Historically, the suspension of presuppositions (the epoché, or bracketing) arose as part of the philosophical procedure of the transcendental reduction which, Husserl taught, led to the distinct realm of phenomenological research: pure consciousness. With such an origin, it may seem surprising that bracketing remains a methodological concept of modern phenomenological psychology, in which the focus is on the life-world. Such a focus of investigation is, on the face of it, incompatible with transcendental idealism. \\The gap was bridged largely by Merleau-Ponty, who found it possible to interpret Husserl’s later work in an existentialist way, and thus enabled the process of bracketing to refer, not to a turning away from the world and a concentration on detached consciousness, but to the resolve to set aside theories, research presuppositions, ready-made interpretations, etc., in order to reveal engaged, lived experience. \\This paper outlines the history of the suspension of presuppositions and discusses the scope and limitations of bracketing in its new sense within existential phenomenology. The emphasis is on research practice and on the phenomenological quest for entry into the life-world of the research participant. It is argued that the bracketing of presuppositions throughout the process of research should be a cardinal feature of phenomenological psychology. \\Of equal importance is the investigator’s sensitive awareness that the investigation of the life-world and the phenomena which appear within it is a thoroughly interpersonal process, necessarily entailing the taken-for-granted assumptions implicit in all social interaction. These presuppositions are not open to bracketing.

This paper compares the enactive approach to perception, which has recently emerged in cognitive science, with the phenomenological approach. Inspired by Husserl and Merleau-Ponty, the enactive theorists Alva Noë and Evan Thompson take perception to be a result of the interaction between the brain, the body and the environment. Their argument turns mostly on the role of self-motion and sensorimotor knowledge in perceptual experience. It was said to be entirely consistent with phenomenology, indeed its revival. However, this issue is under debate. To show this, I begin with analyzing the enactive conception as a physicalist attempt to overcome the challenge of dualism and representationalism. I then turn to Husserl’s transcendental method and argue that Noë’s solution, unlike Husserl’s, remains naturalistic, as it does not take the phenomenon of intersubjectivity and the constitution of the “cultural world” into account. Afterwards I turn to Merleau-Ponty and demonstrate that there is some certain common ground with Noë, but also major differences. I conclude that the enactive approach is not completely refuted by the phenomenological one, insofar as the latter partly contains the first. Yet the enactivists deal merely with the necessary physiological conditions of perception qua animal perception, not with the sufficient sociocultural conditions for the understanding of human perception, like the inquiry into the historical and linguistic circumstances under which the understanding of human mind is made possible. The reason why the recent transformation of phenomenology into neurophenomenology is perceived as a revival is virtually inherent to the specific scientific ethos of enactivism and reveals a certain oblivion of the objectives of philosophical phenomenology.

Key words: enactivism, husserl, merleau-ponty, perception, agency

The course on nature coincides with the re-working of Merleau-Ponty’s breakthrough towards an ontology and therefore plays a primordial role. The appearance of an interrogation of nature is inscribed in the movement of thought that comes after the Phenomenology of Perception. What is at issue is to show that the ontological mode of the perceived object – not the unity of a positive sense but the unity of a style that shows through in filigree in the sensible aspects has a universal meaning, that the description of the perceived world can give way to a philosophy of perception and therefore to a theory of truth. The analysis of linguistic expression to which the philosophy of perception leads opens out onto a definition of meaning as institution, understood as what inaugurates an open series of expressive appropriations. It is this theory of institution that turns the analysis of the perceived in the direction of a reflection on nature: the perceived is no longer the originary in its difference from the derived but the natural in its difference from the instituted. Nature is the “non-constructed, non-instituted,” and thereby, the source of expression: “nature is what has a sense without this sense having been posited by thought.”\\The first part of the course, which consists in a historical overview, must not be considered as a mere introduction. In fact, the problem of nature is brought out into the open by means of the history of Western metaphysics, in which Descartes is the emblematic figure. The problem consists in the duality at once unsatisfactory and unsurpassable – between two approaches to nature: the one which accentuates its determinability and therefore its transparency to the understanding; the other which emphasizes the irreducible facticity of nature and tends therefore to valorize the viewpoint of the senses. To conceive nature is to constitute a concept of it that allows us to “take possession” of this duality, that is, to found the duality. The second part of the course attempts to develop this concept of nature by drawing upon the results of contemporary science. Thus a philosophy of nature is sketched that can be summarized in four propositions: 1) the totality is no less real than the parts; 2) there is a reality of the negative and therefore no alternative between being and nothingmess; 3) a natural event is not assigned to a unique spatio-temporal localization; and 4) there is generality only as generativity.

