Concept Pluralism, Direct Perception, and The Fragility of Presence

Concept Pluralism, Direct Perception,
and the Fragility of Presence

Alva Noë
This paper has three main aims. First, I criticize intellectualism in the philosophy Author
of mind and I outline an alternative to intellectualism that I call Concept Plural-
ism. Second, I seek to unify the sensorimotor or enactive approach to perception
Alva Noë
and perceptual consciousness developed in O’Regan & Noë (2001) and Noë
noe @ berkeley.edu
(2004, 2012), with an account of understanding concepts. The proposal here—that
concepts and sensorimotor skills are species of a common genus, that they are University of California,
kinds of skills of access—is meant to offer an extension of the earlier account of Berkeley, CA, U.S.A.
perception. Finally, I describe a phenomenon—fragility—that has been poorly un-
derstood, but whose correct analysis is critical for progress in the theory of mind Commentator
(both perception and cognition).
Miriam Kyselo
Keywords miriam.kyselo @ gmail.com
Actionism | Concept pluralism | Concepts | Consciousness | Enactive account | Vrije Universiteit
Evans | Fragility | Frege | Intellectualism | Kant | Perception | Plato | Presence | Amsterdam, Netherlands
Sensorimotor account | The intellectualist insight | The intellectualist thesis | Un-
derstanding | Wittgenstein Editors
Thomas Metzinger
metzinger @ uni-mainz.de
Johannes Gutenberg-Universität
Mainz, Germany
Jennifer M. Windt
jennifer.windt @ monash.edu
Monash University
Melbourne, Australia
1 Introduction
The present study takes its starting point from We characterized the relevant kind of know-
the enactive or sensorimotor, or, as I now prefer ledge as knowledge precisely in order to mark the
to call it, the actionist approach to perception continuity between perception and “higher”, more
and perceptual consciousness (O’Regan & Noë intellectual kinds of cognition such as thought
2001; Noë 2004, 2012). Actionism is the thesis and planning (O’Regan & Noë 2001). At the
that perception is the activity of exploring the same time, we were quick to characterize the rel-
environment making use of knowledge of sensor- evant forms of knowledge as practical, non-pro-
imotor contingencies. Sensorimotor contingen- positional, as implicit, or as “skill”, precisely in
cies are understood to be patterns of depend- order to avoid over-intellectualizing perception.
ence of sensory change on movement. The pro- In Action in Perception (Noë 2004, Ch. 6), I
posal, then, is that we make use of this know- defended the view that perception requires the
ledge of the way our own movement gives rise mastery and exercise of concepts. In doing so, I
to sensory change to explore the world. This took myself to be lowering the bar on what it is
knowledge-based or skilful activity is perceiving. to have a concept, rather than raising the bar on
Noë, A. (2015). Concept Pluralism, Direct Perception, and the Fragility of Presence.
In T. Metzinger & J. M. Windt (Eds). Open MIND: 27(T). Frankfurt am Main: MIND Group. doi: 10.15502/9783958570597 1 | 15
www.open-mind.net
what it is to be a perceiver. It was always my They are creatures of judgement. He also be-
view that the resulting account was one in which lieved that concepts play a basic role in cogni-
understanding (mastery and use of concepts, in- tion. They organize the data of sense. Without
cluding sensorimotor skills) and perception (ex- concepts, sensory experience would be empty
ploration of the environment drawing on a variety sensation; without sensory influx, there’d be
of skills, including concepts, as conventionally un- nothing for concepts to organize. For Kant,
derstood, and also sensorimotor skills) worked to- judgement gives the basic form of experience
gether in human and animal mental life. As I put (Erfahrung).
it later, “understanding” and “perception” arrive Frege (1891) said that concepts are func-
at the party together (Noë 2012). tions from objects to truth-values. In this he ap-
Although actionism places great emphasis in peared to break with Kant. Concepts have
the importance of movement, action, and the nothing to do with judgement or with our cog-
body for the theory of perception, on the claim nitive organization. They are before all that.
that perceiving is an activity, and on the proposi- This is in tune with Frege’s well-known anti-
tion that perception is not a representation-build- psychologism, according to which grasping, un-
ing activity, it was never the intention of the view derstanding, judging, and communicating are of
to deny the critical role of understanding and no relevance to logic or ontology.1 But Frege
knowledge. The point, rather, was to offer a uni- doesn’t actually sever the link between concepts
fied account of perception, consciousness, and judgement; he only frames it differently.
thought, and action. But the details were not en- Concepts figure in what is judged; they belong
tirely worked out. Knowledge, skill, ability, and to judgeable content. So Frege preserves Kant’s
understanding were not carefully defined, and the link to judgement, but in a de-psychologized
precise relation between the account of perception version.2
and that of conceptual understanding was not Frege’s anti-psychologism gets him into
spelled out in detail. I try to rectify that here. trouble.3 The fact that concepts are not them-
My basic strategy in this paper is as follows. selves psychological, in the sense of being ideas
In part I, I offer an extended discussion of what I or associations or feelings, doesn’t mean that
call intellectualism. I define the view, criticize it, they are not tied to understanding or judge-
and show how even critics of the view tend to ment, for nothing forces us to think of under-
share many of its presuppositions. In part II, I try standing and judgement as psychological in that
to offer an alternative to intellectualism, namely sense. At the same time, the claim that con-
concept pluralism, which builds upon the action- cepts are “third-realm” entities gives little sub-
ist conception of concepts as “skills of access”. stance to the idea that they are, in the relevant
Concepts, I propose, should be thought of as sense, objective. Finally, if concepts are some
techniques for enabling access to what there is. In sort of occult abstracta, then it isn’t at all clear
this way—the details will become clear later on— how we can grasp them. And surely, whatever
I offer a way of thinking about concepts that is concepts are, it is the case that we can grasp
unified with the basic elements of the earlier the- them.
ory of perception. I’ll return to this set of issues later. But
One caveat: I don’t take up the issue of an- for now let us agree that for both Kant and
imal experience and cognition in this paper, even Frege, concepts are tied to judgement, where
though it is directly relevant to the topic. this means something like: they are tied to cat-
egorizing, to explicit reasoning, to subsuming
I objects under concepts. Each of these thinkers
offers an account of concepts, or of the under-
2 Modes of understanding 1 See, for example, Frege’s “Thoughts“, (1918–1919).
2 Not that I mean to suggest that it is right to think of Kant as actu-
Kant (1791) said that concepts are predicates of ally offering a psychological account. But it might look this way from
Frege’s perspective.
possible judgement. That’s what concepts are. 3 As both Dummett (1973) and Baker & Hacker (1984) have noticed.
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standing of concepts, in what I’ll call the mode cepts, by categorizing them, as it were, in
of judgement. According to Kant and Frege, judgement. The point rather is that the things
grasp or understanding of concepts finds its nat- we see, the things around us, are familiar,
ural, true expression in judgement. known, comprehended, understood, and recog-
This paper takes its start from the obser- nized, from the very outset. Concepts are
vation that there would appear to be other geared in before we are even in a position to ask
modes of conceptual activity, other ways for un- what something is or to make a judgement
derstanding (for concepts) to find expression in about it.5
our lives. At least on the face it, judgement So we have here a distinct way in which
would not seem to be the only mode of concep- concepts, or the understanding, can be put to
tual understanding. use outside the setting of judgement. Specific-
Take, for example, perceptual understand- ally, as I’ve said, this is an example of the de-
ing, or what we might call understanding con- ployment of concepts in the perceptual mode or,
cepts in the perceptual mode. Consider reading. more simply, perceptual understanding.
It is difficult to tell, looking at the entrance to Note, in saying perception is a non-judge-
the Taj Mahal, which bits of squiggle are mere mental mode of understanding, I don’t mean to
ornament, and which are writing in Classical deny that there might be an interdependence
Arabic. You can have this experience, it is avail- between the judgemental and the perceptual
able to you, only if you are not fluent in Clas- modes. Maybe only one who can judge can per-
sical Arabic, or in this style of Arabic script. ceive and precisely because perception enables
This marks the spot of the basic phenomenon: judgement. And maybe it is only of one who
there would seem to be a mode of understand- can have perceptual experience that we could
ing that is perceptual in nature. It is im- ever say that he or she is in a position to judge
possible, as a psychological matter, to see mean- about anything.6 My point is that, on the face
ingful text as a mere squiggle. For the one who of it, judging is one thing, and perceiving an-
knows, for the one who can, meaningful words other, and yet they are both ways of exercising
just show up. the understanding.
Compare this with the case of a scholar There are other modes, as well.
studying Renaissance paintings in which writing Concepts also get deployed in what I call
is shown embroidered into the robes of magi the active mode; understanding, that is, can
and other fabulous figures. Are these scripts in find expression, immediately, in what we do.
a familiar language, or could they be marks There is such a thing as practical understand-
from a forgotten one? Or are they pseudo- ing. And what makes the relevant understand-
scripts? How do you decide? A keen problem ing practical is not that it is an exercise in
and one that affords opportunity, for it de- judgement on, as it happens, practical matters.
mands reasoning, explicit categorization, and What makes it practical, in my view, is that it
judgement.4 is the gearing in or putting to work of one’s un-
But nothing like that seems to be going on derstanding in the absence of any call for, or
when you are reading. And the point is general: even space for, reflection or judgement.
it operates at the level of our everyday seeing. The dog walker’s knowledge of dogs, for
It is difficult, maybe even impossible—psycholo- example, is put to work in the way he or she
gically speaking—to see familiar kinds of things adopts a gait that suits the dog and encourages
around us as mere things. We always see them or permits it to accomplish its sniffy, doggy
as this or that. business; and so also in the way the owner spon-
I don’t mean that when we see, we repres- taneously shortens the leash as another dog ap-
ent the things we really see around us as this or proaches; it is exhibited, even, we might say, in
that, by bringing them under the relevant con-
5 As Heidegger (1927) would have put it, the things we encounter are
always already familiar.
4 For a discussion of this fascinating topic, see A. Nagel (2011). 6 I return to this issue of the unity of concepts in section 6 below.
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the cool she keeps when the two dogs begin —are expressive of understanding only derivat-
barking and straining at their leashes. Without ively, thanks to the fact that they are guided or
a word, in the absence of deliberation, or expli- controlled, from outside as it were, by true un-
cit thought, the owner knowingly engages the derstanding in the judgemental mode.
nature of dogs.7 I will call this view intellectualism. Intel-
And there may be still other kinds of un- lectualism, as I am defining it, is the view that
derstanding, other styles of conceptuality. For one modality of conceptual expression is basic,
example, there is also perhaps what we could namely, the judgemental, and that the others
call the emotional mode, or maybe it would be are domains where understanding finds expres-
better to say the personal, or even interpersonal sion only derivatively.9
mode. Tears, feeling, injury, but also posture, Plato and Descartes seemed to have be-
standing distance to others, navigating in a so- lieved something like this. For them, a mere
cial environment, can all show a highly refined sensation rises to the level of perception, and a
attunement to situation, relationship, status, mere movement to the level of action, only if it
goals, tasks, and so on. It takes understanding is subject to guidance by reason. The soul is di-
to do all this, even though we rarely try to vided against itself and it achieves integration
make this understanding explicit and even only when it is controlled in the right way from
though, very probably, we cannot do this, even above.
in ideal circumstances. Let us say that in this Intellectualism is probably the establish-
kind of responsive engagement with our social ment view in cognitive science. When you see
worlds we display understanding.8 the Pole Star, for example, as Fodor & Pyly-
To summarize: there is a case to be made shyn (1981) insist, you represent whatever it is
for the existence of at least three, maybe four, that you really see—a pattern of irradiation of
distinct modes of understanding. There is the the retina, perhaps—as the Pole Star. To sup-
judgemental mode, the perceptual mode, and pose otherwise is to suppose that vision could
the active mode, and perhaps also the personal be, as Gibson (1986) had claimed, a direct pick
mode. up of what there is around us. But Pole Star-
hood, like the third dimension, is not something
3 Intellectualism vs. the intellectualist that gets projected onto the retina. The what-
insight ness of things, their nature, no less than the
third-dimension itself, are not, strictly speaking,
I have proposed that there are at least three or visible. We need judgement, the application of
four distinct modes of understanding. I now concepts (in this case perhaps automatic and
turn to the familiar thought that among these implicit) in the building-up of mental represent-
varieties of expression of conceptual understand- ations, to get something like the world into our
ing, only one—the judgemental mode—is genu- experience.10
ine. The other modes, according to this idea— Jason Stanley, in a series of writings
that is, the perceptual, the active, the personal (Stanley & Williamson 2001; Stanley 2011;
7 This example is from Stephen Mulhall (1986). Stanley & Krakauer 2013), defends what I am
8 With this last example we move beyond description to the suggestion calling intellectualism. You perform a skilful ac-
of an argument. The thought is that the relevant forms of under-
standing couldn’t be underwritten by judgement, since we are not 9 Intellectualism can be defined differently. For a variety of approaches
able, as a general rule, to frame the needed judgements. Indeed, to problems in this vicinity, see Bengson & Moffett (2011).
something like this line of thought is already suggested in the way 10 This was David Marr’s (1982) view. The content of visual experience
I’ve sketched the perceptual and active modes above. Recall the cel- is given in a 2.5D sketch, that is, in a depiction of what is given in
ebrated case of Oliver Sacks (1970): a man can’t recognize the item the projection of the world onto the retina. It is only in so far as vis-
before him as a glove; his powers of judgement are fine—he describes ion yields knowledge that it goes beyond what is given in this inter-
what he sees as a self-enclosed piece of fabric with five outpouchings mediate-level representation and gives rise to a fully conceptual 3D
—and he knows what a glove is. The case is illustrative because it model. But for Marr, and for his recent advocates (Prinz 2013), al-
brings out that it is less the fact that he can’t recognize the glove, though we live in the world of the 3D sketch, our experience is con-
and more the very fact that he needs to think about it all, that fined to the intermediate-level representation. And crucially, for
brings home the thought that in our normal life there is no room for these thinkers, you don’t need concepts or understanding at the in-
that sort of deliberation. termediate level. You just need optics.
www.open-mind.net
tion, according to Stanley (2011), only when ist thesis. For one thing, intellectualism at least
your action flows from your knowledge of true threatens to obscure the differences to which I
propositions. He elaborates: have been directing our attention among what
at least appear to be authentically distinct ways
[t]here are all sorts of automatic mechan- of exercising one’s knowledge and understand-
isms that operate in a genuine sense sub- ing. And so, it seems, it gets things wrong. See-
personally. The human (and animal) capa- ing and acting and dynamically reacting, most
city for skilled action is based upon these of the time at least, don’t look or feel anything
mechanisms. What makes an action an ex- like bringing objects under concepts in judge-
ercise of skill, rather than mere reflex, is ment.
the fact that it is guided by the intellec- For another, intellectualism smacks of the
tual apprehension of truths. (Stanley 2011, arbitrary. Couldn’t we maintain that perception
p. 174) is the basic form of understanding and that
judgement, even in cases of pure reasoning and
Is intellectualism right? Should we be intellectu- mathematics, rests on a kind of perceptual in-
alists? sight? Or that it is understanding in the active
It is important that we notice, right away, mode that is truly basic? Judgement itself de-
that intellectualism is right about something. It pends on the mastery and exercise of conceptual
does justice to the fact that there is under- capacities which are in the first instance prac-
standing, and there is conceptuality, at work tical. You need to know how to use concepts,
wherever we think and perceive and act and after all, in order to use them in judgement.
talk, as we have been considering. Conceptual- In any case, let us ask again: are there
ity, understanding, and knowledge pervade not reasons to endorse intellectualism? Why think
only the mental, but our lives and our being. that judgement is the primary and singular au-
Certainly, it is in evidence wherever we can thentic modality of real understanding? Why be
speak of agency. Stanley insists (in the quota- an intellectualist?
tion above) that we can only speak of skilful ac-
tion where there is understanding at work. He 4 Troubles with intellectualism
perhaps ought to have said that we can only
speak of action at all, as opposed to mere reflex, Stanley’s writings (Stanley & Williamson 2001;
or mere movement, where there is also under- Stanley 2011; Stanley & Krakauer 2013) on the
