GLOSSARY INQUIRY: ENACTIVISM

Enactivism as a theory for cognition is "the enactment of a world and a mind on the basis of a history of the variety of actions that a being in the world performs" (Varela, Thompson & Rosch).

Complexity science is entirely compatible with enactivism. Indeed, many enactivists make explicit appeal to complex notions such as emergence and self-organization in their description of living/learning systems.

For enactivists, an organism’s biological and experiential history is embodied in its dynamic structure (which sets the basis for its possible perceptions and actions at any given moment). As it recursively interacts with its environment and adapts its structure in relation to it, the organism enacts its knowledge (or “world”), in the sense that its particular structure implies or specifies that knowledge/world.

At the level of human identity, enactivism rejects the assumption of a core (or essential, or inner) self, arguing instead that ‘who we are’ arises in our moment-to-moment coping with the contingencies of our existences. The aphorism, “knowing is doing is being” is often used to summarize this perspective. The term enactivism is intended to foreground the notion that identities and knowledge are not pre-existent, but enacted. Learning is thus seen in terms of exploring an ever-evolving landscape of possibility and of selecting (not necessarily consciously) those actions that are adequate to maintain one’s fitness with that landscape. Learning is a recursively elaborate (versus accumulative) process.

Enactivism prompts educators to envision learning as an elaborately adaptive process wherein learners’ knowledge and identity are constantly emerging as they interact with their environment.

See related terms: Knowledge, Identity, Learning, Evolution, Recursion, Adaptation, Emergence, Self-Organization.

GLOSSARY