Excerpt: The phenomenological perspective described by M. Merleau-Ponty, particularly in his Phenomenology of Perception (1962), seems to be emerging in the context of contemporary developmental research, theories of communication, metaphor theory, and cognitive neuroscience. This emergence is not always accompanied by reference to Merleau-Ponty, however, or appropriate interpretation. In some cases, the emergence of the perspective seems rather inadvertent. The purpose of this essay is to ferret out some of the points which contemporary thinking has in common with Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology. Though it may appear that the examples chosen for this essay might be scrutinized separately, the thread that ties them together is Merleau-Ponty’s work.

Body Wisdom applies a non-dualist and phenomenological approach. It contends that our bodies are microcosms of the universe and bearers of its unspoken secrets. It describes how our egos arise from our bodies through language. When we focus our hearts on troubling questions, our bodies come through for us. Open questions posed to the unconscious act as the strange attractors of chaos theory. They enable the creative speech of discovery. Nietzsche, Merleau Ponty, holograms, chaos theory, Zen Buddhism, and fractal geometry bear witness.

Context: Seventeen years ago Francisco Varela introduced neurophenomenology. He proposed the integration of phenomenological approaches to first-person experience – in the tradition of Husserl, Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty – with a neuro-dynamical, scientific approach to the study of the situated brain and body. Problem: It is time for a re-appraisal of this field. Has neurophenomenology already contributed to the sciences of the mind? If so, how? How should it best do so in future? Additionally, can neurophenomenology really help to resolve or dissolve the “hard problem” of the relation between mind and body, as Varela claimed? Method: The papers in this special issue arose out of a conference organised by the Consciousness and Experiential Psychology Section of the British Psychological Society in Bristol, UK, in September 2012. We have invited a representative sample of the speakers at that conference to present their work here. Results: Various papers argue that the first-person methods of phenomenology are distinct from, and more robust than, the failed “introspectionist” methods of early modern psychology. The “elicitation interview” emerges as a successful and widely adopted method to have emerged from this field. Phenomenological techniques are already being successfully applied to neuroscientific problems. Various specific proposals for new techniques and applications are made. Implications: It is time to take neurophenomenology seriously. It has proven its worth, and it is ripe with the potential for further immediate, successful applications. Constructivist content: Varela’s key aim was to develop a non-dualising approach to the science of consciousness. The papers in this special issue look at the philosophical and practical details of successfully putting such an approach into practice.

Key words: Phenomenology, neuroscience, dynamical systems, first-person methods, second-person methods, the elicitation interview, introspection, consciousness

Few researchers of the past made sense of the collapse of representations in the quantum domain, and looked for a new process of sense-making below the level of representations: the level of the phenomenology of perception and action; the level of the elaboration of knowledge out of experience. But some recent philosophical readings of quantum physics all point in this direction. They all recognize the fact that the quantum revolution is a revolution in our conception of knowledge. In these recent readings of quantum physics (such as QBism), quantum states are primarily generators of probabilistic valuations. Accordingly, they should not be seen as statements about what is the case, but as statements about what each agent can reasonably expect to be the case. Three features of such non-interpretational, non-committal approaches to quantum physics strongly evoke the phenomenological epistemology. These are: (1) their deliberately first-person stance; (2) their suspension of judgment about a presumably external domain of objects, and subsequent redirection of attention towards the activity of constituting these objects; (3) their perception-like conception of quantum knowledge. But beyond phenomenological epistemology, these new approaches of quantum physics also make implicit use of a phenomenological ontology. Chris Fuchs’s participatory realism thus formulates a non-external variety of realism for one who is deeply immersed in reality. But participatory realism strongly resembles Merleau-Ponty’s endo-ontology, which is a phenomenological ontology for one who deeply participates in Being. This remarkable analogy is supported by Merleau-Ponty himself. Indeed, 50 years before QBism, Merleau-Ponty acknowledged the strong kinship between the status of quantum mechanics and his phenomenology of embodiment. He did so in two texts that remained unpublished until after his death: Visible and invisible, and the Lectures on Nature. The final part of this article is then devoted to a study of Merleau-Ponty’s conception of quantum physics.

