Daniel Hutto - Enactivism

American Philosophical Quarterly
Volume 50, Number 3, July 2013
ENACTIVISM, FROM A WITTGENSTEINIAN

POINT OF VIEW
Daniel D. Hutto
Minds awaken in a world. We did not design our world. We simply 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
nactivists seek to revolutionize the new

sciences of the mind. In doing so, they promote adopting a thoroughly anti-intellectualist 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 philosophy. 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 enactivists prioritize and highlight the primacy of
ways of acting over ways of thinking when it
comes to understanding our basic psychological 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
2013 by the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois
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 section 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 Wittgensteins 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
282 / AMERICAN PHILOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY

its nature and limits aright. In short, enactivists 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 apparently 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 explanations 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 substitute 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 Wittgensteins method properly requires abandoning
any positive attempt to understand our place
and relation to the world aright. Accordingly, 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 enactivism 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 constructive, explanatory theory (section 4).
1. Affinities
Enactivism is a broad framework for understanding 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 organisms 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-cultural environments.
Enaction was chosen as the banner of the
approach because it connotes the performance of carrying out an action (Thompson
2007, p. 12). Yet, crucially, for enactivists
and here there is a strong link with Wittgensteins 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 fundamentally 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 assumptions are that: (1) the nervous system is
an autonomous dynamic system that does not
process information in the computationalist
WITTGENSTEINIAN ENACTIVISM /
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 requires individuals to construct representations
of their worlds.
Perhaps surprisingly, the founders of enactivism 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 assumptionprevalent throughout cognitive
sciencethat cognition consists of the representation of a world that is independent of our
perceptual and cognitive capacities. ... We
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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 depends upon the kinds of experience that come
from having a body with various sensorimotor
capacities, and second, that these individual
sensorimotor capacities are themselves embedded 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, indefinable [be on] the fact that we act in
such-and-such ways, e.g. punish certain actions, 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

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: Commanding, questioning, recounting, chatting, are as
much a part of our natural history as walking,
eating, drinking, playing (PI, 25).
In other writings Wittgenstein makes perfectly 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 later 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 underwrites 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 hypothesizing 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 suddenly 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 generalized, that a better metaphor for development
than following coded instructions is laying 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 communal 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 representational 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
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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 always 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 showing 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? Wittgenstein, at least, works to expose that only those
in the grip of false pictures and driven by misguided 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 explanation 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 superstition or picture that holds the philosopher
captive is not itself a mistake (2010, p. 7).
Being attached to a certain picture may foster 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 inherently 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 picture, a picture that has become identified with
our very form of life (Williams 2010, p. 8).
Getting free of pictures and thus picturedriving theorizing requires recognizing that a
pictures siren song is a wholly empty promise. A major part of getting free involves coming 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. Objects and ideals are conflated in a way that
gives rise to illusions of explanatory advance
(Williams 2010, p. 14).
Paradox arguments show that picturedriven 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 representational 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 Wittgensteins 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 specific 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 language 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 representation of sufficient expressive power that
is up to this task. So one cannot learn a first
natural language unless one already has a language 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 formation and confirmation.
The thing to observe here is that Fodors
Explanatory Need argument is driven by
purely philosophical considerations.3 It defends the view that we need and must have
a lingua mentis. Fodor makes this case in direct and blatant opposition to Wittgensteins
putative demonstration that, despite appearances, nothing at all answers to the philosophers notion of a private language. The core
features of Fodors hypothesized language
of thoughtits syntax and s emantics
are 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 apparent 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
287
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 explanatory 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 Explanatory Need argument accept, nonetheless, that
there is a need to posit and explain contentful 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 languages 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 affairs (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 representation 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 nonlinguistic 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 arguments 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 complaint 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 require 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 seemingly possessed by natural languages. The
same basic requirement, mutatis mutandis,
holds for related variants of the Explanatory
Need arguments that drive other philosophers to believe in mental representations.
Their naturalistic task, too, becomes that of
explainingwithin the stated restrictions
how, 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 contentful mental representations with sufficiently
language-like properties can exist in nature.
This is because the Explanatory Need arguments 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 perceived Explanatory Need is philosophically
grounded and not merely scientific.5
In this light, what should we make of todays best attempts to provide a naturalized
theory of content? To date we lack a workable 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 mental content. Explanatory naturalists with this
ambition seek to explain how it is that mental
representations possess their contentful properties 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 accounts are built.
So as not to violate naturalism, the hypothesized informational content is conceived in
terms of covariance. Setting aside complications about scope and context, the notion of
information relied upon is thus understood
strictly by appeal to the following bi-conditional: 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 innocent because it is accepted in many areas of
scientific investigation as when it is said that
a footprint or a fingerprint carries information 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 underscores 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
289
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 understanding 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 mechanisms ... 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 naturalism. The root trouble is that, by itself, covariance 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, instantiated. 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 informational 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 naturalists 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 explanatory naturalists lack the basic resources even
to begin explaining non-linguistic mental
content because they conflate informationas-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 responding, showing how such responding, in and
of itself, qualifies as a kind of contentful
representing. Accordingly, the way that certain systems are supposed to respond to
environmental offerings might do the work
in fixing the content of mental representations. 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 environmental 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 interpretative activity as opposed to what they are
merely disposed to do. The normative dimensions of such biologically based responding,
so these theorists claim, suffice to show how
teleology can account for genuinely representational 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 biological 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 provide 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 content have begun to realize there is something
amiss about the entire enterprise. GodfreySmith (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 difficultieswould be to operate with a nonlinguistic 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 representations 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 models rather than language). The trouble is that
any of these imagined mental representations,
whatever they may be, would be of the wrong
291
sort to fulfill the stated Explanatory Need. Not

