daniel hutto - enactivism

American Philosophical QuarterlyVolume 50, Number 3, July 2013

2013 by the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

ENACTIVISM, FROM A WITTGENSTEINIAN POINT OF VIEW

Daniel D. Hutto

Minds awaken in a world. We did not design our world. We sim-ply found ourselves with it; we awoke both to ourselves and the world we inhabit. We come to reflect on that world as we grow

and live.

Francisco Varela, Evan Thompson, and Eleanor Rosch 1991, p. 3

1. Introduction

Enactivists seek to revolutionize the new sciences of the mind. In doing so, they pro-mote adopting a thoroughly anti-intellectu-alist starting point, one that sees mentality as rooted in engaged, embodied activity as opposed to detached forms of thought. In advocating the so-called embodied turn, enactivists touch on recurrent themes of central importance in Wittgensteins later phi-losophy. More than this, todays enactivists characterize the nature of minds and how they fundamentally relate to the world in ways that not only echo but fully agree with many of the later Wittgensteins trademark philosophical remarks on the same topics. For example, both Wittgenstein and enac-tivists prioritize and highlight the primacy of ways of acting over ways of thinking when it comes to understanding our basic psycholog-ical and epistemic situation. Both give pride of place to what is done in the world over what is thought about the world, or how the world is represented. And both are committed to the idea that natural ways of acting both foster and come to be shaped and developed

by customs, practices, and institutions. For both enactivists and Wittgenstein, it seems, recognizing these general facts about minded beings is necessary if one is to understand correctly how humans and other animals are situated in the world and how they relate to one another. In response to a challenge, the final sec-tion of this paper will examine in greater depth whether it is the case that the enactive approach and Wittgensteins philosophy of psychology truly overlap in the ways just highlighted. Assume, for the moment, that they do: It follows that the way would be paved for a revived appreciation of Witt-gensteins philosophy of psychology if enactivism should succeed in its ambition to reform mainstream thinking about the nature and roots of mind and cognition. I think this is a very real possibility. There is, however, a twist. For if enactivists are to avoid replicating the same sorts of errors as their intellectualist opponents, they need to take a leaf out of Wittgensteins book on method. The main contention of this paper is that only by doing so, can enactivists frame their positive project credibly, understanding

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its nature and limits aright. In short, enac-tivists have much to gain by understanding their approach from a Wittgensteinian point of view. This case is made in four steps. The first task is to identify the fundamental issues on which enactivists and Wittgenstein ap-parently agree (section 1). The next step is to get clear about why, and exactly where, the opposing intellectualist theories of mind go wrong. This is achieved by (1) examining the philosophical agenda that drives their explanatory endeavors, and by (2) exposing the intractable problems that their various manifestations unavoidably encounter (section 2). It then must be shown (3) that prominent enactivists are at genuine risk of falling into the trap of trying to provide ex-planations of a similar doomed sort, and (4) how that error can be avoided by taking on board important lessons from Wittgenstein about the methods and limits of philosophy. By towing a Wittgensteinian line, enactivists can understand the ambitions of their project in a tenable way. This requires not thinking that enactivism is a straightforward substi-tute for the representational theories of the mind that it seeks to displace (section 3). The final step requires addressing a residual worry. For some claim that to adopt Wittgen-steins method properly requires abandoning any positive attempt to understand our place and relation to the world aright. According-ly, some extreme therapeutic interpreters hold that Wittgenstein thinks there are no positive philosophical insights to be gained about our general situation, by attending to what Wittgenstein has to say about natural reactions and situated forms of life. If so, there would be no real link between enac-tivism and Wittgensteins philosophy after all. In response to this worry, I promote an interpretation of Wittgenstein according to which he did offer something positive even though his offerings fall short of a construc-tive, explanatory theory (section 4).

1. Affinities Enactivism is a broad framework for un-derstanding minds and how they become more elaborate. It is inspired by the insight that the embedded and embodied activity of living beings is the basis of mentality. Thus to understand mentality, however complex and sophisticated it may be, it is necessary to appreciate how living beings dynamically interact with their environments: ultimately, there is no prospect of understanding minds without reference to interactions between or-ganisms and their environments. Enactivism promotes the idea of essentially embodied and embedded minds, understood in terms of the development of organisms various sensorimotor capacitiescapacities that unfold and expand due to engagements with organisms wider biological and socio-cul-tural environments. Enaction was chosen as the banner of the approach because it connotes the perfor-mance of carrying out an action (Thompson 2007, p. 12). Yet, crucially, for enactivistsand here there is a strong link with Witt-gensteins thoughtthe relevant notion of action is that of doings that are not based on thought or representation. Highlighting this, the founders of enactivism, Varela, Thompson, and Rosch (1991), proposed that the activity of minds is best conceived of in terms of ongoing dynamical engagements that unfold over time (see also Thompson 2007, pp. 3940).1 Hence, in speaking of embodied action, the term action was only meant to underline that sensory and motor processes, perception and action, are fun-damentally inseparable in lived cognition (Thompson 2007, p. 173). The enactive approach attempts to knit together a number of related ideas. As Thompson explains (2007), its central as-sumptions are that: (1) the nervous system is an autonomous dynamic system that does not process information in the computationalist

sense but, with the right supports, enables the creation of meaning; (2) sophisticated cognitive processes and structures emerge from appropriate interactions with the world and others; and (3) a cognitive beings world is not an external realm represented internally in its brain (p. 15, with slight modifications). Organismic activitywhich takes the form of creatures engaging with features of their environments in specifiable wayssuffices for the most basic kinds of cognition. Such activity does not depend upon individuals retrieving informational content from the worldcontent that is then processed and manipulatedin order to attribute properties to the world. In short, not all mentality re-quires individuals to construct representations of their worlds. Perhaps surprisingly, the founders of enac-tivism claimed that in advocating this way of thinking about the mind, their ambition was not primarily philosophical (Varela et al. 1991, p. xvi). Rather, their aspiration was to alter both the focus and the way that research in the cognitive sciences is conducted: they insisted: the overriding aim of our book is pragmatic. We do not intend to build some grand, unified theory, either scientific or philosophical, of the mind-body relation (Varela et al. 1991, p. xviii; emphasis added). Despite disavowing the need for a positive theory, it is clear that if the enactive approach is to bring the hoped-for changes then it would have to put to rest certain common and hard-to-shake assumptions about the essential nature of minds and cognition. In this respect, the enactivist project has, at the very least, a negative philosophical agenda. It is thus no accident that its progenitors made indelibly clear, from the start, which assumption about minds they felt it was necessary to reject:

We explicitly call into question the as-sumptionprevalent throughout cognitive sciencethat cognition consists of the repre-sentation of a world that is independent of our perceptual and cognitive capacities. . . . We

outline instead a view of cognition as embodied action. (p. xx; emphasis original)2

In further explicating the notion of embodied action, these authors revealed that

[b]y using the term embodied we mean to highlight two points: first, that cognition de-pends upon the kinds of experience that come from having a body with various sensorimotor capacities, and second, that these individual sensorimotor capacities are themselves em-bedded in a more encompassing biological, psychological, and cultural context. (pp. 172173: emphasis added)

This brief sketch of the motivating vision of the enactive approach suffices to show that it fundamentally agrees with the emphasis on the primacy of action, forms of life, shared practices, and customary ways of going on in Wittgensteins philosophy of psychology. In his later work, Wittgenstein turned his back on the idea that philosophy requires getting at the essence of things through an analysis of what is hidden. In re-directing us to attend to what lies before our eyes (PI, 415), he held that our focus should:

