Humanise the Machine

Contemporary mind sciences are made up of two main paradigms, each with their own working metaphor for what mind and cognition are. Broadly speaking, for the mainstream paradigm - 'cognitivism' - the mind is a computer and cognition is computation, and for 4E/Enactive cognition, a thoroughly established paradigm but a bit more niche, the mind is a living system and cognition is sensemaking. Given that both paradigms are supported by decades of scientific evidence, the article engages the metatheoretical question of how to hold the two together. It does so by treating both paradigms as stories about what a human is and exploring the power of these stories in the context of the cultural and planetary challenges we are navigating. It argues that the paradigm that stories a human as functionally no different to a machine incurs a kind of epistemic injustice upon humans, effecting how we make sense of ourselves and the world of which we are a part and that for this reason we should be wary of an Arendtian banality in being led by a model and theory that diminishes us.