This paper proposes a definition of cognition as a system capable of both action and perception, in which the coupling of action and perception is such that the emergent behaviour of the system in its environment satisfies a meaningful constraint. The immune system of vertebrate animals reacts to nonself antigens by producing a specific immune response which triggers destruction of the antigen; it reacts to self antigens by incorporating them into the regulatory dynamics of a self- organizing network. It is argued that this behaviour meets the requirements of the definition, and hence that the immune system is a cognitive entity capable of adaptation, learning and memory. Consequences of this perspective are that the molecules and cells of a multicellular organism are not, as such, “cognitive”; that the full articulation of neurophysiology into cognitive science requires a study of emergent behaviour at the level of meaningful interactions between a system and its environment; and that the objects of cognition, with or without neurones, are brought into existence by the coupled perceptions and actions of the cognitive system itself.

The fundamental concepts of autopoiesis, which emphasize the circular organization underlying both living organisms and cognition, have been criticized on the grounds that since they are conceived as a tight logical chain of definitions and implications, it is often not clear whether they are indeed a scientific theory or rather just a potential scientific vocabulary of doubtful utility to working scientists. This article presents the deployment of the concepts of autopoiesis in the field of immunology, a discipline where working biologists themselves spontaneously have long had recourse to “cognitive” metaphors: “recognition”; a “repertoire” of recognized molecular shapes; “learning” and “memory”; and, most striking of all, a “self versus non-self” distinction. It is shown that in immunology, the concepts of autopoiesis can be employed to generate clear novel hypotheses, models demonstrating these ideas, testable predictions, and novel therapeutic procedures. Epistemologically, it is shown that the self–non-self distinction, while quite real, is misleadingly named. When a real mechanism for generating this distinction is identified, it appears that the actual operational distinction is between (a) a sufficiently numerous set of initial antigens, present from the start of ontogeny, in conditions that allow for their participation in the construction of the system’s organization and operation, and (b) single antigens that are first presented to the system after two successive phases of maturation. To call this a self–non-self distinction obscures the issue by presupposing what it ought to be the job of scientific investigation to explain.

Key words: Autopoiesis, immune system, idiotypic network, self, non-self

This paper proposes a definition of cognition as a system capable of both action and perception, in which the coupling of action and perception is such that the emergent behaviour of the system in its environment satisfies a meaningfid constraint. The immune system of vertebrate animals reacts to non,self antigens by producing a specific immune response which triggers destruction of the antigen; it reacts to self antigens by incorporating them into the regulatory dynamics of a self-organizing network. It is argued that this behaviour meets the requirements of the definition, and hence that the immune system is a cognitive entity capable of adaptation, learning and memory. Consequences of this perspective are that the molecules and cells of a multicellular organism are not, as such, “cognitive”; that the full articulation of neurophysiology into cognitive science requires a study of emergent behaviour at the level of meaningful interactions between a system and its environment; and that the objects of cognition, with or without neurones, are brought into existence by the coupled perceptions and actions of the cognitive system itself.

Key words: Adaptation, Cognition, Learning, Memory, Computer Simulations, Network, Immune System

Open peer commentary on the article “Visual Representation in the Wild: Empirical Phenomenological Investigation of Visual-spatial Working Memory in a Naturalistic Setting” by Aleš Oblak. Abstract: I show that systematic first-person inquiry into the lived experience of decision-making in naturalistic settings in part affords a different understanding and conceptualization of the phenomenon from those arising in third-person laboratory research. Two aspects are discussed: the role of the task and how the participants understand the investigative situation. Furthermore, I briefly address a related matter: What shapes the choice of tasks in the first place? I argue both that the assemblage of the tasks we use to investigate the mind shapes the way we understand it and that how we conceptualize the mind in part determines our choice of tasks.

Cricket is suffused in memory. Both playing and appreciating the game centrally involve various forms of remembering. This essay focuses on the distinction between explicit autobiographical remembering and the kind of habitual or ‘procedural’ memory involved in complex embodied skills like batting. Generally considered the province of psychology or cognitive science, the phenomenon of habit or skill memory has been largely neglected by philosophical anthropology and the philosophy of mind. However a number of intrinsically interesting questions concerning batting in particular arise when considered from this perspective. While drawing upon ideas from psychology and cognitive anthropology, the argument is supplemented with accounts from general testimony and cricket writing, phenomenology, and other investigations of the embodied mind. While starting from the prevalent view that thinking too much disrupts the practised, embodied skills involved in batting, the essay suggests that experts do in fact successfully learn mental techniques for how to influence themselves in action, and that the kinds of explicit thought and memory in question are themselves active, dynamic and context-sensitive.