Instead of the unanalysable, specific, in-definable [be on] the fact that we act in such-and-such ways, e.g. punish certain ac-tions, establish the state of affairs thus and so, give orders, render accounts, describe colours, take an interest in others feelings. What has to be accepted, the givenit might be saidare facts of living [forms of life]. (RPP I, 630, emphasis added; 1953, PI, p. 226e)

For Wittgenstein the way to achieve this is to imagine possible language gamesnamely, simplified or primitive uses of language, such as those consisting only of orders and reports in battle, or questions and expressions for answering yes and no. And innumerable others (PI, 19). In clarifying what such acts of imagination require, he offers us this famous equation: [T]o imagine a language means to imagine a form of life (PI, 19). A few aphorisms later, when drawing attention

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to the fact that there are countless possible uses of language, he again emphasises that the term language-game is meant to bring into prominence the fact that the speaking of language is part of an activity, or of a form of life (PI, 23). Focusing exclusively on these passages can give the impression that Wittgenstein associates sapient forms of life exclusively with the linguistic antics of creatures like us, those who have been enculturated. Yet, over and against this, Wittgenstein chides those who assume that animals are incapable of thought merely because they cannot talk. Challenging this assumption, he stresses; [T]hey simply do not talk. Or to put it better: they do not use languageif we except the most primitive forms of language (PI, 25). Then we are swiftly reminded: Command-ing, questioning, recounting, chatting, are as much a part of our natural history as walking, eating, drinking, playing (PI, 25). In other writings Wittgenstein makes per-fectly clear that he agrees with the enactivists that sophisticated forms of mentality emerge from and depend upon more basic ones.

The origin and primitive form of the language game is a reaction: only from this can more complicated forms develop. LanguageI want to sayis a refinement, in the beginning was the deed (1980, CV, p. 31).

This is a recurrent theme in Wittgensteins lat-er writings. He continually reminds us of the foundational role that sharing in a form of life plays in making more sophisticated language games possible. Thus, what human beings say that is true and false; and they agree in the language they use. That is not agreement in opinions but in a form of life (PI, 241).In many places he speaks of instinctive and natural responsesnatural ways of doing things and of carrying on playing this role. For him, what we find natural to do under-writes even our most abstract and symbolic cognitive activity. Thus: I go through the proof and then accept its result.I mean:

this is simply what we do. This is use and custom among us, or a fact of our natural history (RFM, I 63). In the final analysis, Wittgenstein holds that even in the domain of producing and evaluating mathematical proofs, we act, without reasons (PI, 211).

Giving grounds, however, justifying the evidence, comes to an end;but the end is not certain propositions striking us immediately as true, i.e., it is not a kind of seeing on our part; it is our acting, which lies at the bottom of the language-game. (OC, 204; emphasis original)

At the roots of thinkingat the bottom of our most sophisticated practices, including our following of linguistic and other rulesis doing. Wittgenstein and enactivists are also united in thinking that doing, and knowing what to do, is not to be explained by hypoth-esizing extraordinary mental processes or operationssubpersonal mental processes that somehow have commerce with, and manage to interpret, rules and meanings in ways that we, as persons, cannot.

Thus what I wanted to say was: when he sud-denly knew how to go on, when he understood the principle, then possibly he had a special experienceand if he is asked: What was it? What took place when you suddenly grasped the principle? perhaps he will describe it much as we described it abovebut for us it is the circumstances under which he had such an experience that justify him in saying in such a case that he understands, that he knows how to go on. (PI, 155; emphasis original)

Note how this assessment fits perfectly with Thompsons (2007) observation, if general-ized, that a better metaphor for development than following coded instructions is lay-ing down a path in walking. This metaphor implies that there is no separation between plan and executed action (p. 180). Like Wittgenstein, enactivists offer a gradual and variegated story of how organisms become able to respond to and engage with relevant features of their environments in cognitively sensitive and sophisticated ways, ranging

from more basic forms of experiencing and response to genuinely symbol-based thinking. There is no contradiction in Wittgenstein characterizing our form of life sometimes in terms of basic animal responses and at other times in terms of socio-culturally informed customs and practices. His notion of our form of life encompasses both our more basic, non-linguistic, animal ways of being as well as our culturally and linguistically scaffolded ways of being. These different ways of being relate to one another in a nested way; the first makes the second possible. Our natural, animal responses fund and fuel, but do not circumscribe, the possibilities for our more sophisticated, cultural, and com-munal customs and practices. Still, always, Wittgenstein tells us:

I want to regard man here as an animal; as a primitive being to which one grants instinct but not ratiocination. As a creature in a primitive state. Any logic good enough for a primitive means of communication needs no apology from us. Language did not emerge from some kind of ratiocination. (OC, 475)

What sets Wittgenstein at odds with represen-tational theories of mind is that for him it is not possible to understand our form of life by getting at what is beneath or behind it. There is no point trying to explain its basis in order to answer certain perceived philosophical needs. Philosophers, Wittgenstein holds, must surrender any hope of explaining our form of life, of giving an account of what underlies it and makes it possible. In precisely the same way, he thinks:

Grammar does not tell us how language must be constructed in order to fulfil its purpose, in order to have such-and-such an effect on human beings. It only describes and in no way explains. (PI, 496; emphasis added)

Consequently, for him it is fruitless to try to explain cognitive activity in terms of our representing features of a mind-independent reality, after the fashion of intellectualist

theories of mind and language. Against this tendency, like the enactivists, Wittgenstein holds that our ways of being, whether animal and basic or enculturated, are al-ways to be understood asinexplicably and inherentlyways of relating to the world. The world is only ever revealed through our active engagements with it. It is only by coming to share in a particular form of lifein and through participating in particular kinds of practicesthat our world is made available to us. In the same vein, when enactivists speak of the world show-ing up and of our enacting the world, they are not suggesting that we somehow fabricate the world (see No 2009, pp. 89). Instead, along with Wittgenstein, they are saying the world is revealed in the technical phenomenological sense, [which means] to bring awareness, to present, or to disclose (Thompson 2007, p. 15). All in all, the foundational importance that Wittgenstein places on the activities and practices of forms of lifeand how what they do and how they agree makes our psychology possibleappears to fit perfectly with the enactivists recognition of a deep continuity of life and mind (Thompson 2007, p. 15). This is a serious challenge to mainstream intellectualist theories of mind and cognition precisely because neither Wittgenstein nor the enactivists restrict their focus to simple animalistic modes of responding; instead they are engaged in world-relating activity even at the very heart of the cultural, historical, and intersubjective constitution of our human world (Thompson 2007, p. 17).