standing. topic are suggestive. However, he seems to mis-
The question I would like us to consider is take evidence in favour of the insight (that un-
this: do we need intellectualism to secure this derstanding is present in perception and action,
undoubted intellectualist insight, as I will dub as well as in the setting of explicit deliberative
the recognition of the pervasiveness of under- thought) with support for intellectualism itself
standing in our perceptual, active, as well as (for the view that judgement governs action and
emotional lives? It’s crucial that we notice the perception). And, on top of that, he may com-
distance between the insight and the thesis. It’s mit the fallacy of conceiving the whole genus on
one thing to say that there is understanding at the model of one of its species; like thinking
work in perception and action, and another to that every dog is a cat because, well, they are
think that what makes this true is that percep- mammals, or that seeing is a way of touching
tion and action are grounded on acts of judge- because, after all, they are both forms of per-
ment. Do we need to think that what guaran- ception. In this case it is the fallacy of thinking
tees and secures the involvement of understand- that knowing how must be a form of knowing
ing is the fact that our seeings, doings, and feel- that because, after all, it is form of knowledge.
ings are guided by judgements? Let’s turn to this last point first, briefly.
There are, right off the bat, two obvious Stanley (2011) notices that we use “to know”
grounds for suspicion regarding the intellectual- both for propositional knowledge and also for
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practical knowledge (know-how). Contrary to to account for the critical link to action in the
what he suggests, however, there are cognate case of know-how. Knowing how to do some-
languages where this is not the case. For ex- thing, on their view, consists in grasping a true
ample, we don’t express knowing how in Ger- proposition, yes, but it consists in grasping it in
man using the same verb that we use to express a distinctively and irreducibly practical way
propositional knowledge (Stanley 2011, pp. 36- (making use of practical modes of presenta-
37). We use können, which means can; we don’t tion).11
use wissen (as in wissen wie). Again, it is worth noticing that to deny, as
But in any case, the more important point I do, that knowing how to do something con-
is, so what? How dispositive are facts like this sists in knowing the truth of a proposition, is
supposed to be? It is common ground, I would not to deny that, as a matter of fact, knowing
say, that know-how is a form of knowledge, an how to do something may put you in a position
achievement of understanding. The question is to make certain judgements, or may require you
whether it is a form of knowledge of the same to appreciate the truth of certain propositions.
type as propositional knowledge, the sort of This brings us to the first point above: the
knowledge that gets expressed in judgement. confusion of evidence for the insight with evid-
Crucially, all the evidence in the world that it is ence for the thesis. I am assuming that know-
a form of knowledge doesn’t add up to evidence how, like propositional knowledge, is a form of
that it is propositional knowledge. knowledge. This common ground is already se-
Now, as a matter of fact, we know that cured by the insight: our understanding, our
knowing how to do something is not merely knowledge of concepts, is put to use in both
knowing that a proposition is true, for any pro- cases. So we can readily agree with Snowdon
position you might care to think up. For know- (2004), cited approvingly by Stanley (Stanley &
ing how to do something implies that you have Williamson 2001), that knowing how and know-
the ability to do it (and vice versa), whereas the ing that go together—that where you have one,
corresponding propositional knowledge has no you have the other. In general, as Snowdon ob-
such practical entailments. serves, if you know how to do something—say,
Stanley would deny this (Stanley & Willi- how to get home from here—then you’ll know
amson 2001; Stanley 2011). You can know how that all sorts of things are true, such as, for ex-
to perform a stunt but be unable to perform it ample, that you need to turn left here, that you
(because you’ve been injured, say); so, he aren’t already home, etc. And vice versa. Know-
claims, possession of know-how cannot be equi- ing how and knowing that, in this sense, com-
valent to possession of an actual ability. But mingle and cooperate. These considerations are
this is unpersuasive. Of course it is true that adduced by Stanley, and by Snowdon, I think,
you can know how to do something even though to suggest that Ryle was mistaken in believing
you are unable to do it. But this is because your that the propositional and the practical are dis-
being unable to do it is not, in the relevant joint and disconnected (1949); in fact they oper-
sense, evidence that you can’t do it! Consider: ate together and in support of each other. This
you can’t swim if there’s no water, even though is an important point and one I endorse. And
you can swim. You can swim but you can’t this is exactly what one should expect given the
swim. Far from showing that know-how and intellectualist insight. After all, understanding
ability part ways, this sort of consideration re- operates in both spheres: the practical and the
minds us that they move along the same rails. judgemental or propositional. Crucially, how-
So knowing how to do something isn’t pos- ever, the fact that the practical and the propos-
session of propositional knowledge: it doesn’t
11 Stanley (2011) offers a different account from that developed in
consist in being in a position to make certain Stanley & Williamson (2001). The former is framed in terms of
judgements. This is a point that Stanley and modal parameters governing the interpretation of the relevant sen-
Williamson accept, if only implicitly, for they tences. Although he insists that know-how does not entail ability, he
admits that attributions of know-how exhibit more or less the same
provide a different analysis of the cases precisely sort of modality as ascriptions of dispositions and abilities.
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itional mutually entail each other in this sort of knowledge if anything is. The mistake is to
way lends no support to the intellectualist idea think that a performance is only rational if con-
that one of these, the propositional, is founda- trol is exerted in the mode of judgement, as if
tional in respect of the other; indeed, it weighs from outside. The understanding that is put to
against that very idea. Why press on and insist work in our talk and play, as in our thought, is
on this thesis when, it would seem, the insight native to these various styles of engagements
on its own is enough to capture the phe- themselves.
nomenon at hand? Stanley and Krakauer make a lot of the
Stanley’s motivations seem fairly clear. He demand that skill depends on knowledge of
wants to break with the idea that propositional facts. It’s worth noticing, yet again, that insist-
knowledge is detached and, as he puts it, beha- ing, as I do, that skilfullness does not consist in
viourally inert. He wants to insist that it’s the exercise of concepts in the judgemental
wrongheaded to think that athletes and clowns mode does not entail that there can be skilful-
and craftspeople are skilful zombies, whereas ness in the absence of the ability to exercise
philosophers and mathematicians and physicists them in that mode. It may be, as a matter of
are intellectual workers whose actions exhibit fact—this is related to the Snowdon point above
authentic brain-power. It may be, even, that he —that only someone who is sensitive to all sorts
thinks this is a point of political significance. of facts, for example, about how something is
Intellectualism isn’t necessary to secure done, will in fact know how to do it. This
any of this, however. The insight has already doesn’t show that knowing how is a kind of
done that. knowledge of the facts. It shows rather that our
In fact, intellectualism, as Stanley devel- distinct conceptual capacities may be interde-
ops it, threatens to distort the nature of the pendent.
cognitive achievements that are put to work in Stanley and Krakauer try to draw a line
our practical, perceptual, and personal engage- between true skills, which are, in their sense,
ments. This comes out in the discussion of skill. governed by rationality, and others—for ex-
Stanley & Krakauer (2013) defend Aristotle’s ample perceptual and linguistic skills—that are
claim (from Metaphysics 1046b) that we can too basic, or too simple to qualify as skills in
only speak of skilful action, as opposed to mere the fuller rational sense.12
habit, or brute capacities, where we can speak One problem with this suggestion is that
of rational control of action, and also where we it is not so easy to draw a sharp line between
can speak of teaching, learning, practicing, get- skills and supposedly brute abilities. Take col-
ting better, or achieving expertise. They defend our vision, for example, which is innate in hu-
Aristotle’s claim that it is a mark of skilfulness, mans. Despite this, it turns out that children
that you can voluntarily choose to perform find it very difficult to recognize and discrimin-
what you can do skilfully badly. ate colours long after they’ve mastered the
This last point seems unlikely. I can’t names of familiar objects, people, games, etc.
choose not to understand what you say, or to As Akins (unpublished manuscript) has argued,
see writing as mere squiggles, or words as com- this is probably because colours are not simple,
posed of bits I need painstakingly to sound or as our phenomenology, or rather, our conven-
spell out. A guitarist cannot choose to experi- tional wisdom about our phenomenology, leads
ence the instrument in his hands as strange or us erroneously to believe. Getting blue or yellow
unfamiliar. At best, maybe, I can pretend I am or red is to develop a sensitivity to suites of
unable to do these things. constancies and variations—to ecological vari-
Is this because talking and reading and ation in what I have called colour-critical condi-
playing guitar are not really skilful at all, that 12 Stanley & Krakauer (2013, p. 5) write: “[b]ut at some point, all such
they are mere habits outside the range of ra- knowledge will rest on knowledge of basic actions, such as grasping
tional control? Hardly! They’re expressions of an object or lifting one’s arm. These activities are not skills; they are
not acquired by or improved upon by raining in adult life. Their
skilful competence, rational understanding and manifestation is nevertheless under our voluntary control.”
www.open-mind.net
tions—that takes time and learning, and allows The opposition between habit and skill is
for criticism and reflection. Is colour vision ba- a false one; and it is a mistake to think that
sic? Or is it skilful? It may be both. what marks the opposition is that habit is be-
This is not a special case. Because seeing low or before understanding whereas skill is the
is saturated with understanding, it is very hard deliberate exercise of understanding.
to find features of our ability that are not mod-
ulated by knowledge and context. Granted, the 5 Troubles with anti-intellectualism
ability to discriminate line-gratings of different
densities is fixed, at its limit, by the resolving Some critics of intellectualism argue that per-
powers of the eyes; yet our discriminations are ception cannot be conceptual, because if percep-
likely to be sensitive to task and motivation, to tion were conceptual, then perception would be
attention and distraction—that is, very broadly, a form of judgement. But the idea that percep-
to our engagement with the meaningful world. tion is judgement over-intellectualizes percep-
So where does skill stop and brute ability be- tion.13
gin? I am skeptical that learnability, teachabil- This is how I understand Gareth Evan’s
ity, or rational control provide an interesting or (1982) argument in connection with the Müller-
valuable demarcation. The most basic reason for Lyer illusion. You can experience the two lines
this is that perceiving is never merely registra- in the Müller-Lyer illusion as different in length,
tion. It is a matter of knowledgable access (Noë even when you know, and so have not the even
2004, 2012). the weakest inclination to deny, that the lines
There is a second important issue as well. are the same in length. The visual experience is
Consider language. Linguistic misunderstanding one thing, and judgement another; hence exper-
doesn’t stop language in its tracks, ejecting you ience is not conceptual.
and sending you back to the grammar, written, Now, this is an example of an apparent
as it were in advance, by those responsible for disagreement between what you know to be the
setting up the language. Rather, coping with case (judgement) and how things look (experi-
misunderstanding—dealing with not getting ence). Things look precisely the way you know
how someone is using words, or how we should they are not. Experience and the judgement are
use them, or with not knowing how to use them in conflict. This shows, I would have thought,
—is one of language’s familiar settings. We ad- that experience, and the corresponding content,
judicate and teach and learn and improve and share the same kind of content. The fact that
criticize and define and formalize and evaluate they are in apparent conflict shows that they
within language, not from outside it. Language, are not somehow incommensurable. So if the
contrary to the claims of Chomskyan linguistics, one is conceptual, then so is the other.
is not a rule-governed activity. It is a rule-using But more important, for our discussion
activity. And we make up the rules as we need here, is that Evans seems to assume that con-
them and for our own purposes. This may be cepts can only be in play if they are applied in
controversial. But here’s why I insist on it: ac- judgement. Since experience is not judgement,
cording to the logician’s or the linguist’s picture there is no way for concepts to gear in. But
of language, first you assign values to primit- that’s to accept the basic claim of the intellec-
ives, then you set up rules governing the con- tualist—judgement is the only way for concepts
struction of well-formed formulas. If you think to get into the act—not to challenge it.
of language this way, then it looks like you need So Evans’ argument against the idea that
judgement—the application of rules to cases— perceptual experience is conceptual—what we
to secure the meaningfulness of what would oth- can think of as Evans’s anti-intellectualism—ac-
erwise be mere marks and noises. But we don’t tually takes what I am calling intellectualism
need judgement—we don’t need understanding
in the judgemental mode—to secure meaning. 13 See Noë (2004, Ch. 6) for detailed engagement with the issue of the
conceptuality of perception and the relation between my own posi-
We don’t need guidance from the outside. tion and that of John McDowell.
www.open-mind.net
for granted. It takes for granted that there is fact that we can use them, and that we care
only one genuine and legitimate mode of exer- about their correct use, is all that is needed for
cise of conceptual understanding, namely the it to be the case that we act under their influ-
judgemental. ence. The influence is not causal. It is normat-
Hubert Dreyfus (e.g., 2013) is responsible ive.
for a widely-influential criticism of intellectual- Dreyfus goes further and insists that
ism that is crypto-intellectualist in just this way. whether or not it is always legitimate to de-
Reasons, principles, and explicit knowledge mand that the phronesis, as he calls the expert,
guide perception and activity, according to invoking Aristotle, justifies his or her actions, it
Dreyfus, but only in the case of the novice. The will not in general be possible for him or her to
expert, in contrast, is one who is engaged, in do so. You can’t make explicit the myriad rules
the flow. The expert, having mastered the rules governing how we stand or react or explore or
and the concepts, has no further use for them. decide because, as a matter of fact, there are no
The expert is able to respond to the solicita- such general rules. There is nothing to be made
tions of situation and environment with no need explicit. At best the chess master is likely to
for conscious thought or deliberate judgement. point to the situation on the board and exclaim,
A favourite example is that of the lighten- look! This situation requires this move!
ing chess player. There is literally no time, But why is not this exactly the kind of
claims Dreyfus, for the chess player to analyse reply that is required? Recall Wittgenstein’s
the situation and decide how to move. Moves (1953, §88) example of “Stand over there!” This
are made in a flash. To suppose that the move can be a perfectly precise command, as exact as
is guided by reasons or judgement is to fall prey rationality can require, even when it is not the
to a myth of the mental, according to which a case that one can specify, to the millimetre, say,
mind-faculty, a faculty of judgement, say, ac- where it is one is supposed to stand. For certain
companies our doings and is responsible for purposes, in certain contexts, one may need
them being expressive of competence, intelli- more precision. But in other contexts the de-
gence, and understanding. For Dreyfus this idea mand for precision on the order of millimetres
is a dead giveaway of a distinct type of intellec- would be unreasonable. And so my thought here
tualist psychologism. Yes, Dreyfus grants, if you is that it is to set too high a standard on what it
ask the expert afterwards, why he or she made would be to have a reason for acting to demand
this move and not that one, he can give you a that one can frame it independently of the situ-
reason. But we have no more ground to suppose ation one is in. It is precisely an over-intellectual-
the reason was in operation before the player ized conception of what it would be to have a
switched into the intellectual mode in response reason, or to make use of a rule, to suppose that
to the question than we do to suppose that the rules and reasons need to be context-free and
refrigerator light is always on because it is on situation-independent, known in advance and ap-
whenever you open the fridge to look. plied, as it were, from outside one’s engaged
According to Dreyfus, understanding or play14—just as it would be to over-intellectualize
reason operate only if there are explicit acts of the intellect in general to suppose that concepts
rule-following, or judgement, that accompany, only gear in in the setting of judgement.
or even precede, every act. But why believe Here’s the point: the use of rules them-
that? The baseball player doesn’t need to be selves—which for Dreyfus is the hallmark of the
thinking about the rules for it to be the case detached attitude of the intellect—is itself an
that what he does is subject to them and is car- activity that admits of mastery and expertise
ried out, so to speak, in their light. The rules and so also flow. And so we cannot insist that
are there—in the form of umpires and rule rule-use marks the boundary between engage-
