Embodied approaches to cognition consider themselves as alternatives to a brain-bound view of cognition. They decisively emphasize that the brain is not the minimal basis for cognition, but that the body plays a crucial role as well. But what do we actually mean by “the body” and to what extent is it a necessary condition for cognition? Is bodily action equated with movement? Is the human body just a biological phenomenon? How is it related to the human self and sociality? This thesis explores these questions by confronting embodied cognitive science with Locked-in Syndrome (LIS), a case of global paralysis, which despite the lack of voluntarily bodily action seems to leave the patient cognitively intact. I suggest that LIS poses a challenge to embodied cognitive science putting into question our basic assumptions on what it means to be a human cognitive system. A body without movement and a self whose connection to the social sphere is radically impoverished – how can we make sense of this? LIS challenges the concepts by which we describe the structure and various dimensions of cognition and it invites us to make explicit the background epistemology and general perspective through which we relate the different aspects of cognition. First, I provide an overview of the philosophy of cognitive science, from the orthodox perspective up to recent embodied cognitive science. I then introduce and clarify the enactive approach, an integrative framework for cognitive science that also serves as the epistemological basis of this thesis. Based on the different states of LIS I formulate a challenge to embodied cognitive science and discuss how the sensorimotor, functionalist and phenomenological approach to embodiment account for it. The discussion casts doubt on the assumption that a body has mainly to do with movement and it reposes the question how tool-use figures in cognition. It also brings to attention the dimension of bodily subjectivity and raises a much-neglected issue in recent cognitive science: the role of the body in social interactions. I show that these approaches to embodiment entail restrictive or loose notions of the body and are not fully able to account for cognition in LIS. I formulate a proposal for an enactive concept of the body integrating aspects from the sensorimotor and phenomenological approach to the body. I defend the idea that the enactive approach is the best framework in embodied cognitive science to counter the challenge posed by LIS and BCI. However, since embodied cognitive science entails an individualistic perspective not fully taking into account that humans are embedded in a social environment the question how the body matters in social interaction can also not be resolved from an enactive perspective on the body. In the last part of this thesis I thus propose transcending the level of individual embodiment. I make suggestions for elaborating on the enactive notion for the cognitive system (autonomy) from a social perspective. I propose to conceive of human mind in terms of a network that is based on the enaction of social processes of distinction and participation. Based on this notion I show how we arrive at an understanding of the human cognitive system which could ultimately account for the basic challenge posited by LIS – the clarification and interrelation of the concepts of body, self and sociality. In the last chapter I provide support for the plausibility for this proposal by applying it to another empirical context, namely psychiatry. What we think about the nature of human mind sets the ground for our thinking about breakdowns and what happens in cases when it does not work. I explore possible implications of the concept of socially enacted human autonomy for mental disorders in general, and for schizophrenia in particular.