2. Wittgensteins Lessons Today Enactivists and Wittgenstein both reject representational theories of mind. What, if anything, justifies their doing so? Wittgen-stein, at least, works to expose that only those in the grip of false pictures and driven by mis-guided explanatory needs would be attracted to such theories. To understand what he thinks



is wrong about such attempts at theorizing, it is necessary to focus on the therapeutic aspect of his later philosophy. Meredith Williams (2010) provides an instructive and succinct sketch of it:

Wittgensteins new philosophy is an activity not a set of theses, doctrines or theories. It is an activity that aims at showing that traditional philosophical theory-building is a house of cards, constructed with illusory materials in pursuit of ends that are themselves the result of confusion and mistaken understanding of the grammar of our language. (p. 4)

Misguided attempts at philosophical expla-nation have a common pathogenesis. Thus:

Wittgensteins diagnosis of philosophical mistake is an account of what is involved in misunderstanding the role of an ideal (PI, 103): it produces a superstitious conviction (PI, 110) that holds in place a picture of how things must be (PI, 115), despite contradiction and anomaly. (Williams 2010, p. 8)

Williams is careful to highlight that the su-perstition or picture that holds the philosopher captive is not itself a mistake (2010, p. 7). Being attached to a certain picture may fos-ter mistaken thinking, and being so attached may drive mistaken attempts to theorize and explain, but being attached to a picture is not in itself an intellectual mistake; it is not inher-ently a case of, say, advancing a coherent but false theory. This is why [t]he importance and depth of philosophical problems are genuine. . . . To break free of the mistakes that produce the picture requires rejecting the pic-ture, a picture that has become identified with our very form of life (Williams 2010, p. 8). Getting free of pictures and thus picture-driving theorizing requires recognizing that a pictures siren song is a wholly empty prom-ise. A major part of getting free involves com-ing to see that what is needed is [t]herapy, rather than a better theory (Williams 2010, p. 8). What are the signs of being in the grip of a picture? As Williams (2010) notes: The emergence of paradox and the willingness

to tolerate contradiction mark philosophical bewitchment (p. 13). Expanding on this observation, Williams identifies two kinds of arguments that she finds in Wittgensteins work that are used to expose the emptiness of philosophical theories and explanations. She calls these conflation and paradox arguments. Conflation arguments are designed to reveal that ones explanans reproduces, as part of the explanation, the very feature(s) it was meant to explain (Williams 2010, p. 14). Thus this kind of error occurs in the cases Wittgenstein deals with in the Investigations when [t]he normativity of our practices, particularly those concerning the identity conditions for norms, is not understood. Ob-jects and ideals are conflated in a way that gives rise to illusions of explanatory advance (Williams 2010, p. 14). Paradox arguments show that picture-driven theories are unstable products that are doomed to implode. Such arguments reveal the special way in which theories, guided by a bewitching picture, are self-defeating. The theoretical explanations eliminate the phenomena to be explained, and they do so in virtue of the explanatory machinery of the theory itself (Williams 2010, p. 14). It is my contention that, insofar as they are philosophically motivated, todays rep-resentational theories of mind exhibit these hallmarks of picture-driven theorizing. Hence they, too, are susceptible to conflation and paradox arguments. If this analysis proves to be correct, such theories only seem tenable if we ignore the central lessons of Wittgen-steins philosophical investigations. Bearing in mind Williamss observations, it is useful to consider how Explanatory Need arguments motivate and justify philosophical quests for naturalized theories of content. Explanatory Need arguments are a class of arguments that attempt to provide logically compelling, philosophical rationales for spe-cific explanatory projects. They are logical arguments that establish an explanatory need.

Fodor (1975) provides one of the clearest examples of such an argument in his bid to persuade us that it is not only possible that we operate with a private language of thought, but that the existence of such a private lan-guage is an explanatory necessity. Rendered roughly, the gist of his 1975 argument is as follows: Learning a natural language involves learning the meaning of the predicates of that natural language. This involves learning which local rules apply. But it is not possible to learn which of the set of possible local rules that might apply are the correct local rules without being able to represent and choose from a wider set of possible local rules. To do this, one already needs a system of repre-sentation of sufficient expressive power that is up to this task. So one cannot learn a first natural language unless one already has a lan-guage of thought. First natural languages are learned, however. So some thinking must be carried out in a non-natural, mental language. All of this follows if, as Fodor contentiously assumes, learning requires hypothesis forma-tion and confirmation. The thing to observe here is that Fodors Explanatory Need argument is driven by purely philosophical considerations.3 It de-fends the view that we need and must have a lingua mentis. Fodor makes this case in di-rect and blatant opposition to Wittgensteins putative demonstration that, despite appear-ances, nothing at all answers to the philoso-phers notion of a private language. The core features of Fodors hypothesized language of thoughtits syntax and semanticsare directly modeled on properties of the same sort that are, if Fodor is right, only apparently possessed by natural language sentences.4 Such properties will only be ap-parent properties of natural language if the explanatory demand that Fodor insists upon proves to be genuine. For in that case, it must be that language only borrows its apparent semantic and structural properties from the properties of the mental representations that

bring ordinary, public linguistic vehicles of natural language to life. Fodor argues that only a peculiar variant of the representational theory of mindhis continually revised Language of Thought (see Fodor 2008 for a recent update)has the characteristics required to satisfy the ex-planatory need that his argument identifies. Yet philosophers who fundamentally disagree with Fodor about the existence of a Language of Thought and the power of his Explana-tory Need argument accept, nonetheless, that there is a need to posit and explain content-ful mental representations. Their conviction that this is so is based on subtly different but closely related Explanatory Need arguments to the one Fodor advances. For example, many philosophers are persuaded that we have no choice but to posit the existence of non-linguistic mental representations of some sort in order to explain how natural lan-guages get their special properties, and these theorists also model the properties of these hypothesized mental representations directly on the apparent properties of sentences and utterances in natural languages. Searle, for instance, is assured that [i]n -tentional states represent objects and states of affairs in the same sense of represent that speech acts represent objects and states of af-fairs (1983, p. 5; emphasis added). Millikan (2005) provides another prominent example. For her, quite generally, intentionality has to do with truth conditions (p. 93). This, she thinks, is true even of the most minimal kind of contentful representations, pushmi-pullyu representations (Millikan 2004, p. 158). Her parade case of a pushmi-pullyu representa-tion is the bee dance, and she contends: bee dances have truth-conditions (Millikan 2005, p. 97). Here Millikan assumes that mental content is a biological phenomenon that features in the thinking of many non-linguistic creatures. For those with language, content of essentially the same kind simply becomes bound up with more and more



complex cognitive process. The crux is that with respect to its semantic properties, the intentionality of language is exactly parallel to the intentionality of bee dances (Millikan 2005, p. 98). Every Explanatory Need argument places its own specific conditions on the related explanatory projects that it motivates. But closely related Explanatory Need argu-ments will share some general features. For example, in the cases just cited above, those seeking to naturalize the content of mental representations are required to explain how such content can be naturally occurring without making any appeal to features of the linguistic activities and practices that are the ultimate target for their explanations. Anyone seeking to naturalize content because they assume that linguistic contents derive wholly from, and are explained by, properties of mental representations must accept this. And there is something else. In addressing an Explanatory Need, it is not an option to simply pre-suppose the relevant special properties of the explanans. For this would only push the Explanatory Need one step back. It is with this in mind that many complain that Fodors Explanatory Need argument for supposing that a language of thought must exist leads to a regress. Fodor maintains that the regress com-plaint misses the target, that it is an instance of the ignoratio elenchi fallacy. In 1975 this was because he thought that our innate mental language could itself be explained in terms of the computational states of organisms. But it is surely no answer to an Explanatory Need to be told that innate mental language exists because we are just built that way. Any such move is at best a postponement. Thus the regress objection is only properly blocked at the point that it is robustly explained how the imagined mental language of thought is (and thus could be) naturally occurring. To answer the Explanatory Need, we re-quire an explanation of how Mentalese can possess the special properties it is claimed

to have. We need that explanation precisely because what motivated positing a mental language in the first place was the thought that its special properties will, in turn, explain (or explain away) the special properties seem-ingly possessed by natural languages. The same basic requirement, mutatis mutandis, holds for related variants of the Explanatory Need arguments that drive other philoso-phers to believe in mental representations. Their naturalistic task, too, becomes that of explainingwithin the stated restrictionshow, not merely pre-supposing that, mental representations possess their contents. For the reasons just given, this must be done by appeal to wholly non-linguistic factors. Explanatory Need arguments look powerful because they seem to supply a priori reasons for believing that explanations of the right kind must be available. For example those persuaded by them are assured that some or other theory must explain how content-ful mental representations with sufficiently language-like properties can exist in nature. This is because the Explanatory Need ar-guments give us reason to believe in such mental representations even if, as a matter of fact, meeting that perceived explanatory demand forever evades us in practice. Some or other naturalized theory of content must be trueeven if no one ever manages to think of itbecause the Explanatory Demand must be met. Again, this highlights that the per-ceived Explanatory Need is philosophically grounded and not merely scientific.5