books, and also dictionaries and courts of law, ment and detachment.
and earnest disagreement among participants— 14 See McDowell (1994). His discussion of demonstrative senses and
and we have access to them as need arises. The demonstrative concepts aims at just this point.
www.open-mind.net
But once we allow that rules are used, and the development of play. But let’s go back to
reasons proffered, from the standpoint of our language. We don’t stop communicating when
engagement—from the inside—, then we need we fail to understand each other. At least that
not fear that we have committed ourselves to an is not usually the case. Misunderstanding is an
over-intellectualized conception of what it is to opportunity for more communication. Clarify-
be engaged, just because we allow that we un- ing, reformulating, trying again, like criticism,
derstand and can reflect on what we are doing. are things we use language to do. The fragility
Notice again that Dreyfus’s picture—a pic- is intrinsic and manifest. It doesn’t mark out
ture he may take over from Heidegger (1927) the game’s limits. It marks one of its modalities.
and Merleau-Ponty (1945)—only counts as evid- I stated earlier that understanding in the
ence against the idea that concepts and reasons active and perceptual modes leaves no room for
and rules gear into perception and skilled action the application of understanding in the judge-
if we suppose that the intellectualist is right, mental mode. I suggested this was a reason for
that there is only one way for understanding to thinking that judgement can’t be operating be-
get into the act—namely, in the form of explicit hind the scenes when we perceive and act. But we
deliberate judgement. can amend this now in light of our consideration
And notice that this way of rejecting intel- of fragility. It is internal to the very character of
lectualism—on the part of Dreyfus, and other our perceptual and active involvements that they
existential phenomenologists, and perhaps also are liable, not so much to breakdown, in Dreyfus’s
Evans—pays a high price. For it must reject the sense, as to error, confusion, and other stutter-
idea that understanding and reason have any steps that require precisely that one now think
place at all outside the range of explicit deliber- about what one is seeing and what one is doing.
ative reason, and so it has to give up the intel- Judgement and thought can, in this sense, live
lectualist’s insight, namely that in our engaged, cheek-by-jowl with perception and action without,
perceptual, and active lives, even when we are therefore, getting in their way.
experts, even when we are skilled, our perform- In any case, Dreyfus’s criticism of intellec-
ance gives expression to knowledge, intelligence, tualism fails. But it does so precisely because he
and understanding. By accepting the intellectu- fails to break with the over-intellectualized con-
alist thesis that judgement alone is the only ception of the intellect at the heart of intellectu-
true way for concepts to gear in, Dreyfus and alism. Dreyfus’s anti-intellectualism fails be-
co. feel they are compelled to reject the idea cause intellectualism fails. It is, in reality, a spe-
that our lives as a whole, beyond the confines of cies of intellectualism. Neither Dreyfus, nor his
deliberate exercise of reason and understanding, would-be opponent, can do justice to the ways
can be, or are, at one with our intellects. in which understanding operates outside the
What existential phenomenology may find narrow domain of explicit reasoning. Both sides
difficult to appreciate—at least in Dreyfus’s ver- fail to accommodate the phenomenon of fragil-
sion of the position—is that conflict, disagree- ity.
ment, and disturbance of flow are themselves
business-as-usual; they are normal moments in II
the way that even the expert carries on. We saw
this in the language case. Expertise is not im- 6 Concept pluralism: A genuine
munity; if anything, it is an evolved opportunity alternative to intellectualism
for new forms of vulnerability. Engagement is,
as I shall put it, always manifestly fragile. That So let us now turn our attention to the pro-
is, the liability to slip up, to get things wrong, spects for framing a true alternative to intellec-
is a built into the nature of the undertaking—of tualism. What would such an alternative look
any undertaking. To go wrong is not, as a gen- like?
eral rule, to stop playing the game—it is not A genuine alternative to intellectualism
the game’s abeyance—it is rather a moment in will be pluralist in that it will reckon that there
www.open-mind.net
are different legitimate and non-derivative perception isn’t beholden to judgement for its
modes of understanding, and so it will hold fast conceptuality doesn’t mean that there could be
to the intellectualist’s insight that understand- perception in the absence of capacities for
ing is in play everywhere in our lives even as it judgement. After all, typically, you can’t be said
rejects the intellectualist thesis. to know a concept if you can’t apply it in nor-
One resource for such a pluralism is Wit- mal perceptual settings. Can you know what a
tgenstein (1953). Wittgenstein proposed that a tomato is if you are incapable of any active or
concept is a technique, and that understanding, perceptual engagement with tomatoes?
therefore, is a form of mastery, akin to an abil- But we should also be careful. In so far as
ity. An important fact about abilities is that our concepts have unproblematic unity, then, on
they can be exercised in a multiplicity of ways. I this Wittgensteinian view, this is because they
can exercise my understanding of what a house are exercises of common abilities—abilities
is by building one, looking at one, painting one, which are, of their nature, such as to admit a
living in one, talking about one, or buying one. genuine multiplicity of expressions. But the
So, from this standpoint, there is nothing more unity of our concepts is not something that we
surprising about the fact that my knowledge can always take for granted.
can find expression in what I do, as well as in Is there one concept of dog, or several,
my knowledge of a proposition, than there is in brought to life in different situations and sub-
the fact that my ability to read gets exercised cultures at different times, for different pur-
both when I read a novel and also when I blush poses? Is there unity or just fragmentation? Is
at the words on the bathroom wall. this a shared understanding? These are import-
This idea also helps us explain the unity of ant questions, not for philosophy, particularly,
understanding. If concepts can be applied in but for culture. Look at the changes that have
walking the dog as well is in writing a treatise taken place in our thinking about matter over
about dogs, what is the connection between the last few hundred years. Or, to give a differ-
these two self-standing and non-derivative ent kind of example, about gender. We have no
modes of exercise of something that, surely, is a choice but to work it out as we go along.
single conceptual capacity: an understanding of And crucially, there is no standpoint out-
the concept dog? What gives unity to this un- side our thinking, talking, writing, persuading,
derstanding? imposing, regulating, prescribing and also de-
The idea that understanding a concept is scribing, from which these questions can be ad-
mastery of a technique, a mastery that has mul- judicated. This doesn’t make the existence of
tiple, distinct, context-sensitive ways of finding dogs a matter of social construction. (Of course,
expression, helps here. One way to express un- dogs are, literally, bred and so constructed by
derstanding of dog is to talk and write about us.) No, surely dogs have a mind-independent
dogs. Another way is to be able to spot dogs on nature. But it does mean that it is hard and
the basis of their appearance. Still another is to creative and unending work to bring that reality
work or play comfortably with dogs. And the into focus in our shared thought, talk, percep-
list goes on and on. We put our singular under- tion, and activity.
standing of what dogs are to work in these dif- There is no standpoint outside our
ferent ways, and the understanding consists in thoughtful practices from which to ask after our
the ability to do (more or less) all of that. own concepts. For our concepts are our own
We are now in a position to appreciate tools and techniques. This is where Frege went
that the claim that perception and action are, wrong. He seems to have thought that the only
with judgement, non-derivative, original modes way to achieve objectivity—that is, sharability,
of understanding does not entail that these articulability, and lawfulness—was by supposing
modes are independent of each other. The idea concepts were out there, indifferent to how we
that the unity of a concept is a matter of unity- grasp or understand them. In fact, they super-
in-ability helps bring this out. The fact that vene on our grasping, negotiating, communicat-
www.open-mind.net
ive activity. Frege made no allowance for fragil- The immediate environment is present in
ity. visual perception, not because it projects to the
eyes, but because the person, by means of the
7 Concepts are skills of access use of his or her eyes as well as other forms of
movement and negotiation, has access to that to
But can we say more than just that concepts environment. Presence is availability, and its
are abilities? Abilities to do what? Well, we’ve modalities—visual as opposed to tactual, for ex-
already said: to talk and see and use and judge, ample—are fixed by the things we need to do,
and so on. the negotiations, to bring and keep what is
But I think we can do better. To do so, I there in reach. Wittgenstein, in the Tractatus
draw on the actionist approach to perception (1921), said that the eye is a limit of the visual
developed in earlier work (Noë 2004, 2012). To field. But this is wrong: the adjustments of the
begin to organise an answer, consider two famil- eye, the need to adjust the eye, difficulties in
iar facts about visual perception. The first is adjusting the eye, are given in the way we see.
that, as Euclid noticed, when a solid opaque ob- Wittgenstein’s point, I suppose, was that the
ject is seen, it is never seen in its entirety at eye doesn’t see itself seeing (unless you look in a
once. Things always have hidden parts. The mirror). But here’s a different model: seeing is
second is that the visible world is cluttered with like what an outfielder does. To say that the eye
all manner of stuff. Things get in the way, the is not in the visual field is a bit like saying that
view is interrupted, occlusion is the norm. the body of the outfielder is not in the field of
And yet, despite these striking limitations, play. But in fact the eye and the head and the
we don’t experience the world as cut off from hand and the arm and the glove are all in the
us, inaccessible to vision, blocked from percep- field of play. And what we call fielding the play
tion. The partial, fragmentary, and perspective- is precisely a temporally extended transaction
bound character of our visual access to the in that whole environment. And the basis of the
world is not a limit on what we see, a marking environment’s availability to this or that modal-
off of our liability to blindness; it is, rather, the ity of exploration, beyond the fact that it is
very manner of our seeing. This is fragility there, is our possession of the skills, abilities,
again. and capacities to secure our access to it. The
Not seeing through the solid and opaque, occluded portions of the things we see are there
as if it were transparent, is not a perceptual for us, present to us, thanks to our skilful abil-
failing but rather an accomplishment. And re- ity to move and bring them into view. Percep-
latedly: we belong to the cluttered environ- tion is fragile.
ment ourselves. We are not confined to what John Campbell, writing in a related con-
is projected to a point. We explore. And it is text (2002), has said that we shouldn’t think of
that exploring, that doing, that is the seeing. the brain as representing the world; we should
The seeing is not the occurrence of a picture think of it as making the adjustments that, as
or representation in the head; it is, rather, the he puts it, keep the pane of glass between you
securing of comprehending access, thanks to and the world clean and clear, as if it were con-
our possession of a specific repertoire of skills, tinuously vulnerable to becoming opaque.
to what there is. The generic modality of the My thought is that we (not our brains)
way the world shows up in perception is not need continuously to make adjustments to keep
as represented, but rather as accessible (as I the world in view, and to maintain our access to
argue in Noë 2012). This is why our inability the world around us.
to see things from all sides at once, or to ex- But I add: the character of the world’s
perience a thing’s colour in all possible light- presence itself is precisely a function not only of
ing conditions at once, is no obstacle to the what there is, but of what we know how to do,
presence of whole objects and colours in our and what we do, and what we must always of
experience. necessity stand ready to do, just in case, to pre-
www.open-mind.net
serve our access. You need to squint and peer 8 We use concepts to take hold of things,
and adjust to see things far away; and this not to represent them
makes a difference to how those things show up.
This is one reason why it is a mistake to Let us come back to the more particular line of
suppose that we think of the adjustments that investigation that has been our concern.
belong to the ways we bring the world into fo- The intellectualist is quite right that in so
cus as the brain’s work. No, it is our work, even far as seeing is expressive of understanding, this
if most of it is low-level, unattended, and done is because we bring concepts to bear in our see-
automatically. For it is this work that gives ex- ing. But the intellectualist is mistaken in hold-
perience the quality that it has. ing that this is because we categorize what we
The scene is present for us in the manner see, in the mode of judgement, by applying con-
of a field of play. This is a fragile presence. Its cepts. It is rather that we see with concepts.
presence is not given to us alone thanks to what Concepts are techniques by which we take hold
might happen in our brains, thanks to neural and secure access. Their job is not to represent
events triggered by optical events. Its presence what is there; their job is to enable what is
is achieved thanks to what we know how to do. there to be present to us. You can’t see the
The basis of our skilful access to the world is, laser-projector if you don’t know what a laser-
precisely, our possession of skills of access. projector is. Your possession of the concept is a
And this, finally, is what I propose con- condition on the laser-projector’s showing up for
cepts are. They are skills of access, or rather, a you. It is the ability that lets you encounter
species of such. They are not so much devices what is in fact there.
by which we make the world intelligible, as Back to the example of text: your grasp of
much as they are the techniques by which we the relevant concepts enables you to read (to
secure our contact with the world, in whatever see what is there). Not because it gives you the
modality. From this point of view, concepts like resources to interpret or decode (although it
dog and matter are of a piece with other skills of does give you that). But because knowledge lets
access such as the not-quite-articulable sensor- what might otherwise be unseen come into
imotor skills we skilfully deploy as we navigate view. Knowledge can also, correspondingly, dis-
the scene with our thinking bodies. able us. Your reading knowledge, for example,
From this standpoint, it is worth em- can make it difficult or even impossible to see
phasizing that there is no theoretically inter- the squiggles, the “mere marks”, which are also
esting cleavage between seeing and thinking always there whenever you read.
(as already argued in Noë 2012). Seeing is And so across the board: we don’t apply
thoughtful and thought is perceptual at least concepts in judgement to what we see in order
in so far is it is, like seeing, a skilful negoti- to represent things; our possession of the con-
ation with what there is, as just another mod- cepts is what enables us to make contact with
ality of our environment-involving transac- them themselves. We see with our concepts.
tions. Presence, after all, is always in a modal- They are themselves techniques or means for
ity—that is, it is always dependant on our handling what there is. Think of the concept in
repertoire of skills. And it is always a matter perception not as a category, or a representa-
of degree. The hidden portions of the things tion, but a way of directly picking up what is
we see show up for us, as does the space be- there (to re-use and rehabilitate Gibson’s 1986
hind our head, and even spaces further afield. idea).
We have access—skill-based, partial, perspect- And so also for the active modality. My
ive-bound, and fragmentary—to it all. understanding gets expressed in what I do and
Perception and thought, from the actionist it gets expressed directly—for example, I exer-
perspective, differ as sight and touch differ. cise my knowledge of teacups in the way I
They are different styles of access to the world handle this cup; I grasp the cup with my hands,
around us. and also with my understanding. My under-
www.open-mind.net
standing gets put to work in the fact that I am to us as something that is always on the cusp of
able to do this, in the fact that I know how to variation, always ready to change with the least
do it. alteration in our perspective or in the condi-
Understanding, I would urge, is put to tions of viewing. A colour, no less than a solid
work, in these doings, directly. We don’t need to object, has hidden aspects. We don’t experience
suppose an action is skilful or knowledgeable or these aspects as isolated atoms—as if we were
expressive of understanding only when it is confined to what the camera sees. What we see,
guided, as it were from without, by proposi- what we experience, outstrips anything that can
tional knowledge—as if the understanding be understood in optical terms alone. For we
couldn’t inform our practical knowledge and our see, we experience, and we also think about, a
action directly. world that manifestly goes beyond what can be
And we are now finally in a position to taken in a glance. Our skills—our understand-
understand why this is the case: for then we ing, to use the term that has organised so much
would be owed an account of how understand- of this discussion—gives us access to what there
ing is put to work in judgement. And here, we is.
are just thrown back on what we can do to That access is achieved, but not once and
bring what is there for us into focus, to achieve for all. It is not as though we consume the
its presence. world in encountering it so that now we can
make do with what is inside us. Access is a
9 Conclusion: The significance of work in process. Presence is fragile, manifestly
fragility so; but it is robust.
The world shows up for us in perception and Acknowledgements

