In 1996 Varela established the neurophenomenology research programme (NRP). This project was not designed to solve what Chalmers has defined as the hard problem, but rather to offer a methodological remedy for this problem. The NRP seeks to bridge the explanatory gap by creating a reciprocal dialogue between the firstperson perspective on the one hand and third-person perspective on the other. Yet, twenty years after Varela’s NRP kicked off, it seems that the explanatory gap is still very much alive. This paper argues that as long as subjective experience remains at least somewhat inaccessible, we will not be able to bridge this gap.

This paper argues that episodic thoughts (judgments, decisions, and so forth) are always unconscious. Whether consciousness is understood in terms of global broadcasting/widespread accessibility or in terms of non-interpretive higher-order awareness, the conclusion is the same: there is no such thing as conscious thought. Arguments for this conclusion are reviewed. The challenge of explaining why we should all be under the illusion that our thoughts are often conscious is then taken up.

Key words: attention, confabulation, consciousness, self-knowledge, thought, working memory.

Recent work in "embodied, embedded" cognitive science links mental contents to large-scale distributed effects: dynamic patterns implicating elements of (what are traditionally seen as) sensing, reasoning and acting. Central to this approach is an idea of biological cognition as profoundly "action-oriented" - geared not to the creation of rich, passive inner models of the world, but to the cheap and efficient production of real-world action in real-world context. A case in point is Hurley's (1998) account of the profound role of motor output in fixing the contents of conscious visual awareness – an account that also emphasizes distributed vehicles and long-range dynamical loops. Such stories can seem dramatically opposed to accounts, such as Milner and Goodale (1995), that stress relatively local mechanisms and that posit firm divisions between processes of visual awareness and of visuomotor action. But such accounts, I argue, can be deeply complimentary and together illustrate an important lesson. The lesson is that cognition may be embodied and action-oriented in two distinct – but complimentary – ways. There is a way of being embodied and action-oriented that implies being closely geared to the fine-grained control of low level effectors (hands, arms, legs and so on). And there is a way of being embodied and action-oriented that implies being closely geared to gross motor intentions, current goals, and schematic motor plans. Human cognition, I suggest, is embodied and action- oriented in both these ways. But the neural systems involved, and the size and scope of the key dynamic loops, may be quite different in each case.

Psychophysical studies of change blindness indicate that, at any instant, human observers are aware of detail in few parts of the visual field. Such results suggest, to some theorists, that human vision reconstructs only a few portions of the visual scene and that, to bridge the resulting representational gaps, it often lets physical objects serve as their own short-term memory. We propose that human vision reconstructs no portion of the visual scene, and that it never lets physical objects serve as their own short-term memory.

What makes it possible to affect one another, to move and be moved by another person? Why do some of our encounters transform us? The experience of moving one another points to the inter-affective in intersubjectivity. Inter-affection is hard to account for under a cognitivist banner, and has not received much attention in embodied work on intersubjectivity. I propose that understanding inter-affection needs a combination of insights into self-affection, embodiment, and interaction processes. I start from Michel Henry’s radically immanent idea of self-affection, and bring it into a contrastive dialogue with the enactive concepts of autonomy and (participatory) sense-making. I suggest that the latter ideas can open up Henry’s idea of self-affection to inter-affection (something he aimed to do, but did not quite manage) and that, in turn, Henry’s work can provide insights into underexplored elements of intersubjectivity, such as its ineffable and mysterious aspects, and erotic encounters

Key words: michel henry, affect, enaction, ineffability, inter-affection, interactive experience, intersubjectivity, participatory sense-making, self-affection, sexuality, social interaction

Excerpt: This paper is concerned with the method of phenomenological reduction understood as a disciplined embodied practice. However before we embark in the discussion that gives this paper its title, it is essential to provide the context from which these questions sprang at the turn of the century, when phenomenology was founded.

Enaction, as put forward by Varela and defended by other thinkers (notably Alva Noë, 2004; Susan Hurley, 2006; and Kevin O’Regan, 1992), departs from traditional accounts that treat mental processes (like perception, reasoning, and action) as discrete, independent processes that are causally related in a sequen- tial fashion. According to the main claim of the enactive approach, which Thompson seems to fully endorse, perceptual awareness is taken to be a skill-based activity. Our perceptual contact with the world, according to the enactionists, is not mediated by representations but is enacted, and the notion of representation, belonging to the classic computational paradigm, has no place in this alternative approach. Though Thompson does not pronounce directly on the issue of representationalism, he is most definitely keeping the company of anti-representationalists, and in that context it is not unreasonable to take his silence for consent. In this paper, we will argue that the enactive approach to imagery is unworkable unless it makes appeal to representations, understood in a particular way. Not understood as pictures, to be sure. Or sentences for that matter. But those aren’t the only options.

Key words: imagination, enactive theory of perception, representation≤ forward models, emulators