Emotions on the Playing Field

Daniel D. Hutto, Michael Kirchhoff and Ian Renshaw

Daniel D. Hutto
School of Humanities and Social Inquiry
Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts
University of Wollongong
NSW 2522, Australia
Tel: +61 2 4221 3987
Fax: +61 2 4221 5341
Email: ddhutto@uow.edu.au

Michael Kirchhoff
School of Humanities and Social Inquiry
Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts
University of Wollongong
NSW 2522, Australia
Tel: +61 2 4221 5742
Email: kirchhof@uow.edu.au

Ian Renshaw
School of Exercise and Nutrition Sciences
Faculty of Health
Queensland University of Technology
QLD 4001, Australia
Tel: +61 7 3138 5828
Fax: +61 7 3138 3980
Email: i.renshaw@qut.edu.au

Abstract:

Sporting events are not just full of emotion; emotions make a difference to how things go on the
playing field for performers, both during the training and execution of their skills. In line with
this observation, sports psychologists have recently proposed a form of affective learning design
(ALD) that recognizes the central importance of emotions on the playing field. In contrast to
conventional training methodologies, ALD offers promising ways to think about how to create
learning environments that are sensitive to the inherent relationship between emotional
attunement and intelligent behavior when acquiring sports skills. This paper introduces ALD and
its central assumptions. It then explains how ALD can be fruitfully understood theoretically by
conceiving of the most rudimentary forms of emotionality in terms of wide reaching, dynamic

cognitive activity. It is shown that this enactivist take on basic emotions is independently
motivated and puts us in a position to understand how emotions can work together and integrate
with other cognitive processes in fast paced sporting performances. The final section considers
the kind of neural architecture that would allow actions to be performed in a fast, yet intelligent,
fashion, where the dynamics involved break across brain, body and environment, and where
emotionality is a constitutive aspect of how organisms respond intelligently to varying
circumstances. It is argued that such a neural architecture is not best understood as being
computational or representational in its core characteristics.

1. Introduction: Embedding Emotions in Training and Performance

Emotions pervade intelligent activity. Our capacity to seize opportunities is inherently emotional,
especially when the actions in question do not rest on conscious inference or decision but are
spontaneously drawn from us in response to situations.
Venerable traditions in philosophy see development of emotional responsiveness as central
to skilled performance. For Aristotle, any virtue (aret) or excellent performance requires
habituating emotions so as to have them at the right times, with reference to the right objects,
towards the right people, with the right aim, and in the right way (Nicomachean Ethics, 1106b
21-24). Becoming virtuous in the Aristotelian sense, in any practical endeavour, necessitates
attuning ones emotions properly to situations; a process inseparably bound up with situated
embodied practice until it becomes second nature.
In general, successful performance in affectively charged situations depends on skillfully
responding in emotionally appropriate ways. Those working in the police, armed forces,
emergency services, performing arts and sports regularly find themselves in such circumstances.
In the extreme, the stakes are life or death and split-second responses are often required.
Consider police work. The police are sometimes confronted with life-threatening challenges in
which they are in fear of their lives. In response to a rise in fatal police shootings it has been
asked whether officers are adequately trained to deal with their emotions in such situations. What
form should such training take given that instinct takes over for police in situations like this
[sic] [T]here is no time to think through training scenarios; your reactions must be second
nature (Goldsworthy 2014)?
Competitive sport is no different. It is clearly a domain in which there are strong links
between skill training, emotional responsiveness and performance. Athletes are deeply invested
in outcomes; success and failure can be easily determined; and the emotions involved can be
measured in naturalistic settings. In light of this reminder, it is surprising that often the training
of emotions and skills in sports and other domains are kept separate, with the emotion training
occurring prior to or after skill training as add-on extras (McCarthy et al. 2013). In effect, often
the emotions are sidelined, if not wholly benched, while learning technical skills. Against this
trend, sport psychologists, inspired by work on constraints-led training methods, have developed
techniques for incorporating emotions directly into skill training putting learners into scenarios
that closely resemble affectively charged performance environments, giving them the
opportunity to attune emotionally to key features of such situations (Headrick et al. 2015).
The Affective Learning Design, or ALD, approach to training conceives of learners as
dynamical systems that refine their responses to possibilities for action afforded by their
environments (Davids et al. 2008, Renshaw et al. 2010, Pinder et al. 2011b). For example, ALD
assumes that a batter in cricket needs to attune emotionally to the intentional attitudes of a

bowler and that replacing bowlers with ball projection machines during training is a barrier to
successfully developing the emotional aspects of performance. Importantly, ALD training shapes
development, not through explicit instruction, but by selectively modifying specific bodily,
environmental and task constraints for example, changing the size of the playing field,
adjusting distances between players, fatiguing players, and so on (Hutto and Snchez-Garca
2015).
To fully understand how emotions can relate to and integrate with other forms of cognition
we need an understanding of how emotions feature in smooth performances that occur in quick-
paced, high-intensity contexts, and how emotional responding can be cultivated. This paper takes
the first steps towards providing such an understanding, laying the ground for further work that
can enrich how we think about the way emotions and cognition integrate in skilled performances
in sport and other domains. By investigating these links it is possible to see how theory and
practice can be successfully bridged in this domain, setting the stage for future research and
collaboration.
The paper unfolds as follows. Section 2 explicates how recognition about the central role of
emotional attunement in the acquisition of skill has led to the development of affective learning
designs, or ALDs, in sports psychology. Section 3 articulates why and in what ways a Radically
Enactive, Embodied approach to Cognition, REC, can serve as a promising theoretical
framework for understanding the constraint-based approach to training in sports that has inspired
ALDs. It then provides a sketch of a radically enactive vision of basic emotions that suits the
needs of ALDs. It is argued that a radically enactive approach to basic emotions is independently
motivated in that it overcomes the limitations of standard cognitivist and somatic theories, while
making room for basic emotions that are inherently enactive, dynamic and interactive. Finally, in
section 4, the paper turns to consider new work on neural dynamics through the lens of
anticipatory models in neurobiology, arguing that these resources may provide the basis for a
REC-friendly unified account of intelligence and emotionality from a neurobiological
perspective.