just any kind of theory of mental representation will serve for that purpose. Consequently,
even if we allow that a non-linguistic model
of mental representations could be developed, this would leave an intolerable logical
holea different sort of gapin the explanatory 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 content 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 justification 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 existence 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 traditionally been the focus of its cognitivist opponents.
(de Bruin and Kstner 2012, p. 544; emphasis
added)
In abandoning the representationalists starting 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 theory
for 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 plausible, 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 meaningful 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 sensory responses guide action and actions have
consequences for subsequent sensory stimulation, 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 environment and to move itself accordingly. (p. 125)
Talk of interpretation, sense-making,

understanding, and even meaning generating 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 extent. 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 interpretation is a far cry from the kinds of interpretation 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 explanatory 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 having 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 properly contentful cognition by participating in
shared, intersubjective social practices. Froese and Di Paolo (2009) maintain that what
makes the cognitive gap look intractable
is a function of the prevalent methodological
293
individualism that dominates cognitive science. 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 bottomup (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 Explanatory 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 difficult, 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 appropriate ways with others.
At best these are descriptions or illuminating 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 conceptual 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 contentful 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 dissenting to a propositionof entertaining thoughts
with propositional content.
Thus, for Davidson, there are special conditions that must be met if one is to have a conceptual 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 correct, then it is only with a certain process
of socialization that there is a possibility of
making sense of ones existence as a sensemaking 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 offerings 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 explanations 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 selfworld
other 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 necessary 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 forthcoming, even if all of the relevant details are
provided, such still remain, at best, a description and not an explanation.
In all, these enactivist observations, worthy 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 explanans. 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 really needed here? Todays enactivists, like
Wittgenstein and Davidson before them,
appear to be on the way to identifying and
describing the conditions that make contentful thinking possible. But it would be a
mistake to suppose that should they succeed
in completing this task that they will have explained, 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 inadequate, lacking, or unsatisfactory if we assume that enactivists owe us explanations
of the same sort as those promised by their
intellectualist rivalsthat is, explanations
that answer a demanding, philosophical explanatory 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 scoreboard 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?
295
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 correct, 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 uncompromising of such readings, he literally
says nothing at all; he does not utter even
the most modest of non-theoretical observations 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 challenge 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 disposed 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 speculations, 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 possibilities and never offering unsupported
empirical speculations.
Dromm (2008) advances a reading according 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 already know (p. xix). Highlighting important 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 ordinary 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 observations 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 interpretation 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 different concepts (in the sense of a hypothesis).
But: if anyone believes that certain concepts are
absolutely the correct ones, and that having different 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 support 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 description, 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 invented cases constructed? Wittgenstein makes it
clear that he is not making empirical claims
about the specific details of the relevant processes. 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
297
natural numbers in decimal notation according 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 mentioned 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 experience 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 signposts, a custom (PI, 198). His mistake,
however, is to suppose that Wittgenstein is
giving us here one possible way that this custom 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 reading 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. (William 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 Wittgensteins theoretical diagnosis is rooted in an
alternative understanding of the normativity 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 reminds us of very general facts of our human
situation. It is in this sense that he is not engaged in merely speculative natural history.
Having eliminated the pictures and picturedriven theories, Wittgensteins philosophical
observations are not reduced to the status of
reminding us of one amongst many alternative, 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 attention 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 always 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 Embodied 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-bodyas-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 approaches 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
299
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 precision. 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 Carruthers (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 languagebased 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 ambition 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 characteristic 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 philosophy 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 descriptions 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 contends, 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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American Philosophical Quarterly

Volume 50, Number 3, July 2013

ENACTIVISM, FROM A WITTGENSTEINIAN

nactivists seek to revolutionize the new

by customs, practices, and institutions. For

282 / AMERICAN PHILOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY

sense but, with the right supports, enables

outline instead a view of cognition as embodied

In further explicating the notion of embodied

This brief sketch of the motivating vision of

For Wittgenstein the way to achieve this is to

284 / AMERICAN PHILOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY

This is a recurrent theme in Wittgensteins later writings. He continually reminds us of the

this is simply what we do. This is use and

At the roots of thinkingat the bottom of our

Note how this assessment fits perfectly with

from more basic forms of experiencing and

Consequently, for him it is fruitless to try

theories of mind and language. Against this

2. Wittgensteins Lessons Today

286 / AMERICAN PHILOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY

Misguided attempts at philosophical explanation have a common pathogenesis. Thus:

to tolerate contradiction mark philosophical

Fodor (1975) provides one of the clearest

bring ordinary, public linguistic vehicles of

288 / AMERICAN PHILOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY

to have. We need that explanation precisely

a crippling problem, the Hard Problem of

not meaning) [is] an objective commodity,

The Hard Problem of Content exposes that

290 / AMERICAN PHILOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY

Obviously, more would need to be done to

non-linguistic content naturalistically if such

sort to fulfill the stated Explanatory Need. Not

292 / AMERICAN PHILOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY

the most primitive forms of life, single-cell

Talk of interpretation, sense-making,

This problem will not easily go away. For

ent kind than that exhibited by lower forms,

Ultimately, the answer these authors propose

294 / AMERICAN PHILOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY

To this they add: Thus as individuals become

and engaging in interpretative practices; this

of content discussed in the previous section.

Extreme therapeutic (and some resolute)

296 / AMERICAN PHILOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY

What we are supplying are really remarks on

Dromm insists that the relevant remarksfor

298 / AMERICAN PHILOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY

At the end of a therapeutic process, one is

300 / AMERICAN PHILOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY

302 / AMERICAN PHILOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY

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