In this light, what should we make of to-days best attempts to provide a naturalized theory of content? To date we lack a work-able naturalized theory of content that could do the explanatory work required. There are several failed and stalled proposals but no tenable theories. This is no accident. These theories are riddled with conflation and paradox, just as one might expect ifin line with Williamsthey are picture-driven. For example, Hutto and Myin (2013) identify

a crippling problem, the Hard Problem of Content, that confronts anyone hoping that the mainstream naturalized theories of content might justify believing in non-linguistic men-tal content. Explanatory naturalists with this ambition seek to explain how it is that mental representations possess their contentful prop-erties by appeal to nothing but undisputed natural phenomena, for example, causation, nomic dependencies, or biological functions. Several mainstream naturalized theories of representational content assume the existence of informational content as a starting point (Dretske 1988; Fodor 2008). Proponents of these theories readily acknowledge that informational content does not suffice to explain full-fledged representational content. Nevertheless, the existence of informational content plays a foundational role in these theories, serving as a platform upon which their supplementary representational ac-counts are built. So as not to violate naturalism, the hypoth-esized informational content is conceived in terms of covariance. Setting aside complica-tions about scope and context, the notion of information relied upon is thus understood strictly by appeal to the following bi-condi-tional: ss being F carries information about ts being H iff the occurrence of these states of affairs lawfully covary. This notion of information is assumed to be wholly inno-cent because it is accepted in many areas of scientific investigation as when it is said that a footprint or a fingerprint carries informa-tion about the individual whose footprint or fingerprint it is. In this sense, it may also be said that a fossil carries information about a past organism. The number of tree rings in a tree trunk carries information about the age of the tree (Jacob 1997, p. 45). The following quotation from Dretske un-derscores the pivotal role that information is meant to play in such theories:

In the beginning there was information. The word came later. . . . [I]nformation (though

not meaning) [is] an objective commodity, something whose generation, transmission and reception do not require or in any way presuppose interpretative processes. One is therefore given a framework for understand-ing how meaning can evolve, how genuine cognitive systemsthose with the resources for interpreting signals, holding beliefs, acquiring knowledgecan develop out of lower-order, purely physical, information-processing mecha-nisms . . . Meaning, and the constellation of mental attitudes that exhibit it, are manufactured products. The raw material is information. (Dretske 1981, p. vii)

The Hard Problem of Content exposes that pre-supposing the existence of informational content is at odds with explanatory natural-ism. The root trouble is that, by itself, covari-ance does not constitute, entail, or suffice for the existence of content. Content has special features. If there is to be content, there must be specified conditions of satisfaction such that there is true or accurate content just in case the conditions specified are, in fact, in-stantiated. If this is correct, and covariance is the only scientifically respectable notion of information that can do the work required by explanatory naturalists, then it follows that we have no explanation of how infor-mational content exists in nature (or how it could do so independently from and prior to the existence of certain linguistic practices). Thus to the extent that explanatory natural-ists must rely on the notion of informational content as a platform for their theories, their project is doomed from the start. For without a naturalistic theory of informational content, such accounts have no basis upon which to build supplementary, naturalized theories of representational content. By challenging the idea that covariance is any kind of informational content, the Hard Problem of Content shows that many explan-atory naturalists lack the basic resources even to begin explaining non-linguistic mental content because they conflate information-as-covariance with informational-content.



By way of reply, an obvious move would be to reject any commitment to the existence of information content. Thus it can seem that the best hope for a naturalized theory of content would be to focus on the function or purpose of information-sensitive respond-ing, showing how such responding, in and of itself, qualifies as a kind of contentful representing. Accordingly, the way that cer-tain systems are supposed to respond to environmental offerings might do the work in fixing the content of mental representa-tions. Taking this line avoids the problems posed by the Hard Problem of Content by surrendering any and all commitment to the idea that informational content exists independently of the activities of cognitive agents. This could be achieved, for example, by assuming that it is the teleofunction of responses of organisms that carries the full weight in fixing mental content. That would be a modest but important advance on an idea that gets its most developed expression in the work of Millikan (1984, 1993, 2004). For according to her consumer-based theory of content, the content of a representation is determined, in a very important part, by the system that interprets it (Millikan 2005, p.100; emphasis added). At first glance, this might seem like a good way to go for anyone committed to providing a naturalistic theory of content. Teleosemantic proposals are, after all, the clear front-runners among those theories. Teleosemantic theories promise to account for the representational properties of mental states, by focusing on the purposeful way that certain kinds of organismic response to envi-ronmental offerings answer consumer needs. The guiding idea of this theory of content is that a device will have the teleofunction of representing Xs if it is used, interpreted, or consumed by the system because it has the proper function of representing the presence of Xs. The notion of proper function is meant to explain how contents can be fixed by what

organisms are supposed to do in their inter-pretative activity as opposed to what they are merely disposed to do. The normative dimen-sions of such biologically based responding, so these theorists claim, suffice to show how teleology can account for genuinely repre-sentational states of mind, those exhibiting referential and truth conditional content. If some or other teleosemantic proposal could be made good, then mental content would be explained in wholly naturalistic terms by appeal to standards set, for example, by natural selection and extended by individual learning and training. The explanatory need would be met. The problem as, Burge (2010) underlines, is that there is a root mismatch between representational error and failure of biologi-cal function (p. 301). And, here again, the problem is one of conflation. For with respect to the normativity of the mental content that these naturalists seek to explain, the relevant notions of success and failure are not those of biological success and failure (Burge 2010, p. 308). Putnams (1992) verdict looks unavoidable:

The reference we get out of . . . hypothetical natural selection will be just the reference we put in our choice of a description. Evolution wont give you more intentionality than you pack into it. (p. 33)

