Pretense as alternative sense-making: a praxeological enactivist account

Abstract

The project of this paper is to synthesize enactivist cognitive science and practice theory in order to develop a new account of pretend play. Pretend play is usually conceived of as a representationalist phenomenon where a pretender projects a fictional mental representation onto reality. It thus seems that pretense can only be explained in representationalist terms. In this paper, we oppose this usual approach. We instead propose not only new explanatory tools for pretend play, but also a fundamental reconceptualization of the phenomena of pretend play, that is, of the very explanandum of theories of pretense. To do so, we suggest combining the turn to action and embodiment in the cognitive sciences with the practice turn in the humanities. From our point of view, pretend play has to be seen in its role in human life as a whole, which is to help children to learn to master the complex sociocultural contingencies of the manifold social practices that make up social reality. Pretend play should therefore be conceived as alternative sense-making that is always related, in varying ways, to ordinary social practices. Pretenders do not need to project mental representations onto reality, but make sense of their surroundings in different ways than encultured adults in ordinary practices. In the paper, we spell out this view and show how it enables an enactivist reconceptualization of imagination, intentions and knowledge, which are usually thought of as being available only to representationalist accounts of pretense.

Towards a Taxonomy of Collective Emotions

“…The overall aim of this paper is to improve the understanding of the relevant phenomena in the field of socially extended emotion, with the purpose of facilitating empirical research in that field. I am not interested in a conceptual analysis of how we use terms like "joint", "shared", or "collective" emotion (for the distinction between phenomena and concepts see Weichold & Rucin ́ska, 2021). This builds on an understanding of concepts as formal indications of the relevant phenomena (Heidegger, 2010).…”

Getting real about pretense

“…Accordingly, following this de-intellectualized construal of what pretense involves, we need only assume that children can identify games of pretense and enter into and master them "in the same way the child learns the rules to any game-such as kickball, or freeze tag" (Langland-Hassan, 2020, p. 159, see also Weichold & Rucińska 2021). Crucially, as Langland-Hassan observes this, "does not require the representation of another's mental states" (p. 159).…”

Approaching Collectivity Collectively: A Multi-Disciplinary Account of Collective Action

“…The synthesis which we will develop at the end of the paper shows how one can conceptualize the explanatory mechanisms in such a way that they gear into each other. Still, this is not meant as an analysis of the concept “collective action” by means of providing necessary and sufficient conditions, but rather as an explanation of the phenomenon of collective action (see Weichold and Rucińska, 2021 for this distinction). Yet to begin with, we will first provide our overview and discussion of the seven different approaches to collective action.…”