2. From Ecological Dynamics to Affective Learning Designs

A significant challenge for sport psychologists is to understand how to design practice tasks that
simulate key features of competitive sport performance (Seifert et al., 2013). In response to this
need the field of sport science has seen a shift towards a constraints-led view of training that is
inspired by developments in ecological dynamics (Baker and Farrow 2015).
Constraints-led approaches to skill acquisition draw heavily on Gibsons (1979) ecological
psychology. According to Gibson, there is a tight functional fit between animals and their
environment, and perception is understood as being fundamentally for action, for getting a grip
on the world as opposed to representing it. As such, animals are thought to directly perceive
possibilities for action that are afforded by their environments. This basic Gibsonian approach
has been significantly enhanced in recent years by adding the resources of dynamical systems
theory. Chemero (2009) provides a developed statement of this view. So augmented, the core
ideas of ecological psychology informs the new paradigm of ecological dynamics, which has
opened the way for investigating complex self-organizing responsiveness of learners in sporting
activities.
From an ecological dynamical perspective, sporting activities can be split up into a number
of variables and their changing patterns can be captured in a continuous, temporal and

interdependent way in terms of unfolding laws that can be expressed in mathematical equations.
These laws describe the dynamics of non-linear couplings, which emerge between organisms and
their environments in a formal and principled way (Garca-Gonzlez et al., 2011). Accordingly,
the basic unit of analysis for ecological dynamics is the nonlinearly coupled organism-
environment system.
Building on these theoretical insights, a constraints-led approach requires teachers and
trainers to adopt a strategy of a relatively hands-off discovery-based learning. Although training
is structured in certain ways, trainers do not provide explicit instruction but rather introduce
constraints into the training regime in order to encourage learners exploratory behaviors so they
can find their own individual solutions to tasks at hand (Renshaw et al., 2010; Renshaw and
Chappell 2012). Constraints can be placed on the individual directly or on the environment in
which they operate. However, crucially, individuals are here understood as situated dynamical
systems, that are open to influence and intervention on multiple temporal and spatial scales at
once. Training is focused on the self-organizing antics of such dynamical systems, which are
always open to re-configurations enabling them to self-organize quickly and flexible to the
contextual demands (Kelso 1995).
Importantly, the constraints-led perspective on learning is a non-linear pedagogy (Renshaw
2012). Instead of relying on explicit instruction, ALD trainers shape emergent intentions,
perceptions and actions by selectively modifying specific bodily, environmental and task
constraints for example, changing the size of the playing field, adjusting distances between
players, fatiguing players to encourage and direct the way skills and expertise emerge over
time (Hutto and Snchez-Garca 2015).
Arguably, we should not understand the ecological dynamics of organism-environment
couplings in terms of acts of cognition that manipulate mental representations. That is to say, we
join with Chemero 2009 in rejecting a mental gymnastics account of cognition that explains
how organisms manage to successfully engage effectively with features of their environments.
Against the standard computational and representational view of cognition, those who favour
radially embodied and enactive approaches to cognition seek to explain skilled performance in
terms of embodied activity that involves dynamic processes that break across brain, body and
environment (see also Chemero 2009; Thompson 2007). Accordingly, cognitive processes are
not conceived of as being on the inside of an individual but rather in bouts of extensive,
embodied activity that involves more or less successful organism-environment couplings (see
also Chemero and Silberstein 2015; Kirchhoff 2015a, 2015b).
So conceived, just as the ecological tradition would have it, embodied skills are acquired and
emerge as a consequence of a history of interactions between learners and their embedding
environments (Chow et al. 2011; Davids et al. 2008). Cognitive processes are essentially
interactional, temporal and dynamic (see also Spivey 2007). The most fundamental forms of
cognition are processes that emerge from and within these dynamic interactions (Arajo et al.,
2009).
A key consequence of adopting an ecological dynamics approach to understand sports
performance is that training should embrace the concept of representative design, initially
proposed by Brunswick (1956), which seeks to understand which variables individuals are
sensitive to in task environments. Sport psychologists adopted this idea, replicating variables
from the actual performance setting in the training setting, and tweaking them as appropriate to
drive learning.

 This style of approach, termed a representative learning design, or RLD, attempts to ensure
that learning task environments replicate performance task environments to a good extent such
that the former can be modified to develop skills (Araujo et al. 2007; Pinder et al. 2011a).
Incorporating RLD principles into practice tasks ensures that the crucial cyclical relationship
between perception and action in a performance environment is maintained (Gibson 1979).
Initial empirical work on RLD has focussed mainly on identifying environmental constraints.
For example, studies have tended to manipulate ball delivery methods (Pinder et al. 2011a),
practice environments (Barris et al. 2013), and task complexity in team games (Travassos et al.
2012). However, a key set of constraints has been neglected that of affect and emotion.
It is natural to suppose that emotions classify amongst the most important set of constraints
that can shape the overall performance of a system (Jones 2003; LaBar and Cabeza 2006). There
is empirical evidence that affective attitudes, such as anxiety, act as constraints on the overall
performance of individuals and how they respond to their environment in sporting cases. Anxiety
clearly influences how possibilities for acting are perceived and responded to in cases of basic
reaching, grasping and passing tasks (Graydon et al. 2004). Similarly, anxiety appears to be
influencing actions of individuals in more complex movement tasks in sports. For example,
Pijpers et al. (2006) were able to manipulate anxiety levels in wall climbing tasks by using
climbing routes, or traverses, of different heights. They found that at higher traverses the
perceived and the actual maximal overhead reaching height were reduced and that this translated
into a commensurate increase in the number of holds used. That is, climbers were more
conservative in the manner they completed the course. It is not much of a stretch to assume that
what goes for anxiety will also be true of basic emotions such as fear and anger.
If this reasoning is along the right lines, then there is good reason to create learning tasks that
replicate the affective and emotional constraints of task environments (Beek et al. 2003).
Specifically, there is a need to replicate the range and intensity of affective attitudes and
emotions in performance tasks within training environments to ensure that functional perception-
action couplings are formed.
In line with constraints-led thinking, the key supposition is that practice task constraints
should be designed to simulate the constraints of a performance environment (Davids et al. 2011).
In this way, athletes can experience the interacting constraints of a specific performance
environment in a managed learning experience. It is therefore imperative to ensure that all the
relevant constraining aspects are present in such situations including affective and emotional
aspects.
Surprisingly, however, skills training in sporting contexts concentrates predominantly on
technical and tactical development in ways that leave emotions either out of the picture entirely
or that require their separate, specialized training. The default tendency is to keep emotions and
skills training apart, with the former, to the extent that it occurs at all, occurring prior to or after
skill training (McCarthy et al. 2013).
Emotions are typically sidelined, or kept on the bench, while traditional models of skill
acquisition focus on template building (Moy et al., 2014). Teachers and coaches often focus
on removing or suppressing emotion from learning. The reason for this is that emotions are
conceived of either as unwanted noise (Davids et al. 2003; Seifert and Davids, 2012; Smith and
Thelen, 2003) or as having a negative impact on skill acquisition in virtue of being considered
irrational or merely instinctive (Lepper 1994)
However, models that demarcate emotions from intelligence the learning of skills in sports
are currently under pressure given that they have been demonstrated to have serious limitations

on learning and skill development: they fail to capture the degeneracy inherent in complex
adaptive systems like individual sports performers and teams (Chow et al., 2015). It is precisely
such limitations of more conventional learning paradigms, where skill acquisition is separated
from emotion training that have been pivotal in extending constraint-led approaches to
incorporate affective learning designs.
In coming to realize that emotions are among the possible contextual constraints that can be
tweaked, researchers have augmented RLDs to include Affective Learning Design, ALDs, in
order to focus more explicitly on the role of emotions when devising learning tasks. Whereas
much previous research has focussed on the negative impact of emotions, ALD views emotions
as integral to skilled performance. From the perspective of ALD, emotions are embraced as a key
part of the learning process and are incorporated directly into skill training (Headrick et al. 2015).
Thus, in the ALD paradigm, learners are asked to cope with scenarios that closely resemble
affectively charged performance environments, giving them the opportunity to attune
emotionally to key features of such situations.

