Enactive Cognition at the Edge of Sense-Making: Making Sense of Non-Sense

The enactive approach is a growing movement in cognitive science that replaces the classical computer metaphor of the mind with an emphasis on biological embodiment and social interaction as the sources of our goals and concerns. Mind is viewed as an activity of making sense in embodied interaction with our world. However, if mind is essentially a concrete activity of sense-making, how do we account for the more typically human forms of cognition, including those involving the abstract and the patently nonsensical? To address this crucial challenge, this collection brings together new contributions from the sciences of the mind that draw on a wide variety of disciplines, including psychopathology, phenomenology, primatology, gender studies, quantum physics, immune biology, anthropology, philosophy of mind, and linguistics. This book is required reading for anyone who is interested in how the latest scientific insights are changing how we think about the human mind and its limits.

Table of Contents:
List of Illustrations Acknowledgements Notes on Contributors Foreword to Making Sense of Non-Sense; Ezequiel A. Di Paolo 1. Introduction to Making Sense of Non-Sense; Massimiliano Cappuccio and Tom Froese PART I: THEORY AND METHOD 2. Breaking the Perception-Action Cycle: Experimental Phenomenology of Non-Sense and its Implications for Theories of Perception and Movement Science; Dobromir G. Dotov and Anthony Chemero 3. Making Sense of Non-Sense in Physics: The Quantum Koan; Michel Bitbol 4. The Plight of the Sense-Making Ape; David A. Leavens 5. Immune Self and Non-Sense; John Stewart PART II: EXPERIENCE AND PSYCHOPATHOLOGY 6. The Surprise of Non-Sense; Natalie Depraz 7. Learning to Perceive What we do not yet Understand: Letting the World Guide us; Michael Beaton 8. No Non-Sense Without Imagination: Schizophrenic Delusion as Reified Imaginings Unchallengeable by Perception; Daria Dibitonto PART III: LANGUAGE AND CULTURE 9. On Being Mindful About Misunderstandings in Languaging: Making Sense of Non-Sense as the Way to Sharing Linguistic Meaning; Elena Clare Cuffari 10. Deleuze and the Enaction of Non-sense; William Michael Short, Wilson H. Shearin and Alistair Welchman 11. Traditional Shamanism as Embodied Expertise on Sense and Non-Sense; Juan C. Gonzalez 12. Making (Non)sense of Gender; Michele Merritt Index

About the Author :
Massimiliano (Max) Cappuccio is Assistant Professor in Philosophy of Mind at the Department of Philosophy of UAE University, where he coordinates the Cognitive Science program. He is currently working on a UAE/NRF-funded project at the intersection of embodied cognition and sport psychology. Tom Froese is Research Associate at the Institute of Investigations in Applied Mathematics and Systems (IIMAS) of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), and a member of the Center for Complexity Sciences (C3) in Mexico City. His research interests are the dynamics and phenomenology of life, mind and sociality.