thought, but it has a fragile presence. It shows
up in very much in the same way that what a I have presented this paper at Georg-August-
person means shows up for us when we are in Universtät Göttingen, Ruprecht-Karls-Uni-
conversation, to return to the language ex- versität Heidelberg, the University of Iowa, the
ample. Misunderstanding, outright failure to University of Pittsburgh, Yale University, and
understand, are always manifestly live possibil- also in Riga at the Riga-Symposium on Cogni-
ities. It isn’t only solid opaque objects that fail tion, Communication and Logic in May 2013, as
to reveal themselves in their totality to the well as at the 2014 Wittgenstein Symposium in
single glance. What we are given, always, is an Kirchberg am Wechsel. I am grateful to these
opportunity or affordance for further effort, en- audiences for their helpful comments and ques-
gagement, negotiation, and skilful transaction. tions. For comments on the talk, or on the writ-
The world is present to thought and perception ten paper itself, I would particularly like to
not as a represented totality—an idea in our thank Michael Beaton, Andy Clark, James Con-
minds, a representation in our brains—but as ant, Caitlin Dolan, Hubert Dreyfus, Sean Kelly,
the place in which we find ourselves, where we John W. Krakauer, Zachary C. Irving, Edouard
live, where we work. The world is a big place, Machery, Thomas Ricketts, Jason Stanley,
and so there is a lot for us to do if we are to se- David Suarez, and Martin Weichold.
cure our footing on its slippery grounds. But a
slippery ground is still a ground, and we need
to secure our footing.
Presence—in thought and experience—is
fragile, in other words. Philosophy has been
strangely resistant to fragility. Fragility is not
fallibility. The point about fragility is that it is
manifest. An object’s colour shows up for us as
something with hidden aspects; it presents itself
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The Fragile Nature of the Social Mind
A Commentary on Alva Noë
Miriam Kyselo
In this paper I argue that while Noë’s actionist approach offers an excellent elab- Commentator
oration of classical approaches to conceptual understanding, it risks underestimat-
ing the role of social interactions and relations. Noë’s approach entails a form of
Miriam Kyselo
body-based individualism according to which understanding is something the mind
miriam.kyselo @ gmail.com
does all by itself. I propose that we adopt a stronger perspective on the role of
sociality and consider the human mind in terms of socially enacted autonomy. On Vrije Universiteit
this view, the mind depends constitutively on engaging with and relating to oth- Amsterdam, Netherlands
ers. As a consequence, conceptual understanding must be seen as a co-achieve-
ment. It is a fragile endeavour precisely because it depends not only on the indi- Target Author
vidual but also on the continuous contribution of other subjects.
Alva Noë
Keywords noe @ berkeley.edu
Body-social problem | Enactive self | Fragility | Socially enacted autonomy | So- University of California
cially extended mind Berkeley, CA, U.S.A.
Editors
Thomas Metzinger
Mainz, Germany
Jennifer M. Windt
Monash University
1 Introduction
In the paper “Concept Pluralism, Direct Per- spective on the mind. It is one of the so-called
ception, and the Fragility of Presence” Alva “E-approaches” to the mind (enactive, exten-
Noë offers an exciting and dense insight into his ded, embodied and embedded) that transcend
philosophical thinking. Combining his classical the classical view of the mind as being an isol-
work on the active nature of perception (Noë ated entity located in the brain that passively
2004) with his more recent inquiries into philo- represents an outside and independently-given
sophical method, presence, the arts, and human world (e.g., Shapiro 2011; Clark & Chalmers
nature in general, Noë now aims at a more 1998; Noë 2004; Varela et al. 1993; Thompson
thorough account of conceptual understanding 2007; Kyselo 2013). There are significant differ-
(2012). ences between these views (and they will be of
Noë’s proposal must be seen in light of the relevance below), but generally speaking they
paradigm shift in the philosophy of mind and all rest on the assumption that cognition is not
cognition, from a cognitivist and representation- in the head and instead requires bodily action
alist view to a distributed or embodied per- and the environment. Noë uses these insights
Kyselo, M. (2015). The Fragile Nature of the Social Mind - A Commentary on Alva Noë.
In T. Metzinger & J. M. Windt (Eds). Open MIND: 27(C). Frankfurt am Main: MIND Group. doi: 10.15502/9783958570573 1 | 11
www.open-mind.net
from the E-approaches to expand on the disem- is embedded. On this view, the social arguably
bodied and representationalist view underlying shapes the mind, but it does not figure in the
the intellectualist approach to concepts, and in constitution of the mind itself.
this way, he provides a timely and innovative In what follows, I first show that Noë’s
elaboration of conceptual understanding that is proposal entails the same presupposition and
more encompassing than previous approaches. thus invites a new form of methodological indi-
I am sympathetic to Noë’s approach. vidualism that risks limiting conceptual under-
Methodologically speaking, he illustrates what standing to the endeavour of an isolated indi-
he promotes as the right style of philosophical vidual subject. I then introduce and discuss an
analysis, an inquiry into the so-called “third- alternative proposal for a model of the indi-
realm” that remains “in-between—neither en- vidual mind as a socially enacted self. I argue
tirely objective nor merely subjective” (Noë that since the world of humans is a world of
2012, p. 136) but open for “conversation or dia- others and our social relations are what mat-
logue” (Noë 2012, p. 138). My comment should ters most to us, the social must also figure in
be considered an elaboration in the same vein. the constitutive structure of human cognitive
I agree with Noë with regards to the more individuation.1 The human mind or self is not
general project of questioning traditional con- only embodied but also genuinely social. From
ceptions in philosophy of mind by adopting an an enactive viewpoint the self can be con-
embodied and distributed perspective. That sidered as a self–other generated autonomous
said, however, I think that there is a problem system, whose network identity is brought
with his proposal. Even though it provides a forth through individual’s engagement in bod-
great number of important insights, I think, ily-mediated social interaction processes of
third-realm fashion, Noë’s proposal fails as a distinction and participation. Distinction and
general theory of understanding. The reason for participation refer to the two intrinsic goals
this is that in a crucial way his own epistemolo- that the individual follows and needs to bal-
gical pre-conception of mind is not yet fully sep- ance. Distinction means to be able to exist as
arated from the paradigm that it seeks to over- individual in one’s own right. Participation
come: while Noë acknowledges the role of the refers to an openness to others and a readiness
bodily and active individual, he accepts a dicho- to be affected by them. It refers to the sense
tomy that is prevalent in the traditional of self as connected and participating. Both
paradigm, namely the split between the indi- goals are achieved through engaging and relat-
vidual and the world of others. His approach in- ing to others. The processes that constitute
herits what I have called the body–social prob- the identity of the human mind are therefore
lem (Kyselo & Di Paolo 2013; Kyselo 2014). not defined in terms of bodily but rather in-
The body–social problem is the third in a series terpersonal relations and interactions. On this
of dichotomies in the philosophy of mind and enactive approach to the self, the body is not
the successor to the classical mind–body prob- equated with the self but instead seen as that
lem and the more recent body–body problem which grounds a double sense of self as a sep-
(Thompson 2007). The body–body problem is arated identity and as participating. The body
the question of how the bodily subject can be mediates the individual’s interactions with
at once subjectively lived and an organismic others (Kyselo 2014).
body that is embedded in the world. The body– I outline how the model of the socially en-
social problem elaborates on this and is con- acted self can combine with and elaborate Noë’s
cerned with the question of how bodily and so- actionist account of concepts so as to arrive at
cial aspects figure in the individuation of the an even more encompassing view of human un-
human individual mind. Philosophers of cogni- 1 By saying that sociality matters constitutively for the human self, I
tion systematically assume that the mind is es- mean that without continuously relating and engaging in interactions
sentially embodied, while the social world re- with others, there would be no human self as a whole. The social is
not only causally relevant for enacting selfhood, but it is also an es-
mains the context in which the embodied mind sential component of its minimal organisational structure.
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derstanding as well as a deeper appreciation of are not very different from one another. Both
its fragile nature. are “a skillful negotiation with what there is,
just another modality of our environment-in-
2 The risk of crypto-individualism volving transactions” (Noë this collection, p.
16). From this perspective, judgements belong
Noë observes a dichotomy between what he to a particular mode of access and form part of
calls the intellectualist approach to concepts, a broader set of skills of conceptual understand-
the view that concepts are judgments, which is ing. Noë then specifies the nature of our access
endorsed by Kant and Frege, and the existential to the world. The world is not just out there
phenomenological approach, such as that en- ready to be understood. Rather, it always has
dorsed by Dreyfus, which argues that concepts to be made available and actively brought into
are usually only used by the novice, and that view or into “presence”, as Noë puts it. Con-
understanding is otherwise already given cepts are the means by which we can achieve
through context and situation.2 Noë disagrees this. They are the techniques “by which we se-
with both positions. He rejects the idea that cure our contact” with the world (ibid.). But
concepts are only judgments, fixed and just bringing the world into presence is not a fixed,
“out there”, to help us represent the world; yet one-time or uni-directional endeavour. Concep-
contrary to the anti-intellectualists, Noë also tual understanding involves continuous engage-
emphasizes that conceptual understanding is ment with the world; it can change and also
not limited to the novice, but “at work fail. Noë proposes the notion of fragility as a
wherever we think and perceive and act and key for understanding conceptual activity as an
talk”. What the existential phenomenologist open and necessarily vulnerable phenomenon,
thereby misses, according to Noë, is that skillful instead of a perfect application of definite rep-
mastery involves learning and development. Noë resentations of the world. In this way, he over-
assumes that, like intellectualism, anti-intellec- comes the limited view of both the intellectual-
tualism makes the presupposition that concepts ist and anti-intellectualist perspectives accord-
are equal to judgments and thus implicitly re- ing to which concepts are judgments about an
duces the mind to a “realm of detached contem- independent world.
plation” (2012, p. 25). For that reason, Noë One of Noë’s crucial insights is that the
calls anti-intellectualism crypto-intellectualist. traditional dichotomy between an objectively
Noë seeks to find an alternative to the two given world and subjectively experienced, in-
positions by questioning their very fundaments. ternally-processed data about worldly objects
Rather than assuming that the world is just can be overcome by grounding all conceptual
given and that everything is already present to activity in a broader “common genus”, i.e., skil-
us, Noë emphasizes the active contribution of ful engagement with the world. But what is
the individual organism (2004, 2009). He pro- even more important, and in this I think Noë
poses that we should adopt a pluralistic ap- does not actually diverge far from Dreyfus and
proach to concepts, according to which concep- other existential phenomenologists, is that the
tual understanding is basically having the skills established unity of different modes of under-
required for accessing the world. There are dif- standing is not merely a unity in terms of styles
ferent types or modes of access to the world, in- of access to the world, but also a unity groun-
cluding the modes of perception and action, the ded in the individual mind as a whole. But
(inter)personal, and the emotional mode. On what is that individual mind as whole?
this pluralistic account, thinking and perceiving Noë quite clearly presupposes that we are
not our brains. We understand the world
2 The existential phenomenological approach refers to phenomenolo-
gists such as Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty who investigate the basic through navigating it with our thinking, skilful
structures of human existence. One of their assumptions is that prior sensorimotor body (Noë this collection, 2004).
to any reflexive understanding, we are already attuned to the world
simply through our bodily being in it. Dreyfus calls this pre-reflexive
This view breaks with the cognitivist paradigm
attunement to the world “absorbed coping” (2013, p. 21). with regard to the constitutive elements of the
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system that does the understanding, and it also (Varela 1997; Maturana & Varela 1987). Ac-
breaks with it with regard to the relation of the cording to Thompson, it is this autonomous self
understanding system to the environment: the that gives unity to the sensorimotor skills in
system is not passive, but rather active and dy- terms of self-organisation and operational clos-
namical. What this elaboration implies, yet ure (2005, 2007). Operational closure means
does not make explicit, is the fact that concep- that some process relations of the autonomous
tual activity is done by a bodily agent who un- network remain constant despite structural de-
derstands or has access to the world. After all, pendence on the environment, i.e., each process
conceptual understanding is not just under- within the network is not only enabling but also
standing about something but always also un- enabled by some other process. With the pro-
derstanding for someone and by someone. To duction of such a self-organised autonomous
argue that thought and perception are unified identity the individual also acquires a basic sub-
as modes of access thus presupposes an indi- jective perspective, from which interactions with
vidual who employs these different modes of ac- the world are evaluated respectively. This sub-
cess, someone for whom the world can show up. jective perspective is what Thompson calls a
Without an agent that does the understanding, pre-reflective bodily self-consciousness (2007, p.
postulating a unification of modes of under- 261).
standing would not make any sense, as any un- On Thompson’s enactive account, the indi-
derstanding would remain an action that has vidual is now not only active and embodied but
neither origin nor actor. also an autonomous subjective agent. Import-
This is a point that Evan Thompson, who antly however, Thompson shares with Noë a du-
is also a proponent of embodied cognition, has bious fundamental pre-supposition, namely the
already made on some of Noë’s earlier work on idea that the individual mind or subject can be
enactive perception (2007). According to equated with the individual sensorimotor body
Thompson, while emphasising the role of exper- or organism. The autonomous agent is a self-or-
iences of objects, Noë underestimates the role of ganised “sensorimotor selfhood” (Thompson
subjectivity as such: the “sensorimotor approach 2005, p. 10). As a consequence, in both
needs a notion of selfhood or agency, because to Thompson and Noë’s views, the mind is em-
explain perceptual experience it appeals to sen- powered and freed, as it is no longer restricted
sorimotor knowledge. Knowledge implies a to the passive, information-consuming existence
knower or agent or self that embodies this that is distant to the world and confined to the
knowledge” (Thompson 2007, p. 260). This is narrow shells of our heads. Nevertheless, it still
where I think Noë’s underlying epistemology re- remains a mind of a body in isolation: in isola-
quires elaboration. Who or what is the indi- tion from the world of others.3 This risk of an
vidual subject that engages in this fragile en- individualist account of the agent is the first
deavour of securing access to the world? horn of a dilemma underlying Noë’s proposal.
Thompson provides an insight that can be The second horn has to do with the fact that
seen as a major step into the right direction: he for Noë understanding is actually not an isol-
proposes addressing the body–body problem, i.e., ated endeavour. The social world is mentioned
the question of how the agent can be at once
subjectively lived and an organismic or sensor- 3 Thompson clearly recognises the importance of intersubjectivity for the
process of understanding, arguing that “human subjectivity is from the
imotor body that is embedded in the world outset intersubjectivity, and no mind is an island” (2007, p. 383). He
(2007, pp. 235–237), by proposing an enactive proposes (in line with Husserl) that humans are from the beginning in-
tersubjectively open. However, it seems that Thompson’s emphasis on
notion of selfhood. According to this notion, in- sociality is either developmentally motivated and concerned with the in-
dividual agency is defined in terms of tersubjectively-open intentionality in object perception or a question of
our (rather sophisticated ability) to understand others and to make the
autonomy. It is seen as a self-organised network distinction between self and other. But the subject herself, despite being
of interconnected processes that produce and intersubjectively open, is still a “bodily subject” (Thompson 2007, p.
sustain themselves as a systemic whole—a 382). In other words, the structures of subjectivity itself, the very net-
work processes that bring about the individual as an autonomous sys-
bounded identity within a particular domain tem, are determined bodily, not intersubjectively.
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throughout the paper in the form of other sub- attempt to overcome the dichotomy between ex-
jects that seem to enable the individual’s under- istential phenomenology and classical conceptu-
standing in various ways. Some of the skills of alism, Noë inherits a very similar problem.
access are interpersonal and also, as Noë em- Noë’s actionist approach opens the individual
phasizes, have to be learned. up to the world; but, perhaps because he is try-
The question is, how do we learn skills? ing to avoid an implication of Dreyfus’ existen-
We usually learn through a teacher, and thus tial phenomenology, namely the risk of losing
through the help of another being. Similarly, the individual (as already immersed) in the
how do we discover a piece of art? By discussing world, Noë also risks over-emphasizing the
it with a friend, who helps to bring about a new status of the embodied individual, thereby miss-
perspective on it. The person whom we misun- ing the deeper relation between the individual
derstand and try again to understand is another and the social world. The undesirable implica-
subject. Understanding is a highly intersubject- tion is that conceptual activity is essentially an
ive endeavour, not only developmentally—in the isolated undertaking (since according to stand-
sense that we need others at some point in life ard approaches to embodiment there is nothing
to learn a particular skill—but also in a con- social about the individual body or organism
tinuously on-going sense, for much of the very per se). It is the lonesome individual by herself
process of human understanding happens who navigates through the world, equipped
through and with others contemporaneously. with a great set of skills that enable her to act
Strikingly, however, though Noë admits this in and to secure the access to the world. 4 Because
acknowledging that understanding happens Noë seems to implicitly accept the individual-
through communication and thus through the istic premise of the traditional cognitivist view,
contribution of other subjects, the social does one might say that that his proposal is crypto-
not seem to matter constitutively in his general individualist.
theory of conceptual understanding. The mech- Noë is not alone in making the crypto-in-
anism and structures of the process of under- dividualist presupposition. According to Post-
standing are defined in terms of sensorimotor Cartesian and non-cognitivist philosophy of cog-
processes, not in terms of interactions with oth- nition, the mind supposedly involves an active
ers, and the unity that grounds conceptual un- and dynamical engagement with the social and
derstanding is constitutively the sensorimotor material environment, and also has an experien-
body in object-oriented action; it is not, more tial dimension (Shapiro 2011; Clark & Chalmers
dynamically put, the individual in its relation 1998; Varela et al. 1993; Thompson 2007). But
to other subjects. The worry is that in Noë’s the integration of these aspects, and in particu-
approach, the social part of the world would lar that of the social and bodily dimension with
therefore only play the weak role of an outside regards to the individual that has or is the
and divided context. In contrast, on a strong mind still remains a fundamental question. This
reading of the relation between understanding is what I have called the body–social problem:
and sociality, engagements and relations with how can the mind be at once a distinct bodily
others would have a more than developmental individual but at the same time remain open
or contextual relevance. Instead, they would and connected to the social world? At the mo-
also be considered part and parcel of the very ment there is a dichotomy between views that
structure of the process of understanding, and posit that the mind is embodied and views that
they would (as I argue below) figure in the min- emphasize the relevance of situatedness and em-
imal constitution of autonomous selfhood. beddedness. On the former view, the mind is
Noë characterises Dreyfus’s anti-intellectu- active but confined to being an isolated indi-
alist stance as “crypto-intellectualist” because 4 Note that it does not actually matter whether one posits that the
Dreyfus allegedly accepts the premises of the in- mind is in the head or in the body, both claims are compatible
tellectualist’s view that understanding is rule- with the weak reading of the interrelation of individual and so -
cial world, according to which the social remains separated from
based judgement. Yet one might say that in his the individual.
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vidual. On the latter, the mind is primordially who we are as subjects. But, speaking to the
immersed in the (social) world. The first view potential worry of losing the individual in
risks a new form of methodological individual- worldly engagements, the solution is of course
ism where the individual mind, while no longer neither to negate any need for differentiation
restricted to the brain, is now confined to the nor the necessity of the individual to have its
body. Here the social world becomes the ex- own share in the very mechanism of under-
ternal, independently given world into which standing the world. Where I think both posi-
these newly embodied and active, yet essentially tions go wrong is in extrapolating from a part
isolated individuals parachute (Kyselo 2014).5 of adult human phenomenology (even when it is
The second view focuses too much on the inter- paired, as in Noë’s case, with an objective ac-
action dynamics and risks losing the immersed count of the constitutive mechanism of experi-
individual mind in the world (and social inter- ence) to a general theory of understanding. In
actions), thereby blurring the very epistemolo- crypto-individualism the individual mind carries
gical target of our philosophical inquiry (Kyselo a heavy burden. It is free from passivity and yet
2013, 2014). enormously restrained by the responsibility of
The body–social problem reveals a deeper achieving the access to the world (and the social
linkage between Noë and the stance of the ex- world) and itself, all by itself. Existential phe-
istential phenomenologist that he actually seeks nomenologists, in emphasising the importance
to debunk. Both positions disagree with the tra- of the social world and its pre-given structures
ditional Cartesian picture of the mind; both in bringing about understanding then ease the
hold that embodiment matters vitally for the burden and free the individual from some of the
mind. But notice that they also focus on differ- responsibility in achieving this; and yet at the
ent aspects of what a true alternative to the same time they also risk depriving the indi-
classical view might look like. The overall al- vidual of its power and right to have a say in
ternative basically involves a fundamental shift that endeavour.6
in thinking about the relation between an indi- It should be clear that neither position on
vidual and the world. In this vein, Noë is right its own will suffice to overcome the dichotomy
to emphasise the individual’s power, giving it inherent in the intellectualist view on concepts.
more responsibility in the very construction of The individual cannot understand the world
its own mind and of the world it experiences, simply by being an individual body, but neither
but so are the existential phenomenologists is the world already understood just by simply
when they focus on worldly embeddedness and being immersed in it.
the fact that a great deal of our being in the
world relies on pre-given structures that can 3 Deep dynamics and the enactive self
surpass the individual’s capacities. An emphasis
on individual action and responsibility cannot There exists a middle ground from which the
mean that the individual is all alone. We would dilemma of having to choose between too much
not have made enough progress if the main dif- or too little individualism can be avoided and a
ference between Noë’s proposal and the repres- more complete epistemological basis for concep-
entationalist division between individual and tual understanding achieved. Finding this
world was that now, while being able to move middle ground basically consists in re-thinking
towards the world, the world does not also move the nature of the mind and of human under-
toward us but remains separate with regard to standing while doing more justice to the deep
other subjects. Other people are active, too, and interrelation between individual and social
they shape not merely the world for us but also world. To this end I have recently proposed the
5 This image is adapted from Varela et al. (1993), who criticise the 6 This commentary is not the place to discuss this issue in detail, but
traditional view as implying that the environment is a “landing pad it should be noted that such a view can be expanded to political
for organisms that somehow drop or parachute into the world” (p. philosophy and the philosophy of law, where it might have far reach-
198); instead, they argue that the relation between world and indi- ing consequences for questions concerning the nature of individual
vidual mind is co-determining. rights and approaches to legal responsibility.
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concept of the socially enacted self (Kyselo tion). Yet, despite these shortcomings I believe
2014, 2013; Kyselo & Tschacher 2014). On this there are two important insights in this exten-
approach, the individual is not sufficiently de- ded functionalist account: first, that the indi-
termined in terms of active embodiment; in- vidual should not be restricted to the biological
stead it is thought to incorporate social and re- realm (be it the brain or the body) but incor-
lational processes into the structure that makes porates tools and technologies, and second, that
up its identity as an individual. This suggests the mind transcends the individual physiological
that without a “social loop” we cannot speak body and that the world matters constitutively
about the human self as a centre of individu- for determining the boundaries of the mind.
ation in any interesting sense. After all, humans The third insight comes from the enactive
do not merely distinguish themselves against a approach to cognition, which proposes that the
background of material objects, but, crucially, mind is basically an autonomous system that
against the world of other humans. They be- self-organizes its identity based on operational
come someone, an identifiable individual against closure. The enactive approach thereby shares
a world of other individuals and social groups. with extended cognition the idea that the indi-
This idea should become clearer by recon- vidual is not clearly separable from the environ-
sidering, or making more explicit, a number of ment. On the enactive view, the individual’s
insights already implied in diverse approaches in mind is “defined by its endogenous, self-organiz-
embodied cognitive science. ing and self-controlling dynamics, does not have
First, Noë’s crypto-individualism captures inputs and outputs in the usual sense, and de-
something essential about the ways humans ac- termines the cognitive domain in which it oper-
cess the world: we often experience the process ates” (Thompson 2007, p. 43). Identity is there-
of understanding as something we do by fore not a given thing or a property, but rela-
ourselves—the concepts we acquire and employ tional: brought forth through the individual’s
are ours and to a large extent we appear to be on-going and dynamical interaction with the
in control in our attempts to secure the world. world. This approach adds an insight derived
Noë’s other important insight is that conceptual from philosophy of biology, namely that like liv-
understanding is an achievement. It is a far- ing beings, cognitive beings create an identity
from-perfect endeavour, involving experiences of that they strive to maintain, and that under-
vulnerability, openness, of not always being able standing the world depends on the purposes
to own and to access the world. and concerns of that identity (Weber & Varela
The second insight is appreciated in the 2002; Thompson 2007) in that they guide and
debate on extended cognition. Clark & structure our understanding.7
Chalmers in their now classical paper “The Ex- The three variants of embodied cognitive
tended Mind” propose that a tool, such as a science therefore all reject the mind–body di-
notebook or a computer, can count as part of chotomy and emphasise a dynamical interrela-
the individual mind (1998). This essentially tion between embodied individual and world.
functionalist position goes against Noë and All of them however, either miss or do not fully
“beyond the sensorimotor frontier” (Clark 2008, acknowledge that the world is social and that
p. 195)—the mind is not restricted to the body the individual is also a psychological and social
but spreads across neuronal, bodily, and envir- being whose concerns are more than object-ori-
onmental features. The extended cognition ap- ented. This is where the enactive approach to
proach to embodiment has been criticised for the social self comes into play. It basically elab-
being too liberal, since it lacks both a principled orates on and integrates the above insights, i.e.,
definition of “body” and of “cognition”. It re- action (sensorimotor cognition), co-constitution
mains unclear how an environmental prop or 7 Interestingly, this is also an insight Dreyfus pointed out much earlier
technology could be integrated into the cognit- when he argued that the “human world, then is prestructured in
ive architecture of an individual mind (Kyselo terms of human purposes and concerns in such a way that what
counts as an object or is significant about an object already is a
& Di Paolo 2013, see also Menary this collec- function of, or embodies, that concern” (1972, p. 173).
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(extended cognition), and grounding in selfhood a self-other generated network of precari-

