Excerpt: Inthe French language, the verb vivre means both “to be alive” (Leben) and “to have an experience, to feel something” (Erleben): it is neutral with respect to the distinction between the transitive life that we call consciousness, and the intransitive life of organisms that merely keep themselves alive. In this text, we put forward the hypothesis that this neutrality, far from being a simple accident of language, is highly revealing as to the primordial status of life; it thus indicates the direction that a phenomenology of life should take. The question that a phenomenology of life has to confront is thus the following: what is the primordial meaning of life such that it precedes the distinction between intransitive and transitive life, and thereby makes this distinction possible? In other words: what is life such that the possibility of consciousness is grounded therein? From the moment we consider that consciousness is basically characterized by intentionality, primordial life must already contain the germ of a fundamental transitivity where intentionality can be grounded; it follows from this that the question of the Being of intentionality, and that of the mode of Being of life, are one and the same question.

Excerpt: Describing language in the light of the enactive paradigm is a most challenging issue: language is to be reconsidered in terms of sensorimotor interactions with an environment in which both the individual and the environment are modified, in which not one,but several individuals are involved – an experience that is, all in one, that of the speaker and hearer at the instant of uttering or thinking; that of the child developing into an adult through social intercourse; that of the tribe turning to a full-fledged civilization; and that of the linguist interfering with his object of scrutiny by linguistic means. As a selection has to be made, this chapter will primarily focus on the immediate experience of languaging, and secondarily broach more general subjects like acquisition and evolution.

The theory of autopoiesis is central to the enactive approach. Recent works emphasize that the theory of autopoiesis is a theory of sense-making in living systems, i.e., of how living systems produce and consume meaning. In this chapter I first illustrate (some aspects of) these recent works, and interpret their notion of sense-making as a bodily cognitive-emotional form of understanding. Then I turn to modern emotion science, and I illustrate its tendency to over-intellectualize our capacity to evaluate and understand. I show that this over-intellectualization goes hand in hand with the rejection of the idea that the body is a vehicle of meaning. I explain why I think that this over-intellectualization is problematic, and try to reconceptualize the notion of evaluation in emotion theory in a way that is consistent and continuous with the autopoietic notion of sense-making. Relevance: It links emotion theory and the enactive notion of sense-making.

This chapter discusses the brain-in-a-vat thought experiment and attempts to determine what needs to be specified so that one can properly imagine a brain in a vat. Daniel Dennett notes that philosophers often fail to set up their intuition pumps properly by failing to think carefully about the requirements and implications of their imagined scenarios. His suggestion is considered here and a careful look at the brain-in-a-vat thought experiment is proposed. The chapter puts the thought experiment to new use, namely, to address the biology of consciousness and to develop some new considerations in support of the enactive approach in cognitive science. Its main argument is that the brain-in-vat thought experiment, when spelled out with the requisite detail, suggests precisely that the body is not merely causally enabling for consciousness, but also constitutive.

Key words: thought experiment, Daniel Dennett, intuition pumps, biology of consciousness, enactive approach

Excerpt: We dedicate this chapter to clarifying the central tenets of enactivism and exploring some of the themes currently under development. In this exercise, following the logic of the central ideas of enactivism can sometimes lead to unexpected hypotheses and implications. We must not underestimate the value of a new framework in allowing us to formulate questions in a different vocabulary, even if satisfactory answers are not yet forthcoming. Implicitly, the exploration of these questions and possible answers is at the same time a demonstration of the variety of methods available to enactivism, from phenomenology, to theory/experiment cycles, and to the synthesis of minimal models and validation by construction – an additional thread that runs through this chapter and that we will pick up again in the discussion.

Excerpt: The goal of this chapter is to explore possible implications of […] a “pragmatic turn” for cognitive neuroscience. In addition to reviewing major conceptual components of this new framework, I will discuss neurobiological evidence supporting this notion. Specifically, I will relate this new view to recent findings on the dynamics of signal flow in the nervous system and on encoding dimensions of neural activity patterns. As I will argue, new vistas on the “meaning,” the functional roles, and the presumed “representational” nature of neural processes are likely to emerge from this confrontation.

Excerpt: Inspired by the constructivist project of Piaget as presented in Construction du réel chez l’enfant (937), the aim of this chapter is to study the microand ontogenetic processes involved in the phenomenological constitution of space and perceived objects in humans. We shall not attempt to revisit the totality of Piaget’s project, but rather reexamine the initial structural and functional conditions with a view to reformulating the process of the construction of spatialized objects of perception. Our goal is to lend support to a radical constructivist thesis that holds, first, that the point of departure for an experience of the world is the lived body, and second, that the constitution of perceived objects is both constrained and made possible by the repertoire of actions available to the subject.

In this text, I propose to review the major analyses of Husserlian phenomenology, and to show how this renews the questions of the nature and the genesis of mind, the epistemological constitution of cognitive science, and their relation. On this basis, I shall propose a new view of the possible relations between phenomenology and cognitive science, quite different from the “naturalization of phenomenology.”

Excerpt:The cognitive accomplishments of all human groups depend on the simultaneous operation of cognitive processes on all of these levels from neuron to social group. The big questions in contemporary cognitive science concern the ways that humans, understood as biological creatures, can produce culturally meaningful outcomes.

Excerpt: Based on […] new neurophenomenological circulation, we review here some of the ongoing work of our research group concerning epilepsy. In particular, special attention is here paid to interdependence of neurodynamic and phenodynamic structures associated with the beginning of an epileptic seizure, the so-called aura.