Excerpt: “There is no place in the phenomenology of fully absorbed coping”, writes Hubert Dreyfus, “for mindfulness. In flow, as Sartre sees, there are only attractive and repulsive forces drawing appropriate activity out of an active body”. Among the many ways in which history animates dynamical systems at a range of distinctive timescales, the phenomena of embodied human habit, skilful movement, and absorbed coping are among the most pervasive and mundane, and the most philosophically puzzling. In this essay we examine both habitual and skilled movement, sketching the outlines of a multi-dimensional framework within which the many differences across distinctive cases and domains might be fruitfully understood. Both the range of movement phenomena which can plausibly be seen as instances of habit or skill, and the space of possible theories of such phenomena are richer and more disparate than philosophy easily encompasses. We seek to bring phenomenology into contact with relevant movements in psychological theories of skilful action, in the belief that phenomenological philosophy and cognitive science can be allies rather than antagonists. We aim to identify some tensions within recent phenomenological approaches. In rejecting “mindfulness” and arguing that “mindedness is the enemy of embodied coping”, we suggest that Dreyfus is representative of many theorists and practitioners who privilege one aspect or feature of the phenomenology of flow as if it captured the entire phenomenon. Though we do not theorise flow explicitly here, the constructive view we sketch in the final section of the paper is closer to Csikszentmihalyi’s idea that sustained flow experience requires ongoing challenge, the sense of having one’s skills constantly stretched: as he puts it, “although the flow experience appears to be effortless, it is far from being so”, and often involves “highly disciplined mental activity” in the form of “complex mental operations.… completed in a few seconds, perhaps in a fraction of a second”. 3 The kind of mental operations in question are not reflective or considered deliberations, not intellectual instructions to the body, and yet they are in the realm of the psychological, both complex and mindful. Explaining just what ‘mindful’ operations might be in play here for different practitioners on different occasions – what mixes of rich attention, kinesthetic awareness, inter-animated forms of memory, and idiosyncratic sensuous experience – will require careful consideration of many different cases of skilful and absorbed embodied activity.

Excerpt: Here we have brought together philosophical, neurophysiological, psychological, psychiatric, sociological, anthropological, and evolutionary studies of the interplay of embodiment, enaction, and culture. The constitution of the shared world is understood in terms of participatory and broader collective sense-making processes manifested in dynamic forms of intercorporeality, collective body memory, artifacts, affordances, scaffolding, use of symbols, and so on. The contributors investigate how preconscious and conscious accomplishments work together in empathy, interaffectivity, identifications of oneself with others through emotions such as shame, we-intentionality, and hermeneutical understanding of the thoughts of others. The shared world is seen as something constituted by intersubjective understanding that discloses things in the shared significance they have for the members of a culture. Special emphasis is put on phenomenological approaches to cognition and culture and their relation to other approaches. Our introduction explicates the key concepts, relates them to relevant empirical research, raises guiding questions, and explains the structure of the book. Starting with a phenomenological approach to the intertwinement of mind, body, and the cultural world, we continue with an exploration of the concepts of intercorporeality and interaffectivity. The ideas underlying these concepts are put in dialogue with central tenets of enactivism. We then consider further cultural conditions, such as those of cognitive scaffolding, and explain how these cultural conditions in turn depend on the embodied interaction of human beings. Finally, we outline the book’s structure and introduce the individual chapters.

This chapter examines the so-called ‘memory argument’ for reflexive awareness in the Yogacara-Madhyamaka school of Indo-Tibetan Buddhist philosophy. According to this argument, when one remembers one recalls both the past object and the past experience of this object, thus no additional higher-order cognition is required in order to recall the subjective side of the original experience, hence reflexive self-awareness or self-cognition belonged to the original experience. Husserlian phenomenology is used to defend the memory argument against rival Buddhist views that deny reflexive awareness, but it is also argued that such a phenomenological defense exerts pressure on certain versions of the Buddhist no-self doctrine.

Key words: memory argument, reflexive awareness, self-awareness, phenomenology

One of the major debates in classical Indian philosophy concerned whether consciousness is present or absent in dreamless sleep. The philosophical schools of Advaita Vedānta and Yoga maintained that consciousness is present in dreamless sleep, whereas the Nyāya school maintained that it is absent. Consideration of this debate, especially the reasoning used by Advaita Vedānta to rebut the Nyāya view, calls into question the standard neuroscientific way of operationally defining consciousness as “that which disappears in dreamless sleep and reappears when we wake up or dream.” The Indian debate also offers new resources for contemporary philosophy of mind. At the same time, findings from cognitive neuroscience have important implications for Indian debates about cognition during sleep, as well as for Indian and Western philosophical discussions of the self and its relationship to the body. Finally, considerations about sleep drawn from the Indian materials suggest that we need a more refined taxonomy of sleep states than that which sleep science currently employs, and that contemplative methods of mind training are relevant for advancing the neurophenomenology of sleep and consciousness.

Key words: access consciousness, advaita vedānta, anaesthesia, awareness, buddhism, consciousness, cross-cultural philosophy of mind, dreamless sleep, meditation, memory, neurophenomenology, nrem (non-rapid eye movement) sleep, nyāya, phenomenal consciousness, sel

This first of three articles creates a framework for bringing the phenomenology of psychotherapy into fruitful coordination with neuroscientific knowledge. We suggest that constructivism is a conceptual paradigm adequate to this task. An examination of the main features of psychological constructivism and of neural constructivism serves to demonstrate their strong convergence. Attention then turns to a particular implementation of psychological constructivism, the relatively recently developed psychotherapeutic system known as coherence therapy or coherence psychology. We provide an account of the extensive neuroscientific evidence supporting this system’s model of clinical symptoms as being produced by coherent, unconscious knowledge structures held in implicit, subcortical memory. Suggestions for research that could test our analysis are the focus of our conclusion.