3. Getting Emotions in on the Act

According to ALD, emotions are parts and parcel of how individuals learn and perform. ALD is
a pedagogical framework that aims at imposing constraints on learning situations to ensure that
both intelligence and emotionality are appropriately intertwined. But what would emotions need
to be like in order for them to make a difference and integrate with dynamic forms of cognition
of the sort that typify skilled sporting performances?
Many philosophers take it for granted that emotions are to be understood along folk
psychological lines that promotes a standard story that represents agency as a series of
interactions amongst states and events (Steward 2016, p. 72). Emotions, so conceived, are
treated as discrete content bearing mental states.
Cognitivist theories of emotions attempt to understand emotions as nothing more than purely
contentful states of mind such as evaluative judgements or the like. What makes cognitivist
accounts of the emotions attractive is, as Ratcliffe (2008) observes, that in describing emotions
as cognitive, [these] philosophers tend to mean at least that they are intentional states of some
kind (20).
In stressing the importance of intentionality for understanding emotion, cognitivism satisfies
a deep intuition that emotions are meaningful. They inform us about our relationship to the
world, they embody our convictions, and they factor intelligibly into our decisions in life (Prinz
2004,16). Certainly, if emotions are understood as cognitive attitudes of some kind then this
would explain why they, or their essential components, have world-relating intentional properties.
For it is generally supposed that states of mind can only have intentional properties if they
possess representational content.
There is some latitude in how to understand cognitivism: it can come in different forms
depending on which notion of cognitive attitude is in play. For example, the attitudes in question
might be thought to be explicitly formed propositional attitudes, such as beliefs or judgements. If
so, they have the potential to be revised through dialogue that engages reasoning processes.
Accordingly, only certain states of mind count as real emotions. Which kinds? Those states of
mind that are bound up with contentful states of mind in normatively appropriate ways. So
understood, having an emotion requires being in a state of mind that is connected in the right
way to a host of other attitudes beliefs, desires and the like: the propositional attitudes of folk

psychology. The reason for insisting on this requirement is that these other contentful states are
thought to play defining and individuating roles that determine (a) if an emotion is in play, and
also (b) which emotion is in play. To give this idea a name, call it the Folk Network View of
Emotions. Gaut (2003) explains how it informs cognitive-evaluative theory and standard views
about the intentionality of emotional states of mind.

An emotion has an intentional object: I am afraid of something. I pity someone. According

to the dominant (and I would argue correct) cognitive-evaluative theory of the emotions, an
emotion not only has an intentional object, but also essentially incorporates an evaluation of
that object. So to be afraid of something essentially involves evaluating that thing as
dangerous; to pity someone essentially involves construing her as suffering, [and so on] (Gaut
2003, p. 16; emphases added).

On this reading of cognitive-evaluative theory, having an emotion necessarily requires being in a

number of other cognitive states most importantly beliefs and desires with the right kinds of
content. This is why merely having certain feelings does not suffice for having an emotion.
Consider a case in which you feel insulted by a perceived slight. That feeling only suffices for
your being emotionally upset as long as you believe that you have been insulted. If that same
feeling were to persist after you discover and come to believe I did not insult you it would make
no sense. The feeling would not connect with the rest of your contentful mental states in the right
way: hence it would not count as an emotion at all.
The contentful states of mind in the folk network are taken to exist within the rational space
of reasons, thus emotional states of mind must have appropriate kinds of contents they must be
contentful evaluations, construals or judgements so they can stand in normatively constrained
relations to other contentful attitudes.
That emotions must be normatively constrained by a constellation of other mental states
comes out most clearly and strongly when the kind of evaluations of which Gaut speaks are
understood as involving contentful judgements. Thus the feelings that we experience when we
are ashamed and when we feel guilty, for instance, might well be identical, and what individuates
them is the content of the respective evaluative thoughts (Gaut 2003, 17, emphasis added). On
the further assumption that such evaluations are judgement-based it is clear why merely having
certain feelings does not suffice for the having of emotions. According to the folk network view
of emotions, it isnt possible to individuate an emotion by a unique feeling associated with it
(Gaut 2003, p. 17).
Thus, focusing on the necessary connection between having certain beliefs and experiencing
shame, Prinz (2004) highlights some important implications of this version of pure cognitivism
when it comes to thinking about how we might intervene on the emotions. But pure cognitivism
goes much deeper than this. It not just the view that beliefs influence a state of shame but that
having the right kinds of contentful states of mind is obligatory for experiencing shame at all. If
you do not believe you did anything wrong, you will not feel ashamed. Shame can be caused by
beliefs and cured by beliefs: If you discover that your actions were beneficial rather than
harmful, you can trade shame in for pride (Prinz 2004, 83).
Pure cognitivism comes in other stripes too. For example, emotions might be belief-like
states that are more basic than the sorts of explicit cognitive attitudes that can enter into our
reasoning processes. It is easily conceivable that some cognitive attitudes might be immune to
revision by rational means even though they possess representational content.

