravel the conundrums of cognition
than the single approach in itself. I claim that skillful action can be better understood in a
non-representational way, by applying the conceptual tools of ecological psychology and
enactivism in a coupled manner. From ecological psychology, I have focused on the concept
of affordances, and from enactivism, I have narrowed down my attention to sensory-motor
approach to cognition. I propose a dynamic mutual relation between affordance and sensory-
motor interaction with the world to explain the mechanism of the gradual emergence of
skillful performance. I, in line with ecological-enactive tradition, argue that posit of mental
content in the form of representation is not the only way to understand cognition. For
example, think of learning any motor skill, car driving, swimming, cycling, one can read
plethora of books on these skills and form a mental representation (in the sense, the concept
of mental representation used in cognitive science or any representational theory of mind),
however, would just the acquisition of such mental activity suffice for performance of these
activities? I think not. Such a line of thought is my primary motivation against the
representational interpretation of the acquisition and performance of a skillful act. The
proposed ecological-enactive account of gradual acquisition and performance of skill in
activities goes like this:

1. I argue that the learning of skill starts as a problem. I have considered the use and
meaning of the word problem in an extended Deweyan sense as, “..the meaning of
word problem to whatever–no matter how slight or commonplace in character–
perplexes and challenges the mind…a state of hesitation, perplexity, or doubt”. 1
Imagine your perplexity while going for your first driving lesson class. I do not intend
to use the words hesitation, doubt, or perplexity, with a negative connotation. I have
considered a problematic situation in the sense of excitement, uneasiness, or tension
caused due to someone’s lack of mastery in the pursue of the intended activity.

1
John Dewey, How we think (New Your: Dover Publications, 1997), 9.
 2. I claim that instead of relying on mental representation, an embodied agent overcomes
perplexity by enactive dynamic engagement with the environment. I have extended
the claim that with the attunement to the affordances situated problem solving results
into situated skill.
3. I have interpreted situated skills in terms of optimal grip2 and transparent
equipment3. For example, by continuous sensory-motor interaction with the landscape
of affordances, when a learner of car driving gets an optimal grip over the activity
which makes the car as transparent equipment. Something becoming transparent
equipment implies that the agent has become so adept in using the instrument, it
becomes an extended part of one’s body.

The rest of the paper is unfolding of the above mentioned three points.

Keywords: Enactivism, Ecological Psychology, Affordances, Phenomenology, Skilled

Performance

Bibliography

Clark, Andy. Supersizing the mind: Embodiment, action, and cognitive extension. New York:
Oxford University Press, 2008.

Dewey, John. How we think. New Your: Dover Publications, 1997.

Kiverstein, Julian, and Erik Rietveld. "The primacy of skilled intentionality: on Hutto &
Satne’s the natural origins of content." Philosophia 43, no. 3 (2015): 701-721.

2
Julian Kiverstein and Erik Rietveld, "The primacy of skilled intentionality: on Hutto & Satne’s the natural
origins of content",  Philosophia 43, no. 3 (2015): 701-721.
3
Andy Clark, Supersizing the mind: Embodiment, action, and cognitive extension( New York: Oxford
University Press, 2008), 10.