(enactive cognition), by adopting a much more ously organized interpersonal processes
radical perspective on the dynamical interrela- whose systemic identity emerges as a res-
tion between the individual and the world—let ult of a continuous engagement in social
us call this perspective deep dynamics. Deep dy- interactions and relations that can be
namics means that the nature of the relation qualified as moving in two opposed direc-
between individual and world is one of strong tions, toward emancipation from others
co-constitution: not only does the individual (distinction) and toward openness to them
actively shape and structure the world, the (participation). (Kyselo 2014)
world, too, affects the individual in its basic or-
ganisational structure. If identity and domain In line with the concept of operational closure,
depend on each other in a strong and mutual both types of processes, distinction and parti-
sense, as the enactive approach to cognition has cipation, are required to bring about the indi-
it, then even more advanced non-organismic or vidual self. Without distinction, the individual
virtual notions of the body do not change the would risk immersion or becoming heteronom-
fact that the organismic bodily domain is an in- ously determined and forced to rely on the next
dividualist domain (Kyselo & Di Paolo 2013). best or a limited set of social interactions. But
In other words, the organismic body cannot be without participation and an act of openness to-
related to the social at the same level of organ- wards others, the individual eschews structural
isational closure. The enactive approach to the renewal, thus risking isolation and rigidity
self would suggest instead that the level at (Kyselo 2014). The point, however, is that this
which human selves can be usefully operational- form of operational closure contains social inter-
ised as autonomous identities is social, not actions. In enactive terms, this is to say that
merely embodied. Admittedly, by emphasising the individual is at the same time self-and-
how conceptual understanding is shaped other-organized. As a consequence, the self is
through social engagements with others, Noë’s not a given nor an individual bodily achieve-
approach obviously also implies a bi-directional ment but also and necessarily co-constructed
relation between individual and world. Simil- with others. Both the individual and the world
arly, as we have seen above, Thompson’s sensor- (that is, other subjects) have a say in the con-
imotor subject is also clearly involved in inter- stitutive mechanism of someone’s mind. In con-
subjective interactions (2005, p. 408). However, trast to Noë’s presupposition, the mind cannot
the bi-directional impact in these accounts is be equated with the active body. Rather, the
more shallow than in the present proposal, as sensorimotor body becomes the ever-evolving
they consider the (social) world to play a con- interface that in being with others co-generates
textual or developmental role, or to matter with the very boundaries of what we call the self
regards to shaping object-recognition. In deep (Kyselo 2014).
dynamics, in contrast, we expand on the insight At this point, proponents of embodiment
of extended cognition that the mind transcends might still want to insist that there is some-
brain and body by acknowledging that this not thing about the body’s role in grounding the
only the case through interactions with tools sense of self that non-negotiably remains en-
but also through our social interactions and re- tirely independent from social interactions. I
lations with other subjects. The idea then is agree, if by “sense of self” one refers to the self
that qua being embedded in a social world, the as mere biological identity. However, if by “self”
self, and by that I mean the individual as a we mean the human self in distinction from
whole, constitutively relies on its interactions other humans, then the proposed view chal-
and relations to other subjects. According to lenges this intuition. It does this, however,
this elaboration on the enactive account of self- without giving up the insight that the self has
hood, the self can be defined as a socially en- to do with individuation. The enactive notion of
acted autonomous system. It is: autonomy and self-organization saves the indi-
www.open-mind.net
vidual from immersion in the social world by tion that feeds into the very organisational
appreciating that the distinction between indi- structure of mind itself. The person involved in
vidual and world is an organisational, not onto- the intentional relation is a social subject. In ac-
logical distinction. Our sense of being a distinct cordance with the two-fold structure of socially
someone is something that is achieved together enacted autonomy, this would also mean that
with others, not just qua being a biological self-reflexivity has a social structure, entailing a
body. sense of being a self as separate individual and
The basic idea of the socially enacted self a sense of being open and connected to the
is therefore not to overcome the tension entailed world.
in the body-social dichotomy but rather to wel- Here lies the deeper reason for why the
come and recognise it as a necessary property of process of understanding is fragile. The fragility
mind itself and to thus integrate this tension of understanding consists precisely in the fact
into a general theory of understanding. On this that the unity of mind is never a given, but is
view, the individual mind has to continuously itself an on-going achievement. Since, as I sug-
negotiate its identity as an individual agent and gest, this is an achievement with others, pres-
its understanding in dependence on other sub- ence does not merely depend on what we do,
jects. As a consequence, uncertainty, conflict, but also on what others do, and especially on
and a permanent need for negotiation and co- what we do with them. In other words, presence
negotiation are part and parcel of being an es- is actually co-presence. It is clearly outside the
sentially social human mind. This is why it scope of this commentary to explicate this in
might be useful to distinguish several senses of more detail, but generally speaking it means
fragility. Fragile understanding is one of them. that understanding simply never really is the
But on the enactive account of selfhood, mind endeavour of an individual mind. This comple-
itself is fragile. ments Noë’s perspective and invites future ex-
plorations in at least two fundamental senses.
4 Varieties of co-presence First, with regards to the role of others in
empowering the individual by enabling access to
Let us now explore a couple of implications that the world: our conceptual skills are acquired
a deep dynamics view has for conceptual under- and the acquisition of these skills usually hap-
standing. By basing conceptual understanding pens in interaction and by learning together
on an understanding of the individual as a so- with others. But our ways of understanding are
cially enacted autonomous system, we can do also continuously shaped and mediated by being
justice to existential phenomenologists who em- with others, be it through cultural norms, bi-
phasize the importance of situatedness and flow ases, advice, or advertisement. Apart from the
and also to Noë’s rightful actionist call for obvious fact that much of instantaneous under-
emancipation of the passive individual mind. standing happens together with others, even in
For Noë, the unity of conceptual modes is de- the absence of others, in the process of under-
rived from positing an active, thinking, sensor- standing, we often presuppose another subject
imotor body. The present proposal suggests that or at least some implicit act of relationality.
the unity is grounded in a socially co-organized Noë says that “there is no such thing as a per-
individual. Noë’s idea of thinking of experien- ceptual encounter with the object that is not
cing and understanding the world as a “relation also an encounter with it from one or another
between a skillful person and really existing point of view” (2012, p. 138). I could not agree
thing” (2012, p. 42), could thus be elaborated more, and yet I suggest we also embrace the
by saying that the intentional relation is also a idea that these other viewpoints are not merely
relation to other subjects, so that intentionality defined in terms of changes in head or body-
is actually co-generated. Yet this co-generated movement but also in terms of loops to and
intentionality is not merely about sharing a per- from different subjective and intersubjective
spective on the world; it is a co-generated rela- view points.
www.open-mind.net
If conceptual understanding has the purpose achieved together with them, through negotiat-
of bringing us into contact with the world, as Noë ing a permanent tension of maintaining a sense
claims, then we should not underestimate the role of individuality while not losing the connection
of others and of our being open to them in mak- to others (distinction and participation).
ing this contact possible. To consider human un- From this perspective, the point of Kafka’s
derstanding as fragile is also to admit a limitation story is therefore not so much to deny that we
of the individual’s capacities and to allow others are animals, but rather to claim that we are so-
and our dialogues with them to play a funda- cial animals that achieve ourselves together with
mental role. In this sense fragility can be a source others. Reflecting the basic insight of this pa-
of power. Our minds are open, not only to the per, the story thus illustrates the fragility and
world, but also to contributions from others. social nature of human existence. It is an ex-
But that said, and this is the second and pression of desperation and of the suffering that
final implication of the enactive self for the ba- can come when others refuse or are unable to
sic nature of human understanding, the social comply with our basic needs: being recognised
nature and fragility of mind also restricts the as individual and as someone who belongs to
individual’s capacities. When the social plays a others. Having lost contact with himself as a
marginal and contextual role, the individual’s human subject in the bureaucratic machinery of
responsibility in understanding the world is im- his professional life, Samsa awakes as an insect,
mense and the optimism in the individual’s ca- his new embodiment an imprint of alienation
pacities can become a heavy burden. The other and loss of recognition. But the loss cuts even
side of fragility is that the presence of the world deeper. With his alien embodiment Samsa the
is not only “not for free”, as Noë puts it, but it insect is rejected by his family, so that he finds
is actually sometimes not available at all. It is no salvation in his private life. Samsa dies from
not available because other subjects have a say social isolation. From an enactive view of the
in the construction of our understanding, and self as a joint achievement, Kafka’s The Meta-
given that they have perspectives and interests morphosis captures (like much of his other
of their own, their contribution may sometimes work) the consequences of our deep vulnerabil-
be out of reach, run contrary to what we need, ity and limited freedom and the drama of the
or even confuse us deeply. The fragile nature of loss from which we can suffer precisely because
our social mind can therefore also deny us ac- we are social beings.
cess to the world. The social structures that we depend upon
empower our ways of understanding; yet for the
5 Conclusion same reason they can also enslave us, and seri-
ously limit our mental capacities. This, I sug-
In his book Varieties of Presence, Noë refers to gest, is not merely the case for institutions and
Kafka’s The Metamorphosis (1915), the story of their bureaucratic apparatus but also applies to
Gregor Samsa, who wakes up as an insect, lying our direct intersubjective relations, be they with
on his back, unable to move. Noë uses the story lovers, friends, family, or co-workers.
to illustrate the upshot of his philosophy of un- Presence is therefore not simply availabil-
derstanding. “We are not only animals”, he says, ity—since this would suggest the subject’s un-
but we “achieve the world by enacting ourselves. warranted access to the world. Presence is
Insofar as we achieve access to the world, we also rather a joint achievement, and the nature of
achieve ourselves” (Noë 2012, p. 28). doing things together is that there will always
On the presented alternative, the actionist be leaps and limitations. In this way, failure and
nature of self-achieved understanding is only limited control over the ways we understand the
half of the story. I have suggested that our world are not entirely the responsibility of the
minds and selves are genuinely social and thus individual and its techniques and skills, but also
transcend the limits of our bodily existence. a deeper expression of the genuinely social and
The human self vitally depends on others and is co-constructed nature of understanding.
www.open-mind.net
Acknowledgements Maturana, H. R. & Varela, F. J. (1987). The tree of

