打破实在论与观念论的二分——认知生成主义及其多样化趋势探究

Breaking the Dichotomy between Realism and Idealism——Enactive Cognition and Its Diversified Trend

瓦雷拉等人在《具身心灵》这本书中提出了一种新的心灵概念,在此基础上他们还提出了认知生成主义方案,这一方案背后深层的哲学动机在于打破实在论与观念论这种二元区分。为了实现这一哲学动机,他们迈出了重要的三步:第一步,承认潜在于所有认知过程中的不可消除的反身性;第二步,接受主体与世界之间的相互规定关系;第三步,提出了具身的“生成”概念。生成主义随后呈现出了多样化发展趋势,虽然这在某种程度上偏离了生成主义的原初哲学动机,但也有利于它灵活地应对认知科学中的前沿问题。

Francisco Varela,Evan Thompson and Eleanor Rosch published their masterpiece“The Embodied Mind”in 1991.On the surface,the goal of this book is to provide an alternative conception of mind and cognition,however,it contains profound philosophical motives,namely,to find a way to break the dualism of realism and idealism.In order to achieve this motivation,they take three steps:the first step is to acknowledge the ineradicable reflexivity underlying all our epistemic practices,the second step manifests as the idea of co-determination or mutual specification of the cognizing organism and its world,the third step follows directly from the first one,the central vehicle in this step is the notion of enaction which is construed as the exercise of skillful know-how in situated and embodied action.The later developments of enactivism disagree with these early proposals and present a diversified trend in the last two decades,which will help to solve the frontier scientific issues.