Should we accept some or other pure cognitivism about the emotions? It is certainly plausible
that one cannot have certain emotions without adopting the right kind of contentful cognitive
attitudes, but is this true of all emotions?
There are excellent reasons to doubt that ambitious versions of pure cognitivism offer an
adequate theory of all emotions. For one thing, pure cognitivist accounts of the emotions seem
woefully incomplete in that they underrate the importance of feelings. A recognized downside of
purely cognitivist accounts of the emotions is that they dont tell the whole story about emotions.
It is easy enough to imagine all of the relevant cognitions taking place in disembodied, entirely
cold, detached and, wholly, unemotional ways. To put it mildly, purely cognitivist accounts
appear to leave out something essential: they are notoriously bad at explaining the
phenomenology of emotional responsiveness the embodied experiences of anger, frustration,
happiness as anything other than mere add-ons to cognition.
This observation is especially pertinent even if we consider quite ordinary cases. Familiarly,
even when our emotions are stirred up by having certain beliefs or judgements, the associated
feelings seem an essential part of what it is to have the emotion and can often outlast changes in
the surrounding contentful beliefs and judgements. Thus my wifes seething anger and feelings
of outrage at what she takes to be some transgression of mine might not immediately subside,
even upon her discovery that I am innocent of that of which I am accused. And even if, as a
consequence of this discovery, she no longer directs her anger at me it might not follow that her
anger entirely dissipates. In such circumstances, it seems that the having of particular feelings
does suffice for being in an emotional state.
Considerations of this kind can make some or other somatic feeling theory of emotions
appear attractive. According to the classic somatic theory, emotions just are feelings of bodily
changes as they occur (James 1884). This basic Jamesian idea has been revamped and updated in
the somatic perception theory advocated by Damasio (1994) and others (see Clark 2016, p. 233
for an updated discussion). Accordingly, James original account is revised to allow for emotions
to occur even without the relevant bodily changes, just in case the relevant brain activity that
monitors the bodily changes is present. Hence, as if feelings triggered by central processes in
the brain suffice for having certain emotions. Such theories are problematic in that they have
little to say about the processes by which external stimuli are evaluated for ecological and social
significance (Hill 2009,199).
Basically, in reducing emotions to bodily feelings or perceptual states exclusively targeting
such, somatic theories have trouble explaining what it is for an emotion to have an intentional
object or target (Hill 2009, p. 200). They lack appropriate reach. Such theories lean too far in
the non-intellectualist direction. What is needed is an understanding of emotional intentionality:
how there can be attitudes of feeling towards in which the objects of emotions target a
particular thing or person (that pudding, this man), an event or an action (the earthquake, your
hitting me) or a state of affairs (my being in an aeroplane) (Goldie 2000,17).
It seems that if we are to have an adequate account of what is essential to being an emotion,
we must resist the false choice between pure cognitive theories and pure somatic, bodily feeling
theories. Apparently, what is really needed is an account of how emotions can be sophisticated
cognitive states and, at the same time, have bodily feelings as a major component (Ratcliffe
2008, p. 17). Prima facie, this looks difficult to achieve. Ratcliffes diagnosis is that we will only
do so by overhauling some deeply entrenched constraining assumptions: Central to this
overhaul is the abandonment of the distinction between cognition and affect (2008, p. 17). This

is broadly right and, crucially, finding a way to adequately revise our assumptions is, if
anything is, a job for a philosopher.
Where should we look? It is best to start by questioning the overly tidy account provided by
pure cognitivism, for without warrant, it forecloses on an important possibility for understanding
basic, contentless emotions. Importantly, despite the popularity of the folk network view of
emotions in philosophy, it is a live question in the sciences whether some emotions exist before,
below and quite independently of contentful attitudes. Basic emotions, according to Elkmans
(1999) theory, each have a distinctive affect program they exhibit script-like patterns of
physiological and behavioral responses.1 Griffiths (2013) explicates Elkmans main idea on basic
emotions, underscoring the fact that by its lights:

basic emotions are homologues categories defined by shared evolutionary origins. The
basic emotion of fear, for example, exists in many mammalian species and it is the same thing
in each just as the femur or the hypothalamus is the same thingit has a shared evolutionary
origin in the common ancestor of those species (p. 2).2

Why take the idea of basic emotions, understood along Elkmans lines, seriously? Griffiths
(2013) hits the nail on the head: the view that emotions are judgements creates a dilemma.
Commonly accepted statements of the content of emotional judgements involve sophisticated
social and normative concepts (p. 2). This mundane fact is apparently at odds with another hard
to deny fact: that many sentient beings those apparently quite capable of emotion, including
infants and animals, for example lack the sorts of concepts that are allegedly needed for having
certain standard types of emotions. Indeed, it seems such beings are quite capable of emotion
even though, according to some accounts, they lack any concepts or even the capacity to form
any contentful judgements at all. As Griffiths observes, none of this sits well:

with the plausible claim that adult human anger has something deeply in common with anger
in frustrated infants, or the anger of a dominant monkey towards a subordinate. Either these
agents possess the [relevant] concepts or they are not angry in the true sense of the word.
This problem is made worse by evidence that emotions in adult humans can be produced by
low-level processes that seem equally implausible locales for such concepts (2013, p. 2).

We can either (a) deny that such beings including ourselves in many cases are capable of
having emotions, strictly speaking or (b) accept that such beings including us in many cases
are capable of real emotion even when the appropriate links to conceptually informed contentful
attitudes are absent. Which way should we go? Here it is instructive to consider Goldies (2000)
proposal about how to understand affect programs namely, those basic episodes of emotional
experience and response that are at once complex, coordinated and automated (Griffiths 1997,
p. 105). Goldie stresses that such basic modes of response should not be confused with culturally
informed, emotions proper (for him the latter can only be understood under the auspices of the
folk network view of emotions).
Even so, Goldie (2000) admits that affect programs provide a good characterization of
some short-term episodes of emotional experience involved in the recognition-response tie,
which could be a suitable object of study for evolutionary science (Goldie 2000, p. 105). And,
taking this a step further, he insists that despite the importance of distinguishing these episodes
of emotional experience from emotions proper, it must be admitted that the former necessarily

involve what he calls feeling towards. Crucially, Goldie understands the latter as an
intentional element which is neither belief nor desire, and which is, in many respects more
fundamental to emotional experience than either of these To reflect the fact that this
intentional element is both intentional and involves feelings, I will call it feeling towards (2000,
p. 19). The capacity for feeling towards something is thus a central feature even of what he
classifies as basic episodes of emotional experience.
How exactly should we understand this rudimentary kind of intentionality this feeling
towards that is exhibited by such basic forms of emotional response? Hutto (2012) makes the
case that this is best achieved by abandoning representational theories of mind and adopting the
REC framework described in the previous section. Doing so involves thinking of basic emotional
responses as target-directed instead of as inherently content involving. Another feature of the
radically enactive approach is that it requires conceiving of emotional attitudes as embodied
attitudes of whole creatures thus the intentionality of such attitudes is not merely a feature of
some functionally specified and semantically individuated mental state internal to emotional
beings.
REC broadly agrees with DeLanceys take on the intentionality of basic emotions as
understood under the auspices of affect program (See Delancey 2001, pp. 89-98). Summarizing
DeLanceys view Griffiths tells us:

Basic emotions can be intentionally directed at a state of affairs, so that their content is a
proposition. For example, I may be afraid that this dingo will bite me. But the very same
emotion may be intentionally directed at what DeLancey calls a concretum, meaning an
object as such, rather than as an element in a proposition. For example, I may be afraid of
this dingo. This is where affect-program theory comes in. Because emotions are intrinsically
action-directing, an emotion whose content is a concretum can nevertheless explain action. I
flee the dingo because I am afraid of it. In order to flee I do not need a proposition about the
dingo, such as that it is dangerous, or that it will bite me, combined with a desire to avoid
danger, or not to be bitten. I just need to be afraid, and for the target of my fear to be the
dingo. What we have in common with other animals, DeLancey argues, is the ability to have
emotions that are intentionally directed at a concretum. What distinguishes us is the ability to
have emotions intentionally directed at propositions. This ability introduces a far greater
flexibility into our emotional responses (2013, pp. 2-3; emphases added).