Obviously, more would need to be done to provide full-scale arguments against such theories (see Hutto and Myin 2013, for a more detailed assessment). And, of course, these conclusions, even if accepted, do not rule out the very possibility of naturalizing content. Doubtless if these theories fail, there will be new attempts; new candidates, vying to pro-vide as yet unimagined naturalized theories of content. The point is that we can be justifiably skeptical of such future offerings because a telling pattern has already revealed itselfa pattern that forewarns of similar intractable problems facing anyone hoping to explain

non-linguistic content naturalistically if such content is understood as having semantic properties of the same sort as (apparent) linguistic content. The pattern in question is precisely the sort that we should expect to find if, as Wittgenstein warned, theorizing in this domain is motivated by commitment to a picture. Even those who were initially optimistic about providing a naturalized theory of con-tent have begun to realize there is something amiss about the entire enterprise. Godfrey-Smith (2006) provides this astute assessment: [T]here is a growing suspicion that we have been looking for the wrong kind of theory, in some big sense. Naturalistic treatments of semantic properties have somehow lost proper contact with the phenomena (p. 42; emphasis added). Remarking on the driving idea behind teleosemantics, he admits that the idea that evolved structures can have a kind of specificity or directedness is essentially correct. But that fact lends no succor to those hoping for a workable representational theory of content because the involvement relation in question is found in many cases that do not involve representation or anything close to it (Godfrey-Smith 2006, p. 60). Grasping at that hanging thread, it might be thought that a way to avoid conflation and paradoxa way out of the familiar dif-ficultieswould be to operate with a non-linguistic model of content, which might have better prospects of being naturalized. Why not simply model the properties of mental representations on something other than language?6

Let us suppose, for the sake of argument, that it is possible to model mental representa-tions on something other than the sentences and utterances of language (see Ryder 2006; and Hutto, forthcoming, for a discussion of an alternative model of content based on mod-els rather than language). The trouble is that any of these imagined mental representations, whatever they may be, would be of the wrong

sort to fulfill the stated Explanatory Need. Not just any kind of theory of mental representa-tion will serve for that purpose. Consequently, even if we allow that a non-linguistic model of mental representations could be devel-oped, this would leave an intolerable logical holea different sort of gapin the explana-tory story. We will wonder afresh how such non-linguistic mental representations could possibly account for the apparent properties of linguistic contents in a way that would satisfy the original ambitions that motivated this naturalistic project in the first place. Our stated need would not be satisfied; the explanatory gap would remain. As a rule, the less language-like the content and structures of mental representations are imagined to be, the harder it will be to understand how positing mental contents could help address the Explanatory Need. In the final analysis, to the extent that one is driven to give a naturalistic theory of con-tent in order to satisfy an Explanatory Need argument, there is every reason to suspect such proposals will forever fail. There is an inherent logical tension in what is being asked for, hence something deeply confused about the demand that such explanations are an absolute necessity. It is no wonder that up until now we have seen only a string of failed proposals, coupled with an apparent justifi-cation for continuing to pursue the project because of a conviction that an explanation of the promised sort must be on the horizon. It is that demandand that demand alonenot actual explanatory successes, that promotes an unshakable, superstitious belief in the ex-istence of contentful mental representations.

3. No Substitute To explain or not to explain, that is the question. As the previous section established proponents of representational theories of mind who are moved by the Explanatory Need argument believe that a naturalistic theory of content is an absolute must. If,



in rejecting such theories, enactivism also bids to replace or supersede them, then it is natural to suppose that enactivists must provide competing explanations of the same phenomenon (Shapiro 2011, p. 3). Thus:

If [enactivism] is to be a genuine alternative to [representationalist cognitivism], it should be able to bridge what De Jaegher and Froese (2009) have called the cognitive gap, i.e. provide us with a convincing account of those higher forms of cognition that have tradition-ally been the focus of its cognitivist opponents. (de Bruin and Kstner 2012, p. 544; emphasis added)

In abandoning the representationalists start-ing point, it can seem that enactivists owe a different explanation, one that accounts for howand not just thatcontentful thinking emerges or comes into being under the right conditions. That obligation seems to follow for any enactivist who admits that contentful thinking is a feature of some sophisticated minds while denying that the capacity for thinking contentful thoughts is a feature of primitive minds. It is surely legitimate to demand such an explanation if enactivism is a straight substitutea replacement theoryfor the representational theories of classical cognitivism. Enactivism, so the thought goes, must take up the challenge of completing the work that cognitivism promised but failed to do, albeit by reversing the explanatory order. On this reading, despite starting in a quite different place, enactivism inherits an explanatory burden that is no less heavy than that of its rivals. One way of trying to avoid this obligation would be to deny the existence of contentful thinking altogether. But this is not very plau-sible, and even enactivists of a radical stripe are unwilling to go this far. Only really radical enactivists would dare go this way (see Hutto and Myin 2013, chap. 1). Another way out would be to try to deny the existence of the cognitive gap. Some enactivists speak about the activities of even

the most primitive forms of life, single-cell organisms, as if such creatures were engaged in making sense of their worlds in meaning-ful ways. By accepting the strong life-mind continuity thesis, these enactivists operate with a very liberal understanding of the nature of cognition. For example, Thompson (2007) proposes that

cognitive interactions are those in which sen-sory responses guide action and actions have consequences for subsequent sensory stimula-tion, subject to the constraint that the system maintains its viability. Sensory response and action are taken broadly to include, for example, a bacteriums ability to sense the concentration of sucrose in its immediate envi-ronment and to move itself accordingly. (p. 125)

Talk of interpretation, sense-making, understanding, and even meaning gener-ating in describing the responses of simple living systems is, however, misplaced and misleading. When pressed, many enactivists are willing to admit this, at least to some ex-tent. Varela et al. (1991), for example, admit that they use the terms significance and relevance advisedly in speaking of very simple creatures enactively bringing forth their worlds. Consequently, even though these authors are still wont to assume that some kind of interpretation takes place in such cases, they confess: [T]his interpreta-tion is a far cry from the kinds of interpre-tation that depend on experience (p. 156; emphasis added). The trouble is, as Clark (2001) observes,

that by stressing unity and similarity we may lose sight of what is special and distinctive. Mind may indeed participate in many of the dynamic processes characteristic of life. But what about our old friends, the fundamentally reason-based transitions and the grasp of absent and the abstract characteristic of advanced cognition? (pp. 118119)

This problem will not easily go away. For even if it is acknowledged that higher forms of mindedness are of a significantly differ-

ent kind than that exhibited by lower forms, the problem of the cognitive gap remains. It seems we have every reason to think that there really are different kinds of minds in the relevant respect because the same explana-tory tools will not work for understanding all forms of mental activity. As Froese and Di Paolo (2009) ask: Is it a question of merely adding more complexity, that is, of just hav-ing more of the same kind of organizations and mechanisms? Then why is it seemingly impossible to properly address the hallmarks of human cognition with only these basic biological principles? (p. 441). The upshot is that if there is a genuine cognitive gap, then it seems an explanation is required in order to say how it gets closed when creatures become capable of contentful thinking. And, as Froese and Di Paolo (2009) admit, even if the notion of sense-making is thought to be appropriate for characterizing the activity of the simplest living creatures, it still cries out for further specification that can distinguish between different modes of sense-making (p. 446). With this in mind, some enactivists are prepared to pick up the gauntlet (Froese and Di Paolo 2009; De Jaegher and Froese 2009; Froese et al., forthcoming).7 They aim to close the cognitive gap by explaining how contentful, symbolic thought could emerge while assuming that the most basic, primitive minds start life without content.

