Disabled Body‐Minds in Hostile Environments: Disrupting an Ableist Cartesian Sociotechnical Imagination with Enactive Embodied Cognition and Critical Disability Studies.

A growing body of literature in the field of embodied situated cognition is drawing attention to the hostile ways in which our environments can be constructed, with detrimental effects on people's ability to flourish as environmentally situated beings. This paper contributes to this body of research...

Full description

Bibliographic Details
Published in:Topoi: An International Review of Philosophy Vol. 44; no. 2; pp. 505 - 516
Main Author: van Grunsven, Janna
Format: Article
Published: Springer Nature May2025
Subjects:
Online Access:View this record in EBSCOhost
fields @attributes:
  recordID: 1
pdfLink:
plink: https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=hlh&AN=185071244&site=ehost-live
header:
  @attributes:
    shortDbName: hlh
    uiTerm: 185071244
    longDbName: Humanities International Complete
    uiTag: AN
  controlInfo:
    bkinfo:
    jinfo:
      jid:
        01677411
        NM2
      jtl: Topoi: An International Review of Philosophy
      issn: 01677411
      maglogo: N
    pubinfo:
      dt: May2025
      vid: 44
      iid: 2
      pid: 237
      pub: Springer Nature
    artinfo:
      ui:
        185071244
        10.1007/s11245-024-10080-5
      ppf: 505
      ppct: 11
      formats:
        fmt:
          – @attributes:
              type: T
          – @attributes:
              type: P
              size: 753KB
      tig:
        atl: Disabled Body‐Minds in Hostile Environments: Disrupting an Ableist Cartesian Sociotechnical Imagination with Enactive Embodied Cognition and Critical Disability Studies.
      aug:
        au: van Grunsven, Janna
        affil: https://ror.org/02e2c7k09 Delft University of Technology, Jaffalaan 5, 2628BX, Delft, The Netherlands
      su:
        Cognition
        Ableism
        Disability studies
        Human body
        Attention
        Imagination
      sug:
        subj:
          Cognition
          Ableism
          Disability studies
          Human body
          Attention
          Imagination
      keyword:
        Affordances
        Cartesianism
        Disability
        Enactivism
        Hostile Environments
        Technoableism
      ab: A growing body of literature in the field of embodied situated cognition is drawing attention to the hostile ways in which our environments can be constructed, with detrimental effects on people's ability to flourish as environmentally situated beings. This paper contributes to this body of research, focusing on a specific area of concern. Specifically, I argue that a very particular problematic quasi-Cartesian picture of the human body, the human mind, what it means for these to function well, and the role of technology in promoting such functioning, animate our Western sociotechnical imagination. This picture, I show, shapes the sociotechnical niches we inhabit in an ableist manner, perniciously legislating which body-minds have access to a rich world of affordances and are seen as agential and valuable. Because the ableist quasi-Cartesian commitments animating our Western sociotechnical imagination are problematic and pervasive, I argue that exposing and reimagining these commitments should be a prime focal point of those working at the intersection of science, technology, and human values. I present insights from enactive 4E cognition and critical disability studies as fruitful resources for such much-needed reimagining. I also make the case, more provocatively but also more tentatively, that the ableist view of bodily and minded well- functioning animating our Cartesian Western sociotechnical imagination is not only damaging to embodied minds who deviate from the presumed norm, creating inaccessible worlds for some of us; it is in fact a threat to human and planetary flourishing at large.
      pubtype: Academic Journal
      doctype: Article
      src: R
    language: English
    refInfo:
    copyright:
      @attributes:
        flag: Y
      custom: Topoi: An International Review of Philosophy is a copyright of Springer, 2025. All Rights Reserved.
      item: Topoi: An International Review of Philosophy
      holder: Springer Nature
      dt:
        @attributes:
          year: 2025
    holdings:
      @attributes:
        islocal: N