REC provides a framework for making sense of these features of basic emotional attitudes, and
basic minds more generally. It develops an account of Ur-intentionality that shows how it is
possible to adopt non-contentful attitudes that are directed at or towards particular worldly
objects or states of affairs (Hutto and Myin 2013, Hutto 2013, Hutto and Satne 2015). Yet, while
basic emotional attitudes exhibit intentionality without content, according to REC, some
emotional attitudes can also be content involving, at least for beings that have mastered certain
discursive, narrative practices; namely, for those whose minds have been socio-culturally
scaffolded in the right kind of ways. As such it is possible for me to respond with fear to the
situation of being confronted by a dingo even if I do not form any contentful attitudes at all. But
it is also possible for me to respond with fear to that dingo in ways that are bound up with a
range of contentful attitudes specific thoughts, beliefs, hopes and so on. According to

REC, the common denominator in both of these cases is the emotional attitude of fear that is
non-contentfully directed at the particular objects and state of affairs (e.g., the dingo facing off
against me), usually with attention focused on specific aspects of the object or situation (e.g., the
dingos snarling, its barred teeth, its glaring eyes). The difference is that in cases of non-basic
emotional responding one also forms contentful thoughts about the given states of affairs in
addition to having world-directed embodied and emotional responses.
All that being said, REC differs very slightly from Delancys official account, as Griffiths
construes it. REC breaks faith with a familiar tenet, one taken as axiomatic and cherished by
many in analytic philosophy of mind. It is widely assumed that adopting a psychological attitude
toward a state of affairs entails adopting an attitude towards a content or a proposition (see, e.g.,
Fodor and Pylyshyn 2015, 6-7). REC denies this. Why so? Because it is sensitive to the fact that,
Propositions are very different from states of affairs. In particular, propositions are true or false,
while states of affairs are not the sort of things that can be either true or false. On many standard
ways of thinking about propositions and states of affairs, states of affairs are the things that make
propositions true or false (Bermdez 2011, 404).
Essentially, according to REC, basic emotions possess the same sort of core structure as
emotions proper the sort of structure that cognitive-evaluative theory assigns to them. However,
as just highlighted, the intentionality of basic emotions is neither based in nor entails having
propositional attitudes. Consequently, the evaluative aspect of basic emotions on this view
should not be understood as rooted in contentful mental states and conceptually grounded
judgements. Rather the so-called evaluations of basic emotions are best understood as enactive,
embodied responses rooted in our biological history but educated through training and culture.
When fearful a creature typically responds to and treats some X as if it were dangerous e.g. by
approaching with caution, avoiding it where possible, and so on. Of course, through training, this
natural reaction can be modified. What explains this? The fact that we and many other creatures
are, thanks to our evolutionary histories, naturally set up to be set off by certain types of things
and situations as opposed to others. Since our embodied evaluations are not contentful
judgements of any kind, rational or otherwise, these basic emotional modes of response are not
to be understood as always already tied up with some kind of norm-bound content or linked, in
the first instance, to a constellation of other propositional attitudes that exist in the space of
reasons. Yet such embodied, emotional responding still counts for all that as a bona fide kind
of basic emoting.
RECs two-tiered framework of basic and scaffolded minds permits recognition that (i) our
most fundamental, non-contentful, enactive emotional attitudes as well as (ii) emotions that are
bound up with other contentful attitudes count as genuine emotions. This provides the necessary
space to properly acknowledge what we share emotionally speaking with other animals
namely, a tendency toward script-like responding to certain worldly triggers. But this is a basic,
embodied way of responding that can be trained and developed through participation in purely
embodied practices. Happily, REC also acknowledges that some emotional beings can have
emotions that are bound up with a host of contentful attitudes it denies, however, that these are
basic. On this analysis, we are not faced with an unpalatable either/or choice when it comes to
thinking about emotions.
Many theorists are attracted to the idea that intentional attitudes such as beliefs, desires
and emotions are neatly and discretely defined, causally efficacious, content-bearing mental
states states that figure in nicely staged and sequenced linear processes and operations.
However, if basic minds are as REC characterizes them then they are architecturally quite

different in character and much messier than the standard story about content-bearing mental
states proposes (for elaboration on this point, see Hutto et al. 2014).
Putting emotion in the spotlight, Baumeister et al. (2007) make this point vividly. In line
with the ecological dynamic approach we can trade in the simplistic and intuitively appealing
idea that mental states directly cause behavior for a vision of mental processing that understands
cognitive influence in more complex, dynamical and holistic terms.

People will explain someones behavior in terms of because she was mad or because he
was afraid, as opposed to saying anger directed her cognitive processing to focus
disproportionately on certain possible outcomes, whereupon her behavioral decision process
failed to take certain potential risks into account or fear temporarily reordered his goal
priorities, causing him to abandon one goal in favor of the seemingly urgent albeit irrational
goal of escaping the situation (Baumeister et al. 2007, 168).

Focusing on the temporal nature of emotional influence requires moving away from state-based
to a process-based metaphysics. Processes are creatures of time in the sense that for processes to
exist necessitates them having a diachronic character. Dynamical systems are comprised not of
states but of processes. 3
REC favours such an approach in viewing basic emotions and basic cognition more generally
as extensive embodied activities. How we feel is bound up with what we are doing in ways that
unfold over time. Importantly, unlike a state or event, a process is something which goes on
through time and can change as it does so (Steward 2016, p. 76).
Crucially, in promoting the idea that basic emotion and cognition are embodied activities,
REC provides a way of understanding them as integral parts of unfolding processes rather than
as interactions between content-bearing states. In doing so it invites different kinds of questions
about emotions than make sense if they are understood as content-bearing states, such as Why,
for example, did the process unfold in this way rather than that? Why has it not stopped? What is
sustaining it and keeping it going? What is responsible for any regular patterns we may observe
in its progression? And so on (Steward 2016, p. 78).
In the final section, to round this analysis off, a complementary account of neurodynamics
that is also in essence process-based is explored.

4. The Neurodynamics (and beyond) of Skillful Performance

The foregoing considerations invite the question of how we should understand the architecture of
brains such that they help to enable emotionally charged performance that can be, in good cases,
fast and intelligent. How should we understand the brains role in enabling dynamical responding
that breaks across brain, body and environment, and where emotionality is part and parcel of
how organisms respond intelligently to varying circumstances? It is worth spending time
examining the brains role in performance because a standard critique of enactive and embodied
approaches to cognition is that these accounts fail to take the brain into account.
Many approaches to brain architecture assume that brains compute information. A familiar
way by which to model this takes the form of a bottom-up approach. Here the brain is depicted
as passive, waiting to be activated by sensory signals from the outside world (Bar 2007, p. 280),
and thus entirely stimulus-driven.