The question therefore becomes how primary adaptive processes of sense-making of the here and now could have been transformed into secondary forms of symbolic sense-making. (Froese et al. 2012, pp. 12; emphasis added)

Ultimately, the answer these authors propose is that basic minds become capable of prop-erly contentful cognition by participating in shared, intersubjective social practices. Fro-ese and Di Paolo (2009) maintain that what makes the cognitive gap look intractable is a function of the prevalent methodological

individualism that dominates cognitive sci-ence. They believe that they can show how to close the gap by taking the active role of our socialityour interactions with othersinto account. Thus they make much of the fact that human symbols only exist within a social context (Froese and Di Paolo 2009, p. 442). Arguing that contentful minds are socially co-constituted, these authors hope to address the cognitive gap by placing great weight on the notion of participatory sense-making (De Jaegher and Di Paolo 2007). Hence we are told that, our human first-person perspective, with its distinct capacity for detached reflection and abstract reasoning, is fundamentally intersubjectively constituted (Froese and Di Paolo 2009, pp. 442443; emphasis added).8 And, more softly, that one way to begin to account for the cognitive gap . . . is by acknowledging the constitutive role of inter-individual interaction (Froese and Di Paolo 2009, p. 446). The driving thought behind this explanatory proposal is that if agents mutually enable and constrain their sense-making activities in an appropriate manner, they can open up new domains of sense-making that would have otherwise remained inaccessible to the individual agents (Froese and Di Paolo 2009, p. 447). By building on these insights, it is claimed, the notion of participatory sense-making can help us to systematically address the cognitive gap from the bottom-up (Froese and Di Paolo 2009, p. 447).9

These observations are surely along the right lines. But if they are to be evaluated as explanations that address an inverted Ex-planatory Need, then such accounts fail. There are many claims on offer, but they do not add up to an explanation. For example, Froese and Di Paolo (2009) assure us that

[i]t is intersubjective engagement and the constitutive role of others that . . . allowsthe possibility of adopting different perspectives and alternative meanings to a situation. (Froese and Di Paolo 2009, p. 454)



Augmenting this, modestly, they then tell us:

What is intersubjectively constituted is a change of meaning of my perception. For example, I do not just see the wall from the perspective of my own current concerns (e.g. as trapping me inside the room) but I can see it also from the perspective of alternative concerns (e.g. as blocking the view, making parking dif-ficult, etc.) including those others might have. (Froese and Di Paolo 2009, p. 453)

To this they add: Thus as individuals become aware of the possible presence of others as others in this way they come to see and begin to encounter objects in the strict sense (pp. 453454). What enables this is being brought into a world by means of interacting in ap-propriate ways with others. At best these are descriptions or illuminat-ing characterizations of the conditions for the emergence of contentful minds. What is on offer is a string of descriptive claims, not a set of explanatory proposals. It is useful to compare Froese and Di Paolos explanation of how the cognitive gap is closed with what Davidson has to say on the same topic. Davidson holds that to be counted as a thinker is to be counted as having a concep-tual point of view, or contentful perspective, on what there objectively is. He holds that unless one is able to triangulate with another mind, there is no way to form such a content-ful perspective because there is no way to develop the idea that there might be divergent perspectives about the same situation. And the latter is a necessary requirement if a subject is to appreciate the distinction between how things appear and how things are. Only those aware of a subjective-objective contrast can be plausibly counted as assenting or dissent-ing to a propositionof entertaining thoughts with propositional content. Thus, for Davidson, there are special condi-tions that must be met if one is to have a con-ceptual grasp on an objective world; to have thoughts with reference and truth conditions. Being that sort of thinker requires mastering

and engaging in interpretative practices; this is achieved by learning from and learning to critique others.10 Accordingly, objective truth and conceptual error only arise for those who learn to interpret. In the process, concepts of subject and object emerge together. This is why, for Davidson, the foundations of knowledge must be subjective and objective at once (Davidson 1986, p. 327; see also 1991a, 1991b, 1992). If Davidson and the enactivists are cor-rect, then it is only with a certain process of socialization that there is a possibility of making sense of ones existence as a sense-making existence (Froese and Di Paolo 2009, p. 459). Very well. But despite their close agreement, Davidson never imagined that he was providing an explanation of how such minds emerge. And if enactivist offer-ings are construed as attempts to explain how the cognitive gap is closed, then we might doubt that their central question has been properly addressed. If they are offering ex-planations in this regard, then proponents of the strong lifemind continuity thesis are still obliged to tell us how to get from the basic organismUmwelt . . . to a selfworldother structure (Froese and Di Paolo 2009, p. 459: emphasis added). To be fair, Froese and Di Paolo (2009) admit that one of the challenges for future research will be to better determine the neces-sary and sufficient conditions which turn the constitutive role of interacting with an other . . . into the constitutive presence of an other as other (Froese and Di Paolo 2009, p.459). Yet even if a full and complete account of the necessary and sufficient conditions is forth-coming, even if all of the relevant details are provided, such still remain, at best, a descrip-tion and not an explanation. In all, these enactivist observations, wor-thy as they are, in no way help to close the cognitive gap, where that is conceived as a philosophical problem. They do no better on the explanatory front than the failed theories

of content discussed in the previous section. To think otherwise would be to attempt to masquerade an explanandum as an explan-ans. It seems then that the right verdict is that at least when it comes to social cognition, current articulations of enactivism are not yet up to the task (de Bruin and Kstner 2012, p. 544). This appraisal of the situation raises the important question: Are explanations re-ally needed here? Todays enactivists, like Wittgenstein and Davidson before them, appear to be on the way to identifying and describing the conditions that make con-tentful thinking possible. But it would be a mistake to suppose that should they succeed in completing this task that they will have ex-plained, in the way required by philosophers, how contentful thinking could havelet alone actually did and doesemerge from non-contentful thinking. Yet these offerings will only seem inad-equate, lacking, or unsatisfactory if we as-sume that enactivists owe us explanations of the same sort as those promised by their intellectualist rivalsthat is, explanations that answer a demanding, philosophical ex-planatory need. The thought that we might reject the demand and give up on the project of trying to provide such explanations may alarm some readers. But we must take stock of the fact that, for all concerned, the score-board currently reads: 00. And, in terms of actual explanatory value, the promise of an explanation (especially one that wont come) is worth exactly the same as no promise of an explanation.

4. Soft-Spoken Naturalism It seems then that Wittgensteins answer is the only honest one. We must abandon any hope of finding theoretical explanations that will satisfy philosophical demands. But, if so, can philosophy tell us anything positive at all? Does it follow that quietism is the only true way for philosophy?

Extreme therapeutic (and some resolute) readers of Wittgenstein think so. They hold that Wittgensteins greatest insight was to recognize that philosophy must be utterly silent. It has nothing positive to saynothing at all.11 Clearly this is at odds with a reading of Wittgensteins later works, according to which when he mentions customs, forms of life, and the like, he is making programmatic gestures towards a certain style of positive philosophy (McDowell 1998, pp. 277278). If a thoroughgoing quietist reading is cor-rect, then Wittgenstein does not really agree with enactivists in the ways suggested in the first section of this paper. That would be so even on the assumption that enactivists arent offering any kind of theory, philosophical or scientific. For complete quietism renders Wittgenstein utterly muteon the most un-compromising of such readings, he literally says nothing at all; he does not utter even the most modest of non-theoretical obser-vations about our general situation. Hence, given that enactivists aim to say something, it would turn out they only appear to agree with Wittgenstein on many central matters. Is the situation this bleak? I do not think so. To show why, I will address a direct chal-lenge from Dromm (2008), who objects to the tendency to think of the later Wittgenstein as promoting a kind of naturalism (p. xviii). Dromm fully recognizes that talk of natural and primitive responses are a familiar motif in Wittgensteins later writings. He also observes that such remarks resemble empirical claims about how we learn and follow rules (Dromm 2008, p. xvii). But he points out that