knowledge: The biological roots of human understand-
I would like to thank Gabriel Levy and Mike ing. Boston, MA: Shambhala Publications.
Beaton as well as two anonymous reviewers for Menary, R. (2015). Mathematical cognition. In T. Met-
their useful comments. My gratitude also goes zinger & J. M. Windt (Eds.) Open MIND. Frankfurt a.
to the editors and organisers of the MIND M., GER: MIND Group.
group, Jennifer Windt and Thomas Metzinger. Noë, A. (2004). Action in perception. Cambridge, MA:
The MIND-group has been a unique source of MIT press.
inspiration and support. This work is supported (2009). Out of our heads: Why you are not your
by the Marie-Curie Initial Training Network, brain, and other lessons from the biology of conscious-
“TESIS: Toward an Embodied Science of Inter- ness. New York, NY: Hill and Wang.
Subjectivity” (FP7-PEOPLE-2010-ITN, 264828) (2012). Varieties of presence. Cambridge, MA:
and by the "Science Beyond Scientism" Research Harvard University Press.
Project at VU University of Amsterdam. (2015). Concept pluralism, direct perception, and
the fragility of presence. In T. Metzinger & J. M.
References Windt (Eds.) Open MIND. Frankfurt a. M., GER:
MIND Group.
Clark, A. (2008). Supersizing the mind: Embodiment, ac- Shapiro, L. (2011). Embodied cognition. New York, NY:
tion, and cognitive extension. Oxford, UK: Oxford Uni- Routledge.
versity Press. Thompson, E. (2005). Sensorimotor subjectivity and the
Clark, A. & Chalmers, D. (1998). The extended mind. enactive approach to experience. Phenomenology and
Analysis, 58 (1), 7-19. 10.1111/1467-8284.00096 the Cognitive Sciences, 4 (4), 407-427.
Dreyfus, H. L. (1972). What computers can’t do. New 10.1007/s11097-005-9003-x
York, NY: Harper and Row. (2007). Mind in life: Biology, phenomenology, and
(2013). The myth of the pervasiveness of the men- the sciences of mind. Cambridge, MA: The Harvard
tal. In J. K. Schear (Ed.) Mind, reason, and being-in- University Press.
the-world: The McDowell-Dreyfus debate (pp. 15-41). Varela, F. J. (1997). Patterns of life: Intertwining identity
London, UK: Routledge. and cognition. Brain and Cognition, 34, 72-87.
Kafka, F. (1915). The Metamorphosis. 10.1006/brcg.1997.0907
Kyselo, M. (2013). Enaktivismus. In A. Stephan & S. Varela, F. J., Thompson, E. & Rosch, E. (1993). The em-
Walter (Eds.) Handbuch Kognitionswissenschaft (pp. bodied mind: Cognitive science and human experience.
197-202). Stuttgart, GER: J.B. Metzler. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
(2014). The body social: An enactive approach to Weber, A. & Varela, F. (2002). Life after Kant: Natural
the self. Frontiers in Psychology, 5. purposes and the autopoietic foundations of biological
10.3389/fpsyg.2014.00986 individuality. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sci-
Kyselo, M. & Di Paolo, E. (2013). Locked-in syndrome: A ences, 1 (2), 97-125. 10.1023/A:1020368120174
challenge for embodied cognitive science. Phenomeno-
logy and the Cognitive Sciences, 3 (1), 1-26.
10.1007/s11097-013-9344-9
Kyselo, M. & Tschacher, W. (2014). An enactive and dy-
namical systems theory account of dyadic relationships.
Frontiers in Psychology, 5 (452).
10.3389/fpsyg.2014.00452
Beyond Agency
A Reply to Miriam Kyselo
Alva Noë
In this paper I respond to Kyselo’s (this collection) claim that actionism, and Author
other versions of the enactive embodied approach to mind, fail to accord social re -
lations a constitutive role in making up the human mind. I argue that actionism
Alva Noë
can meet this challenge—the view makes relations to others central to an account
noe @ berkeley.edu
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 con- University of California,
stitutive role? Berkeley, CA, U.S.A.
Keywords Commentator
Actionism | Body-social problem | Concept pluralism | Concepts | Consciousness |
Enactive account | Enactive self | Evans | Fragility | Frege | Individualism | Intel- Miriam Kyselo
lectualism | Kant | Organized activity | Perception | Plato | Presence | Sensor- miriam.kyselo @ gmail.com
imotor account | Socially enacted autonomy | Socially extended mind | The intel- Vrije Universiteit
lectualist insight | The intellectualist thesis | Understanding | Wittgenstein Amsterdam, Netherlands
Editors
Thomas Metzinger
Mainz, Germany
Jennifer M. Windt
Monash University
1 Introduction
In my contribution to this volume (Noë this col- of judgment. In my target paper I also criticize
lection), I seek to bring out the truth in intellec- anti-intellectualist views, such as that of Drey-
tualism. The intellectualist is right, I concede, fus, for failing to break with intellectualism;
that understanding is at work throughout the such views reject the pervasiveness of the under-
domain of agency—whereever we can talk of standing because they accept the intellectual-
perception, or thinking, or action. Understand- ist’s hyper-intellectualized conception of what
ing is pervasive. The trouble with intellectual- understanding is and because they find it im-
ism, I argue, is that it cleaves to an unrealistic plausible that our experiential or cognitive lives
conception of what is demanded for understand- are intellectual in this way. In this brief reply to
ing to come into play. I particular, it adheres to Kyselo’s excellent commentary, I would like to
an over-intellectualized conception of under- say something about what the anti-intellectual-
standing, according to which an action, or a ism of the sort I criticize in the paper gets right.
perception, can be conceptual only if it is I now want to try to bring out the insight in
guided, as it were from above, by explicit acts anti-intellectualism.
Noë, A. (2015). Beyond Agency - A Reply to Miriam Kyselo.
In T. Metzinger & J. M. Windt (Eds). Open MIND: 27(R). Frankfurt am Main: MIND Group. doi: 10.15502/9783958571068 1|5
www.open-mind.net
2 The truth in anti-intellectualism milliseconds. No. We are interested in what