 Yet an emerging view of the brain dampens, if correct, the plausibility of such a linear view of
the brains architecture. Research on global network dynamics and anticipatory brain dynamics
suggest that the brain is a self-organizing system that need not be understood as computing
informational content but rather dwells in metastable states, poised on the brink of
instability where it can switch flexibly and quickly between such states and so be able to
anticipate the future, not simply react to it. (Kelso 1995, p. 26; Kirchhoff 2015)
What we call dynamic anticipatory models of the brain depict the brain as an anticipatory
organ: one where distributed brain dynamics come into being from local activity across various
brain areas, and where macroscopic or global influences constrain and shape the intrinsic
dynamics of thalamocortical networks and constantly create [anticipations] about forthcoming
sensory events. (Engel et al. 2001, p. 704) This is a view of the brain that is perfectly positioned
to take into consideration the dynamical organization of the body as something that in part
realizes context-sensitive cognitive activity (Riley et al. 2012).
Here the primary job of the brain is not to represent the world. Rather, the brain is part of a
larger network comprising body and environment (Gallagher et al. 2013). To see this, consider,
first, that global brain dynamics arise from local dynamics. However, large-scale dynamics can
have a constraining effect on local neuronal activity. This implies that local and global
neurodynamics are coupled, exhibiting a form of continuous reciprocal causation that is
characteristic of coupled dynamical systems. An example of this is the slaving principle in
synergetics, where microscopic processes or patterns of activity become enslaved by
macroscopic or large-scale ensemble behavior of the system in question (Deco et al. 2012).
Second, this kind of coupling is not intrinsic to the brain but can be found between brain, body
and environment. Crucially, if the brain-body-environment system comprises a single and
unified system, then there is no in principle need for one part of this larger system to represent
another part of the system (Silberstein and Chemero 2012).
Of course, talk of the brain anticipating future events is likely to induce a representationalist
view of anticipatory neurodynamics. The worry goes like this, or something close to it: if the
brain is in the business of anticipating future events, then it does not have access to such events
and must therefore represent them. But this conclusion need not follow. In the literature on
dynamical systems, it is common to treat two separate pendulums as coupled, and therefore as a
constituting a single nonlinear dynamical system. It is relatively straightforward to show that any
dynamical system A e.g., an organism coupled to a second dynamical system B e.g., an
environment can be understood as anticipating the dynamics of B when it reliably covaries
with the dynamics of B and it is robust to the noise inherent in the coupling (Bruineberg and
Rietveld 2014, p. 7) This is the notion of anticipation we have in mind when saying that the brain
continuously tries to anticipate unfolding events in the immediate future.
If it is not representations that maintain a connection between brain and world, what is it?
Work on global network dynamics and dynamical systems theory suggests that it is synergies. A
synergy is an assembly (typically short-lived) of processes enslaved to act as a single coherent
and functional unit (Kelso 1995). Specifically, synergies are defined as compensatory, low
dimensional relations in the dynamic activities of neuromuscular components (Kelso 2009), not
as static representational structures such as motor programs (Riley et al. 2012, p. 23).
This view of neurodynamics depicts the brain as anything but isolated from bodily activity in
real-world situations. Synergies not only enslave local brain areas into coherent dynamical
patterns but also dynamics breaking across brain and body. Central pattern generators are a case
in point. Such generators are coupled networks comprising both motor and interneurons resulting

in rhythmic outputs. As Riley et al. (2012) report: central pattern generators can be reorganized
when sensory and mechanical feedback trigger neurotransmitter release that functionally alters
the network connectivity for example, a mollusk slowly treading water changes abruptly,
recruiting additional interneurons to enable rapid escape from a predator (2012, p. 24). This
does not amount to a view of the brain as a computing device but rather as an organ for action,
whose anticipatory dynamics are realized when multiple areas over diverse temporal and
spatial scales coordinate their activity by exhibiting the same degree of dynamic covariance
(Engel et al. 2001).
How does this view of the brain as a dynamic anticipatory organ align with the claim that
intelligent responding and emotionality are integrated and so deeply unified? Consider, as a case
in point, Barrett and Bars (2009) affective prediction hypothesis. It implies, that emotional
appraisal of an objects salience or relevance does not take place after object identification or
recognition. Instead, affectivity is inherent to visual processing such that to perceive is also to
perceive in an affectively charged fashion. Such a view puts pressure on pure cognitivist
accounts of emotions, which portray emotions as judgments after, say, visual perception. In
contrast to cognitivist views of emotion, the affective prediction hypothesis implies that
perceiving is already affective. This is not a story of affective perceiving that is restricted to the
brain. To see this, consider that for Barrett and Bar external sensations do not occur in a
vacuum, but in a context of internal sensations from the body, including sensations from
organs, muscles, [and] joints (or interoceptive sensations) (2009, p. 1325). What this suggests
is that perceivers are affectively attuned when perceiving. To embrace this approach, one must
reject the cognitivist account of emotions.4 Emotions are part of the microscale constraints from
which macroscale activities emerge, and as such cannot be separated from embodied activity in
the world. On this view, then, synergetic self-organization provides a robust link between
intelligent responding and emotionality that is in line with REC and gives theoretical support to
ALD.

5. Conclusion

This paper has argued that if we are to understand sporting performances and train for them
appropriately emotions cannot be left out of the equation and separated from the training of
intelligent responding. Developing a fuller account of how and why this is so we have proposed
taking a radically enactive and embodied view of basic emotions and intelligence to understand
how they become intimately integrated. Our proposed account not only fits with and supports
new thinking about how to train for emotional attunement in practice it is also a natural partner
for thinking about the dynamical architecture of our brains and the role they play in supporting
cognitive activity.

Acknowledgements: Kirchhoff was supported by the John Templeton Foundation funded New
Directions in the Study of the Mind project based at the University of Cambridge.

References

Arajo, D., Davids, K. W., Chow, J.Y., Passos, P. Y., Raab, M. The Development of Decision
Making Skill in Sport: An Ecological Dynamics Perspective In Perspectives on Cognition
and Action in Sport. eds. Arajo, D. and Ripoll, H., 157-169. Hauppauge, NY: Nova Science
Publishers, Inc., 2009.

