Essay: 4E Cognition and Practical Ethical Implications

4E Cognition refers to a group of frameworks that propose an embodied, embedded, enacted and extended approach to cognition, in contrast with computational or brain-focused perspectives. Here I would like to explore questions of morality and ethics from the perspective of some such frameworks. In particular we will look at Varela (1999)'s exploration of ethics inspired by eastern traditions and on his own and Maturana's framework of autopoietic organisations (Maturana and Varela, 1987). We then look at Fuchs (2020)'s idea of relational values which gives us an insight into how might overarching values arise in a society where people are interconnected. Moreover, Urban (2014) points us towards a potential source of inspiration in works of Care Ethics, specifically Held et. al (2006) where we find overlapping conceptions of person as a relational being rather than the dominant individualistic view, and we try to draw from their developments in the field of ethics to our help.