[c]laims about how humans are naturally dis-posed to behave, the role those behaviours play in such things as language-learning, are ones we should only accept after being provided with sufficient evidence for their truth. This evidence is arrived at through observation and experiment, and not through the conceptual investigations of a philosopher. (Dromm 2008, p. xvii)



Consequently, if Wittgensteins remarks are thought to be armchair attempts at empirical theorizing, then we should treat them with great caution because he offers no evidence for them. . . . [They are] merely specula-tions, because they lack evidential support (Dromm 2008, p. xvii). The problem, as Dromm sees it, with a naturalistic reading of Wittgenstein is that we misunderstand the purpose and status of his remarks on these topics. Wittgenstein did not confuse a mere possibility with a historical reality. In this light, we should recognize that Wittgenstein was only ever describing important pos-sibilities and never offering unsupported empirical speculations. Dromm (2008) advances a reading ac-cording to which Wittgensteins remarks about the natural and the primitive will . . . not presuppose how we actually do learn to follow linguistic and other rules, or about other facts of our natural history (p. xviii). Instead, he tells us, their use is purely pedagogical and not informative (p. xviii). Hence they are not meant to contribute to our knowledge but to relieve an apparent incompatibility between the things we al-ready know (p. xix). Highlighting impor-tant possibilities is only meant to cure us of certain confused tendencies of thought and therefore need not take the form of asserting any kind of truth about the actual world. Pure therapy is often the only remedy (Dromm 2008, p. xxi). Going strongly therapeutic is meant to be a way of resisting naturalistic readings of the later Wittgensteinthose that fail to distinguish them from ordinary explanations (Dromm 2008, p. 18).12 But is it a mistake to characterize Wittgenstein as any sort of naturalist? Certainly, it would be wrong to assume that Wittgenstein was offering ordi-nary empirical explanations (a point I will return to shortly). Nevertheless some kind of naturalistic reading is encouraged by remarks such as the following:

What we are supplying are really remarks on the natural history of human beings; we are not contributing curiosities however, but observa-tions which no one has doubted, but which have escaped remark only because they are always before our eyes. (PI, 415)

Dromm insists that the relevant remarksfor example, about the primacy of action and how we master sophisticated practicesare not the sort of theses that could never be a matter of debate because everyone would agree to them (PI, 128) (Dromm 2008, p. xvii). Accordingly, for example, Dromm holds that what Wittgenstein has to say about language-learning is not among those facts that lie before our eyes (Dromm, 2008, p. 71; RFM VI 38). But, arguably, that is not so. Those facts are there to see for anyone with eyes to see; that is, for anyone not in the grip of a picture. Wholly purgative therapeutic activity enables one to see these things aright. For Wittgenstein, therapy is a means to an end, not an end in itself (Hutto 2006, 2009). Accordingly when Wittgenstein speaks of theses that everyone would agree to and observations that no one has doubted, he is not speaking of what those who are under the influence of a philosophical enchantment would say; he is speaking of the unreflective attitudes we adopt to familiar and constant features of our form of life. Even so, more must be said if this inter-pretation is to be recommended. It must be acknowledged that what Wittgenstein says in PI, 145 seems to be in tension with some of what he has to say about his method at the very close of the Investigations:

If the formation of concepts can be explained by facts of nature, should we be interested, not in grammar, but rather in that in nature which is the basis of grammar?Our interest certainly includes the correspondence between concepts and very general facts of nature. (Such facts as mostly do not strike us because of their generality.) But our interest does not fall back

upon these possible causes of the formation of concepts; we are not doing natural science; nor yet natural historysince we can also invent fictitious natural history for our purposes. I am not saying: if such-and-such facts of nature were different people would have dif-ferent concepts (in the sense of a hypothesis). But: if anyone believes that certain concepts are absolutely the correct ones, and that having dif-ferent ones would mean not realizing something that we realizethen let him imagine certain very general facts of nature to be different from what we are used to, and the formation of concepts different from the usual ones will become intelligible to him. (1953, PI, p. 230e;

emphasis added)

Dont these closing remarks lend sup-port to Dromms (2008) proposal that all Wittgenstein is ever doing is highlighting important possibilities? It is certainly true that Wittgensteins examples, say, of how pupils continue a seriesrepeated often in PI and RFMare obviously fabricated (p. 72). It cannot be denied that the language games he introduces exemplify what he has in mind by pursuing a method of descrip-tion, even though they are, for the most part, invented (Williams 2010, p. 11). It is also the case that his language games are in fact methodological toolsthey are a kind of teaching device. Agreed. But on what basis are these invent-ed cases constructed? Wittgenstein makes it clear that he is not making empirical claims about the specific details of the relevant pro-cesses. Identifying such details dont matter to the philosophical task. Nevertheless, he is interested in very general facts about our situation. The scenarios that Wittgenstein provides are built on general templates; the specific details of each case will varyand hence any given case can be safely imagined in order to highlight what is importantas long as the essential aspects are preserved. For example, Wittgenstein describes an imagined case in which A gives an order to B, who has to write down a series of signsthe

natural numbers in decimal notation accord-ing to a certain formation rule. In doing so, in a methodological aside, he tells us: What we have to mention in order to explain the significance, I mean the importance, of a concept, are often extremely general facts of nature: such facts as are hardly ever men-tioned because of their great generality (PI, ,143).13

All that I have just claimed is consistent with Dromms (2008) contention that [r]ather than a model of how we learn to follow rules that Wittgenstein derived from his experi-ence of observing actual cases of instruction, these discussions of training in the use of a rule are meant to do such things as correct our conception of understanding (p. 72). Moreover, there is a way of understanding what Wittgenstein is doing without assuming that he is putting forth an account of how we actually do, or must, learn to follow rules (Dromm 2008, p. 73). Dromm (2008) is, in an important sense, right to deny that Wittgenstein is making a claim, empirical or philosophical, about our general situation when we say such things as a person can make use of a sign-post only in so far as there exists a regular use of sign-posts, a custom (PI, 198). His mistake, however, is to suppose that Wittgenstein is giving us here one possible way that this cus-tom was established (Dromm 2008, p.74). Thus, I disagree, with Dromm (2008) that Wittgenstein is only suggesting what Hutto takes to be asserted by Wittgenstein: that our common natural reactions and instinctive responses (Hutto 2006, p. 161) underlie our customs with rules (Dromm 2008, p. 74). I entirely agree with Dromm (2008): Wittgenstein is doing something other than offering an ordinary explanation . . . [that] he is not putting forth some claim (p. 84). But nor is he merely suggesting important possibilities in the way Dromm supposes. It is instructive to compare Dromms read-ing with that of Williams (2010). Williams



agrees with me that although therapy is required as a means to the philosophical end of seeing things aright, therapy is not the true purpose of philosophy (Hutto 2006, 2009). Williams and I agree that Wittgensteins

arguments reveal the nonrational commitment to the picture itself. In doing so, they force the philosopher to consider alternative conceptions of language and mind, which is precisely what Wittgenstein offers. Yet against constructive interpretations, Wittgenstein does not offer a replacement theory of language or mind. (Wil-liam 2010, p. 18)14

At the end of a therapeutic process, one is forced to consider alternatives because some seeming options have been wholly eliminated. Thus when the dust clears, when obstacles of our own manufacture are no longer blocking our view, it becomes apparent that Wittgen-steins theoretical diagnosis is rooted in an alternative understanding of the normativ-ity and necessity of our language games. This alternative requires making visible the background against which we make explicit linguistic moves (p. 18; emphasis added).