Arajo, D., Davids, K., and Passos, P. Ecological Validity, Representative Design, and
Correspondance between Experimental Task Constraints and Behavioral Setting. Ecological
Psychology 19 (2007): 69-78.
Armon-Jones, C. Varieties of Affect. Toronto, Canada: University of Toronto Press, 1986.
Aristotle. Nicomachean Ethics in The Complete Works of Aristotle, ed. J. Barnes. Princeton,
NJ: Princeton University Press. 1984.
Baker, J. and Farrow, D. Handbook of Sports Expertise. London: Routledge, 2015.
Barrett, L. F., and Bar, M. See it With Feeling: Affective Predictions During Object Perception.
Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B 364: (2009): 1325-1334.
Barris, S., Davids, K., and Farrow, D. Representative Learning Design in Springboard Diving:
Is Dry-land Training Representative of a Pool Dive? European Journal of Sport Science,
13(6) (2013): 638-645.
Baumeister, R. F., Vohs, K.D., DeWall, C.N., Zhang, L. How Emotion Shapes Behavior:
Feedback, Anticipation, and Reflection, Rather Than Direct Causation. Personality and
Social Psychology Review. 11:2. (2007), 167-203.
Beek, P.J., Jacobs, D.M., Daffertshofer, A., and Huys, R. Expert Performance in Sport: Views
from the Joint perspectives of Ecological Psychology and Dynamical Systems Theory in
Expert Performance in Sport. Eds. Starkes, J.L., Ericsson, K.A., 321-344, 2003.
Bermdez, J. The Force-Field Puzzle and Mindreading in Non-Human Primates. Review of
Philosophy and Psychology 2,3: (2011). 397-410.
Bruineberg, J. and Rietveld, E. Self-Organization, Free Energy Minimization, and Optimal Grip
on a Field of Affordances. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 8, (2014). 1-14.
Chemero, A. Radical Embodied Cognitive Science. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2009.
Chow, J-Y. Davids, K. Button, C., and Renshaw, I. Nonlinear Pedagogy in Skill Acquisition: An
Introduction. London: Routledge. 2015.
Chow, J. Y., Davids, K., Hristovski, R., Arajo, D. and Passos, P. Nonlinear Pedagogy:
Learning Design for Self-Organizing Neurobiological Systems, New Ideas in Psychology. 29.
(2011). 189-200.
Clark, A. Surfing Uncertainty: Prediction, Action and the Embodied Mind. Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2016.
Clark, J. A. Hubristic and Authentic Pride as Serial Homologues: The Same but Different.
Emotion Review. 2: (2010a). 397398.
Clark, J. A. Relations of Homology Between Higher Cognitive Emotions and Basic Emotions.
Biology and Philosophy. 25: (2010b). 7594.
Damasio, A. Descartes Error. New York: Harper Collins,1994.
Davids, K., Arajo, D., Hristovski, R., Passos, P., and Chow, J.Y. Ecological Dynamics and
Motor Learning Design in Sport. Skill Acquisition in Sport: Research, Theory and Practice.
2nd Edition. eds. E. M. Williams and N. Hodges. pp.112-130. London: Routledge, 2012.
Davids, K. Learning Design for Nonlinear Dynamical Movement Systems The Open Sports
Sciences Journal, 5:1: (2012). 9-16.
Davids, K, Button, C., and Bennett, S. Dynamics of Skill Acquisition. Champaign: Human
Kinetics, 2008.
Davids, K., Glazier, P., Arajo, D., and Bartlett, R. Movement Systems as Dynamical Systems:
The Functional Role of Variability and its Implications for Sports Medicine. Sports
Medicine, 33:4. (2003). 245-260.

Delancey, C. Passionate Engines: What Emotions Reveal about Mind and Artificial Intelligence.
New York: Oxford University Press, 2001.
Ekman, P. Basic Emotions. In Handbook of cognition and emotion. eds. T. Dalgleish and M. J.
Power, 4560, Chichester, UK: John Wiley and Sons, 1999.
Engel, A. K., Pascal, F., and Singer, W. Dynamic Predictions: Oscillations and Synchrony in
Top-Down Processing. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 2, (2001). 704-716.
Eriksen, J. Mindless Coping in Competitive Sport: Some Implications and Consequences.
Sport, Ethics and Philosophy 4. (2010). 66-86.
Fodor, J.A. and Pylyshyn, Z. Minds Without Meanings: An Essay on the Content of Concepts.
Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2015.
Gallagher, S., Hutto, D. D., Slaby, J., and Cole, J. The Brain as Part of an Enactive System.
Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 36:4, (2013). 213-214.
Gaut, B. Reasons, Emotions and Fictions. In Imagination, Philosophy and the Arts. Eds.
Kieran, M. and Lopes, D. M., 15-34, London: Routledge, 2003.
Gernigon, C., d'Arripe-Longueville, F., Delignieres, D. and Ninot, G.. A Dynamical Systems
Perspective on Goal Involvement States in Sport. Journal of Sport and Exercise Psychology,
26 (2004). 572-596.
Gibson, J.J. The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception. Boston: Houghton Mifflin,
1979/1986.
Goldie, G. The Emotions: A Philosophical Exploration. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000.
Goldsworthy, T.. 25 November 2014. 12.42 pm AEDT. Shoot to Kill: The Use of Lethal Force
by Police in Australia. The Conversation.
Graydon, M. M., Linkenauger, S. A., Teachman, B. A., and Proffitt, D. R. Scared Stiff: The
Influence of Anxiety on the Perception of Action Capabilities. Cognition and Emotion, 26:7,
(2012), 1301-1315.
Griffiths, P. E. What Emotions Really Are: The Problem of Psychological Categories. Chicago,
Illinois: University of Chicago Press, 1997.
Griffiths, P. Current Emotion Research in Philosophy. Emotion Review. 5:2, (2013). 18.
Harwood, C. Developing Consulting in a Professional Football Academy: The 5Cs Coaching
Efficacy Program. The Sport Psychologist, 22, (2008), 109-133.
Headrick, J., Renshaw, I., Davids, K., Pinder, R. A., and Araujo, D. The Dynamics of Expertise
Acquisition in Sport: The Role of Affective Learning Design. Psychology of Sport and
Expertise, 16, (2015). 83-90.
Hill, C. Consciousness. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009.
Hutto, D.D. Truly Enactive Emotion. Emotion Review, 4:2. (2012). 176-181
Hutto, D.D. Why Believe in Contentless Beliefs? in New Essays on Belief: Structure,
Constitution and Content. ed. N, Nottelmann, 55-74. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013.
Hutto, D.D. REC: Revolution Effected by Clarification. Topoi. 10.1007/s11245-015-9358-8.
(2015). 1-15
Hutto D.D., Myin E. Radicalizing Enactivism: Basic Minds without Content. Cambridge, MA:
MIT Press, 2013.
Hutto, D.D. and Snchez-Garca, R. Choking RECtified: Embodied Expertise beyond Dreyfus.
Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences. 14:2, (2015). pp 309-331.
Hutto, D.D. and Satne, G. The Natural Origins of Content Philosophia. 43:3. (2015). 521-536.
James, W. What is an Emotion? Mind. 9. (1884). 188205.

