Graduation Year

2026

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree

Ph.D.

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.)

Degree Granting Department

Philosophy

Major Professor

Stephen Turner, Ph.D.

Co-Major Professor

Alex Levine, Ph.D.

Committee Member

Lee Braver, Ph.D.

Committee Member

Joshua Rayman, Ph.D.

Committee Member

Wei Zhang, Ph.D.

Committee Member

Sara Green, Ph.D.

Keywords

computationalism, disability, philosophy of cognitive science, radical enactivism

Abstract

The purpose of this project is to analyze different methodological approaches in the philosophy of cognitive science, with the goal of determining their usefulness for explaining and understanding bodily awareness and skill-acquisition over time. The examples of skill-acquisition are limited to motor control, impaired by various kinds of disability—but then acquired over time, via technological or rehabilitative means. These phenomena of motor learning are then viewed through the lens of two competing theoretical approaches in cognitive science: neuromechanical cognitive science, and radical enactivist cognitive science.

The strengths of the neuromechanical framework are found in its historical pedigree, and in the empirical evidence that justifies mechanical explanations in general. Its weaknesses are found in its difficulty to explain the connection between mechanistic processes in the brain, and intentional mental content. Secondly, the neuromechanical view will appeal to the notion of a “body schema” to account for bodily awareness and learning, but I argue that the body schema’s instantiation in the brain cannot be easily located.

Radical enactivism’s strengths are in its emphasis on a developmentally-sound framework for explaining cognition: beginning with so-called basic cognition—without mental content—and developing into socially scaffolded cognition. Secondly, its explanation of cognition as the result of interactions between one’s brain, body and environment— takes seriously the dynamism of human cognition. Radical enactivism’s weakness is found in its apparent inability to explain the coherent structure of embodied activity over time. Ultimately, the strengths of these theories ought to be preserved, but within a new framework that prioritizes the social core of cognition.

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