It is in this context that Wittgenstein re-minds us of very general facts of our human situation. It is in this sense that he is not en-gaged in merely speculative natural history. Having eliminated the pictures and picture-driven theories, Wittgensteins philosophical observations are not reduced to the status of reminding us of one amongst many alterna-tive, contingent possibilities. For there is no competing vision of our form of life blocking our sight and corrupting our thinking. When we are in that condition, nothing stands in the way of Wittgensteins drawing our atten-tion to revealed certainties about our general situation.15

Wittgenstein is neither in the business of making merely empirical speculations nor deducing logical necessitiesjust as he al-ways says.16 He is quietly noting facts about our language games and general situation. Wittgenstein is not a complete quietist; he is a softly spoken naturalist. After all, making claims and assertions, theorizing and offering explanations are not the only ways of using language in order to say things in philosophy.17

NOTES

This work was supported by the Australian Research Council Discovery Project Embodied Virtues and Expertise (DP: 1095109); the Marie-Curie Initial Training Network TESIS: Towards an Embod-ied Science of InterSubjectivity (FP7-PEOPLE-2010-ITN, 264828); and the Spanish Department of Economy and Innovation (Ministerio de Economa e innovacin): Agency, Normativity and Identity: the Presence of the Subject in Actions (FFI-201125131).

1. The enactivist movement was originally inspired by phenomenology, and Merleau-Pontys work in particular. Varela, Thompson, and Rosch (1991) were moved to develop a radically new approach to the mind and cognition because they observed that, at the time, cognitive science has had virtually nothing to say about what it means to be human in everyday, lived situations (p. xv). They pressed for a fundamental reform in thinking and practice, one requiring acknowledgment of the double-sense of embodiment, making room for an understanding of the body both as the-body-as-object and the-body-as-lived-subjectivity.

2. In emphasizing the essential link between mentality and embodied and embedded activity, the express aim of the original version of enactivism was to oppose and serve as an antidote to those ap-proaches to mind that take representation as their central notion (Varela et al. 1991), p. 172.

3. There are also non-philosophical motivations for believing in mental representations. Some argue that positing mental representations is the best way to answer certain scientific needs. Ordinary inferences

to the best explanation are meant to justify such claims. For example, Carruthers (2013, in this issue of American Philosophical Quarterly) makes a case for thinking that the simplest explanation of the special mental feats performed by certain non-linguistic animals requires accepting that such creatures manipulate contentful mental representations. Headline cases include the alleged planning capacities of corvids and the dead reckoning abilities of some insects, for example, ants and bees. Focusing on the first case, it is argued that the best way to explain the capabilities of certain bird species is to accept they plan a course of action by processing mental representations before taking action. This would elegantly account for the way they are able to gain access to food hung on the end of a long string so rapidly and with such preci-sion. Similarly, with respect to the second case, positing capacities to manipulate representations is, it is proposed, the best way to explain how certain insects manage to dead reckon. Dead reckoning requires calculating ones position by estimating the direction and distance travelled rather than by interacting with environmental landmarks. That seems to require manipulating representations. Thus it has been claimed that the navigational abilities of certain insects is strong evidence in favor of a computational-representational theory of mind (Gallistel 1998), p. 5. But it may also be that non-representational explanations turn out to be better at explaining such phenomena after all. Certainly, any attempt to secure the existence of mental representations by appeal to inferences to the best explanation remains a hostage to empirical fortune. Focusing on just one of these examples, in the case of corvids, it has been recently proposed that New Caledonian crows may be spontaneously solving problems without planning their actions. Contra Car-ruthers (2013), new research findings contend that the birds do not first solve the problems in their heads. Rather, their problem solving occurs spontaneously and interactively as the bird engages with features of its environment. Thus some scientists now claim that the best explanation of these performances are due to the birds being able to react in the moment to the effects of their actions, rather than being able to mentally plan out their actions (Taylor et al. 2012).

4. Fodors language of thought is an ideal language. Its sentences are only partially modelled on the apparent properties of natural language sentences. A catalogue of the differences is provided by the commentary on the model (Sellars 1956), pp. 103104. See Hutto (2007) for further discussion of this point.

5. In this light, there is something deeply ironic about Shapiros (2011) claim that if . . . language learning were to turn out to be inexplicable in terms of rules and representations, this would turn out to be something of a catastrophe for [orthodox] cognitive science (Shapiro 2011), p. 2. The irony is that it is wholly unclear what could ever positively convince cognitivists that language learning is inexplicable in terms of rules and representations. What evidence could be conceivably supplied to establish such a result?

6. Some believers in mental representations have sought to move even further away from a language-based model of mental representation, assuming quite different kinds of vehicles and contents (Prinz 2002; Crane 2009; Gauker 2011). It seems possible to imagine that both the structure and contents of non-linguistic minds might be, at root, quite un-language-like.

7. In its original formulation, enactivism, as noted in the first section of this paper, foreswore the ambi-tion of constructing a unified theory of the mind-body relation, either scientific or philosophical. Times change. Today, prominent defenders of the radical non-representationalist wing of enactivism regard the lifemind continuity thesis as laying the foundations of a general theory of mind and cognition, one that also includes the highest reaches of human cognition (Froese and Di Paolo 2009), p. 440. Thus, it is now claimed that the strong continuity thesis aspires to become a unified theory of life and mind (Froese and Di Paolo 2009), p. 440.

8. Froese and Di Paolo (2009) hold, therefore, that the capacity for worldly engagement that is char-acteristic of adult humans is neither acquired nor performed in isolation p. 452.



9. This proposal keeps faith with the central ideas of enactivism; the seeds of this proposal are there even in Varela et al., who note that, in their view, intelligence shifts from being the capacity to solve a problem to the capacity to enter into a shared world of significance (1991), p 207; emphasis added.

10. Since Davidson holds that this only occurs once one has mastered certain sophisticated linguistic practices, he concludes that non-verbals do not have a properly conceptual view of things; see Davidson (1985).

11. To accept that Wittgensteins vision of philosophy is entirely purgative is to accept he saw phi-losophy as wholly critical and reactive (Williams 2010), p. 4. Accordingly, there is nothing positive for philosophy to do (Williams 2010), p. 4. Nothing other, that is, than to set us free from the grip of pictures that led us astray.

12. Dromm (2008) has a goodly number of naturalistic interpreters in his sights, including Hacker (1989); Stroll (1994); Williams (1999); Medina (2004); and Hutto (2006).

13. It is therefore no accident that Wittgensteins descriptions are schematic, suggestive, concerned with what Stanley Cavell calls the generic object (Williams 2010), p. 11. In this respect, [h]is de-scriptions are closer to the examples and reminders of the sort used traditionally in philosophy. Indeed his engagement is at the same level of abstraction as the theories he targets for destruction (Williams 2010), p. 11.

14. For this reason: In his rejection of a scientistic conception of theory-building, there is complete harmony between his metaphilosophy and his actual method (Williams 2010), p. 19.

15. This reading is wholly in line with the central message of On Certainty, if as Moyal-Sharrock con-tends, that work is designed to show us that knowledge does not have to be at the basis of knowledge. Underpinning knowledge are not default, justified propositions that must be susceptible of justification on demand but pragmatic certainties that can be verbally rendered (2007), p. 10.

16. Hence, philosophy neither explains nor deduces anything (1953), PI, 126.

17. This is why [t]he question is not one of explaining a language-game by means of our experiences, but of noting a language-game (1953), PI, 655.

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daniel hutto - enactivism

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