Context: Varela’s neurophenomenology was conceived from the outset as a criticism and dissolution of the “hard problem” of the physical origin of consciousness. Indeed, the standard (physicalist) formulation of this problem is what generates it, and turns it into a fake mystery. Problem: Such a dissolution of the “hard problem” is very demanding for researchers. It invites them to leave their position of neutral observers/thinkers, and to seek self-transformation instead. It leaves no room for the “hard problem” in the field of discourse, and rather deflects it onto the plane of attitudes. As a consequence, it runs the risk of being either ignored or considered as a dodge. How can we overcome this obstacle and restore the argumentative impact of neurophenomenology? Method: I propose a metaphysical compensation for the anti-metaphysical premise of the neurophenomenological dissolution of the “hard problem.” Yet, this alternative metaphysics is designed to keep the benefit of a shift from discourse to ways of being - this is the latent message of neurophenomenology. Results: A dynamical and participatory conception of the relation between body and consciousness is formulated, with no concession to standard positions such as physicalist monism and property dualism. This conception is based on Varela’s formalism of “cybernetic dialectic” and on a geometrical model of self-production. It is in close agreement with Merleau-Ponty’s “intra-ontology: an engaged ontological approach of what it is like to be, rather than a discipline of the contemplation of beings. Implications: Taking neurophenomenology seriously implies a radical shift in our way of tackling the “hard problem” of consciousness. There is no question here of theorizing about the neuro-experiential correlation but of including it in a chain of resonance and continuous research that amplifies our lived life. Even metaphysics partakes in this shift. Constructivist content: The article advocates a critical stance towards standard realist approaches to the science and philosophy of mind. A complete reversal of the hierarchy of ontological priorities between physical objects and consciousness is proposed, in the spirit of Husserl’s Crisis of the European Sciences. Then, the obvious but usually overlooked relation between being conscious and knowing consciousness is emphasized. Keywords: Neurophenomenology, phenomenology, consciousness, experience, mind-body problem, quantum mechanics, neutral monism, panpsychism, Merleau-Ponty.

Alva Noë (2004, 2008, 2012) understands what he calls “perceptual presence” (2004, 59) as the experience of whole, voluminous objects being ‘right there’, present for us in their entirety, even though not each and every part of them impinges directly on our senses at any given time. How is it possible that we perceptually experience voluminous objects as voluminous directly and apparently effortlessly, with no need of inferring their three-dimensionality from experience of the part of them that is directly stimulating our sense organs? For Noë, this is the ‘problem of perceptual presence’. In this paper, I integrate Noë’s view by articulating a different view of what perceptual presence at a more basic level amounts to. This new account of perceptual presence which, I believe, can clarify and make an enactive account of presence richer. The view I suggest revolves around the idea, developed especially by Merleau-Ponty (1945, 1947) and Kelly (2005, 2007, 2010), that perceptual experience is in an important sense indeterminate. Indeterminacy, I argue, is key if we want to understand perceptual presence and the ‘problem’ Noë solves.

Key words: perception, enactivism, perceptual presence, phenomenology, indeterminacy

Excerpt: Phenomenology was a European philosophy that was a parallel development to American pragmatism. It will be argued that personal construct psychology may fruitfully be seen as a phenomenological approach to the person and that its methods for investigating the experience of individuals mirror and indeed extend phenomenology’s reach. It will also be contended that personal construct psychology is enriched by the insights of other phenomenologists, in particular, those of Merleau-Ponty (1962/1945).