people do, but in a manner that is truly beyond
If the intellectualist is right that understanding agency. We are interested, here, in a phe-
saturates the space of agency, the anti-intellec- nomenon of the embodiment level (as distinct
tualist is right that there is also understanding from the subpersonal or the personal level).
beyond the limits of our agency. Stanley (2011, And yet we remain, when thinking about
cited in Noë this collection) relied on the oppos- conversation—or any other organized activity—
ition between the personal and the subpersonal; very much in a domain where we can and must
he supposed that what makes a mere reflex, speak of cognitive achievement, understanding,
which is subpersonal, an action, which is per- skill, and so on.
sonal, is that it is guided by knowledge or One upshot of these considerations, then,
reason. But the opposition between reflex and is that while understanding, as I argued above,
action is not exhaustive, and the crucial dimen- is a necessary condition of agency, it is also
sion is not that of the contrast between the per- present beyond its limits. Another is that un-
sonal and the subpersonal. Consider conversa- derstanding beyond the limits of agency cannot
tion, as an example. We can characterize con- be understood individualistically. This is obvi-
versation as a personal-level action. But there is ous in the case of intrinsically social activities,
a way of describing the phenomenon that defies like conversation, but it is also true for organ-
such characterization. When two people talk ized activities that can be carried out by solit-
they adopt similar postures, they pause at co- ary individuals (such as seeing, for example).
ordinated intervals, they adjust their volumes to The thing that anti-intellectualism gets
match each other, they move their eyes and right, as I see it, is the appreciation that a great
modify their dialects, all in ways that are gov- deal of what we do, isn’t really done by us:
erned by their interaction (see Shockley et al. activity happens to us; we find ourselves organ-
2009 for a review of this literature). Talking is ized. We are made what we are in the setting of
what I elsewhere call an “organized activity” organized activities.
(Noë in press). One remarkable feature of or- From the standpoint of the theory of or-
ganized activities, in this sense, is that they are ganized activities—presented in more detail in
not guided by the participants or authored by Noë (in press)—we are creatures who are from
them. Another is that they are carried on spon- the very beginning caught up in world and
taneously and without deliberate control. And other-involving organized activities; these activ-
yet another is that they are clearly domains in ities form the lived substrate of our biographical
which highly sophisticated cognitive capacities lives as persons. Actionism, in these ways, is
—looking, listening, paying attention, moving, committed to a radical form of anti-individual-
undergoing—are put to work. ism.
Notice: I said above that talking, in the
sense I have in mind, is not a personal-level 3 The challenge of crypto-individualism
activity. What I mean by this is that the sort of
tight coupling and temporal dynamics, the sort Now, Kyselo has criticized actionism not for ig-
of organization we see at work when people noring the social, but for failing to treat the so-
talk, is not best characterized at the level of cial as constitutive of human cognitive organiza-
minutes, hours, choices, etc. that normally char- tion. Kyselo’s point is that for actionism, other
acterize the personal level. But nor is this a people and our relations to them “shape” the
phenomenon of the subpersonal level. For one mind, but they do so in the same the way that
thing, we aren’t interested in something hap- any environmental conditions cause, constrain,
pening in the nervous system of one individual. or enable human experience; the view makes no
We are interested in something encompassing allowance for the stronger possibility that other
two (or more) people. For another, we aren’t in- people and our social relations with them are
terested in processes unfolding at time-scales of actually constitutive of what it is to be a human
www.open-mind.net
being. So she writes, with actionism as one of But we are not only animals. I am also a
her targets in mind: father, and a teacher, and a philosopher,
and a writer. These modalities of my being
Philosophers of cognition systematically were no more given to me than my ability
assume that the mind is essentially em- to read and write. I achieve myself. Not on
bodied, while the social world remains the my own, to be sure! And not in a heroic
context in which the embodied mind is way. Maybe it would better to say that my
embedded. On this view, the social argu- parents and my friends and family and
ably shapes the mind, but it does not fig- children and colleagues have achieved me
ure in the constitution of the mind itself. for me. The point is that we are cultivated
(Kyselo this collection, p. 2) ourselves—learning to talk and read and
dance and dress and play guitar and do
And she goes on to explain: mathematics and physics and philosophy
—and in this cultivation worlds open up
I argue that since the world of humans is a that would otherwise be closed off. In this
social world of others and our social rela- way we achieve for ourselves new ways of
tions is what matters most to us, the so- being present.
cial must also figure in the constitutive
structure of human cognitive individu- Here I explicitly repudiate heroic individualism;
ation. The human mind or self is not only we achieve ourselves with and through others;
embodied but also genuinely social. (ibid., we are cultivated by a world full of others and
p. 2) that’s the setting in which we bring the world
into focus for consciousness.
In a footnote, she then elaborates: Perhaps another feature that feeds the
appearance of crypto-individualism is the
By saying that sociality matters con- availability of an idealist or anti-realist read-
stitutively for the human self, I mean that ing of enacting or achieving presence. It is not
without continuously relating and enga- in fact my view—Kyselo herself is clear about
ging in interaction with others, there this—that we make the world, or construct it.
would be no human self as a whole. The The world shows up for us, in perception, and
social is not only causally relevant for en- in thought, and for action. But it doesn’t
acting self-hood, but it is also an essential show up for free. Just as you can’t encounter
component of its minimal organizational what a text means if you don’t know how to
structure. (ibid., p. 2) read, so you can’t see what is there to be seen
without the battery of understandings neces-
Now, I admit that the language of earlier work sary for reaching out and picking it up.
(Noë 2004, 2012) can be taken to suggest some- We don’t make the world, just as we
thing like crypto-individualism. In so far as I don’t make other people. In fact, the world,
talk about presence as something that thinkers and others, are necessary for us to achieve
and perceivers “achieve,” and in so far as I in- contact with it in three distinct ways. First,
sist that, in achieving the world’s presence in our experience of others and the world de-
thought and experience, we also achieve pends on their existence. If they weren’t there,
ourselves, it can perhaps sound like I am de- we couldn’t achieve access to them. Second,
scribing the enactive feats of a heroic solitary our possession and exercise of the relevant
agency. skills may require the presence and participa-
I admit that’s how it sounds. But I was tion of others. Think of the turn-taking dance
careful to warn against being misled in this way. that is conversation; you can’t do that
So, for example, in a passage immediately fol- without the other. Third, our possession of
lowing one that Kyselo cites, I write: perceptual and cognitive skills of access de-
www.open-mind.net
pends on our development in the setting of shortstop. And this is so for all the other play-
personal relationships. ers.
Does the commitment of actionism to Now, the fact that being a shortstop is
these three kinds of dependence of our experi- something “whose identity is brought forth
ence on our engagement with others meet the through body-mediated social interaction”, as
standard of offering an account of other people we could say, borrowing Kyselo’s words (this
as not merely shaping but as constituting our collection, p. 2), doesn’t entail that the flesh-
mental lives? If not, I hope to be told why. and-blood human being who is playing
Let me offer a final example to try to cla- shortstop is also in the same way identity-de-
rify what is at stake. Take a baseball team. pendent on his or her social relations. The indi-
There will be nine players on the field at a vidual existence of the man, after all, the actual
given time during a game: a pitcher and guy, the living human organism, is presupposed
catcher, three basemen, a shortstop, and the by his entering into the kinds of relationships
three outfielders. Notice that there are two dif- that can make it the case that he is also a
ferent ways in which we can individuate these shortstop.
players. We can pick them out by the role that This sort of consideration can be general-
they play—by their position, in baseball par- ized: just as we can distinguish the player from
lance—or we can pick them out by the player, the position he plays, so we can distinguish the
that is, by the particular person who is playing human being from the person he or she also is.
the role. Take the shortstop, for example. The Personhood is enacted, achieved, or performed
shortstop is the near outfielder, or the far in- in ways not so different from the way being a
fielder; he is positioned between 2nd and 3rd baseball-player is undertaken. A person is
bases. His job is to field balls hit to him and to defined by nesting and overlapping roles—
deliver the balls to teammates in ways that daughter, employer, citizen, rebel, lover, failure,
work to his team’s advantage. For our purposes and so on. And these roles are genuinely con-
it is important to notice that a shortstop is a stitutive of who or what a person is, of his or
social creature in the sense that a) to be a her identity. Truly these constitutive features
shortstop is to play a role that can only be spe- that make a person the person she is are ro-
cified by naming other positions and shared bustly and thoroughly social, in all the ways be-
goals and needs, and b) that there is no such ing a shortstop is social. You can’t be a person
thing as a shortstop outside of the context of on your own, any more than you can be a
convention, practice, and history—for that is shortstop on your own. Persons are creatures of
what baseball is: a structure in a temporally ex- normative, evaluative spaces. Persons are per-
tended space of convention and practice. A formers. They perform their personhood. And
shortstop, we might say, is a thoroughly social they bear the ever-present burden of being eval-
kind of thing. It is constituted by social rela- uated. That, finally, is the difference between
tions. mere action and performance. Performance, as
Notice that this way of thinking about distinct from mere action, happens against the
what it is to be a shortstop takes nothing away background of the possibility of being judged
from the fact that shortstops are embodied and (good dancer, good father, good lover, good stu-
that they are in continuous dynamic exchange dent, etc.).
with their physical environment. The quality of Personhood is enacted. But what about
a shortstop is usually framed in terms of the being human? Is that enacted as well? Is one’s
range of ground he can cover, the softness of his status as a human being, like one’s status as a
hands, the strength of his arm, the delicacy and person, or a shortstop, something that is accom-
control of his footwork, and finally, his under- plished through one’s body-mediated social in-
standing of what to do in the split-second heat teractions?
of play. Physical and intellectual skill are all This much is clear. Being a distinct human
properties of this essentially social being, the being is antecedent to entering into the kinds of
www.open-mind.net
relationships that constitute one’s being a per- References

