MerleauPonty Embodied Cognition and Enactivism Between Phenomenology and the Life Sciences

Drawing on Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenological work on embodiment and perception, Jack Reynolds develops a novel account of many of the recent debates in enactivism and embodied cognition, engaging specifically with the epistemological and metaphysical aspects of these views. Reynolds sets out a Merleau-Ponty inspired view of enactive cognition, arguing that it presents the best overall explanation of both phenomenological considerations and a range of scientific evidence concerning life and mind. He defends the view against a variety of alternative positions across the putative analytic-continental divide, including predictive processing, illusionism and computationalism.