Jones, M. V., Lane, A. M., Bray, S. R., Uphill, M. A., and Catlin, J. Development and
Validation of the Sport Emotion Questionnaire. Journal of Sport and Exercise Psychology,
27:4. (2005). 407-431
Kelso, S. Synergies: Atoms of Brain and Behavior. In Progress in Motor Control: A
Multidisciplinary Perspective. Ed. D. Sternad, 83-91, New York: Springer, 2009.
Kelso, S. Dynamic Patterns. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1995.
Kirchhoff, M. D. Experiential fantasies, Prediction, and Enactive Minds. Journal of
Consciousness Studies, 22:3-4, (2015). 68-92.
LaBar, K. S., and Cabeza, R. Cognitive Neuroscience of Emotional Memory. Nature Reviews
Neuroscience, 7 (2006). 54-64.
Lepper, M. R. Hot versus Cold Cognition: An Abelsonian Voyage. In Beliefs, Reasoning,
and Decision Making: Psycho-Logic in Honor of Bob Abelson. eds. R. C. Schank and E.
Langer, 237-273, Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1994.
McCarthy, P. Allen, M.S. and Jones, M.V. Emotions, Cognitive Interference, and Concentration
Disruption in Youth Sport, Journal of Sports Sciences. 31:5, (2013), 505-515.
Moy, B., Renshaw, I., and Davids, K. Variations in Acculturation and Australian Physical
Education Teacher Education Students Receptiveness to an Alternative Pedagogical
Approach to Games Teaching. Physical Education and Sport Pedagogy, 19:4, (2014), 349-
369.
Newell, K.M. Constraints on the Development of Coordination in Motor Development in
Children: Aspects of Coordination and Controls. ed. M.G. Wade and H.T.A. Whiting, 341-
361, Amsterdam: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 1986.
Nussbaum, M. Upheavals of Thought: The Intelligence of Emotions. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2001.
Pijpers, J. R., Oudejans, R. R. D., Bakker, F. C., and Beek, P. J. The Role of Anxiety in
Perceiving and Realizing Affordances. Ecological Psychology, 18:3 (2006). 131-161.
Pinder, R. A., Davids, K., Renshaw, I., and Arajo, D. Manipulating Informational Constraints
Shapes Movement Reorganization in Interceptive Actions. Attention, Perception and
Psychophysics, 73, (2011a). 1242 - 1254.
Pinder, R. A., Davids, K., Renshaw, I., and Arajo, D. Representative Learning Design and
Functionality of Research and Practice in Sport. Journal of Sport and Exercise Psychology,
33, (2011b). 146-155.
Prinz, J. Gut Reactions: A Perceptual Theory of the Emotions. New York: Oxford University
Press., 2004
Ratcliffe, M. Feelings of Being: Phenomenology, Psychiatry and the Sense of Reality. Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2008.
Renshaw, I., Chow, J. Y., Davids, K., and Hammond, J. A Constraints-led Perspective for
Understanding Skill Acquisition and Game Play. Physical Education and Sport Pedagogy
15:2, (2010). 117-137.
Renshaw, I., Chappell, G. S., Fitzgerald, D., and Davison, J. The Battle Zone: Constraint-led
Coaching in Action. Paper presented at the Conference of Science, Medicine and Coaching
in Cricket, Gold Coast, Queensland: Australia, 2010.
Renshaw, I., Davids, K., Chow, J., and Shuttleworth, R. Insights from Ecological Psychology
and Dynamical Systems Theory Can Underpin a Philosophy of Coaching. International
Journal of Sport Psychology, 40 (2008). 580-602.

Riley, M. A., Shockley, M., and Van Orden, G. Learning from the Body about the Mind.
Topics in Cognitive Science, 4, (2012). 21-34.
Seifert, L., Button, C., and Davids, K. Key Properties of Expert Movement Systems in Sport:
An Ecological Dynamics Perspective. Sports Medicine, 43:3, (2013), 167-178.
Seifert, L., and Davids, K. Intentions, Perceptions and Actions Constrain Functional Intra - and
Inter - Individual Variability in the Acquisition of Expertise in Individual Sports. The Open
Sports Sciences Journal, 5, Suppl 1, (2012). 68-75.
Silberstein, M., and Chemero, A. Complexity and Extended-Phenomenological-Cognitive
Systems. Topics in Cognitive Science, 4, (2012). 35-50.
Smith, L. B., and Thelen, E. Development as a Dynamic System. Trends in Cognitive Sciences,
7:8. (2003). 343-348
Solomon, R. C. The Passions. New York: Double Day, 1976.
Spivey, M. The Continuity of Mind. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007.
Steward, H. Making the Agent Reappear: How Processes Might Help. In Time and The
Philosophy of Action. Eds. Altshuler, R and Sigrist, M.J., 67-84, London: Routledge, 2016.
Thompson E. Mind in Life. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007.
Travassos, B., Duarte, R., Vilar, L., Davids, K., and Arajo, D. Practice Task Design in Team
Sports: Representativeness Enhanced by Increasing Opportunities for Action Journal of
Sports Sciences, 30:13, (2012). 1447-1454.

1
Affect programs have script-like structures with the following standard steps: Step 1: paradigmatic
recognitional element involved in X; Step 2: paradigmatic outward expression of X; Step 3:
paradigmatic bodily changes and feeling of those changes; Step 4: paradigmatic motivational response
involved in X; Step 5: paradigmatic action out of X (Goldie 2000, 94).
2
Developing this idea we could follow Griffiths. He notes, Jason A. Clark has argued that basic
emotions and more cognitively sophisticated forms of the same emotion may be homologous to one
another (Clark 2010a, 2010b) (Griffiths 2013, 3). Expanding, he emphasizes, Clarks innovation is
to propose that simple and complex emotions in the same species may be homologous. The same
evolved developmental patterns are used twice, just as the developmental patterns that produce
skeletal elements are used twice in our arms and legs (serial homology). Clark proposes that a form of
shame similar to that in other primates and a more cognitively sophisticated form unique to humans
are both found in humans (Griffiths 2013, 4).

3 In any case, talk of states when thinking about dynamical systems appears to be an idealization at best.
As Spivey argues, [Claiming] that a system was in a particular state, X, at a particular point in time,
really boils down to saying that the average of the systems states during that period of time was X.
This kind of coarse averaging measurement is often a practical necessity in science, but should not be
mistaken as genuine evidence for the system actually resting in a discrete stable state. (2007, p. 30).
4
Indeed, as Clark (2016) claims the [predictive processing] account of emotion belongs, it seems,
to me in the same broad camp as so-called enactivist accounts that reject any fundamental
cognition/emotion divide and that stress the continuous reciprocal interactions between brain, body an
world (p. 235).