Les partisans de l’approche énactive soutiennent que la cognition se constitue à travers l’histoire des différentes formes d'interaction (biologique, sensorimotrice, intercorporelle, linguistique, etc.) entre un vivant et son environnement. Ces interactions ne sont pas aléatoires, mais des activités obéissant à certaines normes que les énactivistes appellent sense-making. La cognition est, de ce point de vue, une forme de sense-making. Malgré les avantages indéniables que confère une telle perspective pour étudier la cognition, la présente thèse développe un point de vue critique par rapport à l’approche énactive et soutient qu'il est nécessaire d'approfondir notre compréhension de la dimension écologique du sense-making. Le but principal de la thèse est en conséquence de montrer que l'environnement joue un rôle encore plus important que l’approche énactive ne lui attribue habituellement. En m'engageant de manière critique dans le répertoire conceptuel de la cognition énactive, de la phénoménologie et des approches écologiques de la cognition, l’objectif de cette thèse consiste à poser les bases conceptuelles d'une approche énactive-écologique de la cognition. Pour ce faire, la thèse s’attèle à mettre de l’avant trois idées principales. La première consiste à redéfinir le concept du sense-making : contrairement à la conception qui s’est traditionnellement imposée dans le mouvement énactif, nous allons démontrer qu’il s’agit d’un phénomène de développement (et non de création) de normes. La rencontre du corps et du monde est toujours ancrée dans un champ normatif prédéfini, de sorte que nous devons réévaluer le rôle que joue l'environnement dans les processus de sense-making. En effet, si les agents se retrouvent toujours-déjà plongés dans un champ normatif (et non dans un environnement purement causal et physique), il faut alors reconnaître que l'environnement joue un rôle actif dans la constitution et l'auto-transformation des normes de sense-making. La deuxième idée poursuit dans cette veine et porte sur cette nouvelle conception de l'environnement, qui est ici défini comme un champ normatif actif, incarnant une tension entre le passé habituel du système agent-environnement et les contingences incessantes des événements du monde qui poussent le système vers leur auto-transformation et développement. La troisième idée principale de cette thèse consiste en une description holistique du champ d'action des agents (un lieu énactif) et des normes édictées (enacted) par des processus de sense-making sur le terrain (normes de lieu). Une esquisse générale du lieu énactif montre que les activités de sense-making sont liées à des processus écologiques qui enchevêtrent de multiples agents et localités matérielles dans un réseau écologique local. Ces réseaux écologiques forment une unité systémique et résiliente qui se déploie dans le temps avec les habitants du lieu, et fonctionne comme un champ normatif qui contraint et motive l'auto-transformation de chaque système agent-environnement / Supporters of autonomist enactivism or the enactive approach claim that cognition is a phenomenon constituted by the historical development of different forms of interaction (biological, sensorimotor, intercorporeal, and linguistic) between living bodies and their environments. For autonomist enactivists, the nature of these interactions is not entirely predetermined by general laws of causation but by norms enacted in the historical path of the agent-environment system, and thanks to processes of sense-making. Cognition is, from the enactivist standpoint, a form of sense-making. While there are multiple advantages in holding such perspective to study mind and cognition, this thesis develops a critical point of view and argues that it is necessary to deepen our understanding of the ecological dimension of sense-making. Specifically, the thesis aims to show that the environment plays a more critical role than autonomist enactivism usually attributes to it. By drawing on and critically engaging with the conceptual repertoire of enactive cognition, phenomenology, and ecological approaches to cognition, my objective is to set the conceptual foundations for an enactive-ecological approach to cognition. For this task, I propose three interrelated ideas. The first redefines sense-making as a phenomenon of norm development. The most common descriptions of sense-making involve the emergence of meaning from raw physical matter thanks to the activity of living organisms. As norm development, by contrast, sense-making refers to a constant enactment and re-enactment of norms of interaction from other pregiven norms, previously enacted in the past of the agent-environment system. I argue that the encounter of the body and the world is permanently embedded in a pregiven normative field and never in an abstract void where raw physical interactions occur. From this standpoint, we need, however, to re-evaluate the role that the environment plays in sense-making processes. If agents find themselves immersed in normative fields and not in raw physical landscapes, then the environment has a more active role for the constitution and self-transformation of sense-making norms than autonomist enactivists have acknowledged. In this vein, the second main idea of this thesis concerns the environment as an active normative field that incarnates a tension between the habitual past of the agent-environment system and the ongoing contingencies of worldly events that push the system to their self-transformation and development. The third main idea of this thesis consists of a holistic description of the field of action of agents (enactive place) and the norms enacted by processes of sense-making in the field (place-norms). A general sketch of enactive place shows that sense-making is tied to processes that entangle multiple agents and material localities into a local ecological web. An enactive place constitutes a systemic and resilient unity that unfolds in time altogether with its inhabitants, working as a normative field that constrains and motivates the self-transformation of each agent-environment system. Bodies are therefore part of wider unities of historical development: places.