Embodied Agency-Attunement: A Case Study in an Enactive CSR

This presentation argues for integrating enactive cognition into CSR, using Agency Detection as a case study. This key element in CSR’s explanatory model faces increasing skepticism, due in part to a lack of experimental confirmation. One proposal is to recast agency detection in terms of predictive processing. While this is promising, serious concerns remain, e.g. the ultimate sources of the “priors” that inform prediction, and compatibility with evolution. Enactive cognition offers a better approach: a fully embodied, socially embedded model. AGENT is not a mental representation triggered. Rather, under specifiable configurations of the brain-body-world nexus, a disruption in goal-directed action engages an embodied agency-attunement that guides behavior in re-establishing action. The perception of agency emerges from ‘agency-attuned’ responses—it is enacted rather than detected. This model encompasses key contributions of predictive processing, but eliminates problematic cognitivist assumptions, preserving the role of ‘agency detection’ within CSR. Additional contributions will be suggested.