#1185 Giovanni Rolla: Enactivism, Ecological Psychology, and Embodied Cognition

Dec 5, 2025

Giovanni Rolla, a Professor of Philosophy at the Federal University of Bahia, dives into the world of enactivism, contrasting it with traditional cognitivism. He explains how enactivism, ecological psychology, and embodied cognition offer a more nuanced understanding of perception and knowledge. Rolla argues against representational frameworks, emphasizing the importance of embodied experience. He discusses how organisms shape their environments and introduces concepts like 'affordances' and 'niche construction,' painting a vibrant picture of cognition as an interactive, evolving process.

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INSIGHT

Mind As Adaptive Action

Enactivism sees cognition as organism-environment action dynamics rather than internal representation processing.
Giovanni Rolla argues this reframes the mind as enabling adaptive action grounded in bodily autonomy.

INSIGHT

Limits Of The Representational Metaphor

Traditional cognitivism models the mind as a computation machine that represents the external world.
Rolla contends this misses embodied, action-oriented aspects that empirical behavior and agents reveal.

INSIGHT

Neural Activity Isn’t Automatically Semantic

Neural activations co-vary with actions but need not bear semantic content or 'represent' external states.
Rolla warns that ascribing semantic status to brain patterns imports unjustified metaphysical claims.

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Dr. Giovanni Rolla is Professor of Philosophy at Federal University of Bahia (UFBA), Brazil. His research is about enactivism, ecological psychology and radically embodied cognition in general (sometimes he deals with traditional epistemology as well, especially know-how, normativity and rationality). He is also a founding member of the Enactive Cognition and Narrative Practices research group (University of Wollongong), and a founding member of the Cognition, Language, Enaction and Affectivity research group.

In this episode, we start by talking about enactivism, and how it differs from cognitivism and other traditional approaches in cognitive science. We talk about combining enactivism, ecological psychology and embodied cognition. We discuss what information is in cognitive science, what know-how is, and the enactivist conception of “bringing forth a world”. We talk about the relationship between enactivism and evolutionary dynamics, and evolution as natural drift. We discuss whether pre-linguistic infants have representational abilities. Finally, we talk about Radically Enactive Cognition, and how rationality is approached from this perspective.

A HUGE THANK YOU TO MY PATRONS/SUPPORTERS: PER HELGE LARSEN, JERRY MULLER, BERNARDO SEIXAS, ADAM KESSEL, MATTHEW WHITINGBIRD, ARNAUD WOLFF, TIM HOLLOSY, HENRIK AHLENIUS, ROBERT WINDHAGER, RUI INACIO, ZOOP, MARCO NEVES, COLIN HOLBROOK, PHIL KAVANAGH, SAMUEL ANDREEFF, FRANCIS FORDE, TIAGO NUNES, FERGAL CUSSEN, HAL HERZOG, NUNO MACHADO, JONATHAN LEIBRANT, JOÃO LINHARES, STANTON T, SAMUEL CORREA, ERIK HAINES, MARK SMITH, JOÃO EIRA, TOM HUMMEL, SARDUS FRANCE, DAVID SLOAN WILSON, YACILA DEZA-ARAUJO, ROMAIN ROCH, YANICK PUNTER, CHARLOTTE BLEASE, NICOLE BARBARO, ADAM HUNT, PAWEL OSTASZEWSKI, NELLEKE BAK, GUY MADISON, GARY G HELLMANN, SAIMA AFZAL, ADRIAN JAEGGI, PAULO TOLENTINO, JOÃO BARBOSA, JULIAN PRICE, HEDIN BRØNNER, FRANCA BORTOLOTTI, GABRIEL PONS CORTÈS, URSULA LITZCKE, SCOTT, ZACHARY FISH, TIM DUFFY, SUNNY SMITH, JON WISMAN, WILLIAM BUCKNER, LUKE GLOWACKI, GEORGIOS THEOPHANOUS, CHRIS WILLIAMSON, PETER WOLOSZYN, DAVID WILLIAMS, DIOGO COSTA, ALEX CHAU, CORALIE CHEVALLIER, BANGALORE ATHEISTS, LARRY D. LEE JR., OLD HERRINGBONE, MICHAEL BAILEY, DAN SPERBER, ROBERT GRESSIS, JEFF MCMAHAN, JAKE ZUEHL, MARK CAMPBELL, TOMAS DAUBNER, LUKE NISSEN, KIMBERLY JOHNSON, JESSICA NOWICKI, LINDA BRANDIN, VALENTIN STEINMANN, ALEXANDER HUBBARD, BR, JONAS HERTNER, URSULA GOODENOUGH, DAVID PINSOF, SEAN NELSON, MIKE LAVIGNE, JOS KNECHT, LUCY, MANVIR SINGH, PETRA WEIMANN, CAROLA FEEST, MAURO JÚNIOR, 航豊川, TONY BARRETT, NIKOLAI VISHNEVSKY, STEVEN GANGESTAD, TED FARRIS, HUGO B., JAMES, JORDAN MANSFIELD, CHARLOTTE ALLEN, PETER STOYKO, DAVID TONNER, LEE BECK, PATRICK DALTON-HOLMES, NICK KRASNEY, RACHEL ZAK, AND DENNIS XAVIER!

A SPECIAL THANKS TO MY PRODUCERS, YZAR WEHBE, JIM FRANK, ŁUKASZ STAFINIAK, TOM VANEGDOM, BERNARD HUGUENEY, CURTIS DIXON, BENEDIKT MUELLER, THOMAS TRUMBLE, KATHRINE AND PATRICK TOBIN, JONCARLO MONTENEGRO, NICK GOLDEN, CHRISTINE GLASS, IGOR NIKIFOROVSKI, PER KRAULIS, AND JOSHUA WOOD!

AND TO MY EXECUTIVE PRODUCERS, MATTHEW LAVENDER, SERGIU CODREANU, ROSEY, AND GREGORY HASTINGS!