son, or a shortstop. So it can’t be that it is the
same kinds of relations with others that consti- Kyselo, M. (2015). The fragile nature of the social mind.
tute one’s personal identity (in my sense) that In T. Metzinger & J. M. Windt (Eds.) Open MIND.
constitute one’s organismic identity as a human Frankfurt a. M., GER: MIND Group.
being. My question for Kyselo, then, would be: Noë, A. (2004). Action in perception. Cambridge, MA:
why should we say that human beings, above MIT Press.
and beyond the persons they enact, are, in the (2012). Varieties of presence. Cambridge, MA:
relevant sense, constitutively social? Or better Harvard University Press.
still, the question is: what is the relevant sense (2015). Concept pluralism, direct perception, and
of “constitutively social”? the fragility of presence. In T. Metzinger & J. M.
Let me be clear that I think it would be a Windt (Eds.) Open MIND. Frankfurt a. M., GER:
mistake to hold that personhood, bound up MIND Group.
with practice, convention, and history, though it Noë, A. (in press). Strange tools: Art and human nature.
is, is merely cultural, and that this cultural New York, NY: Farrar Straus and Giroux.
structure is stamped or imposed onto a pre- Shockley, K., Richardson, D. C. & Dale, R. (2009). Con-
given biological substrate (the human being). versation and coordinative structures. Topics in Cog-
No, each of us is both a human being and a nitive Science, 1 (2), 305-319.
person and any comprehension of our nature 10.1111/j.1756-8765.2009.01021.x
needs to do justice to both of these. A biological Stanley, J. (2011). Knowing how. New York, NY: Oxford
theory of us will be a theory of creatures who University Press.
are both persons as well as organisms and will
take seriously the way these loop back and
down and the way they interact.
4 Conclusion
There is much in Kyselo’s excellent response to

which I have said nothing in reply. I am struck,
in particular, by her powerful handling of the
concept of fragility. I have tried, in this reply, to
show that actionism, despite appearances of
heroic individualism to the contrary, recognizes
that people spend their lives in worlds that are
always ineliminably social.


Concept Pluralism, Direct Perception, and The Fragility of Presence

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Concept Pluralism, Direct Perception,

and the Fragility of Presence

The world shows up for us in perception and Acknowledgements

References Noë, A. (2004). Action in perception. Cambridge, MA:

(extended cognition), and grounding in selfhood a self-other generated network of precari-

Acknowledgements Maturana, H. R. & Varela, F. J. (1987). The tree of

2 The truth in anti-intellectualism milliseconds. No. We are interested in what

relationships that constitute one’s being a per- References

There is much in Kyselo’s excellent response to

Noë, A. (2015). Beyond Agency - A Reply to Miriam Kyselo.

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